NIST will hold a Big Data Workshop 13-14 June 2012 in Gaithersburg to explore key national priority topics in support of the White House Big Data Initiative. The workshop is being held in collaboration with the NSF sponsored Center for Hybrid Multicore Productivity Research, a collaboration between UMBC, Georgia Tech and UCSD.

This first workshop will discuss examples from science, health, disaster management, security, and finance as well as topics in emerging technology areas, including analytics and architectures. Two issues of special interest are identifying the core technologies needed to collect, store, preserve, manage, analyze, and share big data that could be standardized and developing measurements to ensure the accuracy and robustness of big data methods.

The workshop format will be a mixture of sessions, panels, and posters. Session speakers and panel members are by invitation only but all interested parties are encouraged to submit extended abstracts and/or posters.

The workshop is being held at NIST’s Gaithersburg facility and is free, although online pre-registration is required. A preliminary agenda is available which is subject to change as the workshop date approaches.

1 Peter 2:9-10

9 But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, God’s special possession, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.

Reflection:
Because of God’s mercy, we have been rescued and called God’s royal priesthood. It was because God in His mercy saw us and had compassion on us that we were saved. And the mercy we have received, we are to share and declare. God has called us to go and minister, and share His mercy and love with this generation.

Response:
Let’s ask God for His heart for our generation, that we would pray, love and share His mercy to those around us, and that we will be His royal priesthood to our generation.

We've increased the storage limits for iCloud Key Value Store so you can provide an even better experience in your app. Now, the total Key Value Storage limit is 1 MB per app, the single key limit is 1 MB, and the total key limit is 1024. Key Value Store also updates devices faster than ever. Learn how you can get started with iCloud.

We've increased the storage limits for iCloud Key Value Store so you can provide an even better experience in your app. Now, the total Key Value Storage limit is 1 MB per app, the single key limit is 1 MB, and the total key limit is 1024. Key Value Store also updates devices faster than ever. Learn how you can get started with iCloud.

A few weeks ago, AASHE Executive Director Paul Rowland and I were in the nation’s capital for the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Symposium: Science, Innovation, and Partnerships for Sustainability Solutions, held in a glass-enclosed room of the Pew Convention Center.

The NSF is a renowned federal agency that funds research advancing scientific knowledge across the spectrum. NSF’s Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) program was established to specifically address issues of sustainability while encouraging interdisciplinary research and collaboration.

“Sustainability issues remain at the forefront and will into the foreseeable future; the solutions have to be based in basic scientific understanding,” remarked Tim Killeen, Assistant Director for Geosciences at NSF. Sound science is the nucleus, the common ground among all of the disciplines of sustainability. Whether we think of sustainability as three legs of a stool or four interconnected circles, whether we are researching sea level rises or population dynamics, science is the indispensable core.

But what about the anthropologists, historians, shortly put, social scientists? According to Killeen, “science is in all of those” disciplines too. It comes down to getting data that is usable and easily understood. There are “enormous challenges with mining the data, weaving it together while granting the public access to data.”

This theme of data collection, as well as the integrity of interdisciplinary research resonated throughout the day. Holm Tiessen, Director of the Inter-American Institute commented that interdisciplinarity is about “teaching scientists how to ask the right questions to fellow scientists.”
Chad Gaffield, President of Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) offered a model for us to consider in relation to interdisciplinarity. His T-shaped model on an individual level aims to describe how interdisciplinarity should be approached: we should have depth as well as breadth. The issue with this approach, as other panelists pointed out, is that when it comes to constructing interdisciplinary sustainability curriculum we consistently run up against the question of what should be in the “vertical” and what can be dispersed into the “horizontal.”

I found it interesting the different prefixes of “-disciplinary” that were used, most significantly, “inter,” “cross,” and “trans.” The last one struck me the most because it is commonly used today in relation to transnationalism, the concept used to explain the exchange and flow of physical, human, and intellectual capital across geographical boundaries. And if we think about the global nature of interdisciplinary partnerships (i.e., Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability), “trans” seems to make even more sense as a way to describe sustainability curriculum development; it’s no longer just about crossing geographical boundaries, but national boundaries. Students and researchers of varying nationalities are partnering on research that is endemic to their country or world. What that means to sustainability, and specifically higher education sustainability, is that crossing disciplines is far from divorced from crossing cultures. So, thinking about ways in which we can marry those concepts when it comes to teaching and practicing sustainability on our campuses is important.

