February 3, 2010

Millions, Billions, Zillions -- (In)numeracy Still Matters

EarthWeight.jpgSays Princeton Computer Science professor Brian Kernighan: “As calculators and computers have become steadily more powerful, they have buried us in an avalanche of numbers and graphs and charts, many of which claim to present the truth about important issues. But at the same time, our personal facility with numbers has diminished, often leaving us at the mercy of quantitative reasoning and presentation that is sometimes wrong and often not disinterested.”

For the past ten years, Dr. Kernighan has been teaching a course that satisfies “QR”, Princeton’s dreaded Quantitative Reasoning requirement. Increasingly, he has come to view a significant part of the QR component as basic numeric self-defense: assessing the numbers presented by other people, and producing sensible numbers of one’s own.

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December 16, 2009

In Pursuit of the Salesman: Mathematics at the Limits of Computation

TSPxkcd120.jpgThe traveling salesman problem, or TSP for short, is easy to state: given a number of cities along with the cost of travel between each pair of them, find the cheapest way to visit them all and return to your starting point. Simple to state, but remarkably difficult to solve! Despite decades of research by top applied mathematicians around the world, in general it is not known how to significantly improve upon simple brute-force checking. It is a real possibility that there may never exist an efficient method that is guaranteed to solve every instance of the problem. This is a deep mathematical question: Is there an efficient solution method or not? The topic goes to the core of complexity theory concerning the limits of feasible computation. For the stout-hearted who would like to tackle the general version of the TSP, the Clay Mathematics Institute will hand over a $1,000,000 prize to anyone who can either produce an efficient general method or prove an impossibility result.

The complexity question that is the subject of the Clay Prize is the Holy Grail of traveling-salesman-problem research and we may be far from seeing its resolution. This is not to say that mathematicians have thus far come away empty-handed. Within the theoretical community the problem has led to a large number of results and conjectures that are both beautiful and deep. In the arena of exact computation, an 85,900-city challenge problem was solved in 2006, when the optimal tour was pulled out of a mind-boggling number of candidates in a computation that took the equivalent of 136 years on top-of-the-line computer workstations.

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December 9, 2009

Toward Quantum Computing

ICboard.jpgImagine a computer that made direct use of quantum mechanical phenomena. Such a machine would likely operate exponentially faster than our present computers.

Zahid Hasan is leading an international scientific collaboration that has observed an exciting and strange behavior in electrons’ spin within a new material that could be harnessed to transform computing and electronics. The team believes that the discovery is an advance in the fundamental physics of quantum systems and could lead to significant progress in electronics, computing and information science.

The team has been searching for a material whose atoms, when placed in certain configurations, would trigger electrons to produce exotic “quantum” effects. In the Feb. 13 issue of Science, the team reported that the quantum Hall effect, a phenomena in condensed-matter physics, can occur within a carefully constructed crystal made of an antimony alloy laced with bismuth. The behavior involves a strange form of rotation that could potentially transform computing and storage.

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December 2, 2009

Digital Inequality

DigitalDivide.jpg In the Internet’s early years, some observers believed that the new technology would reduce social inequality in at least two ways. First, by reducing the price of information, it would make information more available, and therefore level the playing field. Second, because young people appeared to have the inside track in mastering and using the new technologies (and because youth is negatively associated with wealth and uncorrelated with other indicators of socioeconomic status), some felt that the advantage of the young would likewise reduce certain kinds of inequality in access to and use of information. By contrast, other more jaded observers predicted that the well to do and well educated would use their resources to extract more benefit from the Web than for their less prosperous and well schooled neighbors, reproducing or even exacerbating inequality rather than moderating it.

In his Lunch ‘n Learn seminar on December 2, Paul DiMaggio addressed three issues. First, what is the status of the digital divide? Which divides (i.e. inequality in access to the Internet between which groups) have persisted and which have moderated over time, and why? Second, once people go on-line, how does social inequality shape their experience, how they use the Internet and what they get out of it? Third, what difference does it make? What evidence addresses the question of whether access to and use of the internet does (or does not) improve people’s life chances and ability to participate in their communities?

