Submerging supercomputers and servers in oil or other liquids to cool them off might offer a way to reduce massive energy consumption. Mineral oil and liquid fluoroplastics do not conduct electricity, and therefore present no risk of short-circuiting or damaging equipment as water would, experts say. Submersion technology can save a facility millions of dollars a year in air conditioning electricity expenses and reduces the need for air conditioning and filtering equipment. The institute made only a few adjustments to prepare the Tsubame KFC for submersion, including removing moving parts such as hard drives and fans. In November, Tsubame KFC was named the greenest supercomputer in the Green500 industry ranking.

Researchers announced today that scientists running genomic analyses at George Washington University’s Colonial One High Performance Computing Center will pilot ultra high-speed 40 Gigabit per second data transfers from the National Institutes of Health’s National Library of Medicine (NLM) using both organizations’ new 100 Gigabit per second links to the Internet2 Network. “Biomedical researchers need high-bandwidth access to the extremely large data sets used in today’s medical research,” commented Don Preuss, who heads the Systems group at the NLM’s National Center for Biotechnology Information. “Our new 100 Gigabit connection to the Internet2 backbone will provide researchers at GW and other research centers with state-of-the-art connectivity.”

The eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) is launching a new program – called the Industry Challenge – that connects industry partners with researchers from the open science community in order to enhance product designs and speed time to market. Over at the XSEDE.org website, science writer Scott Gibson details the new program, which brings together collaborative cross-disciplinary teams and provides them with access to XSEDE’s advanced computational capabilities. Industry Challenge draws on the power of collaboration and technology to address industry challenges, according to David Hudak, director of the program.

Girls Who Code is on the hunt for smart, inspiring and talented computer science instructors and teaching assistants for its 2014 Summer Immersion Programs. If you're passionate about computer science education and want to change lives and help close the gender gap in the tech sector, we want you. The ideal candidate is an empathetic and enthusiastic individual with a BA or BS in Computer Science and teaching experience (e.g. classroom teaching, tutoring, TAing). Interested candidates should send a cover letter and resume to jobs@girlswhocode.com.

IBM today announced it is further expanding its operations across Africa with the opening of two new IBM Innovation Centers in Lagos, Nigeria and Casablanca, Morocco. These new centers aim to spur local growth and fuel an ecosystem of development and entrepreneurship around Big Data and Analytics and cloud computing in the region. Approximately one in every two medium to large businesses in both South Africa and Kenya already use the cloud. At the same time, organizations around Africa are looking for ways to improve their analytics skills and more accurately tap into the data being produced by mobile devices and tablets – and, better anticipate the needs of their customers by delivering improved services.

The U.S. Army Education Outreach Program (AEOP) sponsors research, education, competitions, internships and practical experiences designed to engage and guide students and teachers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) education. One of the AEOP programs called eCYBERMISSION offers a free web-based STEM competition for students to promote self-discovery and to recognize the real-life applications of science, math and technology. Using either the scientific inquiry method or the engineering process, students form teams of three to four students and propose a solution to a real problem in their communities, competing for state, regional and national awards. For more information visit the website.

As part of the Blue Waters efforts to motivate and train the next generation of supercomputing researchers, the program is sponsoring 20 undergraduate research interns in 2014. The goal is to engage undergraduate students in petascale computing research and development projects. The program provides each student a stipend totaling $5000, a two-week intensive high-performance computing workshop, and travel to The Blue Waters Symposium 2015. Visit the website for further information and eligibility criteria.

The National Science Foundation-funded Blue Waters and eXtreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) projects are hosting the 8th Extreme Scaling Workshop Aug. 14-15, 2014, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. The conference committee seeks submissions of excellent quality addressing the challenges of using, designing, deploying, or integrating infrastructure for both big data analysis and large-scale computation to facilitate scientific discovery. For more information please visit the website. Send questions and submissions to Scott Lathrop at lathrop@illinois.edu by May 1, 2014.

