Below is an excerpt of an open letter from Mandy Bratton, Ph.D. Director, Global TIES at the Jacobs School.
I know that many of you have been moved, as I have, by the stories and images emerging from Haiti in the wake of last week’s devastating earthquake. We all want to do something to help. Rest assured that Global TIES intends to help Haiti rebuild itself, once it is safe and appropriate for us to be on the ground.
In the meantime, the best way to help is through financial contributions. Immediate medical aid is urgently needed to stem the death toll from this disaster. To this end, Global TIES has teamed up with Partners in Health, a non-governmental organization co-founded by Dr. Paul Farmer that has been providing healthcare in Haiti for the past 25 years. (To learn more about Dr. Farmer and his groundbreaking work, read “Mountains Beyond Mountains” by Tracy Kidder.)
Please join me in giving what you can via this web site. Partners in Health has agreed to track contributions made from UC San Diego via this site, so if you are part of the UC San Diego community, please include your UCSD email address on your donation form. All proceeds will go to Partners in Health.
NanoEngineering professor Jennifer Cha recently published new work on using biomolecules, such as DNA and proteins, to engineer the orientation and placement of nano scale materials into the desired device architectures that are reproducible in high yields and at low costs.
The paper titled “Large Area Spatially Ordered Arrays of Gold Nanoparticles Directed by Lithographically Confined DNA Origami,” appeared in Nature Nanotechology.
“Self-assembled structures are often too small and affordable lithographic patterns are too large,” said Albert Hung, lead author of the Nature Nanotechnology paper and a post doc working in Cha’s Biomolecular Materials and Nanoscale Assembly Lab. “But rationally designed synthetic DNA nanostructures allow us to access length scales between 5 and 100 nanometers and bridge the two systems."
Screen time, computer time, desk time, study time, writing time, Facebooking time...so much of our lives now take place in front of the computer. And it can take its tool.
A friend here on campus recently sent me a link to various ergonomic resources provided by UCSD. Check them out...you'll be glad you did.
Check out the 10 News story about construction practices in California and in Hati. (Watch the video here.) The story includes insights from UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering structural professor Jose Restrepo.
"In Haiti, we are dealing with structures that are similar in a way to the construction we used to do 100 years ago here in the U.S.," said Jose Restrepo, professor of structural engineering at UCSD. "Those are structures that do not incorporate any seismic design provisions that are very precarious where they are built."
Restrepo talked to 10News about seismic advances being made in schools throughout the University of California system. "Every one of us chips in and we are working in a collaborative environment to see what is best for our region and trickle down to all the regions in the world," he said.
Inspired by overheard snippets of cell phone conversations that most people would ignore, Wendy Richmond and collaborator Michael Chladil have taken background noise and turned it into interactive artwork.
I am definitely going to check this out...and will report back with my thoughts.
Did you go see the exhibit? Thoughts on the show? leave comments here.
"Overheard" opens Jan. 15, 2010 and runs through March 12, 2010 at the gallery@calit2. The installation consists of multiple displays of textual graphics, based on overheard New York City cell phone conversations ranging in subject matter from the poetic to the banal. The audio, made up of recordings of conversations spoken by actors, is triggered as the audience moves through the gallery space. In addition, two interactive rope&pulley systems allow visitors to interface with the displayed graphics, changing their shape and size. The visual elements of the fragmented conversations continue onto the gallery display walls on the first floor of Atkinson Hall. The artists hope that the installation will provide viewers an opportunity to reframe the barrage of private and public expression that they navigate in their everyday lives.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Panel Discussion: Ramesh Rao, Ricardo Dominguez, Benjamin Bratton, Wendy Richmond and Michael Chladil6pm-7pm Calit2
"The cameras were rolling in tech land, and the results are all over YouTube," wrote Computerworld. And one of the YouTube gems recognized featured Cynthia Taylor, a computer science PhD student at the Jacobs School. In the short, impromptu video, Taylor explained how to improve the Starbucks experience with thin-client computing. I shot the video at the most recent research review for the UCSD Center for Wireless Communications. Computerworld's Patrick Thibodeau named the video as one of "The 10 best IT videos of '09"
Imagine if a Starbucks latte also came with server-based resources available to your iPhone. The presenter, a Ph.D. student at Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California-San Diego, makes the case for "Exploiting Proximal Resources for Better User-Perceived Performance."
