CENIC News

I recently became aware of a just published Government Accountability Office (GAO) report on national broadband deployment. The report, issued in mid May, was prepared in response to a request of Henry Waxman, Chairman of the Committee on Energy and Commerce, House of Representatives (CA, 30th District). It is a much more interesting report than I was anticipating, and I thought our readership might be interested in some of the highlights.

The report describes the status of broadband deployment in the US, covers various important legislative and policy acts, and discusses both the policies of the former George W. Bush administration and the evolving policies of the Obama administration. It starts by reporting that the US slipped from 4th in broadband subscribership in 2001 to 15th in 2007 and 2008 among the 30 democratic nations that make up the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). While this information will likely not be a surprise to most of the CENIC Today readership, the history of the actions that brought us to this point is illuminating when reviewed.

The report concentrates, appropriately, on the role of the FCC, but also reports on the roles of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The GAO report points out that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 directs the FCC to encourage the deployment of broadband to all Americans. The report goes on to say that, to this end, the FCC established a minimal regulatory environment for broadband Internet access services, stating that less regulation would promote the availability of competitive broadband services to consumers.

Further, the report states that officials at the OSTP, FCC, and NTIA during the Bush Administration told the GAO that that administration's broadband policy was market-based, that a competitive marketplace would provide the best environment for achieving the US broadband goals and hence, competitive markets should be deregulated. Officials went on to say that the role of the private sector was to fund the deployment of broadband while the role of government was to create market incentives and remove barriers to competition.

The report then concludes that these policies and practices have not been completely effective, though the report is not that quite that direct in its conclusions. According to the report, only 90% of homes have access to broadband, and the gaps are primarily in rural areas since the market does not support private broadband infrastructure investment in low-density areas. Discussions with telecommunications provider companies are cited in which the GAO was told that the cost of deploying broadband infrastructure in rural, low-density areas is the reason that many homes in these areas do not have access.

The report mentions briefly that in March of 2009, FCC and NTIA officials informed the GAO that federal policy on broadband deployment is changing as the new administration and Congress form their telecommunications agenda. Officials highlighted as one example some provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), often referred to as the stimulus bill. In addition to the funding provided in the act for broadband deployment, the GAO report also reminds us that the ARRA also directs the FCC to develop a national broadband plan.

The GAO report is a stark reminder of three things: first, the US does not have universal access to broadband; second, other nations that have followed more specific plans for broadband have achieved higher rates of subscribership than we; and finally, the major challenge remaining is that of creating broadband infrastructure in rural areas where a market-based policy may not provide enough incentives.

The report is clear on how far we have come as a nation and what brought us to this point, how much further we have yet to go, and what it will take to achieve complete broadband availability (additional funding to that provided by the private sector); in this, it provides a great foundation for solving the problem of closing that remaining 10% gap and ensuring broadband access for all Americans.

The coming century promises to be defined in large part by global access to the services that broadband makes possible. Let's hope that the plan to be developed by the FCC as directed in the ARRA provides a clear path for raising the status of the US on the simple measure of broadband access.

As mentioned in the June 2 issue of CENIC Today, preparations are still going strong for the next group of circuit upgrades for California's K-12 and Community College Systems, and we look forward to a new fiscal year full of progress and updates to the CENIC Today readership about the enhanced educational networking for millions of Californians.

The Layer 1 Router Refresh of the HPR tier of the CalREN network is also continuing, with new equipment being installed and the migration of Associate network traffic slated to begin soon.

Lastly, CENIC would like to welcome the Carnegie Mellon University's Silicon Valley campus, located at the NASA Ames Research Center. The connection to the CalREN-HPR network tier has been completed, and final preparations are underway for the campus to begin using it.

Digital media is of course one of the most broadband-dependent industries around; a fifteen minute segment of high-definition video only (without audio) comprises over a Terabyte of data, and even access to lower-quality video such as that enjoyed by millions of users on web sites like YouTube requires some level of broadband access. Generating such content and manipulating the files necessary to do so require even more bandwidth, as does collaboration between groups. And of course, including such materials in a classroom setting, especially when training students and incumbent workers to create and manage such content, requires extremely reliable advanced networking like that provided by CalREN.

This makes the Multimedia & Entertainment Initiative (MEI) a star performer in the world of research & education networking. In the May 1 issue of CENIC Today, readers were introduced to the Media Arts Award Competition for 2009, a statewide competition for all forms of digital arts and media creation open to students throughout California's Community College System and several of the state's high schools as well. As the motivating force behind the annual competition, the MEI has made a vocation of preparing students for careers in all forms of digital media as well as meeting the needs of the industry itself with the continuing education of its existing professional staff.