Technovation is the global technology entrepreneurship program for girls, with over 1,300 alumnae from 19 countries. Middle school, high school, and university students research, design, build, and launch a mobile app prototype over 3 months, with guidance from dedicated teachers and female mentors who are professionals in STEM and business careers. No prior app development experience is necessary. The time commitment is approximately 60 hours over 12 weeks. There is no charge for the program. Sign up to get started at http://technovationchallenge.org. The registration deadline is March 1st, 2014 and final app submissions are due April 26th, 2014. Questions? Please call Samantha Quist at samantha@iridescentlearning.org.

SC14 will include nearly 30 full-day and half-day workshops that complement the overall Technical Program events, expand the knowledge base of its subject area, and extend its impact by providing greater depth of focus. These workshops are geared toward providing interaction and in-depth discussion of stimulating topics of interest to the HPC community. SC’s continuing goal is to provide an informative, high-quality technical program that meets the highest academic standards. Workshop submissions will be reviewed in a rigorous academic and competitive review process. Submitters should ensure to provide convincing arguments for the value of the workshop to the academic community. For more information please review the website.

Hadi Partovi, a longtime Seattle entrepreneur who founded Code.org this past January with his brother, Ali, wrote up a 2013 recap on Wednesday that outlined the organization’s accomplishments thus far. One particular stat was impressive: In just one month after Code.org launched its free 20-hour intro to computer science course last month, 10,000 teachers have signed up for program — that’s about 500,000 new students now learning how to develop. Partovi estimates that before Dec. 9, there were 13,000 teachers in the U.S. helping students learn about computer science. That means Code.org has technically almost doubled the amount of computer science learning in the country.

In 2014, PRACE will organize its first Scientific and Industrial Conference – the first edition of the PRACE days - under the motto HPC for Innovation – when Science meets Industry. The conference combines the previously separate PRACE Scientific Conferences and PRACE Industrial Seminars and will bring together experts from academia and industry who will present their advancements in HPC-supported science and engineering. The program will include invited keynotes, scientific presentations and a poster session. For more information, registration and the Call for Contributions, please visit
http://www.prace-ri.eu/pracedays14.

The Meteor open source JavaScript platform, released in 2012 with the goal of streamlining Web application development, is moving toward its 1.0 release in early 2014, says Meteor Development Group's Matt Debergalis. Debergalis, who co-wrote Meteor, says the program is designed to simplify Web programming to make it more fun and inclusive for a wider range of programmers. He notes that Meteor's developers were motivated by a move toward thick client applications, in which most of the code runs within the Web browser rather than in a data center, resulting in programs that are more interactive and engaging. Because of this shift, Meteor offers a live page updates feature that enables developers to write templates that automatically update when the database changes.

America has fallen far from its place as a leader in math and science, experts said during a Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) Diversity Symposium on Capitol Hill on Wednesday. "International comparisons place the U.S. in the middle of the pack globally," said Debbie Myers, general manager of Discovery Communications. Myers said in order for the U.S. to compete in the global market, we need to a do a better job of inspiring children to develop that desire for discovery and encourage minorities and girls especially to get involved in STEM. For both students and up-and-coming professionals, tests and studies continue to confirm that the U.S. is losing its competitive edge when it comes to math, technology and science.

Intel is developing perceptual computing technology that will sense a user's emotions and body language. Perceptual computing uses gestures, facial recognition, and voice recognition to make devices more "natural, intuitive, and immersive," says Intel's Anil Nanduri. He says Intel aims to obtain "sensory inputs that make [computers] more human like." Cameras, for example, will enable devices to sense emotion and detect a person's biometric data. Computers also will be able to hold conversations and comprehend general, rather than specific, commands, taking context into account.

U.S. Sen. Amy Klobuchar has introduced a bill that would expand STEM education nationwide by creating 100 high schools, adding computer-science teachers and building new opportunities for undergraduate research. Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat, announced the legislation Wednesday. The idea, she said, is to give students more opportunities to succeed in an increasingly skilled and specialized workforce while making the country’s economy more competitive.