Coming to a Theater Near You: High-Tech Digital Cinema For the fourth year in a row, Calit2 hosted CineGrid, an international conference that grew out of Calit2's exploration of 'extreme' digital cinema, leveraging next-generation cyberinfrastructure to promote higher-resolution imagery, better sound as well as more secure and efficient distribution of digital media over photonic networks.
Making MuSyC: Scientists Explore Energy Efficiency in Multi-Scale Computing Systems Researchers from Calit2, the Jacobs School of Engineering and SDSC are part of a new Multi-Scale Systems Center (MuSyC) charged with finding better ways to design computing systems of all sizes, notably by focusing on energy efficiency as a tool to get computer systems to work more efficiently.
Getting Intense About Data: The SDSC 'Gordon' Cluster SDSC Interim Director Mike Norman and SDSC Associate Director Allan Snavely discuss details and the potential of the new Gordon HPC system scheduled to come online mid next year in an in-depth interview with Linux Magazine's Douglas Eadline.
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Reflections on the NSF Supercomputer Center Program Calit2 Director Larry Smarr delivered this position paper to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Future of High Performance Computing Workshop in early December. In it he reviewed the successes, failures and continuing challenges of the NSF supercomputing program that he helped create.
NSF Awards SDSC, ASU $1.7 Million for National OpenTopography LiDAR Facility SDSC and Arizona State University have been awarded a $1.7 million grant from the NSF to operate an internet-based national data facility for high-resolution topographic data acquired with LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) technology.
Engineers Help Secure California Highways and Roads At the UC San Diego Englekirk Structural Engineering Center, engineers tested the kinds of retaining walls used on highways, roads, bridges and oceanside bluffs. NSF-funded cyberinfrastructure ensured that engineers around the world could benefit from the generated data.
UC San Diego Experts Calculate How Much Information Americans Consume With corporate funding, a team of UCSD experts led by Prof. Roger Bohn is measuring the total amount of information in the world, and in a first report, tackles U.S. household consumption of information, which he pegs at 3.6 zettabytes. (One zettabyte is 1,000,000,000 trillion bytes.)
Universities Challenged to Develop Technology Solutions for a Carbon-Constrained World Calit2's Larry Smarr, Tom DeFanti and Jerry Sheehan teamed with CANARIE's former chief research officer, Bill St. Arnaud, to co-author the cover story in the November-December 2009 issue of the journal EDUCAUSE Review, urging universities to pave the way for a "greener future."
San Diegans and their Cell Phones will help Monitor Air Pollution Computer scientists from UC San Diego are developing a system to provide up-to-the-minute information on outdoor and indoor air quality, based on environmental information collected by sensors attached to the backpacks, purses, jackets and board shorts of San Diegans going about daily life.
HPWREN Featured in NSF Daily Digest The world has gone wireless, even in the wilderness, thanks to HPWREN, the High-Performance Wireless Research and Education Network that began in 2000 with the objective of connecting remote science sites to a high-speed network. The wireless network covers nearly 20,000 square miles in San Diego, Riverside and Imperial counties in Southern California. HPWREN was featured in the December 1 edition of the NSF's Daily Digest.
SDSC, UC San Diego, LBNL Team Wins SC09 'Storage Challenge' Award A research team from SDSC, UC San Diego and the UC's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has won the Storage Challenge competition at SC09, the leading international conference on high-performance computing, networking, storage and analysis. The team highlighted the innovative flash-memory technology behind SDSC's new Dash and upcoming Gordon systems.
Calit2 Brings Future of Visualization and Global Collaboration to SC09 In Portland, Oregon, for SC09, Calit2 was 'embedded' in the KAUST showcase, where a NexCAVE system was connected to the StarCAVE virtual-reality environment at UCSD, and in the CENIC booth, where Tom DeFanti and George Papen delivered talks.
