Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) made available by organizations like Coursera, an online education company  that offers free college courses, are gaining popularity at lightning speed. An article in the New York Times details the growth and potential profitability of free online education companies. In early 2012, Coursera was founded by two computer science professors, Daphne Koller and Andrew Ng, and enrollment has reached more than a million users for over 200 courses. This rapid growth outpaces the launches of both Twitter and Facebook. The company is slowing starting to generate revenue. So far, Coursera has attracted $22 million in venture capital. Other companies offering online courses are also taking hold. Udemy allows individual […]

According to an article in CRN Magazine, the Los Alamos National Laboratory has decided to remove networking devices created by a Chinese manufacturer because of security concerns. Even though the parts have been removed, it may not be enough to stop attackers from stealing information. A security assessment focusing on sensitive networks prompted the U.S. government nuclear weapons laboratory to remove networking switches made by China-based H3C Technologies. “There is definitely been plenty of proof that the Chinese use the supply chain to their advantage,” said Avivah Litan, vice president and distinguished analyst at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner. “If you have a high security environment and you are concerned about theft […]

On November 27-29, 2012, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC) Principal Investigator Meeting was held. The SaTC program is NSF’s flagship for cybersecurity research. NSF program officers for SaTC, wrote an blog post on the event found here. The purpose of the NSF SaTC meeting was to build the community of PIs, encouraging them to interact and find new areas for research and collaboration, as well as to identify new areas for future NSF investment. It was not intended for PIs to give technical talks, but there were several events designed to encourage multidisciplinary collaboration and exploration of new research areas. Attendees also received copies of Control Alt Hack, a new […]

DARPA is envisioning a 100-Gigabit per second Radio Frequency communications link between airborne and ground assets. Currently, fiber optic cables provide the core backbone for military and civilian networks, enabling high speed Internet, phone, video and other data transfer. A major challenge to providing 100 Gb/s from an airborne asset to the ground is cloud cover. Free-space optical links won’t propagate through the cloud layer, which means RF is the only option. The system will be designed to provide all-weather capability enabling tactically relevant data throughput and link ranges through clouds, fog or rain. Technical advances in modulation of millimeter-wave frequencies open the door to achieving 100G’s goals. “Providing fiber-optic-equivalent […]

A recent article in Nature, highlights a major challenge that computer engineers are facing. As the size of microcircuits decreases, their temperature rises. They must now find new and innovative ways to keep cutting edge computer parts cool.   Current trends suggest that the next milestone in computing — an exaflop machine performing at 1018 flops — would consume hundreds of megawatts of power (equivalent to the output of a small nuclear plant) and turn virtually all of that energy into heat.   Increasingly, heat looms as the single largest obstacle to computing’s continued advancement. The problem is fundamental: the smaller and more densely packed circuits become, the hotter they […]

Earlier this week, NBC aired a video segment highlighting how Massively Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are transforming education. Professors at universities like Stanford, Princeton and Columbia are now offering online courses in a wide range of topics for free. View the segment here. On February 11-12, 2013, the Computing Community Consortium (CCC) will hold a visioning workshop titled, “Multidisciplinary Research for Online Education.” Participants will look beyond the current high-profile interest in MOOCs, and to ideate on important research questions over the next 10 years in all areas of computing in support of massively open online education.