Information Engineering

http://www.itworld.com/internet/76659/experimenting-mechanical-turk-5-how-tos
Interesting article on Amazon Mechanical Turk

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RzXDmJ6HA0Y
Matrix Reloaded in 5 sec

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-6dfa2pSJQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ymSEibHKOgo
Two other summaries

http://www.today.ucla.edu/portal/ut/crime-alert-a-missing-former-faculty-111857.aspx
Phil Agre is missing

http://www.libraryjournal.com/article/CA6706383.html
Netflix for Libraries?

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/Rankings2009-Top200.html
New university rankings

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1121855.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/921525.html
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/922550.html
Israel mulls perks for professors to stymie brain drain

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/may09/8788
“The Million Dollar Programming Prize”. IEEE Spectrum

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn17581-infectious-people-spread-memes-across-the-web.html
‘Infectious’ people spread memes across the web

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/04/books/review/Stossel-t.html
You and Your Friends Friends Friends
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/magazine/13contagion-t.html
Are Your Friends Making You Fat?

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/12/technology/12data.html?_r=1&ref=global
Training to Climb an Everest of Digital Data

http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2009/9/38904-the-status-of-the-p-versus-np-problem/abstract
The status of the P vs. NP problem

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/08/social.networks.connected/index.html
Obesity, politics, STDs flow in social networks

http://www.meta-synthesis.com/webbook/35_pt/pt_database.php?PT_id=167
Database of periodical tables

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/wayoflife/10/06/mf.nobel.odd.facts/index.html?iref=newssearch
Odd facts about the Nobel Prize

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/10/07/language.facebook.google/index.html
Machine translation successes

http://infoproc.blogspot.com/2009/10/more-brainpower-and-globalization.html
More brainpower and globalization

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/091006/full/news.2009.977.html?s=news_rss
Half of EU research budget should be spent on frontier science, say
science advisers.

http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090930/full/461590a.html?s=news_rss
http://www.nature.com/news/2009/090930/full/461586a.html?s=news_rss
Science in Eastern Europe

http://www.nature.com/news/specials/datasharing/index.html
Data Sharing

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MijRS7myeBY
‘What Is That’ By Constantin Pilavios

1. Ad for Vitamin Water on the side of a truck (seen today).

Paraphrasing the ad:

… soccer (”futbol” for those of you in Mexico, Spain, and Italy)

2. Ad for Iona College on NPR (head about 10 days ago).

Paraphrasing the ad:

… we are proud of our “low faculty to student” ratio

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/08/21/AR2009082101778.html
5 Myths About Health Care Around the World

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/325/5945/1181
Galvanizing science departments

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_the_longest-running_Broadway_shows
Longest running Broadway shows

http://chronicle.com/article/Atop-the-Latest-US-News/48084/
new US News rankings

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=407705
A threat to scientific communication

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/04/future.library.technology/index.html
The future of libraries, with or without books

http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/europe/09/01/alan.turing.petition/index.html
Petition for Alan Turing

http://www.inyourpocket.com/data/download/sofia.pdf
Nice guide about Sofia

http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2009/08/31/marinoff
Hiring in a Philosophy dept

http://bigeyedeer.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/modern-life2.gif?w=500&h=408
Modern life is rubbish

http://www.convinceme.net/
Debates

http://blog.codalism.com/?p=773
Citing papers that you haven’t read

http://www.chrisharrison.net/projects/trigramviz/
Trigram visualization

http://lucatrevisan.wordpress.com/2009/06/18/the-end-of-uc-berkeley-as-we-know-it/#more-1427
The end of UC Berkeley as we know it

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/issue_pdf/printtoc_pdf/325/5939.pdf
Science special issue on Network Science

http://www.cnn.com/2009/LIVING/worklife/07/22/cb.you.said.what.interview/index.html
43 weird things said in job interviews

http://ilo2009usa.blogspot.com
http://www.math.uni.wroc.pl/~msliw/lingw/iol/index.php
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=115385&org=OLPA&from=news
Linguistics Olympiad

http://polish.slavic.pitt.edu/
Resources about learning Polish

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123119236117055127.html#articleTabs%3Darticle
The best job in the world!

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/13/technology/internet/13influence.html
Another cool internet paper from Kleinberg and co.

