The National Science Foundation (NSF) and Science magazine have announced the 10th International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge. The annual competition aims to celebrate the grand tradition of visualizations, in the spirit of communicating science, engineering, and technology for education and journalistic purposes. There’s a category all about Video Games & Apps — and last year’s winner was Foldit, an entry by University of Washington computer scientists Zoran Popović and Seth Cooper. Judges appointed by NSF and Science will select winners in five categories: Photography, Illustrations, Posters & Graphics, Video Games & Apps, and Videos. The winning entries will appear in a special section of Science (with one entry chosen for the front cover) and be hosted at ScienceMag.org and NSF.gov. In […]

The U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) — notably its Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) and National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) — together with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) yesterday launched a nationwide prize competition to develop personal air pollution and health sensors. In particular, the HHS and EPA are seeking to bring health and computing researchers together to develop highly portable sensors that can measure air quality data while monitoring a person’s physiological response to air pollution. Proposals are due by October 5 — and up to four finalists will receive $15,000 and be invited to develop their proposals into working prototypes, […]

Back in January, the National Science Board (NSB) released a report — National Science Foundation’s Merit Review Criteria: Review and Revisions — recommending that NSF “better define the two criteria for the benefit of the science community.” The report specified three principles governing the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) approach to utilizing these criteria. Last month, the NSF, together with research councils from 50 countries, established a Global Research Council and issued six merit review principles at the conclusion of the first-ever Global Summit on Merit Review. The principles (following the link):

The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) Information Technology Laboratory (ITL) has announced plans to hold a workshop on its Gaithersburg, MD, campus next week — Wednesday and Thursday, June 13 and 14 — exploring “key national priority topics” in support of the Federal government’s recently-announced Big Data R&D Initiative. The BIG DATA Workshop is free and open to all, but attendees must pre-register online by this Wednesday, June 6th in order to clear security. According to NIST/ITL (following the link):

Beginning at 1pm EDT this afternoon, the World Science Festival — an annual celebration and exploration of science, culture, and art that’s taking place all across New York City this week  — will stream live from New York University’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts a 90-minute session titled “Internet Everywhere: The Future of History’s Most Disruptive Technology”: Disruptive technologies uproot culture, can precipitate wars and even topple empires. By this measure, human history has seen nothing like the Internet. Pioneers of the digital revolution examine the Internet’s brief but explosive history and reveal nascent projects that will shortly reinvent how we interact with technology — and each other. From social upheaval […]

A number of news outlets have begun covering Plan X, a new five-year, $110 million cyberwarfare research program that the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) expects to launch this summer. According to The Washington Post, which broke the news earlier this week: The Pentagon is turning to the private sector, universities and even computer-game companies as part of an ambitious effort to develop technologies to improve its cyberwarfare capabilities, launch effective attacks and withstand the likely retaliation.   The previously unreported effort, which its authors have dubbed Plan X, marks a new phase in the nation’s fledgling military operations in cyberspace, which have focused more on protecting the Defense Department’s computer systems than on […]