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• 25 May ' 14:59

  Welcome to the May 25, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Please note: In observance of the Memorial Day holiday, TechNews will not be published on Monday, May 28. Publication will resume Wednesday, May 30. U.S. Tech Worker Shortage Looms, Study Warns Government Teams Up with Intel to Make London Smart Internet Voting Still Faces Hurdles in U.S. Robotics: Gesturing for Control Researchers Take Virus-Tracking Software Worldwide Data Mining Your Desktop Google Funds Computer Teachers and Raspberry Pis in England iPads Could Pick Up on Unique Biological Traits in Individual Hand Gestures Spy Agency Seeks Cyber-Ops Curriculum A Robot Learns How to Tidy Up After You 'Father of the Internet' Warns Web Freedom Is Under Attack Cell Network Security Holes Revealed, With an App to Test Your carrier Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Networks U.S. Tech Worker Shortage Looms, Study Warns InformationWeek (05/23/12) Paul McDougall If the U.S. does not adjust its immigration policies to make it easier for foreign-born technology workers to reside in the country, it could fall behind the rest of the world in growth and innovation, according to a recent Partnership for A New American Economy study. The study found that just 4.4 percent of U.S.-born undergraduates are enrolled in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, compared to 33.9 percent of students in Singapore, 31.2 percent of those in China, 12.4 percent of those in Germany, and 6.1 percent of those in the United Kingdom. These statistics will result in a shortage of more than 200,000 high-tech workers by 2018 in the United States, according to the study. The study's authors say that Congress and the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services need to establish a new visa category for foreign entrepreneurs trying to launch startups, to designate more H-1B visas and green cards for foreign students enrolled in STEM programs and U.S. institutions, and to offer tax breaks for U.S. tech workers who have moved abroad to encourage them to return to the United States.Government Teams Up with Intel to Make London Smart V3.co.uk (05/24/12) Rosalie Marshall The British government announced a partnership with Intel that will result in the deployment of a sensor network in London to monitor factors such as noise levels, pollution, wind speed, and energy use. Researchers at Imperial College London and University College London also will be involved in the project, which is being funded by Intel. "The collaboration will take all of the data produced by the city ... to make life in the 21st century easier for people," says British chancellor George Osborne. Intel also recently launched the Collaborative Research Institute for Sustainable Connected Cities, a new academy that will support the project. Once the sensors have been deployed, the next 18 months will serve as a testbed to determine how the data can be used, says Intel's Martin Curley. Intel plans to use London as the first of many worldwide cities to utilize this type of sensor network, notes Intel's Justin Rattner. "As leaders around the world look to the future, without the adoption of truly sustainable practices across many aspects of society, we are really going to be in trouble," Rattner says.Internet Voting Still Faces Hurdles in U.S. Agence France-Presse (05/24/12) More than two dozen states will accept some form of electronic or faxed ballots in the U.S. 2012 elections, according to the Verified Voting Foundation. However, computer security experts contend that any system can be hacked or manipulated, which poses a big threat to online voting systems. "You have computer systems such as those of Google, the Pentagon, and Facebook, which have all fallen victim to intrusion," notes University of Michigan computer scientist J. Alex Halderman. Meanwhile, other countries are moving forward with Internet voting plans. For example, French citizens living abroad this year will be able to vote on the Internet in a parliamentary election. In Estonia, a record 25 percent of voters cast Internet ballots in 2011. In the United States, election officials are examining the costs of the technology while struggling with how to make voting more accessible, says Ohio deputy election administrator Matt Masterson. He notes online voting can help boost participation and address the issue of voters who cannot get to a polling station. The U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology recently concluded that Internet voting systems cannot currently be audited with a comparable level of confidence in the audit results as those for polling stations.Robotics: Gesturing for Control A*STAR Research (05/23/12) Lee Swee Heng Researchers at the A*STAR Institute for Infocomm Research say they have developed a system that recognizes human gestures quickly and accurately, and requires very little training. The researchers, led by A*STAR's Rui Yan, developed a cognitive memory model called a localist attractor network to create a system that recognizes gestures. "Since many social robots will be operated by non-expert users, it is essential for them to be equipped with natural interfaces for interaction with humans," Yan says. The researchers tested the software by integrating it with ShapeTape, a special jacket that uses fiber optics and inertial sensors to monitor the bending and twisting of hands and arms. During testing, the researchers used the ShapeTape jacket to control a virtual robot through simple arm motions. The researchers found that 99.15 percent of the gestures were correctly translated by the system. The researchers now want to improve the system to enable humans to control robots without the need to wear special devices. "Currently we are building a new gesture-recognition system by incorporating our method with a Microsoft Kinect camera," Yan says. Researchers Take Virus-Tracking Software Worldwide Ohio Supercomputer Center (05/22/12) Jamie Abel Researchers at Ohio State University (OSU) and the Ohio Supercomputer Center are expanding the reach of SUPRAMAP, a Web-based application that synthesizes large, diverse datasets so researchers can better understand the spread of infectious diseases across hosts and geography. The researchers want to use SUPRAMAP to reconfigure the server so that other researchers and public safety officials can develop front-end applications that draw on the logic and computing resources of SUPRAMAP. "Our software allows public health scientists to update and view maps on the evolution and spread of pathogens," says OSU professor Daniel Janies. The original implementation of SUPRAMAP was built with a single client that was tightly coupled to the server software. "We now have decoupled the server from the original client to provide a modular Web service for [poyws.org (POY)], an open source, freely available phylogenetic analysis program," says the American Museum of Natural History's Ward Wheeler. The researchers developed GEOGENES, a client application that demonstrates the POY Web service. "Unlike in SUPRAMAP, in which the user is required to create and upload data files, in GEOGENES the user works from a graphical interface to query a curated dataset, thus freeing the user from managing files," Wheeler says.Data Mining Your Desktop Technology Review (05/23/12) Jessica Leber Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs has created the Collective Project, a workplace social network that tracks internal documents created or opened by about 10,000 company employees. The Collective Project assigns topic words to each document by mining its content, and then creates knowledge maps and family trees centered on employees and subject areas by computing their similarity. The project aims to show how people within large organizations can automatically be connected based on "inferred expertise," providing a resource that staff can tap into to get answers to queries. "You don't have to update a profile, you don't have to declare your interests or expertise, you don't have to search," says HP Labs Israel director Ruth Bergman. "The tool makes knowledge instantly accessible, rather than being a laborious process of discovery and input." HP employees who use the Collective Project can search keywords and see results that recommend useful documents and employees closely connected to those files. The researchers say that this type of data mining could encourage connections between coworkers working in different countries at extremely big organizations. Users can customize permissions to share the full content of some documents, but prevent its retrieval by others.Google Funds Computer Teachers and Raspberry Pis in England BBC News (05/23/12) Google is partnering with the Teach First charity to train and fund British teachers specializing in computer science. Additional funds will be provided for teaching aids, such as Raspberry Pis or Arduino starter kits, notes Google chairman Eric Schmidt. He says the United Kingdom has been throwing away its great computing heritage by focusing on how to use software instead of how to make it. "Put simply, technology breakthroughs can't happen without the scientists and engineers to make them," Schmidt says. "The challenge that society faces is to equip enough people, with the right skills and mindset, and to get them to work on the most important problems." Teach First puts exceptional graduates on a six-week training program before sending them to schools where they teach for a two-year period. The Google funds will be used to train more than 100 first-rate science teachers over the next three years, with the majority focused on computer science. "It's vital to expose kids to this early if they're to have the chance of a career in computing," Schmidt says. Each of the 100 teachers will be given a budget to buy equipment related to their teaching.iPads Could Pick Up on Unique Biological Traits in Individual Hand Gestures NextGov.com (05/22/12) Dawn Lim Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) researchers have developed technology that can biometrically authenticate users' hand gestures with multi-touch sensors. The researchers plan to create an iPad app that replaces the use of text passwords with strokes that a hand can make on a keyboard. The researchers, led by NYU-Poly doctoral student Napa Sae-Bae, developed an algorithm to detect individuals' unique biological traits, such as the shape of their hands, how their fingers move in relation to one another, and the length of their fingers. During testing, the system achieved a 90 percent accuracy rate in verifying that gestures belonged to the individuals who made them. The researchers note the technology could lead to new ways to authenticate users into government systems and to detect malicious attackers. Sae-Bae says this type of authentication strategy may be preferable to retina scanning because it uses sensor technologies widely available on the market, such as those on iPads and Android touch tablets. In the future, the researchers will explore how stable and accurate an individual hand gesture is over time, taking variations such as fatigue into account.Spy Agency Seeks Cyber-Ops Curriculum Reuters (05/22/12) Tabassum Zakaria The U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) has launched a new cyber-ops program at selected universities in an effort to broaden U.S. cyberexpertise needed for secret intelligence operations against adversaries on computer networks. The cyber-ops curriculum is designed to provide fundamental education for intelligence, military, and law enforcement jobs so classified they will only be disclosed to some students and faculty, who must pass security clearance requirements. "We're trying to create more [quality cyber operators], and yes they have to know some of the things that hackers know, they have to know a lot of other things too, which is why you really want a good university to create these people for you," says NSA's Neal Ziring. He notes the mindset 15 years ago was that of computer systems seldom being hacked and of security hardening being sufficient to ensure protection. "What we've realized these days is ... that systems are under attack constantly," Ziring says. Just four of the 20 universities that applied were certified this week as Centers of Academic Excellence in Cyber Operations. NSA says two of the 10 requirements on the curriculum—courses on reverse engineering and cellular communications and mobile technologies—were most lacking at many schools.A Robot Learns How to Tidy Up After You Cornell Chronicle (05/21/12) Bill Steele Cornell University researchers have developed a robot that can survey a room, identify all its objects, and determine where they belong and put them away. "Our major contribution is that we are now looking at a group of objects, and this is the first work that places objects in non-trivial places," says Cornell professor Ashutosh Saxena. The robot's algorithms enable it to consider the nature of an object in deciding what to do with it. In testing, the robot was as much as 98 percent successful in identifying and placing objects it had seen before. First the robot surveys the room with a Microsoft Kinect three-dimensional camera. Various images are combined to create a general perspective view of the room, which the robot's computer splits into blocks according to discontinuities of color and shape. The researchers trained the robot by feeding it graphic simulations in which placement sites are labeled as good and bad, and it builds a model of what good placement sites have in common. The robot then generates a graphic simulation of how to move the object to its final location and carries out those movements.'Father of the Internet' Warns Web Freedom Is Under Attack The Hill (05/21/12) Andrew Feinberg Governments around the world are trying to use intellectual property and cybersecurity issues to control the Internet, says Google vice president and chief Internet evangelist Vint Cerf. "Political structures ... are often scared by the possibility that the general public might figure out that they don't want them in power," Cerf says. He speculates that the International Telecommunications Union will likely become the global Internet cop, and expects the group to try to lock in mandatory intellectual property protections as a backdoor for easy Web surveillance. The public should view even good-faith efforts at Internet policymaking skeptically because balancing freedom and security "isn't something that government alone is going to figure out," Cerf says. He is concerned about the U.S. Cybersecurity and Intelligence Protection Act passed by the House, because it does not offer enough limits on how information about cyberthreats would be used. Still, Cerf expresses optimism that resourceful engineers will find a way around hostile government attempts to restrict access.Cell Network Security Holes Revealed, With an App to Test Your carrier University of Michigan News Service (05/21/12) Nicole Casal Moore University of Michigan researchers have found that popular firewall technology designed to improve security on cellular networks can reveal data that could help a hacker break into Facebook and Twitter accounts. The researchers, led by professor Z. Morley Mao and doctoral student Zhiyun Qian, also have developed an Android app, called Firewall Middlebox Detection, that alerts users when they are on a vulnerable network. The researchers were able to demonstrate how an attacker could hijack a Transmission Control Protocol Internet connection by taking advantage of publicly available information on smartphones and network firewall middleboxes, which block data bundles that do not appear to be part of the flow of information traffic. The researchers detected middleboxes on 32 percent of the networks they tested. "Most vendors and carriers that deploy such firewall middleboxes still believe they are safe and we want them to be aware of this design flaw," Qian says. The research shows a susceptibility in the sandboxing safety mechanism that smartphone platforms use. "What's surprising here is that this shows how malware can, in a sense, reach out of its sandbox and tamper with other legitimate apps such as your browser," Qian says.Why Rumors Spread Fast in Social Networks Saarland University (05/21/12) Saarland University researchers have mathematically proved that information spreads in social networks much faster than in networks in which everyone communicates with everyone else, or networks that have a totally random structure. Tobias Friedrich of Saarland's Cluster of Excellence on Multimodal Computing and Interaction and colleagues demonstrated their findings through the successful combination of persons with many contacts and persons with only a few contacts. "A person who keeps only a few connections can inform all of these contacts very fast," Friedrich says. Moreover, among these few contacts, there is always a highly networked person who is contacted by many people in the social network. "Therefore everybody in these networks gets informed rapidly," the researchers note. They used preferential attachment graphs as a basic network model, and assumed new members of a social network would more likely connect to a person maintaining many connections than to a person with only a few contacts. The foundation of in-network communication is the model that every person regularly shares all information with his or her contacts, but never speaks to the person contacted in the previous communication round.

