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Student Creates Multi-Touch Software and Table for Science Project

Brad Baldwin — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 20:54:59 +0000

Here’s one student that takes the “Science Fair” to the next level. Bridger Maxwell, a high school student at Utah County Academy of Sciences (UCAS) decided to create a multi-touch table for his Science Fair entry–kinda like an iPhone screen, and Microsoft Surface on a budget.

The multi-touch experience allows for object movement, rotation, growing and shrinking, and even multi-hand, multi-person use. Inspired by movies like Minority Report, Maxwell leverages Apple OS X, code developed during Google Summer of Code called Open Touch, and his own code. The table, made from plexiglass and a dissembled Acer monitor, uses infrared light emitting diodes and an IR camera to detect and transmit fingertip motions as inputs.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. Maxwell submitted his code back to the community at code.google.com/p/corkboard/ and has received coverage on Ars Technica and a local NBC news story.

Maxwell also expects to experience a future where multi-touch technology becomes a standard way to interact with applications, particularly for graphic manipulation and even gaming. While Maxwell didn’t get a summer internship on the iPhone team “this” year, has received coverage on Ars Technica and the local NBC news station. Not bad for a high school student.

Tags: Apple, Brad Baldwin, Bridger Maxwell, Google, iPhone, Multi-Touch, RockyMountainVoices, Summer of Code, Surface, Utah

Intel ISEF 2008: Atlanta Hosts Global Science Fair

Jason Lopez — Tue, 06 May 2008 23:01:57 +0000

In this video podcast, Dr. Oren Shriki, a science teacher at the Israel Arts and Sciences Academy, speaks about Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair, taking place in Atlanta, May 11-16. (As excitement builds toward the event’s opening, you can follow along on a dedicated Intel ISEF blog.)

Many of the best young scientists from around the world will attend, selected through regional science fairs for a wide range of skills, from identifying and addressing important scientific challenges or questions to using organized and logical thought to reach conclusions. The participants in Intel ISEF are very likely to be tomorrow’s leaders in technology, medicine and health, agriculture, environmental science and engineering.

During Intel ISEF, their work will be judged by professional scientists who will look for gifted communicators with excellent foundational understanding in specific research and the scientific process.

No matter what the judges decide, however, participants in the annual event will benefit from meeting their peers from around the world, hearing from Nobel laureates and scientists involved in the same kinds of research as theirs, and also creating lasting memories, like those found on the blog of 2004 ISEF alum (and member of a Fourth Award-winning team) Jayson Reggie Obos.

Here’s more information about the science fair as well as a quick look at recent ISEF events, including the 2007 Intel ISEF in Albuquerque, N.M.

Tags: Oren Shriki, Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, ISEF, science fair, environmental science, Nobel laureate

Cory Doctorow, on BoingBoing and the EFF

Kiruba Shankar — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:22:41 +0000

Cory Doctorow is a popular science fiction author and co-editor of the high-profile blog, BoingBoing. His novels are given away for free on the Internet as Creative Commons-licensed downloads. They can be freely shared, and in some cases, remixed or translated and sold in developing countries. Perhaps surprisingly, this has led to good sales in the real world.

He is former Director of European Affairs for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a technology advocacy nonprofit that works to upload liberty in technology law, policy and standards.

He describes himself as “an activist, a writer, a blogger, a public speaker, and a technology person”.

Tags: Cory Doctorow, BoingBoing, Electronic Frontier Foundation

Research Day: CTO Justin Rattner on Weird Science

Jason Lopez — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 06:54:05 +0000

Intel@Research Day is a science fair with some unbelievable demos — unbelievable on one hand because some seem to defy physics and on the other hand because the topics under consideration are clearly anthropological. In this podcast, Intel CTO Justin Rattner explains why the company has hired more than a few ethnographers, and he talks about how research at Intel has truly gone global. The featured photo is of a catom, a form of programmable matter called a claytronics atom. Read more about it at www.intel.com/research/dpr.htm.

Tags: Intel@Research Day, Intel, Justin Rattner, catom, claytronics

Intel ISEF: Awards

Jason Lopez — Sat, 19 May 2007 19:18:08 +0000

Three high school students, Dayan Li of Greenbelt, Md.; Dmitry Vaintrob of Eugene, Ore.; and Philip Streich of Platteville, Wisc.; were the winners of the Intel Foundation Young Scientists Awards at the Intel Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Li studied tumors and a way to monitor tumor marker genes in human cells. Vaintrob, a mathematician, evaluated ways to associate algebraic structures to topological spaces. Streich investigated carbon nanotubes and discovered properties that could make them useful as a supermaterial. PodTech’s Jason Lopez was at the award ceremony and produced this podcast.

