ACM and IEEE Computer Society have named Katherine Yelick as the recipient of the 2015 ACM/IEEE Computer Society Ken Kennedy Award for innovative research contributions to parallel computing languages that have been used in both the research community and in production environments. She was also cited for her strategic leadership of the national research laboratories and for developing novel educational and mentoring tools. Yelick’s work has improved the programmability of HPC through innovations to parallel languages and runtime systems.

With the aid of UC Berkeley astronomer Michael Wong, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope team has produced a dramatic new video of a rotating Jupiter, its bands and famed Great Red Spot standing out among swirling Technicolor clouds. The video was created from new global maps of the planet, the first in a series of annual portraits of the solar system’s outer planets from the Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy program. Already, the Jupiter images have revealed a rare wave just north of the planet’s equator and a unique filamentary feature in the core of the Great Red Spot not seen previously. The Hubble observations confirm that the Great Red Spot continues to shrink and become more circular. In addition, an unusual wispy filament is seen, spanning almost the entire width of the vortex.

A study by engineers at Oregon State University suggests that they have achieved the most realistic robotic implementation of human walking dynamics that has ever been done, which may ultimately allow human-like versatility and performance. The system is based on a concept called "spring-mass" walking that was theorized less than a decade ago, and combines passive dynamics of a mechanical system with computer control. It provides the ability to blindly react to rough terrain, maintain balance, retain an efficiency of motion and essentially walk like humans do.

To find out all you need to know about your body's vital signs, all you need to do is to get dressed. The burgeoning market for intelligent clothing that can measure stats including your heart and respiratory rate has resulted in a broad range of wearables which could one-day act simultaneously as an on-call doctor. "[People] can be monitored 24/7 and not have to be in hospital to do it," says Bennet Fisher, of CircuiteX, the smart fabrics arm of Noble Biomaterials.

What do science, technology, engineering and math have in common with the art of dance? On the surface – not much. But STEM From Dance, a New York City-based non-profit group, is using dance to expose girls, in low-income communities, to the opportunities available to them in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics – also known as STEM education. Yamilee Toussaint is the group’s founder. She says many minority girls, from low-income areas, don’t dream of becoming scientists or engineers, not because of ability, but because of a lack of confidence.

A team of researchers led by Angelika Lingnau, from the Department of Psychology at Royal Holloway, University of London has been able to predict participants' movements just by analysing their brain activity. The research, which is published in the Journal of Neuroscience, is the first human study to look at the neural signals of planned actions that are freely chosen by the participant and could be the first step in the development of brain-computer interfaces. Dr. Lingnau and her team used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while participants planned and performed simple hand movements inside the scanner.

There’s a popular meme that states it takes 10 years of effortful study to become an expert at something. Studies show that, in reality, the number of years varies a bit from subject to subject and from one individual to the next — but one thing is clear: Expertise takes time. Therein lies the problem. Most students who enter college and decide to take computer science have minimal, if any, prior exposure to the subject. At many colleges, a student’s first year is primarily taken up with broad, core, required classes, so a student isn’t likely to encounter computer science until late in their freshman year, or later.

To avoid a global warming catastrophe by the end of the century, humans may need to actually hack the climate. Whether you call it hacking, or "fiddling with the knobs in the climate system," or the less-imaginative "geoengineering," it revolves around this question: Can humans game the system by using science to reverse global warming? One way to keep global average temperatures from warming beyond a catastrophic 2-degree-celsius tipping point, according to some experts, is to suck massive amounts of CO2 out of the atmosphere.

Electronic components called memristors have enabled a simple computing circuit to learn to perform a task from experience. After processing data during a training phase, the device classified 3-by-3-pixel images as one of three letters of the alphabet, researchers report in the May 7 Nature. The study is a step toward building computers that operate more like the human brain. A memristor is a circuit element whose resistance depends on the past electrical pulses that surged through it. That’s similar to the way synapses work in the brain.

Many of the technologies we use every day have been getting smaller, faster and cheaper each year -- with the notable exception of batteries. Apart from the possibility of a smartphone which lasts for days without needing to be charged, the challenges associated with making a better battery are holding back the widespread adoption of two major clean technologies: electric cars and grid-scale storage for solar power. Lithium-oxygen, or lithium-air, batteries have been touted as the 'ultimate' battery due to their theoretical energy density, which is ten times that of a lithium-ion battery.

Years ago, calculus courses were almost exclusively the domain of college students. Yet today, most high schools have increased their mathematics course offerings to include calculus courses of various difficulties, from the standard high school-level to honors, all the way up to AP. This trend is largely a result of increased college admissions competition, especially into high-level institutions with strong math and science programs. But it also comes from the desire of many high school students for pre-college calculus prep that will help them succeed in their college calculus courses.

Researchers from the Univ. of South Florida College of Engineering have proposed a new form of computing that uses circular nanomagnets to solve quadratic optimization problems orders of magnitude faster than that of a conventional computer. A wide range of application domains can be potentially accelerated through this research such as finding patterns in social media, error-correcting codes to big data and biosciences.

From an "off-the-grid" school that relies on solar panels to classrooms in a public library, there are countless schools reimagining education. Startup Noodle has released its first ever Innovative Schools report, which identifies 41 public, private and charter K-12 schools that rise above the rest. Launched by Princeton Review Founder John Katzman, Noodle provides educational resources to parents and teachers, and it spent the last year examining 140,000 schools to come up with this list.

