This year's themes are:

The Rise of Intelligent Software Systems and Machines
Nano/Bio Interface
Engineering Personal Mobility for the 21st Century
Supply Chain Management

So what is this symposium?

U.S. Frontiers of Engineering is an annual three-day meeting that brings together 100 of the nation's outstanding young engineers (ages 30-45) from industry, academia, and government to discuss pioneering technical and leading-edge research in various engineering fields and industry sectors. Participation is by invitation following a competitive nomination and selection process.

The program provides an opportunity for top-notch engineers, early in their careers, to learn about cutting-edge developments in fields other than their own, thereby facilitating collaborative work and the transfer of new approaches and techniques across fields. Through both formal sessions and informal discussions, the meetings have proven an effective mechanism for the establishment of cross-disciplinary and cross-sector contacts among this country's future engineering leaders.

The slides (and more) from last year's symposium are available, when the themes were:

ID and Verification Technologies
Engineering for Developing Communities
Engineering Complex Systems
Energy Resources for the Future

Some readers may be interested in Alessandro Vespignani's Complex Networks: Ubiquity, importance, and implications.

2006 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium

A sumptuous marvel of Macromedia mastery to accompany the recent rehash on obesity trends.

Dig in, and enjoy! It's your heart, after all!

InVision Guide to a Healthy Heart

By now, I bet almost everybody knows somebody who has joined a social networking Web site ... Americans aren’t exactly suffering from anomie. If anything, a surfeit of connectivity is the curse of the moment ...

We have, in effect, defined intimacy up.

That is not exactly what you would expect in an era of constant communicating. Yet could it be precisely because we’re more plugged in to a disparate array of people who supply us with information when we need it, offer advice and keep us intermittent company, that our standard of genuine closeness has become more exacting? It’s not just that we’re too busy for more than a select few confidants. We may be choosier too.

When one-dimensional, functional relationships are ever more accessible, the desire to be known and to know another from all sides and from inside out may be lodged even deeper.

Confidant Crisis

A new sensor being developed can detect bioweapons in sealed packages from a short distance away—calling to mind Star Trek's handheld scanning devices known as tricorders.

Bioweapon Sensor Mirrors Star Trek Tricorder

As bioengineering becomes easier, and “people start to engineer biology,” we’ll need to worry about new issues.

Will people synthesize pathogens from scratch?

Will groups pool knowledge legally?

Will there be accreditation and oversight of those who create biological systems?

The Implications of Synthetic Biology

* WhyDoPeopleOrganize
o IsSearchThePanacea

* TheProblemWithHeterogeneousInformation
* PrinciplesOfGrok
* WhyIsDataSoHardToGrok
* LookingToThePhysicalWorld
o TheUseOfColor
o ChunkingOverTime
* OneUppingNature

* WhatDoesSuccessLookLike
* RelationshipToOrganizationalParadigms

* OrganizationalParadigms
o 2 and 1/2 classification systems
o The nature of Hierarchies
o The nature of Faceted systems
o Faking Facets in an Hierarchy
o Changing data and the element of Time
o How the cookie crumbles: Hierarchies in a state of nature
o How the cookie crumbles: Facets in a state of nature
o The nature of Tags

* ContentTypesVersusKindsOfItems

* ComplexityIsInTheEyeOfTheBeholder

Chandler - Paper Outline

The following is a story of the Second Law of Thermodynamics* as it applies to human efforts to represent knowledge in ontologies or classification systems...But with a twist...Because knowledge rarely exists in a closed system, because all things are never equal, the best laid plans for orderly arrangements of information disintegrate into disorder. The very structures we build to make Sense of our data turns into Nonsense when, as The Dude (aka Jeffrey Lebowski) would say, "New sh#$ has come to light! Man." And in our unending quest for more information and more knowledge, "New sh#$ is always coming to light...Man" faster than our stiff-legged classification systems can handle. As a result, the systems ultimately reject the new data and what we're left with is a regurgitated mess of bits and pieces strewn across the landscape of your variegated and uncoordinated information gathering and storage devices: email clients, web mail clients, documents, pdas, paper calendars, sticky notes, notepads, envelopes, napkins, the back of your hand and last but not least, your brain.

*The Second Law of Thermodynamics states that in a closed system, entropy or the measure of disorder, always increases. In other words, the end is nigh, so stop filing your email!

Chandler - Story

"I once asked Ivan, 'How is it possible for you to have invented computer graphics, done the first object oriented software system and the first real time constraint solver all by yourself in one year?" And he said "I didn't know it was hard."
    -- Alan Kay on Ivan Sutherland.

Lisa Rein's Tour Of Alan Kay's Etech 2003 Presentation

What Chandler is and isn't

* Chander is a PIM: Personal Information Manager
* Chandler is a platform for an integrated General Information Manager: Documents, Photos, Music
* Chandler is not a feature list or a set of tools for getting things done (ie. toolbar)
* Chandler is a way of getting things done
* Chandler is a way to manage your life information
* More of an approach to life, less of a diet pill

Chandler - Intro

Check it.

iTunes Remote Control (iTRC) is a network remote control for iTunes. It allows you to control iTunes on a remote machine with full track changing support and basic but functional playlist support. All you need to do it enable Remote Apple Events on the computer with iTunes on it and remember its network name.

iTunes Remote Control