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/html/arts/20090717-1969-feature/?hp
1969

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2009/07/10/nrc
The new NRC rankings criteria

http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=448
Building a better collective memory
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=545
Doing Science Online
http://michaelnielsen.org/blog/?p=465
Science beyond individual understanding

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/19/magazine/19healthcare-t.html
Why we must ration health care (by Peter Singer)

http://www.phishtank.com
Check here if a suspicious email is not a phishing attempt

http://www.webometrics.info/top6000.asp
Another university ranking

http://www.usnews.com/sections/education/worlds-best-colleges/index.html
Another university ranking

http://www.vanityfair.com/online/daily/2009/06/harvard.html
Harvard’s endowment problems

http://retrobulgaria.com/main.html
Retro Bulgaria

http://www.nature.com/nature/peerreview/debate/nature05535.html
Open peer review

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/mcb/UriAlon/nurturing/index.html
Materials for Nurturing Scientists

http://worldsbestfilms.blogspot.com
Movie rankings

http://1linereview2.blogspot.com/2009/07/50-greatest-films.html
Movie rankings

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=1554
http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596516499/
NLTK book is out

Q: How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb?

A: Whereas the party of the first part, also known as “Lawyer”, and
the party of the second part, also known as “Light Bulb”, do hereby
and forthwith agree to a transaction wherein the party of the second
part shall be removed from the current position as a result of failure
to perform previously agreed upon duties, i.e., the lighting,
elucidation, and otherwise illumination of the area ranging from the
front (north) door, through the entryway, terminating at an area just
inside the primary living area, demarcated by the beginning of the
carpet, any spillover illumination being at the option of the party of
the second part and not required by the aforementioned agreement
between the parties.

The aforementioned removal transaction shall include, but not be
limited to, the following.  The party of the first part shall, with or
without elevation at his option, by means of a chair, stepstool,
ladder or any other means of elevation, grasp the party of the second
part and rotate the party of the second part in a counter-clockwise
direction, this point being tendered non-negotiable.  Upon reaching a
point where the party of the second part becomes fully detached from
the receptacle, the party of the first part shall have the option of
disposing of the party of the second part in a manner consistent with
all relevant and applicable local, state and federal statutes.  Once
separation and disposal have been achieved, the party of the first
part shall have the option of beginning installation.  Aforesaid
installation shall occur in a manner consistent with the reverse of
the procedures described in step one of this self-same document, being
careful to note that the rotation should occur in a clockwise
direction, this point also being non-negotiable.  The above described
steps may be performed, at the option of the party of the first part,
by any or all agents authorized by him, the objective being to produce
the most possible revenue for the Partnership.

Here is the final tally:

1. Individual contest (86 participants from 17 countries)

a. individual medals

2 golds: student from Bulgaria, student from Poland
8 silvers: Rebecca Jacobs + 7 more students
12 bronzes: Sergei Bernstein, John Berman, Alan Huang + 9 more students
20 honorable mentions: Morris, Daryl, Vivaek, Anand + 16 more

b. highest average

Russia M

c. best solutions

problem 1 (tie) – student from Russia M, Alan Huang
problem 2 – student from Russia M
problem 3 – student from South Korea
problem 4 (tie) – students from Russia M, Poland, Bulgaria
problem 5 – John Berman

2. Team contest (23 teams from 17 countries)

1 gold – USA Red (Rebecca, Anand, Morris, Alan)
1 silver – South Korea 1
1 bronze – Russia M

3. Overall statistics:

a. by medal count (individual + team)

USA 5 1+1+3 (tie)
Poland 5 1+1+3 (tie)
Russia 4 1+2+1
Bulgaria 3 1+1+1
Estonia 2 0+1+1
Korea 2 0+0+2
India 1 0+1+0
Latvia 1 0+1+0
UK 1 0+0+1

b. by medal count (individual only)

the following teams got at least one honorable mention but no
medals: Latvia, Netherlands, Ireland, Germany

c. by total prizes (medals + best solution awards + highest-average)

Russia 8
USA 7
Poland 6
Bulgaria 4
South Korea 3
Estonia 2

NB! All counts above are based on my personal notes. Changes are
possible.

NB! The scores above have not been broken down into individual
teams. I will post this information when I get it from the organizers.

21 honorable mentions
12 bronze
8 silver uncluding Rebecca.

More to come.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Anand Vivaek Daryl Morris got honorable mentions.
More to come.

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

There were two lectures in the morning.
Then some free time and then the awards ceremony which just started.

There are expected to be about 2 to 4 gold medals, close to 10 silvers and close to 10 bronzes in the individual contest. Plus a few team medals for the team event as well as a team cup for the best collective team score at the individual event.

The ceremony is in the main aula of the university. It was built in 1702 by Prussian Jesuits

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

This year with 23 teams representing 17 countries, the contest is in
progress in Wroclaw, Poland.
The problem sets were very hard.
There will be results in less than 48 hours.

IOL-7
home page with a lot of photos.