Imagine Cup Challenges Students to Solve World Problems with Technology

“We deeply believe that tomorrow’s innovators will come from the dorm room, not the boardroom.”

That is a quote from Microsoft’s general manager of Education Strategy, Jon Perera. For eight years now, Microsoft has sponsored the worldwide Imagine Cup, a technology competition for high school and college students around the world. This year’s theme is, “Imagine a world where technology helps solve the world’s toughest problems.” Students work in teams to compete in a number of broad categories including software design, embedded development, game design, digital media and IT challenge, which is a systems level survey for managing technology.

This year’s event is being held in Warsaw, Poland home of the astronomer Nicolas Copernicus and physicist Marie Curie-Sklodowska. Opening ceremonies on July 3rd kicked off the competition of projects of teams who have advanced to the worldwide finals. Consisting of several students and a mentor to provide guidance, each team has advanced through several regional events in their respective countries to qualify to appear in Warsaw. For them, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to demonstrate the application of their ideas – ideas that can help change the world.

Team SuperLove Factory from Thailand - Image © Microsoft
This year there have been over 325,000 entrants into the Imagine Cup with 400 teams from all over the world competing this week for top honors and awards. A panel of judges helped narrow that list down using published criteria including how well the idea adheres to the theme and how well the students demonstrate mastery of technology in their categories, including various Microsoft technologies.

On that last point, I had read about Microsoft taking some criticism from earlier events. While it would be great to see some additional open technology used, whether that would be an open software language or open embedded platforms such as Arduino, I don’t think it compromises the competition. After all, the team’s projects are as much about the ideas as they are about the implementation.

For example, Team NLO from Russia developed a water quality monitoring tool called PolarVision that is already in place in a Russian national park to determine where contaminants are entering the water system. It’s possible that Team NLO can find an investor here at the Imagine Cup to bring his idea to mass market, or at least exposure for one of many compelling ideas that can have a positive impact in the world.

The first round of judging has already occurred across all major categories, with the finalists announced. There will be plenty of demonstrations, exhibits and presentations over the next two days, and I am here in Warsaw covering the event courtesy of Microsoft.

If you’re looking to get involved for the Imagine Cup next year, first check in with your school to see if they organize their own teams, or register your own. In the US there have been spring and fall competitions to tie in with class projects. There are also milestones that must be accomplished to advance. If your team succeeds, you can earn a spot at next year’s worldwide Imagine Cup finals.

World’s first HSPA+ phone to be made by HTC, run Android, launch on T-Mobile USA in September

HSPA+ is a technology meant to maximize the lifespan of 3G. Don’t get me wrong, LTE and WiMAX is all well and good, and we’ve seen what LTE can deliver in countries like Sweden and Norway, surpassing 20 megabits per second, but do you know what the upper limit of HSPA+ is?
How does 42 megabits per second sound? That’s using established standards. With hacks it can even even break 100 megabits per second, but the only place you’ll see such speeds are in a lab

So far there haven’t been any HSPA+ phones launched. It’s a chicken and egg problem. No HSPA+ networks, no need to make HSPA+ modems. Thanks to consumer demand for mobile broadband however, there’s plenty of HSPA+ in Europe and Asia, and thanks to T-Mobile USA there’s even some on the other side of the pond too. The iPhone 4, the latest from Apple, can only hit 7.2 megabits per second, and while you may not ever see that on AT&T’s network, there will be other countries with more evolved wireless infrastructure getting close to 4 or even 5 megabits per second.

According to a T-Mobile spokesman, we aren’t sure if they’re from T-Mobile EU or USA, but whatever, said spokesman said that in September there will be an HSPA+ HTC smartphone running Android launching on T-Mobile USA. Considering T-Mobile’s American network is rated at 21 megabits per second, you’re looking at possible speeds of 10 megabits or more, in the palm of your hand.

