Professor Marc Olano recaps what happened at the UMBC site during the Global Game Jam.

Last weekend, 35 people were working madly in the UMBC GAIM lab as part of the 3rd annual Global Game Jam. At 5pm on Friday, in the midst of a campus-wide power outage, they watched they keynote video from a laptop held over my head in a dark lab, then learned the theme for this year’s jam: all games had to express somehow the theme “Extinction”. By about 7:00, the power was back on, and they’d formed into five teams, each trying to complete a game by Sunday. One short second power outage later(!), they were on their way.

Read the complete post including descripions and links to the five games that were created at UMBC in Dr. Olano's Global Game Jam wrap-up post.

The current (11 February 2011) issue of Science is a special issue on Dealing with Data. It includes a collection of free, online articles that “highlights both the challenges posed by the data deluge and the opportunities that can be realized if we can better organize and access the data.” Some of the articles are drawn from three sister publications: Science Signaling, Science Translational Medicine and Science Careers.

From the issue’s introduction:

“Scientific innovation has been called on to spur economic recovery; science and technology are essential to improving public health and welfare and to inform sustainability; and the scientific community has been criticized for not being sufficiently accountable and transparent. Data collection, curation, and access are central to all of these issues.
…
As you will discover, two themes appear repeatedly: Most scientific disciplines are finding the data deluge to be extremely challenging, and tremendous opportunities can be realized if we can better organize and access the data.”

One of the great things about the “data deluge” is that there is something in it for almost all computer science researchers including areas like machine learning, data mining, NLP, visualization, semantic web, security and privacy, social media, high performance computing, HCI, etc. Here are some of the articles that caught our eye:

• Editorial: Making Data Maximally Available, B. Hanson, A. Sugden, B. Alberts
• Changing the Equation on Scientific Data Visualization, P. Fox and J. Hendler
• Ensuring the Data-Rich Future of the Social Sciences, G. King
• Metaknowledge, J. A. Evans and J. G. Foster
• Electronic Consent Channels: Preserving Patient Privacy Without Handcuffing Researchers, R. H. Shelton
• More than Words: Biomedical Ontologies Provide New Scientific Opportunities, C. Wald

and still more that look very interesting:

• Climate Data Challenges in the 21st Century, J. T. Overpeck et al.
• Challenges and Opportunities of Open Data in Ecology, O. J. Reichman et al.
• Challenges and Opportunities in Mining Neuroscience Data, H. Akil et al.
• The Disappearing Third Dimension, T. Rowe and L. R. Frank
• Advancing Global Health Research Through Digital Technology and Sharing Data, T. Lang
• More Is Less: Signal Processing and the Data Deluge, R. G. Baraniuk
• Access to Stem Cells and Data: Persons, Property Rights, and Scientific Progress, D. J. H. Mathews et al.
• On the Future of Genomic Data, S. D. Kahn
• Conquering the Data Mountain, N. R. Gough and M. B. Yaffe
• Power to the People: Participant Ownership of Clinical Trial Data, S. F. Terry and P. F. Terry
• Surfing the Tsunami, E. Pain
• Sharing Data in Biomedical and Clinical Research, K. Travis

The beautiful actress Elizabeth Taylor is hospitalized due to sudden congestive heart failure.

It’s a wild roller-coaster ride! Mubarak goes down, stocks go up, and oil prices go down.

Sure to dampen your spirits, the WHO warns that alcohol kills more than AIDS, TB, or even violence!

Talk about Fresh Off the Boat, hundreds of Tunisians fleeing from unrest arrive in Italy.

Ahh YES,  tis Sarah Palin’s Birthday and on that note thanks to Huffingpost for the 47 second comic relief. What better way to commemorate her 47th birth day than to recall her best moments.

The media has been covering the revolution in EGYPT incessantly; the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, and Al Jazeerato name a few.  It is one thing to read, hear about, or even watch the news on TV and its entirely another to freeze time and space.  Here are the top 5 photos that embody the successful REVOLUTION.

Thanks to Al Jazeera

Thanks to Time Magazine

Thanks to Times Magazine Online

Thanks to Time Magazine Online

Thanks to Al Jazeera

What does February mean to you? Snow? School? Super Bowl?

THIRTY FOUR years after the celebration of the first black history  month (1976) and EIGHTY FOUR years after the first  Negro History Week (1926), it is likely the month of February is remembered more for Valentine’s day than the 300 years of rich African American History.

Sure, almost everyone knows Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” speech,  Rosa Parks daring acts of defiance on a segregated bus, and Harriet Tubman’s underground railroad.

But few can tell you about Marcus Garvey, Stokely Carmichael, or even Count Basie.

In fact, it is a safe bet to say that an American teenager knows more about Pauly D’s hair gel than he/she does about Black History.  And professors are beginning to worry when students are shocked to discover the first lady is indeed (gasp), BLACK!

Despite the popularity of African American history on college campuses, some are asking…Why the special treatment?

Some view Black History Month as nothing more than a time for recalling grievances for slavery and a celebration of the rights that blacks have been awarded.

The boasting of the progress that has been made is summed up in Barack Obama, the first black US president.

But what about the progress that has not been made? The racial profiling or the incarceration of blacks that exceeds those that are in college?

Maybe Morgan Freeman was right when he said “You’re going to relegate my history to a month?” during an interview aired on CBS’ “60 Minutes” in December. “I don’t want a black history month. Black history is American history.”