University System News
USG NEWS:
www.onlineathens.com
http://onlineathens.com/uga/2013-11-26/uga-curb-use-social-security-numbers-computer-records
UGA to curb use of Social Security numbers in computer records
By LEE SHEARER
The University of Georgia will erase Social Security numbers from millions of computer records next month in a move to protect employees’ personal information. “This is going to eliminate a lot of information security risk at the institution,” said Brian Rivers, UGA associate chief information officer for information security in UGA’s Enterprise Information Technology Services, or EITS.
www.redandblack.com
http://www.redandblack.com/uganews/campus/atlanta-strong-contender-for-post-grad-opportunities/article_23f14ed0-5596-11e3-8e5c-001a4bcf6878.html
Atlanta, ‘strong contender’ for post-grad opportunities
Michelle Baruchman
At the end of four or more years in the Classic City, University of Georgia students will spread out across the country to the big cities in search of big opportunities. But according to Vocativ’s new list released, big opportunities are happening in UGA students’ backyard — Atlanta. Atlanta ranked No. 7 out of 35 on Vocativ’s “35 Best U.S. Cities for People Under 35.” …According to the 2012 UGA Fact Book, the number of UGA alumni still living in the state is 173,145 and the majority live in Atlanta. Living amongst fellow graduates can give a sense of familiarity and the chance to form connections that can help in both individual and working life, said Realenn Watters, Atlanta Program Coordinator of the Alumni Association.
www.ajc.com
http://www.ajc.com/news/news/uga-employee-charged-with-43-counts-of-exploiting-/nb5NH/
UGA employee charged with 43 counts of exploiting children
By Alexis Stevens
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
A 51-year-old Clarke County man was charged Tuesday morning with 43 counts of sexual exploitation of children, police said. Jeffrey Wall Delk was arrested after a search warrant was executed at his Wendy Lane home, according to Hilda Sorrow with the Athens-Clarke County Police Department. Computers and cell phones were seized during the investigation, Sorrow said. Information from the GBI initiated the investigation between Athens-Clarke County and University of Georgia police, Sorrow said. Delk was employed as the assistant director of gift and estate planning for the university, but his contact information was removed Tuesday afternoon from the department’s website.
GOOD NEWS:
www.autoremarketing.com
http://www.autoremarketing.com/trends/gm-foundation-grants-29-million-stem-education
GM Foundation Grants $2.9 Million to STEM Education
By Auto Remarketing Staff
The General Motors Foundation on Tuesday announced the recipients of $2.9 million in grants for education. The grants will support 26 leading universities and partnering organizations across the U.S., through the foundation’s University/Organization Partner Program. The initiative provides funding to advance secondary education curricula in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, also known as STEM, information technology and other fields important to the automotive industry. …This year’s GM Foundation grant recipients are: Art Center College of Design, Brigham Young University, University of California-Berkeley, Cleveland Institute of Arts, University of Cincinnati, Duke University, Georgia Institute of Technology,
RESEARCH:
www.medicalxpress.com
http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-11-dementia-diagnosis.html
Improved dementia diagnosis possible, new study shows
by Jessica Luton
(Medical Xpress)—Nearly 36 million people worldwide are estimated to currently have dementia. That number is expected to almost double every 20 years. Researchers are diligently working to find better, more accurate methods for earlier diagnosis. According to recently published research from the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences department of psychology, scientists may be one step closer to a better biomarker for earlier detection of mild cognitive impairment, the leading predictor of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease in older adults.
www.foodpoisoningbulletin.com
Frozen Produce May Retain Vitamins Better than Fresh Stored
by Linda Larsen
The University of Georgia, along with the Frozen Food Foundation conducted a study comparing the nutrient content of eight frozen and fresh fruits and vegetables. They found that the nutritional value of many of the frozen fruits and veggies are equal to the fresh choices, and is greater in some cases.
www.latimes.com
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-fire-ants-liquid-solid-self-healing-bioinspired-20131126,0,2222651.story#ixzz2lq3BHUJq
Video: Fire ants’ superpowers could inspire self-healing bridges
By Amina Khan
November 26, 2013, 4:04 p.m.
