Microsoft Research today announced that it will award $1-million to help pay for projects from 10 universities.

Lisa Hildebrandt, spokeswoman for Microsoft Research, says they received over 200 applications for the A. Richard Newton Breakthrough Research Award, selecting “those that focused on high-risk research that has the potential for large benefits.”

Projects included interdisciplinary research in geology, chemistry, parallell computing and synthetic biology.

A list of the winning projects is available here.—Hurley Goodall

As computer circuitry advances, silicon chips decrease in size. But as transistors get smaller, they tend to leak more electrical current, reducing their effectiveness.

That was one of the conclusions physicists reached at the Condensed Matter and Materials Physics 2008 conference held at the University of London last week.

There is speculation that very soon, silicon transistors won’t be able to support the speed of computers in the future. So researchers at the University of Leeds are seeking out alternative materials to use on circuit boards, such as carbon nanotubes.

Using carbon nanotubes — which are about the width of a molecule of protein — isn’t anything new in the world of transistors. There has been talk of it as early as 2001. The real problem is trying to determine the atomic structure of each nanotube. The atomic structure, which varies with each tube, determines the ...

The University of South Florida has installed software on its network that has helped curb illegal music and movie downloads, according to the Tampa Tribune.

The move comes after 124 students in the past year have been caught using file-sharing software such as Limewire and BitTorrent to download media files illegally.

But while other institutions have used systems that completely block Limewire, BitTorrent, and similar programs, the software that the university has chosen instead redirects students to a Web page which makes them promise not to use the P2P software for illegal purposes. The program was developed by Red Lambda.

Strange as it may seem, file-sharing programs are used for legitimate purposes at times, says Michael Pearce, the university’s vice president of information technology.

“Some schools have taken the approach of, ‘If we see the traffic, we just block it,’” he says. “...

The first-year engineering student who faced expulsion for maintaining a Facebook study group will be able to continue his studies at Ryerson University, in Toronto, according to the The Globe and Mail.

Chris Avenir faced 147 charges of academic misconduct after one of his professors found a Facebook group Mr. Avenir administered where engineering students could get homework help. It was stipulated in the professor’s course that students should work independently.

Mr. Avenir ran into trouble when he wrote on the group’s page that members should “discuss/post solutions.”

The case has stirred hot debate. Some have argued that the group was analogous to an in-person study group — merely a medium for collaboration. In some circles, Ryerson’s actions were branded as Luddite.

Others, however, said that Facebook was a mere distraction from the real issue: that Avenir broke the rules by...

The credibility war rages on in the world of Web 2.0.

Those who say information provided by Internet research tools needs to be vetted have made their case in several ways.

Knol, for example, appears to be Google’s answer to Wikipedia. And for now, while the project is under development, authors can contribute content by invitation only. The plan is to let users rank the wheat among the chaff; the highest-ranking articles would pop up first in a Google search.

A clear example is Mahalo. It’s essentially a search engine run by staff members, who hand-pick links for popular search terms. That’s a familiar concept for academic libraries.

There is resistance to the idea that experts have lost their place in the indiscriminate, user-generated Web 2.0. John Connell, an education-business manager at Cisco Systems, writes in his blog that experts and laymen can coexist on the Web:

“We are not...

With e-mail, cellphones, and online social networking, it often seems like the last thing technology does is induce face-to-face conversations.

With that in mind, the University of Central Florida’s digital-media department has a research lab that examines how live interaction, along with (not in spite of) digital media, can be used for both education and training. The new field of study is called interactive performance.

This weekend the department will play host to the Interactive Performance Conference to show what this new discipline is about.

Jeff Wirth, director of the Interactive Performance Lab, says much of the research works in an “emotion-based framework.”

For example, while traditional video games are goal oriented (“get to the next level”), research in interactive performance focuses on creating games where the success is in human interaction.

“When you go to see a movie,...

Some applicants to Duke University’s graduate school were left feeling a bit exposed.

Triangle Business Journal reports that the grade-point averages of 212 applicants to Duke’s graduate program in physics were accidentally left on a public archive of an e-mail list, and were searchable on Google for three weeks, from January 31 until February 20.

University officials hid the information once they found out about the snafu, and the department chair sent letters informing the applicants of the situation. —Hurley Goodall

A student at Ryerson University, in Toronto, is facing expulsion for running a Facebook study group, the Toronto Star reports.

Chris Avenir, a first-year engineering student, is facing expulsion from the school on 147 counts of academic charges — one for himself, and one for every student who used the Facebook group “Dungeons/Mastering Chemistry Solutions” to get homework help.

University officials say that running such a group is in violation of the school’s academic policy, which says no student can undertake activity to gain academic advantage. Students argue, however, that the group was analogous to any in-person study group.

Of course, this wouldn’t be the first Facebook-related expulsion hearing.

The expulsion hearing is scheduled for Tuesday.—Hurley Goodall

Reports are trickling in about the latest enrollment numbers in computer science from the Computing Research Association.

The latest Taulbee Survey—set to be published in full by May—says that in 2007, undergraduate enrollment in computer-science programs had fallen to half of what it was in 2000 (15,958 to 7,915, to be exact).

However, there’s an inkling that enrollment will stabilize, as the new enrollment numbers flattened in 2006 and increased in 2007. —Hurley Goodall

Though the statistics on Virgil Griffith’s Booksthatmakeyoudumb, which, as Wired Campus reported yesterday, correlates colleges’ average SAT scores with college students’ “favorite book” preferences on Facebook, can be humorous and provocative, it’s interesting to look at how arbitrary the rankings seem.

For example: Ray Bradbury’s dystopian book-burning tome Fahrenheit 451 ranks 96 (average SAT: 893) on the list, falling below another high-school reading-list classic, Of Mice and Men (1007), or just not reading at all (968).

Mr. Griffith, a graduate student at the California Institute of Technology, has released yet another iteration of Facebook number crunching with Musicthatmakesyoudumb. Here’s a look at where some of college students’ favorite bands fall on the SAT spectrum.