Science & Engineering
- Rails Yet To Make Dent in the Enterprise
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11/28/2007
The eardrum-rupturing buzz around Ruby on Rails (RoR or just "Rails") among Web developers is understandable. Even the luminaries are singing its praises. James Duncan Davidson, creator of Tomcat and Ant, has described RoR as "the most well thought-out Web development framework I've ever used." Tech book publishing titan Tim O'Reilly thinks it's "a breakthrough in lowering the barriers of entry to programming." Agile programming expert Martin Fowler calls Rails "a standard to which even well-established tools are comparing themselves."
- Nvidia CUDA Brings GPU-Based Parallel Programming to the Classroom
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11/27/2007
Nvidia has released a public beta of CUDA 1.1, an update to the company's C-compiler and SDK for developing multi-core and parallel processing applications on GPUs, specifically Nvidia's 8-series GPUs (and their successors in the future). While the 1.1 beta was originally released to developers Nov. 12, an update was posted last week that includes new public beta Linux display drivers. In addition, Nvidia has announced that more than 20 universities around the world have adopted CUDA for multi-core and parallel processing programming, with several more also exploring CUDA for inclusion in their parallel programming curricula.
- NMSI To Grant $25 Million for STEM Teacher Prep
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11/21/2007
The non-profit National Math and Science Initiative (NMSI) will award $25 million to 12 universities in the United States in an effort to boost the number of teachers with "enhanced math and science teaching skills." The grants will be awarded to universities whose teacher preparation programs are modeled after the UTeach program at the University of Texas at Austin--a program that has doubled the number of math and science majors being certified at the university.
- IBM/University Collaboration To Develop Open-Source Accessibility Tools
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11/20/2007
University researchers in the United States and the U.K. have started collaborating with IBM to develop open-source software solutions aimed at bringing accessibility to older workers to "help them adapt to and remain productive in the changing workplace of the 21st century," according to information released late last week by IBM. The effort is part of IBM's Open Collaborative Research initiative, which creates partnerships with universities for the purpose of developing and releasing open-source tools to the public.
- Red Hat and Platform Computing Team on Grid Solution
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11/20/2007
Red Hat recently announced an agreement with Platform Computing to support high-performance computing (HPC) solutions. HPC is a form of distributed computing where multiple processors are linked together to act as a single system. This type of system uses an array of commercial-grade processors to create a system that has processing speeds comparable with today's fastest supercomputers.
- OASIS Ramps Up SDO Efforts for SOAs
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11/19/2007
The nonprofit OASIS standards group has created a technical committee in support of the Service Data Objects (SDO) specification at OASIS. The SDO spec, which is a subset of the Service Component Architecture (SCA) spec, aims at simplifying data handling in service-oriented architectures (SOAs).
- Microsoft Releases Beta of High-Performance Computing Server
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11/16/2007
Microsoft took the next step into the arena of high-performance computing (HPC) Nov. 13 when it announced the release of the first beta of Windows HPC Server 2008, the successor to Compute Cluster Server 2003.
- MIT Researchers Advance Lecture Capture with Search Capabilities
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11/14/2007
Researchers in MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) have developed a new Web-based technology that's designed to take recorded classroom lectures to the next level. The technology, developed by a team led by MIT's Regina Barzilay and James Glass, provides search functionality for classroom video recordings. At present, the prototype only works with MIT's online lectures made available to the public through the university's OpenCourseWare initiative, but it may be made available to other institutions in the future.
- Carnegie Mellon To Engage Yahoo! Open Source Supercomputing Project
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11/13/2007
Carnegie Mellon University will become the first higher education institution to work with Yahoo!'s M45, a new project announced yesterday by the Internet firm designed to advance distributed computing research and software development. The program, which leverages the Apache Software Foundation's open-source Hadoop, will allow researchers to test software running on a Yahoo!-provided 4,000-processor supercomputer.
- Natural Language Gets AJAX Support
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11/13/2007
Software AG recently unveiled Natural for AJAX, a variant of Software AG's Natural 2006 programming language. Natural 2006 is typically used at the enterprise level for transactional systems running on mainframes.
- Red Hat and Sun Ink Open Source Java Deal
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11/13/2007
Open source solution vendor Red Hat is collaborating with Sun Microsystems with the aim of creating a "fully compatible, open source Java Development Kit (JDK) for Red Hat Enterprise Linux," according to an announcement issued by Red Hat.
