Join the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute and the Campus Water Collaborative Wednesday, Nov. 18 for their second technical seminar, "Inexpensive Desalination: Harnessing Natural Forces."

The hour-long seminar begins at 4 p.m. in Atkinson Hall Room 4004 and features Michael Motherway, President of DXV Water Technologies. The agenda includes a 25-minute presentation, followed by an open discussion with question and answer opportunities. Refreshments will be served.

Seating is limited so please RSVP to msession@ucsd.edu.
 
SSI encourages faculty, researchers, ...

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UCSD undergrad and Calit2 staff photographer Erik Jepsen won first place in the sports photo category in the Associated Collegiate Press' annual Photo Excellence Awards.

Jepsen took his aerial shot of a UCSD volleyball player (shown at left) for the UCSD Guardian while perched in the rafters of RIMAC arena (although he likes to tell people that he set the camera's self-timer and tossed it above the player just before his overhand serve). Click here to see the other winning entries.

Jepsen's photograph of Calit2 researcher Albert Yu-Min Lin was also recently featured on National Geographic's Web site. NatGeo ran Jepsen's pic of Lin standing in front of the institute's HIPerSpace Wall with its ...

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... and a happy birthday to all those at Calit2 who celebrate an October birthday!

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It's the calculator that "thinks" only if you think, too -- and now it's available online.

QAMA(TM), or Quick Approximate Mental Arithmetic, is a new kind of calculator designed and developed by Ilan Samson, an "inventor-in-residence" at the University of California, San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).

Having prototyped and tested a hand-held version of the calculator at UC San Diego and San Diego's High Tech High School, Samson has now launched an online version of the device that allows users to perform any calculation, from simple arithmetic to complex calculations involving scientific functions. But here's the twist: The result is shown ...

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The publication of UC San Diego political science Professor and Calit2 affiliate James Fowler's new book: "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives" has led to an onslaught of media attention in some noteworthy publications.

Fowler's research (conducted with colleague Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health) was the lead story on CNN.com this morning.

The New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a piece about Fowler's book in its last Sunday edition, and the story has also received recent pick-up in USA Today, NPR and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Fowler is an affiliate of Calit2's Center for Wireless and Population Health Systems (CWPHS). ...

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Xconomy.com, a nationwide, Web-based publication that features stories on exponential economy, the realm of business and innovation, recently featured Calit2 Director Larry Smarr in a two-part series about the "Origins of the Internet, Innovations in IT, and Insights on the Path Ahead."

One highlight: "(Smarr) views Calit2 as a 'time machine' because the advanced capabilities of the institute's high-performance network enable researchers to develop software applications five or 10 years before they can be deployed commercially. That's something that could be true of any academic research center, although innovations developed for the Internet may stand in a class by themselves."

Read part one ...

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UC San Diego political science Professor James Fowler, an affiliate of Calit2, will make an appearance at Warwick's Bookstore, 7812 Girard Avenue in La Jolla at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8 to discuss and sign his new book, "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."

Fowler's research (conducted with colleague Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health) has repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. The authors' new book explains why emotions are contagious, how health behaviors spread, why the rich get richer and even how we find and choose our partners.

Read more about Fowler's research. 

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A number of classrooms at UC San Diego have received a new addition -- just in time for the 2009-2010 academic year.

LED digital signs have been installed in five classrooms in UCSD's Center Hall, with 13 more expected to be installed throughout campus in the coming months. Initially, the signs will display the time and, at the top of the hour, information about the course itself, including the professor's name and the course title. ("That gets asked about a million times a day on the first day of class," says the project's lead, Calit2 Principal Development Engineer Doug Palmer.)

But eventually, the signs will be used to alert students during emergency situations, such as during a fire or in ...

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Calit2 extends its deepest congratulations to UC San Diego Music Professor Roger Reynolds, who has been appointed University Professor by the University of California Board of Regents -- the highest honor that can be bestowed on UC faculty.

Reynolds, a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, is the first artist to be awarded the title and only the 36th UC faculty member since 1960 to be so honored. The designation is reserved for scholars of international distinction who are recognized and respected as teachers of exceptional ability.