Students Help San Diego Region Secure $154 Million in Solar Bonds Mechanical and aerospace engineering (MAE) students at UC San Diego played a critical role in helping the university and the San Diego region secure a total of $154 million in federal bonds for solar installation projects. Such distributed solar installations are part of the ongoing convergence of the traditional electric grid and cyberinfrastructure.
MARK YOUR CALENDAR… … for these upcoming cyberinfrastructure-connected events and training sessions. All events will be held at UC San Diego (except where noted otherwise).
Saturday, Jan. 16, 2010, 9:00am-12:00pm, SDSC Training Room 279 (West Building) StudentTECH: A Celebration of Cultural Diversity through Digital Art and Media In honor of the celebration of Black History and American Cultural Diversity in February, this workshop will incorporate the use of collected and found photography, as well as other graphic imagery relevant to the theme of personal identity. Participants will create a collage that represents the participants’ own individual cultural and historical family heritage. The artwork created will be showcased at the UCSD Price Center. Please contact Ange Mason via email or at 858-534-5064 to reserve your space.
Jan. 20-21, 2010, CSE Building, UC San Diego Center for Networked Systems Winter Research Review The agenda will include talks by CNS's industry affiliates on current research challenges and concerns, progress reports from UC San Diego researchers conducting CNS-sponsored projects, a graduate student research poster session, and numerous opportunities for information interactions with CNS faculty, researchers and graduate students. Attendance is limited to industry sponsors and invited guests. For more information, contact Kathy Krane via email or call 858-822-5964.
Jan. 25-28, 2010, Calit2 Auditorium, Atkinson Hall 8th Intl Conference on Creating, Connecting and Collaborating through Computing (C5) This conference, first launched in Japan, is targeted at researchers, technology developers, educators and technology users interested in developing and enabling human-oriented creation, connection and collaboration processes. Focus areas of the 2010 conference, to be hosted by Calit2, include: collaboration and communication; technology-human interaction; visualization; virtual worlds; social networks; and learning. Keynote speakers will include Calit2 Director and Jacobs School Professor Larry Smarr, and sci-fi writer and retired SDSU Computer Science Professor Vernor Vinge.
Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2010, 4:30pm- 6:30pm, SDSC Auditorium (East Building) TeacherTECH: Step-by-Step Biotech for the High School Educator: An 8-Part Workshop Series Beginning January 26 High school teachers are invited to attend an exciting new TeacherTECH workshop series focused on biotech. This series will provide building blocks needed to introduce standards-based, hands-on laboratory activities into your lesson plans. May be used as stand-alone activities or as a combined series of labs to create an entire biotechnology course. The first of this eight-part series will focus on quick, easy ways to teach the principles of chromatography, a powerful method for separating complex mixtures into component parts based on molecular properties. We will extract the DNA from your own cheek cells, and then watch it precipitate. Bring only your imagination and take home your own DNA - in a necklace! Teachers may choose to attend one or all of the workshops in this series, depending on their interest. Please contact Ange Mason via email or at 858-534-5064 for more details.
Feb. 2-3, 2010 DoubleTree Hotel, Washington D.C. National Science Foundation TeraGrid Workshop on Cyber-GIS This NSF Cyber-GIS workshop will take place in conjunction with the 2010 UCGIS Winter Meeting. The workshop will focus on the following: Complex geospatial systems and simulation of geographic dynamics Computational intensity of spatial analysis and modeling Data-intensive geospatial computation and visualization High-performance, distributed, and/or collaborative GIS Geospatial ontology and semantic web Geospatial middleware, Clouds, and Grids Open source GIS Participatory spatial decision support systems Science drivers for, and applications of Cyber-GIS Spatial data infrastructure
Feb. 9-11, 2010 -- Calit2, Atkinson Hall, UC San Diego SDR Development Using Software Communications Architecture This is a 3-day course introducing software-defined radio (SDR) development. The course is organized by Canada's Communications Research Centre (CRC) in collaboration with Calit2. Registration required for in-person or webinar attendance.
