The Podium
Blog posts tagged with 'Research'
Friday, February 01
By Brad
Here’s something interesting for your Friday. At GigaOm, Laura Hazard Owen writes about a research project aimed at predicting the future:
Researchers at Microsoft and the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology are creating software that analyzes 22 years of New York Times archives, Wikipedia and about 90 other web resources to predict future disease outbreaks, riots and deaths — and hopefully prevent them.
The new research is the latest in a number of similar initiatives that seek to mine web data to predict all kinds of events. Recorded Future, for instance, analyzes news, blogs and social media to “help identify predictive signals” for a variety of industries, including financial services and defense. Researchers are also using Twitter and Google to track flu outbreaks.
We live in amazing times.
Friday, January 04
By Brad
Over at the Huffington Post, Olivier Dumon looks at how the Internet has revolutionized research and academic publishing. His entire post is worth digging into, but here’s a taste:
Collaboration between researchers in different countries, of the kind we take for granted today, would have been unheard of even as late as WWII. But the decline of the Cold War saw laboratory walls melt away, as a global economy and the rise of the multinational corporation, increased competition and the need to access the best scientific talent in order to build modern economies and address problems that are now global in nature. More than 35 percent of all research papers published today document active international collaboration, a 40 percent increase from 15 years ago and double since 1990. China dominates in cross-border collaborations; Japan and the E.U. are second and third.
Tuesday, July 03
By Brad
“Mobile Network Design and Deployment: How Incumbent Operators Plan for Technology Upgrades and Related Spectrum Needs” is a paper released last week by engineer Peter Rysavy. In it, he examines the lengthy process wireless providers go through to locate new spectrum and put it to use:
Managing wireless networks is a complex process that must balance infrastructure investment with service revenues, capacity with demand, and that must optimally time the deployment of new technologies. Part of this balancing act is acquiring and deploying radio spectrum. Spectrum can neither be immediately acquired, nor can it be immediately deployed. Instead, operators have to phase it into their networks in conjunction with the right technology at the right time over periods that span many years. The fact that operators may have idle spectrum at specific points in time does not mean that they don’t need it, and it does not mean that they don’t intend to use it.
If you’re looking for a smart — and consumable — breakdown of the importance of spectrum, Rysav’s paper is worth digging in to.
Monday, February 13
By Brad
Via Ryan Kim of GigaOm, a new study from Forrester Research reveals just how mobile our lives will soon be:
• 1 billion consumers will own smartphones by 2016 with U.S. users owning 257 million smartphones and 126 million tablets. By 2016, 350 million employees will use smartphones, with 200 million of them bringing their own.
• Mobile spending will reach $1.3 trillion by 2016 or 35 percent of the technology economy with the app market generating $56 billion by 2015.
• Apple, Google and Microsoft are expected to control 91 percent of the U.S. smartphone market and 98 percent of the U.S. tablet market by 2016.
• Businesses are expected to double their spending on mobile projects by 2015.
That’s a lot of data flying through the air. Hopefully our networks will have the spectrum necessary to keep up.
Thursday, December 15
By Brad
That’s how many U.S. households will solely depend on mobile broadband for Internet access by the end of this year, according to new numbers from Strategy Analytics Service Provider Strategies.
Wednesday, September 21
By Brad
Via Talking Points Memo’s Carl Franzen comes a cool story about video game players, AIDS research, and an innovative solution to a problem:
As fanciful as it may sound at first, gamers on Foldit, a crowdsourced, online protein folding simulator from the University of Washington, actually managed to solve a longstanding problem in AIDS research that has vexed scientists for more than a decade. And they did so in about 10 days.
The full story, which involves spatial reasoning skills, structural determination, and something called “folding proteins,” is worth checking out.
Thursday, September 08
By Brad
Via Carl Franzen of Talking Points Memo comes word on a potentially huge breakthrough for mobile broadband:
A team lead by Rice professor of electrical and computer engineering Ashutosh Sabharwal has managed to successfully demonstrate their method of increasing wireless network throughput — the rate of successful message delivery — by 70 percent, with mostly existing mobile device and cell tower hardware.
That ultimately means wireless network providers can provide more customers with faster and smoother transmitting of all data-intensive operations — including calls, video streaming and downloading apps - without having to install expensive new cell towers.
According to the researchers’ findings, the key to such a big increase are devices with multiple antennas. It’s all very complicated, and all very cool.
Thursday, August 18
By Brad
CMIO reports on a new study out of Norway that examines telemedicine and its effect on cutting down travel:
The study found the percentage of avoided travel reported in 12 of the studies, using store-and-forward technology, at 43 percent, while 70 percent of patients avoided travel in seven studies using telemedicine, and in a single study with a hybrid technique.
“A major benefit offered by telemedicine is the avoidance of travel, by patients, their [caregivers] and healthcare professionals,” the authors wrote. “Unfortunately, there is little published information about the extent of avoided travel.”
For more on telemedicine, see our infographic on the 10 Benefits of Health IT.
Monday, May 23
By Brad
Via the BBC comes word on a breakthrough out of Germany:
Researchers have set a new record for the rate of data transfer using a single laser: 26 terabits per second.
At those speeds, the entire Library of Congress collections could be sent down an optical fibre in 10 seconds.
