Aricebo Will not be Rebuilt

 I had an involvement with data from Arecibo, sad to see this go.  Are we getting data from China?   Much more detail at the li

Space scientists lament loss, say it won't be the same without actual working instruments

By Thomas Claburn in TheRegister

Mon 17 Oct 2022 // 20:10 UTC

The US National Science Foundation (NSF) has decided not to rebuild Puerto Rico's Arecibo Observatory, shut down in August 2020 due to damage accrued three years earlier.

In its place, the NSF has solicited bids to create "a new multidisciplinary, world-class educational center" for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).

The Arecibo Center for STEM Education and Research (ACSER), as center is being called, "would serve as a hub for STEM discovery and exploration by building upon existing programs and opportunities currently in place at the Arecibo Observatory site, while also creating and implementing new STEM education, research, and outreach programs and initiatives," the solicitation says.

The Arecibo Observatory was completed in 1963. At 305 metres (1,000 feet), its main instrument, the Arecibo radio telescope, was the largest single-aperture telescope until 2016 when it was surpassed by China's Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST, or Tianyan). The observatory has played a role in numerous significant scientific discoveries, including the finding of the first binary pulsar.  .... '

NSF Announces $10-million Partnership with Intel

 Watching the building of semiconductor resources, will ultimately be crucial.

NSF Announces $10-million Partnership with Intel

By Mirage News, September 8, 2022

Today, the U.S. National Science Foundation announced a new program with Intel Corporation to educate and train the nation's semiconductor manufacturing workforce and advance opportunities for equitable science, technology, engineering and mathematics education. Following the historic passage of the "CHIPS and Science Act," Intel and NSF will invest $10 million to provide funding to support the development of a high-quality manufacturing workforce at all levels of production and innovation as described in a new Dear Colleague Letter, or DCL.

A nationwide shortage in semiconductors, complicated by the global pandemic, has made it difficult for the chip industry to meet the increasing demand for chip-based products. And while that demand is high in the U.S., only about 10% of the global supply of chips is produced nationally. Awards made through this DCL will help tackle this problem by supporting the education and training of the semiconductor manufacturing workforce in the U.S.

"We are thrilled to continue our partnership with Intel to support research and workforce development to advance semiconductor design and manufacturing," said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. "It's not just about chips – it's about unlocking investments in America's science and technology research, STEM education and workforce. This collaboration presents a remarkable opportunity for students entering this field."

From Mirage News

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Transforming Science through Cyberinfrastructure

Considerable piece. Process-technical.  Instructive diagrams at link. 

Transforming Science through Cyberinfrastructure

By Manish Parashar, Amy Friedlander, Erwin Gianchandani, Margaret Martonosi

Communications of the ACM, August 2022, Vol. 65 No. 8, Pages 30-32      10.1145/3507694

Advanced cyberinfrastructure (CI) is critical to science and engineering (S&E) research. For example, over the past two years, CI resources (including those provided by the COVID-19 HPC Consortiuma) enabled research that dramatically accelerated efforts to understand, respond to, and mitigate near- and longer-term impacts of the novel coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.b Computer-based epidemiology models informed public policy in the U.S., and in countries throughout the world, and newly studied transmission models for the virus have been used to forecast resource availability and mortality stratified by age group at the county level.c Artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches accelerated drug screening to find candidate medicines from trillions of possible chemical compounds,d and differential gene expressions among COVID-19 patient populations have been analyzed with important implications for treatment planning.e Structural modeling of the virus has led to new insights, speeding the development of vaccines and antigens. One such effort earned the ACM's Gordon Bell Prize Recognizing Outstanding Achievement in High-Performance Computing.f\

CI encompasses more than the computing resources themselves. Rather—and as the response to the pandemic illustrates—CI constitutes an expansive ecosystem, comprising these resources as well as data, software, networking and security, coordination and user support, and connections to instrumentation and large-scale infrastructure. Realizing such a CI ecosystem requires blending fundamental and translational research in computer and computational science, research infrastructure, and private-sector innovations to ensure continuous refresh of the ecosystem to align with evolving use cases and needs.

