ERCIM News 101
April 2015
Special theme The Internet of Things and the Web of Things
Guest editors Dave Raggett (W3C) and Emmanuel Baccelli (Inria)
LEARNMINER – Advanced Analytics for eLearning
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- Category: Research and Innovation
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by Christian Bauckhage, Markus Ketterl and Ulrich Nütten
LEARNMINER is an interactive social eLearning platform that integrates advanced analytics and linked data processing to assist users in structuring course material. Tools for analyzing crowd behaviour allow instructors to identify overly simple or difficult material and provide means for planning deadlines or tests. LEARNMINER allows for mobile access and provides interactive visualization of learning material and progress.
Online Semantic Analysis over Big Network Data
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- Category: Research and Innovation
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by Chengchen Hu and Yuming Jiang
Mobile applications, web services and social media generate huge data traffic from many sources. This is described as ‘big network data’ with the ‘4V-characteristics’ - that is, variety, velocity, volume and veracity. Analysis on such big network data can discover problems, reveal opportunities and provide advice for the service and network providers for fine-grained traffic engineering with close to real-time adjustment or application acceleration [1].
From Cooling Integrated Circuits to Efficient Electrical Power Generation
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- Category: Research and Innovation
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by Stephan Paredes, Brian Burg, Patrick Ruch, Ingmar Meijer and Bruno Michel
An earlier article in ERCIM News described a system for cooling integrated circuits with re-usable hot water. The result is a sharp increase in energy efficiency and a sharp reduction in the carbon footprint of data centers. The same technique is being applied to photovoltaic electrical energy production, again with a huge gain in system efficiency due to the parallel recovery of waste heat. In hot climates heat from datacenters as well as solar systems is converted into cooling by means of adsorption heat pumps.
VAVID– Handling Big Data
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- Category: Research and Innovation
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by Jochen Garcke, Fraunhofer SCAI
The German VAVID project develops improved techniques for data compression as well as new methods of data analysis, data management and interactive data visualization.25 Years of Python at CWI
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- Category: In Brief
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Announcement
In February an interview with Guido van Rossum was published on the ACM website, celebrating 25 years of Python. This popular programming language originates from CWI in Amsterdam, where Van Rossum designed Python in December 1989 and finished the first working version in the first months of 1990. He named the language after his favourite British comedy series Monty Python's Flying Circus.
Guido van Rossum
Java Bug Fixed with Formal Methods
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- Category: In Brief
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Announcement
Researchers from the Formal Methods group at CWI fixed a bug in programming language Java in February 2015. They found an error in a broadly applied sorting algorithm, TimSort, which could crash programs and threaten security. The bug had already been known from 2013 but was never correctly resolved. When researcher Stijn de Gouw attempted to prove the correctness of TimSort, he encountered the bug. His bug report with an improved version has now been accepted. This version of TimSort is used by Android.
MOOC on “Binaural Hearing for Robots”
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- Category: In Brief
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Announcement
A Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) “Binaural Hearing for Robots” will be available on the platform France Université Numérique from 11 May to 12 June 2015. It will be taught by Radu Horaud, research director at Inria Grenoble Rhône-Alpes.