Computer Science

Longwood Gardens, PA

Brett’s article on the Dependency Inversion Principle (DIP) and how it works in practice has been a popular read on this site (over 24,000 views since it was published at the beginning of the month). Brett has now expanded the article with two more examples from his delivery experience: questioning requirements and handling time.

This year is the centennial of Paul Erd?s’s birth. Erd?s lived most of his adult life as a traveling mathematician, “couchsurfing,” as we would say now, from place to place and to mathematical conference to mathematical conference. He wrote more than 1,500 papers with more than 500 different coauthors, introduced the probabilistic method and was the defining figure of the “Hungarian approach” to combinatorics. He died at age 83 while attending a mathematical conference. Last year, we celebrated the centennial of Alan Turing’s birth. Turing and Erd?s have become such iconic figures both for the impact of their work and for the fascinating facts of their lives. I would like to argue that the cultural archetype through which we interpret their lives is that of the saint. It is clearly that of the martyr saint in the case of Turing, while Erd?s gave up material possessions and devoted his life to others, traveling everywhere and “preaching” to everybody, much in the mold of Saint Francis. (A comparison of the Turing centennial celebration and Erd?s’s, and a look at the frescoes of Medieval Catholic churches will show which kind of saints people are more interested in.) The first step to become a saint of the Catholic church is to establish that the person exhibited “heroic virtues,” which is a great expression. This is an archetype that is not restricted to religion: you see it occurring in communist propaganda (Stakhanov, Lei Feng) and in every civil rights movement. Saints were the “celebrities” of the Middle Ages, those whose life people liked to talk about. But contemporary celebrities come from a totally different archetype, that of the Greek God. Greek (and Roman) gods were petty and jealous, they cheated on their spouses, they were terrible parents, but there were good stories to be told about them. We don’t want (at least, I don’t) to live the life of a saint, but thinking about them is certainly inspirational and it makes us think that if someone can be so much better than us, maybe we can be a little better ourself in the practice of “virtues”, whatever this may mean to us. And we don’t admire gods, but, well, it’s probably fun to be one. As usual, I have lost track of what I was trying to say, but I think that it speaks well of the academic community that we are more interested in saints than in gods, I will close by saying that my favorite saint of complexity theory is Avi Wigderson, I will keep to myself who my favorite god of complexity theory is, and I will leave it to the readers to contribute their picks.

Every two years, CSTA conducts a survey of current computer science teachers. We have an excellent response rate and now that the results have all been tallied, I would like to introduce you to the "average" Computer Science teacher (statistically speaking). The average Computer Science teacher is a white male who has been teaching for more than 15 years and has been teaching Computer Science for about 13 years. He is a member of CSTA. He teaches in a public, suburban high school with approximately 1500 students in grades 9 through 12. Almost 300 of those students speak a different language at home. He is part of the Business Department and teaches Computer Science courses full time. His state and district have no Computer Science standards. His school offers Computer Science at the pre-AP level. The 25 students enrolled in his Computer Science elective will earn a Computing/Technology credit for the course. Three of these students are female and three represent ethnic minorities. In this class, he teaches problem solving, programming in Java, and the social and ethical issues related to the field. He's never even heard of the proposed AP Computer Science Principles course, not surprising in light of the fact that his school does not offer AP Computer Science A. He also teaches elective courses related to web design and development. What does he think of his enrollment numbers? He believes there are students who would like to be in his classes who aren't. He thinks these students are dealing with full schedules and the perception that electives are not as desirable on a transcript. His biggest challenges to teaching Computer Science? Lack of interest in the subject -- from both the adults and the students at his school. He would really like more time for professional development, as long as he can find a workshop or seminar that is relevant, nearby and inexpensive. Are YOU the average Computer Science teacher? Leave a comment below and share your reactions! Tammy Pirmann School District Representative

Join us on June 20, when Adam Connor presents Design Studio: Building Design Consensus Early in Your Process. Design reviews can result in conflicting lists of stakeholder feedback and out-of-scope ideas about what the design should be. Bruised egos, longer timelines, and higher budgets are often par for the course. Adam Connor builds design consensus naturally by running a Studio, which structures team brainstorming early in the process, then uses sketching, presentation, and critique activities to get everyone moving toward a shared vision. Before long, you’ll be running faster among a team of happy people — and you’ll all be building better products, too. You’ll Learn to: Solve problems as a team Generate ideas during a Studio Build consensus around a shared idea Use critique at the “right” times Special Offer – Register by May 31 and immediately get access to Adam’s first seminar, Discussing Design: The Art of Critique.

