Read the research blog Further Findings.
Research Prizes and Honors
[Have you or a colleague won a research-related prize or honor? Let the Research Alert know.]
HISTORY PROFESSOR NAMED 2009 CARNEGIE SCHOLAR
Dr. Denise Spellberg, associate professor of history, has been awarded a two-year grant of up to $100,000 from the Carnegie Corporation of New York for a book project titled “Thomas Jefferson’s Qur’an: Islam and the Founders.”
Spellberg, who is known for her research in Middle East and Islam history, was one of 21 academics named to the Carnegie Corporation’s highly competitive scholar program this year. The 2009 awardees are the fifth class to focus on Islam, bringing 117 Carnegie Scholars devoted to the topic since the program began in 2000.
JOURNAL ISSUE DEDICATED TO ODEN
A special issue of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering has been dedicated to Professor J. Tinsley Oden on the occasion of his 70th birthday. The journal was published last week.
The laudation read, in part, “Throughout his career, John Tinsley Oden has made seminal contributions in many areas of computational mechanics and scientific computation. Accordingly, in honor of his 70th birthday, this special issue of Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering features the latest developments in several areas of computational mechanics and scientific computation to which he has contributed.”
News and Information
GRANTS.GOV BLOG PROVIDES UPDATES ON SYSTEM PERFORMANCE
Find out the status of Grants.gov, the online system for working with federal research grants.
The blog provides the current status of Grants.gov as well as information on technical issues resolved and unresolved.
QuotedUT Researchers in the News
[A sampling of recent quotes by university faculty members and researchers. To be included in this section, let the Research Alert know when you or a colleague have been quoted.]
National Public Radio (NPR)
Talk of the Nation: Science Friday
April 17, 2009
HEADLINE: A Truly Green Energy Source: Algae
[From a Science Friday segment about algae as a fuel source.]
IRA FLATOW (host): But theoretically, then, with all these different kinds (algae), you should be able to find one for everybody.
JERRY BRAND (professor and director of the Culture Collection of Algae): You really would think you could. The problem is the alga does what it wants to do, not what man wants it to do. And living out in nature, it’s very analogous, I would say, to growing wheat.
When farmers, or let’s say hunters and gatherers, first wanted to grow wheat, there was just a few stalks of this stuff, and it probably was enough to support a few people every square mile. But you had to develop new varieties. You had to learn culturing techniques. You had to learn a lot of things before you could really get wheat that was highly productive and useful to make bread and so forth.
Research Opportunities
Important university research deadlines:
Awards and Grants
Limited Submissions
AMERICAN RECOVERY AND REINVESTMENT ACT
The University of Texas at Austin Stimulus Package Web page is online.
—ARRA–DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Recovery Act – Smart Grid Investment Grant Program
(Notice of Intent; announcement expected June 17, 2009)
Deadline: May 6, 2009 (for comments)
—ARRA–NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Recovery Act Limited Competition: Supporting New Faculty Recruitment to Enhance Research Resources through Biomedical Research Core Centers
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, April 29, 2009; Application, May 29, 2009
DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE
NIST 2009 Technology RandD Competition to Address Civil Infrastructure, Manufacturing
http://www.nist.gov/tip/comp_09/2009_ffo_final1.pdf
Deadline: June 23, 2009
DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE
DTRA FY2009 – 2011 Basic Research for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Broad Agency Announcement (BAA)
Deadlines: White Paper, May 13, 2009 (Period 3), Nov. 2, 2009 (Period 4);
Invited Phase II Proposal, July 29, 2009 (Period 3), Jan. 25, 2010 (Period 4)
DoD Gulf War Investigator-Initiated Research Award
Deadline: Sept. 9, 2009
DoD Gulf War Illness Clinical Trial Award
Deadline: Sept. 9, 2009
DoD Gulf War Illness Innovative Treatment Evaluation Award
Deadline: Sept. 9, 2009
Deep Learning (DL)
Deadline: April 14, 2010
DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
Enhanced Geothermal Systems Demonstration
Deadline: May 14, 2009
NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE HUMANITIES
Fellowships
Deadline: May 5, 2009
Summer Stipend
Deadline: Oct.1, 2009
NATIONAL INSTITUTES OF HEALTH
Considerations For The Safe and Effective Use of Iron Interventions In Context of Malaria and Its Co-morbidities
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, May 19, 2009; Application, June 19, 2009
NLM Applied Informatics Grants
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, June 1, 2009; Application, July 1, 2009
Research on Teen Dating Violence
Deadline: June 5, 2009
Collaborative R01s for Clinical and Services Studies of Mental Disorders, AIDS and Alcohol Use Disorders
Deadline: June 5, 2009
Developmental Research in Cancer Prognosis and Prediction
Deadline: June 16, 2009
Exploratory/Developmental Grants Program for Basic Cancer Research in Cancer Health Disparities
Deadline: June 23, 2009
Women’s Reproductive Health Research Career Development Program
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, June 30, 2009; Application, July 28, 2009
Translational Research in Pediatric and Obstetric Pharmacology
Deadlines: Letter of Intent, Aug. 17, 2009; Application, Sept. 16, 2009
NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION
Geomorphology and Land Use Dynamics
Deadline: July 16, 2009
Physics of Living Systems
Deadline: July 31, 2009
Strategic Technologies for Cyberinfrastructure
Deadline: Aug. 13, 2009
Cultural Anthropology
Deadline: Aug. 15, 2009
Research Project
[Let the Research Alert know about your research projects.]
NeTS-NECO PROPOSAL 0830939: PROTOCOL DESIGN FOR DISTRIBUTED DELAUNAY TRIANGULATION AND ITS APPLICATIONS
RESEARCHER: Simon Lam, professor, Department of Computer Sciences
AGENCY: National Science Foundation
AMOUNT: $400,000
Delaunay triangulation (DT) of a set of points in Euclidean space has many applications in different fields of science and engineering. A distributed DT can be used to improve performance for a variety of networks (e.g., P2P, overlay, sensor, and wireless networks) as well as simulation-type applications, including distributed virtual reality systems and multiplayer online games.
The discovery of a necessary and sufficient condition for a correct distributed DT is the basis of protocol design in this project for a dynamically changing system of nodes (in d-dimensional space, d > 1) to construct and maintain a distributed DT. In addition to correctness and efficiency, accuracy is used as a performance metric because it is impossible to maintain a correct distributed DT continually (correctness of a distributed DT is broken as soon as a join, leave or failure occurs). A suite of protocols is designed that recovers quickly from incorrect system states such that a system that has been under churn converges to 100 percent accuracy quickly after churning stops.
Expected results include (i) the design of an improved protocol suite that is an order of magnitude more efficient than existing protocols and still satisfies requirements of correctness and accuracy, and (ii) protocols to construct a distributed Euclidean minimum spanning tree for systems under churn. Network application protocols are also designed for greedy routing, finding the closest node, broadcast, multicast, geocast, and clustering. The performance of these protocols for network nodes with inaccurate (or virtual) coordinates is being investigated.