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• 23 May ' 16:49

  Welcome to the May 23, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Troves of Personal Data, Forbidden to Researchers Web Creator Backs U.K. Open Data Institute Alan Turing’s Centennial Provides a Retrospective on His Influence Researchers Improve Fast-Moving Mobile Networks New Mathematical Framework Formalizes Oddball Programming Techniques Microsoft's FDS Data-Sorter Crushes Hadoop Study Shows Promise and Challenges of ‘Hybrid’ Courses Robotic Fish Shoal Sniffs Out Pollution in Harbours Totally RAD: Bioengineers Create Rewritable Digital Data Storage in DNA Origami-Inspired Design Method Merges Engineering, Art The UJI Is Developing a Web Platform to Facilitate Communication to Immigrants in a Court of Law Quantum Computer Leap Googling Cancer: Search Algorithms Can Scan Disease for Patient Risk Troves of Personal Data, Forbidden to Researchers New York Times (05/21/12) John Markoff Caches of big data collected by researchers at Facebook, Google, and other companies from patterns of cell phone calls, Internet clicks, and text messages by millions of users worldwide are often withheld from publication for competitive or privacy reasons, and social scientists such as Hewlett-Packard Labs' Bernardo A. Huberman argue that privately held data troves are threatening the foundation of scientific research. "If another set of data does not validate results obtained with private data, how do we know if it is because they are not universal or the authors made a mistake?" Huberman writes in a letter in the journal Nature. He says corporate dominance of data could give privileged access to an elite cohort of scientists at the biggest companies, leading to a situation in which equally talented researchers are ignored by the scientific community because they lack access. The issue is complicated by a lack of clear data-sharing guidelines at leading science journals across a wide range of disciplines. Last year the U.S. National Science Foundation said researchers to whom it allocates funds would be "expected" to share data with other scientists, and many researchers concur that this model should be applied across the entire scientific spectrum.Web Creator Backs U.K. Open Data Institute BBC News (05/22/12) A United Kingdom (U.K.) institute opening in September will serve as an open data hub as the government makes more data available to the public. World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee will co-direct the Open Data Institute (ODI), along with University of Southampton professor Nigel Shadbolt. The U.K. government has already released weather and transport data, which has led to the development of novel applications and businesses. The institute plans to offer "appathons" and "hackathons" to help provide people with the skills needed to use large data sets. In addition to offering training, ODI plans to advise businesses on how to get the most out of the government data. The institute also intends to provide the government with feedback on the data it is providing, such as the novel types of information that are of interest to businesses. "As the government releases more and more of that data, the obvious question to ask is whether we are driving all the value out of that we can," Shadbolt says.Alan Turing’s Centennial Provides a Retrospective on His Influence SD Times (05/22/12) Victoria Reitano ACM is hosting the Turing Centenary Celebration June 15-16, a program that includes individual talks by past A.M. Turing Award winners, as well as panel events on networked computing and other subjects. Alan Turing’s research on universal computation is one of the most important works in the field of computing over the last 100 years, says scientist Stephen Wolfram. This year's A.M. Turing Award winner, University of California, Los Angeles professor Judea Pearl, will speak on a panel about human and machine intelligence. The fact that the industry is reviewing the Turing test of universal computation, and understanding that it is not the end of the road, is a sign that the industry understands that Turing’s legacy is one of constant discovery, Pearl says. "Systems must also display autonomy, that is, providing continuous service without human intervention and dependability that is invulnerability to threats including attacks, hardware failures, and software execution errors," says 2007 A.M. Turing Award winner and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne professor Joseph Sifakis. "In the near future, another anticipated, important landmark will be the advent of the Internet of things as the result of the convergence between embedded technologies and the Internet."Researchers Improve Fast-Moving Mobile Networks NCSU News (05/21/12) Matt Shipman A new method developed by researchers from North Carolina State University (NCSU) promises to improve the quality and efficiency of data transmission in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). MANETs present a challenge for transmitting data because the nodes that transmit and receive data are in motion, and the faster they move the harder it is for the network to identify effective relay paths for transmitting data, considering the power of the data-transmission channels fluctuates much more rapidly at high speed. The team's method improves the ability of each node in the network to select the best path for relaying data, as well as the best path for transmitting the data that ensures reliable reception. When a node needs to transmit a message, it first measures the strength of transmissions it is receiving from potential relays. The data is then plugged into an algorithm that predicts which relay will be strongest when the message is transmitted. The algorithm also tells the node the rate at which it should transmit the data. "Our goal was to get the highest data rate possible, without compromising the fidelity of the signal," says NCSU professor Alexandra Duel-Hallen.New Mathematical Framework Formalizes Oddball Programming Techniques MIT News (05/22/12) Larry Hardesty Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a mathematical framework that enables developers to reason rigorously about sloppy computation, providing mathematical guarantees that if a program behaves as intended, so will a fast-but-inaccurate modification of it. MIT's Michael Carbin describes the framework as a type of formal verification, and says the performance gains promised by techniques such as loop perforation will give programmers confidence to try formal verification techniques. "We're identifying all these opportunities where programmers can get much bigger benefits than they could before if they're willing to do a little verification," Carbin says. The framework forces programmers to specify "acceptability properties" for each procedure in a program and by reference to the normal execution of the program. The framework also enables developers who have already verified their programs to reuse a lot of their previous reasoning. Carbin says the researchers are now working on a system that enables programmers to simply state acceptability properties.Microsoft's FDS Data-Sorter Crushes Hadoop The Register (UK) (05/22/12) Timothy Prickett Morgan Microsoft researchers have developed the Flat Datacenter Storage approach, which features new sorting algorithms for the Bing search engine that beat a Hadoop cluster in the MinuteSort test, which counts how many bytes of data a system can sort using the benchmark code in 60 seconds. The Microsoft effort also beat Hadoop in the PennySort test, which measures the amount of data you can sort for a penny's worth of system time on a machine or cluster set up to run the test. However, Microsoft is only providing some clues as to how it was able to beat the Hadoop cluster by almost a factor of three, using one-sixth the number of servers. The Flat Datacenter Storage researchers increased the speed of the system using bisection bandwidth networks, which enabled each node in the cluster to transmit data at 2Gb per sec and receive data at 2GB per sec without interruption. "That’s 20 times as much bandwidth as most computers in data centers have today, and harnessing it required novel techniques," says Microsoft project leader Jeremy Elson.Study Shows Promise and Challenges of ‘Hybrid’ Courses Chronicle of Higher Education (05/22/12) Katie Mangan Students learn equally well in a course that is taught partly online as they do in a traditional classroom, according to an Ithaka S+R report. However, the report says hybrid courses, which offer both online and traditional classroom instruction, will not reach their potential until they are easier for faculty members to customize and more fun for students. The conclusion that hybrid courses are no better or worse than traditional ones is not "a bland result," says study co-author William G. Bowen. "We felt it was important to do a rigorous, randomized study so we could see if the extreme claims on either side of the divide are justified." The study compared how much students at six public universities learned after taking a prototype introductory statistics course in either a hybrid or a traditional format. "We find that learning outcomes are essentially the same--that students in the hybrid format pay no 'price' for this mode of instruction in terms of pass rates, final exam scores, and performance on a standardized assessment of statistical literacy," the report says. The study applies only to interactive online courses that substitute some face-to-face instruction with computer-guided lessons. View Full Article - May Require Paid Subscription | Return to Headlines Robotic Fish Shoal Sniffs Out Pollution in Harbours New Scientist (05/22/12) Jacob Aron The SHOAL project is a collaboration between European universities, businesses, and the Spanish port of Gijon that has created autonomous robotic fish that can sense marine pollution. "With these fish we can find exactly what is causing the pollution and put a stop to it right away," says SHOAL project leader Luke Speller. The robotic fish are equipped with a range of built-in sensors that detect lead, copper, and other contaminants, as well as measuring water salinity. If one of the fish senses pollution in an area, it calls others to help create a detailed map of high and low concentrations of the pollutant, enabling authorities to locate the source. The robotic fish are one--and-a-half meters long, have an eight-hour battery, and can communicate with each other and a nearby base station using very low-frequency sound waves. However, the robots also have a low data transmission rate and can only send short, predefined messages. "It's a good solution, but it requires thinking carefully about what data to transmit and how to use that data," says University of Washington roboticist Kristi Morgansen. Totally RAD: Bioengineers Create Rewritable Digital Data Storage in DNA Stanford School of Medicine (05/21/12) Andrew Myers Stanford University researchers have developed a method to reapply natural enzymes adapted from bacteria to flip specific sequences of DNA back and forth, which can serve as the genetic equivalent of a binary digit. "Essentially, if the DNA section points in one direction, it's a zero. If it points the other way, it's a one," says Stanford graduate student Pakpoom Subsoontorn. "Programmable data storage within the DNA of living cells would seem an incredibly powerful tool for studying cancer, aging, organismal development, and even the natural environment," notes Stanford professor Drew Endy. The method also could form the basis of non-volatile memory. The researchers call their method a recombinase addressable data module, which they used to modify a specific section of DNA with microbes that determines how the organisms will fluoresce under ultraviolet light. The researchers had to control the precise dynamics of two opposing proteins. "Previous work had shown how to flip the genetic sequence--albeit irreversibly--in one direction through the expression of a single enzyme, but we needed to reliably flip the sequence back and forth, over and over, in order to create a fully reusable binary data register, so we needed something different," says Stanford's Jerome Bonnet.Origami-Inspired Design Method Merges Engineering, Art Purdue University News (05/21/12) Emil Venere Purdue University researchers have developed Kaleidogami, a method for creating robotic systems and shape-shifting sculptures from a sheet of paper using computational algorithms and tools. "One of our aims is to provide a new geometry-inspired art form, reconfigurable structures, in the emerging field of kinetic art," says Purdue professor Karthik Ramani. The researchers also have developed Kinectogami to create foldable robot-like mechanisms that can reconfigure themselves to suit the terrain. "The folded designs have an elegant simplicity, while using paper and cardboard-like materials that are flat is practical because they are very inexpensive and lightweight," says Purdue doctoral student Wei Gao. The robotic designs consist of building blocks called basic structural units (BSUs), each of which contains two segments joined by a creased hinge, and many BSUs are linked together to create larger structures. "Whereas traditional origami allows only folding, we create our structures by folding and also making cuts to a single piece of flat, paper-like materials," Gao says. The researchers say the method also could be used in architecture to design features such as vaulted ceilings, skylights, and retractable roofs.The UJI Is Developing a Web Platform to Facilitate Communication to Immigrants in a Court of Law Jaume I University (05/18/12) The JUDGENTT project, led by researchers at Jaume I University's Textual Genres for Translation research group, have developed a Web platform designed to improve the work processes for translation and interpreting professionals, and ultimately assist immigrants with communication in a court of law. The Web platform offers documentary, textual, and terminological resources that make use of information technology. The researchers say the platform includes everything from multilingual glossaries to schemas of legal systems from different countries, such as lists of documents subject to translation in legal institutions. The project will help modernize administrative processes and improve the professional image of linguists and translators. The researchers studied the socio-professional needs of legal translators in the Legal Tribunal of the Valencian Community, and determined that they lacked a suitable infrastructure for carrying out specialized translation tasks. They say the platform should ease communication between professional legal translators and immigrants. The preliminary study determined that applied translation tools were not being used, but that text translation was being done manually and sent to other institutions via fax. The researchers created a census of legal translators to analyze their work, with the aim of ascertaining their shortfalls and requirements.Quantum Computer Leap Australian National University (05/18/12) Sarina Talip Disturbance has been the main technical difficulty in building a quantum computer, but new research from the Australian National University (ANU) suggests that noise could be the key to making a quantum computer operate accurately. A quantum computer requires developers to address atomic scales and microscopic systems, which are extremely sensitive to noise, says ANU's Andre Carvalho. Carvalho and collaborators from Brazil and Spain are proposing adding even more noise to the system. "We found that with the additional noise you can actually perform all the steps of the computation, provided that you measure the system, keep a close eye on it, and intervene," Carvalho says. He notes the outcomes of the measurement cannot be controlled--instead, they are totally random. As a result, patiently waiting means it would take an infinite amount of time to extract even a very simple computation. "By choosing smart ways to detect the random events, we can drive the system to implement any desired computation in the system in a finite time," Carvalho says.Googling Cancer: Search Algorithms Can Scan Disease for Patient Risk Txchnologist (05/17/12) Charles Q. Choi Lund University researchers have modified Google's PageRank algorithm to develop NetRank, which scans how genes and proteins in a cell are similarly connected through a network of interactions with their neighbors. The researchers have found that NetRank can help find new targets for drugs to fight tumors and other diseases. "These decisions are mostly the result of proteins talking to each other, and if we want to predict what the cell does next, we have to, besides measuring the protein levels, take into account and better understand these networks of interactions," says Lund's Christof Winter. The researchers used NetRank on about 20,000 pancreatic cancer proteins to see which ones were the best indicators for survival. They identified seven proteins that could help assess how aggressive a patient's tumor is and guide experts to decide if the prognosis was worth trying chemotherapy or not. "Most exciting for me is that solutions to problems in one domain, such as computer science, hyperlinks in the World Wide Web, can be often successfully used in a completely different domain, such as medicine, cancer protein networks," Winter says. The NetRank system was right in about two-thirds of cases, according to the researchers.