Wired NewsHenry Markram believes his Human Brain Project can simulate all 86 billion neurons in the human brain as well as the 100 trillion connections among them, an ambitious effort that will require unprecedented computing power. Essentially Markram intends to develop a plug-and-play brain that researchers could disassemble to determine the causes of brain disease, apply to robotics to develop intelligent technologies, or combine with virtual reality glasses to experience another person's brain. The project’s first Blue Gene supercomputer could simulate a single neocortical column in a rat, but an entire rat brain has the equivalent of 100,000 columns. The Human Brain Project will eventually need a minimum of 100 petabytes of RAM and an exaflop of computing power to enable its simulations. Critics say Markram's project is doomed to fail and question the $1.3 billion in funding the European Commission awarded the project in January. However, supporters defend the Human Brain Project, believing that even if Markram does not accomplish all he aims to, the project will make tremendous advances in neuroscience. “There aren’t any aspects of Henry’s vision I find problematic,” says the University of Manchester's Steve Furber. "Except perhaps his ambition, which is at the same time both terrifying and necessary."From "Thought Experiment: Build a Supercomputer Replica of the Human Brain" Wired News (05/14/13) Jonathon Keats View Full Article

New Jersey Institute of TechnologyNew Jersey Institute of Technology (NJIT) researchers have developed a method for using a combination of commonly used existing algorithms to find out more information about adverse drug reactions within electronic health records. The researchers say their method produced an almost 25-percent improvement in outcome, compared to conventional algorithms. "Although such records are maintained for patient administration, they could provide a broad range of clinical information for data analysis," says NJIT's Lian Duan. "A growing interest has been drug safety." Although the performance of the two new algorithms—a likelihood ratio model and a Bayesian network model—for negative drug effect discovery is comparable to the state-of-the-art Bayesian confidence propagation neural network algorithm, by combining three works, the researchers say it is possible to generate better, more diverse results. The actual adverse drug effects on a given dataset cannot be absolutely ascertained, so the researchers used a simulated observational medical outcomes partnership dataset. They based the dataset on predefined adverse drug effects to assess their methods. Experimental outcomes show the usefulness of the proposed pattern discovery method on the simulated dataset by improving the standard baseline algorithm by nearly 24 percent.From "NJIT Computer Scientist Publishes New Algorithm Cluster To Data Mine Health Records" New Jersey Institute of Technology (05/15/13) View Full Article

New ScientistResearchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab have developed a system that could tell advertisers how well their ads are being received in the real world. The system is designed to assess how muscles in the face move in response to watching a video. The team collected more than 3,200 videos of people watching ads, and asked them to rate the commercials. The researchers also trained an algorithm on the mouth area of viewers to gauge how much they were smiling throughout each advertisement, tracked the smile intensity during the video, and then had the software predict which ads the viewer most enjoys. During tests, the system made correct predictions more than 75 percent of the time. Advertisers trying to reach potential customers online could find the system very helpful, says the Australian National University's Abhinav Dhall. The researchers note the system eventually could be used to personalize advertisements for viewers.From "Face-Reading System Watches You Watching Ads" New Scientist (05/14/13) Niall Firth View Full Article - May Require Free Registration

National Science FoundationThe University of Chicago recently launched the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud, a secure cloud-based computing system that enables researchers to access and analyze human genomic cancer information without the costly infrastructure normally needed to download and store massive amounts of data. The system enables researchers to access and analyze data in the Cancer Genome Atlas without having to set up secure, compliant computing environments capable of managing and analyzing terabytes of data, downloading the data, and then installing the tools needed to perform the desired analyses. "The open source technology underlying the Open Science Data Cloud enables researchers to manage and analyze the large data sets that are essential to tackling some of today's greatest challenges: from environmental monitoring to cancer genomics," says University of Chicago professor Robert L. Grossman. The Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud enables researchers to focus on the analysis of large-scale cancer genome sequencing, which could lead to early detection, appropriate treatment, and prevention of cancer. "We are excited that the Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud is now used for cancer genomics data so that researchers can more easily work with large datasets to understand genomic variations that seem to be one of the keys to the precise diagnosis and treatment of cancer," Grossman says.From "University of Chicago Launches Bionimbus Protected Data Cloud to Analyze Cancer Data" National Science Foundation (05/15/13) Lisa-Joy Zgorski View Full Article

InformationWeekResearchers at Queen Mary College and Cardiff University have used a combination of x-rays and computer modeling to offer historians a way to read ancient parchments so fragile they cannot be unrolled. The system, called Apocalypto, creates a virtual version of the documents. The researchers are focusing on documents with metallic-based inks because they can be seen with x-rays. Apocalypto uses a combination of micro tomography and advanced software-based visualization techniques to build a three-dimensional map of the contents of the documents, revealing the hidden or overwritten layers underneath for the first time in centuries. "The iron content in the ink gives it its good x-ray contrast, but this ink also can cause degradation of the parchment and may contribute to the reasons why a particular scroll cannot be opened," says Queen Mary University researcher Graham Davis. The process also involves the use of specially designed surface mesh construction and correction algorithms. "This is a milestone in historical information recovery," says Cardiff's Tim Wess. "Across the world, literally thousands of previously unusable documents up to around 1,000 years old could now become available for historical research."From "New Imaging System 'Reads' Ancient Scrolls" InformationWeek (05/16/13) Gary Flood View Full Article