Ants may seem tiny and weak when they’re alone, but together they can form a sort of “super-organism” — one with superpowers. Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found that a jumbled crowd of fire ants acts like both an elastic solid and a viscous liquid — a rare and remarkable property that holds the secrets of self-healing materials. The discovery could one day help scientists design self-repairing bridges and self-assembling modular robots, said co-author David Hu, a mechanical engineer at Georgia Tech, at the American Physical Society’s fluid dynamics conference in Pittsburgh.
www.wired.co.uk
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-11/26/cabbage-quest
Cabbage Quest: Assign cabbages and improve games with a purpose
By Philippa Warr
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology are using a game called Cabbage Quest to investigate how scoring systems work in games with a purpose. Games with a purpose (GWAPs) are games that use the actions taken by players to give information to computer systems. It’s a way of outsourcing parts of a computational project to humans by gamifying them. In this instance the researchers are looking at ways to improve the process, providing both better player experiences and improving the quality of data collected.
www.hpcwire.com
Opening Up the Accelerator Advantage
Tiffany Trader
Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology and University of Southern California will receive nearly $2 million in federal funding for the creation of tools that will help developers exploit hardware accelerators in a cost-effective and power-efficient manner. The purpose of this three-year NSF grant is to bring formerly niche supercomputing capabilities into the hands of a more general audience to help them achieve high-performance for applications that were previously deemed hard to optimize. The project will involve the use of tablets, smart phones and other Internet-era devices, according to David Bader, the lead principal investigator.
www.eetimes.com
http://www.eetimes.com/author.asp?section_id=36&doc_id=1320233&itc=eetimes_sitedefault
3D Stacks Need Lower Costs, Broader Backing
Herb Reiter, President, eda 2 asic Consulting
More than 200 packaging experts from 11 countries recently discussed how interposers and IC packaging technology can contribute to maintaining the pace of semiconductor innovation. Their conclusion was the technology for 3D chip stacks is ready, but we need lower costs. At the third annual interposer workshop hosted by Georgia Tech’s Packaging Research Center (PRC) packaging specialists such as Amkor and ASE clearly stated they are ready to assemble and test interposer-based designs. Globalfoundries detailed its strategy to partner with such OSATs for implementing these designs.
Editorials/Columns/Opinions
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/MOOCs-Are-Usefully-Middlebrow/143183/
MOOCs: Usefully Middlebrow
By Jonathan Freedman
I was having lunch with a brilliant, hip colleague in the digital humanities when the question of MOOCs came up. “MOOCs are over,” she said. “Administrators haven’t figured it out yet, but everyone else knows.” My tech-savviest administrator friend agreed. Having taken two or three online courses to check them out, he admitted it: “MOOCs are a sideshow.”
The problems endemic to MOOCs are well known: the high dropout rate, the variable quality of the offerings, evaluation methods that make educators roll their eyes, stale lectures, and tests that make you remember why high school was such a bad idea.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/blogs/next/2013/11/24/moocs-move-beyond-the-perfect-media-narrative/
MOOCs Move Beyond the Perfect Media Narrative
The media love a good story, a narrative with characters, tension, and conflict. Higher ed rarely provides such narratives, unless they involve students overcoming the odds, or protests over tuition and student debt. For the past two years, the subject of Massive Open Online Courses, or MOOCs, has delivered a compelling narrative about the future of higher ed, at a time when many colleges were struggling to maintain enrollments and stabilize their finances.
www.chronicle.com
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Yale-Experiment/143185/
The Yale Experiment
The surprising history of the idea that graduates’ salaries should determine their student debt.
By Greg Harris and La Keisha Landrum
WWhen Yale University announced in 1999 that it was writing off the remaining debt from its 1970s experiment in student-loan reform, the Tuition Postponement Option, it seemed to mark the end of an era. The TPO, as it was called, had allowed students from 1971 to 1978 to attend Yale without paying the full costs upfront, instead collectively pledging a portion of their future incomes to the university.