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• 21 May ' 19:38

  Welcome to the May 21, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. MIT Creates Amazing UI From Levitating Orbs University of Nevada, Reno Scientists Design Low-Cost Indoor Navigation System for Blind Emergency Management: Incident, Resource, and Supply Chain Management 'March Madness' of Coding Contests Highlights Two Trends Navy Pilot Training Enhanced by AEMASE 'Smart Machine' Developed at Sandia Labs Project Aims to Build Online Hub for Archival Materials Japanese Researchers Break Record for Terahertz Wi-Fi Transmission Computer Field Wide Open for Women Center Seeks to Transform Teaching Practices Internet Usage Patterns May Signify Depression You Can't Play Nano-Billiards on a Bumpy Table Meet the Man Who Invented the Instructions for the Internet MIT Creates Amazing UI From Levitating Orbs Fast Company (05/18/12) Mark Wilson Jinha Lee from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab's Tangible Media Group has been experimenting with developing a tactile user interface (UI) in which floating objects are manipulated in three-dimensional (3D) space. Lee's prototype ZeroN UI harnesses electromagnetism so that a user can place a metal ball in midair. The orb can be repositioned manually by a computer, it can be animated on a path, and it can function as a virtual camera or light source in a 3D scene with the assistance of software. The interface features a 3D actuator housing an electromagnet, which keeps the ball stable by creating a perfectly tuned magnetic loop. The actuator repositions itself to drag the ball around lateral space, moving in tandem with the object and tracking its position with 3D infrared cameras. "ZeroN can remember how it has been moved," Lee notes. "Physical motions of people can be collected in this medium to preserve and play them back indefinitely." Lee envisions the UI being adopted for numerous applications, including animation prototyping, physics simulation and education, and 3D design studios.University of Nevada, Reno Scientists Design Low-Cost Indoor Navigation System for Blind University of Nevada, Reno (05/18/12) Mike Wolterbeek University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) researchers have developed Navatar, an indoor navigation system for people with visual impairments. The smartphone-based system combines human-computer interaction and motion-planning research. "Existing indoor navigation systems typically require the use of expensive and heavy sensors, or equipping rooms and hallways with radio-frequency tags that can be detected by a handheld reader and which are used to determine the user’s location," says UNR's Kostas Berkis. Navatar uses two-dimensional architectural maps, which are already available for many buildings, as well as low-cost sensors such as accelerometers and compasses. The system locates and tracks users inside buildings, finding the best path based on their needs, and provides step-by-step instructions to the destination. "To synchronize the location, our system combines probabilistic algorithms and the natural capabilities of people with visual impairments to detect landmarks in their environment through touch, such as corridor intersections, doors, stairs, and elevators," says UNR's Eelke Folmer. The directions are provided using synthetic speech, while users confirm their location by verbal cues or by pressing a button on the phone. The researchers now are seeking new applications for Navatar, including integrating it into outdoor navigation systems that use global positioning systems.Emergency Management: Incident, Resource, and Supply Chain Management CCC Blog (05/20/12) Nabil R. Adam Rutgers University professor Nabil R. Adam, director of the Information Technology for Emergency mAnageMent Research Laboratory, recently led a U.S. Department of Homeland Security workshop focused on emergency management at the University of California, Irvine. The workshop aimed to provide a forum for researchers, subject-matter experts, and practitioners dealing with emergency management to assess the current state of the art, identify challenges, and provide input to developing strategies for addressing those challenges. The workshop discussions led to the realization that emergency management poses unique challenges that require fundamental advances in computing and information science and engineering. Participants noted that there are opportunities to advance not only the state-of-the-art in emergency management, but also computing broadly, including real-time data sensing and analysis, predictive modeling and simulation, human-computer interaction, computer vision and robotics, wireless networks, and social networking. The workshop focused on incident management, resource management, and supply chain management. The workshop can help communities by developing support tools for enhanced disaster supply chain management, modeling disaster supply chains, developing information-sharing networks across the disaster supply chain, and developing public-private partnerships for enhanced disaster supply chain resiliency.'March Madness' of Coding Contests Highlights Two Trends ITBusiness.ca (05/17/12) Brian Jackson ACM's International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) is used by the top software companies as a tool to find talented recruits, with the main event being a rigorous five-hour programming competition in which three-person teams solve problems at a single workstation. This year's ICPC highlighted a number of trends, including a dearth of female participants, which emphasized the general shortage of women selecting computer science as a study path and career choice. Accompanying the ICPC's expansion to include international teams has been a decline in North American teams' performance. The last time a North American school won the top spot was 1999, and in recent years Chinese and Russian teams have dominated the event. Underlying this trend are deep cultural differences between North Americans and their Asian counterparts, with the former subscribing to a view of computer programming as geeky and socially undesirable. In Asia, and China in particular, programming is taken very seriously, reflecting Asian schools' competitiveness. In fact, the Chinese contestants have fans supporting them in their native country, which demonstrates profoundly dissimilar attitudes to computer science between the Asian and North American regions.Navy Pilot Training Enhanced by AEMASE 'Smart Machine' Developed at Sandia Labs Sandia National Laboratories (05/16/12) Heather Clark Sandia National Laboratories researchers have developed the Automated Expert Modeling & Student Evaluation (AEMASE) system, and is giving it to the U.S. Navy as a component of flight simulators. The components are currently being used to train Navy personnel to fly H-60 helicopters and a complete system will soon be delivered for training on the E-2C Hawkeye aircraft. AEMASE is a cognitive software application that updates its knowledge of experts' performance on training simulators in real time to prevent training sessions from becoming obsolete and automatically evaluates student performance, both of which reduce overall training costs. The system is adaptable and aware of what is happening, which is what is "driving our cognitive modeling and automated systems that learn over time from the environment and from their interactions with people," says AEMASE inventor Robert G. Abbott. He says AEMASE will give Navy trainees specific ways to improve performance through machine learning, automated performance measurement, and recordings of trainees' voices during training sessions. The software recognizes that there may be several right answers that incorporate different ways of responding to the situation, notes Sandia's Chris Forsythe. AEMASE also utilizes speech recognition technology to assess how effectively teams communicate.Project Aims to Build Online Hub for Archival Materials Chronicle of Higher Education (05/13/12) Jennifer Howard The Social Networks and Archival Context Project (SNAC), developed by Daniel V. Pitti at the University of Virginia's Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, seeks to build an online central clearinghouse for archival records. SNAC's prototype Web site permits visitors to search for the names of individuals, corporate entities, or families to find related archival context records. SNAC's radial-graph feature enables researchers to probe an individual's social and cultural environment by generating a manipulable web of a subject's links as revealed in archival records, which fits with the project's core goal of visualizing social networks within which archival records were created. To ensure that its data is good, SNAC in its first phase tapped thousands of finding aids from various sources. The second phase of the project will involve 13 state and regional archival consortia and more than 35 U.S., British, and French university and national repositories contributing records. The Encoded Archival Context-Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families standard was applied to SNAC's records, which "provides connections to this wealth of material that's out there," says the California Digital Library's Rachael Hu. SNAC's large-scale demonstration of the viability of this strategy could inspire the widespread adoption of the standard by archives.Japanese Researchers Break Record for Terahertz Wi-Fi Transmission Techworld (05/17/12) Sophie Curtis Researchers at the Tokyo Institute of Technology have set a new record for wireless transmission in the terahertz band. The team has achieved a data transfer rate of 3 Gbps at a frequency of 542 GHz, which is 20 times higher than most current Wi-Fi connections. The researchers used a wireless radio no bigger than a penny, a tiny device known as a resonant tunneling diode than can reduce voltage as current increases. The researchers tuned the current correctly, and were able to make the diode oscillate and distribute signals in the terahertz band, which sits between the microwave and infrared regions of the spectrum and ranges from 300 GHz to just under 3 THz. In theory, terahertz Wi-Fi could support data rates up to 100 Gbps--about 15 times faster than 802.11ac, the newest Wi-Fi standard available to consumers, according to the report in Electronics Letters. The researchers now will focus on improving the proof-of-principle device and extending its range deeper into the terahertz band.Computer Field Wide Open for Women Montreal Gazette (Canada) (05/11/12) Jason Magder McGill University recently started hosting the 4 Girls workshops, which are dedicated to bringing together girls who are interested in technology. Women currently make up about 25 percent of all workers in information technology and the percentage of women enrolling in university technology programs has either held steady or declined in the last 10 years. McGill undergraduate computer science student Genevieve L'Esperance and Microsoft Canada researcher Susan Ibach worked at 4 Girls, teaching the students ways of interacting with computers, including using a mouse, a keyboard, a touchscreen, or motion gestures. Ibach says women often are hesitant to choose a technical field because of the lack of women already in those fields. "When you don’t have momentum of enrollment, I think that lowers the number of people that will want to enter that field," she says. The 4 Girls program is just one of several efforts being made by Canadian elementary schools, high schools, and universities to promote technology as a career choice for women. L'Esperance says programs such as 4 Girls are helping to remove the stigma about technology for women. “I think slowly, but surely people will start to realize how much fun it is,” she says.Center Seeks to Transform Teaching Practices U.S. News & World Report (05/17/12) Marlene Cimons Although spatial reasoning is a great predictor of talent in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) fields, these skills are not taught adequately in the educational system, says Temple University professor Nora Newcombe. She is principal investigator for the Spatial Intelligence and Learning Center, which was established to develop the science of spatial learning and to find new ways to help children and adults acquire spatial skills in order for them to be successful in STEM fields. The center consists of research partners from Temple University, Northwestern University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania. Researchers at the center want to encourage classroom teaching that incorporates methods that "spatialize" information, such as using diagrams in science instruction. "Understanding how external symbol systems function in human cognition is crucial to using them effectively in education," Newcombe says. For example, Northwestern University professor Kenneth Forbus is developing CogSketch, software that enables college geology and engineering professors to use sketching in the classroom with immediate feedback from the computer. "The idea is that you can have a tablet computer on which you can sketch, and the artificial intelligence aspect will be able to give you feedback," Newcombe says.Internet Usage Patterns May Signify Depression Missouri University of Science and Technology (05/16/12) Missouri University of Science and Technology researchers have found that students who show signs of depression use the Internet differently, and professor Sriram Chellappan says the research provides new insights on the association between Internet use and depression. The researchers found that about 30 percent of the students in their study met the minimum criteria for depression. "The study is believed to be the first that uses actual Internet data, collected unobtrusively and anonymously, to associate Internet usage with signs of depression," Chellappan says. The researchers found that depressed students tended to use file-sharing services, send email, and chat online more than the other students. Depressed students also tended to use higher "packets per flow" applications, such as online videos and games, and used the Internet in a more random fashion, frequently switching among applications. The researchers plan to develop software that can help individuals determine if their Internet usage patterns indicate depression. "The software would be a cost-effective and an in-home tool that could proactively prompt users to seek medical help if their Internet usage patterns indicate possible depression," Chellappan says. The software also could be used to help diagnose other mental disorders.You Can't Play Nano-Billiards on a Bumpy Table UNSW Newsroom (05/14/12) Bob Beale An international team of researchers led by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) recently published a paper showing that small bumps can have an unexpectedly large impact on the paths that electrons follow. The team has developed a major redesign that enables these bumps to be ironed out. "Scaled down a million-fold from the local bar variety, these microscopic pool tables are cooled to just above absolute zero to study fundamental science, for example, how classical chaos theory works in the quantum mechanical limit, as well as questions with useful application, such as how the wave-like nature of the electron affects how transistors work," says UNSW professor Adam Micolich. University of Oregon professor Richard Taylor notes "we found that we can 'reconfigure' the warping by warming the table up and cooling it down again, with the electron paths changing radically in response." The researchers used the new billiard design to remove the silicon dopants, eliminating the associated warping, and enabling the electron paths to stay the same each time they cool the device down for study.Meet the Man Who Invented the Instructions for the Internet Wired News (05/18/12) Cade Metz In an interview, Steve Crocker, chairman of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), discusses how he created Requests for Comments (RFCs), the documents that described how the precursor to the Internet would work, as well as how ICANN came into being. Crocker, who at the time was a researcher at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), notes that RFCs were developed after he and his fellow researchers discussed how ARPAnet, the forerunner to today's Internet, would be set up in the late 1960s. Those discussions were necessary because there was no formal plan for the nodes that would be connected to the network, nor were there detailed specifications about how the interface message processors were going to be connected to the hosts. Crocker says he wanted to emphasize the informal nature of the notes, so he called them Requests for Comments. Crocker says he believed the notes would be discarded once formal documentation for ARPAnet was drawn up, although the notes persisted and became the primary mode of documentation for the network. Crocker eventually left UCLA and gave the responsibility of handling the RFCs to another member of the group, John Postel, who oversaw the creation of the domain name system and became responsible for assigning top-level domains to countries around the world.

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• 18 May ' 20:57

  Welcome to the May 18, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Russian Whizzes Win Global Collegiate IT Contest Closure in Disappearance of Computer Scientist Why Shutting Airports Is Not the Best Way to Halt a Global Flu Pandemic Saving Lives With Google Maps--Disaster-Tracking Software Developed by Abertay Student Paralyzed, Moving a Robot With Their Minds Computing Experts Unveil Superefficient ‘Inexact’ Chip Memristors in Silicon Promising for Dense, Fast Memory Individual Typing Style Gives Key to User Authentication India's Proposal for Government Control of Internet to Be Discussed in Geneva Getting in Tune: Researchers Solve Tuning Problem for Wireless Power Transfer Systems Wild Blue Yonder: Engineers Tackle Challenges of Hypersonic Flight New Research Could Mean Faster Computers and Better Smart Phones Study: Facebook Relies on Good Design to Retain Users Russian Whizzes Win Global Collegiate IT Contest Agence France-Presse (05/17/12) The St. Petersburg State University of IT, Mechanics and Optics has won this year's ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC), besting 111 other teams from around the world by solving nine of 12 problems in five hours. The problems featured real-world issues that require optimal solutions, such as having to build the best communications system between moving asteroids. The 112 teams competing in the ICPC were all finalists of an earlier regional round that involved 25,000 students from more than 2,200 universities in 85 countries. "The ACM ICPC is a wonderful opportunity for students from around the world to come together, collaborate, and exchange different views and experiences," says ICPC executive director and Baylor University professor Bill Poucher in a press release. "I am excited to see how these students will utilize the amazing knowledge they've gained from this contest and from one another as they continue their academic and professional pursuits." The University of Warsaw came in second in the competition, followed by the Moscow Institute of Physics & Technology, Shanghai Jaio Tong University, Belarusian State University, Zhongshan University, Harvard University, the Chinese Institute of Hong Kong, the University of Waterloo, and Moscow State University.Closure in Disappearance of Computer Scientist New York Times (05/18/12) Nick Wingfield Computer scientist Jim Gray, who has been missing for more than five years, was declared legally dead by a San Francisco court, providing closure to Gray's widow and others. During his tenure at IBM and Tandem Computer in the 1970s and 1980s, Gray carried out pioneering work in developing database and transaction-processing technologies that underpin today's Internet. He received ACM's A.M. Turing Award in 1998, and the respect he engendered was partly reflected in the enormous search effort that followed his disappearance. Gray, an expert sailor, disappeared with his sailboat off the coat of Northern California, and his friends from Microsoft, Amazon.com, and Google scoured high-resolution satellite pictures of 132,000 square miles of ocean trying to locate him. Gray's widow, Donna Carnes, later hired a team to perform underwater searches using sonar and unmanned rovers. “I am in the San Francisco house, with the fire on, drinking tea, with the hope that Jim may rest in peace,” wrote Carnes in an email following the court's ruling.Why Shutting Airports Is Not the Best Way to Halt a Global Flu Pandemic Technology Review (05/17/12) Rather than closing all international airports, Newcastle University researchers say a better approach to limiting the spread of a global flu pandemic is to cut specific flights between airports because it can achieve the same reduction in the spread of the disease with far less drastic action. The researchers, led by Jose Marcelino and Marcus Kaiser, used a standard disease-spreading model to simulate the spread of an H1N1-type infection across a network consisting of the world’s top 500 airports and the flights between them. The researchers found that shutting down entire airports only had a significant effect on spreading if it reduced travel by 95 percent. However, the same standard could be achieved by removing just 18 percent of the flights between cities ranked by a network measure known as edge betweenness. In the best-case scenario, shutting down entire airports would cut infections by 18 percent, while removing specific flights reduced infections by up to 37 percent, according to the researchers. "Selecting highly ranked single connections between cities for cancellation was more effective, resulting in fewer individuals infected with influenza, compared to shutting down whole airports," say Marcelino and Kaiser.Saving Lives With Google Maps--Disaster-Tracking Software Developed by Abertay Student University of Abertay Dundee (05/16/12) A University of Abertay Dundee student David Kane has demonstrated that a home broadband router could be used to map natural disasters in real time. Kane has developed software that pings home broadband routers to determine whether buildings are still standing. The system shows live data on safe areas using Google maps, enabling a disaster to be detected and mapped within seconds, and progress of the support effort to be tracked. Kane says the system could automate the entire process of coordinated disaster response and supply a constant stream of up-to-date information. The software also could work with mobile phone networks, if an app was developed to support it, and would allow for accurate disaster tracking as phone networks go down, as geolocation runs on satellites. "The idea definitely works and I've built it so anyone can take this code and improve it," Kane says. "It's certainly not finished, but everything is open source compatible and using XML can plug straight into existing disaster management systems." Abertay lecturer Ian Ferguson says the use of computer infrastructure to find data about natural disasters as the occur could be a significant advance.Paralyzed, Moving a Robot With Their Minds New York Times (05/16/12) Benedict Carey Researchers have demonstrated that humans with severe brain injuries can effectively control a prosthetic arm using brain implants that transmit neural signals to a computer. The researchers say their brain-computer interface could enable people with brain and spinal cord injuries to live more independent lives. “It is a spectacular result, in many respects, and really the logical next step in the development of this technology," says University of Montreal researcher John Kalaska, who was not involved in the study. As part of the study, two quadriplegic patients each had a tiny sensor injected just below the skull, in an area of the motor cortex known to be active when people move their arms or hands. The patients learned to move a robot arm by watching the researchers move the arm and imagining they were actually controlling it. The sensor transmitted their neurons' firing patterns from the imaginary movement to a computer, which recorded the patterns and translated them into an electronic command. Both patients were able to move the robotic arm and hand skillfully enough to pick up foam objects. The researchers note that their system is still experimental, and several hurdles remain before the technology becomes practical.Computing Experts Unveil Superefficient ‘Inexact’ Chip Rice University (05/17/12) Jade Boyd Rice University researchers have developed an "inexact" computer chip that boosts power and resource efficiency by allowing for occasional errors. The researchers say the chips are 15 times more efficient than current microchips. "This work opens the door to interesting energy-efficiency opportunities of using inexact hardware together with traditional processing elements," says Hewlett-Packard's Paolo Faraboschi. The researchers cut power consumption by allowing the processing components to make a few mistakes. By managing the probability of errors and limiting which calculations produce errors, the researchers developed a method to simultaneously cut energy demands and boost performance. One type of inexact design is known as pruning, or trimming away some of the rarely used parts of digital circuits on a microchip. The pruned chips were twice as fast, used half as much energy, and were half the size of conventional chips. "When we factored in size and speed gains, these chips were 7.5 times more efficient than regular chips," says Rice researcher Avinash Lingamneni. The technology is expected to find use in application-specific processors, such as special-purpose embedded microchips for hearing aids, cameras, and other devices.Memristors in Silicon Promising for Dense, Fast Memory BBC News (05/18/12) Jason Palmer European Materials Research Society researchers have developed a memristor that can be made much less expensively by using current semiconductor techniques. The researchers, led by University College London's Anthony Kenyon, were working on silicon devices for light-emitting diodes when they discovered that a film of silicon oxide on the devices behave like a memristor. After further testing, the researchers found that their devices seem to significantly outperform existing solid-state flash memory technologies. "Flash memory devices switch at 10,000 nanoseconds or so, and in our device we can't measure how fast it is," Kenyon says. "Our equipment only goes down to 90 nanoseconds. It's at least as fast as that and probably faster." The energy required to switch the state of the new devices is just a hundredth of that in existing flash memory, and significantly faster, according to the researchers. They believe the inexpensive and simple nature of the new device will make it commercially attractive.Individual Typing Style Gives Key to User Authentication Queensland University of Technology (05/15/12) The unique typing styles of computer users could be used for authentication, according to Queensland University of Technology researcher Eesa Al Solami. He has developed the continuous authentication system (CAS), an algorithmic system that captures and analyzes the keystroke dynamics of keyboard users in a single session and allows for user authentication throughout a session. "So while current computer systems can authorize the user at the start of a session, they do not detect whether the current user is still the initial authorized user, a substitute user, or an intruder pretending to be a valid user," Al Solami says. "This makes a system that can continuously check the identity of the user throughout a session necessary." He says CAS can define a new global threshold for any user and will not be affected by changes in a computer user's typing style. The system would be valuable to the military, financial institutions, and universities, enabling organizations to generate alerts or terminate sessions when it detects a change in user. CAS could be extended to detect the typing styles on tablets and other mobile devices, Al Solami notes.India's Proposal for Government Control of Internet to Be Discussed in Geneva The Hindu (India) (05/15/12) Shalini Singh The Commission on Science and Technology for Development is expected to discuss India's proposal to the United Nations (UN) General Assembly that governments take control of Internet regulation. India has led the charge, along with South Africa, Brazil, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan, to shift Internet governance from Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers' (ICANN)'s multi-stakeholder model to a government-only model. Under the proposal, a UN Committee for Internet Related Policies would oversee all national Internet standards bodies and policy organizations. It also would negotiate Internet-related treaties and negotiate disputes. The committee would be funded by the UN, run by staff from the UN's Conference on Trade and Development, and report directly to the General Assembly. India's proposal could generate controversy for multi-stakeholder communities within the country and across the globe, since it involves a migration away from the prevailing democratic "equal say" process for Internet governance to one in which governments would be central, receiving advice from stakeholders and choosing the way forward. Guiding India's actions could be concerns about Western governments' closeness to ICANN.Getting in Tune: Researchers Solve Tuning Problem for Wireless Power Transfer Systems North Carolina State University (05/15/12) Matt Shipman Magnetic resonance can be used to transmit power wirelessly, according to researchers at North Carolina State University. Professor Srdjan Lukic and Ph.D. student Zeljko Pantic have developed technology that automatically and precisely re-tunes the receivers in wireless power transfer (WPT) systems, making them more efficient and functional. "We're optimistic that this technology moves us one step closer to realizing functional WPT systems that can be used in real-world circumstances," Lukic says. The prototype incorporates additional circuitry into the receiver that injects small amounts of reactive power into the receiver coil as needed to maintain its original resonant frequency. If the transmitter's tuning changes, the electronic prototype also can read the trace amount of current being transmitted and adjust the receiver's tuning accordingly. "Because we are using electronics to inject reactive power into the receiver coil, we can be extremely precise when tuning the receiver," Lukic says. He says WPT systems could be used to charge electronic vehicles, electronic devices, and other technologies. “The next step is to try incorporating this work into technology that can be used to wirelessly charge electric vehicles," Lukic says.Wild Blue Yonder: Engineers Tackle Challenges of Hypersonic Flight Stanford Report (CA) (05/15/12) Simon Firth Stanford University researchers are launching the Predictive Science Academic Alliance Program (PSAAP), which uses computers to model the physical complexities of the hypersonic environment, particularly as it relates to the scramjet engine. The program focuses on the "unstart" problem, which requires a clear understanding of the physics of the scramjet and then reproducing mathematically the immensely complex interactions that occur at hypersonic speeds. "These hypersonic vehicles are themselves subject to uncertainties in how they behave in the air," says Stanford professor Juan Alonso. PSAAP's goal is to try to quantify those uncertainties so that scramjet engineers can build the appropriate tolerances into their designs to enable the engines to function in extraordinary environments. PSAAP researchers are using the supercomputer facilities at Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia national laboratories, where the largest and most complex simulations can be run. The PSAAP team also has created LISZT, a computer language for running complex simulations on massive processor sets. LISZT can directly express problems in engineering and science through code designed specifically for exascale architectures. "It's something you could never have created unless you put computer scientists, mathematicians, mechanical engineers, and aerospace engineers together in the same room," Alonso says.New Research Could Mean Faster Computers and Better Smart Phones University of Gothenburg (Sweden) (05/15/12) University of Gothenburg researchers have found that graphene and carbon nanotubes could help reduce the size and power consumption of electronic circuits. "If you stretch a graphene sheet from end to end the thin layer can oscillate at a basic frequency of getting on for a billion times a second," says Gothenburg's Anders Nordenfelt. "This is the same frequency range used by radios, mobile phones, and computers." He says the limited size, weight, and unique properties of the carbon materials could improve the electronics of devices. Graphene and carbon nanotubes can pick up radio signals because they have high mechanical resonance frequencies. "The question is whether they can also be used to produce this type of signal in a controlled and effective way," Nordenfelt says. "This assumes that they themselves are not driven by an oscillating signal that, in turn, needs to be produced by something else." Nordenfelt carried out a mathematical analysis to demonstrate that it is possible to connect the nanowire with an electronic circuit, apply a magnetic field, and get the nanowire to self-oscillate mechanically.Study: Facebook Relies on Good Design to Retain Users IDG News Service (05/09/12) Joab Jackson University of Washington graduate student Parmit Chilana recently interviewed Facebook engineers and design specialists to learn how they develop and deploy new features for the service. Chilana interviewed 17 Facebook employees, including software engineers, product designers, and product managers. She used the principles of good software user interface design, as as described in a 1985 paper by John Gould and Clayton Lewis, who stress iterative design, a focus on user testing, and user-focused design, as a baseline. "Over half the interview participants explicitly identified user experience as a key factor in driving design on Facebook," Chilana says. Engineers often have to design for the least common denominator, as new features must be equally intuitive to a 90-year-old Mongolian grandmother as to a 14-year-old Brazilian soccer player, according to one Facebook engineer. Iteration also is valued at Facebook, with one engineer noting that the company "will just try to get something out there, make sure it is reasonable and then iterate on the design based on how people are using it," Chilana says. She also notes that Facebook designers are not averse to deploying cutting-edge features that comply with the company's long-term vision of a social networking site, even if users are unhappy with it in the short term.