Within the U.S., the conceptualization, design, and implementation of such an advanced CI ecosystem for S&E research and education is led by the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Office of Advanced Cyberinfrastructure (OAC). Over the past two decades, OAC (and its predecessors) developed a balanced portfolio of complementary CI investments,g and funded and coordinated exploration, development and provisioning of advanced CI resources, facilities, and services (see the figure here). Collectively, these investments have laid the groundwork for today's S&E advances.   .... ' 

AI Collaborating with Dancers

Successful Collaboration a powerful idea,   how is it fundamentally enhanced?

NSF Grant Sees Dancers and AI As Creative Collaborators, By Georgia Institute of Technology, August 31, 2021

A project predecessor is LuminAI, which pairs a participant's movements with AI virtual dance partners.

A U.S. National Science Foundation grant for $573,561 awarded to Professor Brian Magerko at Georgia Institute of Technology will fund "research to develop a computational architecture to model embodied and co-creative behavior between humans and embodied intelligent machines," according to the NSF award.

Magerko's team will study human dancers and develop artificial intelligence agents to "co-create" with humans. The work will culminate in a live AI dance performance with the Kennesaw State University School of Dance faculty and students.

The goal is to "develop a co-creative AI that approaches expert-level participatory sensemaking in contemporary dance and train this agent to create a curated improvisational partner," the award states.

The project is expected to lay the groundwork for the development of other applications such as physical therapy, design brainstorming, or future experiences with robots in the home.

Georgia Institute of Technology

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Human AI Collaboration

Google talks one of the most important aspects of the use of advanced tech.  I would further say that this should not be about just 'AI' as it is defined today, but all enhanced computational collaboration.  Points to a number of interesting project underway.

Partnering with NSF on human-AI collaboration
Charina Chou
Global Policy Lead, Emerging Technologies
Leslie Yeh
Global Head of University Relations
Published Sep 2, 2020

Today, in partnership with the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), we are announcing a National AI Research Institute for Human-AI Interaction and Collaboration. Google will provide $5 million in funding to support the Institute. We will also offer AI expertise, research collaborations, and Cloud support for Institute researchers and educators as they advance knowledge and progress in the field of AI.

Studies have shown that humans and AI systems operating together can make smarter decisions than either acting alone. In the past few years we’ve seen the increasing use of AI to support people and their decision making in sectors like medicine, education, transportation and agriculture. Conversely, people also support AI systems and their decision making through training data and model design, testing and operation, and continued feedback and iteration on system performance. People and AI systems shape each other, and in order to realize the full potential of AI for social benefit, positive and productive human-AI interaction and collaboration is critical.

Google has been working in this area over the last several years, publishing hundreds of research papers in human-computer interaction and visualization; bringing industry and academic experts together at events like the PAIR Symposium and top research conferences; designing tools like Facets, the What-If Tool, and the Language Interpretability Tool to better understand datasets and models; creating the Model Card Toolkit for model transparency and a People + AI guidebook to support human-centered AI development; building better human-AI interfaces in our products like smart predictions in Gboard and auto-captioning with the Live Transcribe app; and enabling anyone to help make AI-powered products more useful through efforts like Crowdsource and Translate Community.  ... " 

NSF Seeks to Improve Smart Home Security

Useful direction.

Scientists want to fix our notoriously insecure smart home devices
The National Science Foundation wants to boost consumer trust in the Internet of Things.

By Steve Dent, @stevetdent in Engadget

The dream of a smart home that would automate your life à la The Jetsons is more like a nightmare thanks to the lack of security in numerous smart devices. Now, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is intervening with a nationwide project designed to boost internet of things (IoT) security. Seven academic institutions will research technology designed to reduce the security burden on users and help fix smart home privacy flaws eroding consumer trust. ... " 

US Quantum Initiative

Considerable detail at the link on this effort.

The Drive to Quantum Computing
By R. Colin Johnson 
July 30, 2019

 The U.S. National Quantum Initiative Act signed into law last December mandates a multi-billion-dollar, 10-year effort to build a quantum computer infrastructure, ecosystem, and workforce.

