23 March 2007 - New Scientist

Autonomous driving systems aim to drive dirty: "Autonomous model cars will race against one another in a contest designed to test different software approaches.

The contest is being organised by researchers at the University of Essex in the UK, who are creating an affordable and standardised autonomous vehicle kit to encourage others to get involved.

The kit will include a high-end commercial model car, a laptop, a GPS receiver, a USB controller and a camera. The aim is to encourage different research teams to develop autonomous racers using the same equipment, which will then race against one another at the 2008 World Congress on Computational Intelligence in Hong Kong."

Technology is among fastest growing fields

The US Department of Labor / Bureau of Labor Statistics gives a list of the Fastest growing jobs. Healthcare and technology professions dominate the list.

Technology occupations listed by degree level:

Bachelor's degree: Network systems and data communications analysts, applications and systems software engineers, network and computer systems administrators.

Bachelor's plus experience: CIS managers

Doctoral degree: Computer and information scientists, research

10 fast-growing jobs

Technology jobs poised for strong growth: "If you're looking for a job that's here to stay, here's a counterintuitive piece of advice: Look into tech. It's one of several sectors on our list that is slated to see the sharpest job growth between now and 2014.

You may have heard the bad news about outsourcing, but not every tech job lends itself to the practice. And the most creative and difficult technical work is likely to remain here. Most importantly, retiring baby boomers will deplete the ranks of experienced tech workers, leaving openings for up-and-comers."

"Software engineer" ranked best job in America

Software engineer ranked Best job in America!: "Jobs in technology are ranking high on a listing of the 'Best jobs in America'--compiled by Money Magazine and Salary.com--that's been quickly circulating around the blogosphere today.

Software engineers ranked number one in the listing, which is based on stress levels, flexibility in hours and working environment, creativity, and how easy it is to enter and advance in the field,"

Amazing -- note the criteria for the ranking include stress levels, flexibility, and CREATIVITY... Not what most people imagine when they hear "Software Engineer"

The Top Five Technologies You Need to Know About in '07

Ruby on Rails: "Ruby on Rails (also known as RoR and Rails) is a Web application framework written in Ruby, an object-oriented programming language known for its clean syntax."

Tech Innovations Fuel Low-Cost Laptop

PC World Story: "How do you make a laptop that can tolerate sandstorms and monsoons, run on a car battery, and cost just $150? That was the challenge facing One Laptop per Child, a nonprofit group founded by MIT Media Lab veterans to get youngsters in developing nations online.

OLPC's XO notebook PC attains its ultralow price through a combination of innovative technology (such as its dual-mode LCD) and old-fashioned streamlining (it doesn't have a hard drive, and it uses a Linux-based operating system)."

An interesting challenge for CS students -- develop software for OLPC!

Making Computer Systems Reveal Biological Secrets

Making Computer Systems Reveal Biological Secrets: "Two of the hottest areas of scientific discussion these days are computational science, the intersection between computer science and other sciences, and systems biology, the effort to decipher the code of the human genome.

Andrew Phillips gets to work in both.

Phillips, a scientist who works for Microsoft Research Cambridge, is working with stochastic pi-calculus, a programming language particularly applicable to biological systems.

“There’s been a lot of research in computer science on programming-language theory,” Phillips says, “and a lot of that can be applied to biological modeling.”

The stakes are large. The products of that modeling could provide insights into how biological systems work, and those insights could help in understanding and curing diseases."

Mathematicians Team Up with Supercomputer to Crack 248-Dimensional Object

Scientific American: "A monstrous computer-based calculation has rekindled researchers' hopes of solving a longstanding problem in mathematics. In a style of collaboration more commonly associated with sequencing genomes, a team of 18 mathematicians and computer scientists has mapped an extremely complex object known as the E8 group.

The calculation is only a stepping stone, but an important one, researchers say, in a larger project to uncover subtle ways in which different equations or geometric shapes can be seen as facets of the same underlying thing—an insight that has led to some of the century's biggest discoveries in particle physics and may play a role in future theories. The result also highlights the growing trend of using computers to crack tough math problems."

"This is the latest case in which mathematicians have relied on computers to solve thorny problems. In 2005 the Annals of Mathematics published a computer-aided proof of Kepler's conjecture (about the most efficient way to stack spheres) after reviewers spent four years checking the code fed into the computer but finally gave up without completing the task."