Perhaps as sustainability professionals we should be looking more closely at how we personally define interdisciplinary, and how it’s defined by the immediate and extensive communities in which we’re implicated. This would give us a better idea of what questions need to be asked among a given, self-proclaimed interdisciplinary group in order to not just create a conversation amongst individuals from varying disciplines but create a permeable boundary – one that allows a constant and consistent exchange of information and knowledge.

Paul presented on the second day about the role of higher education in sustainability, alongside representatives from other non-profit as well as for-profit organizations. A theme that emerged was a (near) consensus that sustainability is necessary, but the mechanisms desired and required to achieve it are still not fully understood. Bill Clark, Professor of International Science, Public Policy and Human Development at Harvard University expounded on his research regarding barriers to establishing sustainability as a field: mutual incomprehension between and among scientists, policymakers, and the general public (avoided by trust-building); fragmentation of knowledge (avoided by strategic integration, supply-chain thinking, and project management); and inflexibility (avoided by shifting from knowledge systems to learning systems, and creating safe spaces for experimentation and failure). The last barrier especially brings to the forefront the importance of the university in this process.

In conferences or symposiums such as this one in which there is a great deal of information packaged into a short time frame, participants sometimes leave with a sense of overwhelm. However, in this case, the collective sense of optimism around cross-discipline and –sector collaboration resonated above all. The combination of meta discussions around sustainability with concrete examples of current (NSF-funded) research, as well as generative discussions around the real challenges different stakeholders are facing in this movement afforded an energetic dynamic.

Be sure to check the NSF website for archives of the plenary speeches, Powerpoint presentations, and more information.

Romans 12:1-2

Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is —his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Reflection:
So Paul urges us as God helps us, to “…take your everyday, ordinary life—your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life—and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well-adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You’ll be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well-formed maturity in you. (MSG)” This is how we live everyday as God helps us, we place it all before God. As we walk away from the influences of this world and move toward God this is our daily worship to Him. As we recognize more quickly His way and turn to follow Him, this is our daily worship to Him.

Response:
Let’s pray that everyday we will place it all before God. Let’s pray that we will worship him daily, walk toward Him and recognize His way and quickly turn to follow Him.

On Sunday, 88 students from local universities embarked on a cross-country bike trip as part of the 4K for Cancer program run by the Ulman Cancer Fund for Young Adults. Among this year’s participants was Michelle Wong ’13, financial economics, who said that she is riding in memory of her mother Natalie, and to support of her grandmothers Ethel On and Vernan Wong, who are currently fighting their own battles with the disease. The Baltimore Sun covered the program in a May 27 story entitled “UMBC senior joins cross-country ride for cancer victims.”

“I think it builds everyone’s passion,” said Wong regarding those close to her who have been lost or are still fighting their illnesses as the motivation for herself and her fellow riders. “I think that’s what drives and motivates each individual [in the 4K for Cancer], and everyone feeds off each other.”

According to the Sun, the ride will stretch from Baltimore to Portland, Oregon, over 70 days, with participants staying at churches and YMCAs along the route, and “are expected to offer community services to cancer organizations across the nation.”

Marc Olano, associate professor of Computer Science and Electical Engineering and director of the Computer Science BS in Game Development Track, was quote in a Baltimore Sun story on the closing of the Timonium-based video game company Big Huge Games. The story, “Timonium video game maker closes, lays off 100,” appeared on May 25.

The 12-year-old company of 107 employees was shuttered last week as a result of its parent company, Providence, RI’s 38 Studios, closing down due to its own mounting debts. The loss of Big Huge Games to the Maryland video game industry is significant, as the company had been a “longtime major [player]” according to Olano. He also noted that the closing should not be a reflection on Big Huge Games’ own management and staff, but rather on the “financial problems of their parent [company] that had ultimately led to this.”

Laura Hussey, assistant professor of political science, is quoted in a recent Gazette story regarding Governor Martin O’Malley and his political future.

The article focuses on O’Malley’s ongoing second chairmanship of the Democratic Governors Association, where he has been able to build potential support and create links with potential contributors for higher office. Hussey offers contrary opinion as to any negative effect which the recent state budget debacle might have on the governor’s fortunes, as voters “tend to have short memories” and criticism in nationally-read conservative publications like the Wall Street Journal could help in raising O’Malley’s profile across the country for the 2016 election year.

The story, National Democratic stage gives O’Malley major boost,” appeared in the Gazette on May 25.