Twelve years ago when the MEI was founded, the web was brand-new and as the original initiative director John Avakian states, "Interactive was the buzzword. It's been through a few iterations since then." Curriculum development was the MEI's initial focus in a world where digital media was still coming to life, but the MEI's broader goals rapidly settled into a two-part approach of delivering students ready to begin careers in digital media as well as meeting the needs of the industry's existing worker population. "We've always been focused on more than skill development," Avakian says, "but also upskilling and retooling the incumbent workforce." He adds, "It's a big part of why the Initiative has always been so highly respected by the Department of Finance and the Governor's office, that two-fold focus on job development and maintenance."

The award competition itself began in 1999, with the first awards being given out in 2000 both to help recognize student success and to raise awareness among the business community of the quality of work being done by instructional programs. "We were selling ourselves as well as the students," says Avakian. "And what better way to sell the program than to show the amazing quality of work by the students in it?" In the ten years since then, there have been some 3,000 entries from more than sixty different community colleges and high schools.

In action that speaks well of the esteem in which the competition is held by the industry, corporate sponsors have also donated facilities and related equipment in support of the events. The industry community is an integral part of the competition itself as well, with a two-tiered judging process that consists first of a faculty screening followed by a final judging by industry professionals in each award area.

The future course for the MEI lies to some extent with its strong reliance on advanced computing and networking. "Currently, we're actively working to identify partners in the ICT area with whom we can work," Avakian states. As another major industry sector that must meet the challenge of incumbent worker skills training and one on which digital media relies so heavily, ICT, or information and communications technology, is a natural candidate for collaboration with digital media. The MEI is working directly with the Mid-Pacific ICT Center headquartered at City College of San Francisco to identify opportunities.

The future however is far from assured in such uncertain economic times here in the Golden State, especially for the MEI annual awards competition itself, which is in danger of being eliminated. As the first funded director of the MEI beginning in 1997, Avakian is eager to discover new and creative sources of funding for the project before retiring.

Last month's Star Performer was Richard Weinberg, Research Associate Professor at the USC School of Cinematic Arts and, together with former USC Master's student Greg Townsend, winner of the 2009 Innovations in Networking Award from CENIC for Educational Applications for the high-definition, interactive mystery-comedy movie "Alternate Endings."

To learn more about the other Star Performers that CENIC has featured, please visit our website at www.cenic.org.

Among the collaborations taking advantage of high-quality videoconferencing are two that readers of CENIC Today have encountered before: nanotechnology and orthopedics, both favorite subjects of Ed Johanson, past presenter at RIDING THE WAVES OF INNOVATION, the CENIC 2009 annual conference. On June 8, Johanson facilitated yet another international videoconference on the latest advances of nanotechnology being used to study and improve orthopedic implants. Presenters and participants in Kansas, Los Angeles, Sweden, and Brazil discussed topics like bone/implant interfaces and how to create samples for study, reasons for implant failures, creating implants that are integrated into the body's own bone more readily, and the utility of high-quality videoconferencing to empower research and education in this dynamic field of study.

After introductions and a welcome by Johanson, the University of Gothenburg's Dr. Anders Palmquist began a presentation on the preparation of samples to facilitate the study of bone/implant interfaces at the nanometer scale. According to Palmquist, sample preparation alone is a major challenge to the study of the bone/implant interface, and without such study improving implant integration into the body is seriously hampered. Cutting, polishing, and slicing infinitesimally thin pieces of such samples are extremely difficult with the very hard materials involved, most often bone, ceramic, or metals. Coating the more preparation-friendly plastic in titanium-based materials, very popular for orthopedic implants, is one option. Others involve new advances such as focused ion beam technologies which make it easier to slice and polish the preferred very hard materials to an amazing 100 nm thickness. Other parts of Palmquist's presentation focused on how to create a more nano-scale surface on the implant itself such as roughening the threads of a bone screw using lasers, thus creating surfaces which the human body can integrate into its own nano-scale systems more readily.

Johanson, speaking from the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA with orthopedic luminaries Dr. Chadwick Smith and Ben Wu, then introduced Dr. Wu, who presented on cell-apatite interactions. Apatites are a class of minerals often studied by geologists, but bone itself is simply a connective tissue composed of a significant amount of biologically-based apatite held together by and with living components. Taken as a whole, the resulting material is of course amazingly strong and resilient, and features structure at the nanometer scale that can be appealed to in order to create more bone-friendly implants. As Dr. Wu's presentation showed, there are certain implant materials that welcome the creation of a layer of bone-friendly biological apatite, and using nanotechnology, such a layer can be deposited on the surface of an otherwise less than ideal implant material with an additional coating of bone-specific proteins to make the apatite layer even more attractive to bone formation. Effectively, by decoupling the implant material's mechanical engineering features from its ability to attract bone growth on its surface, new nano-surfaces could be part of a revolution in orthopedic implant design. In future, orthopedic researchers could create implants that offer the best of both worlds to patients: simultaneously maximizing both the implant's mechanical strength and its ability to become one with the body's own bone.

