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(01/28/14 5:35am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Robert Nickelsberg has been inside Al Qaeda’s training camps, and he has stood feet from Taliban soldiers. He has been on the frontline, and he has documented everything he has seen. On Monday, the IU School of Journalism Speaker Series began with Nickelsberg’s presentation on his years of work in Afghanistan war zones. Nickelsberg has worked as a photojournalist for Time magazine and the New York Times.For the last 25 years, on and off, Nickelsberg has documented the struggles in Afghanistan as the Taliban took over the country. He said he arrived just after the Cold War ended. “This was all unfolding in front of you,” he said. “You had the news. As long as you could get the pictures out, you had people’s attention.” Nickelsberg took pictures of warlords, dead infants and destroyed homes. He photographed refugees and their struggle to combat the constant violence in their homeland. He also met some of Bin Laden’s close allies, gaining further insight into the Taliban. He said Bin Laden gave money to the farmers and others around him to protect his location. “Bin Laden was very smart,” Nickelsberg said. “Remember, he was an engineer, and he thought like one.”Though Nickelsberg was not in Afghanistan at the time of 9/11, he said as soon as the JFK airport reopened, he was on the first flight back. “9/11 wasn’t a surprise to me,” Nickelsberg said. “I knew exactly where it came from.” He has documented his years of work in his 2013 book, “Afghanistan: A Distant War,” a collection of photos and essays.After the talk, Nickelsberg opened the floor to questions from the audience members. Many wanted to know how he dealt with absorbing all the death and destruction.“You kind of hold your breath for a second and then go about your business,” Nickelsberg said. “You must remain strong because the story needs to get out.” He said that after his years of work in Afghanistan, he has developed a new threshold for what he can and cannot handle.“The camera does protect you a little bit when you go to the front of a situation like that,” he said. Bari Goldman is a freshman majoring in journalism who attended the presentation. She said she was inspired by Nickelsberg’s talk and has considered pursuing photojournalism as her career. “This man clearly has a way with pictures, but he’s just as good with words,” Goldman said. “I’m definitely considering it now.” Nickelsberg said that Afghanistan has made some progress recently. Schools are open again, literacy rates have gone up and girls’ schools are being formed. However, he said as Americans threaten to leave the country completely, rumors are floating around of a Taliban comeback. “In my opinion, we need to stay engaged in Afghanistan,” Nickelsberg said.
(01/10/14 5:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Starting in fall 2014, students can choose to room in furnished campus apartments with members of the opposite sex.These “gender-blind” apartments have been offered in the unfurnished apartments for the last 20 years, originally reserved for students with families. Next semester, the option will also be offered in Union Street Center, Willkie Residence Center and Collins Living-Learning Center’s Hillcrest Apartments. Sara Ivey Lucas, assistant director for housing assignments, has worked with student representatives from the IU Residence Halls Association for the past three years to have a proposal for gender-blind housing in furnished apartments approved. Lucas said gender-blind housing in Union Street Center has been in demand since the building opened five years ago. “It came to me and my staff from students, not necessarily campus student leaders,” Lucas said. Lucas said there is no possibility of a student being randomly assigned a roommate of the opposite sex. Students will not be paired with a roommate of the opposite sex unless they make a specific request.“Our goal is to only provide it to people who specifically ask for it and have set up specific relationship parameters,” Lucas said. “We don’t want anyone to be surprised by it.” If students do not have enough people to fill their room and are still interested in co-ed living, Lucas suggested using social media to find roommates. Lucas said these housing options were approved for gender-blind living because they feature single bedrooms and are upperclassmen housing. “They are environments where we know that students are coming in knowing what a roommate relationship looks like, with a little more experience than a traditional freshman might approach those questions and issues,” Lucas said. “That’s kind of a trend nationally in terms of how campuses are entering into this issue.”Marianna Eble, the president of RHA in 2011 and 2012, was part of the team of students that identified gender-blind housing as an important issue to students. “It was the next level of inclusion,” Eble said. “IU prides itself on being a mecca for diversity, and we offer hundreds of different languages and classes. Why not include as many possible options for housing as we can?”Eble said the biggest problem her team faced was logistics rather than backlash about the morals of a men and women living together. She said RHA determined issues such as what the gender ratio would be within the rooms, and whether a leaving roommate would have to be replaced with a member of the same sex. Eble said she hoped the next step would be the option of alternating male and female rooms in the dorms, instead of a divide between the two sections on co-ed floors. Residential Programs and Services did a trial run this year in one apartment in Union Street Center. Richard Milford, a senior British exchange student, lives with three sophomore girls in Beech Hall. After Milford’s expected roommates “never showed up,” he said he met the three girls at a party and they asked him to move into their four-person apartment. “The dynamic is very different. I feel much guiltier if I don’t clear up,” Milford said. “To begin with, it was a little awkward to discover boundaries of action and conversation. And for the love of God men, avoid all drama. But other than that it has been an absolute delight so far, and I am strongly in favor of it.” Though RHA discussed expanding this option and making all RPS housing gender-blind, surveys showed that it was not in demand campus-wide, Lucas said. “It doesn’t seem to be a highly desirable thing for our incoming freshman,” she said. “Until it becomes something that a significant number of people want, it’s not something that is financially viable.”
