Calit2*Life

Vice magazine wrote a long article this month about Calit2 PI Ricardo Dominguez and the b.a.n.g. lab. The article covers numerous Border Disturbance Art projects, including the Freephone, but focuses on the Transborder Immigrant Tool. FOLLOW THE GPS, ESE:THE TRANSBORDER IMMIGRANT TOOL HELPS MEXICANS CROSS OVER SAFELY Also, b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas/Azdel Slade published a new article on Realityshifting on Augmentology.com last week. It includes a short machinima she produced as well as other...

Join the UCSD Sustainability Solutions Institute and the Campus Water Collaborative Wednesday, Nov. 18 for their second technical seminar, "Inexpensive Desalination: Harnessing Natural Forces." The hour-long seminar begins at 4 p.m. in Atkinson Hall Room 4004 and features Michael Motherway, President of DXV Water Technologies. The agenda includes a 25-minute presentation, followed by an open discussion with question and answer opportunities. Refreshments will be served. Seating is limited so please RSVP to msession@ucsd.edu. SSI encourages faculty,...

Calit2 artist/researchers working with the b.a.n.g. lab have had a number of reviews and articles published about their work this month. The new article Micha Cardenas co-authored with Felipe Zuniga entitled "IO NON HO NIENTE DA DIRE (I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY)" is in the current issue Digimag, an italian new media magazine. Since its only in Italian, you can find english text here. The article discusses the Emergency - Emergent Agency / Emergencia -...

Calit2 artist/researchers working with the b.a.n.g. lab have had a number of reviews and articles published about their work this month. The new article Micha Cardenas co-authored with Felipe Zuniga entitled "IO NON HO NIENTE DA DIRE (I HAVE NOTHING TO SAY)" is in the current issue Digimag, an italian new media magazine. Since its only in Italian, you can find english text here. The article discusses the Emergency - Emergent Agency / Emergencia -...

UCSD undergrad and Calit2 staff photographer Erik Jepsen won first place in the sports photo category in the Associated Collegiate Press' annual Photo Excellence Awards. Jepsen took his aerial shot of a UCSD volleyball player (shown at left) for the UCSD Guardian while perched in the rafters of RIMAC arena (although he likes to tell people that he set the camera's self-timer and tossed it above the player just before his overhand serve). Click here...

UC San Diego undergrad Michael Nekrasov spent nine weeks this summer as a Pacific Rim Undergraduate Experiences (PRIME) student in Taiwan. He worked on a project of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and Calit2, engineering a system that will allow researchers to monitor coral reefs in real time ("Coral Reef Observing through Data Capture, Data Streaming, and Automation"). His project involved integrating cameras into environmental observing systems, as well as using fluorescence to detect coral...

... and a happy birthday to all those at Calit2 who celebrate an October birthday!...

It's the calculator that "thinks" only if you think, too -- and now it's available online.QAMA(TM), or Quick Approximate Mental Arithmetic, is a new kind of calculator designed and developed by Ilan Samson, an "inventor-in-residence" at the University of California, San Diego's California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2).Having prototyped and tested a hand-held version of the calculator at UC San Diego and San Diego's High Tech High School, Samson has now launched an...

When Facebook's VP of Technology, Jeff Rothschild, delivered a lecture at Calit2 Oct. 8 at the invitation of the Center for Networked Systems (CNS), he divulged some key statistics that made news in high-tech publications that follow the data center industry. Rothschild's talk was webcast live by Calit2 and the archived version of "High Performance at Massive Scale" is now available for on-demand viewing [Windows Media player and broadband connection required]. As the blog...

The publication of UC San Diego political science Professor and Calit2 affiliate James Fowler's new book: "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives" has led to an onslaught of media attention in some noteworthy publications. Fowler's research (conducted with colleague Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health) was the lead story on CNN.com this morning. The New York Times Sunday Book Review ran a piece about...

