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Hoaxy visualizes how fake news spreads across social media
We're at the point where the proliferation of fake news online has had extreme offline consequences. While Google has poured funds into battling misinformation and Facebook has asked its users to rate headlines for truthfulness, Indiana University is going about things a different way. Hoaxy, a project from IU's Center for Complex Networks and System Research, is a search engine that tracks the spread of fake news stories, visually.
Cancer patient receives a 3D-printed jaw
If you lose your lower jaw to cancer, you don't have many options for prosthetics. At that size, traditional clay is so heavy and unwieldy that you can only wear it for a few hours at a time. Indiana University's Dr. Travis Bellicchi and team have developed a much better alternative, though. He recently gave tongue cancer patient Shirley Anderson a 3D-printed jaw after losing his natural jaw to the side effects of radiation treatments. The digitally-modeled piece is not only much lighter, but far more natural-looking -- the creators could create more natural borders and account for fine details like skin pores. The result is good enough that Anderson could comfortably wear the prosthesis in public without drawing significant attention.
Google releases Course Builder, takes online learning down an open-source road
Google is well-known for projects with unexpected origins. It's almost natural, then, that the code Google used to build a web course has led to a full-fledged tool for online education. The open-source Course Builder project lets anyone make their own learning resources, complete with scheduled activities and lessons, if they've got some skill with HTML and JavaScript. There's also an avenue for live teaching or office hours: the obligatory Google+ tie-in lets educators announce Hangouts on Air sessions. Code is available immediately, although you won't need to be grading virtual papers to see the benefit. A handful of schools that include Stanford, UC San Diego and Indiana University are at least exploring the use of Course Builder in their own initiatives, which could lead to more elegant internet learning -- if also fewer excuses for slacking.
10 Gigabit per-second connection between US and China demoed
You, sir or ma'am, should probably not get too excited. Chances are, this trans-Pacific 10 Gigabit link won't do you any good, personally. On the other hand, researchers working together across the oceanic divide have tons to cheer about. The China Education and Research Network, the National Science Foundation and Indiana University worked together with BGI, one of the largest genomics organizations in the world, to christen the connection by transferring 24 Gigabytes of genomic data from Beijing to UC Davis in under 30 seconds. As a benchmark, the same file was sent between the same locations over the regular ol' Internet and it took over 26 hours. The high-speed link should prove to be a major boon for genetic research and DNA sequencing.
Hedge fund using Twitter to predict stock prices, OK Cupid to meet girls
For some reason, we weren't surprised when Derwent Capital Markets announced plans to launch a hedge fund in February that will trade based on something called "Twitter sentiment," among other things. The science behind it comes from researchers at the University of Manchester and Indiana University, which maintains that there is a correlation between public mood and the Dow Jones industrial average. Apparently, a calm public seems to indicate that the Dow will go up, while an anxious public indicates that the Dow will go down. And according to Johan Bollen, an associate professor of informatics and computing at IU, Twitter posts can be analyzed and used to judge the public mood -- with a greater than 87 percent accuracy. Hit the source link to see him state his case.
