I am working on a 2 minute video that tries to capture the energy and excitement generated in an introductory computer programming class at UC San Diego.
Beth Simon taught the clase, CSE8B, last winter quarter. I shot video on the final lecture, when the students held a tournament in which their "critters" battled each other. To create critters, the students had to understand "inheritance" in the computer science/Java sense of the word. Each student extend the critter class in a unique way, and then the various critters battled.
A near-final version of the video is below...I'll update this with the final version when it's ready.
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
iPhone game developed by UCSD computer scientists gains steam
The online momentum for TowerMadness, the iPhone game developed by three computer scientists who studied in the computer science department at UC San Diego's Jacobs School of Engineering continues to pick up steam.
On the heels of the Wired.com review of TowerMadness, the latest review I've seen is in MobileTechReview.com
Wednesday, September 2, 2009
Toward a Better Understanding of Nuclear Ignition
As the nation’s nuclear weapons age, the U.S. government is turning to researchers and scientists at universities such as UC San Diego to figure out safe and reliable ways to estimate their longevity and to understand the physics of thermonuclear reactions in the absence of underground testing currently prohibited under law. (Read the full story by Andrea Siedsma here.)
Hoanh Vu--a research scientist in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering--and colleagues won a three-year, $510,000 grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)to use computer simulation tools to figure out how to successfully achieve controlled, miniaturized nuclear ignition of spherical fuel pellets in laboratory environments using lasers as energy drivers.
The Jacobs School researchers are collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM), Lodestar Research Corporation and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester in New York.
“The way nuclear weapons work is that there is a spherical core of deuterium-tritium that is driven by a radiation source to nuclear ignition; we know that these bombs work because they have worked underground,” Vu said. “But the nuclear materials inside these fuel cores, primarily deuterium-tritium, and the radiation sources that drive these cores to nuclear ignition, have a relatively short shelf life. We don’t know with any certainty if these weapons still work. Since we can’t test them on a full scale, what do we do? We actually look at the physics and scale down the problem so we can test the viability of these weapons in a safer and more controlled environment.
“These weapons are massive so we try to scale it down to pellets that are millimeter-size,” Vu continued. “The method of choice for compressing these fuel pellets is using a laser, which provides a radiation source.”
Hoanh Vu--a research scientist in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering--and colleagues won a three-year, $510,000 grant from the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA)to use computer simulation tools to figure out how to successfully achieve controlled, miniaturized nuclear ignition of spherical fuel pellets in laboratory environments using lasers as energy drivers.
The Jacobs School researchers are collaborating with Los Alamos National Laboratory (NM), Lodestar Research Corporation and the Laboratory for Laser Energetics at the University of Rochester in New York.
“The way nuclear weapons work is that there is a spherical core of deuterium-tritium that is driven by a radiation source to nuclear ignition; we know that these bombs work because they have worked underground,” Vu said. “But the nuclear materials inside these fuel cores, primarily deuterium-tritium, and the radiation sources that drive these cores to nuclear ignition, have a relatively short shelf life. We don’t know with any certainty if these weapons still work. Since we can’t test them on a full scale, what do we do? We actually look at the physics and scale down the problem so we can test the viability of these weapons in a safer and more controlled environment.
“These weapons are massive so we try to scale it down to pellets that are millimeter-size,” Vu continued. “The method of choice for compressing these fuel pellets is using a laser, which provides a radiation source.”
Tuesday, September 1, 2009
Taaz.com Update on Virtual Makeovers
About 18 months ago, computer science professor David Kriegman, and Jacobs School alumnus Satya Mallick launched a virtual makeover Web site, Taaz.com. The site, and associated startup company Photometria, Inc, grew out of their invention of an algorithm for separating gloss from non-gloss in digital images. It turned out that the algorithm is great for makeovers even if it was first developed for face recognition. Read the original Jacobs School press release here and watch the three minute video I made here.
At Taaz.com, anyone can apply thousands of makeup products, and try out new hairstyles, with the click of a mouse.
Estee Lauder recently incorporated Taaz.com's technology to their Web site with a "let's play makeover" widget.
People Espanol also offers visitors to its site the chance to change your look with their "Cambia tu Look" site, also based on Taaz.com technology.
Last April, Taaz.com put out a press release highlighting the winners of their celebrity look-a-like contest. Who knew celebrity hairstyles were attainable with a few mouse clicks...
Thursday, August 27, 2009
Retrofit Tests for Older California Buildings
A three-story structure shook as it was jolted by a strong simulated earthquake, but it didn’t collapse – just what UC San Diego structural engineers had hoped for. As part of a retrofit project, the engineers subjected the 1920s era reinforced concrete structure to a series of simulated earthquakes, measuring up to a 7.5 magnitude. The building suffered some damage but was still standing after all of the tests, a sign that the engineer’s retrofit model worked.
As part of the $1.24 million research project sponsored by the National Science Foundation under the Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) program, the masonry-infilled, reinforced concrete frame representing structures built in California in the 1920s was tested at the NEES -UCSD Englekirk Structural Engineering Center, home of the world’s largest outdoor shake table.
The ultimate goal of this project is to provide methods to assess and improve the seismic performance of these older buildings by developing reliable analytical models and effective retrofit techniques.
Read the full story here:
Read the full story here:
Watch a video of a related test below:
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
IEEE Spectrum has a new website
IEEE Spectrum
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/
Below is IEEE's summary of their new Spectrum site. Btw, if you type UCSD into their search box, the first story that pops up is about how electrical engineernig professor Stojan Radic is helping to invent a Terabit Internet.
http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/
Below is IEEE's summary of their new Spectrum site. Btw, if you type UCSD into their search box, the first story that pops up is about how electrical engineernig professor Stojan Radic is helping to invent a Terabit Internet.
IEEE Spectrum is now more user-friendly and easier to search. We have also expanded the free resources we offer to the public. In addition to theexpert-written articles and in-depth research visitors to the site can now access white papers, blogs, newsletters, and webinars reflecting the latest developments, standards, and best practices in engineering. With a history spanning 125 years, IEEE continues to serve as an authoritative resource for individuals in the tech sectors of government,industry, and academia worldwide. We hope you will continue to find value in our site.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
"This is stuff the big traders will be interested in." SIGCOMM quote from computer science professor from UC San Diego.
“This is stuff the big traders will be interested in,” said George Varghese, a computer science professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and an author on the SIGCOMM paper, “but more importantly, the router vendors for whom such trading markets are an important vertical.”
That "stuff" is an inexpensive solution for diagnosing delays in data center networks as short as tens of millionths of seconds—delays that can lead to multi-million dollar losses for investment banks running automatic stock trading systems. Similar delays can delay parallel processing in high performance cluster computing applications run by Fortune 500 companies and universities.
University of California, San Diego and Purdue University computer scientists presented this work on August 20, 2009 at SIGCOMM, the premier networking conference.
The new approach offers the possibility of diagnosing fine-grained delays—down to tens to microseconds—and packet loss as infrequent as one in a million at every router within a data center network. (One microsecond is one millionth of a second.) The solution could be implemented in today’s router designs with almost zero cost in terms of router hardware and with no performance penalty. The UC San Diego and Purdue University computer scientists call their invention the Lossy Difference Aggregator.
“This is stuff the big traders will be interested in,” said George Varghese, a computer science professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and an author on the SIGCOMM paper, “but more importantly, the router vendors for whom such trading markets are an important vertical.”
Read the full press release here.
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