Xconomy.com, a nationwide, Web-based publication that features stories on exponential economy, the realm of business and innovation, recently featured Calit2 Director Larry Smarr in a two-part series about the "Origins of the Internet, Innovations in IT, and Insights on the Path Ahead." One highlight: "(Smarr) views Calit2 as a 'time machine' because the advanced capabilities of the institute's high-performance network enable researchers to develop software applications five or 10 years before they can be deployed...

If you missed the poster session last week, or if you made it and want to know more, copies of the 2009 Calit2 Summer Scholars' Posters are now available on the Summer Scholars website. Poster session winner for best poster, Robert Turner, is in photo here. Turner is just beginning his sophomore year as a computer science and engineering (CSE) major this month. He worked with faculty advisor Beth Simon of CSE on his project...

CRCA researchers Micha Cardenas and Elle Mehrmand will be doing a performance entitled Technesexual that uses DIY biometric sensors that were made by hand to create live audio which will be heard in real space and virtual space at the same time. It is a Mixed Reality performance exploring relationality between people and between people and technology. Cardenas and Mehrmand will be performing Technesexual  in Tijuana at Entijuanarte on Oct 4th, in San Francisco at...

On Tuesday evening, Calit2 Director Larry Smarr was the keynote speaker at the 2009 Convocation, which welcomed thousands of transfer students and freshmen to the UC San Diego campus. In his talk, Smarr went out of his way to challenge the students to work on solving the big challenges facing humanity, including global climate change. Here's the full text of his speech: It is a great honor to be part of this Convocation, welcoming...

Please join us in celebrating the hard work of the 2009 Calit2 Undergraduate Summer Scholars. Their end-of-summer Poster Session will be held next Tuesday. This event is the culmination of 10-weeks of intensive research by 24 undergraduates majoring in 15 different fields who worked with faculty advisors from across campus as full-time researchers this summer. This is the ninth year of the highly successful program; more than 225 UC San Diego undergraduates have been Calit2...

UC San Diego political science Professor James Fowler, an affiliate of Calit2, will make an appearance at Warwick's Bookstore, 7812 Girard Avenue in La Jolla at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8 to discuss and sign his new book, "Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives."Fowler's research (conducted with colleague Nicholas Christakis of the Harvard School of Public Health) has repeatedly made front-page news nationwide. The authors' new book...

A performance art developed by Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas, "Mixed Realtions" looks at the connection between bodies and technology within a virtual and physical existence, and explores the virtual world's ever increasing influence, socially and physically, in society.Elle Mehrmand and Micha Cardenas performing in actual space and artificial space using Second Life....

b.a.n.g. lab researcher Micha Cardenas will be presenting at the Mobile HCI conference in Bonn, Germany tomorrow morning at the Community Practices and Locative Media Workshop. She will be presenting a paper on the Transborder Immigrant Tool. The pdf of that paper is here and it was co-written by Cardenas, Ricardo Dominguez, Amy Sara Carroll and Brett Stalbaum of the Electronic Disturbance Theater. Here's the summary: The Transborder Immigrant Tool: Violence, Solidarity and Hope in...

A number of classrooms at UC San Diego have received a new addition -- just in time for the 2009-2010 academic year. LED digital signs have been installed in five classrooms in UCSD's Center Hall, with 13 more expected to be installed throughout campus in the coming months. Initially, the signs will display the time and, at the top of the hour, information about the course itself, including the professor's name and the course title....

The San Diego Union-Tribune's technology writer Mike Lee picked up on the joint Calit2-Scripps Institution of Oceanography release about overcoming the final obstacle to start receiving roughly $32 million in stimulus funding for the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) Cyberinfrastructure project. The funding comes from NSF, via the semi-governmental Consortium for Ocean Leadership, and had been initially announced in 2007, before an overhaul of Ocean Leadership's predecessor organization -- and budget problems -- put the award on hold. The funding...