Reynolds joined the UCSD Department of Music in 1969. He became founding director of the Center for Music Experiment (now called the Center for Research in Computing and ...

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Those lucky enough to be in Geyserville, Calif., this weekend will have the unique opportunity to hear "Tower Sounds: Ancient Voices and Electronics," the work of Calit2-affiliated composer and UCSD Assistant Theatre Professor Shahrokh Yadegari. The composition will be performed in Ann Hamilton's Tower, a one-of-a-kind venue (complete with double helix staircase) that is rarely open to the public.

Yadegari's ground-breaking multi-channel sound piece and composition begins at 1 p.m. Saturday, July 11 and will feature performances by:

• Siamak Shajarian, vocals
• Kate St-Pierre, vocals
• Keyavash Nourai, violin
• Dmitri Mahlis, oud
• Satnam Ramgotra, tabla and percussion

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Fact: For every five hours of cable news, less than a minute is devoted to science.

Fact: 46 percent of Americans believe that God, not evolution, created life on earth.

Fact: The number of newspapers with science sections has shrunk from 95 to 33 since 1989.

If you're noticing a trend here, you wouldn't be the first. In their new book, "Unscientific America," journalist and best-selling author Chris Mooney, along with scientist Sheril Kirshenbaum, explain how corporate interests, a weak education system, science-phobic politicians, and hyperspecialized scientists have created a huge disconnect between the scientific community and American culture.

But it's not all doom and gloom: The authors ...

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The UC San Diego division of Calit2 would like to extend a hearty congratulations to the institute's six nominees for UCSD's Exemplary Staff Employee of the Year Award. The nominees are:

• Theresa Allen
• Timothy Beach
• Qian Liu
• Sarah Prom
• Cuong Vu
• April Walsh

Thank you for all that you do to make Calit2 a wonderful place to work!

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If driving a car required a theoretical understanding of thermodynamics, "very few of us would be automobile drivers," says Professor C. Richard Johnson, Jr. of Cornell University.

Likewise, if analyzing a painting required an art historian to have an advanced education in math and engineering, very few paintings would ever be analyzed. But that's the rub: High-tech analysis of these paintings does require math- and engineering-based solutions, and that's where most art historians (educated predominantly in the humanities) are at a loss.

But their loss is Johnson's gain. Johnson, a Stanford alumnus who received a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and a Ph.D. minor in art history, served as a "translator" ...

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A group of multi-disciplinary researchers affiliated with the UC San Diego division of Calit2 convened in Atkinson Hall yesterday for the launch of GRAIN, the Global Responsibility and Innovation Network.

The founders of GRAIN seek to connect academic institutions, non-governmental agencies and industry to generate projects and products that "are successful and sustainable -- culturally, economically and environmentally -- from idea to implementation."

"Were talking about the most multidisciplinary effort you could ever think of," said co-founder Garrett Smith, a bioengineering Ph.D. candidate. "We want to facilitate a way for the UCSD community to engage with industry and NGOs to design technologies ...

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UC San Diego's Project GreenLight, which focuses on the development of metrics and technologies to help minimize the environmental impact of the IT industry, received a Sustainability Award from UC San Diego last week.

Calit2 and the university's Administrative Computing and Telecommunications (ACT) group have invested $600,000 in matching funds, in the project, and several research scientists from Calit2 are playing active roles. Receiving the award were (pictured) former Calit2 Chief Technology Officer Greg Hidley, Vice Chancellor Steve Relyea, Calit2 Director Larry Smarr, Research Scientist Tom DeFanti, Computer Science & Engineering Professor Ingolf Krueger and Richard Carson, Chair ...

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The team behind UCSD's Project GreenLight -- a plan to connect scientists and their labs to more energy-efficient 'green' computer processing -- will receive recognition for their outstanding sustainability efforts at a ceremony next week.

The Chancellor's Advisory Committee on Sustainability willi present the team with an award at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday April 22 (Earth Day) at the Student Services Complex multipurpose room.

Read more about Project GreenLight....

