Scientific programming has become increasingly essential for manipulating, visualizing, and interpreting the large volumes of data acquired in earth science research. Yet few discipline-specific instructional approaches have been documented and assessed for their effectiveness in equipping geoscience undergraduate students with coding skills. Here…

With the global increase of infections caused by antibiotic-resistant bacterial strains, there is an urgent need for new methods of tackling the issue. Genomic analysis of bacterial strains can help to understand their virulence and antibiotic resistance profile. Bioinformatic skills are in great demand across the biological sciences. We designed…

Assessments of new pedagogical practices usually rely on instructor oriented surveys and questionnaires to measure student perceptions of teaching methods; however, fixed response categories in structured questionnaires might bias results. This paper demonstrates a mixed methods approach using open and multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) for a…

Describes (in separate articles) 25 developments in science, technology, and medicine that have potential impact on the near future. They include discoveries related to space butterflies, drugs, twenty-first century software, experimental mathematics, brain drugs, egg development, ultrasmall microchips, the biology of birth, cancer-causing genes,…

To make computing power broadly available and truly friendly, both soft and hard meshing and synchronization problems will have to be solved. Possible solutions and research related to these problems are discussed. Topics considered include compilers, parallelism, networks, distributed sensors, dataflow, CEDAR system (using dataflow principles),…

Discusses whether machines can think in the same sense that humans think. Provides four conclusions based on axioms of differences between computer programs and human minds. Compares claims of strong and weak artificial intelligence. (YP)

Computers, chip technologies, networking, and artificial intelligence all need vast improvement just to take their place as tools for building new computers. Research efforts, progress, and needs in each of these areas are addressed. (JN)

Discusses Japanese endeavors to create a new generation of computers endowed with intelligence, and the U.S. and European responses to these endeavors. Major U.S. efforts have been through private industry and the Defense Advanced Research Agency, while the National Science Foundation has increased support for developing advanced scientific…