Campus Briefs
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Penning at Brown: Van Dam to direct
new pen-centric computing research.
PENNING THE FUTURE
Brown University (RI) and Microsoft Research have
joined forces to revolutionize pen-centric computing for the academic environment. Microsoft will provide $1.2 million to
establish the Microsoft Center for Research in Pen-Centric Computing at Brown, and fund three years of research into new
ways to use pen-like styluses in the operation of tablet PCs, PDAs, electronic whiteboards, and conventional desktop PCs.
Researchers, faculty, and students at Brown will also create and test new software to recognize, interpret, and process handwritten
input, including various notational styles in fields like mathematics, chemistry, and art/design. Andries van Dam,
Brown’s VP for Research, will serve as director of the center.
STREAMLINING STORAGE
IT managers at The
Ohio State University’s Fisher College of Business are getting more out of existing storage components while simplifying
administration. In an industry first, they’ve paired their storage-area network (SAN) from Compellent with a network-attached storage (NAS) gateway appliance from ONStor, to automate tiered storage
based on usage patterns and policies. IT administrators can dictate rules for the integrated SAN and NAS storage system to
dynamically move less frequently used data to lower-cost storage tiers. The system works at both the block and file levels
and scales easily to achieve the greatest economy.
SEARCHING FOR CONTEXT
With the frustration of text
searching on common names or terms in mind, a team at Tufts University (MA) recently implemented a text-mining tool
within the university’s Perseus Digital Library that will provide context and limit ambiguity for searches on people, places,
and dates in its updated 19th Century American collection. The computer not only searches for the indexed term, but also
scans documents for natural language connections within the text. It’s the first time the “named entity analysis” process has
been applied to a digital library of historical documents.
VENDOR PORTAL
The Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR),
overseeing 19 higher ed institutions and 26 technology centers, is finding vendors through the SunGard Higher Education
Collaborative, a network of 50-plus third-party
providers that complement SunGard’s software, services, and technologies. “The
Collaborative offers us a collection of vendor applications with proven interfaces to SunGard Higher
Education products,” Thomas Danford, CIO of TBR explains, “yet we only need to interact with one vendor.”
FIGHTING CYBER CRIME
The City University of New York (CUNY) has standardized
its messaging security platform across its 19 university locations, to protect some 200,000 mailboxes
against spam and malicious e-mail. Says CUNY CIO Brian Cohen, “Everyone in the organization,
including our uppermost administration, instantly noticed the absence of spam,” thanks to the new Proofpoint Protection Server.
UMASSONLINE GAINS MASS
A successful
online program for years, UMassOnline has reported an upswing. In March, the University of
Massachusetts’ online division reported a 20 percent increase in enrollment and a 29 percent jump in
program revenue for the 2006 fiscal year.
MORE ONLINE PROGRAMS
South University (GA) launched three online master’s degree programs this spring. As of April 3, the university is offering
new MBA, MBA in Healthcare Administration, and MS in Criminal Justice degrees.