No, it isn’t WiMAX, which has the nerve to call itself 4G, and no, it isn’t LTE, which for some strange reason Verzion can’t reach double digit megabit speeds with, T-Mobile uses plain old 3G technology, but they use the latest advancements that technology has to offer.
Think of your DSL modem. I remember growing up as a kid my mother would give me lunch money everyday, and me being the geek I am, I saved it up. What did I finally purchase with the almost $150 that failed to stunt my growth seeing as how I’m almost 2 meters tall? A U.S. Robotics 33.6 kilobit per second modem. At the time, that was the best you could get over the copper wire strung to your house. Then technology got better. The latest and greatest I know about DSL technology is called ADSL2+ and it pushes 24 megabits per second.
Same copper wires strung to your house.

See where I’m getting at with HSPA+? It’s 3G, but damn good 3G, and T-Mobile USA is going to get the world’s first HSPA+ mobile phone to take advantage of the best 3G has to offer.

Lack of Space Technology Is Not the Muslim World’s Problem

The Obama administration decided to dispatch Charles Bolden, head of NASA, to do “public diplomacy” on Al Jazeera, where he said that President Obama wanted him to “find a way to reach out to the Muslim world and engage much more with dominantly Muslim nations to help them feel good about their historic contribution to science, math, and engineering.” He then announced that our deficit-ridden U.S. government will begin a new fund “to support technological development in Muslim-majority countries.”

The 57 OIC countries include some of the wealthiest in the world, yet many are human-rights offenders. Handing them our technology and funds could end up strengthening theocrats and monarchs, further preventing real reform.

Consider the words of Dr. Ahmed Zewail, this administration’s first science envoy to the Middle East and appointee to the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology. After Obama’s Cairo speech last June, Zewail wrote a very revealing op-ed in the Boston Globe, in which he professed that the way for Obama to stimulate an “Islamic Renaissance” would be to provide “investment in education” with a “new emphasis on science and technology.” This ignores the fact that many militant Islamist leaders, from bin Laden to Zawahiri to most of the heads of the Muslim Brotherhood, are very scientifically educated. In fact, the Brotherhood (Ikhwan) is sometimes pejoratively referred to as the “Brotherhood of Engineers.”

Zewail goes on to write: “Most Westerners today are unaware of the extent to which Nasser’s regime promoted education as the vital engine of progress.” How insulting: Gamal Abdel Nasser’s legendary fascism, pan-Arabism, and socialism have become “engines of progress.” Nasser infected the Middle East with a deeply corrupt ideology, yet Obama’s science envoy is apologizing for the Egyptian despot.

The challenge is not science and technology. Real Muslim reform will only come from modernization of thought in the political sciences, liberal arts, free markets, theology, and philosophy. Theocratic Islamist movements are the primary obstacles to Muslim enlightenment — not the absence of space technology.

— M. Zuhdi Jasser, MD, is the founder and president of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy based in Phoenix, Arizona.

Intelligence Agents Borrow Wall Street Trading Technology

NEW YORK—Wall Street often guards its high-frequency trading strategies as if they were matters of national security. Yet the worlds of the quants and the spymasters share more than a penchant for secrecy.

The defense and intelligence fields have long relied on computers to help collect and organize data. But a new cross-pollination has flowered with the super-fast automated systems developed by Wall Street. That technology is now being used to search the Internet's message boards for security threats, comb through bank records for unusual flows of money and gather information used in combat in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Just as ...

Microsoft toppled as world's largest tech firm

Microsoft has been toppled as the world's largest technology manufacturer, based upon market capitalisation at least.

Long-term rival Apple has forged ahead of the Seattle-based software giant in Q1 2010, with its value rising to £154 billion, compared to Microsoft's £150.98 billion.

The success of the Apple iPhone, and the new iPad, has led to a surge in the company's market worth in recent years.

Shares in the company now cost ten times more than they did in 2000, while Microsoft has seemingly struggled to maintain the industry dominance it established during the 1990s.

Microsoft is still the better performing company based on profits alone, clearing £10 billion in the first quarter of 2010 compared to Apple's £9.3 billion.

However, with the Apple iPad shifting more than one million units in its first month in the US, and the tablet device's global launch taking place today (May 28th), the next quarter's figures will be particularly interesting.