All presenters and participants agreed on the power of international videoconferencing to move such disciplines forward, while being realistic about the requirements that the technology will have to meet. Everyone present, for example, agreed that the bandwidth and clarity needed for such presentations was of paramount importance, especially given the very high-resolution microscopic images that must be shared between researchers. The June 8 videoconference was the third international forum on the topic of orthopedics and nanotechnology, and Johanson looks forward to the fourth such forum, which is slated to take place during the Internet2 meeting in San Antonio, TX in October of 2009.

If you've been waiting for online video of the Keynote Addresses at the 2009 CENIC Annual Conference that took place this past March in Long Beach, CA, you need wait no longer! Video of the addresses Telepoly Consulting's John Windhausen and Stanford University's Guru Parulkar are now available at the CENIC 2009 conference website, so be sure to take a look and see the sorts of great presentations attendees enjoyed at this year's conference.

Viewers will need to use Windows Media Player to view the linked video streams. Apple users can download a viewer here.

Be sure to keep an eye out for updates regarding the coming 2010 conference to be held in Monterey, CA as well. Luminaries like Windhausen and Parulkar in 2009 and others make the CENIC annual conference the premiere event on advanced networking in California and a cost-effective way to network with your colleagues state-, nation-, and even worldwide.

And thanks to Phil Cerda and his team from 3C Media Solutions for doing the recording and editing.

The K20 California Educational Technology Collaborative (K20CETC), the research and innovation arm of the California Virtual Campus, has just completed a Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) Pathways Project Plan.  This report was developed in consultation with a business advisory council, and provides guidelines to develop programs and services that use network-enabled technologies to create a 21st century workforce.  With a focus on green careers, the plan describes a set of goals, strategies, and objectives that will help California develop this workforce.  

The goals are the following:

1. Improve Student Readiness as a Gateway to STEM/Green Careers
2. Increase Student Knowledge of and Interest in STEM/Green Careers
3. Strengthen STEM course/program access and quality

The K20 CETC welcomes feedback on the report and educational partners to help achieve these goals.   For a copy of the report, please visit http://www.k20cetc.org/stemplan.pdf.  For more information, please contact info@cvc.edu.

US & World Networking News:

On June 19, the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, announced the appointment of Michael L. Norman to the position of interim director, effective July 1. Norman succeeds Francine Berman, who announced plans in April to join the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as Vice President of Research, effective August 1.

More aggressive use of clean energy could help California end its mulitbillion dollar budget deficits, according to a University of California, Berkeley, study released Wednesday. The study by UC Berkeley economic professor David Roland-Holst predicts a huge energy market will be created that will spur innovation, creating jobs and lowering energy costs.

Small Business Novus Entertainment Inc., a Vancouver-based premier service provider for television, high speed Internet and digital phone, is claiming cost savings and improved performance by connecting to BCNET's Vancouver Transit Exchange.

Hotel rooms have been set aside for attendees and exhibitors. Technical Program attendees should consider staying in the downtown area as many hotels are within walking distance to the MAX and are close to the Thursday night event.

The MAX, Portland's mass transit system, has a convention center stop and is free in the downtown area including the convention center. This year the conference will rely heavily on the MAX.

For a long time, education leaders worldwide have been on a mission to find ways to make learning fun. Pictures of planets, dinosaur diagrams and long division problems have little real-world relevance for students.

But informal learning environments offer an alternative, interactive approach to education. As schools close and budgets shrivel, these public institutions give life to STEM learning.

As the financial deficit continues to rattle California, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set his sights on new target: printed textbooks. He wants to terminate them all and replace them with digital learning materials by the fall to save the state money.

About CENIC and How to Change Your Subscription:

California's education and research communities leverage their networking resources under CENIC, the Corporation for Education Network Initiatives in California, in order to obtain cost-effective, high-bandwidth networking to support their missions and answer the needs of their faculty, staff, and students. CENIC designs, implements, and operates CalREN, the California Research and Education Network, a high-bandwidth, high-capacity Internet network specially designed to meet the unique requirements of these communities, and to which the vast majority of the state's K-20 educational institutions are connected. In order to facilitate collaboration in education and research, CENIC also provides connectivity to non-California institutions and industry research organizations with which CENIC's Associate researchers and educators are engaged.

CENIC is governed by its member institutions. Representatives from these institutions also donate expertise through their participation in various committees designed to ensure that CENIC is managed effectively and efficiently, and to support the continued evolution of the network as technology advances.

For more information, visit www.cenic.org.

Subscription Information: You can subscribe and unsubscribe to CENIC Today at http://lists.cenic.org/mailman/listinfo/cenic-today.