Related Stories:
IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Dayan Li, Dmitry Vaintrob, Philip Streich, Intel Foundation Young Scientists Awards, Intel Science and Engineering Fair, PodTech, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF: The Story of an Idea

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 23:23:19 +0000

At the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico, one can’t help but notice some very practical ideas that could land some enterprising 17 year-old a nice business deal. High school senior Ruby Kanda says she’s got one. PodTech’s Jason Lopez has the history of a gear set that could become a standard car part on hybrid automobiles.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, Ruby Kanda, PodTech, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Cancer Detection

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:54:10 +0000

Do remember what you were doing at 17? For high school seniors JinJu Yi and Vijay Jain they’ll look back at the integrated smart chip they developed for the early diagnosis of cancer. In this podcast they spoke with PodTech’s Jason Lopez at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: integrated smart chip, Jason Lopez, Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Music vs. Homework

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:52:22 +0000

Can science do anything? Patrick Dalton used it to settle a difference with his mother. Then he created a hypothesis and a methodology. He lost. But the point is, he asked questions and tested his assumptions. Dalton was one of more than 1,000 high schoolers from more than 45 countries participating in Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He spoke with PodTech’s Jason Lopez.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Milkweed Bug Control

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:50:02 +0000

The high school kids who participate in Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 are certainly focused on their entry projects. Many will use their research in college, which could become the basis of future careers. For Atlanta, Georgia high school student Kari Jackson, helping to control insect pests is a step along the way toward working in space. Jackson talked about his project with PodTech’s Jason Lopez at ISEF, which is underway in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, Jason Lopez, ISEF, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Google

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:48:18 +0000

One can’t have a science fair these days without Google — at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pictured is the brainchild of South Korean high school student Ukseong Moon, 16, who has come up with a way to use keywords to improve search relevance. He spoke with PodTech’s Jason Lopez.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Google, Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, keywords, search, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Ethnic Facial Expressions

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:45:20 +0000

Humans understanding (or misunderstanding) other humans couldn’t be a bigger topic as the world gets smaller and the global population grows. One high school student looked at the abilities of elementary school children, from a mostly white community, to understand the facial expressions of other children of color. Brandy Buchanan is pictured in front of her booth at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair 2007 in Albuquerque, New Mexico. PodTech’s Jason Lopez posted this podcast interview.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

Intel ISEF 2007: Banana Ethanol

Jason Lopez — Fri, 18 May 2007 14:43:11 +0000

From the floor of the Albuquerque Convention Center, Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair provided a day full of compelling ideas. Listen to this podcast of three Malaysian high school students who have begun to study the possibility of using bananas to make ethanol for the Southeast Asian market. Pictured are Muhammad Naim As-siddiq, Mohammad Ashraaf Raiez and Aminuddin Bin Abdul Raheem. They spoke with PodTech’s Jason Lopez.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, bananas, ethanol, Jason Lopez, IntelWorldAhead

The World Is Changing

Jason Lopez — Tue, 15 May 2007 20:02:03 +0000

Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair has been described as a junior Nobel Prize competition, as more than a thousand high school kids from around the world come together to show their work and make connections. Intel Chairman Craig Barrett, who is attending the fair, says the global science community still calls the U.S. a focal point, but less so, as the rest of the world participates more and more in research and the making of technology. In this podcast, Barrett spoke with PodTech’s Jason Lopez about this year’s ISEF being held in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Pictured on the PodTech player is junior high school student Lawrence Stringer (photo taken by Lloyd Gallman, Montgomery Advertiser) who is not a participant in this year’s ISEF. But Barrett has been a champion of improving science education at all levels to maintain the competitiveness of the U.S. in technology and industry.

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IntelWorldAhead

Tags: Intel, International Science and Engineering Fair, Craig Barrett, Jason Lopez, ISEF, Lawrence Stringer, Lloyd Gallman, IntelWorldAhead

Pfizer on Achieving 113% ROI with EMC Documentum

editor — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 15:30:03 +0000

Hear from Claire Hogikyan, senior director - Intellectual Property at Pfizer, about how Pfizer has achieved a 113-percent ROI with a break even point or payback period of just 18 months after the EMC Documentum deployment, based on a study from Forrester on the total economic impact of EMC Documentum. Learn what factors Pfizer considered when developing their content management strategy and why they chose the EMC Documentum platform.

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Tags: Claire Hogikyan, Pfizer, Documentum

Juniper Networks Master of IT, Craig Collar: Alaska Distance Education Consortium (ADEC)

Paul Lancour — Wed, 17 Jan 2007 23:42:41 +0000

Building and maintaining a network always presents challenges, but as Manager of Networking for the University of Alaska, Craig Collar has some additional difficulties. Hear how Juniper Networks helped him tackle the tundra.

This Juniper Networks podcast is part of the Juniper Networks Master of IT program.

Transcript:
Host: Paul Lancour – PodTech
Guest: Craig Collar – Juniper Networks

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Welcome to the Juniper Networks Master of IT Podcast, recognizing Juniper customers who deliver strategic value to their organizations, by solving complex networking challenges. I’m Paul Lancour with Podtech.net. Today’s guest is Craig Collar, Manager of Networking at the University of Alaska. As you might imagine, he faces some unique challenges, designing and maintaining a network. I started by asking him to describe his role.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
I’m responsible for the network design, new network implementation, and I would say network expansion for the University of Alaska System Office, which is sort of a governing body for the University of Alaska and its three major campuses. The three major campuses are the University of Alaska Fairbanks, University of Alaska Anchorage, and University of Alaska in Juneau, and my role at the System Office is fundamentally to develop a network from a wide area network service point of view, whereas we provide network services to the various campuses. I’m also recently started working on the University of Alaska Fairbanks Campus Network Engineering as well.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
And so what are the specific challenges as the Manager of Network Engineering for the University? What are the specific challenges you face?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, being in Alaska our challenges, I think are different than some other major universities in the United States. Simply because our geography, we face some challenges in terms of the amount of infrastructure that’s available to us and when there is infrastructure available to us, the cost that infrastructure has for us. So, with any university our three primary challenges for IT, is to serve the research community, to serve the students, and to serve the communities, specifically in terms of community outreach.