- Latest LabView Student Edition Includes Multicore Processing, Hybrid Programming
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11/9/2007
National Instruments has released LabView 8.5 Student Edition, the latest update to its software that gives students a graphical system for designing, prototyping, and deploying real-world applications based on engineering and science concepts.
- First Look: The Curl Development Environment
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11/8/2007
Curl, which has recently been released in part to the open source community under the Apache 2.0 license, is an object-oriented hybrid markup language with similarities to HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
- Innovation First Brings Robotics to the Classroom
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11/8/2007
With robotics playing an ever more integral role in STEM education, Innovation First, the company behind a wide range of robotics initiatives, has launched a new online resource targeted directly toward K-12 and post-secondary education.
- California, Maryland Universities Nab Aeronautics Grants
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11/6/2007
Three universities in California and Maryland have received grants as part of the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Fundamental Aeronautics Program. The program is designed to foster collaboration between industry, education, and NASA itself to benefit the aeronautics community.
- USRA To Lead NASA's Undergraduate Student Research Project
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11/5/2007
NASA has launched an educational initiative designed to provide "real-world" experience to undergraduate students of STEM subjects. The Undergraduate Student Research Project (USRP) will be headed up by the Universities Space Research Association, in Maryland.
- Survey: Good News for COBOL Programmers
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11/2/2007
Yes, COBOL. Believe it or not, in higher education, COBOL--one of the oldest programming languages and second only to FORTRAN in comedic value--still has a future. According to a survey of CIOs by technology provider Micro Focus, more than 75 percent said they intend to recruit COBOL programmers over the next five years, but 73 percent said they're having a hard time finding such programmers. COBOL was invented in 1959 as an alternative to the most popular programming language of the day, Cuneiform.
- 2008 Technology for Teaching Grants Open
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10/30/2007
HP has opened up its 2008 Technology for Teaching Grant program, offering $6 million to K-12 and higher education institutions in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. The initiative is aimed at efforts to improve education through the use of innovative uses of technology in the classroom, increase the number of underrepresented students on a path toward high-tech careers, and enhance student success in math, science and engineering.
- Adobe To Release Flex Builder 2 Free for Education Users
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10/29/2007
Adobe last week announced its intention to release Flex Builder 2 free for students and faculty at education institutions. Flex Builder, which retails for $499, is an integrated development environment for the Flex framework, which powers cross-platform rich Internet applications on the Web.
- STEM Equity Gets Boost from NSF
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10/29/2007
In an effort to explore methods for encouraging females to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM), the National Science Foundation has awarded the National Alliance for Partnerships in Equity (NAPE) Education Foundation an extension services grant. The grant comes through the Research on Gender in Science and Engineering Program and was awarded to implement NAPE's five-year STEM Equity Pipeline project.
- Apple Launches iPhone Dev Center
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10/25/2007
Apple has created a new suite of development resources tailored specifically for the iPhone. Dubbed the "iPhone Dev Center," the service provides a range of resources, including guidelines for optimizing Web apps for the iPhone, sample code, video tutorials, and other reference material.
- IBM Funds University Collaboration Studies
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10/25/2007
IBM has provided grant funding to three universities that are using the company's Jazz collaboration solutions for software development. The universities--including the University of California at Irvine, the University of British Columbia and the University of Victoria--received Jazz Faculty Grants from IBM.
- ITCC To Bolster STEM Education
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10/24/2007
Ivy Tech Community College in Indiana this month received a $3.1 million grant from the state's North Central Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development (WIRED) initiative. The grant will be used to enhance STEM education in K-12, higher education, and businesses and will train an estimated 44,000 people in North Central Indiana over the next five years.
- Darmstadt über Alles
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10/22/2007
In a competition that will surely serve as the plot for a future Broken Lizard film, Technische Universität Darmstadt this weekend won the overall 2007 Solar Decathlon, sponsored by the United States Department of Energy. Darmstadt was the sole German team in the international collegiate competition, which included teams from 17 American universities and one each from Spain and Canada.
- Open Standards Coming to Second Life?
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10/16/2007
In an effort to shift virtual worlds to the broader realm of the World Wide Web, Linden Lab and IBM are partnering to bring open standards and interoperability to Second Life, the online 3D realm created by Linden Lab. The two will also be working with a broad range of industry partners and have discussed the formation of an open consortium for all comers to engage in the effort.