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have developed an immersive, first-person player video game designed to teach students in elementary to high school how to program in Java, one of the most common programming languages in use today. The researchers tested the game on a group of 40 girls, ages 10 to 12, who had never been exposed to programming before. “CodeSpells is the only video game that completely immerses programming into the game play,” said William Griswold, a computer scientist at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. Researchers are currently conducting further case studies in San Diego elementary schools.

XSEDE and PRACE, major research infrastructures, providing peer-reviewed access to high-end HPC resources and services in the United States and Europe, respectively, are now exploring options to extend collaborative efforts to other activities that effectively support research teams spanning the US and Europe. One of these options is the provisioning of interoperable services; this is a call to invite research teams that are using both infrastructures--or will be interested in doing so in the future--to express their requirements for such interoperable services.

The Blue Waters Graduate Fellowship Program enables select graduate students from across the country to immerse themselves in a year of focused high-performance computing (HPC) research. The fellowships will empower these talented graduate students to advance their HPC knowledge while also providing them with time and support to accelerate their research. The fellowships provide PhD students with a year of support, including a $38,000 stipend, up to $12,000 in tuition allowance, an allocation on the powerful Blue Waters petascale computing system at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), and funds to support travel to a Blue Waters-sponsored symposium. Apply today!

Play-i is a startup that is making delightful robots that make computer programming fun and accessible for children ages 5 and up. They are launching a pair of robots - Bo and Yana - today in a crowdfunding campaign. These robots are perfect for children ages 5-10, so elementary school teachers are especially encouraged to sign up. If your school gets selected, they will be given to you for free during the summer of 2014. As part of their crowdfunding campaign, they are raising money to buy robots for schools and organizations in need. To get more information about donating or bringing robotics into your classroom please visit the website.

Some U.S. states are starting to boost computer science education as a way to prepare students for high-paying jobs that will help boost the economy. In May, Washington State Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill to count Advance Placement (AP) computer science as a math or science credit. The state previously offered computer science as an elective, and many students passed over the course for others that met graduation requirements. Nationwide, just 10 percent of schools offer programming classes, and only 10 states count computer science toward math or science requirements for high school graduation. Experts say the sooner students develop a love for computer science, the better, and in- and after-school activities will be key to helping cultivate and sustain their interest in the subject.

Indiana University professor and artificial intelligence expert Douglas Hofstadter directs the Fluid Analogies Research Group (FARG) in a mission to understand how humans think and to write software that functions in the same manner. FARG believes the mind is akin to a unique piece of software and to understand how software works, you must write it yourself. If successful, the group will not only explain human thought, but also make truly intelligent machines. Although in the early 1980s Hofstadter was hailed as a leader in the emerging AI field, his popularity waned as AI proved more difficult than first envisioned and mainstream AI has embraced more attainable goals.

They are almost passed 1.8 million students planning to participate in the Hour of Code across 144 countries! It’s now on track to be the largest online education event in history, proving that the demand for computer science education knows no boundaries. See every school participating at http://csedweek.org/events/events. Registered schools have a chance to win laptops or a video chat with Bill Gates, and the odds of winning are still exceptionally high in many states. With CSEdWeek (Dec. 9-15) only a few weeks away, please help your students join in on this record-breaking event.

Hour of Code tutorials are ready to try -- with options for every age and every device. Although there may be a few bugs, they invite you to check out the options. In particular, Code.org’s own tutorials are available to preview for the first time - learn basic sequencing, repeat loops, and if-then statements from Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, and Angry Birds. To view the tutorials, please visit the http://csedweek.org. Don't forget Computer Science Education week is December 9-15, 2013!

IBM recently unveiled its Accelerated Discovery Lab (ADLab), which aims to augment the data-mining concept in practical application domains with smart analytics derived from its Watson question-and-answer technology combined with deep domain knowledge for each area being researched. "Instead of looking for answers that are already known--where it's just a matter of finding them--we are learning how to search for things that are not yet known," says IBM's Jeff Welser.