A great piece about Big Data in today’s New York Times by technology reporter Steve Lohr: GOOD with numbers? Fascinated by data? The sound you hear is opportunity knocking.   Mo Zhou was snapped up by I.B.M. last summer, as a freshly minted Yale M.B.A., to join the technology company’s fast-growing ranks of data consultants. They help businesses make sense of an explosion of data — Web traffic and social network comments, as well as software and sensors that monitor shipments, suppliers and customers — to guide decisions, trim costs and lift sales. “I’ve always had a love of numbers,” says Ms. Zhou, whose job as a data analyst suits her skills.   […]

The National Science Foundation (NSF) yesterday released a report on its support for cloud computing, describing the outcomes of “investments in cloud computing research, recommendations for research focus and program improvements, and other related recommendations.” Emphasizing the role of cloud computing — “a vital area of national importance that requires further research and development” — the report highlights some of the 125 cloud computing research awards issued by NSF’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate between 2009 and 2011, spanning areas of architecture, algorithms, big data, security and privacy, green computing, and so on. Among these are the set of awards enabled by a partnership between NSF and Microsoft over […]

USA TODAY is out this week with an interesting article featuring the work of MacArthur Foundation Fellow Constance Steinkuehler, an Assistant Professor in the Educational Communications & Technology program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison — who’s on assignment for 18 months as a Senior Policy Analyst at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) to study video games that improve health, education, civic engagement and the environment, among other areas. According to the USA TODAY piece: If you’re training for a new job someday soon with a video game controller in your hands, thank Constance Steinkuehler.   This summer, when your kids’ favorite science museum boasts a new augmented-reality […]

Back in October, we told you about the ninth International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge — a joint effort by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine to celebrate the grand tradition of visualization, specifically for communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. For the first time ever, this year’s Challenge allowed participants to submit entries online, and the public was allowed to vote for its favorite images as “People’s Choice” winners. Today, NSF and Science have announced the competition’s winners. See the winners of the Interactive Games category — and a video — after the jump:

Ever wondered how companies determine the best flavors and scents for their packaged food, drinks, cleaning products, toiletries, and so many more items? Well, turns out it’s a multibillion-dollar business, with millions of dollars spent every year on R&D, including consumer testing. But if colleagues at MIT have their say, the way of this business could soon change: [Though] the big flavor companies spend tens of millions of dollars every year on research and development, including a lot of consumer testing… making sense of taste-test results is difficult. Subjects’ preferences can vary so widely that no clear consensus may emerge. Collecting enough data about each subject would allow flavor companies to filter […]

An interesting interview with Alex Szalay, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University — about data-intensive computing — in Datanami this week: When it comes to thought leadership that bridges the divides between scientific investigation, technology and the tools and applications that make research possible … Szalay is one of the first scientists that springs to mind.   Szalay, whom we will dub “Dr. Data” for reasons that will explained in a moment, is a distinguished professor in the university’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. Aside from his role as a scientist — an end user of high performance computing hardware and applications — he also serves director of the JHU […]