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• 16 May ' 08:29

  Welcome to the May 16, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Software Engineer: 2012's Top Job The Elusive Capacity of Networks Researcher Develops Personalized Search Engines Body Heat-Powered Computers a Step Closer Perfume-Puffing Robot Sniffs Out Social Media Mentions Humanoid Robot Swarm Synchronised Using Quorum Sensing Researcher Runs IP Network Over Xylophones Font for Digits Lets Numbers Punch Their Weight Researchers Develop a Web Application for the Evaluation of the Ecological Status of Rivers in the Spanish Mediterranean Basin Bee Research Breakthrough Might Lead to Artificial Vision Biologically Inspired Energy Researchers Propose Solution to 'Bufferbloat' Spin Spirals for Computers of the Future Software Engineer: 2012's Top Job InformationWeek (05/15/12) Cindy Waxer A recent CareerCast.com study ranked software engineer as the top job for 2012 based on five criteria, including salary, stress levels, hiring outlook, physical demands, and work environment. Software engineer ranked higher than doctor, Web developer, computer programmer, and financial planner due to tremendous demand and outstanding salary. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently found that the median pay for software engineers was $90,530 per year in 2010. In addition, the demand for software engineers is on the rise, with an estimated growth rate of 30 percent between 2010 and 2020. "Over the last few years there's definitely been a 20 percent to 25 percent uptick in salary for software engineers," says Monetate's Tom Janofsky. "I feel like I live in a different economy. We're constantly hiring." Other benefits for software engineers are collaboration, creative thinking, and hands-on experimentation that can support a career in a continuous state of evolution. Software engineers also enjoy a lot of flextime, interesting colleagues, and a collaborative, team-oriented work environment. "A lot of what we do is about failing, doing something wrong, and then going back and looking at the problem again," Janofsky says.The Elusive Capacity of Networks MIT News (05/15/12) Larry Hardesty Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Technology in Munich have shown that in a wired network, network coding and error-correcting coding can be handled separately without causing a reduction in the network's capacity. In a network coding system, a node scrambles together the packets it receives and sends the hybrid packets down multiple paths, where they are scrambled again at different nodes. However, each link between nodes could be noisy, so the information in the packets needs to be encoded to correct for errors. "I could try to remove the noise, but by doing that, I'm in effect making a decision right now that maybe would have been better taken by someone downstream from me who might have had more observations of the same source," says MIT's Muriel Medard. The researchers analyzed the scenario in which the noise in a given link is unrelated to the signals traveling over other links. They also analyzed the scenario in which the noise on a given link is related to the signals on other links and determined how to calculate the upper and lower bounds on the capacity of a given wireless network.Researcher Develops Personalized Search Engines Arkansas Newswire (05/15/12) Matt McGowan University of Arkansas professor Susan Gauch is helping to develop Hypothes.is, a system of annotation for the Web that can be an open source platform for annotators to comment on individual sentences. "What Hypothes.is is trying to do is build confidence and trust about information obtained on the Web," Gauch says. She notes "the peer-review component will be determined by the annotator's reputation, which will be based on many demographic factors and will be constantly under review by other annotators." Hypothes.is functions as an overlay on top of stable content, such as news, blogs, scientific articles, books, terms of service, ballot initiatives, legislation and regulations, and software code. Gauch says the system does not require the participation of the underlying site, and the content is housed on separate servers. She also notes that by enabling or disabling plug-ins, users can activate and deactivate the service. "Technology allows us to see which sites users frequently visit, so we have a good idea what they're looking for when they enter vague or ambiguous search terms," Gauch says. A user's behavioral information enables the system to develop profiles that guide users to pages they will be interested in.Body Heat-Powered Computers a Step Closer Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (05/14/12) Jon Cartwright Harvard University researchers have developed a method to tailor composite materials so that their thermal conduction is in a direction that changes throughout. The researchers demonstrated this concept with a thermal shield, a device that excludes heat from a certain region. The researchers placed the device in a block of conductive jelly and kept one side warm and the other cold. With no shield in place, the heat would have flowed through the jelly in a uniform temperature gradient. However, when the shield was in place, it almost totally excluded the heat current from the region inside without affecting its flow in the jelly outside. "There are likely situations where heat currents can be successfully harnessed for computation and other applications," says University of California, Berkeley researcher Alex Zetti. Materials already exist whose conductivity depends on temperature, notes Harvard's Yuki Sato. He says if these materials were used in the new device, it would access the heat current only if the surroundings were warm enough, which would be the basis of thermal computation. A thermal computer would be extremely energy efficient, because it could run off waste heat in the environment, including heat produced by the human body.Perfume-Puffing Robot Sniffs Out Social Media Mentions BBC News (05/15/12) Mint's Benjamin Redford has developed Olly, a robot that connects to the Internet and emits a waft of scent when its owner is mentioned on social networks. Olly is designed to watch the millions of messages passing through social networks and spot when people are talking about its owner. Redford says a whiff of perfume is a good medium for reward because it could catch someone's attention without being overly distracting. "We are gradually spending more and more time on screen and it's good to have some other form of sensory stimulus rather than just video and audio," he says. Users can set Olly to monitor Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks for interactions such as retweets, posts, comments, mentions by name, or specific text search. They also can tailor the robot to give off different scents, including a partner's perfume. The technology has been made available through a Creative Commons license, which enables anyone who is familiar with electronics, three-dimensional printing, and computer programming to make their own robot.Humanoid Robot Swarm Synchronised Using Quorum Sensing Technology Review (05/16/12) Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed an approach for robotic synchronization based on the biological phenomenon of quorum sensing. Quorum sensing is a form of synchronization used by bacteria and social insects that works by constantly releasing signaling molecules into the environment while simultaneously measuring the local concentration of those molecules. The concentration rises as more creatures join the local population, making it an effective measure of population density. The researchers, led by Patrick Bechon and Jean-Jacques Slotine, are using a similar approach to synchronize humanoid robots. The quorum-sensing approach gives each robot access to a global variable such as the average population or the average clock time. Each robot also can change its variable because it contributes to the average. The MIT research is contributing to a larger trend in robotics that takes advantage of less expensive humanoid robots to enable the large-scale synchronization of humanoid robot swarms.Researcher Runs IP Network Over Xylophones IDG News Service (05/14/12) Joab Jackson University of California, Berkeley graduate student R. Stuart Geiger recently ran an Internet Protocol (IP) network over a set of xylophones, played by human participants. Geiger says the network protocol, Internet Protocol over Xylophone Players, provides a fully compliant IP connection between two computers. The system involves two Arduino microcontrollers, sensors, a pair of xylophones, and two players. In a normal setup, the computer will send a message packet to the microcontroller in the ACSII format, which the microcontroller converts into hexadecimal code. The Arduino is attached to a series of light-emitting diodes (LEDs), each of which corresponds to a hexadecimal character, as well as a key on a xylophone. When an LED lights up, the human participant strikes the corresponding key on the xylophone. Piezo sensors are attached to each xylophone, so that they are able to sense when a note is played on the other xylophone. The Arduino for the receiving computer senses the note and then converts it back into hexadecimal code. When the second computer sends a return packet, the order of operations is reversed.Font for Digits Lets Numbers Punch Their Weight New Scientist (05/12/12) Jacob Aron Researchers at the St. Andrews and Calgary universities have developed FatFonts, a font that offers a way to write numbers so that their areas equal their numerical value. The researchers say FatFonts has the potential to transform data visualization by enabling a single infographic to convey exact values as well as a visual overview. The team measured the area for each number and then thickened or thinned sections so that the total area scaled in proportion to each number. For example, the number two has an area that is exactly twice that of one, three is triple the size of one, and 999 is the largest number possible with FatFonts. The team demonstrated the concept by creating a map of Sicily in which each number represents the height of the ground at that geographical location. Standing back from the map makes it easy to identify mountainous regions, but the added advantage is that moving closer also enables viewers to compare points numerically. The researchers note the concept is most effective when printed on large, high-resolution wall displays, which are big enough to see the individual numbers as well as large-scale trends.Researchers Develop a Web Application for the Evaluation of the Ecological Status of Rivers in the Spanish Mediterranean Basin University of Granada (Spain) (05/10/12) University of Granada researchers have developed the Mediterranean Prediction and Classification System (MEDPACS), a Web application that evaluates the ecological status of any river in the Spanish Mediterranean basin by estimating the variety of aquatic macroinvertebrates that live in each river. MEDPACS was developed within the framework of the GUADALMED project, in which seven Spanish universities collaborated to test different methods for assessing the basin's rivers. The project aims to develop an evaluation methodology for meeting the provisions of the European Parliament's Water Framework Directive. The model automatically creates maps and reports on the ecological status of each stream. The system lists the macroinvertebrate community that should live in a specific stream habitat in any river of the basin, provided there are no environmental alterations in that point. The list of macroinvertebrates provided by the model is compared to the actual list to determine the level of habitat alternation. To generate the forecast list, the model performs a series of calculations and assessments, including parameters such as the distance between the specific stream point and the source of the stream, the slope, or the geological materials in the upstream area.Bee Research Breakthrough Might Lead to Artificial Vision RMIT News (05/10/12) New research reveals that honeybees use multiple rules to solve complex visual problems, and study author Adrian Dyer of RMIT University says the findings help explain how cognitive capacities for viewing complex images evolved in the brain. Dyer says rule learning was a fundamental cognitive task that enabled humans to operate in complex environments. "For example, if a driver wants to turn right at an intersection then they need to simultaneously observe the traffic light color, the flow of oncoming cars and pedestrians to make a decision," he says. This type of cognitive task is beyond current machine vision. "Our research collaboration between labs in Australia and France wanted to understand if such simultaneous decision making required a large primate brain, or whether a honeybee might also demonstrate rule learning," Dyer notes. The team trained individual honeybees to fly into a Y-shaped maze that presented different elements in specific relationships, and the bees were able to learn that the elements had to have two sets of rules. The findings showed that multiple simultaneous conceptual rule learning can be mastered without a complex brain. The research also suggests that machines would be able to handle such a task and see almost as well as humans.Biologically Inspired Energy Texas Advanced Computing Center (05/09/12) Aaron Dubrow University of Houston professor Margaret Cheung is using the Texas Advanced Computing Center's Ranger supercomputer to explore the role that confinement, temperature, and solvents play in the stability and energy efficiency of the carotenoid-porphyrin-C60 molecular triad, an artificial photosynthetic material. "By using computation, we can understand the properties and the behavior of this molecule and gain insight into improving it," Cheung says. The results of the experiments provide a way to test and engineer nano-capsules with embedded triads that, when combined in large numbers, could greatly increase the ability to produce clean energy. Since 2011, the project has used more than 2.5 million computing hours on Ranger and 2 million hours at the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Council. The researchers simulated the triad in solution at many different temperatures and confinement conditions to map the impact of these changes on the behavior of the molecule. The researchers discovered that the triad conformation distribution could be manipulated by temperature fluctuations in the solvent. They hope to use the information from the computer simulations to design a scalable system that maximizes the generation of chemical energy while maintaining the triad's stability.Researchers Propose Solution to 'Bufferbloat' The Register (UK) (05/09/12) Richard Chirgwin Xerox PARC's Van Jacobson and Pollere's Kathleen Nichols have developed Controlled Delay (CoDel), a queue management mechanism designed to solve the "bufferbloat" problem, which happens when packet buffering causes high latency and jitter and reduces overall network throughput. CoDel is designed to provide a "no-knobs" approach to queue management to overcome bufferbloat. CoDel dynamically resizes the buffer at the edge, so that the buffer keeps a sufficient number of packets to handle jitter without fooling the sender into picking the wrong Transmission Control Protocol window size. CoDel uses a local minimum queue to estimate the end-to-end ideal queue size. The traffic is then measured to see how long it is above or below the minimum queue estimate, and the measurement is based on packet-sojourn time rather than in terms of bytes or packets. Since it is a self-contained algorithm, it requires no configuration, and the researchers believe it is suitable for modern packet buffers and could be added to edge devices at a minimal cost.Spin Spirals for Computers of the Future Julich Research Center (05/07/12) Angela Wenzik Researchers from Julich, Hamburg, and Kiel have demonstrated how magnetic moments in chains of iron atoms could allow information to be transported at the nanoscale in a fast and energy-efficient manner over a wide range of temperatures, while remaining mostly unaffected by external magnetic fields. “To the best of our knowledge, it is a completely new concept for data transport on this scale,” says Julich Research Center professor Stefan Blugel. "Because the system is extremely stable and allows information to be transferred in a fast and energy-efficient manner, we believe it is an extremely promising option for future applications." The researchers call the spiral arrangement of the magnetic properties in chains of iron atoms "spin spirals," which were placed in twin rows on an iridium surface for the experiments. "What is particularly interesting, is the fact that the spin of the atomic screw, which we refer to as chirality in the jargon, is very stable--even at relatively warm temperatures," Blugel says. The researchers now plan to study whether the system is stable at higher temperatures, up to and including room temperature. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 14 May ' 19:34

