There’s an interesting piece running now in BusinessWeek by Microsoft Researcher Bill Buxton that capitalizes on the buzz around the concept of the “long tail” in business by arguing that there’s an equally important “long nose” in business innovation that represents the long period of research and development that’s required to bring innovative products to […]
A Washington Post article today talks about the first petascale supercomputers expected to come online next year. The article points out the vast areas of other fields, which are assisted by computing at such a large scale including geography, medicine, and even financial markets. Heres a sample: The first “petascale” supercomputer will be capable of […]
As NSFs Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation (CDI) program heads toward its first deadline, the program staff will be launching a web cast on how to take advantage of this new cross-cutting funding initiative. The web cast will be held live on Thursday, November 29 from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. and program managers will be […]
Every six months, the folks at Top500.org put together what has become the most-recognized metric of supercomputing speed and power, the Top 500 list. While there’s ongoing debate about the meaning and value of a top 500 ranking, it’s proven to be the most often-cited guide to where the “big iron” really is — touted […]
Questions about NSF’s new $52 million Cyber-enabled Discovery and Innovation initiative? The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a “Brown Bag” discussion on the topic with CDI program director Sirin Tekinay on Thursday, November 8th, at noon ET. You can submit your questions now and Sirin will join the discussion on Thursday with answers. As […]
Computerworld has fantastic coverage of the 50th anniversary of the Sputnik launch (Oct. 4th, 1957) and why, in a sense, we can thank the Soviets for helping create the conditions that led the U.S. to become the technological superpower we’ve become. Computerworld’s Gary Anthes’ piece “Happy Birthday Sputnik! (Thanks for the Internet)” does a great […]
Long-time readers of this blog, or anyone familiar with CRA’s policy efforts, will know that we’ve spent a lot of time raising concerns about policy shifts at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) that have cut university participation rates in DARPA-funded computer science research. In congressional testimony and blog posts, we’ve pointed out that […]
Recognizing that the Pentagon’s science and technology investment “may be inadequate to meet the imposing security threats that challenge our Nation and may not be adequately robust to take advantage of key scientific and technological opportunities that offer breakthrough advantages to our warfighters,” John Young, the current Director of Defense Research and Engineering, has written […]
Forbes.com has an interesting article about a survey on the role of women in patents. The survey (PDF), from the National Center for Women & Information Technology, shows that patents by mixed-gender teams are cited more often than those of single-gender teams. Not a lot of new information in the article but it points out […]
John Schwartz of the New York Times has an interesting piece today on the rise in complexity of networked applications and the risks that complexity poses. Headlined Who Needs Hackers?, the piece makes the point that the biggest threat to these systems isn’t malicious users, but complexity itself. Understanding how these giant interconnected systems work […]