Whoa. The entire article, which uses such brain-scrambling terms as “silicon photonics” and “frequency comb,” is worth checking out.
Monday, November 08
By Brad
Via TechCrunch, marketing analyst company comScore has released new data that finds close to 1.3 trillion — yes, trillion — online display ads reached web users in Q3 of this year alone. The #1 delivery method? Facebook:
According to comScore, the social network led all online publishers in the third quarter with no less than 297 billion display ad impressions, representing 23.1 percent market share.
Monday, September 20
By IIA
The companies in innovative industries do roughly 75 percent of all the business in research and development, according to data from the National Science Foundation. They also employ almost 70 percent of all research and development personnel.
— Mandel, Michael. “The Coming Communications Boom?” Progressive Policy Institute, April 2010. Web. 28 Jul 2010.
Learn more facts in our ever-expanding Broadband Fact Book.
Monday, May 03
By Bruce Mehlman
Research firm Frost & Sullivan has released a new report, “Net Neutrality: Impact on Carrier Investment and Economic Growth,” which examines the possible effect new regulations would have on consumers, the economy, and the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. From the report (which we’ve posted to our site):
After interviews with several carriers as well as several consumer advocacy organizations, we determined that net neutrality was likely to impact the following variables:
Innovation: Net neutrality impacts operator innovation by either providing incentives to develop products and services or to discourage those activities. Based on primary research conducted by this author, the assumption is that the more confusion or restrictions that are placed on an organization, the less likely it is to be creative and, by extension, innovative.
Prospective ARPU: Average revenue per user is a statement of the expectation that particular consumers, both individuals and commercial users, will generate a particular amount of revenue over time. The important point here is not whether the average user will actually generate such revenue, but whether the operator expects the user to do so. It is the expectation of return that motivates an investor to invest.
Non-access Service Revenue: Anything likely to discourage consumers or commercial entities, such as content providers, to subscribe to an operator’s service offerings is likely to decrease the total amount of non-access related revenue that can be generated.
OPEX: Operational expense is the overhead required to deploy, manage and maintain networks. Net neutrality, by potentially increasing the overhead associated with ensuring regulatory compliance or by reducing the efficiency of managing networks could increase OPEX.
CAPEX: Capital expense is the direct cost of deploying networks. In an environment where the revenues associated with services are denied or reduced for operators, CAPEX could be expected to decrease. Contrariwise, if QoS approaches are denied operators, CAPEX could increase as operators overbuild to address traffic growth.
Check out the full report, which should raise a major red flag for the excellent broadband team at the Federal Communications Commission. Rather than getting distracted by divisive new regulations with significant economic risks to consumers, the Commission should drive full speed ahead on those aspects of its Plan more surely focused on broadband adoption and deployment.
Friday, April 30
By Brad
The New York Times highlights a new report from privacy research group the Ponemon Institute that finds when it comes to online advertising, privacy concerns are creating some roadblocks:
Privacy issues have prompted marketers to use online behavioral advertising — based on tracking a user’s Web browsing habits — 75 percent less than they would otherwise, according to a report by the Ponemon Institute, a privacy research group.
The 90 companies and organizations surveyed curtailed their behavioral advertising, even though they estimated the tracking-based ads were 50 percent more efficient in generating sales than conventional online display ads.
“Privacy fears are definitely having an economic impact,” said Larry Ponemon, chairman of the privacy and security research group.
Thursday, April 29
By Brad
We here at IIA are big supporters of innovation — heck, it’s part of our name — but this story from CNN seems just plain nuts:
Livermore, California (CNN)—Scientists at a government lab here are trying to use the world’s largest laser—it’s the size of three football fields—to set off a nuclear reaction so intense that it will make a star bloom on the surface of the Earth.
The Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory’s formula for cooking up a sun on the ground may sound like it’s stolen from the plot of an “Austin Powers” movie. But it’s no Hollywood fantasy: The ambitious experiment will be tried for real, and for the first time, late this summer.
The scientists working to destroy life as we know it develop the massive laser hope that by capturing the energy emitted from their tiny star they can solve the world’s energy crisis. Stay tuned…
Wednesday, January 27
By Brad
Undersea Internet cables aren’t just for transferring data between continents, at least if researchers from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are right. Reports Engadget:
While they haven’t moved beyond computer models just yet, the group has apparently found that voltmeters attached to the end of an undersea cable are able to detect the small electric field stirred up by tsunamis, which measure around 500 millivolts.
Now that’s cool.
Wednesday, October 21
By Bruce Mehlman
Updated research from both the Information Technology and Innovation Alliance and former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth helps shed new light on just how important investment in the broadband industry is for America’s economy.
Despite differences in methodology, both ITIF and Furchtgott-Roth find that a reduction in investment of just 2 percent by the broadband service industry would mean the loss over over 24,000 jobs. Make that reduction 5 percent, and the loss in jobs leaps to between 47,000 and 78,000 jobs. And a 10 percent drop would mean over 100,000 jobs.
Each year the broadband services sector invest roughly $60-$80 billion — or 80 percent of the Information, Communications and Technology sector investment. With unemployment in America hovering around 10 percent, job losses would be disastrous for our economy. Which is why broadband policies need to ensure that investment in America’s broadband infrastructure is strongly encouraged to continue.
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