Commenting on the news, Microsoft's chief executive Steve Ballmer noted that the company has "good competitors", but is continuing to perform "very well".

Posted by Jon Aspinell

Technology Executives to Provide the "State of Technology" at NCTA's Statewide Conference in RTP

Event to Focus on Technology's Impact on Communications, Energy/Smart Grid, Government Solutions, Healthcare and Supply Chain/Logistics

RALEIGH, N.C., May 21, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA), the primary voice of the technology industry in North Carolina, announced its lineup of presenters for the organization's annual RTP conference, to be held Wednesday, May 26 from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Sheraton Imperial Hotel in Durham. The event, titled "State of Technology: Transforming the Way We Live, Work and Play" will feature presentations from companies whose solutions are revolutionizing their respective industries. Executives from the following companies are confirmed as speakers: Gigabeam, NWN Corporation and Sony Ericsson in communications; Accenture, Elster Solutions, and Progress Energy in energy/smart grid; Cisco, Raytheon and SAS in government solutions; Allscripts, CSC and d-WISE in healthcare; and Flextronics, GXS and Inmar in supply chain/logistics.

Dr. John Kelly, senior vice president and director of IBM Research, will provide the opening keynote presentation. As the global leader for IBM Research, Dr. Kelly is focused on stimulating innovation that delivers new technologies and services and opens new markets for IBM. At the State of Technology Conference, Dr. Kelly will discuss IBM's smarter planet agenda and what it means for the future of business and society.

"IBM is applying its deep research skills to help our clients address some of the world's most formidable and exciting challenges," said Dr. John E. Kelly III, senior vice president and director of IBM Research. "As the ability to monitor and analyze the physical and natural systems that run our world increases, technology holds new promise to make the world work better. IBM scientists and engineers are working on these things around the world."

"Technology plays such a key role in nearly every aspect of our daily lives," said Brooks Raiford, NCTA president and CEO. "The five presentation areas on which we will focus during this year's conference are industries that are especially important in our state. We are pleased to have executives from some of the leading companies in these industries to present and discuss ways in which technology will continue to shape the way we do business and live in North Carolina."

Title sponsor for this year's event is IBM. Additional sponsors include: EMC(2), Cisco, Hosted Solutions, Accenture, Beacon Technologies, Triangle Business Journal, Time Warner Cable Business Class, SAS, Hudson IT, AT&T, Business Wire, CSC, DPR Group, Grant Thornton, SunGard, tw telecom, Vaco, AllScripts, CA, DataChambers, Peak 10, Railinc, Elster Solutions, GXS, Level 3, New Horizons Computer Learning Center, NWN Corporation, Project Right Track, Raleigh Economic Development, Computer Service Partners and Red Hat.

For more information or to register for the State of Technology Conference, please visitwww.nctechnology.org, or contact Marc Montoro at mmontoro@nctechnology.org or 919-856-0393 ext. 225.

SOURCE: North Carolina Technology Association (NCTA)

DPR Group, Inc. 
Michelle Perkins, 919-678-9200 
mperkins@dprgroup.com    

Copyright Business Wire 2010

Medical technology department observes National Lab Week

The University of Southern Mississippi Department of Medical Technology hopes to increase awareness about a profession currently experiencing considerable employment growth as part of National Medical Laboratory Professionals Week from April 18-24.

Medical technologists, also referred to as medical laboratory scientists, serve as vital health care detectives who uncover and provide laboratory information from analyses that assist physicians in patient diagnosis and treatment. Clinical laboratory personnel examine and analyze body fluids and cells.

They look for bacteria, parasites and other microorganisms; analyze the chemical content of fluids; match blood for transfusions and test for drug levels in the blood that show how a patient is responding to treatment.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of clinical laboratory workers is expected to grow by 14 percent between 2008 and 2018, faster than the average for all occupations. The volume of laboratory tests continues to increase with both population growth and the development of new types of tests.

Dr. Jane Hudson, chair of the Department of Medical Technology at Southern Miss, notes that in 2009 the program saw 100 percent job placement rate for graduates and a 100 percent pass rate on the American Society for Clinical Pathology examination.

