News 08-07-2001
Natural Language Speech Recognition Technology
Avaya Inc. and the University of Colorado at Boulder recently announced a joint
research initiative to speed development of natural language speech recognition
technology for self-paced training programs and other business applications.
To fund this research, Avaya has donated $250,000 to the university's Center
for Spoken Language Research (CSLR) and Alliance for Technology, Learning, and
Society (ATLAS) initiative. The two university entities will work with local
Avaya research and development experts in developing and testing new speech
recognition technologies. The joint project is expected to create a new generation
of voice recognition tools that intelligently engage users with greater levels
of verbal and visual perception. CU-Boulder students enrolled in the ATLAS Technology,
Arts and Media program will assist in developing test strategies for the interactive
training tools. In addition, CSLR will use a portion of the donation to create
a toolkit that simplifies speech recognition application development and integration.
For more information, visit http://www.avaya.com.
Adobe to Make e-Textbooks Available this Fall
Adobe Systems today announced that it is working with education publishers
Addison Wesley Higher Education Group; Digital Scanning; Houghton-Mifflin, College
division; McGraw-Hill; South-Western, a division of Thomson Learning; and John
Wiley & Sons to offer electronic textbooks based on Adobe Portable Document
Format (PDF) for the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader. In addition to study guides,
the eTextbooks will cover a broad range of general topics such as accounting,
business, chemistry, English, history, marketing, mathematics, and political
science. Students will be able to download the Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader at
no charge and purchase the eTextbooks directly from the publishers' Web sites,
university bookstores, online book retailers, and Adobe.com.
For more information, visit http://www.adobe.com.
MIT's Media Lab May Add On
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is reported to be considering two
new offshoots of its Media Lab--one in Korea and
one in Latin America. The proposed projects would add to the Media Lab's growing
international network, which includes Media Lab-Europe, in Dublin, and the recently-announced
Media Lab-Asia,in India.
For more information, visit http://mit.edu.
Online College to Close Doors
Harcourt Higher Education, which launched an online for-profit college in Massachusetts
last year, is closing the school's virtual doors Sept. 28. Remaining students
will have their credentials reviewed by the U.S. Open University, the American
affiliate of the Open University in England.
Fiber Optic Based Network Now Spans the Pacific
Recently, the AARNet (the Australian Academic and Research Network) activated
its trans-Pacific optical fiber connection to the Pacific Northwest Gigapop
(PNWGP) at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington. The Pacific
Northwest Gigapop is a primary interconnection point for advanced research and
education networks in Canada, the U.S., and now the Pacific Rim. The trans-Pacific
fiber optic cable is part of the Southern Cross Cable Network and spans 30,500
km under the Pacific with landing sites in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, Hawaii,
Oregon, and California.
The first connections through the Pacific Northwest Gigapop will be to CA*net
3 and Internet2 backbone networks, the advanced research and education networks
of Canada and the United States, respectively. Early deployment of multicast
multimedia connections across the new links will allow Australia's participation
in SC2001, the first truly global technical conference on Grid technology and
applications.
For more information, visit http://www.aarnet.edu.au/
WebCT Announces IMS Content Migration
WebCT, a provider of integrated e-learning systems for higher education, today
announced the availability of an IMS Content Migration Utility for the latest
version of its market-leading e-learning software, WebCT 3.6, in both Standard
and Campus Editions.? The IMS Utility is also backwards compatible with previously-released
versions of the software, WebCT 3.1.3, and WebCT 3.5 Standard and Campus Editions.?
The IMS Utility is available online (http://download.webct.com/)
and can be implemented by current WebCT license holders through a simple download
process.
Institute Partners With Supercomputing Center
A new partnership between the Institute for Systems Biology and the Arctic
Region Supercomputing Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will support
research related to genes and proteins in which extremely large datasets will
be analyzed to better understand diseases and identify potential treatments
and preventative strategies. The Institute and ARSC are linked via an extremely
high-bandwidth connection that allows researchers at both centers to quickly
transfer massive amounts of information. The ARSC, located on the University
of Alaska Fairbanks campus, provides computational resources to scientists and
engineers within the University, the Department of Defense and other academic
and government agencies. The supercomputers operated by ARSC provide the memory
and processing power to tackle problems that are too large to be handled by
the average desktop machine. The center supports a 32-processor Cray SV1ex,
a 272-processor Cray T3E and a 200-processor IBM SP. In addition, the center
supports two StorageTek robotic tape silos and a variety of networking and visualization
hardware and software.
For more information, visit http://www.systemsbiology.org
and http://www.arsc.edu.
HorizonLive Desktop Lecture
Jennifer Hofmann, Virtual Classroom Designer at InSync Training will present
a free interactive lecture, "Tips for Teaching Synchronously," delivered
live, Tuesday,?August?14, at?4:00 PM EST. To register, visit
http://www.horizonlive.com/lecture/index.html#hoffman.
Don't Miss These Upcoming Events from 101communications:
TDWI World Conference, Summer 2001, Anaheim, CA, August 12-17.
No-Nonsense Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence Education. For more information,
please visit: http://www.dw-institute.com/anaheim2001.
MCP TechMentor Fall in San Francisco, September 4-8.
Bridge the distance between Windows NT and Windows 2000. Onsite Testing Available!
Visit http://www.techmentorevents.com.
XML One & Web Services One - September 30-October 4, San Jose, CA.
http://www.xmlconference.com/sanjose/index.asp. Online registration now open!