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Einstein lives. Our story about the Machine Perception Lab's Einstein Robot, which was modeled after the theoretical physicist, is turning up all over the Web:

• 'Einstein Robot Feels For You," NBC New York
  
• 'UC San Diego Scientists Create 'Emotionally Intelligent' Einstein Robot, MSNBC
• 'Einstein Robot Smiles With You,' Sci Tech News
  
• 'It's All Relative: Einstein Robot Has Emotional Intelligence, Imperial Valley News
• 'Robots 'Emotions' Are Relative,' The La Jolla Light
• 'Researchers Develop Smirking, Speaking Einstein Robot,' UCSD Guardian
  

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UC San Diego graduate student Micha Cardenas, creator of the "Becoming Dragon" virtual reality performance in Second Life, will be presenting documentation of the project at 9:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 26. as part of the College Art Association's 97th annual conference at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

For the show -- titled "@" -- Cardenas created in Second Life an installation of objects that people had given her during her immersive performance. When users approach one of the objects, they replay conversations she had through text chat, making them appear as if they are recurring in the exhibition space in Second Life.

A reception will follow the event at 9:30 p.m., at SCI-Arc, 960 East Third ...

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Calit2 aritist and Assistant Professor of Visual Arts Ricardo Dominguez has a busy month ahead of him, with appearances at two events in Los Angeles and Victoria, B.C.

• As a contributor to the Sound + Science Symposium, Dominguez (pictured) will present "Sounding out the Matter Market" from noon to 1 p.m. Thursday, March 5 in the California NanoSystems Institute Auditorium at UC Los Angeles. The event is free and open to the public (parking at UCLA is $9 per day). The full symposium takes place from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m., March 5-6.
  
• Dominguez will also be giving the keynote address at this years Cultural, Social, and Political Thought gathering from 9:20 to 10:50 a.m. March 7 at the University of ...

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Micha Cardenas, creator of the durational, immersive Second Life project known as "Becoming Dragon," will present her research findings at the SPIE Photonics West Conference in San Jose, Calif., Dec. 22.

Cardenas, a Calit2-affiliated graduate student with the Department of Visual Arts at UCSD, will present a lecture as part of a session titled "Evoking Environments through Artful Distinctiveness." The presentation is scheduled to begin at 11:10 a.m. in the San Jose Convention Center, and is one of about 20 conference lectures sponsored by SPIE, an international society advancing light-based research (SPIE was founded as the Society of Photographic Instrumentation Engineers).

Read more about ...

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The Digital Archaeological Atlas of the Holy Land (DAAHL), a project spearheaded by Calit2's Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3), got top billing on Google's Student Blog when it was featured as a daily post last month. Google recruited Arizona State University Affiliated Professor (and DAAHL collaborator) Steven Savage to write the entry, which encourages students to explore DAAHL's interactive, Google-app-based features to learn more about archaeological sites located in Israel, Palestine, Jordan, southern Lebanon, Syria and the Sinai Peninsula.

Savage, together with UCSD Professor of Archaeology/CISA3 Associate Director Tom Levy and San Diego SuperComputer ...

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Nearly 100 Calit2 employees at UCSD turned out for the institute's holiday shindig last night. The catered event featured a White Elephant Gift Exchange, a raffle with valuable prizes from around the world and the epic main event: Guitar Hero World Tour Battle of the Bands. Miss it? You missed out, but be sure to check out the party pics (including some from the December birthday event/Guitar Hero Encore today).

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San Diego CityBeat picked up the story about Micha Cardenas and her "Becoming Dragon" performance for its current issue, placing particular emphasis on the potential psychological dangers of the project. Cardenas, a UCSD grad student in visual arts, will spend 365 consecutive hours totally immersed in the Second Life virtual world as a means of questioning the one-year requirement for "real-life experience" that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive gender confirmation surgery (Micha is currently undergoing hormone replacement therapy).

For more about the performance, check out Micha's daily blog, browse the "Becoming Dragon" project Web site or read an article on the Calit2 main ...

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Sheldon Brown, Calit2's Artist in Residence and the director of UCSD's Center for Research and Computing in the Arts, will be featured on KPBS' "These Days" morning program at 9:40 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 2. Brown will be speaking about his "Scalable City" project, an interactive, mixed-media installation that encourages viewers to steer through a replicating urban environment. The installation runs through Dec. 15 in UCSD's gallery@calit2.