In the research area, we do some high performance computing. We have a fairly prestigious science community here and they’re doing a lot of large date set transfers to sites in lower 48. And for our students, one of the challenges we have is the expectations that they come into the university with and for IT specifically. A number of our students of course live here on campus and they’re expecting and indeed deserving to have Internet access and network access, equal to any other university in the nation.

So, that puts us in a different sort of operational mindset than some other’s education environment might be, and that we’ve to provide 24×7 365 days a year access to our network resources, both commodity Internet resources and Internet2 resources for all these people, just like any mission critical network or a mission critical operation.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
We were joking, just before we got started that everybody who first speaks to you when you’re in Alaska, asks you about the weather, but it’s true that the weather conditions in the terrain probably present you with unique problems up there, as well as the far-flung nature of the various campuses you deal with.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Absolutely, absolutely. We still serve remote campuses using satellite feeds, which universities in the lower 48 might not have to do with and that presents problems of latency and delay that we have to overcome. And these are actually very low bandwidth circuits here of course. So, we can’t provide the amount of bandwidth, say to a remote campus that some of the university might, but we have to make sure that that bandwidth is used to its utmost potential. And of course there is the cost issue as well. Satellite bandwidth remains to be very, very expensive.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Is that the only way you connect with some of your campuses is with the satellite you have no fiber lines or anything like that?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
For some of our remote campuses, satellite is the only connection available. Most of them, however most of our remote campuses we connect to via a frame relay like network that’s delivered either via carriers, fiber-optic, infrastructure or over microwave links.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
In what ways is Juniper Networks assisted you in facing these challenges?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, Juniper has been instrumental in the development of our network. About three years ago, we received a grant from the National Institute of Health, to upgrade the core network infrastructure of our network. And we turned the Juniper first and foremost to help us out in the design and deployment of the network.

Juniper has an excellent name in the education and the research market and Internet2 of which we’re a member, uses Juniper extensively. And so it was fairly easy for us to look at Juniper for a core network, routing platform. And they were very helpful in that regard; plus in terms of a community outreach prospective for the university, we are involved in a program called Sponsored Education Group Participant called SEGP, and basically it’s an Internet2 program that allows us to connect non-Internet2 member entities on the Internet2 backbone.

And Juniper was instrumental in helping us allocate some equipment from them throughout the State of Alaska, to deploy this new network that will connect these individual communities with. So, what we’re talking about specifically is, Connecting K through 20 schools, connecting libraries, connecting museums, connecting certain other education organizations, throughout the state to the Internet2 backbone over Juniper routing equipment.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, it sounds like you’re overseeing the network connection of a large segment of the education system in the State of Alaska?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Absolutely and it seems to be growing daily to tell you the truth.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
When did you receive this grant money and you started to deploy your new network?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
We received the grant money about three years ago, and that’s when we upgraded the universities core network. And then in conjunction with Juniper and a number of the carriers here in Alaska, we recently deployed what’s called the AK20 Network and we just finished that deployment before 2007. And we’re now in the process of connecting the other educational organizations up to that network.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
So, as you move forward with this and with other aspects of your work, what do you see is the challenges in the future?

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Well, I think our challenges are; well, there is technical challenges and I think there is policy challenges. Of course, some of the technical challenges we are up against are like many enterprises or many large service provider networks in that we can no longer rely just on destination-based IP routing.

What we really need to do and this is one of the reasons we chose Juniper as a partner here, is we need to able to control packet forwarding in a way that isn’t say the default way of packet forwarding and of course Juniper’s hardware is renowned for this ability. And Juniper offers, in my mind, a very rich policy language, and through the use of that policy language, we’re able to control packets in ways that a couple of years ago wouldn’t be possible.

And so, we’re also looking at so called advanced services in terms of QoS, in terms of bandwidth reservation and in terms of in the specific areas, compression and local cashing, particularly with the satellite sites. We have to make sure that, that bandwidth there, is used properly and used to its best affect; and the only way you can do that is through some of the new technologies, in terms of compression and certain amount of cashing.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Well, it sounds like you’ve a lot of challenging and rewarding work going on up there in Alaska, and I just want to thank you for taking the time out today Craig and talking to us about it.

Craig Collar – Juniper Networks
Okay, great.

Paul Lancour – PodTech
Craig Collar is Manager of Network Engineering for the University of Alaska.

Join us for the next Podcast in the Juniper Networks series Masters of IT. Thanks for listening.

Tags: Craig Collar, Juniper Networks