Category: Science & Technology
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Taxes, Innovation and Virginia’s Lost Mojo
In 1940 In 1940, technological innovation in the United States was concentrated overwhelmingly in the Great Lakes states, the Northeast, and California. The powerful economic force known as agglomeration — in which geographic proximity boosts the productivity of inventors and researchers — acted to perpetuate those states’ lead. Yet over the following six decades, the…
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UVa’s $30 Million Raid on Tech’s Biocomplexity Initiative
The University of Virginia offered a biocomplexity research professor a 15% pay raise — to $450,000 — plus a rich set of fringe benefits to recruit him from Virginia Tech, according to Freedom of Information Act documents obtained by the Roanoke Times. Chris Barrett, who was promised $30 million in startup funds, left his job as executive director…
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Who Were the Puerto Rico 3,000; How Did They Die?
So, who were those 3,000 Puerto Ricans who died because of Hurricane Maria last year? What killed them? The storm down south and the controversy swirling over our illustrious President’s defensive tweet sent me searching for data. It turns out there is no list of names. There is no accounting of what causes of death…
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AI – Nirvana or Apocalypse (for Virginia)?
Smells like tech spirit – Artificial Intelligence may be on its way to becoming the buzziest buzz-term in the buzzword laden history of the buzz-o-sphere. No prior trend has engendered the societal debate that AI has sparked. Scientists, billionaires, politicians, poets, priests, butchers, bakers and candlestick makers have all gotten into the game. Ok, the candlestick maker reference was hogwash but give that industry…
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Quincy Patterson – Welcome to Virginia (Tech)!
Windy City Blues. The City of Chicago has been much maligned of late, mostly for its high murder rate but also (I suspect) for its loudly liberal mayor – Rahm Emanuel. Emanuel is a favorite target of conservatives. The per capita rate of murder in Chicago is high but far from the highest in the…
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Coming to a Military Near You: Robots, Drones and Artificial Intelligence
On Sept. 26, 1983, Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov was on duty in bunker Serpukhov-15 outside Moscow when sirens began blaring and a red backlit screen flashed a warning. The Soviet Union’s new Oko satellite-early warning system had detected what appeared to be an intercontinental ballistic missile launch from the United States. Then another. Then three…
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21st Century Wealth Creation: block.one
Nine years ago Dan Larimer was broke, living with his parents, driving a 2001 Nissan Altima, and recovering from a messy divorce. Today Forbes magazine estimates his net worth at $600 million. The source of the 35-year-old Virginia Tech graduate’s fortune? Crypto-currency. As the Roanoke Times‘ Jacob Dimmit tells the story, when Larimer was down…
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This Bitcoin Mania Is out of Control
If people want to invest in bitcoin, or invent competing cryptocurrencies, or dedicate their computers to “mining” bitcoin by solving computationally difficult puzzles, well, it’s a free country and they can do what they want. As a political-policy commentator, I would never advocate banning such endeavors. As a social commentator, I am moved to ask,…
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UVa Snags $27.5 Million Computer Research Grant
Thanks to a $27.5 million grant from the Semiconductor Research Corp., the University of Virginia’s Department of Computer Science is tackling one of the most pressing problems in computer science and engineering — the so-called “memory wall,” reports the Daily Progress. As health care, science and technology systems grow more and more data-intensive and analytics…
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When Virginia Universities Fund their Own Research, Where Does the Money Come From?
In the previous blog post, Reed Fawell makes the argument that America’s research universities are subsidizing their R&D programs to the tune of some $18 billion a year. The subsidies, which are especially high among public universities, contribute significantly to cost pressures that drive up undergraduate tuition. There is significant variability among universities and higher-ed systems…
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Does Undergraduate Tuition Subsidize University R&D?
It stands to reason that there should be a rational nexus between the cost of providing a college education and the tuition charged to pay for that education. If the cost goes up, tuition needs to go up as well…. And costs have been going up. Reported per-student educational expenditures at public four-year universities increased…
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Blockchain, Data Analytics, and the Future of Energy and Transportation
Blockchain, a digital ledger in which transactions made in cryptocurrencies are recorded chronologically and publicly, is most closely associated in the public mind with BitCoin, a crytocurrency that is undergoing a mania like the 17th-century Dutch tulip crisis. I venture no predictions about the future of BitCoin, but I’m increasingly reading that blockchain has the potential…
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The Research Crisis in Higher Ed
The modern American research university is in crisis. Perverse rewards and incentives create an unhealthy “hyper-competition” among research scientists and encourage unethical behavior that can lead to bad science. So say Mark A. Edwards, the Virginia Tech professor best known for exposing the high levels of lead in the water in Flint, Mich., and Siddhartha…
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Planning for the Solar Eclipse
by Bill Tracy As a backyard astronomer, here’s my take on why Virginians might want to “get out of Dodge” on August 21. Just like Dodge City, Kan., Virginia will be close to, but not inside the path of totality for the Great American Eclipse. Therefore Virginia will experience a partial solar eclipse. Virginia’s partial…
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A Patch in Time Saves Nine
The WannaCry and Petya cyber-assaults on banks, airports and other businesses in Europe in May used a vulnerability in Microsoft software to infect machines and spread around the world. Microsoft had issued a patch to close the back door months earlier, but many users never installed the update. Ironically, when Microsoft creates a software patch,…