Brown's "These Days" segment will be streaming live the day of the broadcast, and will be available for download following the show.

Also on Dec. 2, the gallery@calit2 will host a talk by the artist and readings by Geoff Ryman and Kim Stanley Robinson, two well-known ...

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Computer Science and Engineering undergraduates from professor Gary Cottrell's cognitive modeling courseMachine Perception Lab at Calit2 Tuesday to get a hands-onCottrell, who is the director of UCSD's Temporal Dynamics of Learning Center, has focused his research on building working models of cognitive processes and using them to explain psychological or neurological processes.His research has focused upon face processing, including face recognition, face identification,and facial expression recognition -- something the MP lab also specializes in.

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Nathaniel Kahn, director of the film "My Architect," paid a visit to Calit2's Atkinson Hall last week for an "Architecture+Cinema" event sponsored by Artpower! at UC San Diego. Following a screening of Kahn's elegiac documentary, Kahn discussed his creative approach and his somewhat strained relationship with his father, the famed architect Louis Kahn (pictured here with Nathaniel as a young boy). The elder Kahn is the subject of his son's feature-length documentary and served as both Nathaniel's muse and the source of a mystery the director has yet to solve.

Joining Kahn for the discussion were Kyong Park, associate professor of Visual Arts at UCSD, as well as architectural engineer Victor ...

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Calit2 Summer Scholar Benjamin Lotan was in the right place at the right time Tuesday when San Diego 6 news correspondent Jenny Hamel stopped by UCSD to ask students about the new Google/T-Mobile phone. The scholars had finished presenting their summer research at a poster session in Atkinson Hall when the news crew turned up. Lucky for Ben (pictured, in a self-portrait), he was still around, and even managed to get a snippet of the digital film he created for his research project in the news clip.

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I'm live-blogging from Price Center East at UCSD, where the half-day opening symposium for the new Center for Academic Research and Training in Anthropogeny (CARTA) is taking place all afternoon (Calit2-affiliated professor Ajit Varki is co-director of the center, while Calit2 and SDSC will support CARTA with IT and telecom technologies). The symposium, "Anthropogeny: Defining the Agenda," features experts from all over the world, representing the many facets of anthropogeny, or the study of human origins.

Professor Tetsuro Matsuzawa, director of primate research at Kyoto University in Japan gave a particularly engaging presentation on primatology that featured a chimpanzee named Ayumu. Ayumu ...

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If you've ever wandered through a museum exhibition and wished you could have helped put it all together, you won't want to miss this opportunity from Calit2's Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3).

CISA3 is inviting student volunteers to help install its forthcoming exhibition entitled 'Masters of Fire -- Hereditary Bronze Casters of South India', which will open at UCSD's Geisel Library on October 5, 2008. Julie Gay, an exhibition designer and preparator from the San Diego Museum of Man, will be installing the CISA3 exhibit from September 26 to 30 at the Geisel Library (and the exhibition itself runs through January 25). Ms. Gay, who has a distinguished ...

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Somewhere out there is a group of mathematicians so powerful, so uber-geeky, that they just might be able to predict human behavior using nothing but a bunch of bits and bytes.

In his newly released book "The Numerati," Business Week technology reporter Stephen Baker investigates a new breed of "entrepreneurial mathematicians" who are using the data we all leave in our wake -- while surfing the Internet, using a credit card, or talking on the phone -- to measure and analyze user experiences. The end goal: Total customization (hence the Amazon "recommendation" feature that led me to the book in the first place).

But that's not even the half of it. Baker predicts that soon, by harnessing ...

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I've been listening in on a few sessions of the Second Congress of the International Society for Cultural and Activity Research (ISCAR) this week, and one conclusion I've come to is that Lev Vygotsky -- who died of tuberculosis in 1934 -- still has a loyal worldwide following.

Even if you've never heard of the late Soviet psychologist, plenty of people at ISCAR know his work well, and their lectures this week have been peppered with references to Vygotsky's research in developmental psychology, the philosophy of science and methodology of psychological research, child development, education, the psychology of art, the study of learning disabilities and the interrelation between language and ...

