The Bay Area Council Economic Institute (BACEI) is out with a new report that integrates data from multiple sources, including the biennial Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) numbers we featured here several months ago, and presents a revealing county-by-county portrait illustrating where within the U.S. high-tech jobs are found. And the result is quite striking: it’s not just in Silicon Valley, but rather in communities all across the country where there have recently been increases of more than 10 percent in high-tech employment. Here are some of the takeaways the BACEI highlighted in its report:

The National Science Foundation (NSF), together with the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation (BSF), today announced the U.S.-Israel Collaboration in Computer Science (USICCS), which seeks to support collaborative research projects that “develop new knowledge” in foundational areas of computer science, including the theory of computing and the foundations of software design and systems. In particular, through this program, “U.S.-based researchers will receive funds from NSF to support travel to Israel to interact with their Israeli counterparts.” Proposals are due by Feb. 1, 2013. According to the solicitation (following the link):

The following is a special contribution to this blog by Jenny Korn, a Ph.D. student in communications at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Korn was one of the participants of last week’s 2012 Summer Social Webshop on Technology-Mediated Social Participation, co-organized by Alan Neustadtl, Jennifer Preece, and Ben Shneiderman, faculty at the University of Maryland at College Park, as well as Marc Smith of the Social Media Research Foundation. Chosen from more than 100 applications, 50 doctoral students gathered at the University of Maryland last week for the Summer Social Webshop (the website includes videos of presentations!). The well-crafted presentations triggered lively discussions at the intersection of social media and network analysis. We represented many disciplines, including communications, sociology, information science, […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has issued a solicitation for its Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Fellows program, paving the way for funding a second cohort of recent Ph.D.s who wish to pursue interdisciplinary research and education spanning sustainability science and engineering. The program seeks “to advance science, engineering, and education to inform the societal actions needed for environmental and economic sustainability and sustainable human well-being while creating the necessary workforce to address these challenges.” In particular: The program’s emphasis is to facilitate investigations that cross traditional disciplinary boundaries and address issues of sustainability through a systems approach, building bridges between academic inquiry, economic growth, and societal needs. The Fellow’s […]

Earlier this month, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced a new initiative that aims “to break the status quo of digital processing” by investigating new ways of “non-digital” computation that are “fundamentally different from current digital processors and the power and speed limitations associated with them.” Called Unconventional Processing of Signals for Intelligent Data Exploitation, or UPSIDE, the initiative specifically seeks “a new, ultra-low power processing method [that] may enable faster, mission-critical analysis of [intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR)] data.” According to the DARPA announcement (after the jump):

NBC Learn — the educational arm of NBC News — is out with a new video about crowdsourcing, featuring Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Luis von Ahn and his work with CAPTCHA, reCAPTCHA, and, most recently, Duolingo. The video — part of a “Science Behind the News” video series developed in partnership with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore advances in science and technology making the news — describes von Ahn’s efforts to digitize books and translate the web into foreign languages. Check out the clip after the jump…