Astroturfers, Twitter-bombers and smear campaigners need beware this election season as a group of leading Indiana University information and computer scientists today (Sept. 28) unleashed Truthy.indiana.edu, a sophisticated new Twitter-based research tool that combines data mining, social network analysis and crowdsourcing to uncover deceptive tactics and misinformation leading up to the Nov. 2 elections. Combing through thousands of tweets per hour in search of political keywords, the team based out of IU's School of Informatics and Computing will isolate patterns of interest and then insert those memes (ideas or patterns passed by imitation) into Twitter's application programming interface (API) to obtain more information about the meme's history. Full Story

Interactive health games -- using popular gaming consoles, the web and mobile technologies -- have emerged as effective tools in the future of healthcare and education, and a new regional conference based at IUPUI hopes to help establish Indiana as a leader in this growing field. The first-ever Midwestern Conference on Health Games, scheduled for Oct. 29 at the IUPUI Campus Center, will gather medical researchers, academics, IT professionals, multimedia experts and other leaders from Indiana and surrounding states to explore how healthcare is rolling out the fun and games to encourage healthy behaviors, prevent disease, improve overall care and drive down medical costs. Full Story

As part of an effort to encourage more young women to choose careers in technology, the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and the Indiana STARS Coalition of universities, which is led by Indiana University, are now seeking applications from high school women for the NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing. Award-winners will be selected for their outstanding aptitude and interest in information technology and computing, solid leadership ability, good academic history and plans for post-secondary education. The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing was created to acknowledge the computing aspirations of young women, introduce them to leadership opportunities in the field and generate visibility for women's participation in computing-related pursuits. Full Story

A $2 million grant from the National Science Foundation to Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis is targeted to boost the number of students graduating with bachelor's degrees in science, technology, engineering and mathematics by 10 percent. The funding is designed to encourage more students, including those who begin their college education in a local community college, to embark on careers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) and to provide those students with the support needed to achieve this goal. With this award, IUPUI hopes to increase STEM degrees to an additional 782 undergraduates by 2015. Full Story

An Indiana University data mining expert will use a grant from Pfizer to create a public resource exploring connections between chemical compounds and their biological activities. IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing Professor David Wild will use large-scale semantic Web-based data mining and network methods to seek to uncover previously undiscovered historical links between chemical compounds, drugs, biological pathways, targets, genes and diseases. Pfizer has awarded Wild $140,000 to conduct the chemogenomics study and to facilitate research relating to the discovery of new therapies and treatments. Full Story

The Sept. 6, 2010, edition of IT Matters@IU features the announcement of new research being conducted by faculty at the IU Bloomington School of Informatics and Computing that seeks to understand the creative processes of massive artistic collaborations like World of Warcraft online gaming and Etsy crafters and artists. Also in this edition, readers will find announcements of two record-setting indicators for IU: Grants and awards for research set a new all-time high at $603.9 million for fiscal year 2009-2010 and IU's Research and Technology Corporation reported a record $14.2 million in revenue from patents, disclosures and licensing; and announcement that an IU Bloomington researcher will be working with the Mellon Foundation and the National Information Standards Organization to develop a sustainable framework for public scholarly assessment. Full Story