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Recycling bins and motion-sensor lighting are all well and good, but a team of staff members from Calit2 at UCSD thinks the institute can take sustainability to the next level. Led by Government Program Developer Jerry Sheehan and Management Services Officer Yuki Marsden, employees at the institute's Atkinson Hall facility met last Friday to discuss how the building -- and the people in it -- can do more to 'go green.'

"We want to think about things we can do on a practical level that can have a greater focus," said Sheehan. "I propose that we should innovate now, before sustainability stops being voluntary and starts being compulsory."

At its initial brainstorming session, the team (which welcomes ...

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We at Calit2 were saddened to hear of the death last week of Manny Farber, an influential film critic, abstract painter and professor emeritus at UCSD. Farber died at his home in Leucadia at the age of 91.

A major force in American culture for more than 50 years, Farber wrote film criticism for The New Republic, The Nation and Time Magazine, among other publications. Farber also made a name for himself as a painter, joining the UCSD Visual Arts Department in 1970 and remaining an active member of the faculty until 1987. In 2006, Calit2 filmmaker-in-residence Jean-Pierre Gorin organized a five-hour tribute called "Manny Farber and All That Jazz" at Calit2's Atkinson Hall. Gorin had been a colleague ...

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"Network World," the premier provider of information and insight for network and IT executives, has published an article in both its print and online editions about research conducted by UCSD Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) Professor Amin Vahdat.

The article -- titled "Could 'fat-tree' switch setup be key to trimming data center costs?' -- discusses Vahdat's research findings, which he presented last week at the annual meeting of SIGCOMM, the Special Interest Group on Data Communications. In his paper, Vahdat and co-authors Mohammad Al-Fares and Alexander Loukissas (both UCSD grad students in CSE) explain how companies with large data centers can save money and enhance performance ...

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The kites were flying high, the burgers and dogs were sizzling and the sunshine seemed special-ordered at the Calit2-UCSD Staff Picnic, held yesterday afternoon at Mission Bay's De Anza Cove. More than 75 staff members turned out for the barbecue cook-out (provided by the Grove Cafe), which was followed by a hugely popular kite-flying contest, a prize raffle and pick-up games of volleyball and soccer.

"AV = Awesome!" took first place in the kite-flying contest, and winners Alex Matthews, Mike Toillion, Hector Bracho (pictured, with the winning entry), Adam Burruss and Emily Jankowski will celebrate their success with a pizza party sponsored by Calit2. Nano3 engineer Ryan Anderson won the grand ...

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The autonomous underwater vehicle known as the "Stingray" recently participated in this year's Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International competition and held up pretty well against its rivals. Building it, however, required a little bit of high-tech, a little bit of a low-tech and a whole lot of "black magic," says Gideon Prior, president of the UCSD-based iBotics engineering group that created the craft.

At one end of the spectrum are the Stingray's high-tech "guts." It's equipped with Voith-Schneider propellers, forward- and down-looking cameras, a high-intensity lighting apparatus, a piezoelectric film-based sonar system, inertial navigational sensors and custom-designed software. ...

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Ilkay Altintas, assistant director for the National Laboratory for Advanced Data Research (NLADR) and manager of Scientific Workflows Automation Technologies (SWAT) at UCSD's San Diego Supercomputer Center, presented a lecture and slide-show this week to undergraduates at Australia's Monash University, where seven UCSD students are currently enrolled as part of the Calit2-based Pacific Rim Experiences for Undergraduates (PRIME) program.

The lecture was titled "Accelerating Scientific Discovery Using Scientific Workflows and Kepler Scientific Workflow System" and was streamed live in high definition video from Calit2's HD Studio to Monash, where PRIME students are working this summer on diverse ...

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As part of its series examining what life might be like in 2020, CNN.com has run a story about Intelligent Tutoring Systems that features UCSD Machine Perception Lab researcher Jacob Whitehill's work to create a facial remote control.

Despite the benefits of having a robot in the classroom (infinite patience, for one), it seems not everyone is convinced. Writes one commentator: "LOL don't think so... at least not anytime near soon.... Think how fast kids would hack their teacher."