(01/09/14 9:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Danielle castonzoStarting in Fall 2014, students can choose to room in furnished campus apartments with members of the opposite sex.These “gender-blind” apartments have been offered in the unfurnished apartments for the last 20 years, originally reserved for students with families. Next semester, the option will now also be offered in Union Street Center, Willkie Residence Center and Collins Living-Learning Center’s Hillcrest Apartments. Sara Ivey Lucas, assistant director for housing assignments, has worked with student representatives from the IU Residence Halls Association for the past three years to have a proposal for gender-blind housing in furnished apartments approved. Lucas said gender-blind housing in Union Street Center has been in demand since the building opened five years ago. “It came to me and my staff from students, not necessarily campus student leaders,” Lucas said. Lucas said there is no possibility of a student randomly being assigned a roommate of the opposite sex, adding students will not be paired with a roommate of the opposite sex unless they make a specific request.“Our goal is to only provide it to people who specifically ask for it and have set up specific relationship parameters,” Lucas said. “We don’t want anyone to be surprised by it.” If students do not have enough people to fill their room and are still interested in co-ed living, Lucas suggested using social media to find roommates. Lucas said these housing options were approved for gender-blind living because they feature single bedrooms and are upperclassmen housing. “They are environments where we know that students are coming in knowing what a roommate relationship looks like, with a little more experience than a traditional freshman might approach those questions and issues,” Lucas said. “That’s kind of a trend nationally in terms of how campuses are entering into this issue.”Marianna Eble, the president of RHA in 2011 and 2012, was part of the team of students that identified gender-blind housing as an important issue to students. “It was the next level of inclusion,” Eble said. “IU prides itself on being a mecca for diversity, and we offer hundreds of different languages and classes. Why not include as many possible options for housing as we can?”Eble said the biggest problem her team faced was logistics rather than backlash about the morals of a men and women living together. She said RHA determined issues such as what the gender ratio would be within the rooms , and whether a leaving roommate would have to be replaced with a member of the same sex. Eble said she hoped the next step would be the option of alternating male and female rooms in the dorms, instead of a divide between the two sections on co-ed floors. To see how the gender-blind housing would work, Residential Programs and Services did a trial run this year in one apartment in Union Street Center. Richard Milford, a senior British exchange student, lives with three sophomore girls in Beech Hall. After Milford’s expected roommates “never showed up,” he said he met the three girls at a party and they asked him to move into their four-person apartment. “The dynamic is very different. I feel much guiltier if I don’t clear up,” Milford said. “To begin with, it was a little awkward to discover boundaries of action and conversation. And for the love of God men, avoid all drama. But other than that it has been an absolute delight so far, and I am strongly in favor of it.” Though RHA discussed expanding this option and making all RPS housing gender-blind, surveys showed that it was not in demand campus-wide, Lucas said. “It doesn’t seem to be a highly desirable thing for our incoming freshman,” she said. “Until it becomes something that a significant number of people want, it’s not something that is financially viable.”--dcastonzo@gmail.com
(12/06/13 4:52pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science and director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems at IU, was recognized as a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery last month. He was one of 40 people worldwide selected for this honor, which is awarded for contributions over time to the fields of computing, advanced science and engineering.Menczer said he researches and teaches web science, social networks, social computation and modeling of complex information networks. Menczer said his most influential work during the past 15 years has included designing intelligent web crawlers and social phishing.“I love my research,” Menczer said. “It is exciting to work on technology that can impact so many lives.” Menczer’s other work has included modeling complex information and social networking and analyzing social tagging systems and crowdsourcing techniques.He said his most recent study has involved the investigation of how information and misinformation spread through social media. The ACM Distinguished Member program draws candidates from the top 10 percent of their worldwide membership, with its current membership at more than 100,000. The 2013 Distinguished Members come from countries such as Denmark, Japan, Israel, Italy, China, and the United Kingdom in addition to North America.The ACM Distinguished Member program began in 2006 and honors members who have at least 15 years of professional experience and have made significant strides in the computing field.Vinton Cerf, the president of ACM, described the recipients of this award as “the problem solvers, prophets and producers who are powering the future of the digital age,” according to the ACM website. ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, and it provides a way for professionals in the field to collaborate and share resources. In addition to his work with computer sciences, Menczer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Menczer said his success was due in part to the School of Informatics, his students and his colleagues. “I have brilliant students and colleagues, making it possible to explore many problems from diverse perspectives,” he said. “When you have fun and a great team, you can accomplish a lot. The award is theirs as much as mine.”