  Welcome to the May 14, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. A Computer Interface That Takes a Load Off Your Mind AI Branding Automates the Brainstorm Now You See Me, Now You Don't Research Quantifies Literary Trends BuildSys 2012 Calling for Papers: Sensors, Buildings, Energy Smart Shoes Step Up the Wearable-Computing Pace Software Design Cannot Be Neglected Simulated Skiers Reveal Mountain Traffic Jams Japanese Humanoid Robot Can Keep Its Balance After Getting Kicked Going Wireless in the Data Center Best Websites Balance Self-Expression and Functionality MSEIP Grants Fuel STEM Programs at Predominantly Minority Colleges A Computer Interface That Takes a Load Off Your Mind Technology Review (05/14/12) Kate Greene Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Tufts University have developed Brainput, a system designed to recognize when a user has an excessive workload and then automatically modify a computer interface to make it easier. The researchers used a portable brain-monitoring technology, known as a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which determines when a user is multitasking. "Brainput tries to get closer to the source, by looking directly at brain activity," says MIT postdoctoral researcher Erin Treacy Solovey. The researchers incorporated Brainput into virtual robots designed to adapt to the mental state of their human controller. The experiment aimed to guide two robots through a maze to find a location where a Wi-Fi signal was strong enough to send a message. As the researchers drove the robots toward the strongest Wi-Fi signal, the fNIRS sensors transmitted information about their mental states to the robots. The researchers found that when the robots' autonomous mode started, the overall performance of the human-robot team improved. "This work is a wonderful first step toward understanding our changing mental state and designing interfaces that dynamically tailor themselves so that the human-computer system can be as effective as possible," says Microsoft researcher Desney Tan.AI Branding Automates the Brainstorm New Scientist (05/10/12) Jim Giles Bruno Kessler Foundation researchers Carlo Strapparava and Gozde Ozbal have developed artificial intelligence-based branding software that can mimic the process of naming companies with effective brand names. The process starts with a series of words that describe the product to be named. The system then retrieves related words from an open source database called ConceptNet, which contains information on the meaning of words. The software forms a name by analyzing the words and combining them to produce a new word that contains some of the sounds of one of the original words. The system is designed to be used for brainstorming ideas, rather than as a replacement for human namers. The researchers plan on enhancing the system by adding the ability to use rhymes. Strapparava and Ozbal also want to make the system available to the public to get feedback. "A name doesn't come out of the blue," Strapparava says. "There is a technique, and when there is a technique it is possible to think computationally." - May Require Free Registration Now You See Me, Now You Don't Kansas State University News (05/10/12) Greg Tammen Kansas State University researchers are developing a computer network that could protect itself against online attackers by automatically changing its setup and configuration. The study will be the first to document if this type of adaptive cybersecurity, known as moving-target defense, can be effective. The researchers also will develop a set of analytical models to determine the effectiveness of a moving-target defense system, as well as a proof-of-concept system that can be used to experiment in a concrete setting. "It's important to investigate any scientific evidence that shows that this approach does work so it can be fully researched and developed," says Kansas State professor Scott DeLoach. The goal in developing moving-target defense systems is to create a network that automatically randomizes its configuration by changing the addresses of software applications on the network, switching between instances of the application, and changing the location of critical system data. Kansas State professor Xinming Ou says creating a computer network that could automatically detect and defend itself against cyberattacks would increase the security of online data for universities, government departments, corporations, and businesses. He also notes a moving-target defense system would shift the power imbalance from hackers back to network administrators.Research Quantifies Literary Trends Dartmouth Online (NH) (05/09/12) Ester Khachatryan Dartmouth University researchers studied the evolution of literary styles using mathematical and statistical analysis of English-language literature. The researchers found that the literary styles of modern authors vary from their predecessors more than the authors of previous eras. "The study confirms the possibility of computations and quantitative techniques as another way to look at cultural artifacts," says Dartmouth professor Daniel Rockmore. The researchers focused on content-free words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, articles, and numbers, to study similarities in the structure of literary styles since the year 1550. The research involved data from 7,733 books written by 537 authors. As the number of works increased over time, authors were influenced by subsets of available literature, which produced increasingly diverse works in the future. By the 20th century, authors were more strongly influenced by their contemporaries than predecessors, according to the researchers. "In interpreting what the numbers mean, you have to bring in all the knowledge of literary genres, history, literary history, institutions, authors, methods of publishing and distribution that you acquire in the normal course of literary studies," says Stanford University professor Ursula Heise.BuildSys 2012 Calling for Papers: Sensors, Buildings, Energy CCC Blog (05/11/12) Erwin Gianchandani ACM's BuildSys 2012 workshop, which takes place Nov. 6, provides an opportunity for the sensor, building, and energy research communities to address the challenges facing the design, deployment, use, and fundamental limits of those systems. The BuildSys organizers recently issued a call for papers, and the three best papers will be sponsored by the Computing Community Consortium (CCC). "We are interested in a life-cycle perspective across design, construction, and operation of buildings, and in energy consumption in both direct (electricity, gas etc.) and indirect (embedded energy in water) forms," the CCC says. Topic areas of interest include sensing technologies and sensor information processing methods; measurement, modeling, and visualization of building performance; and computationally assisted design of energy-efficient buildings. The workshop also welcomes demo abstracts, which describe technology that members of the community want to showcase, such as building controls, optimization and learning, smart energy-aware devices and appliances, and renewable energy integration. The deadline for paper/poster submissions is July 30.Smart Shoes Step Up the Wearable-Computing Pace CNet (05/09/12) Martin LaMonica Researchers at the universities of Munich and Toronto have developed ShoeSense, a type of wearable computing system for smartphones. ShoeSense involves a sensor being placed in a shoe that is able to understand customizable hand and arm gestures. For instance, a user moves his finger along his forearm to raise the volume on a music player in his pocket, pinches to choose the next track, and then pinches with three fingers to send an "I will be late" email to his wife. ShoeSense's developers say it could be more socially acceptable to operate a smartphone via arm and hand gestures than through glasses, as would be the case with Google's Project Glass. "ShoeSense introduces a novel and unique perspective (from the shoe), making it possible to recognize discreet and relaxed, as well as large and demonstrative, gestures without the need for cumbersome hats or body-mounted sensors," the researchers say. Analysts note that much of the research in computing interfaces and wearable computers focuses on the new possibilities for combining the digital and physical worlds using sensors.Software Design Cannot Be Neglected ZDNet Asia (05/09/12) Jamie Yap Compatibility and time-to-market pressures recently have de-prioritized software design investment, but industry observers say enterprises should concentrate on design as a differentiator to enhance usability and adoption of their software. "It's more than pretty screens now," says Constellation Research analyst Ray Wang. "It's about thinking how people engage with technology." Another factor underlying the de-emphasis of software design is a lack of stress on usability and human computer interaction training in local schools, says National University of Singapore (NUS) School of Computing researcher Zhao Shendong. Wang says great design helps cultivate a competitive advantage and shapes preferential behaviors in the value chain. He also points out that it would be helpful if vendors introduce "experiential designs" in view of fast product commoditization and contracting lifecycle times. NUS professor David Rosenblum says software design remains an ad hoc process within enterprises, while available established software design principles are scant. Under these circumstances, the "surest way" for software firms to realize a high level of design standard is to nurture a team of outstanding designers by identifying, fostering, and retaining the best designers. There also needs to be a chief architect responsible for guaranteeing the conceptual integrity of a software's design across its lifecycle, according to Rosenblum. He notes that smaller firms are particularly vulnerable to designing poor software, and it is common for them to neglect quality assurance.Simulated Skiers Reveal Mountain Traffic Jams Inside Science (05/08/12) Brian Jacobsmeyer Swiss Federal Institute of Technology researchers led by graduate student Thomas Holleczek have combined global positioning system (GPS) tracking data and a skier simulation to help reduce collisions between skiers on a mountain. The skier traffic model is based on physical forces, such as gravity and friction, as well as social forces, such as a skier's tendency to avoid another and the edges of the ski run. The researchers simulated thousands of skiers traveling down two slopes to determine average speeds and densities. Holleczek compared GPS data with the simulation results and found that the computer model replicated behavior on the intermediate level run well. But the model did not fully account for skiers' tendency to periodically stop and rest on the more advanced trail. The research reveals unexpected bottlenecks that have been overlooked in the past, and these areas could be widened to reduce congestion. Although computer models can never account for all the randomness of human behavior, these simulations can still be useful, says University of Idaho civil engineer Ahmed Abdel-Rahim. "These models have continuously been improved and validated with data," he reports. Holleczek hopes to account for more variables in future generations of the simulation.Japanese Humanoid Robot Can Keep Its Balance After Getting Kicked IEEE Spectrum (05/08/12) Erico Guizzo University of Tokyo researchers have developed a high-torque, high-speed robotic leg based on a novel electrical actuation system. The robot uses high-voltage and high-current liquid-cooled motor drivers that get their power from a 13.5-farad capacitor system. The capacitor was chosen because, unlike batteries, it can supply a large amount of current very quickly and reliably. The 53-kilogram robot's specialized motors allow it to react to disturbances such as kicks, knee strikes, and other abuse, as well as be able to jump 44 centimeters off the ground. The robot relies on a new balance control system that detects disturbances and computes 170 foot placement possibilities in 1 millisecond, selecting the best candidate to keep the robot from falling. The technique is the result of a collaborative effort between the University of Tokyo researchers and researchers at Japan's National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology. University of Tokyo researcher Junichi Urata is putting together a team to equip the robot's lower body with manipulation arms and additional sensors in anticipation of participating in the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Robotics Challenge.Going Wireless in the Data Center Computerworld (05/07/12) Johanna Ambrosio Scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) are working on a technique that could accelerate data center traffic by as much as 30 percent, compared to using traditional cables. Their approach, called 3D beamforming, is to send short bursts of traffic directly between the servers that need the information--avoiding competition with other servers and applications--and to do so at top speeds. Congestion associated with short bursts of activity is the reason why data center traffic gets tied up at key points during the day. Using mostly off-the-shelf gear, the team set up a system that creates and transmits 60 GHz Wi-Fi beams. The design bounces data over server racks, off metal plates on the ceiling, to specially designed antennas on each server. And the method saves bandwidth because the wireless links can be turned off and on as needed. "The next step is to develop network protocols and management techniques" to ensure those connections can be established, broken, and remade at will, says UCSB's Heather Zheng. "We are currently working on these." Zheng expects this phase of the project to take a couple of years.Best Websites Balance Self-Expression and Functionality Penn State Live (05/07/12) Matthew Swayne Penn State University researchers have found that providing users with a certain amount of freedom to express themselves could help designers develop more interactive Web portals and online communities. The researchers found that users increased their interactivity and developed a more robust community when they could write their own blog posts, change the look of the site, and add gadgets to personalized sites. "We need to strategically use interactive tools to help people interact in ways that are beneficial to both the users and site owners," says professor S. Shyam Sundar. However, the researchers also found that offering too many choices could frustrate or fatigue users. "Users feel overwhelmed when a site offers a lot of gadgets or tools and they seem fatigued by making too many decisions; but we can counter all this by providing them a chance to express themselves," Sundar says. The researchers designed 12 distinct variations of sites that either offered or did not offer users a chance to tailor the look of the site, to add gadgets and applications, and write original blog posts. The version that performed the best gave users a chance to write blog posts and allowed them to change the sites' look.MSEIP Grants Fuel STEM Programs at Predominantly Minority Colleges Campus Technology (05/07/12) David Nagel The U.S. Education Department has awarded $3.1 million in grants to 14 predominantly minority colleges and universities to help support efforts of "long-range improvement in science and engineering education." So far 12 recipients, with awards totaling $2.71 million, have been published. The Education Department awarded the grants through its Minority Science and Engineering Improvement Program, which seeks to promote science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) careers among underrepresented populations. The funds are used to improve college and pre-college STEM programs, fund faculty development, provide stipends for participants, support student research, and renovate facilities. "These grants will help support the expansion of America's scientific and technological capacity to build global competitiveness by increasing minority graduates in the STEM fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics," says U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan.