It’s looking more and more like future super powerful quantum computers will be made of the same stuff as today’s classical computers: silicon. A new study lays out the architecture for how silicon quantum computers could scale up in size and enable error correction—crucial steps toward making practical quantum computing a reality. Previously, Australian scientists demonstrated single quantum bits based on both the spin of electrons and the nuclear spin of phosphorus atoms embedded in silicon. Their latest work establishes a quantum computing architecture that paves the way for building and controlling arrays of hundreds or thousands of quantum bits.

Back in 2000, Ian Buck and a small computer graphics team at Stanford University were watching the steady evolution of computer graphics processors for gaming and thinking about how such devices could be extended to fit a wider class of applications. At first, the connection was not clear, but as GPUs started to become programmable to enable more realistic game graphics, Buck and his team started tweaking the small devices, playing with the relatively small bit of programmability to test the limits of possible performance outside of game graphics.

Interest in computer science (CS) at the university level declined after the “dot-com bust” of 2000, but then came back with a vengeance in 2007. Since then, student enrollment in computer science has been increasing. As a professor of computer science who has worked extensively to improve CS education at the K-12, undergraduate and graduate levels, I know there are many more who want to go into the field of computer science. The numbers of female students and racial minorities remain distressingly low. But often these students do not have the preparation or encouragement to succeed in college-level work. So, what are some of the challenges of expanding computer science education in the K-12 public school system?

Coding bootcamps are becoming a popular way for anyone interested in learning technical skills to dive into a rigorous course. Whether you want to become a Web developer, software programmer or learn a new coding language, you'll find a bootcamp that suits your needs. And these highly focused and fast-paced courses are changing the way we view accessible education, and giving students a resource outside of the typical four year college. Perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of bootcamps is that they are often cheaper than a semester at college -- or even sometimes one college course. This has made bootcamps appealing to anyone interested in learning a new skill, but not able to pay for a college course.

Technology companies including Google must consider “unintended consequences” when investing in AI, an eminent machine learning professor and founder of multimillion startup, Dato, warns. The ethics surrounding machine learning is a hot topic. Google, which this morning announced it had invested an undisclosed sum in a top German AI research center will instate an ethics board to monitor its AI efforts. It hasn’t revealed who will sit on the board, but the move is indicative of the public mood after tech figureheads like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk claimed AI would “overtake humans” within the next 100 years and consumers have wised up on tech company’s privacy and data collection policies.

NASA is asking the public to come up with ideas on how to test prototype Mars space suit materials for durability without actually going all the way to Mars. The agency plans to give away $15,000 in prizes for the best ideas. We’re all familiar with the current space suit design, which has been used by astronauts for decades. The problem with these pieces of equipment is that they’re optimized for low-Earth orbit. They have some damage resistance, but they aren’t built to be worn while walking around on the surface of a planet, or anywhere really — there’s no walking at all in low-Earth orbit. They’ll need new suits.

For years, getting into the business of renting out extra computing power through the cloud has been a bit like getting into the business of nuclear power. First, you have to spend a few hundred million dollars on ginormous hardware and the pricey software to run it. Next, you have to hire a team of Ph.D.s to make sure the equipment always runs pretty much perfectly, because one screw-up means a customer—probably a big corporate IT department—leaves forever. That formula is changing as cloud startups such as DigitalOcean and Backblaze begin to compete for customers with the likes of Amazon.com, Microsoft, and Google.

While humans are still many years from reaching Mars in person, their robotic proxies have proven fit for the journey. Employing high-resolution imaging technology on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA scientists recently were able to analyze light waves returned from seasonal dark lines on Martian cliffs. The results offered strong evidence for the ebb and flow of water. But does that mean there’s life? Kenneth Nealson, an astrobiologist who worked for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology before coming to USC in 2001, always approaches new research about potential life on Mars with caution.

The word to keep in mind is no longer “plastics.” It’s “parallel.” Parallel computing is the wave of the future in science and engineering, and thanks to donations from Intel and Dell Corporations, Cornell students will get hands-on experience with the technology. Intel is donating 15 Xeon Phi 5110P circuit boards, each of which holds 60 interconnected processors, or “cores,” along with memory. Installed in servers provided by Dell at a substantial discount to support a course, they will create a high-performance parallel computing cluster with 996 cores. The system, to be housed in the basement of Gates Hall, will be used for the fall 2015 course, Applications of Parallel Computers.

A new NCAR-facilitated group aims to develop the know-how and tools for building resilient systems that can recover smoothly when catastrophic weather and climate events strike. The group, the Engineering for Climate Extremes Partnership (ECEP), is building relationships with experts from a broad array of sectors, from engineering to business, government, academia, and American Indian tribal and community leadership. The common thread is concern for the mounting toll taken by extreme weather events, which is expected to worsen with climate change. Central to ECEP is the Global Risk, Resilience, and Impacts Toolbox, or GRRIT.

UC Berkeley, in partnership with UC Irvine and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, was awarded a five-year, multi-million dollar international research consortium that tackles water-related aspects of energy production and use. Three additional UC campuses – UC Davis, UC Merced and UCLA – and Massachusetts-based Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI)-US are also part of the collaboration. The consortium, announced by the U.S. Department of Energy, is one of several technical tracks under the U.S.-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC), which was launched in 2009 by President Barack Obama and former Chinese President Hu Jintao to accelerate the transition to an efficient, low‐carbon economy while mitigating the long‐term threat of climate change.

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has made significant upgrades to its cloud-based storage system to include a new range of computing services designed to support science-based researchers, especially those with large data requirements that preclude commercial cloud use, or who require collaboration with cloud engineers for building cloud-based services. The upgrades to SDSC Cloud, which debuted in late 2011 as one of the first large-scale academic deployments of cloud storage in the world, offers a unique storage service to educational and industry partners.