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November 18, 2009

Smart Art: Database Tools for Research and Curation

ivories.jpg For the past three decades, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Office of Information Technology have collaborated on many innovative projects. During the 1980s. the Piero Project produced a real time three-dimensional tour of the Basilica of San Francesco in Arezzo, Tuscani. During the 1990s, OIT led the development of Almagest, a media management, presentation, and authoring tool.

Today, OIT and the Princeton University Art Museum are collaborating on the delivery of the museum’s collection through Roxen, the University’s web Content Management System. Customarily, museums are able to display only a small fraction of their holdings, but all museums recognize that one of their most important objectives is to make available scholarly content. Today, with the availability of powerful new development tools and special components to cost-effectively connect to the museum’s SQL Collection Information Management System, the Art Museum will be able to promote existing collections and to provide online access to local and even international researchers to a much larger portion of its holdings and events.

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November 11, 2009

Managing Content on the Princeton Web

ABCs of the Web During the past decade, Princeton’s web site has grown from a relatively simple tool supporting producers and consumers of information about the institution, its programs, and its people to what is today a complex, mission-critical appliance for teaching, research, administration, and collaboration.

Such complex web sites publish and sustain every day vast amounts of time sensitive information. To manage the mountain of content, Princeton has turned to Content Management Systems that offer an integrated set of powerful features for creating, storing, versioning, and publishing everything from news articles and brochures though audio, video, and images.

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November 4, 2009

Princeton's Partnership with Google Books

flower.jpg The Google Books Library Project is a collaborative effort between Google and more than 20 academic libraries and publishers to scan and make searchable major research collections. When books are out of copyright and in the public domain, the public can now use Google Book Search to view bibliographic information, to read and search the texts, and even download them.

Google Books is a product resulting from the combination of the Google Library Partnerships (29 libraries) and the Google Publishers Partnership (many thousands)

The library project began in 2005 with Harvard, the New York Public Library, Stanford University, the University of Michigan, and Oxford University.Princeton joined the project in 2006. Many other institutions of higher education and several publishers have now joined the endeavor.

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October 28, 2009

Digital Telephony at Princeton

BluePhone.jpg Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) refers to a family of hardware and software technologies that deliver voice communications over the internet rather than the public, switched telephone network. To make it work, technologists have to convert traditional analog signals into a digital format and then translate that signal into IP packets for transmission over a private or public network.

At the October 28 Lunch ‘n Learn, Dave Wirth, Manager of Operations within the Office of Information Technology’s (OIT) Networking/Telephony group, reviewed the technology, its present implementation at Princeton, and the University’s plans for the future.

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October 14, 2009

Blogs, Lulz and Tweets: Social Media Comes to Princeton

PUSocialMedia.jpgWhy has the use of Facebook and other social networking sites exploded? Perhaps, suggest John Jameson and Shani Hilton of Princeton’s Office of Communications, because it is now possible to interact socially with very large numbers of people in ways that are no more difficult than sending out a simple e-mail.

Most users need not worry about the coding or the construction of their pages. They can simply concern themselves with what they should share, and not share.

The technologies are changing rapidly (MySpace, for example, has lost 20% of their users in just two months), bringing enormous opportunities, challenges, and some significant policy headaches.

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October 5, 2009

Reassembling the Wall Paintings of Thera

shard.jpg Imagine trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle without knowing the number of pieces or even what the final image might look like.

The archaeological site of Akrotiri on the small, volcanic island of Thera (modern-day Santorini, Greece) has yielded an unparalleled trove of artifacts and information from the prehistoric Aegean. The ancient trading civilization was destroyed by a volcanic eruption, which buried the remains of a flourishing Late Bronze Age (c. 1630 B.C.) settlement in ash. Among the most significant finds are numerous wall paintings, ranging from every day scenes and coming-of-age rituals to abstract motifs. However, these paintings are recovered as thousands of plaster fragments, and reassembling them consumes a substantial portion of the effort expended at Akrotiri.

