Sunday, February 15, 2009

Sunday Musings

* I searched my gmail for "cpm". Bad idea! I was looking for CPM 09 conference related email, but ad auction researchers know what my mailer pulled out in large numbers.

* After flip-flop-flips, exactly how much does the stimulus package provide for basic research? Blogs reveal: $1 billion total for NASA; $3 billion total for National Science Foundation (NSF); $2 billion total for Science at the Department of Energy including $400 million for the Advanced Research Projects Agency—Energy (ARPA-E); $830 million total for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA). There is a clause that gets the money spent quickly, like in a few months, I hear.

* Sunday without Times? Neah. What are great green CS problems? I was reminded of this by Thomas Friedman's OP-ED piece about a ride through India in an electric car, discovering local, green innovations. (btw, where in India can you charge an electric car for 6 hours a day? :))
“Why did this tour happen?” asked Ringwald. “Why this mad, insane plan to travel across India in a caravan of solar electric cars and jatropha trucks with solar music, art, dance and a potent message for climate solutions? Well ... the world needs crazy ideas to change things, because the conventional way of thinking is not working anymore.”

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5 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

At the ITA workshop, there was a panel discussion on funding and Sampath Kannan mentioned the following. The house version wanted NSF to spend the 3B in 4 months, while the senate version wanted NSF to spend the money in a year. The final version was passed the day of the panel discussion, so Sampath did not know the final time frame set by the congress to spend the money.

1:58 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Any more details about the impact of stimulus on NSF funding in theory of computing?

4:35 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Thanks to Atri for the update. Wonder if Sampath mentioned anything specific to theory. I am not in the loop and dont have any specific info.
-- metoo

6:17 PM  
Blogger Unknown said...

Here are some other things that Sampath mentioned:

(*) Someone asked about the increase in funds for specific units at NSF. The 3B is about a 50% increase in the annual NSF budget, which Sampath said would translate to roughly the same increase for each unit. He did not say anything specific about ToC as far as I remember.

(*) Almost all of the grant proposals for 2009 are already in. He said that most probably this would mean that they'll try to fund those proposals at a higher rate and augment existing grants with more students/postdoc. However, they might also post fresh cfp's.

8:01 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Muthu asks "What are great green CS problems?" If anyone would like to contribute to the process of answering this question for NSF, I encourage to attend the NSF Workshop on the Science of Power Management: http://scipm.cs.vt.edu/ The output of the workshop will be a report that will presumably form the basis for a call for proposals in this area in the Fall. Email me if you are interested.


Cheers,
Kirk Pruhs

2:35 PM  

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