At any rate, it seems Calit2 has its finger on the pulse of the up-and-coming zeitgeist: CNN's series also looks at the future of telemedicine, virtual classrooms, energy solutions, and virtual worlds -- all well-established ...

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Four artists affiliated with Calit2 at UC San Diego are in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this week for the Electronic Language International Festival (FILE), an annual gathering of innovators within the fields of art and technology, including digital art, games, documentary films, electronic music and -- for the first time in the festival's nine-year history -- digital 4K cinema.

Calit2's contributions fall under the latter category, with Sheldon Brown, Peter Otto, Todd Margolis and Mike Toillion presenting 30-minute lectures at the festival's Symposium this Friday (translated to Portuguese in real-time), followed by screenings of their work in the newly emerging medium.

Brown, director of Calit2's Center ...

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UCSD's Mohan Trivedi, head of the university's Computer Vision and Robotics Research Laboratory and a Calit2 expert on intelligent transportation and telematics, joined KPBS host Tom Fudge for this morning's episode of "These Days". Trivedi (pictured) oversees projects such as a robotic, sensor-based traffic-incident monitoring and response systems, and was on the air to discuss the logistics and ethics behind public surveillance systems. An archived audio file of the broadcast will be available later today for download.

Today's episode of the program was spurred in part by a UCSD Ethics Center's panel discussion titled "Surveillance and Sensors: Who's Watching Whom?," which will take place at ...

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The Royal Society for the Conservation of Nature (RSCN) -- Jordan's leading nature conservancy agency -- recently wrote a letter of support for a Calit2 CISA3 project that will promote eco-tourism and sustainable development in the country's Feynan Region.

The agency is taking steps, in cooperation with CISA3 Associate Director and Professor of archaeology Tom Levy (pictured at center with grad students in Feynan) to nominate the Feynan area for World Heritage status and hopefully include it within the protected area of the Dana Natural Reserve. The reserve, according to RSCN Wild Jordan Director Chris Johnson, is Jordan's largest and most renowned protected area and the most visited eco-tourism ...

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"My obtuse little friend: If they had needed our help, they would have asked for it. You obviously have a lot to learn about human behavior."
-- C-3PO to R2-D2, "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones"

It's too bad poor R2 doesn't work for Calit2's Machine Perception (MP) Lab ... with all the work researchers have been doing in Intelligent Tutoring Systems, he'd be getting a full-on crash course in human behavior.

Researchers at the UCSD lab are hoping to improve educational robot tutors by studying the visual feedback that human students provide while learning -- be it through facial muscle movement, head positioning or other expressions of interest or confusion. The idea is to equip robot tutors with ...

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Students from across the state have converged at four UC campuses this month -- including UC San Diego and UC Irvine-- for the California State Summer School for Mathematics and Science program, better known as COSMOS. COSMOS is a four-week summer program geared toward motivated high-school students with a demonstrated interest and achievement in science and math.

UCSD Computer Science and Engineering Professor Rajesh Gupta dropped us a line to fill us in on what's been going on with the COSMOS cluster he is spearheading. Here's what he has to say:

Working with a team of Choon Kim, Rick Ord, Bridget Benson, Arash Arafee and Shirley Miranda (a high-school teacher by choice and one of our graduates), ...

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A group of about 20 high school students paid a visit to the Machine Perception Laboratory at Calit2 today as part of UC San Diego's Academic Connection program -- a pre-college summer academic and residential experience targeted to highly motivated, high achieving, college-bound students entering grades 10-12.

The students -- all of whom chose to study robotics for the program's three-week course -- were led by Dan Rupert, a math and pre-engineering teacher at the Preuss School UCSD and leader of the school's "Midnight Mechanics" Robotics Club. On hand to show the students the bells and whistles at the MP Lab were co-directors Marni Stewart Bartlett, who demonstrated some of the lab's facial ...