(12/05/13 3:42am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Filippo Menczer, professor of informatics and computer science and director of the Center for Complex Networks and Systems at IU, was recognized as a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery last month. He was one of 40 people worldwide selected for this honor, which is awarded for contributions over time to the fields of computing, advanced science and engineering.Menczer said he researches and teaches web science, social networks, social computation and modeling of complex information networks. Menczer said his most influential work during the past 15 years has included designing intelligent web crawlers and social phishing.“I love my research,” Menczer said. “It is exciting to work on technology that can impact so many lives.” Menczer’s other work has included modeling complex information and social networking and analyzing social tagging systems and crowdsourcing techniques.He said his most recent study has involved the investigation of how information and misinformation spread through social media. The ACM Distinguished Member program draws candidates from the top 10 percent of their worldwide membership, with its current membership at more than 100,000. The 2013 Distinguished Members come from countries such as Denmark, Japan, Israel, Italy, China, and the United Kingdom in addition to North America.The ACM Distinguished Member program began in 2006 and honors members who have at least 15 years of professional experience and have made significant strides in the computing field.Vinton Cerf, the president of ACM, described the recipients of this award as “the problem solvers, prophets and producers who are powering the future of the digital age,” according to the ACM website. ACM is the world’s largest educational and scientific computing society, and it provides a way for professionals in the field to collaborate and share resources. In addition to his work with computer sciences, Menczer is a Senior Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute. Menczer said his success was due in part to the School of Informatics, his students and his colleagues. “I have brilliant students and colleagues, making it possible to explore many problems from diverse perspectives,” he said. “When you have fun and a great team, you can accomplish a lot. The award is theirs as much as mine.”
(12/04/13 3:09am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Map makers around the world have created maps to analyze everything from character interactions in “Lord of the Rings” to the history of science fiction for an IU School of Informatics project called “Places and Spaces: Mapping Science.”Informatics researchers at IU are collecting an assortment of these maps to make scientific data more fun and accessible to the general public.Project curator Todd Theriault and Katy Börner, professor and director of the IU Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center, presented their research on data mapping for the “Places and Spaces” project Tuesday night.Their presentation was shown through the monthly Science Café Bloomington series for which diverse scientists come to Bloomington and present their research in an informal and relatable way.Börner started “Places and Spaces” in 2005.The project focuses on visualizing data in maps that can be read and understood by anyone, even non-experts. It involves 70 map makers from around the globe, Börner said.“As an engineer, I like to build things. I like to make things,” Börner said. “Typically as a professor at a college, you don’t get to make things. You just publish things.”The maps covered diverse topics — from movie character interactions to international priorities, as inferred from Wikipedia searches by country.One of the maps focused on different styles of manga art based on shading and stylization of the page. The map can be used to see what areas of manga are more popular and what areas have yet to be created.The manga art map was part of a series geared toward children.Börner said that by presenting the information in maps, this scientific data can become available and accessible to a much wider range of people, including kids as young as 12.“This data was meant for a very scientific audience, and now it’s meant for my mom and kids,” Börner said. “It’s for anyone.”Another map, called “U.S. Mood Variations Inferred from Twitter,” showed what regions of the country were feeling on a typical day. The scientists used combinations of terms from tweets to infer what mood the user was feeling.The Science Café series is free and open to the public.The event was in the upstairs room of Finch’s Brasserie.There were about 20 people in attendance eating at small tables and calling out questions whenever one came to mind.Alex Straiker was one of the founders of the Science Café series in Bloomington.He said he saw his first Science Café event in Seattle and was excited about bringing the series to Bloomington.“We have the resources, we have the faculty, we have a lot of scientists and researchers,” Straiker said. “Bloomington is not huge, but there’s enough of a community here. The idea is to share with community and to build a bridge with the community and the rest of the public.”Harold Ogren and his wife, Denise, are regular members of the audience at the Science Café.Harold is a former physics professor at IU and was part of the team of international scientists who discovered the Higgs boson particle.“Most of the talks are very interesting. It’s also a good opportunity to come out and have a great pizza,” Ogren said.The next Science Café will be Jan. 29.“This is a really nice resource for those who may not be specialists in science,” Theriault said.