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July 14, 2009

Is Academia finally ready for Videoconferencing?

VCLewis349sm.jpg The current recession has persuaded institutions of higher education to look in new places for significant savings. And so, rather than flying cross country for a conference, imagine being able to take part in sessions, or even delivering a paper, right from your office or from a specialized videoconferencing facility on campus.

Professor John Nash and Professor Robert Socolow, for example, have given several keynote addresses via videoconferencing. Says Professor Socolow: “The Princeton Environmental Institute (PEI) and the Center for Human Values sponsored a video conference lecture last spring for the popular Ethics and Climate Change Lecture Series. Robyn Eckersley of the University of Australia at Melbourne presented a virtual lecture entitled: “The Ethics of Carbon Trading” to an audience which was very receptive to the videoconference.” The lecture and more information about the series are available at the ECC website.

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May 28, 2009

Backing Up's Not Hard to Do

GreenData.jpg You don’t have to be a fan of Sex in the City to know that it’s important to backup your data. If you have not seen this wonderful vignette, take a moment to see what can happen if your intellectual property is not well protected.

Princeton uses a software application called Tivoli Storage Manager or TSM to back up campus computers. During the current academic year, TSM has backed up 600,000,000,000,000 bytes of stored data on 10,849 campus client accounts using 16 STK/Sun T10000 encrypted tape drives in two silos as well as eight TSM servers in two computer rooms.

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May 6, 2009

Computer Modeling of the Mind and Brain

BrainMap.jpgFor those who still assume that the Psychology faculty analyze subconscious thoughts and place rats in mazes, Matthew Botvinick represents an eye opening cup of java. Building on the foundations of cognitive psychology, Botvinick’s laboratory works at the intersection of neuroscience, psychology and computer science, seeking to clarify the computational and neural foundations of human behavior. They employ a diverse set of research tools, including functional neuroimaging (fMRI), behavioral techniques (reaction time, error, and decision analyses), and computational modeling (neural networks, reinforcement learning models, and belief nets), typically applying multiple techniques to a single problem.

They are leveraging these tools to investigate a range of specific research questions, spanning the topics of cognitive control, working memory, decision making, sequential action, and language processing. Current projects include the monitoring and control of cognitive processing, the control of sequential behavior, and the representation of sequential order in working memory.

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April 29, 2009

The Cairo Geniza: Ancient Papers in the Digital Age

GenizaPaper.jpg The Cairo Geniza is a collection of an estimated 750,000 manuscript pages found discarded for “burial” in the Geniza chamber of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo in the late 19th century. In addition to holding religious poems and fragments of Torah scrolls, the Cairo Geniza contains approximately 15,000 mundane papers that reflect the daily life of the Jewish community in Cairo during the medieval period (mainly in the 11th to 13th centuries) - letters, contracts, wills, and other legal documents preserved in the area’s arid climate. These “Geniza documents” range in size from a few words to long letters of 80-100 lines.

For more than two decades, Mark Cohen and his Princeton colleagues have been working to bring these ancient papers into the digital age. Their work, called the Princeton Geniza Project, has created the world’s only online, searchable-text database of the Cairo Geniza’s historical documents.

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April 22, 2009

Archives and Manuscripts: Library Finding Aids

FAbook.jpgThe Department of Rare Books and Special Collections at the Princeton University Library holds world class archival and manuscripts collections. The Mudd Manuscript Library, with more than 35,000 linear feet of storage, holds two major collections: The Princeton University Archives and “Public Policy Papers” which include very significant collections in the areas of foreign policy, economics and economic development, Civil Liberties, Law and Jurisprudence.

Finding aids, descriptive inventories created by archival repositories in order to provide access to collections, serve as the entry points for scholars and researchers to discover and explore these collections. In order to provide a standard structure for finding aids, the archival community developed an international XML metadata standard, Encoded Archival Description (EAD) in 1995. Comparable to AACR2 and MARC for bibliographic records, the content standard for Finding Aids has now been adopted by numerous institutions. EAD reflects the hierarchical nature of archival collections and provides a structure for describing the whole of a collection, as well as its components. And the standard supports flexible searching by collection, creator, biographies, title, call number, or topic.