The purpose of the law is to offer federal support to the research, development, demonstration, and application of quantum information science and technology. It aims to expand the number of quantum researchers, educators, and students by promote the necessary college curriculums, establishing new facilities for research, testing, and education, coordinating governmental, industrial, and academic cooperation, and promoting the development of international standards.

The law is a milestone of bipartisan support, passing the House of representatives by a vote of 348 to 11, and passing the Senate unanimously, before being signed into law by President Trump on Dec. 21, 2018.

This quantum technology acceleration program was provided $1.2 billion in funding for its first five years, with additional funding promised to the most successful projects starting circa 2025.

Most of the quantum technological efforts under the National Quantum Initiative will take place up in as many as five new National Quantum Information Science Research Centers to be established by the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Science with five-year renewable charters of up to $25 million per year per center. The Department of Energy (DoE) will coordinate basic research in the storage, transmission, manipulation, and measurement of quantum information.

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) also will fund grants through its Multidisciplinary Centers for Quantum Research and Education. Besides fostering the education of a U.S. quantum workforce, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) also will work on developing measurement methods, standards, cybersecurity, and quantum ecosystem needs, along with a "space needs" assessment by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). .... " 

Vint Cerf on the NSF

A technical view of the value of the NSF since the 60s.  Was honored to see much of the progress first hand.

In Debt to the NSF    By Vinton G. Cerf 

Communications of the ACM, April 2019, Vol. 62 No. 4, Page 5  10.1145/3313989

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency launched the ARPANET project in 1968 and the Internet project in 1973.

In 1980, the National Science Foundation (NSF) sponsored the development of CSNETa to connect a number of computer science departments together that had not already been connected to the ARPANET. Using a mix of dial-up phone connections, public X.25 packet network services, and access to the ARPANET, the CSNET was the programmatic forerunner of the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET).  .... "

Human Presence Sensing for Smart Buildings

In  RDMag.

NSF Grant Awarded for Smart-building Sensor Research  by University of Hawai’i

The National Science Foundation has awarded University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa researchers a $750,000 grant to develop a low-cost sensor capable of detecting human presence and monitoring occupants for energy-savings and smart-building applications. The Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Phase II grant was awarded to UH Mānoa in partnership with technology company Adnoviv.

Olga Borić-Lubecke, professor of electrical engineering in the College of Engineering and a co-principal investigator on the grant, co-founded Adnoviv in 2013 with electrical engineering Professor Victor Lubecke. The company focuses on research-driven technology, developing innovative sensors and systems for industrial, medical and security applications, including its centerpiece product, True Presence Occupancy Detection Sensors (TruePODS). Adnoviv is a Phase I graduate of the XLR8UH start-up program and has already hired four UH graduates. ... "

Proposal for Quantum Foundries

I usually think of quantum as the world of the very small, a foundry as the a big thing  so this proposal struck me.

NSF Proposes $25 Million in Grants to Set Up Quantum Foundries
FedScoop   By Carten Cordell

The U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) has set up new grants to support the development of quantum technology, pledging $25 million in funding to foundries that will produce components essential to advancing its applications. The Convergent Accelerated Discovery Foundries for Quantum Materials Science, Engineering, and Information (Q-AMASE-i) program will allocate the funding as part of a cooperative agreement to establish research facilities where industry can partner with universities to accelerate development of novel quantum devices using materials science and rapid prototyping. The NSF says, "Of particular interest are new materials and device structures for transport of charge and spin, including valleytronics, spintronics, and low-power electronics." The agency also says grant recipients will work to advance a range of quantum-related topics, including "transformative breakthrough fundamental research; novel materials, tools, devices, algorithms, and simulations integrated with industrial technologies; quantum systems research; new application domains; and the next generation of a highly-trained workforce." ... ' 

NSF Solicitation on Augmenting Human Cognition

Alexandra Medina-Borja     Group Owner
Program Director at the U.S. National Science Foundation

New Future of Work at the Human-Technology Frontier Solicitation on Advancing Cognitive Capabilities

This solicitation focuses on advancing cognitive and physical capabilities in the context of human-technology interactions. The solicitation will support two themes: Theme 1 will focus on Foundations for Augmenting Human Cognition and Theme 2 will focus on Embodied Intelligent Cognitive Assistants. 