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• 11 May ' 19:04

  Welcome to the May 11, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. MirageTable: Microsoft Presents Augmented Reality Device Project Moon: One Small Step for a PC, One Giant Leap for Data Computer Scientists Develop an Interactive Field Guide App for Birders Physicists Go Totally Random Google Gets License for Driverless Car Kinect Cameras Watch for Autism Georgia Tech/Microsoft Study Shows Bandwidth Caps Create Uncertainty, Risky Decisions DARPA System to Blend AI, Machine Learning to Understand Mountain of Text Despite State Oversight, Vote-Counting Errors Abound More Search Could Be Crowdsourced Picking the Brains of Strangers Improves Efforts to Make Sense of Online Information Email 'Vacations' Decrease Stress, Increase Concentration Bringing Open, User-Centric Cloud Infrastructure to Research Communities MirageTable: Microsoft Presents Augmented Reality Device BBC News (05/09/12) Microsoft is developing an augmented reality system that allows users in different locations to work together on a tabletop and share and handle objects. Demonstrated at a conference in Austin, Texas, the MirageTable deceives the eye of users into believing they are using a seamless three-dimensional (3D) shared task space. MirageTable uses a 3D-video projector to beam images onto a sheet of curved white plastic placed in front of the user, and at each end, one of Microsoft's Kinect depth camera sensors is used to track the direction of each user's gaze, as well as the shape and appearance of objects placed on the surface and the participant sitting behind them. Users must wear shutter glasses to see the projected image in 3D, and the experience is powered by two computers linked by a network connection. Microsoft calls the projector/depth camera system a significant improvement on current videoconferencing technologies, and notes that it could be used to create a single-person gaming experience. "The unique benefit of this setup is that two users share not only the 3D image of each other, but also the tabletop task space in front of them," says the team.Project Moon: One Small Step for a PC, One Giant Leap for Data Wired News (05/08/12) Robert McMillan Virginia Tech researchers launched the MapReduce On Opportunistic Environments (Moon) project five years ago with the goal of turning the university's Math Emporium, which contains 550 Apple computers, into a type of supercomputer that is based on the same technology that Google developed to power its search engine. The Project Moon researchers' paper on the system was recently named one of the most important distributed supercomputing papers in the past 20 years. "We're going through technology transfer and trying to figure out how much more we might need to do to package it if people want to license it or to spinoff a company off of it," says Virginia Tech researcher Wu-chun Feng. Project Moon is based on Hadoop, the open source version of Google's MapReduce platform, and it is one of many efforts to apply the platform to more than just Web services. The Project Moon researchers used Hadoop to turn each Apple computer into a node on a supercomputer, with each machine helping to solve complex data-analysis problems. In theory, the 550 Apple computers in the Math Emporium could be transformed into a supercomputer capable of performing 6.6 trillion mathematical operations per second.Computer Scientists Develop an Interactive Field Guide App for Birders UCSD News (CA) (05/08/12) Ioana Patringenaru University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have developed Visipedia, an iPad app that can identify most North American birds with minimal help from the user. Visipedia is an interactive field guide that uses computer-vision algorithms to analyze user-submitted pictures and provide information about a bird species that is a likely match. "We chose birds for several reasons: There is an abundance of excellent photos of birds available on the Internet, the diversity in appearance across different bird species presents a deep technical challenge and, perhaps most importantly, there is a large community of passionate birders who can put our system to the test," says UCSD's Serge Belongie. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has contributed its database of images showing the male, female, and juveniles of more than 500 North American birds. The goal is to have 100 images identified by experts for each species. Belongie hopes Visipedia will start a movement among other enthusiasts, who will create similar apps for other organisms, such as flowers, butterflies, lichens and mushrooms. The app will ask users specific questions about the image if it cannot come up with a match based on the original image alone.Physicists Go Totally Random Science News (05/06/12) Alexandra Witze ETH Zurich researchers have developed a method that guarantees complete randomness in a flow of information. The researchers, led by Roger Colbeck and Renato Renner, wanted to better understand the role of randomness in quantum theory. The researchers calculated what might happen to a stream of partially random information, in which some of the bits are correlated with other variables, thus making the bits non-random. The researchers used these bits to choose measurements on pairs of entangled particles sent down two different paths, which produced an outcome that is independent of any other variables, according to Colbeck and Renner. "Imagine an adversary who can guess at what choice you're going to make at a given time," Colbeck says. "Now we've shown there's a procedure where you can make it so the adversary cannot guess at all, within certain limits. In principle, one could use this to make better quality random numbers." The ETH Zurich researchers may next explore precisely how non-random the information flow can be and still be transformed into a purely random stream. "The fact that the quality of randomness can be improved is new and surprising," says University of Geneva physicist Nicolas Gisin.Google Gets License for Driverless Car InformationWeek (05/08/12) Thomas Claburn Nevada has issued a license that permits Google to test its experimental self-driving cars on state roads. Google, which provided demonstrations of its autonomous cars on state freeways, highways, and roads in Carson City and Las Vegas to Nevada's Autonomous Review Committee, also received special red license plates bearing an infinity symbol. "We're excited to receive the first testing license for self-driving vehicles in Nevada," says a Google representative. "We believe the state's framework--the first of its kind--will help speed up the delivery of technology that will make driving safer and more enjoyable." The Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles says automakers also have expressed interest in testing autonomous vehicles in the future. Autonomous vehicle legislation was introduced in the California State Assembly in March, and Arizona, Hawaii, and Florida also are in the process of considering legislation. Meanwhile, Google recently acquired a Federal Communications Commission permit to operate automatic cruise control radar units in the 76.0-77.0 GHz band for driverless car navigation.Kinect Cameras Watch for Autism New Scientist (05/08/12) Niall Firth University of Minnesota researchers are using Microsoft Kinect sensors and computer-vision algorithms to detect behavioral abnormalities and automate the early diagnosis of autism in children. The researchers, led by Guillermo Sapiro and Nikolaos Papanikolopoulos, equipped a nursery with five Kinect depth-sensing cameras to monitor groups of 10 children as they play. The cameras identify and track children based on their shape and the hue of their clothes, and this data is fed to three computers, which run software that logs each child's activity level and plots it against the room's average. "The idea is not that we are going to replace the diagnosis, but we are going to bring diagnosis to everybody," Sapiro says. "The same way a good teacher flags a problem child, the system will do automatic flagging and say, 'Hey, this kid needs to see an expert.' " By studying video footage of children interacting with a psychiatrist, computer-vision algorithms learn to identify behavioral markers as designated on the Autism Observation Scale for Infants. The system measures traits such as a child's ability to follow an object as it passes in front of the eyes, and notes certain mannerisms or postures that are classified as being early signs of a possible Autism Spectrum Disorder.Georgia Tech/Microsoft Study Shows Bandwidth Caps Create Uncertainty, Risky Decisions Georgia Tech News (05/07/12) Michael Terrazas Researchers at Georgia Tech and Microsoft have found that Internet pricing models that cap monthly residential broadband usage trigger uneasy user experiences that could be mitigated by better tools to monitor data usage through their home networks. Home users typically manage their capped broadband access against three uncertainties--invisible balances, mysterious processes, and multiple users, which have predictable impacts on household Internet use and can force difficult choices on users, according to the study. "People's behavior does change when limits are placed on Internet access--just like we've seen happen in the smartphone market--and many complain about usage-based billing, but no one has really studied the effects it has on consumer activity," says Georgia Tech's Marshini Chetty. The researchers focused on South African Internet usage because that country had universal broadband caps until February 2010. "We were surprised to learn that many of the households we studied chose not to perform regular software updates in order to manage their cap," Chetty says. She suggests the frequency of such hazardous behaviors among the broader population of metered/capped Internet users should be evaluated through follow-up scientifically representative surveys.DARPA System to Blend AI, Machine Learning to Understand Mountain of Text Network World (05/04/12) Michael Cooney U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) researchers are developing an automated system that will enable analysts to better understand large volumes of text documents. The system will use artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, machine learning, and natural language technologies. "Sophisticated artificial intelligence of this nature has the potential to enable defense analysts to efficiently investigate orders of magnitude more documents so they can discover implicitly expressed, actionable information contained within them," DARPA says. The Deep Exploration and Filtering of Text program has developed technology that is expected to provide the capability to identify and interpret both explicit and implicit information from highly ambiguous and vague narrative text. "We want the ability to mitigate ambiguity in text by stripping away filters that can cloud meaning and by rejecting false information," says DARPA's Bonnie Dorr. DARPA also has developed the Anomaly Detection at Multiple Scales program, the Machine Reading program, the Programming Computation on Encrypted Data research effort, the Video and Image Retrieval and Analysis Tool program, and the XDATA program, all of which aim to make sense of large volumes of data.Despite State Oversight, Vote-Counting Errors Abound Palm Beach Post (05/08/12) Pat Beall; Adam Playford For the past 10 years, Florida's vote counting systems have been regularly beaten by different kinds of technology, despite a state certification process designed to guard against such problems. In Union County in 2002, voting machines read both Democratic and Republican ballots as Republican. In Broward County in 2004, under certain circumstances, the voting software could not count beyond about 32,000 votes in a precinct. After hitting that total, it started counting backward. In Sarasota County in 2006, approximately 17,800 undervotes triggered allegations of problems with ES&S' iVotronic machines. In Hillsborough County in 2008, the voting systems server crashed when early voting results were fed into it. "The best software written by the wealthiest companies is buggy because software is really hard to get right," says University of Iowa professor Douglas W. Jones. Florida's Division of Elections certifies voting equipment as sound before counties can use it. "I will tell you that Florida is one of the toughest states to get a voting system certified in, and we make no apologies for that," according to former Secretary of State Kurt Browning. However, neither independent testing nor the state's stamp of approval is a surefire way to find problems in the system.More Search Could Be Crowdsourced PC World (05/07/12) Joab Jackson Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Microsoft researchers determined that search engines could use crowdsourcing to expand the range of answers they provide for users. Most Web search engines use computer-run page ranking algorithms to generate results for user submitted queries. However, this range of answers could be radically expanded through some data mining techniques and crowdsourced editing, according to MIT researcher Michael Bernstein, who presented the group's work at the Association for Computing Machinery's Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. "Our findings suggest that search engines can be extended to directly respond to a large new class of queries," Bernstein says. The range of answers could be radically expanded with a relative minimal additional cost by harnessing the power of crowdsourcing and contracting people to identify the answers to simple but frequently asked questions. "We are focusing on a set of queries that are somewhat popular," Bernstein says. The researchers used data mining software to analyze 75 million search queries from Microsoft's Bing search engine, looking for those queries that resulted in a click through to a single site. The researchers identified those queries that could be quickly answered and contracted workers to craft simple answers and proofread the work through Amazon's Mechanical Turk. By automating this process as much as possible, search engines can keep their costs minimal.Picking the Brains of Strangers Improves Efforts to Make Sense of Online Information Carnegie Mellon University (05/07/12) Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft Research recently presented their findings on distributed sensemaking at CHI 2012. The team recruited 21 Microsoft employees for a study, and found that the quality of their work was better when they used a digital knowledge map that had been created and improved upon by several previous users. Digital knowledge maps provide a means of representing the thought processes used to make sense of information gathered from the Web. "Collectively, people spend more than 70 billion hours a year trying to make sense of information they have gathered online," said professor Aniket Kittur in Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. "Yet in most cases, when someone finishes a project, that work is essentially lost, benefiting no one else and perhaps even being forgotten by that person." Distributed sensemaking can save time and lead to a better understanding of information gathered online. Using eye tracking, the team discovered that participants often focused more on the organization of knowledge maps, rather than any specific content, as they are modified successively by multiple users. New users spend less time focused on specific content elements, shifting a greater balance of their attention to structural elements such as labels.Email 'Vacations' Decrease Stress, Increase Concentration University of California, Irvine (05/03/12) Janet Wilson University of California, Irvine (UCI) researchers have shown that eliminating the constant distractions of work email significantly reduces stress and allows users to focus better. The researchers attached heart rate monitors to computer users while software sensors detected how often they switched windows. Users with email changed screens twice as often and worked in a state of steady high alert with more constant heart rates. Those users without email for five days experienced more natural, variable heart rates. "We found that when you remove email from workers' lives, they multitask less and experience less stress," says UCI professor Gloria Mark. The study participants were computer-dependent civilian employees at the Army's Natick Solider Systems Center. Those with no email reported feeling better able to do their jobs and stay on task, with fewer stressful and time-wasting interruptions. Participants with email switched windows an average of 37 times per hour, while those without email changed screen about 18 times an hour. The findings could be useful for boosting productivity and suggest that controlling email login times, batching messages, or other strategies could be helpful, according to Mark.Bringing Open, User-Centric Cloud Infrastructure to Research Communities CORDIS News (05/04/12) European researchers working on the VENUS-C project have developed an open, scalable, and user-centered cloud computing infrastructure, highlighting an attempt to implement a user-centric approach to the cloud. Cloud computing empowers researchers "in a number of different ways, enabling them not only to do better science by accelerating discovery but also new science they could not have done before," says VENUS-C project director Andrea Manieri. The new infrastructure integrates easily with users' working environments and provides on-demand access to cloud resources as and when needed. "Our approach to the interoperability layer tackles current challenges with our users firmly in mind," Manieri says. The researchers used the VENUS-C infrastructure on Microsoft's Windows Azure platform to run BLAST, a data-intensive tool used by biologists to find regions of local similarity in amino-acid sequences of different proteins. The VENUS-C infrastructure made the experiment cost less than 600 euros and take just a week to process the data that normally would have taken more than year. "The advantage of using VENUS-C BLAST compared with renting cloud resources and deploying high-performance computing or high-throughput versions of BLAST is that deployment efforts are minimized and client impact is also minimal, since users don’t have to log-in on a different machine," says VENUS-C's Ignacio Blanquer.

