A new computational tool could give scientists a better understanding of the functional units critical to the performance of the biochemical pathways that govern biological processes. Developed by researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU), the algorithm can identify which metabolites, biochemical reactions, and enzymes are related to each other, group them into functional modules, and identify whether an individual component plays a role in multiple modules. The algorithm also characterizes how the relationships between different modules and individual components may change over time and under different internal and external conditions. The input for the algorithm comes from using dynamic models to observe changes in concentrations of metabolites, biochemical reactions, and enzymes under various conditions. To read further, please visit http://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-williams-pathways2014/ .

University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers analyzed more than a billion anonymized status updates among more than 100 million Facebook users in the United States and found that positive posts encouraged positive posts and negative posts produced negative ones, with the positive posts being more influential, or more contagious. "Our study suggests that people are not just choosing other people like themselves to associate with but actually causing their friends' emotional expressions to change," says UCSD professor James Fowler. "We have enough power in this data set to show that emotional expressions spread online and also that positive expressions spread more than negative." Each additional negative post yields 1.29 more negative posts among a person's friends, while each additional positive post yields an additional 1.75 positive posts among friends, according to the study. To read further, please visit http://ucsdnews.ucsd.edu/pressrelease/facebook_feelings_are_contagious_study_shows.

Nov 16-21, 2014 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Submission Deadline – April 25, 2014

Panels at SC14 will be, as in past years, among the most important and heavily attended events of the Conference. Panels will bring together the key thinkers and producers in the field to consider in a lively and rapid-fire context some of the key questions challenging high-performance computing, networking, storage and associated analysis technologies for the foreseeable future. For more information and guidelines, please visit https://submissions.supercomputing.org/.

As part of a broader effort to increase the number of women participating in technology, Google is funding Chicago-based technology startup center 1871's launch of the 1871FEMtech incubator for female technology entrepreneurs. Under its #40Forward initiative, Google this year intends to help launch 40 incubators worldwide that will increase women's participation in technology by 25 percent. The new incubator will mentor 10 to 15 women-owned technology startups annually. "We know the percentage of women in tech hasn't improved, that it's hovered around 7 to 8 percent," says 1871 CEO Howard Tullman. "There are a massive number of companies who want to make this sort of commitment, but we didn't have the mechanism to do anything.” Entrepreneurs can apply for FEMtech over the next 30 to 60 days. For more information, please visit http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140311/BLOGS11/140319961/google-helps-launch-women-tech-incubator-at-1871.

The Wall Street Journal

As the Internet approaches its 25-year anniversary, the Pew Research Center has released responses from science and technology experts about what the future Internet might look like. Pew had asked a group of experts in various fields what impact they thought the Internet would have in 2025 on social, political, and economic processes. Experts predict the Internet will be thoroughly embedded in homes and integrated into people's daily lives, with some noting a rise in wearable technology, massive open online courses, and business model changes. "We may literally be able to adjust both medications and lifestyle changes on a day-by-day basis or even an hour-by-hour basis, thus enormously magnifying the effectiveness of an ever more understaffed medical delivery system," predicts University of California, Berkeley software developer Aron Roberts. Massachusetts Institute of Technology senior research scientist David Clark says devices will become increasingly autonomous. To read further, please visit http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/03/11/what-the-internet-of-2025-might-look-like/.

A new, $1 million National Science Foundation grant will enable engineers at Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center (PSC), the National Institute for Computational Sciences, the Pennsylvania State University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Texas Advanced Computing Center and the National Center for Supercomputing Applications to create a new tool for high-volume scientific users to achieve faster data transfers over Internet2 The Developing Applications with Networking Capabilities via End-to-End SDN (DANCES) project will add network bandwidth scheduling capability to the network infrastructure and the supercomputing applications used by the collaborating sites. The DANCES web site is available at http://www.dances-sdn.org.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) researchers recently conducted a study revealing new information about the motor circuits of the brain that could help those developing therapies to treat conditions such as stroke, schizophrenia, spinal cord injury, or Alzheimer's disease. "Using the tools of artificial intelligence, specifically computer vision and image processing, we are able to visualize and process actual neurons of model organism," says IUPUI professor Gavriil Tsechpenakis. "Our work in the brain of a model organism--the fruit fly--will help us and other researchers move forward to more complex organisms with the ultimate goal of reconstructing the human central nervous system to gain insight into what goes wrong at the cellular level when devastating disorders of the brain and spinal cord occur." To read further, please visit http://science.iupui.edu/news/iupui-researchers-use-computers-see-neurons-better-understand-brain-function

May 28-30, 2014 - Kansas City Missouri

The Annual Meeting of the Great Plains Network and Greater Western Library Alliance brings together knowledge and information technology professionals including advanced network and Cyberinfrastructure users, faculty members, researchers, librarians, information technology staff and graduate students from leading universities, and higher education networks.’ For more information, please visit http://www.dce.k-state.edu/conf/great-plains-network/.

As part of a broader effort to increase the number of women participating in technology, Google is funding Chicago-based technology startup center 1871's launch of the 1871FEMtech incubator for female technology entrepreneurs. Under its #40Forward initiative, Google this year intends to help launch 40 incubators worldwide that will increase women's participation in technology by 25 percent. The new incubator will mentor 10 to 15 women-owned technology startups annually. "We know the percentage of women in tech hasn't improved, that it's hovered around 7 to 8 percent," says 1871 CEO Howard Tullman. "There are a massive number of companies who want to make this sort of commitment, but we didn't have the mechanism to do anything.” Entrepreneurs can apply for FEMtech over the next 30 to 60 days. For more information, please visit http://www.chicagobusiness.com/article/20140311/BLOGS11/140319961/google-helps-launch-women-tech-incubator-at-1871.

UC Berkeley NewsCenter

University of California, Berkeley professor Ben Recht's work concentrates on simplifying data analysis, with particular emphasis on the incorporation of expert knowledge within data analysis. He is especially eager to create ways to address problems common to many investigations, and he already has demonstrated that the same mathematical model can surmount computational challenges of determining a molecule's structure, predicting traffic flow, or forecasting an online shopper's habits. "We're trying to understand if there's a single tool that all can use in data analysis," Recht says. "Is there a way of looking at analysis of huge amounts of data in which you don't have to build a giant new factory from scratch each time?" To read further, please visit http://vcresearch.berkeley.edu/news/making-sense-big-data.

November 16-21, 2014 - New Orleans, Louisiana
Submission Deadline – April 25, 2014

Panels at SC14 will be, as in past years, among the most important and heavily attended events of the Conference. Panels will bring together the key thinkers and producers in the field to consider in a lively and rapid-fire context some of the key questions challenging high-performance computing, networking, storage and associated analysis technologies for the foreseeable future. For more information and guidelines, please visit https://submissions.supercomputing.org/.