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Syllabus News Update for Tuesday, April 6, 2004

04/06/04

Syllabus News Update:
An Online Newsletter from Syllabus

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Is your campus prepared for the tech-savvy student?
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=6313

Visions for IT-Enabled Learning at Syllabus2004
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=6305
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News for Tuesday, April 6, 2004

* FlashMob Supercomputing Event at University of San Francisco
* For Shame: MIT Places Fifth in World Programming Contest
* USC System Prof Designing System to “Print” New Houses
* U.S. Department of Homeland Security Becoming BMOC
* Friendster-like Site Launches Beauty & Brains Scholarships

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Is your campus prepared for the tech-savvy student?

Dell University programs can enable you to successfully plan
student computing initiatives. We can help you select the systems
and configurations that best suit your university's needs. Find out
how prepared your campus is by taking this quick assessment.

http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=6313

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FlashMob Supercomputing Event at University of San Francisco

What has three full-sized basketball courts, six regulation
hoops, and 180 gigaflops? The University of San Francisco’s
Koret Gym met that description during this past Saturday’s
FlashMob I supercomputing demonstration. Sneaker-clad
onlookers clutched their gym bags and gawked in amazement
as volunteers loaned their 700 personal computers to be
linked together for the day, transforming the gym for about
six hours into a world-class, albeit temporary supercomputer.

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Visions for IT-Enabled Learning at Syllabus2004

Join your colleagues at Syllabus2004,July 18-22 in
downtown San Francisco for five days of programming
featuring higher education’s foremost thought leaders
in IT and education technologies. Clifford Lynch,
Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked
Information and an adjunct professor at the University
of California-Berkeley offers the opening keynote on
Monday, July 19, examining digital information and
learning cultures along with the sometimes competing
and conflicting points of view surrounding the world
of digitally enabled learning.

Thought-provoking keynotes are among the many reasons
to be a part of Syllabus2004. You'll spend a day on
campus at UC Berkeley, select sessions from five conference
tracks, enjoy plenary panels that bring together technology
experts from campuses across the country, and network and
learn from your peers in a collegial atmosphere.

For more information and to register, go to:
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=6305.

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For Shame: MIT Places Fifth in Word Programming Contest

Students from St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and
Optics in St. Petersburg, Russia, took first place in the
Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM) International
Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), sponsored by IBM.
The competition challenged students to tackle a semester's
worth of computer programming in one morning in a battle of
logic, strategy, and mental endurance. The ACM-ICPC World
Finals champions walk away with prizes, scholarships, and
bragging rights to the "world's smartest trophy."

KTH-Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden; Belarusian
State University, Minsk, Belarus; and Perm State University,
Perm, Russia finished the competition in second, third, and
fourth places, respectively, and all won Gold medals. The
three-person teams were awarded medals based on the number
of problems they solved in the shortest time during the
five-hour competition.

MIT took top honors in North America, finishing 5th and
winning a silver medal. Other regional champions include:
St. Petersburg Institute of Fine Mechanics and Optics, St.
Petersburg, Russia (Europe); University of Capetown,
Capetown, South Africa (Africa and the Middle East);
Universidad de Palermo, Palermo, Argentina (Latin America);
National Taiwan University, Taiwan (Asia); and University of
New South Wales, New South Wales, Australia (South Pacific).

USC System Prof Designing System to “Print” New Houses

A University of Southern California professor is working on
a computer-controlled system designed to automatically
"print out" full-size houses in hours. Funded by a grant
from the National Science Foundation, Dr. Behrokh Khoshnevis
of the USC Viterbi School of Engineering's Information
Sciences Institute has been developing his automated
house-building process, called "Contour Crafting," for more
than a year.

Khoshnevis believes his system will be able to construct a
full-size, 2000-square-foot (185-square-meter) house with
utilities embedded in 24 hours. He now has a working machine
that can build full-scale walls, and is hoping to actually
construct his first house by the end of 2005. Contour
Crafting uses crane- or gantry-mounted nozzles, from which
building material -- concrete, in the prototype now
operating in his laboratory -- comes out at a constant rate.
Moveable trowels surrounding the nozzle mold it into the
desired shape, as the nozzle moves over the work.

Read more: http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=6326

U.S. Department of Homeland Security Becoming BMOC

With millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money at its disposal,
the Department of Homeland Security is mining American
higher education for tomorrow's terrorist hunters -- and
paying well for it, too, reports the L.A. Weekly. By doling
out scholarships, helping to set up new university departments
and influencing what research d'es and d'esn't get funded,
the government is creating a stampede for research dollars
not seen since the dawn of the space program.

Friendster-like Site Launches Beauty & Brains Scholarships

Stockholm-based B2Elite.com, a career networking site for
women based on the Friendster model, has launched a “Beauty
& Brains Scholarship,” open to “dynamic young women”
currently attending college or graduate school. The $1000
scholarships will be awarded to 12 young women based on a
combination of factors, including academic and/or professional
achievement, personal profile, and in-depth online essays.