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For more than 25 years, noted Andean archaeologist Charles "Chip" Stanish, a professor of anthropology at UCLA and director of that university's Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, has been exploring the shores of Lake Titicaca in Peru and Bolivia for evidence of civilizations dating back 7,000 years. Chip (pictured, at right) recently invited Calit2's Tom Levy (pictured, at left), a UCSD anthropology professor and associate director of the Center of Interdisciplinary Science for Art, Architecture and Archaeology (CISA3), to examine ancient copper works discovered during archaeological surveys conducted by UCLA and the University of Chile in the Taracapa Valley in Chile's Atacama desert. The bi-national ...

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Happy birthday to those born in the month of July! Pictured from left to right are: Karen Riggs-Saberton (7/31), Rosalyn De La Cruz, Jeff Nagle (7/19), Jessica Mac (7/5), Adam Brust (7/11), Lynda Tran (7/4), Claudiu Farcas (7/31) and Alice Dignazio (7/8).

Also celebrating a birthday this month:
Samuel Doshier (7/2)
Paul Gilna (7/3)
Sean Michael Parks (7/4)
Mark Plummer (7/12)
John Wooley (7/27)

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An educational video from the National Science Foundation (NSF) will feature UCSD post-doc researcher and Calit2-affiliate Jurgen Schulze in an effort to show young students that science can be cool.

A NSF video crew will be in Atkinson Hall Tuesday morning to take footage of Schulze (pictured) in the StarCAVE virtual reality system, where he will conduct research on a test subject as part of a virtual-reality experiment in navigation and "way-finding." The project, which is a multidisciplinary effort to study human neurological responses to built environments, is being conducted in collaboration with UCSD's Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience. (Read more about the Navigation/Way-Finding ...

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Frank Stietz, head of corporate research and technology at Carl Zeiss AG, toured Calit2's Atkinson Hall today as part of a one-day visit to UC San Diego (see a webcast of Stietz's presentation about Carl Zeiss).
Carl Zeiss, a German high-tech company best known for its optics, microscopes, and semiconductor equipment, collaborated with Calit2 at UC Irvine three years ago to create the ZEISS Center of Excellence for nanotechnology and biotechnology research and advanced materials development and innovation. Now Zeiss is looking into potential collaborations with the institute's UCSD division, possibly in the areas of 3-D data visualization and molecular imaging.

Stietz's UCSD tour included a stop ...

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It's no exaggeration to say that Visual Arts graduate student Micha Cardenas will have to spend 30 days locked away in a single room to complete her MFA project. Cardenas, a researcher for the Center for Research in Computing an the Arts (CRCA) in Atkinson Hall, will be using a head-mounted display (HMD) and a Vicon motion-capture system to create long-durational performances of non-human characters in Second Life, an Internet-based virtual world imagined and created by its "residents."

Cardenas intends to fully immerse herself in Second Life for the month of November, waking and sleeping in the physical world (a single room at Calit2's Atkinson Hall) as the motion capture system tracks her ...

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Calit2-San Diego Associate Director Bill Hodgkiss returned this week from 18 days at sea off the West coast of Kauai, where he and a team of 15 researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography studied the effects of fluctuations in the ocean environment on underwater acoustic communications.

Despite logging countless hours in the field as a Scripps faculty member, Hodgkiss says he still gets seasick in rough conditions (although the weather on this most recent trip proved to be fortuitously calm).

Hodgkiss offers the following advice to those who tend to go green around the gills while at sea:
1) Go out in nice weather. Of course, it helps if you're somewhere near Hawaii.
2) Go to sea in ...

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Calit2 Principal Development Engineer Doug Palmer's idea for a "smart" Universal Power Adapter is striking a chord with the national news media. Coverage of the adapter, also known as uPower, turned up today on "The Blue Marble Blog" an online component of Mother Jones magazine. With a circulation of 230,000, Mother Jones is the most widely read progressive publication in the United States.

The story about uPower also appeared on PhysOrg.com, where it's generated 20 reader comments within a span of 24 hours. PhysOrg.com is a Web-based news site that specializes in the hard sciences. This year, Quantcast listed the site as a top 5000 site with 510,000 U.S. people visiting per month....

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Architecture, music and technology will join forces in October with a film screening and music performance sponsored by the Salk Institute for Biological Sciences, Artpower! and Calit2.

