Some interesting news items in the past week: “The Art of Video Games” The Smithsonian Institution’s American Art Museum will debut on March 16 an exhibition titled The Art of Video Games — exploring “the 40-year evolution of video games as an artistic medium, with a focus on striking visual effects, the creative use of new technologies, and the most influential artists and designers.”  But before then, the Smithsonian needs the public’s help to determine which 80 video games should be represented.  Click here to see the options and vote for your favorites.  And as the Smithsonian notes, “Remember, this is an art exhibition, so be sure to vote for games that you […]

As we’ve blogged in this space before, the CCC has sponsored a series of “research visions” sessions at computing research conferences over the past year — hoping to provide venues for sharing and discussing forward-looking, visionary ideas for the field, without the constraints of the typical reviewing process.  The CCC is pleased to announce another “crazy ideas” session, this time at the 12th International Symposium on Spatial and Temporal Databases in Minneapolis this August. Teaming with our colleagues at the University of Minnesota who are leading the organizing committee, the CCC will award travel awards to the first-, second-, and third-placing paper submissions.  Here’s some background on the “Headwaters Awards”: […]

Decimated. Vanquished. Demolished. As you probably know by now, those are but a few of the words being used to describe how “Watson” — the IBM question-answering supercomputer system — bested its two competitors in a three-part JEOPARDY! series earlier this week.  What’s more, “Watson” wasn’t battling just anyone; the machine — with a friendly voice and cool avatar for television audiences — defeated the two best humans ever to play the game, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter. “Watson” ended the two-game exhibition with a score of 77,147 USD (including a number of Daily Double and Final Jeopardy wagers that drew laughter for their highly specified form).  Meantime, Jennings notched 24,000 […]

Day 2 of the two-day NSF–OECD Workshop on Building a Smarter Health and Wellness Future is about to get underway at the National Science Foundation.  Over 130 people from 16 nations throughout the world turned out yesterday, when the focus was on emerging models for smart health and wellness.  Most everyone is expected back today — along with a few new arrivals — and the attention is turning to commonalities and differences in international challenges (AM session) and crafting an international research and policy agenda (PM session). Once again, we’ll have live coverage throughout the day right here.  If you’re just joining us, be sure to review what was discussed yesterday. […]

As noted in this space last week, the National Science Foundation and the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) are co-sponsoring a Workshop on Building a Smarter Health and Wellness Future at NSF today & tomorrow.  This workshop is reviewing how new technological developments — including high-speed and mobile applications, connected devices, social networks, etc. — can provide unique and unprecedented opportunities for addressing the health and wellness challenges of our aging society.  A specific goal is to identify priorities for an international research and policy agenda in this space, all the while stimulating collaboration and innovation on a global scale.  We’ll be blogging about the meeting in real-time today.  Keep checking back […]

Several items of interest this Monday morning:

President’s FY 2012 Budget Unveiled

President Obama will reveal his budget request for FY 2012 at 10:30am ET this morning. For live coverage, check your favorite news source. Later today, there will be budget briefings by Federal funding agencies, notably the National Science Foundation — including the CISE Directorate — and the Department of Energy’s Office of Science. Our colleagues at CRA’s Policy Blog will have complete coverage of the President’s anticipated $3.7 trillion request — and specifically what it says about Federal funding for R&D.