Podcast Series: Innovations in Education

Explore the full series of eCampus News podcasts hosted by Kevin Hogan—created to keep you on the cutting edge of innovations in education.

University’s Facebook experiment makes political waves

A Facebook ad may have driven 280,000 Americans to the polls in 2010.

A University of California (UC) San Diego researcher who helped prove well-placed Election Day Facebook ads could boost voter turnout said social media could be the most effective way to get Americans to the voting booth this November.

A UC San Diego research team on the day of the 2010 midterm elections posted a reminder to vote on the Facebook pages of 61 million Americans. The “Today is Election Day” banner ad linked to polling place information and displayed photos of users’ Facebook friends who had said they voted.

A control group of 600,000 Facebook members did not receive the voting reminder in their news feeds, and another 600,000 were shown a modified version of the Election Day message without the pictures of friends next to the news feed item.…Read More

Researchers vie for supercomputer access

TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability.
TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability.

Officials who run the most comprehensive cyber-infrastructure dedicated to scientific research are accepting proposals for the next cycle of projects headed by academics who require massive computing power to predict earthquakes, detect tumors, and better understand a myriad of technological issues.

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) TeraGrid program allocates more than 1 billion processor hours to researchers every year, and program officials are accepting the latest round of submissions until Jan. 15.

Last month, the committee that decides how TeraGrid’s resources will be distributed among applicants doled out about 200 million processor hours and nearly 1 petabyte of data storage to 100 research teams worldwide. A petabyte is a unit of computer storage equal to 1 quadrillion bytes, or 1,000 terabytes. A terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes.…Read More

Researchers vie for supercomputer access

TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability.
TeraGrid resources include more than a petaflop of computing capability.

Officials who run the most comprehensive cyber-infrastructure dedicated to scientific research are accepting proposals for the next cycle of projects headed by academics who require massive computing power to predict earthquakes, detect tumors, and better understand a myriad of technological issues.

The National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) TeraGrid program allocates more than 1 billion processor hours to researchers every year, and program officials are accepting the latest round of submissions until Jan. 15.

Last month, the committee that decides how TeraGrid’s resources will be distributed among applicants doled out about 200 million processor hours and nearly 1 petabyte of data storage to 100 research teams worldwide. A petabyte is a unit of computer storage equal to 1 quadrillion bytes, or 1,000 terabytes. A terabyte is equal to 1,000 gigabytes.…Read More