(11/12/13 4:26am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Students and professors trickled into Woodburn Hall, looking around at the screens lining the front of the room and the rows of empty tables, serving as seats for incoming visitors. Colleagues and presenters from the School of Informatics and Computer Sciences milled around the cluttered room, swapping research updates and wishing each other luck on their upcoming presentations. The SOIC’s Cyberinfrastructure for Network Science Center held an open house on Monday for students and faculty interested in the CNS’s newest technologies. Attractions included hands-on demonstrations, talks with experts in the business and a viewing of the award-winning short film “Humanexus: Knowledge and Communication Through the Ages.” CNS specializes in repurposing big data by analyzing data and recreating it visually, making it more easily accessible to the public.The IU School of Informatics and Computing operates the center, which is located in Herman B Wells Library.Katy Börner, professor of information sciences, informatics and statistics, and director of the CNS, organized the event to show the work of CNS interns and faculty. “What we are trying to achieve with this open house is to help people understand how to make better sense of data and learn to use advanced tools that are actually easy to use,” Börner said. “I believe that being able to generate and understand data is as important as being able to read and write.” Scott Emmons, a CNS intern and high school junior from Bloomington High School North, presented his research on predicting consumer purchases based on consumer demographics.“Once you go from data to space, the relationship between the products becomes clear,” Emmons said. Emmons, by far the youngest speaker of the group, got his internship through the service learning program at his high school. He said that because of this internship, he is considering attending IU after high school. Ali Jafari, an IUPUI professor who also created OnCourse, presented his work at the open house. His new project is CourseNetworking, an online service that he described as “academic social networking.” Jafari said that CourseNetworking combines learning management services with social networking aspects, making it a more “engaging” and “student-driven” resource. This service is free and available to students worldwide. “We’re trying to make learning really exciting,” Jafari said. In addition to research presentation, the open house provided information on the Information Visualization MOOC course, the first of which was launched January 2013. This graduate-level class provides a foundation on the art of information visualization.The first course had 1,780 students enrolled from 93 different countries. Most of the students were from the United States, India, Canada, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands. Lecturer Scott Weingart will teach the spring 2014 course.For this coming semester, there are some proposed extensions to the course material, including information visualization for the digital humanities and statistics. Gabriel Zhou, a Ph.D student in Computer Sciences, said he attended the event because he wanted to see his colleagues and hear Börner speak. “I’m also doing info-based research so the demos were beneficial to my own research,” Zhou said. After the presentations, members of the audience mingled with the speakers.“Ultimately, I believe anyone can make sense of data,” Börner said. “Just like anyone can cook, anyone can map and visualize data and make sense of it.”
(10/29/13 3:23am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Technology is a growing force in modern society, and women need to be more involved, said Moira Gunn, National Public Radio host. Gunn delivered the keynote address at the official launch of the IU Center of Excellence for Women in Technology on Monday in the IU Auditorium. The talk, titled “Life Choices in a Digitally Connected World,” focused on technology’s growing influence and how women’s strengths should be harnessed and taken advantage of in the technology field. A former NASA computer scientist and engineer, Gunn is host of the NPR show “Tech Nation” and its regular segment BioTech Nation. She was also the first woman to earn a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Purdue University.Gunn has a saying on her radio show: “If God didn’t make it, it’s technology.” She explained most people do not realize how broad of a field technology is and what effect it has on society. After she received her Ph.D., Gunn said she expected her accomplishment to “open the floor for women’s involvement in technology.” However, the next woman to receive a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering did not graduate until 17 years later. Gunn said the underrepresentation of women in technology could lead to a flaw in design of new innovation because the designs won’t represent all stakeholders.Gunn also noted though people often avoid the subject, there are neurological differences between men and women that can affect their involvement in the technology field. While men tend to use the left side of their brains, which includes language and math skills, women tend to be dominantly right-brained, which includes art, science and perception skills. She said the CEWiT program could use these differences to its benefit.“This program needs to find things that women are good at that contribute to the whole,” Gunn said. Though technology has been considered a “traditionally male-skilled career,” Gunn said employers need to take advantage of the skill set women have to offer. For example, women tend to be better at perception and working in teams. Gunn said in addition to a shortage of women, female hesitation to try new things is a problem in the field today.“For all those people who are going to do something for the first time, they risk not being accepted,” Gunn said. “You have to see your abilities, see your opportunity, and not worry if you are accepted or not.” Gunn said she was hopeful programs like CEWiT would be beneficial to women in technology. Jaclyn Nora, a senior studying information and process management, attended the Monday lecture and said she was impressed with Gunn’s experiences. “I thought it was inspirational to see someone who has done a lot of innovative things as a woman in the field,” Nora said. “That’s what I see as the biggest challenge as I go into this field is being innovative.”The talk also included remarks from Provost Lauren Robel, who said she has been a strong supporter of CEWiT and women’s involvement in the technology field. “Technology seems almost recession-proof,” Robel said. “This is an area of high demand, high growth and extreme potential, and women deserve to be on the table.”