University of Utah computer science professor Charles Hansen is part of a team that is developing new software that can help scientists visualize their work in computers with much more realism.

The program, called GraviT, allows researchers to easily use a graphics method known as ray tracing to create their computer simulations with higher fidelity and photorealistic imagery. That can be an important step in helping scientists visualize their work with more accuracy.

Research involving weather phenomena, blood flow through the human body, or medical conditions are just a few examples that can be reproduced in supercomputers as simulations. With Hansen and his team’s program, scientists can focus on their work instead of having to spend countless hours trying to recreate their research in a simulation through traditional methods.

Work on the program also involves researchers from Texas Advanced Computing Center, University of Oregon, Intel Corporation, and ParaView, a company that designs scientific visualization software. A beta version of the software is expected to be released in the Fall.

Read more from the National Science Foundation . . .

Ask someone to name cities with thriving tech, media, fashion or food scenes, and you’ll hear the usual suspects: San Francisco; New York; Portland, Ore. But there’s a slew of other metro areas with established infrastructure and skilled work forces that can match those more established locations at a fraction of the cost of living and with less day-to-day stress. These are the places where startup dreams come easier and cheaper, but can still pay off big. Start packing.

1. Salt Lake City

Best for: Software and hardware
Metro-area population: 1.1 million
Median household income: $53,036
Median home price: $243,300
Unemployment: 3.5%
College graduates: 31%

Tech companies such as Adobe and Workday are moving to “Silicon Slopes” in droves, inspired by startups launched by alumni from software pioneers Novell and WordPerfect, not to mention the easy access to world-class skiing. On the hardware side, everything from flash memory chips (one of every 14 worldwide is made here) to Skullcandy headphones calls the Wasatch Front home. VCs invested nearly $1 billion in local startups last year, making Salt Lake tops nationally in dollar-per-deal average.

The Utah Science Technology and Research Economic Development Initiative provides funding to the University of Utah in Salt Lake and Utah State University in nearby Ogden to research new technologies and spin them off into a handful of companies each year. And when the state’s insurance department wanted to ban Zenefits, a Silicon Valley startup that gives away its HR-management software for free, Governor Gary Herbert signed a law reversing the ban, stating, “Utah is open for business.”

Did you know? Thanks to thousands of Mormon missionaries returning from time abroad, Utah has the highest percentage of foreign-language speakers in the country.

Read the full story at www.entrepreneur.com.

Erik is excited to be one of the speakers at the TEDx Salt Lake City event this fall – September 19th at Kingsbury Hall.

The theme of this year’s event is "Upcycling." he’ll be talking about upcycling old toys to turn them into weird-sounding electronic "musical" instruments. This is something called "circuit bending" and it involves modifying (bending) a toy’s circuits to make it into something else.

The "big idea" is that in our modern world people should have a basic knowledge of technology – it’s a fundamental skill for the 21st century. One way to get a feel for technology is to mess with it, play with it, and learn enough to feel like you can take a noise-making kid’s toy apart and make it do something different than it was intended to do. And, as a bonus, this is a LOT of fun!

You might recognize this as also relating to the theme of his University Professorship project and class. His undergraduate general education class developed as part of the Professorship is what inspired this talk (CS/UGS 2050 Making Noise: Sound Art and Digital Media ). The point of this course is that technological fluency should be a part of the general education curriculum!