CT News Update July 19, 2005
CT News Update:
An Online Newsletter from Campus Technology
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News for Tuesday, July 19, 2005
* IBM Offers Schools Free Tech for Open Standard Training
* System on a Chip Curriculum Hits Four Year Milestone
* Buffalo Purchase Boosts Supercomputing Cluster to Top 50
* New Mexico State to Go with Blackboard E-Commerce Suite
* Coppin State Picks Integrated Identify Management System
* Rutgers Pursues R&D in Advanced Rechargeable Battery Tech
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IBM Offers Schools Free Tech for Open Standard Training
IBM will grant universities an “academic license” for
free access its emerging technologies to help train
and improve student skills on open standards technologies.
The company said it hoped university professors would
use the tools to build course curriculum, and that
students would gain a competitive advantage in the
workforce. In return, it expected faculty and students
to provide IBM with feedback on how to improve these
technologies before inclusion into future IBM products.
Professors will have access to more than 25 technologies
including games and simulations to enhance skills around
open standards technologies, such as Java and Eclipse,
tools to enable Grid computing and new technologies to
help developers create applications that are accessible
to the visually impaired.
IBM said the project is part of a plan to develop closer
ties with the academic community. Through IBM's Academic
Initiative, the company is forging relationships with
colleges and universities to encourage students to enter
into the fields of science and mathematics. The U.S.
Department of Labor reports that by 2006, the United
States alone will need 1.5 million more information
technology professionals. And that one out of every
four jobs in this decade will be in technology.
For information on technologies that will be offered
under the program, visit:
http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/academic
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Sponsored by:
Wide Range of Education Technology Providers
Exhibit at Syllabus2005
Syllabus2005, July 24-28 in Los Angeles, features the latest
products and solutions for campus technology in the conference
Exhibit Hall. In addition to cutting-edge keynotes, more
than 50 breakout sessions and peer-to-peer learning, Syllabus2005
features an interactive exhibit hall with leading technology
vendors. Companies exhibiting include: Films Media Group, GraySail,
GTCO CalComp, Hitachi America, Hobsons, Intelliworks, ISTE,
Jabber Inc., MailFrontier, MatchWare Inc., and Mirapoint. View the
entire program and exhibitor list online, and register now for
Syllabus2005.
http://info.101com.com/default.asp?id=16765
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System on a Chip Curriculum Hits Four Year Milestone
Pennsylvania’s Technology Collaborative (TTC), a
statewide economic development organization that
supports the state’s IT industries, announced that
its multi-University System on a Chip (SoC) certificate
program has finished its fourth year by certifying 21
new designers. Initiated in 2002, the program has
certified 89 students to date.
TTC has funded a virtual SoC design facility that
supports SoC design and education activities at the
University of Pittsburgh, the Pennsylvania State
University, and Carnegie Mellon University. The virtual
facility provides "industrial strength" hardware,
software, workflows, and technical support staff to
all three TTC member universities. This enables students
and faculty users at each school to create real-world
designs for modern semiconductor processes.
In 2004-2005, students from each of the three universities
worked on design projects that shared a signal processing
theme of speech and face recognition. The also attended a
seven-week "Silicon Boot Camp," during which they exposed
to advanced design concepts to ensure that all three classes
were operating at similar proficiency levels.
Buffalo Purchase Boosts Supercomputing Cluster to Top 50
The University at Buffalo’s Center for Computational
Research has installed an 834-node Dell high-performance
computing cluster to support research in life sciences,
physical sciences, engineering and visualization. CCR
director Russ Miller said that today such research is
driven by simulation and modeling, which requires
high-end computing, including storage, networking,
computing and visualization.
The cluster is made up of Dell PowerEdge SC1425, 1850,
2850 servers. It has a theoretical peak performance of
more than 10 trillion floating point operations per
second (TFlops). The installation brings the number
of processors at CCR to nearly 7,000 and extends the
center's theoretical peak performance from approximately
12 to approximately 22 TFlops, ranking it among the 50
fastest supercomputing clusters in the world.
New Mexico State to Go with Blackboard E-Commerce Suite
New Mexico State University said it would convert its
campus electronic commerce system to the Blackboard
Transaction System to help manage the administration,
processing and reporting functions for all campus
transactions. The school said its 16,500 students
and 4,200 faculty/staff will convert immediately to
the Blackboard Transaction System for a variety of
campus services, including vending, facilities
access and laundry.
Future expansion plans include providing NMS users
a unified interface for commerce, communities, and
administrative services, and offering students a
safe, cashless method for making purchases on- and
off-campus. Blackboard Transaction System is part
of the Blackboard Commerce Suite, a package of three
software applications supporting cashless transactions.
The systems uses existing student debit accounts at the
university.
Coppin State Picks Integrated Identify Management System
Coppin State University said it would install a
university-wide identity management system that covers
provisioning, compliance, password management, user self
service, and mobile identity management. The school, a
historically black college in northwest Baltimore,
purchased Fischer Identity Suite 2.0, which incorporates
compliance at no additional cost and uses a validated
Oracle-PeopleSoft identity management interface.
Coppin State University sought an identity management
solution to reduce the time and cost it was spending
to manage access for thousands of users. Part of the
problem was the challenge of integrating disparate
identity management components created by multiple
vendors through acquisition. The Fischer system
incorporates multiple components in a single platform,
according to Ahmed El-Haggan, Coppin’s chief information
officer.
Rutgers Pursues R&D in Advanced Rechargeable Battery Tech
Rutgers University is working on a project to develop
advanced rechargeable lithium battery technology that
will operate more efficiently than existing products
for both government and commercial applications. The
project will be pursued in a joint venture with Electro
Energy Inc., a maker of aerospace grade battery technology.
In an agreement, the two organizations agreed to pursue
development of new cathode materials for lithium batteries,
which were recently introduced by Rutger’s Energy Storage
Research Group. The new technology has an ability to
discharge efficiently at very high rates, factors that
can be critical in power and energy consuming commercial
applications. It can also accommodate compact packaging
and is cheaper to manufacture.
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