Too bad: total eclipse totally hidden in the clouds….
It poured almost all day!
Links
Shanghai wheather- An error has occurred; the feed is probably down. Try again later.
Total eclipse tomorrow
Wednesday, July 22 2009, around 9:30 we will have a total eclipse in Shanghai, meaning that the rare situation takes place, that the moon totally covers the sun. During the day it will be pitch dark for 5 Minutes. Normally, temperature might drop a little aswell, but I am afraid this is not going to happen this time. We have more than 30°C also at night since a couple of weeks here.
It will be the first eclipse in Asia and the longest one in the 21st century. It will be the first for Shanghai since the middle ages (1575 was the last). It will be my third one, I visited total eclipses in Stuttgart (11.08.1999) and South Africa before.
We have brunch with friends at the VUE Bar on 32nd floor of Bund Hyatt to view the spectacle. This place features also the cities highest Jacuzzi.
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- Astrid’s total eclipse experience
Links
www.shanghai.bund.hyatt.com
www.focus.de/wissen/wissenschaft/astronomie/naturschauspiel-die-wandernde-finsternis_aid_418565.html (auf Deutsch)
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Female students in CS
Increasing Female Participation: A CS Project Team Experience With a Difference
ACM-W Council Women in Computing News Blog, June 17
According to an ACM-W Ambassador in Turkey, one way to increase female participation in the computer science field is through the creation of international student teams that work together on computing projects. Based on the success of a similar type of international project course in Sweden, computer science professors at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology have been working with a team in Turkey to increase female participation in computer science. In this example, the female-led project resulted in three products: a web page to teach children about their rights, a Google tool for following up the events related to child rights and games for children age 10-12 to teach them about their rights.
As part of the project, students worked in teams to analyze, design and develop software solutions for a “Child Rights” project for the International Children’s Center (ICC). Students visited with their supervisor two times during the semester for face-to-face meetings. At other times they communicated online using Internet tools like Skype, Facebook and email. The second visit was at the end of the semester to present the final products. In addition to the successful results, the project was noteworthy for its representation of female CS students on the team: six of the eleven participants were female. Going forward, computer science will become more attractive for female students when the impact of computing in a global community is emphasized.
Source
ACM-W Council Women in Computing News Blog
Links
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, Indiana, USA
Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey
Questions I have
- What is the situation in your country’s University?
- How many women are in your computing classes?
- How do they perform? How are they welcomed by class mates and faculty?
- What do you think of projects like the one mentioned above?
- Do you think female students need different projects?
- Which topics are specifically interesting for women in CS?
- What do you think is a good approach to raise the number of female students in technical programs, especially in Computer Science?
I appreciate your thoughts and comments.
Green Dam postponed
Chinese government has postponed its mandate that manufacturers embed Web-filtering software in all new PCs sold in the China, in the wake of intense opposition inside and outside China.
The Chinese government has said the purpose of implementing the Web-filtering software is to prevent youngsters from viewing online pornography and other “harmful content,” and it insists that the software “definitely has no capability for collecting users’ information or monitoring their Internet behavior.” In China, “green” is a term used for online content free from pornography and other illicit material.
The Xinhua news agency quoted a Ministry of Industry and Information Technology representative as saying that some PC makers claimed they did not have sufficient time to meet the July 1 deadline, in which case a delay was permissible.
Isaac Mao with Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society says the Chinese initiative “has lost legitimacy” and that the government’s enforcement of the rule would be impossible. There also are indications that the plan has broadened public interest in China regarding questions about government inquisitiveness and censorship.
Some critics said the plan appeared to be aimed at extending the government’s massive Internet censorship into people’s homes and offices, and others worried it could expose PCs to hackers or cause technical problems. Researchers who studied the software found evidence that it blocked a range of content including sites covering sensitive political issues.
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GUIworld's Weblog by Astrid Beck 