“Medical technologists/medical laboratory scientists are responsible for providing test results that are used by the physician to make approximately 70 percent of the medical decisions,” said Hudson. “The shortage will only become more critical with 12,200 new laboratory professionals needed annually to meet the growing need of the world’s population, but only 4,000 to 6,000 graduates will join the workforce each year.”

Hospitals are traditionally the major employer of clinical laboratory workers. However, employment is expected to grow rapidly within medical and diagnostic laboratories, physicians’ offices and throughout the entire health care industry.

The following statistics clearly illustrate the impact the med-tech program at Southern Miss has made on South Mississippi:


• 83 percent of the medical technologist staff at Wesley Medical Center in Hattiesburg are Southern Miss graduates

• 77 percent of the staff at Forrest General Hospital in Hattiesburg


• 68 percent of the staff at Memorial Hospital in Gulfport

• 50 percent of the staff at VA Medical Center in Biloxi

• 50 percent of the Tissue Typing Laboratory at University Medical Center in Jackson

• 43 percent of the staff at Singing River Hospital in Pascagoula


“Our graduates are recruited heavily for South Alabama and South Louisiana also, thus our program truly serves the Gulf South,” said Hudson. “The only other programs in the Gulf South are LSU at New Orleans, the University of West Florida at Pensacola.”

On-Premise ERP vendors: Your Partners are Abandoning You

Big Trouble Brewing for On-Premise ERP Firms

Last night, NetSuite made a number of announcements at their SuiteCloud 2010 event here in San Francisco. Specifically, these announcements covered a number of deals they’ve recently inked with major SI, accounting and outsourcing firms.

Genpact, the General Electric spinoff, has made a big splash over the years bringing back office BPO (business process outsourcing) to the world. Genpact has large numbers of process black belts on staff that help design more efficient and effective ways of delivering back office processes and software. Last night, it was announced that Genpact will create a new BPO practice solution around NetSuite cloud applications. This business will cater to mid-market and larger firms.

Wipro, one of the world’s largest outsourcers, announced that they were building a NetSuite practice focused on NetSuite technologies.

Hein & Associates LLP, a top 50 accounting and tax firm, announced that they were building out service offerings around NetSuite applications.

(Fujitsu Japan previously had a relationship with NetSuite.)

Why is this occurring? System integrators and outsourcers understand that they need to find lower cost solutions to bring to clients. These same firms are seeing clients moving to cloud based solutions and they want to hitch their stars to the perceived and potential market leaders in the space. Similarly, these service providers get the economic advantage true cloud based solutions possess over on-premise applications. What these service providers are signaling is a shift in the market preferences of clients.

On-premise providers that previously dismissed cloud applications as a phase or fad should be scared now. The service firms that supported and enlarged the markets for those on-premise solutions are now abandoning an old market segment for something more market relevant and more economically attractive to clients/customers.

These recent moves by Genpact, Wipro, et.al. will likely presage many more announcements by other consultancies, systems integrators and outsourcers. The services ecosystem is changing and the on-premise solution providers won’t be able to stop it.

Geneva Atom Smasher Sets Collision Record

GENEVA — The world's largest atom smasher has set a record for high-energy collisions by crashing two proton beams at three times more force than ever before.

The $10 billion Large Hadron Collider directed the beams into each other Tuesday as part of its ambitious bid to reveal details about theoretical particles and microforces.

The collisions start a new era of science for researchers working on the machine below the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

Scientists at a control room at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, broke into applause when the first successful collisions were recorded. Their colleagues from around the world were tuning in by remote links.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP's earlier story is below.

GENEVA (AP) — The world's largest atom smasher was ready to start a new era of science on Tuesday, but problems delayed scientists seeking to collide the first beams of protons to learn more about the makeup of the universe and its smallest particles.

Dubbed the world's largest scientific experiment, the $10 billion Large Hadron Collider holds the promise of revealing details about theoretical particles and microforces, scientists say.

Tuesday's initial attempts were unsuccessful, however, because problems developed with the beams, said scientists working on the massive machine. That meant that the protons had to be "dumped" from the collider and new beams had to be injected.

