Academic Computing Blog

Wolfram Workbench is the state-of-the-art integrated development environment that makes it easier to build and maintain software solutions written with Mathematica technologies.

Wolfram Workbench is currently available as a prerelease exclusively at UVM as part of our subscription to Wolfram’s Premier Service. All Mathematica users at UVM can download a free copy now for any work machine on which they’ve installed Mathematica through the site license.

Key features in Workbench enable users to:

* Group files, code, and other Mathematica resources into a single project

* Perform source-code editing with syntax highlighting, error reporting, local variable coloring, and many more options

* Study code as it runs to easily detect and fix any problems * Profile code’s execution and develop and run tests, with an array of insightful reporting methods

* Manage multiple versions of files and access their version histories

* Build and deploy Mathematica packages

For more information about Workbench, visit our website at:
http://www.wolfram.com/workbench

To download Wolfram Workbench, go to:
http://www.wolfram.com/services/premiersupport/

Call for Chapters for the Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication, Editor: Sigrid Kelsey, MLIS, Louisiana State University

Introduction: Technology has changed communication drastically in recent years. Podcasts, Email, the World Wide Web, Blackberries, cell phones, text messaging, wireless connections, and other forms of computer mediated communication (CMC) have transformed communication in numerous ways, not only facilitating the speed and sometimes ease of communicating, but redefining and shaping today’s communication norms. The Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication will provide comprehensive coverage of the most important current issues, trends, and technologies related to professional computer mediated communication.

Coverage: The Handbook of Research on Computer Mediated Communication will feature chapters (5000-7000 words) of a scholarly nature, written by experts offering in-depth descriptions of concepts, issues, and trends in various areas of CMC. The purpose of this handbook is to provide academic articles written in a more non-academic style, in the sense that each article should focus on a specific topic — rather than a general treatment of CMC — keeping in mind a readership with a varied background. This will allow scholarly ideas to be accessible to a wide range of readers. This book will explore various forms of CMC chapter by chapter and discuss the broad implications that each medium is having on communication.

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San Francisco: ALTHOUGH today’s solar eclipse will not be visible in North America, science fans will get a chance to see it online. The Exploratorium science museum will transmit a live Webcast of the event from Turkey to http://www.exploratorium.edu.

Webcasting special events is an increasingly common practice for science museums that are trying to nurture online visitors, but it has been a longstanding activity at the Exploratorium. Since 1996, the museum has covered science events online, including six eclipses and scientific expeditions to Antarctica and the rain forests of Belize. Webcasts are so common for the Exploratorium, which regularly produces science-themed presentations and even game shows, that it has a broadcasting studio on its exhibition floor, complete with a podium, backdrops and stage lighting.

Archive: Total Solar Eclipse: Live from Turkey in 2006, The Exploratorium, March 29, 2006. http://www.exploratorium.edu/eclipse/2006/index.html

From: Tim, Gnatek, Taking the Rough-and-Tumble Approach to Science. The New York Times,
March 29, 2006. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/29/arts/artsspecial/29sanfran.html
[free registration required, article expires in 2 weeks]

Google Scholar uses the popular Google search engine to enable searches for scholarly materials such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports from broad areas of research. It includes a variety of academic publishers, professional societies, preprint repositories and universities, as well as scholarly articles available across the web. Some Google Scholar search results include links to full-text; some offer only citations.

Google Scholar Local Links allows a user to specify a “local library preference,” and then, if Google Scholar finds a local link, it flags that citation as available locally.

Craig Mundie, Science as a Web Service. XML can supercharge research, Technology Review, March/April 2006.
http://www.technologyreview.com/InfoTech/wtr_16461,258,p1.html

Although my roots before joining Microsoft were in supercomputing, I believe that “extreme computing” and adding gigaflops (billions of floating-point operations per second) are no longer the optimal solutions to most scientific and technical problems. Today, scientists and engineers can buy or build 10-gigaflop desktop computers for around $5,000, and within the next several years, we will see similar supercomputing power at the chip level.

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