This spring and early summer, storm chasers from the VORTEX2 national tornado research project will spend six weeks getting up close and personal with tornadoes in an effort to better understand how they form and behave -- and Indiana University technology will help guide their way. VORTEX2 is described as being the largest and most ambitious effort ever made to understand tornadoes and the effort will involve as many as 100 scientists and 40 support vehicles, including storm-chasing trucks and aircraft. Full Story

Virtual humans are increasingly taking on roles that were once reserved for real humans. A study by researchers at the Indiana University School of Informatics at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis explores how appearance, motion quality and other characteristics of computer-generated characters may impact the moral and ethical decisions of their viewers. The research, published in the June 2010 issue of the journal Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments found that the decisions of men were strongly affected by presentational aspects of the simulated woman, while women's decisions were not. Full Story

Indiana University, a founder in the Kuali community five years ago, has expanded its involvement by joining the Kuali Student (KS) initiative as an investing partner. IU will provide resources to support the overall goals of a next generation student system. IU will also have representation on the Kuali Student Project Board. Kuali is a growing community of universities, colleges, businesses, and other organizations that have partnered to build and sustain community source administrative software for higher education, by higher education. In 2004, a small group of institutions and a commercial company set out to develop a comprehensive suite of open source financial software. Full Story

As the United States moves toward the goal of a secure nationwide health information network (NHIN), a new study from the Regenstrief Institute provides a framework for evaluating the costs, effort and value of what is sometimes referred to as the health internet. The study, which appears in the May/June 2010 issue of Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, also reports on the initial assessment of that framework by health information exchange experts across the nation. Full Story

The robots are back and ready for another summer showdown at the fourth annual Summer Technology Workshop for teens. Indiana high school students with an interest in computer technology, programming, or networking can once again work side-by-side with IU technology professionals to build a robot and compete against other teams during this hands-on workshop sponsored by Indiana University's Pervasive Technology Institute. The workshop will introduce teens to the fields of high-speed network research, cybersecurity, and basic computer programming. As students work in small teams to build a robot with kits from the LEGO® Mindstorms® series, they will learn how those concepts can be applied to the robot for legitimate and malicious purposes. Full Story

In the May 3, 2010, edition of IT Matters @ IU, there's a report on the ceremony breaking ground for IU Bloomington's new $37 million Cyberinfrastructure Building that will serve as headquarters for the university's technology staff of more than 600 employees. Also included in the issue is an announcement of IU's Worldview real-time network monitoring tool receiving an IDEA Award from Internet2; news about a medical informaticist's new tool, RXplore, designed to provide physicians fast and accurate information about adverse reactions when multiple medications are used simultaneously; an announcement from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration that IU had received $1.6 million to serve as operator of the agency's new "Nwave" project; and news about two IU recipients of Webby Awards. Full Story