"It's a very complicated machine and we have ups and downs," said Michael Barnett of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. "Right now we have a down."

Two beams of protons began 10 days ago to speed at high energy in opposite directions around the 27-kilometer (17-mile) tunnel under the Swiss-French border at Geneva.

The beams were pushed to 3.5 trillion electron volts in recent days, the highest energy achieved by any physics accelerator — some three times greater than the previous record.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, is now trying to use the powerful superconducting magnets to force the two beams to cross, creating collisions and showers of particles. They could have been successful immediately, but such huge machines can be so tricky to run that it could take days.

When collisions become routine, the beams will be packed with hundreds of billions of protons, but the particles are so tiny that few will collide at each crossing.

Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology, describes the challenge of lining up the beams as being akin to "firing needles across the Atlantic and getting them to collide half way."

He said the problems Tuesday started with a power supply that tripped and had to be reset. The second time, the system designed to protect the machine shut it down. That was likely to have been a misreading by the system rather than any basic problem, said Barnett.

The collisions will come over the objections of some people who fear they could eventually imperil the Earth by creating micro black holes — subatomic versions of collapsed stars whose gravity is so strong they can suck in planets and other stars.

CERN and many scientists dismiss any threat to Earth or people on it, saying that any such holes would be so weak that they would vanish almost instantly without causing any damage.

The Large Hadron Collider was launched with great fanfare on Sept. 10, 2008, but it was sidetracked nine days later when a badly soldered electrical splice overheated, causing extensive damage to the massive magnets and other parts of the collider some 300 feet (100 meters) below the ground.

It cost $40 million to repair and improve the machine so that it could be used again at the end of November. Since then the collider has performed almost flawlessly, giving scientists valuable data in the four-week run before Christmas. It soon eclipsed the next largest accelerator — the Tevatron at Fermilab near Chicago.

The extra energy in Geneva is expected to reveal even more about the unanswered questions of particle physics, such as the existence of antimatter and the search for the Higgs boson, a hypothetical particle that scientists theorize gives mass to other particles and thus to other objects and creatures in the universe.

Scientists hope also to approach on a tiny scale what happened in the first split seconds after the Big Bang, which they theorize was the creation of the universe some 14 billion years ago.

Rolf-Dieter Heuer, the director-general of CERN, has said it is likely to take months before any scientific discoveries are made, partly because computers will have to sort through massive amounts of data produced by the collisions.

Heuer said researchers hope by the end of this year to make discoveries into the dark matter that scientists believe comprises 26 percent of the universe. The better understood visible matter makes up only 4 percent of the universe.

Dark matter has been theorized by scientists to account for missing mass and bent light in faraway galaxies. Scientists believe it makes galaxies spin faster.

A separate entity called "dark energy," making up the remaining 70 percent of the universe, is believed linked to the vacuum that is evenly distributed in space and time. It is believed to accelerate the expansion of the universe.

Other possible candidates for discovery are hidden dimensions of space and time.

Physicists have used smaller colliders for decades to study the atom. They once thought protons and neutrons were the smallest components of the atom's nucleus, but the colliders showed that they are made of quarks and gluons and that there are other forces and particles.

Copyright © 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Worlds Fastest NVIDIA Fermi Graphic Cards

Nvidia’s latest graphic cards the GTX 480 and GTX 470 which Nvidia are touting as the worlds fastest are Nvidia’s first to use DirectX 11 .

These next generation graphics cards are also the first to use Nvidia’s latest technology Fermi which creates faster frame rates at high resolutions. Perfect for hardcore gamers.

Using DirectX 11 Nvidia are betting that future games will use the new tessellation method of tilling graphic elements in games. But these monsters come with a monster price tag to match. The Nvidia GTX 480 with 1.5GB costs a whopping $499 and you will also need some serious PSU installed as it will requires 250 watts to run. Need more power? Well you can slot these beauties together in SLI producing a reported 90% increase in performance.

The slightly less well equipped Nvidia GTX 470 with 1.2GB will be priced at $349. Both will be available to buy in mid April.

Via DVICE