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• 09 May ' 13:38

  Welcome to the May 9, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Magnetic Bacteria May Help Build Future Bio-Computers Excel Programming for Nonprogrammers Surge in Postdocs Continues, According to Latest Survey Data Neural Recordings: Robot Reveals the Inner Workings of Brain Cells DARPA Wants Gamers to Design Medical Training Software Life-Size, 3D Hologram-Like Telepods May Revolutionize Videoconferencing Next-Generation Nanoelectronics: A Decade of Progress, Coming Advances Delaware Girls Day Promotes STEM Careers Implanted User Interface Gives Patients New Options 'Game-Powered Machine Learning' Opens Door to Google for Music Algorithm Weighs Up Strategies for Bridge Management New Protocol Enables Wireless and Secure Biometric Acquisition With Web Services Students Gain Professional Experience Through Microsoft Contest and Internships Magnetic Bacteria May Help Build Future Bio-Computers BBC News (05/07/12) Researchers at the University of Leeds and the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology are studying a bacterium called Magnetospirilllum magneticum and the possibility of using it in future computer systems. The bacteria eats iron, and in the process creates tiny magnets inside themselves, similar to those in PC hard drives. The researchers say their work could lead to the creation of much faster hard drives. When the bacteria ingest iron, proteins inside their bodies interact with it to produce tiny crystals of the mineral magnetite, the most magnetic mineral on Earth. In addition to using microorganisms to produce magnets, the researchers also created tiny electrical wires from living organisms. The researchers have created nanoscale-size tubes made from the membrane of cells and a protein present in human lipid molecules. "These biological wires can have electrical resistance and can transfer information from one set of cells inside a bio-computer to all the other cells," says Tokyo University researcher Masayoshi Tanaka.Excel Programming for Nonprogrammers MIT News (05/08/12) Larry Hardesty Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a system that enables Microsoft Excel users to customize their spreadsheets by giving examples of how they want the data to be processed. The system can modify text strings based on just a few examples. The researchers recently expanded the power of the system by enabling it to exploit tables that establish correlations between different types of data. The table-based correlations are useful because organizations often have multiple databases that contain different types of data about the same objects. The researchers say the major challenge in designing the system was handling the range of possible interpretations for any group of examples. The key was to find a way to represent features shared by many expressions only once each, says MIT's Rishabh Singh. "If you look at the macros [small programs] that one would have to write in order to perform those text transformations manually, compared to the few demonstrations that you do as an end user, it’s quite amazing how much programming you can avoid doing through this system," says University of California, Berkeley professor Rastislav Bodik.Surge in Postdocs Continues, According to Latest Survey Data CCC Blog (05/07/12) Erwin Gianchandani The recent growth in the number of new Ph.D.s in computer science and related fields pursuing postdoctoral positions has continued in 2011, according to the most recent Computer Research Association (CRA) Taulbee Survey. The survey also found that the three-year rolling average for the number of new computing Ph.D.s pursuing postdoctoral positions rose from 218 in 2010 to 249 in 2011, an increase of 14 percent. However, the rolling average for the number of new Ph.D.s hired into tenure-track faculty positions immediately following graduation fell for the seventh consecutive year, dropping from 131 in 2010 to 124 in 2011. Meanwhile, the decrease in postdocs between 2010 and 2011--from 294 to 241--is the first such decline since 2004-2005. Still, the raw numbers remain significantly higher than in the early 2000s, when the field had fewer than 100 new Ph.D.s pursuing postdoctoral positions in a given year. The survey's results heighten the need to apply renewed scrutiny to CRA's initiatives to engage the community in a dialog about this trend.Neural Recordings: Robot Reveals the Inner Workings of Brain Cells Georgia Tech News (05/06/12) Abby Robinson Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Georgia Tech have developed a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm that can identify and record neurons in a living mouse brain with more accuracy and speed than a human. The researchers say their work provides long-sought information about living cells' activities. The technique enables researchers to classify thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and determine how diseased cells differ from healthy cells. "If we could really describe how diseases change molecules in specific cells within the living brain, it might enable better drug targets to be found," says MIT professor Ed Boyden. The automated process can perform a skill, known as whole-cell patch clamping, that normally takes several months for a graduate or post-doctoral student to learn. The researchers also showed that their method can be used to determine the shape of the cell by injecting a dye. "If you really want to know what a neuron is, you can look at the shape, and you can look at how it fires," says Georgia Tech professor Craig Forest.DARPA Wants Gamers to Design Medical Training Software Government Computer News (05/03/12) Henry Kenyon The U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking proposals for a game-based interactive system to train medical first responders. DARPA wants to combine skills training and broad educational applications for a system that goes beyond teaching where to apply a tourniquet, for example, to reinforcing the lesson with demonstrations and discussions of the circulatory system. The agency believes game-based graphics and techniques will help make for well-rounded students who are able to react in difficult situations. "We are not seeking standard computer-based learning systems, but game-based interactive systems that are engaging and challenging to the user," states the request for proposal. DARPA wants design and development proposals to meet professional game standards. Officials say the system must be flexible enough to be used in medical training and in civilian science classes. The agency also wants game designers to create a game-based application for mobile devices to teach first responders through intelligent tutoring systems. The underlying architecture must be accessible to users, which would enable them to analyze and optimize the software.Life-Size, 3D Hologram-Like Telepods May Revolutionize Videoconferencing Queen's University (Canada) (05/03/12) Technology developed by researchers at Queen's University will enable people in different locations to videoconference by talking to a life-size three-dimensional (3D) holographic image of another person. The human-scale 3D videoconferencing pod is called TeleHuman, and looks like something from the Star Trek holodeck. Users stand in front of their own cylindrical pods and talk to 3D hologram-like images of each other, which are visible 360 degrees around the pod, and they can walk around it and see the other person's side or back as well. Cameras capture and track 3D video and convert it into the life-size image. The researchers mostly used existing hardware, including a 3D projector, a 1.8-meter-tall translucent acrylic cylinder, and a convex mirror. The researchers also used the pod to create BodiPod, an application for presenting an interactive 3D anatomy model of the body. People can use gestures and speech to explore 360 degrees around the model. "Why Skype when you can talk to a life-size 3D holographic image of another person?" says Queen's University professor Roel Vertegaal.Next-Generation Nanoelectronics: A Decade of Progress, Coming Advances Northwestern University Newscenter (05/03/12) Northwestern University researchers are attempting to further the development of nanoelectromechanical (NEM) switch technology with the goal of sustaining the advance of silicon-based circuits while curbing power consumption. "NEM switches consist of a nanostructure [such as a carbon nanotube or nanowire] that deflects mechanically under electrostatic forces to make or break contact with an electrode," says Northwestern professor Horacio Espinosa. He says NEM switches, which offer both ultra-low power consumption and a strong tolerance of high temperatures and radiation exposure, could be used either in standalone or hybrid NEM-silicon devices. The researchers reviewed the last decade of progress in NEM technology, providing a comprehensive discussion of the potential of these technologies, as well as the primary challenges associated with adopting them. For example, although individual NEM devices show extremely high performance, it has been difficult to make them operate reliably for millions of cycles. "NEM devices with commonly used metal electrodes often fail by one of a variety of failure modes after only a few actuation cycles," says Northwestern Ph.D. student Owen Loh. The researchers significantly increased the number of cycles NEM devices can endure by replacing the metal electrodes with electrodes fashioned from conductive diamond-like carbon films.Delaware Girls Day Promotes STEM Careers Converge (05/02/12) Tanya Roscoria Wilmington University recently hosted 150 eighth- and ninth-grade girls for DigiGirlz, an event that seeks to introduce young girls to careers in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). The girls competed in teams to program robots, and were exposed to many of the skills that technologists need, such as programming, logic, and critical thinking. Ellen Kullman, the first female CEO of DuPont, and Lillian Lowery, Delaware's secretary of education, talked about technology and offered general career advice. The Delaware Education Department and Department of Technology and Information, along with the Delaware Center of Educational Technology and Microsoft, sponsored the event. State and private-sector leaders targeted the myths girls often face when it comes to STEM careers. "'Math and science is too hard,' and 'a technology career is not for me,' and 'I don't want to be labeled a geek'--those were the things that we tried to dispel yesterday," says Elayne Starkey, chief security officer for the Department of Technology and Information. Starkey says computer science has given her the opportunity to be innovative and creative. "You're not able to sit back and say, 'Wow, I've completed all my education' because the technology changes so quickly, and that keeps things interesting and energizing for everybody," she says.Implanted User Interface Gives Patients New Options InformationWeek (05/02/12) Ken Terry Researchers at the universities of Potsdam and Toronto have demonstrated that it is possible to communicate with a small user interface (UI) device that is implanted just below the skin. The researchers say implanted UI devices will enable patients to recharge and reprogram their devices without using wireless transmissions, which could be vulnerable to hacking. "So far, people have only been able to get those implants checked by making a trip to a physician or by interacting with wireless technologies such as Bluetooth," says Potsdam researcher Christian Holz. "But there hasn't been a lot of direct interaction with implanted devices, and indirect wireless communications have raised some security concerns." The researchers also say the devices can support a much wider range of applications and tasks than conventional implanted medical devices. They note that implanted units have many advantages over mobile and wearable UI devices, such as being able to travel with the user, being invisible, and being unaffected by the weather.'Game-Powered Machine Learning' Opens Door to Google for Music UCSD News (CA) (05/02/12) Catherine Hockmuth University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers have developed game-powered machine learning, technology that enables users to search for songs on the Web using simple key words. The researchers, led by UCSD professor Gert Lanckriet, plan to create a text-based multimedia search engine that will make it easier to access online multimedia content. Game-powered machine learning involves computers studying the examples of music that have been provided by music fans and given specific labels. The system analyzes waveforms of recorded songs in specific categories looking for acoustic patterns common to each. It then can automatically label songs by recognizing these patterns. "This is a very promising mechanism to address large-scale music search in the future," Lanckriet says. The system also can use what it has learned to design programs that elicit the most effective training from the users in the loop. For example, if the system struggles at recognizing jazz patterns, it can ask for more examples of jazz music to study. Lanckriet notes the active feedback loop combines human knowledge about music and automated music tagging through machine learning. He says it also automatically creates new programs to collect the specific human input it needs to improve the auto-tagging algorithms.Algorithm Weighs Up Strategies for Bridge Management The Engineer (United Kingdom) (05/02/12) Concordia University engineers have developed an algorithm designed to help public officials decide how to manage bridges. The algorithm takes into account the physical conditions of a particular bridge and places more importance on some factors than others. For example, a bridge that is in poor shape would be seen as being a higher priority than a bridge whose drainage system is inefficient. The algorithm also looks at whether to rebuild a bridge, repair it, or increase maintenance. This feature was developed with the help of experts who chose one of those three options for each of the 20 bridges that were in a sample put together by the researchers who developed the algorithm. After choosing whether it was better to rebuild, repair, or increase maintenance, the researchers used software to simulate all of the various possibilities and determined the cost of each. Concordia's Abu Dabous says the algorithm is a powerful tool that takes into account the opinion of experts and a systematic assessment of bridges in order to identify the best strategy for dealing with problematic bridges, while simultaneously helping governments stay within the limitations of their budgets. New Protocol Enables Wireless and Secure Biometric Acquisition With Web Services NIST News (05/02/12) Evelyn Brown U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) researchers have developed the WS-Biometric Devices (WS-BD) protocol, which enables communication between biometric sensors over wired and wireless networks. WS-BD permits desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones to access sensors that capture biometric data, such as fingerprints, iris images, and face images using Web services. The researchers say WS-BD will simplify setting up and maintaining secure biometric systems for verifying identify because this type of system will be easier to assemble with interoperable components compared to conventional biometrics systems. Interoperability is facilitated by WS-BD through the addition of a device-independent Web services layer in the communication protocol between biometric devices and systems. "Biometric systems should be designed to anticipate the development and adoption of new advances and standards, modularizing components that are likely to become obsolete, such as biometric sensors and matcher systems, so that they can be easily replaced," says a 2010 National Academies study. Meanwhile, NIST scientist Kevin Mangold says the WS-BD protocol "would be useful to many organizations that house biometric systems, including border control and customs agencies." Students Gain Professional Experience Through Microsoft Contest and Internships Nevada Today (05/02/12) Megan Akers Microsoft has partnered with the University of Nevada, Reno's College of Engineering to host a developer contest to help students learn about coding and developing their own application ideas for the Windows Phone 7. The contest gives students creative range over their own projects. The apps are evaluated based on reliability, usability, uniqueness, sustainability, and marketability, and the winning app is selected by the highest cumulative score. College of Engineering students Cody Callahan and Ray Shihab make up one of three teams who entered the contest. "Over the past year or so, my main goal for extracurricular excursions has been to gain real-world experience and to build a portfolio of projects for future job hunting," Callahan says. Callahan and Shihab's GeoHoops app asks players to bounce a basketball through a series of increasingly difficult obstacles to make a basket. The gSales app devised by students Jeremy Olsen and Matt Geyer gives users the ability to post and search for nearby garage sales. "My university classes have sparked my interest in computer science and inspired me to learn how to develop for other devices and platforms," Callahan says. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 07 May ' 12:28

  Welcome to the May 7, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. London to Test 'Smart City' Operating System Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone Struggle Continues to Plug Embedded Programming Gap Game On! UCLA Researchers Use Online Crowd-Sourcing to Diagnose Malaria U.S. Study Cites Worries on Readiness for Cyberattacks Revolutionary Technology Enables Objects to Know How They Are Being Touched Preparing for Many-Core Thanks for the Memory: Researchers Find Room for More Data Storage in 'Phase-Change' Material Hottest IT Skill? Cybersecurity Purdue Researcher Helps Robots 'See' in 3-D Like Humans Turning Big Ideas Into Solutions Money Puck: Changing the Way We Rate NHL Players London to Test 'Smart City' Operating System BBC News (05/04/12) Jane Wakefield London is preparing to test an operating system designed to power the smart cities of the future. Living Plan IT has developed Urban OS, which serves as a platform for connecting services such as water, transportation, and energy to citizens. "We are entering a phase when everything becomes connected, from healthcare to transportation," says Living Plan IT CEO Steve Lewis. Unlike traditional operating systems, Urban OS is designed to be extremely robust, considering critical services will be linked to the network--even an insulin pump. Living Plan IT plans to embed thousands of sensors that will monitor external and internal conditions to create smart lighting and heating systems in a newly built office block, and will test smart lamp posts on the roads. "They will be talking to each other, producing their own energy, raising lighting levels when cars are coming, and monitoring the movement of traffic," Lewis says. Living Plan IT also will test other technologies with the platform, such as smart vests that have microsensors embedded in them to monitor heart rates and other vital signs.Gesture Control System Uses Sound Alone Technology Review (05/07/12) Rachel Metz Microsoft researchers have developed SoundWave, a gesture-control system that utilizes the Doppler Effect, software, and the built-in speakers and microphone on a laptop. The technology can be used to sense several simple gestures. Speakers equipped with SoundWave software emit a constant ultrasonic tone of between 20 and 22 kilohertz. If there is no movement in the immediate environment, the tone the microphone hears should be constant. However, if something is moving toward the computer, that tone will shift to a higher frequency. If something is moving away, the tone will shift to a lower frequency. This phenomenon happens in predictable patterns, so the frequencies can be analyzed to determine how big the moving object is, how fast it is moving, and the direction it is going, says Microsoft's Desney Tan. The software currently performs with about 90 percent accuracy, according to the researchers, who have developed several movements that the software can understand, including swiping your hand up or down, moving it toward or away from your body, flexing your limbs, or moving your entire body closer to or farther away from the computer.Struggle Continues to Plug Embedded Programming Gap EE Times (05/03/12) George Leopold Critics say the growing embedded programming gap can be attributed to university curriculums for introductory computer science courses, which recently have focused more on Java than other languages. "Many universities went to Java because ‘that’s where the jobs are,’ but ironically may have produced a generation of programmers with over-specific but superficial skills who are now losing jobs to overseas competition with broader and deeper talents," says New York University professor Robert Dewar. "To be blunt, adopting Java to replace previous languages used in introductory programming courses, such as Pascal, Ada, C, or C++, was a step backward pedagogically." In response, Industry expert Michael Barr recently created the Embedded Software Boot Camp, which focuses on skills such as controlling hardware in C or C++ and writing more formal device drivers. The most recent embedded boot camp attracted programmers from Belgium, Canada, Mexico, Turkey and the United States, illustrating the lack of emphasis on embedded programming. Explanations for why university computer science departments have de-emphasized teaching embedded programming skills based on the C language include the popularity of Java programming and the lack of job opportunities for computer science graduates with embedded programming skills. - May Require Free Registration Game On! UCLA Researchers Use Online Crowd-Sourcing to Diagnose Malaria UCLA Newsroom (05/02/12) Wileen Wong Kromhout University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers have developed a crowdsourcing online gaming system that asks players to distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images taken from microscopes. The researchers found that a small group of non-experts playing the game was collectively able to diagnose malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by trained medical professionals. "The idea is, if you carefully combine the decisions of people--even non-experts--they become very competitive," says UCLA professor Aydogan Ozcan. The researchers believe that by training thousands of members of the public to identify malaria through their crowdsourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly. "The idea is to use crowds to get collectively better in pathologic analysis of microscopic images, which could be applicable to various telemedicine problems," says UCLA's Sam Mavandadi. The researchers also have created an automated algorithm for diagnosing malaria images using computer vision. The system includes a hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources to diagnose malaria. The researchers plan to use the crowdsourcing game at clinical sites in Mozambique, Malawi, and Brazil.U.S. Study Cites Worries on Readiness for Cyberattacks New York Times (05/04/12) Michael S. Schmidt U.S. state and local officials are most concerned about the government's cyberattack response readiness, according to a study by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) regarding the U.S.'s ability to respond to terrorist attacks and man-made and natural catastrophes. FEMA's National Preparedness Report lauded the coordination among local, state, and federal officials for exchanging information and intelligence, and authorities' ability to rapidly implement lifesaving and life-sustaining operations. The report cites cybersecurity as "the single core capability where states had made the least amount of overall progress," while just 42 percent of state and local officials believed that their cybersecurity was sufficient. Forty-five percent of officials reported that they lacked a formal cyberattack prevention and response program, while about 66 percent said they had not updated their "information security or disaster recovery plans in at least two years." The report notes the Secret Service's dismantling of major cybercriminal organizations using 31 task forces, while less than two-thirds of U.S. companies sustained cyberattacks and just half of high-priority facility owners and operators said they reported such attacks. Nevertheless, the report says the number of reported cyberattacks in the U.S. has risen 650 percent since 2006.Revolutionary Technology Enables Objects to Know How They Are Being Touched Carnegie Mellon News (PA) (05/03/12) Byron Spice Scientists at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and Disney Research have developed Touche, a sensing technique that monitors capacitive signals across a broad range of frequencies. Touche uses Swept Frequency Capacitive Sensing (SFCS) technology, which makes it possible to detect a "touch event," as well as recognize complex configurations of the hand or body that are doing the touching. "In our laboratory experiments, we were able to enhance a broad variety of objects with high-fidelity touch sensitivity," says Disney's Ivan Poupyrev. However, interpreting all of that SFCS information requires analyzing hundreds of data points. "Devices keep getting smaller and increasingly are embedded throughout the environment, which has made it necessary for us to find ways to control or interact with them, and that is where Touche could really shine," says CMU's Chris Harrison. Different body tissues have unique capacitive properties, so monitoring a range of frequencies can identify a number of diverse routes that the electrical charge takes through the body. The researchers have created proof-of-concept applications such as a smart doorknob and a new touchscreen that can interpret the configuration of the entire hand.Preparing for Many-Core Texas Advanced Computing Center (05/03/12) Aaron Dubrow The Texas Advanced Computing Center recently hosted the Intel Highly Parallel Computing Symposium, which showcased the experiences of researchers who had ported their scientific computing codes to Intel's Knights Ferry software development platform, the prototype hardware and software development package for Intel's Many Integrated Core (MIC) architecture. More than 100 participants from many sectors of the science and technology community attended the symposium. Intel engineers James Reinders and Tim Mattson focused on the goals and research processes that led to the development of Intel's MIC architecture, and the ecosystem of libraries, kernels, and programming paradigms that Intel hopes will make its new coprocessors a long-term success in the high-performance computing community. "The architecture for many-core is still being determined," Mattson notes, and he says more than a dozen research groups at Intel are working on the many-core problem. One key topic of the symposium was vectorization, which refers to programs that are modified to perform the same operation many times simultaneously on a large number of operations. The symposium also highlighted the promise and challenge of implementing existing codes on Intel's new coprocessor.Thanks for the Memory: Researchers Find Room for More Data Storage in 'Phase-Change' Material Johns Hopkins University (05/03/12) Phil Sneiderman Johns Hopkins University researchers say they have discovered previously unknown properties of a phase-change memory alloy consisting of germanium, antimony, and tellurium (GST), which could lead to new forms of memory drives, movie discs, and computer systems. The researchers say that GST could enable memory devices to retain data more quickly, last longer, and allow for more capacity than current systems. GST currently is used in rewritable optical media, but Johns Hopkins researchers used diamond-tipped tools to find new electrical resistance characteristics that could make GST even more useful to the computer and electronic industries. "This phase-change memory is more stable than the material used in the current flash drives," says Johns Hopkins researcher Ming Xu. Although GST has been in use for at least 20 years, it is still unknown exactly how it switches from one state to another because it happens so quickly. The researchers used a process called X-ray diffraction to trigger the change more gradually. They were able to tune the electrical resistivity of the material during the time between its change from amorphous to crystalline form. "By having a wide range of resistance, you can have a lot more control," says Johns Hopkins professor En Ma.Hottest IT Skill? Cybersecurity Network World (05/03/12) Carolyn Duffy Marsan As they face increased activity by hackers and cybercriminals, U.S. corporations are accelerating their hiring of cybersecurity specialists, with open jobs reaching an all-time peak in April. "Companies want security professionals to counter breaches and also anticipate gaps, suggesting measures to fill them," says Dice's Tom Silver. "Protection is key." The need for cybersecurity experts in the federal government also is pressing, with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano citing a paucity of such pros to assist federal agencies in foiling cyberattacks, which topped 106,000 last year. In fact, Napolitano told a Senate committee in April that cyberattacks are her leading concern. The growing complexity of corporate networks, companies' use of cloud networks, and an inundation of user-owned mobile devices are among the trends driving new interest for cybersecurity experts. "Everything is in flux with the move to the cloud and mobile devices," says consultant Sudhir Verma. "It's about how to protect information in the enterprise in an environment that includes cloud applications and tablets." Yoh's Don Hanson sees a need for developers capable of building secure applications, network engineers with security credentials, and architects who can secure systems and processes.Purdue Researcher Helps Robots 'See' in 3-D Like Humans Purdue University News (05/02/12) Cynthia Sequin Purdue University researchers are developing technology that will enable robots to "see" more like humans do. "Research in the field of robotic vision has typically focused on recording and analyzing [two-dimensional] images, but really it is about [three-dimensional (3D)] visual perception--being able to understand the 3D scene in front of the robot so that it can decide what needs to be done with an object that is in its field of view," says Purdue professor Zygmunt Pizlo. The researchers are developing a model of decision-making to mimic the human mind. "This process eliminates the need for additional range sensors currently used for robotic vision and reduces the time and complexity of robotic sight," Pizlo says. Developing a human-robot connection will be a key factor in bringing robots into every day life, according to the researchers. "Once they can interact with us they can begin doing all types of tasks such as drive a car, help surgeons in hospitals, assist the elderly, provide sight for the blind, replace people in high-risk situations like making repairs in a nuclear plant and, yes, bring us coffee in the morning," Pizlo says.Turning Big Ideas Into Solutions CITRIS Newsletter (05/01/12) Susan Suleiman Student teams' development of innovative tools has earned them awards in the University of California (UC) Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society's recent Big Ideas competition. Winning first prize in the contest was Politify, an algorithm developed by UC Berkeley undergraduates Nikita Bier and Jeremy Blalock that enables anyone to enter a few simple facts about themselves to determine how presidential candidates' agendas will impact their lives and the U.S. government. "I wanted to find a way to quantify [candidates'] proposals," Bier says. "We read their Web sites, and we wrote direct mathematical algorithms for what they propose." Politify has drawn 250,000 uses and is fueling interest among both Democrats and Republicans. Another project recognized in the Big Ideas contest is a pen that illuminates to help stroke victims and autistic children write by hand using a force sensor. Other notable competition entries include an effort that offers low-income people information about social services through text messaging, a project that uses new technology to identify incipient diabetes by non-invasively measuring microcirculation in the eye, and a prototype oral history archive of radio recording collections.Money Puck: Changing the Way We Rate NHL Players University of Toronto (05/01/12) Liam Mitchell University of Toronto researchers have proposed a new methodology for quantifying the value of a hockey player. The researchers note that a player's value can determine his salary, influence trades, and affect his playing time. "We started thinking about how we could develop a model that would help predict what the ideal Team Canada hockey team would look like," says Toronto professor Timothy Chan. In the process, the researchers realized a need for a better method to value different player types. The researchers monitor several player performance statistics, including goals, assists, hits, blocks, time in the penalty box, and time on the ice. The model considers all of the statistics together in order to get an overall picture of a specific player. The model established four types of forwards, including top line, second line, defensive, and physical; four types of defensemen, including offensive, defensive, average, and physical; and three types of goalies, including elite, average, and bottom.