In shaping projects responsive to these two themes, PIs consider the importance of understanding, anticipating, and shaping the larger implications at the individual, institutional, corporate, and national levels, including issues arising from the needs or consequences for training and education. 

In addition, projects should be framed in terms of their focus on the potential contribution toward (a) transforming the frontiers of science and technology for human performance augmentation and workplace skill acquisition; (b) improving both worker quality of life and employer financial metrics; (c) enhancing the economic and social well-being of the country; and (d) addressing societal needs ... "

Unifying Statistics, Computer Science and Applied Math

Makes sense to unify multiple methods,   and though not mentioned here, include logical decision processes as well.

Unifying Statistics, Computer Science, and Applied Mathematics    By Lehigh University 

A U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported project led by Lehigh University will advance machine learning by merging statistical, computer science, and applied mathematical techniques.

As one of NSF's Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science projects, the Lehigh team will work with colleagues at Northwestern and Stony Brook universities to build on the continuing efforts of Lehigh's Optimization and Machine Learning research group. The group concentrates on the design, analysis, and deployment of numerical methods for solving large-scale optimization problems stemming from machine-learning applications.  .... " 

Nomadic Computing Faster

In the CACM:  Nomadic computing speeds up Big Data Analyses.  " ... University of Texas at Austin professor Inderjit Dhillon, a 2014 ACM Fellow, concentrates on expediting big data analytics by using machine learning to reduce data to its most insightful parameters. His latest research, supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), is a non-locking, stochastic multi-machine algorithm for asynchronous and decentralized matrix completion (NOMAD). ... Dhillon says the algorithm can extract meaningful information from data much faster than other current cutting-edge instruments, as well as investigate data sets that break other leading software. .... " 

Building Innovation Capacity

From the NSF:   Considerable detail at the link,

" .... The Partnerships for Innovation: Building Innovation Capacity (PFI:BIC) program supports academe-industry partnerships which are led by an interdisciplinary academic research team collaborating with a least one industry partner. In this program, there is a heavy emphasis on the quality, composition, and participation of the partners, including the appropriate contributions for each role. These partnerships focus on the integration of technologies into a specified human-centered service system with the potential to achieve transformational change, satisfying a real need by making an existing service system smart(er) or by spurring the creation of an entirely new smart service system. The selected service system should function as a test bed. ... "

NSF Service Systems Research

NSF funds smart, human-centered service systems research
Smart, human-centered service systems augment the abilities of people:
NSF adds $10M more in funding - to spur research in this very complex, transdisciplinary area:

" ... From transportation to healthcare, service systems make our lives easier and more productive on a daily basis. .... New technologies that learn from data are bringing intelligence to service systems, allowing them to center on people by incorporating individuals' feedback and input. These systems create more value through adaptive and individualized interactions. The National Science Foundation (NSF) has invested $10 million in such systems, supporting innovative new partnership projects to create service systems that are smart and human-centric. ... "

Elastic Systems and Smart Services

By Jim Spohrer: from the NSF Linkedin Group. The term Elastic Systems was unknown to me.

Recently learned about "Elastic Systems" from Schahram Dustar (TU Vienna) and Hong-Linh Truong (TU Vienna)... 

I see many connections between:

"Elastic Systems" - http://www.slideshare.net/linhsolar/truong-sdsbigdataic2e2014
"Cyber-Physical-Social Systems" - http://www.icyphy.org/
"Societal Networks" - http://scsn.stanford.edu/index.php
"Human Agent Collectives" - http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/12/180791-human-agent-collectives/fulltext
"Smart Service Systems" - http://web.mit.edu/mitssrc/nsf/presentations.html

Principles of Software-defined Elastic Systems for Big Data Analytics slideshare.net   http://www.slideshare.net/linhsolar/truong-sdsbigdataic2e2014 

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