Medpedia Project Aims to Be the Wikipedia of Health and Medicine
Medpedia intends to become the new model for sharing information about health, medicine, and the human body. The service, which went live in February 2009, offers three services: a collaborative, wiki-based encyclopedia, a directory of health professionals and organizations, and Communities of Interest, where medical professionals can share information with the public. The content is created by physicians or those with Ph.D.s in a biomedical field. Medpedia screens the contributors before they are approved to write content.
www.medpedia.com

Budget Cuts go Green at Washington State University
In the face of a budget shortfall, Washington State University President Elson S. Floyd announced in February that the university will go paperless for all internal communications. Floyd said that despite predictions of a paperless society for years, more paper than ever seemed to be crossing campus desks. The president expects the change will spur creativity as the university’s staff find alternatives to printing newsletters, memos, and event flyers. Staff plan to use e-mail and web communications as a replacement for the printed material.
president.wsu.edu/perspectives/021009.html

If You Crunch the Numbers They Will Come
The Media Cloud is a media analysis tool looking for researchers. The web site, currently in an infant state, ingests news stories from an ever-growing list of sources and analyzes them to determine the topics, people, and countries therein. The site, a project from the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard University, openly solicits research ideas and site improvements that will make the tool more useful. The project’s goal is to offer a way to quantitatively examine questions like, “Where do stories begin?”
www.mediacloud.org

College Debate Teams Face Off in Second Life
In February, two college debate teams argued the merits of abolishing faculty tenure in Second Life, an online virtual world. Avatars of debaters from St. John’s University locked horns with the University of Vermont. Organizers declared the event a success, noting a full virtual room, viewers from a number of countries, and a healthy post-event buzz about other virtual debate possibilities.
globaldebateblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/second-life-debate-succeeds.html

2009 Horizon Report Describes Education Technology Trends
Expanding cellphone-based services, cloud computing, geocoded data, and semantic-aware software are several technologies that could reach the mainstream within the next five years, according to this year’s Horizon Report. The annual report, a collaboration between the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, claims cellphones are the closest technology to widespread adoption in education. The report sees semantic-aware applications, software that understands the context of information online, as technology that will need four or five more years before it has the potential of widespread use.
wp.nmc.org/horizon2009

Simulating America
Using up to 163 variables from U.S. Census data and computer clusters, researchers at Virginia Tech are simulating how American’s lifestyles, travel patterns, and health effect the spread of a flu epidemic. The system models the lives of about 100 million Americans, drawing on the huge quantities of publicly-available demographic data. High-speed computer clusters can run 20 simulations an hour. The simulation is not limited to epidemic studies. The software can also model traffic flows or the adoption of cultural fads.
spectrum.ieee.org/dec08/7051

Saudi University, Not Yet Complete, Shows Itself Off With an Interactive Map
King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, a graduate-level research university, is still under construction. To help attract students and faculty, the university has created an interactive map of its unfinished campus. The project is unique: build from scratch an 8,900-acre campus, complete with housing, grocery store, restaurants, golf course, marina, and full-service health care. The map gives users an idea of how HOK architects have designed this one-of-a-kind project.
www.kaust.edu.sa/interactive-map/map.aspx

Get Paid for Good Grades
A new web site called GradeFund aims to connect students with friends or family who want to encourage great learning. Sponsors commit a dollar amount for each grade. Students upload their transcripts at the end of the term. GradeFund verifies the grades then distributes the rewards. Whether the system works remains to be seen. The web site showed two recent students who had raised only $3.50 between them.
www.gradefund.com

Your Laptop is a Seismograph
Seismologists at the University of California at Riverside and Stanford University are working to create the world’s largest and densest earthquake monitoring system by using the accelerometers built in to many laptops. The software sends accelerometer data to the server, tracks the laptop’s location to within a few kilometers, and verifies that the computer’s clock is accurate. To participate in the distributed computing Quake-Catcher Network, users simply install the BOINC client, available for download from the Quake-Catcher Network.
qcn.stanford.edu

Experimental Flash Debate on Twitter Nets ‘Middling Success’
The Ed Techie, an education blogger, tried to have a flash debate on Twitter. The result was “only middling success,” said the Ed Techie. “My debate around virality didn’t go viral.” The Techie is considering another attempt in the future with a topic that is more focused.
nogoodreason.typepad.co.uk