Education News
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/57723/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=4bc0fbde71aa4e1587a56af20c2bb940&elqCampaignId=144#
Making the Right Cuts in Higher Education
By Brian C. Mitchell
CBS News recently reported that a number of colleges and universities had or planned to cut their sticker prices significantly. CBS noted that the reported tuition price for independent colleges and universities was slightly over $30,000 per year—or up about $1,100 since last year. These numbers translated into a 2.9-percent increase or the lowest collective tuition increase in 40 years. Consumers need to think through a number of points before applauding this decision as a panacea to address high sticker prices.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/27/nyu-and-uaw-agree-terms-election-teaching-assistant-union#ixzz2lpwnF1Cu
Union Election, Not NLRB Vote
By Scott Jaschik
Graduate teaching assistants at New York University could be represented by a union as early as next year, under a deal announced Tuesday afternoon. Under the deal between NYU and the United Auto Workers, an election is expected next month on whether graduate teaching assistants would like to be represented by the UAW. If they vote yes, as is expected, NYU would become the first private university since 2005 with unionized TAs.
www.diverseeducation.com
http://diverseeducation.com/article/57701/?utm_campaign=Diverse%20Newsletter%203&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Eloqua&elq=4bc0fbde71aa4e1587a56af20c2bb940&elqCampaignId=144#
Tribal Colleges Face Unique Recruiting, Retention Challenges
By Helen Hu
…There are 37 tribal colleges in the country, which tend to be in remote locations and serve poor populations. Many of the students stick with their education, sometimes despite great odds, to get their degrees and certificates. But too many drop out, the colleges say, due to a long list of reasons: financial difficulties, family responsibilities, a poor high-school education, lack of self-confidence, ignorance about how college works, doubting that a degree can help get a job or even the people they associate with. Officials with the American Indian Higher Education Consortium say their data on the colleges’ retention rates is unreliable because the schools use varying criteria. The consortium should have more meaningful, consistent data by this spring, they say. In any case, tribal colleges say they can do a better job of retaining students and are exploring various approaches, such as using grants to fund their efforts in some cases.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/27/institutions-recruit-students-reach-students-social-media#ixzz2lpxKAmCF
Experts of Engagement
By Carl Straumsheim
Keeping up with the latest social media trends is time-consuming even for digital natives, which is why some institutions have outsourced the task to experts in the field. When universities examine how to reach students online, some of the people behind the efforts are often therefore students themselves. …College and university Facebook and Twitter accounts may yet boast the highest number of followers, but measured by engagement, social media managers say the attention has shifted to platforms that are optimized for mobile use and excel at one task — like Instagram with photography, for example. By creating and maintaining Instagram accounts, universities have found a simple — not to mention free — way to interact with students where email and other forms of communication could go unnoticed.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/27/study-tracks-attrition-rates-stem-majors#ixzz2lpx2PCWo
STEM-ming the Tide
By Megan Rogers
About half of bachelor’s degree candidates in science, technology, engineering and math leave the field before completing a college degree, according to a report from the U.S. Education Department’s National Center for Education Statistics. That might seem high, but it roughly tracks the rate at which students in other majors — like humanities, education and health sciences — switched majors or dropped out of college, too, the study found.
www.insidehighered.com
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/11/27/australian-university-employees-weigh-plan-tie-raises-institutional-performance#ixzz2lpxoTkyA
Betting on Performance
By Julie Hare for The Australian
Employees at Australian university will vote this week on a proposal to tie their raises to the university’s financial results, with a bonus pool possible. …Writing in The Australian newspaper, Canberra Vice Chancellor Stephen Parker says staff members could expect to receive bonuses of about $2,400 each, with the plan giving the greatest proportional benefits to lower paid staff. Annual pay increases also are linked to federal grants and indexation, rather than a set predetermined increase.