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• 04 May ' 10:57

  Welcome to the May 4, 2012 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses 'Big Data' Could Remake Science--and Government Spot a Bot to Stop a Botnet Twitter Cannot Predict Elections Either Microsoft Taps Yahoo Scientists for New York Research Lab Google SPDY Accelerates Mobile Web Physicist: Moore's Law as We Know It Is on Its Last Legs Thwarting the Cleverest Attackers Carnegie Mellon Researchers Create Dynamic View of City Based on Foursquare Check-in Data Libraries: Sandbox Space for New Technology European Researchers Study Social Robots for Elderly Assistance Look Ma No Hands, in 140 Characters or Less... Taps and Rhythms Replace Keyboard Shortcuts Harvard and M.I.T. Team Up to Offer Free Online Courses New York Times (05/02/12) Tamar Lewin Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) announced a plan to offer free massively open online courses under their edX partnership. Overseeing edX will be a nonprofit organization that Harvard and MIT will govern equally, and each school has pledged $30 million to the initiative. EdX's inaugural president will be Anant Agarwal, director of MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, while Harvard's contribution will be supervised by provost Alan M. Garber. University officials say the new online platform would be used to research educational technologies and methods as well as to build a global community of online students. Included in the edX project will be engineering courses and humanities courses, in which crowdsourcing or software may be used to grade essays. Harvard Corporation's Lawrence S. Bacow says education technology currently lacks "an online platform that gives faculty the capacity to customize the content of their own highly interactive courses." The edX effort faces competition from similar partnerships between Stanford, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and Coursera. The rapid evolution of online education technology is such that those in the new ventures say the courses are still in an experimental stage.'Big Data' Could Remake Science--and Government NextGov.com (05/02/12) Joseph Marks Big data is capable of transforming scientific research by switching it from a hypothesis-driven field into one that is data-driven, says Farnam Jahanian, head of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate. However, Jahanian notes that before this can be achieved, it will be necessary to secure upfront investment from the government and the private sector to build the infrastructure for data analysis and new collaboration tools. The field of big data analysis seeks to sort through vast data stores to gather intelligence and identify new patterns. Last year the U.S. President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology found a gap in the private sector's investment in basic big data research and development, and in March U.S. officials announced that the government will invest $200 million in research grants and infrastructure building for big data. "The shift with data-driven science and big data is that first we collect the data and then we see what it tells us," says Wyle chief technology officer Bill Perlowitz. "We don’t have a pretense that we understand what those relationships are, or what information we may find."Spot a Bot to Stop a Botnet EurekAlert (05/01/12) Computer scientists at the Veermata Jijabai Institute have developed a way to detect botnet infections on computers. The technique developed by Manoj Thakur and other researchers at the institute involves the use of a standalone heuristic algorithm and a network algorithm that can sniff out a botnet on a computer network and obstruct its malicious operations before it causes too much damage. The standalone algorithm operates independently on each network node and examines active processes on those nodes. In addition, the standalone algorithm is capable of detecting botnet activity that had previously been hidden. In the event the algorithm detects activity that is deemed suspicious, the network algorithm is activated and begins analyzing information being sent between hosts on the network. This makes it possible to determine whether or not the suspicious activity is the result of a botnet or some legitimate program. By working in tandem, the two algorithms can identify activity from both known and unknown botnets. The use of two algorithms also reduces the number of incorrect botnet detections.Twitter Cannot Predict Elections Either Technology Review (05/02/12) A new analysis of research about the predictive power of social media challenges claims that Twitter can predict the outcomes of elections. The University of Oviedo's Daniel Gayo-Avello contends the research on Twitter and elections is riddled with flaws. Gayo-Avello says researchers have assumed that all tweets are trustworthy when political statements are often littered with rumors, propaganda, and humor. He takes issue with Twitter's demographics, considering most tweeters are younger, which will bias any results. "Social media is not a representative and unbiased sample of the voting population," Gayo-Avello says. Self selection is a problem in that people who make political remarks are the most interested in politics, and Gayo-Avello says more work needs to be done to understand the silent majority. Moreover, he notes that all of the papers on elections so far have been done after the fact. Consequently, "there are elections virtually all the time, thus, if you are claiming you have a prediction method you should predict an election in the future," Gayo-Avello notes.Microsoft Taps Yahoo Scientists for New York Research Lab New York Times (05/03/12) Steve Lohr Microsoft is opening a new research laboratory in New York City that will focus on applying advanced computing tools to the social sciences. The lab will be staffed by 15 scientists, including well-known researchers in the fields of machine learning, prediction markets, and online social behavior. "Microsoft is a fantastic place for research because it balances the academic and the product-impact sides," says former Yahoo! researcher David Pennock, who will oversee the lab's day-to-day operations. The lab's primary goal is to advance the state of the art in each researcher's area of expertise, says Microsoft's Jennifer Chayes, who also will manage the lab. Microsoft has a growing portfolio of data sources that provide fertile ground for research, such as the Bing search engine, the Skype Internet phone service, and the Xbox Live online game network. The New York lab also is seeking creative partnerships with Columbia University, New York University, Princeton University, Rutgers University and the Technion-Cornell Innovation Institute. Pennock notes that a key advantage of working at Microsoft is the "ability to have what you do impact hundreds of millions of people."Google SPDY Accelerates Mobile Web InformationWeek (05/02/12) Thomas Claburn The SPDY protocol can help provide much faster access to mobile Web sites, according to Google engineers. In a test involving 77 Web pages across 31 domains, the team used the experimental protocol and a Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone running the SPDY-enabled mobile browser Chrome for Android. "The net result is that using SPDY results in a mean page load time improvement of 23 percent across these sites, compared to HTTP," say Google's Matt Welsh, Ben Greenstein, and Michael Piatek. SPDY, first published in draft form in November 2009, is designed to transport Web content more efficiently by compressing HTTP headers. The protocol is not a replacement for HTTP, but it does override the HTTP connection management and data transfer formats. Google has deployed SPDY in a stable version of its Chrome browser and uses it for search and Gmail. Other companies have started to adopt the protocol, and an Internet Engineering Task Force working group is considering including SPDY in the forthcoming revision of the HTTP protocol. Web site operators "should consider using SPDY to speed up access to their sites from mobile devices," say Welsh, Greenstein, and Piatek.Physicist: Moore's Law as We Know It Is on Its Last Legs Network World (05/01/12) Jon Gold City College of New York theoretical physics professor Michio Kaku believes Moore's Law is breaking down. Moore's Law states that computing power doubles about once every 18 months, but Kaku, who has predicted its collapse since at least 2003, says the critical point will be reached within a decade. He says the constant shrinking of transistors is unsustainable. Intel has a new chip called Ivy Bridge that represents a 10-nanometer reduction from the previous generation, but it has been found to run hotter than its predecessors under overclocking, which could suggest that transistor density and size are becoming a concern for microprocessors. Three-dimensional chips--a feature of Ivy Bridge--and parallel processing could potentially delay the collapse of Moore's Law, but Kaku says these workarounds will eventually reach their limits. New forms of computing may provide a solution for processing power. He says molecular transistors are promising, but current fabrication techniques do not allow for mass production. Quantum computers also could eventually become more powerful and practical, but they are even less well understood.Thwarting the Cleverest Attackers MIT News (05/01/12) Larry Hardesty The threat of side-channel attacks is growing with the expanding popularity of cloud computing, and a general strategy for ameliorating such attacks was recently posted by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers on the Web site of the Electronic Colloquium on Computational Complexity. The technique masks a computer program's computational details by converting a given computation into a sequence of smaller computational modules. Data entered within the first module is encrypted and never decrypted during execution, and then the first module's still-encrypted output is fed to the second module, which encrypts it differently, and so on. The final module's output is the same output of the original computation, but the operations performed by the individual modules are completely different. Although the instruction that inaugurates a new module is identical to the instruction that concluded the last one, the modules are executed on different servers on a network. MIT professor Shafi Goldwasser says this method could thwart attacks on private information as well as on devices that shield proprietary algorithms to prevent reverse-engineering.Carnegie Mellon Researchers Create Dynamic View of City Based on Foursquare Check-in Data Carnegie Mellon News (PA) (05/01/12) A dynamic view of a city's activities and character that reflects the ever-fluctuating patterns of city life can be generated by the millions of check-ins produced by foursquare, according to Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers. They devised an algorithm that taps the check-ins created when foursquare members visit participating venues or businesses, clustering them based on a blending of the site of the venues and the groups of people who most frequently visit them. The check-in dataset includes such information as user ID, time of day, latitude and longitude, and the name and category of the venue for each check-in. The data is plotted on a map of the city to reveal the area's "Livehoods." The Livehoods project exploits the spread of smartphones and the location-based services they facilitate, and the researchers are investigating the project's applications to city planning, real estate development, and transportation. "Our goal is to understand how cities work through the lens of social media," says Justin Cranshaw at CMU's Institute for Software Research. Raz Schwartz, a visiting scholar at CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, notes that urban studies typically involve extrapolating meaning from only a small sample of interviewed community residents.Libraries: Sandbox Space for New Technology Queensland University of Technology (05/01/12) Stephanie Harrington Queensland University of Technology (QUT) professor Marcus Foth says libraries and other cultural institutions could become spaces for experimenting with new technologies. Foth, who also serves as director of QUT's Urban Informatics Research Lab, notes Google released the design for its futuristic glasses in April so the public could provide feedback before they go on sale later this year. He says Project Glass adds a new interface to the bits-to-atoms technology trend, which includes laptop, tablet, and mobile phone screens. "Google's augmented-reality glasses are an example of the global network being used for local purposes," Foth notes. The rollout of Australia's National Broadband Network (NBN) also could help facilitate public engagement. Foth is excited about the opportunity to bring the NBN into the real world to amplify local relationships. "Libraries can become a sandbox space and educational outlet for these user-led developments in addition to being used as a place to archive and preserve knowledge and collect books," he says.European Researchers Study Social Robots for Elderly Assistance Orebro University (05/01/12) About 25 European researchers are meeting at Orebro University to design robots that can help improve the quality of life for the elderly, their families, and care givers. The event is part of the Robot-Era project, which will integrate robots and smart environments to develop new technological solutions for elderly assistance. The researchers are developing a domestic robot to provide day-to-day assistance in the home, an outdoor robot to help with tasks while on the go such as carrying goods and providing directions, and a condominium robot to help with tasks such as carrying heavy groceries from the street into the home or taking out the garbage. The robots will cooperate with each other and the smart environment to manage complex tasks together. Robot-Era is pursuing a distributed solution in order to make the system affordable and acceptable for users. The European Commission is funding the project, which runs from January 2012 through December 2015. The project includes researchers from Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden.Look Ma No Hands, in 140 Characters or Less... Txchnologist (05/01/12) Terrence Murray Clifford Nass, founder of Stanford University's Communications Between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab, says future automobiles will boast full automation and will be centered on social media platforms. "We're seeing all the car companies getting very, very excited about creating a much richer relationship so the car evolves into a partner that can give specific advice, from selecting a parking spot, or improving your driving skills, or drive in a more eco-friendly way," he notes. Much of the technology for realizing this vision already exists, and CHIMe's focus is on creating an effective but non-distracting car-driver interface, Nass says. He stresses that car manufacturers have a responsibility to make automotive technology that emphasizes both safety and enjoyability. "Our job is to find that sweet spot," he points out. Nass cites the industry's recognition of enormous demand for autonomous cars, motivated even further by the demand for social media. He says a smarter car must inform the driver of its actions, and "because the intelligence of a fully automated car is obvious and overt, it creates a situation in which drivers have to understand what the car is doing." Nass says CHIMe researchers are studying psychological literature on team building and partnerships to help design the car-driver interface.Taps and Rhythms Replace Keyboard Shortcuts LiveScience (04/30/12) Morse code-like rhythms tapped onto a laptop's touchpad could be used to replace keyboard shortcuts for copying text, according to computer scientists at the University of Paris-Sud 11. During testing, the researchers found that volunteers could reproduce rhythmic sequences in a way the computer could recognize 94 percent of the time. The team conducted another test on a different group of volunteers and found that the group was able to recall both the rhythm and keyboard shortcuts 93 percent of the time. Most of the volunteers preferred the rhythmic taps, thought it was fun, and liked that they did not have to look at the keyboard to find the right keys. The researcher say the next generation of smartphones, tablet, and laptops could let users create their own rhythmic shortcuts. They say rhythmic taps could be used to speed-dial a number, add a number to a contact list, navigate text, or switch modes in an app. The researchers also note that mobile devices are already equipped with all of the sensors they need to detect rhythms.

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