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April 15, 2009

Flash Forward: The Rise of Small Tech Gadgets

gadgets.jpgA compelling technology, flash memory continues its march through the consumer electronics industry, yet again doubling quickly in capacity and dropping in price. In its wake, the wreckage of other, once proud, technologies and products — the floppy disk wiped from computers by the USB drive, the CD Audio disc humbled by portable flash players, and tape-based video cameras that now seem clunky compared to smaller flash cams. And next in the sights: computer hard drives giving way to faster and more rugged Solid-State devices.

Again this year, Doug Dixon of Manifest Technologies worked the January Consumer Electronics Show to scope out the new products. This year’s show saw even more examples of the impact of flash memory: rugged HD camcorders, replacement solid state storage devices, Wi-Fi integrated on SD memory cards, new formats promising 2 terabyte memory cards, and card slots everywhere, from mobile phones to HDTV displays. Dixon returned to Lunch ‘n Learn on April 15 to explore the developing trends in the rise of flash memory and to show off dozens of fun, new, high-tech gadgets. His web site, contains his Lunch ‘n Learn presentation, as well as more than 200 additional articles and a blog about a range of technology topics. The site also contains more detailed information about the products that Dixon demonstrated during his talk.

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April 1, 2009

All Aboard! Teaching Engineering with Computerized Toys

train.jpgImagine being paid, or getting Princeton credit, for playing with trains and Legos™.

For more than 25 years, Professor Michael G. Littman, of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton, has taught MAE 412 Microprocessors for Measurement and Control, a course about microcomputer control.

In the class, students design single-board microcomputer controllers, and apply them for the automation of a modular n-scale model railroad. For example, a computer might be used to automate railroad switches to prevent collisions, facilitate traffic flow through a ladder network of tracks on a project board, or even regulate the loading of pipes onto train cars.

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March 25, 2009

Women in Research Computing

WomenComputer.jpgHow did three distinguished women in research computing overcome political and societal obstacles? How have they dealt with the different work/life expectations that our society places on women? Do they see progress toward equaling the playing field?

On March 25, three prominent members of the faculty at the University joined moderator Betty Leydon, Vice President for Information Technology and CIO to discuss their use of Princeton’s high-performance computing facilities and a range of varied issues, from the challenges of performing research in a male-dominated field to the importance of mentorship.

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March 12, 2009

Princeton University's Broadcast Center: First Cuts

bcshield.jpg The new Peter B. Lewis Library contains a new OIT-operated Broadcast Center with a high definition video studio that features a green room with a 65 inch LCD screen, a professional audio recording studio, as well as the hardware and software to edit video, color correct footage, and sweeten and edit audio. The Studio also has a Broadcast van with full, mobile production capabilities.

The Broadcast Studio staff is happy to assist members of the University community from the beginning through the end of their A/V projects, from the actual shoots through video editing and the final distribution. Some of the projects involve location shoots (from single camera shoots through full production), live event productions (such as Commencement and Opening Exercises), and in-studio shoots that aid in control of lighting and other key conditions. The Center also manages lecture recordings (including he integration of lecture A/V and speaker slides), podcasts, and rich media content.

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March 9, 2009

The Foundations and Future of Information Search

search.jpg Launched in 1998, Google’s stated its mission: “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” And so it is. Today, everyone Googles - in the U.S, about 12 billion times a month (including search engines that aren’t Google). We are mostly pleased with the results we get. How can it be that we give an automated system a couple of words and it finds reasonably relevant documents among one hundred billion or so possibilities? Will our satisfaction with these tools increase or decrease as the Web and our expectations grow?

At the March 4 Lunch ‘n Learn seminar, Computer Science Professor Andrea LaPaugh gave a peek “under the hood” of major search engines. Core techniques range from word occurrence analysis for text documents, which originating in the 1960s, to Web linking analysis, pioneered by Google’s 1998 PageRank document ranking method.

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