As part of its "Architecture and Cinema" series, Artpower! will screen "My Architect," an Academy-Award nominated documentary about Salk Institute architect Louis Khan, Oct. 2 in the Calit2 auditorium

The screening comes in conjunction with a performance Oct. 11 of "Sanctuary," an experimental percussion-based work composed by Calit2 artist-in-residence Roger Reynolds. That performance -- held at the Salk Institute -- will mark the second time Reynold's composition will be performed (its debut was held last year ...

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You need one for your mobile phone, one for your laptop, one for your iPod ... even one for your hedge trimmer. Plug them all in and not only do you have a mess of power cords, you've also got one hefty electricity bill.

External power adapters -- known to some as "wall warts" -- might be ubiquitous in today's gadget-crazed world, but that doesn't mean they're the best option for consumers. Calit2-San Diego Principal Development Engineer Doug Palmer hopes his idea for a "universal power adapter" will provide a much-needed alternative to wall warts. It would supply both power and communications to any consumer electronics device (or multiple devices at once), and when paired with a solar panel, ...

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If you missed the "Softwhere 2008" Software Studies workshop held at Calit2 last month, here's your chance to catch up on the public pecha kucha sessions. Videos of the six-minute presentations -- which addressed everything from cultural analytics to interface design -- are available for download on the Software Studies Initiative site in both Quicktime and on YouTube.

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Archaeologist and UCSD lecturer Adolpho Muniz -- an affiliate of CISA3 at Calit2 -- is headed off to Tamil Nadu, India, this Sunday to complete ethnographic research for CISA3. The center is spearheading an effort to document and study the "lost wax" bronze-casting technique used among artisans in the village of Swamimalai.

Muniz's research is part of the Traditional Indian Technologies Project led by CISA Associate Director Tom Levy. The project is aimed at using digital technologies to create a new way of researching, recording, analyzing and partnering with traditional craftspeople in India to conserve their traditions and help artisans market their works.

Read the full article about Muniz's ...

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Here are four good reasons to think about investing in a hands-free mobile device:

1. You have to. As of July 1, all California drivers are required to use a hands-free mobile device while at the wheel.

2. You can participate in a mobile malware study being conducted by Calit2 researchers at UCSD.

3. You can try before you buy. The UCSD Bookstore Computer Center will host Plantronics, makers of Bluetooth, this Thursday from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The company will be on hand to display and demo the devices.

4. Consider the alternative (pictured).

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Read more about the project or watch a video that shows the technology in action. (Says Whitehill in the video: "In the current day and age of using Botox to improve one's facial ...

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At his lecture at the San Diego division of Calit2 last week, National Geographic's EVP for Mission Programs Terry Garcia told the story of the seven mountain gorillas who were murdered in cold blood last year in Virunga, a National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

Photojournalist Brent Stirton (pictured) will discuss the murders and the controversy behind them on today's episode of Fresh Air, streaming live on KPBS at 1 p.m. and available for download following the show.

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UCSD's Biomedical Library hosted a free "Extreme Googling" workshop today that featured some Google Scholar tips Calit2 researchers should find especially helpful:

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Here's your chance to participate in "hands-on" genetic research without even needing a lab coat.

The National Geographic Society's "Genographic Project" is a five-year, worldwide effort to chart new knowledge about the human species and where we all came from. Terry Garcia, executive vice president of Mission Programs for the Society, spoke about the program in a lecture he delivered at the Calit2 auditorium earlier this week. He said the general public can participate in the study by purchasing a DNA swab kit from the project's Web site. The results will reveal the migration paths your ancestors followed thousands of years ago, and the proceeds from the kit further field research ...

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They might not have come away with the prize for best project at the ECE 191 final presentations Friday, but UC San Diego students Alvin Shieh and Bunreth Nhong -- two members of a Calit2-sponsored research group - said they feel honored just to have worked with their mentor, Nandan Das.

Das (pictured above, center) is a Calit2-affiliated researcher who coached a total of seven students during the 10-week Engineering Group Design Project course. Das took time out of his busy schedule as a system engineer at ViaSat to work with two teams of students on projects to implement Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA) for digital communication systems. Shieh and Nhong, along with fellow student Chang ...

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