Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications researchers have experimented with using visible light from commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data wirelessly at speeds of up to 230 Mbit per sec. One advantage to using light to carry data over Wi-Fi or another system is that the lights are already in the room, says Fraunhofer researcher Jelena Vucic. A signal from a LED is generated by slightly flickering all the lights in unison at a rate millions of times faster than the human eye can detect. Although the bandwidth for commercial LEDs is limited to a few megahertz, Vucic’s team increased the amount tenfold by filtering out all the light except for the blue part of the spectrum. The researchers say the data rate could be doubled with some modulation adjustments.
View Full Article
For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) researchers recently performed a multi-part analysis of Twitter and concluded that it is a surprisingly interconnected network and an effective way to filter information. On the MSN messenger network, the median degree of separation is six. However, on Twitter, the average path length is 4.12. Because 94 percent of Twitter users are fewer than five degrees of separation from one another, it is likely that the distance between any random user and a celebrity is even shorter on Twitter than in real life. “No matter how many followers a user has, the tweet is likely to reach [an audience of a certain size] once the user’s tweet starts spreading via retweets,” write the KAIST researchers. Earlier Twitter studies suggested that the best way to get noticed was to tweet at certain times of day. “Half of retweeting occurs within an hour, and 75 percent under a day,” according to the researchers. “What is interesting is from the second hop and on is that the retweets two hops or more away from the source are much more responsive and basically occur back to back up to five hops away.”
View Full Article
For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

ACM and several computing community partners commend the U.S. House of Representatives’ passage of a resolution to improve the visibility of computer science as a transforming industry that propels technology innovation and improves economic productivity. The House resolution designates the week of December 7 as “National Computer Science Education Week” and calls on educators and policymakers to improve computer science learning at all education levels and to encourage increased participation in computer science. ACM is working with Microsoft, Google, Intel, the Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA), the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), and the Computing Research Association to improve awareness that computer science education is a national priority. “National Computer Science Education Week will help us draw attention to the need for an educational system that values computer science as a discipline and provides students with critical thinking skills and career opportunities,” says ACM Education Policy Committee chair Bobby Schnabel, dean of the School of Informatics at Indiana University. CSTA executive director Chris Stephenson notes the vital role that computing plays in people’s daily lives, and stresses the urgency of building a strong computing workforce. “We need to expose K-12 students to computer science concepts to help them gain critical 21st century skills and knowledge, and we’re grateful for Congress’ recognition of this need as a national priority,” Stephenson says. NCWIT CEO and co-founder Lucy Sanders says the annual commemoration of National Computer Science Education Week can strengthen efforts to inform students, teachers, parents, and the public about how computer science enables innovation in all science, technology, engineering, and mathematics fields and creates economic opportunities.

View Full Article

For More Information:http://www.cpccci.com

A coalition of seven academic institutions will use a $12.2 million National Institutes of Health grant to develop VIVOweb, a Facebook-style professional networking system for biomedical researchers across the United States. Participating institutions say VIVOweb will make it easier for scientists to find one another, ultimately enabling them to improve their ongoing studies and create long-term collaborative projects that could result in new discoveries. University of Florida professor Michael Conlon, the principal investigator on the project, says scientists often have difficulty finding each other, and currently the best way to connect with others performing similar research is through lists of publications. Dean Krafft, who is leading the project at Cornell University, says VIVOweb will use the Semantic Web to make information more available to scientists. The public also will be able to access the site, but some information will be available only to scientists. The open source software developed by Cornell for VIVOweb collects the facts a person is looking for and assembles a unique Web page just for that search. Participants expect to have VIVOweb connected across the country within two years, and eventually plan to connect scientists from around the world.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

ACM’s SIGGRAPH 2009 conference in August featured an exhibit that enabled visitors to experience the various levels of vision and hearing of animals, such as the ultraviolet vision of birds or the ultrasonic hearing of whales. Computer scientists at Texas A&M University worked with the university’s fine arts expert Carol LaFayette on the virtual environment program, “I’m Not There.” Professor Fred Parke developed the system, which requires participants to don three-dimensional glasses and use a Wii controller to navigate through the immersive exhibit. He also is working on a liquid-crystal display version of the system. The virtual environment was enhanced by surround-sound recordings of animals in the wild and scenes set on Cocos Island, located southwest of Costa Rica. “The Viz lab is about the synthesis between art and science, so we inserted artistic elements into these scenes to make them more realistic and interesting,” LaFayette says. She believes science and natural history museums could use such technology to enhance the experience for visitors. “Think of all the exhibits that could come to life–and in a very green way,” she says.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com