This is your chance to get an inside look at the big challenges Yahoo! research scientists are working on while driving your research forward. Learn more about the real-world problems facing our industry, then focus on and solve these fundamental challenges alongside the top minds in the field.

Yahoo! Labs is inviting PhD students working in each of their core research areas to review these challenges and submit an application between January 20th - March 9th, 2012 to be considered for the Key Scientific Challenges Program.

Description and how to apply: http://labs.yahoo.com/ksc

(I am currently affiliated to Yahoo! Labs)

The Anti-Social Web: Credibility and Quality Issues on the Web and Social Media (WebQuality 2012) is a workshop to be held at the 21st International World Wide Web Conference (WWW 2012) in Lyon, France.

The workshop will provide the research communities working on web quality, web spam, abuse, credibility, and reputation topics with a survey of current
problems and potential solutions:

Assessing the credibility of content and people on the web and social media

• Measuring quality of web content
• Uncovering distorted and biased content
• Modeling author identity, trust, and reputation
• Role of groups and communities
• Multimedia content credibility

Fighting spam, abuse, and plagiarism on the Web and social media

• Reducing web spam
• Reducing abuses of electronic messaging systems
• Detecting abuses in internet advertising
• Uncovering plagiarism and multiple-identity issues
• Promoting cooperative behavior in social networks
• Security issues with online communication

The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) is an international organization founded in 1945 to contribute to peace and security by promoting international collaboration through education, science, and culture.

In an unilateral action, the United States of America has decided to stop contributing funds to UNESCO as a reprisal for accepting Palestine as a member state:

Victoria Nuland, a State Department spokeswoman, said that American contributions to Unesco, including $60 million scheduled for this month, would not be paid.

UNESCO has declared that:

It is well-known that funding from our largest contributor, the United States, may be jeopardized. I believe it is the responsibility of all of us to make sure that UNESCO does not suffer unduly as a result.

In a world with 7,000,000,000 people, UNESCO develops key programmes to promote literacy, education, science, and technology. Eventually, I believe the USA will start contributing again to UNESCO, but in the mean time I think we have to collaborate, not only with words but also with funds so that the work of this organization can continue. Please, it will take just a minute of your time to make a donation today »»

Want to monitor an earthquake, track political activity or predict the ups and downs of the stock market? Researchers have found a bonanza of real-time data in the torrential flow of Twitter feeds.

When the magnitude 8.8 Chilean earthquake hit last year, researchers found that on Twitter the truth often won out over misinformation. "When a rumor is true, it spreads faster," said computer analyst Barbara Poblete at the University of Chile in Santiago.

Ms. Poblete and her colleagues analyzed how survivors of the earthquake used the messaging service in lieu of more conventional communications that had been knocked out. They discovered that in the crisis, Twitter crowds reflexively sorted facts from falsehoods, exercising a collective wisdom on the fly. She found enough measurable differences in language, citations and posting patterns to devise a way to assess the credibility of Twitter texts automatically, with an accuracy of about 70%.

"The network itself can provide a filter for valid information," Ms. Poblete said.

Full article: Decoding Our Twitter Chatter by Robert Lee Hotz at WSJ, 2011-10-01.

Image: Ars Technica.