The Real Cloud Computing

29
Oct
2015

Every year, scientists get better at modeling the Earth’s climate, making forecasts at higher resolution and further into the future than ever before. But many of these models are still missing a major regulator of the planet’s climate, hanging right over our heads. Clouds play an important cooling role for Earth, shielding the oceans and land from sunlight and influencing weather around the world. In order to study these dynamics and incorporate new details into climate models, atmospheric scientists work in an unusual laboratory: a luxury jet.

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CI Researchers: 

Bridging Police and Communities with Data

28
Oct
2015

As President Barack Obama addressed police chiefs in Chicago this week, a Data Science for Social Good project that uses data to prevent adverse police incidents received praise from the White House.

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"Publish or Perish" vs. Innovation

15
Oct
2015

To build a sustainable career, many scientists have to balance safe research that will likely be published with ambitious, riskier experiments. A new paper from CI Senior Fellows James Evans and Andrey Rzhetsky, with UCLA assistant professor of sociology Jacob Foster, finds that these cultural pressures handicap scientific innovation, encouraging incremental research to the detriment of bolder discoveries. 

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Imagining Tomorrow's Grid

13
Oct
2015

For over a century, the electrical grid has been a one-way street. A power company’s operations department estimates the demand for energy, instructs a power plant to produce enough electricity to meet demand, and distributes that power to residences and businesses. Except for incidents of severe weather and mechanical failure, this system is fairly reliable. But new advances in renewable energy, technology, and decentralized power have set the stage for the next generation: the smart grid.

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