CS Staff Invited to Feb. 4 All-Hands Meeting
Computing Sciences Associate Lab Director Kathy Yelick invites all staff to an all-hands meeting at 10 a.m. Thursday, Feb. 4. The meeting will be held in the Bldg. 50 auditorium.
Reminder: Vint Cerf Delivers Wednesday’s Computing Sciences Distinguished Lecture
Vinton G. Cerf, who is vice president and chief Internet evangelist for Google and widely known as one of the “fathers of the Internet,” will »give a Computing Sciences Distinguished Lecture at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 27, in the Bldg. 50 auditorium. He will be addressing “Safety, Security and Privacy in the Internet of Things.”
Assessing the Impact of Human-Induced Climate Change
In recent years, the world has seen seen record droughts, heatwaves, wildfires and flooding. Glaciers are melting. Permafrost is thawing. Some animals are leaving their usual ranges or changing migratory patterns as their habitats change. Scientists know that human activities have raised global temperatures, which impacts these climate-sensitive systems. The bedeviling question is just how much of these impacts are due to human activities and how much are to natural climate fluctuations? Dáithí Stone of Berkeley Lab’s Computational Research Division and Gerrit Hansen of the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany have developed and applied a novel methodology to help answer that question. The resulting study links human-influenced climate change to some two-thirds of atmospheric and oceanic-related impacts. Evidence of human influence on precipitation patterns, however, is still weak. Their work was »published in Nature Climate Change on December 21, 2015. »Read the full story.
Explore Galaxies Far, Far Away at Internet Speeds
No need for hyperdrive: Scientists have released an “expansion pack” for a virtual tour of the universe that you can enjoy from the comfort of your own computer. The latest version of the publicly accessible images of the sky, which can be viewed using an interactive »Sky Viewer tool hosted at NERSC, roughly doubles the size of the searchable universe from the project’s original release in May.
The images for this sky-mapping project, dubbed DECaLS (for Dark Energy Camera Legacy Survey) were taken by the 520-megapixel Dark Energy Survey Camera (DECam).
The scientific aim of DECaLS is to identify a select set of about 40 million galaxies and 2.5 million or more quasars—extremely luminous sources in the distant universe powered by massive black holes—that will be the focus of a ground-breaking project known as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI). »Read the full story.
Cray Supercomputer Moved in 41 Seconds Flat
It really took a few days to move NERSC’s Edison Cray supercomputer from Oakland to its new home in Wang Hall at Berkeley Lab, but you can »see the whole process in just 41 seconds in a newly posted timelapse video.
Berkeley Institute for Data Sciences Holds Open House
On Monday, Feb. 1, 3 – 4pm, the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS) is having an open house and ice cream social to introduce BIDS to the campus community. Whether you are already part of the BIDS community or are completely unfamiliar with what BIDS does, you are invited to learn more about what BIDS does, catch up with fellows and staff, and meet other data science enthusiasts. The social will be held in the Doe Library room 190. »Learn more about the event.
This Week’s CS Seminars
CITRIS Research Exchange: Advances in Digital Medicine with George Savage
Weds., Jan. 27, 2016,12-1pm, Sutardja Dai Hall, Banatao Auditorium, UC Berkeley
George Savage, Proteus Digital Health
One of the biggest opportunities for digital health solutions today is to help bridge the gap in outcomes seen in a controlled clinical environment compared to the real world. Insight and analytics derived from Big Data can help bridge this gap, but it is crucial that we start with Good Data. Good Data is highly personalized information about an individual’s daily health habits and medication taking patterns that helps physicians to develop highly personalized and more effective treatment plans. This talk will feature an introduction to Digital Medicines and spark a dialogue around how Good Data has the potential to shift the focus from drugs and diseases to individual patients, resulting in a new approach to therapy .»Register online by Monday for a free lunch at UC Berkeley.
The CITRIS Research Exchange Seminar Series is a weekly dialogue highlighting leading voices on societal-scale research issues. Each one-hour seminar starts at 12pm Pacific time and is hosted live at Sutardja Dai Hall on the UC Berkeley campus.
Live broadcast at »http://video.citris.berkeley.edu/playlists/webcast/
Safety, Security and Privacy in the Internet of Things
Weds., Jan. 27, 1:30 – 2:30pm, Bldg. 50 Auditorium
Vinton G. Cerf, Google
We are surrounded by an increasing number of Internet-enabled devices. They measure, control and carry out tasks on our behalf. But they are software artifacts and subject to mistakes – leading to risks of penetration, abuse and re-purposing. Think “100,000 refrigerators take over Bank of America!” It is incumbent on software and systems design engineers to think through these seriously negative scenarios to defend these devices and their users from harm. I have more questions than answers but I hope a discussion will produce some new insights. Strong authentication and cryptography may help to solve some of these problems but have their own implementation challenges. The general public has a role to play with regard to achieving access control, for example.