Data-Intensive Computing in the 21st Century

The deluge of data that future applications must process—in domains ranging from science to business informatics—creates a compelling argument for substantially increased R&D targeted at discovering scalable hardware and software solutions for data-intensive problems

Advanced Cyberinfrastructure for Science, Engineering, and Public Policy

Progress in many domains increasingly benefits from our ability to view the systems through a computational lens, i.e., using computational abstractions of the domains; and our ability to acquire, share, integrate, and analyze disparate types of data. These advances would not be possible without the advanced data and computational cyberinfrastructure and tools for data capture, integration, analysis, modeling, and simulation. However, despite, and perhaps because of, advances in "big data" technologies for data acquisition, management and analytics, the other largely manual, and labor-intensive aspects of the decision making process, e.g., formulating questions, designing studies, organizing, curating, connecting, correlating and integrating crossdomain data, drawing inferences and interpreting results, have become the rate-limiting steps to progress. Advancing the capability and capacity for evidence-based improvements in science, engineering, and public policy requires support for (1) computational abstractions of the relevant domains coupled with computational methods and tools for their analysis, synthesis, simulation, visualization, sharing, and integration; (2) cognitive tools that leverage and extend the reach of human intellect, and partner with humans on all aspects of the activity; (3) nimble and trustworthy data cyber-infrastructures that connect, manage a variety of instruments, multiple interrelated data types and associated metadata, data representations, processes, protocols and workflows; and enforce applicable security and data access and use policies; and (4) organizational and social structures and processes for collaborative and coordinated activity across disciplinary and institutional boundaries.Comment: A Computing Community Consortium (CCC) white paper, 9 pages. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1604.0200

March 2015 progress report

Cyberinfrastructure is broadly defined as the human and technological support framework for advanced data acquisition, data storage, data management, data integration, data mining, data visualization, data curation and other computing and information processing services within the research environment. MU's CI Council continued to work diligently throughout 2014 to understand the CI needs of researchers at MU and to assure research CI investments are coordinated, focused, and leveraged where possible. The University of Missouri is becoming a leader in research CI, and is gaining renown for our faculty leadership through the CI Council. MU is one of only a handful of leading universities who have the highest speed (100 gigabits per second) connections to Internet2 - the Internet dedicated to research and education. Advanced Layer 2 Services provide MU researchers scalable and flexible global access to an open exchange network where the most demanding data-intensive investigations can be conducted. MU researchers can build short or long-term Layer 2 circuits between endpoints on the Internet2 Network and beyond. The Advanced Layer 2 Services are described in this publication: Backbone of 21st Century Research. Looking ahead, momentum is building, and increased faculty participation is welcome - particularly in refining MU's CI plan and in communicating the availability of existing resources - at the campus level and beyond

How Does Technology Affect Skill Demand? Technical Changes and Capital-Skill Complementarity in the 21st Century

This paper attempts to examine technology’s impact on the labor market through the lens of skilled labor. Technical changes in the late 20th century are skill-biased in nature, because they are found to complement with skilled labor who are adept at adopting new technologies. However, recent studies document a lower demand for high-skilled labor in the 21st century, compared with the late 20th century. Are technologies starting to substitute for human skills instead of complementing them? Drawing on the wage share data from 1975 to 2015 for 18 sectors in the United States, I find strong and robust evidence of complementary relationships between technical changes and demand for skilled labor. Furthermore, my results suggest that technologies have become more skilled-biased, not less, in the 21st century

Virtual Astronomy, Information Technology, and the New Scientific Methodology

All sciences, including astronomy, are now entering the era of information abundance. The exponentially increasing volume and complexity of modern data sets promises to transform the scientific practice, but also poses a number of common technological challenges. The Virtual Observatory concept is the astronomical community's response to these challenges: it aims to harness the progress in information technology in the service of astronomy, and at the same time provide a valuable testbed for information technology and applied computer science. Challenges broadly fall into two categories: data handling (or "data farming"), including issues such as archives, intelligent storage, databases, interoperability, fast networks, etc., and data mining, data understanding, and knowledge discovery, which include issues such as automated clustering and classification, multivariate correlation searches, pattern recognition, visualization in highly hyperdimensional parameter spaces, etc., as well as various applications of machine learning in these contexts. Such techniques are forming a methodological foundation for science with massive and complex data sets in general, and are likely to have a much broather impact on the modern society, commerce, information economy, security, etc. There is a powerful emerging synergy between the computationally enabled science and the science-driven computing, which will drive the progress in science, scholarship, and many other venues in the 21st century

Pre-service teachers use e-learning technologies to enhance their learning

The purpose of this study was twofold. The primary purpose was to improve pre-service teacher education by using technology to help pre-service teachers bridge the gap between academic preparation and practice. The secondary, but still important, objective was to familiarize pre-service teachers in the use of technology to support their future pedagogical activities. Therefore, this research sought to develop a method for training undergraduate students in designing, implementing, and evaluating lesson plans to solidify the relationship between research, pedagogy, and teaching practice. Specifically, this study investigated the implementation of e-learning as a method of instruction to help pre-service teachers evaluate and improve upon the implementation of their lesson plans during their real world practicum experiences. The study was guided by the following research questions: 1) What successes, challenges, and benefits do university instructors and pre-service teachers experience in using and analyzing video in teacher education methods coursework? 2) In what ways did the use of e-learning help the pre-service teachers improve their teaching during the practicum experience? Results showed that participants reported improved lesson planning, improved lesson implementation, visual interpretations of best practices, modeling, and peer and university instructor feedback as successes of the e-learning project. Challenges included participants’ frustrations of being overworked and overwhelmed with the technical problems associated with e-learning. Overall participants judged the e-learning project as a very positive aspect of their teacher training

Reading in the 21st century; reading at scale

Essay from a festshrift that was originally published in: Reading for faith and learning : essays on scripture, community, and libraries in honor of M. Patrick Graham / edited by John B. Weaver and Douglas L. Gragg. Abilene : Abilene Christian University Press, 2017