3.26.2004
"Los Angeles Times"
Actions Morphs Into Art
Three decades after "Pong" ricocheted into popular culture, video games are bouncing into the rarefied world of fine art. A vocal clique of academics, curators and critics is asking whether digital muscleman Duke Nukem deserves the same study and reverence as, say, a Degas sculpture. But if art is, as novelist Leo Tolstoy once observed, the passing of an experience from one person to another, "Return to Castle Wolfenstein" cannot so easily be dismissed as simple engineering. Celia Pearce, an instructor of game design and Calit2 new media arts layer researcher at UCI, found the game so engrossing that it drowned out the Friday afternoon hum outside her Venice loft. Pearce navigated the game's gothic dungeons on her custom-built laptop giving her insight which included her quote from a graphics perspective, I think this is beautiful.
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3.11.2004
"Irvine World News"
Bartenders know more about you than you think
Regarding Swipe's demonstration of data mining, Celia Pearce, research and external relations manager for Calit2 at UCI is quoted as saying, "One of the things that I like about this is that it's using technology in a very compelling way to look at something that is very everyday that people take for granted," she said. "This data mining phenomenon that is being done by corporations is happening all the time and most people aren't aware of it, meanwhile, everyone is freaking out about the government and the Patriot Act and privacy. But corporations have pretty much unlimited access to us."
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3.10.2004
"89.3 KPCC"
'Swipe' Exhibit Highlights Our Lack of Privacy
A performance art piece at UC Irvine shows how much of our personal information is publicly available -- just with the swipe of our driver's license.
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3.6.2004
"The Feature.com"
Putting Wireless to the Test(bed)
David Pescowitz reports in the online news service on the $5.5 million, NSF-funded project called WHYNET, which includes UCSD and four other UC schools, linking together their wireless testbeds into a "meta-testbed." Calit2 division director Ramesh Rao is quoted saying that "the point of WHYNET is to enable users to go across a single federated testbed and get access to all of the unique capabilities of the various campuses." The article notes that at UCSD, "researchers there have demonstrated cellular-based tele-medicine systems that enable physicians to diagnose stroke patients remotely via mobile audiovisual links." 
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3.4.2004
"National Academies"
National Academy of Sciences Elects Treasurer and Councilors
In a news release, the National Academies announced in Washington, D. C. that the National Academy of Sciences has elected "Ronald L. Graham, Irwin and Joan Jacobs Professor of Computer and Information Science, University of California, San Diego... to a third term as the Academy's treasurer. During his four-year term beginning July 1, 2004, he will continue to be responsible for financial oversight of the Academy and the National Research Council." Graham is also Calit2's Chief Scientist.   
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3.3.2004
"San Diego Union-Tribune"
On tap: a 10,000-volt view of deep oceans
Columnist Neil Morgan writes that the NSF has asked Congress for $200 million to establish Project ORION (Ocean Research Interactive Observatory Network), a network of fiber-optic observatories on the ocean floors. The article quotes Calit2 director Larry Smarr as saying we "watch America's research vehicle maneuver on the surface of Mars, a hundred or two million miles away. But we know far too little about our oceans, which make up two-thirds of Earth and are our last great unknown." SIO director John Orcutt, who leads the project, is also mentioned. 
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2.25.2004
"Technology Review"
Wearable Devices Add Strength
In the February issue of "Technology Review" magazine, Maria Feng, layer leader of Environment and Civil Infrastructure at UCI, is cited as a leader in wearable MEMS technology. 
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2.19.2004
"Medical Research Law & Policy Report"
Inventors Say Automated Cage Monitoring Promises Better Lab Results, Animal Care
According to this Bureau of National Affairs publication, UCSD recently announced that it is developing a system to monitor rats, mice, and other lab animals automatically. "Instead of human eyes, a camera connected to a computer monitors the cages. Pattern recognition software enables the computer to track each animal and monitor its behavior," writes Alexander Otto, about the system dubbed a "Smart Vivarium." Jacobs School computer science professor Serge Belongie, who is leading the Calit2 project, is quoted as saying that "being able to track several animals in the same cage--as opposed a single animal in a single cage--is [new]." 
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2.17.2004
"Reuters"
Hollywood Honours Its Geeks
In a report from Los Angeles reprinted by CNN and other outlets, the news service reported that actress Jennifer Garner "proved her range as actress when a Hollywood audience got to hear the star of ABC's spy drama "Alias" expound on the merits of subsurface light scattering in translucent materials" -- a computer-graphics technology pioneered by UCSD professor Henrik Wann Jensen, an academic participant in Calit2. The article noted that the technology "has been used to make more realistic-looking skin on digital film characters."   
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2.10.2004
"Wired News"
Cool New Ideas to Save Brains
San Diego-based Randy Dotinga reports on the International Stroke Conference held recently, and notes that "researchers from the University of California at San Diego unveiled an Internet-based system to help emergency rooms get expert advice... American doctors have been experimenting with ways to allow faraway doctors to see test results and examine stroke patients through video and computer links. According to a study of the online diagnoses of 25 patients, the Internet link allowed doctors to boost the number of patients given tPA." The StrokeDoc system was co-developed by researchers at the Jacobs School and Calit2. 
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1.26.2004
"San Diego Union-Tribune"
Virtual Pilots
Jan. 25-Helena Bristow typically spends more than two hours a day commuting from her home in Vista to her job at UCSD. So she leapt at the chance when the engineers at work asked her if she wanted to test a free, personalized traffic information service. The traffic-report system, now available to the public at http://traffic.calit2.net, puts San Diego on the cutting edge of mobile traffic directions, part of a growing field known as telematics, which involves technology to help drivers. Engineers at Calit2, the University of California, San Diego-based California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, say theirs is the only such system offering customized traffic reports. 
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1.16.2004
"@UCSD"
Distant Diagnosis
In the inaugural January 2004 edition of a new quarterly magazine published by the UCSD Alumni Association, writer Christopher Vaughn reports on the StrokeDoc project, calling it "a marriage of medicine, computer science and cellular technology [that] brings new hope to stroke victims. The Jacobs School's principal investigator on the project -- ECE professor and Calit2 division director Ramesh Rao -- is quoted as saying "the features and the quality of the system that the physicians were asking for turned out to be quite demanding." 
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1.5.2004
"Electronic Engineering Times"
Between Rock, Hard Place
In the Dec. 22 edition, Ron Wilson reports that "static timing analysis is one of the pilings upon which the whole edifice of modern IC [integrated circuit] design has been erected," but that the assumptions on which the technique is based "may no longer hold water." Jacobs School computer science professor and Calit2 academic participant Andrew Kahng is quoted extensively in the article. 
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