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• 20 Nov 2009 19:24

  Welcome to the November 20, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. PRACE Is Ready for Implementation: Applications Ported Assoc Prof Tai Xue-Cheng Wins 8th Feng Kang Prize in Scientific Computing in China Building the Smart Home Wirelessly Self-Policing Cloud Computing Southampton's World-Class Supercomputer Opens Windows ORNL, Partners Helping Scientists Deal With Data Deluge Open Shop for Environmental Data Distinguished Professor Peter Hunter Wins the Rutherford Medal Are Nations Paying Criminals for Botnet Attacks? Internet Still Under U.S. Grip: Forum Delegates Invisibility Visualized: New Software for Rendering Cloaked Objects The Mandelbulb: First 'True' 3D Image of Famous Fractal NIST Demonstrates ‘Universal’ Programmable Quantum Processor for Quantum Computers PRACE Is Ready for Implementation: Applications Ported Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (11/16/09) The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (PRACE) has been researching promising petascaling techniques, as well as related work on optimization techniques and the study of software libraries and programming models suitable for petascale computing. The combined work has laid the foundation for the efficient exploitation of the upcoming Tier-0 systems. The applications studied cover a variety of scientific areas and represent European high-performance computing use, with most of them originating from the European scientific community. The applications were ported, evaluated, and scaled on the PRACE supercomputer prototypes. Each application was ported to an average of three prototype systems. Porting to cluster-based systems encountered the fewest problems, while programs that were ported to Cell-based prototypes required a major time investment. PRACE researchers say it was essential to tune the options and parameters used when compiling and running a program, such as the choice of numerical libraries and compiler options. The project developed a tool for studying optimal compiler options and platform-specific recommendations. PRACE researchers also explored the programming models and software libraries required by petascale applications, and completed a survey and analysis of the new upcoming programming models and languages suitable for such programs.Assoc Prof Tai Xue-Cheng Wins 8th Feng Kang Prize in Scientific Computing in China Nanyang Technological University (11/19/09) Lu, Sunanthar Tai Xue-Cheng, a specialist in numerical analysis and computational mathematics at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), has been named the winner of the 8th Feng Kang Prize in Scientific Computing. Tai, a professor in NTU's School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences, has developed mathematical models for restoring images that have been degraded due to wear and tear to their original look. His models have been used for magnetic resonance imaging medical-image processing and other medical and industrial applications as well. "It is a surprise and also an honor for me to receive this prestigious award for computational mathematics," Tai says. "This encourages me to continue to strive for excellence in my research and to seek solutions for challenging scientific problems." The award is dedicated to the memory of Feng Kang, a Chinese pioneer in computational mathematics. The award seeks to bring attention to Chinese mathematicians who have made significant contributions in numerical linear algebra, computer-aided geometric design, and numerical partial differential equations and scientific computing.Building the Smart Home Wirelessly EurekAlert (11/19/09) Researchers at Taiwan's National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) say that radio tags, combined with mobile communication devices, could provide seamless smart home multimedia services. The researchers, led by NCKU's Yueh-Min Huang, have proposed an intelligent home network system that integrates radio frequency identification (RFID) technology into the Open Service Gateway Initiative (OSGi) to enable people to access a video monitoring and media system throughout their household, or possibly remotely. The system could enable users to remote check the home's security system or turn off lights. When someone is home, the technology could control entertainment systems as a person moves about the house, allowing a song to follow them from room to room. The researchers note that more than 70 manufacturers have joined OSGi, which means the standard could see widespread adoption. "The open architecture system in this paper can provide rapid, automatic, and convenient services, thereby substantially improving the quality of life for users," the researchers say.Self-Policing Cloud Computing Technology Review (11/20/09) Talbot, David Researchers at IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center and IBM Research-Zurich have developed a cloud computing security system that makes elements of the cloud act as a kind of virtual bouncer. The new system is based on the theory that as long as the cloud can see a customer's data and leased computational devices, it should check those elements for malicious code. The system enables the cloud to search virtual machines to see what operating systems they are using, whether they are running correctly, and whether they contain malicious code. The IBM research was one of several papers presented at the recent ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop, the first event to focus on cloud computing security. "In clouds, the barrier to entry is lower, and the thing customers are most concerned about is their information," says IBM's J.R. Rao. "We want to make sure their information is handled in a manner consistent with their expectation of security and privacy." Cloud computing could become particularly dangerous if hackers learn how to place malicious virtual machines on the same physical servers as legitimate users. Hackers could theoretically steal data from cache memory on multicore systems within the server. Microsoft has proposed a system that would assign hierarchies within cache memory, which would serve as a partition to protect against this kind of attack.Southampton's World-Class Supercomputer Opens Windows The University of Southampton's new supercomputer was ranked 74th on the Top500 supercomputer list and is the fastest university-owned supercomputer in England. It also is the fastest Microsoft Windows-powered computer in Europe. "We are interested in making this advanced capability available to every researcher from their desktop, without the need for specialist IT skills," says professor Simon Cox, the director of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at Southampton. "Using the familiar Windows desktop environment, they are able to carry out extremely large calculations that were previously inaccessible, due to the complexity of more traditional [high-performance computing (HPC)] systems." Southampton's Oz Parchment says the objective of using Windows as the operating system is to make supercomputing available to everyone on campus, which requires making it easier to use. "We look forward to bringing even more new research domains into the world of HPC to solve problems that they have previously been unable to tackle," Parchment says. "The system is helping existing users focus more on their research, without having to worry about the underlying IT."ORNL, Partners Helping Scientists Deal With Data Deluge Oak Ridge National Laboratory (11/18/09) Walli, Ron Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and other research partners are building DataONE, a new network that will be able to store massive amounts of information. DataONE, backed by $20 million in funding from the National Science Foundation's DataNet program, is uniting universities and government agencies in an effort to meet the growing demand for organizing and providing large amounts of highly diverse and interrelated but often incompatible scientific data, says ORNL's Robert Cook. "The network will drive advanced research and data acquisition, storage, mining, integration, and visualization for citizen scientists, researchers, and decision makers," Cook says. DataONE is led by the University of New Mexico, and includes partners from across the United States, Europe, South America, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Cook says DataONE will give scientists from numerous disciplines a way to collaborate on extremely important environmental scientific challenges. "Scientists have collected an enormous amount of environmental data useful in climate change research--rainfall, temperature, forest and agricultural properties, bird species and their migration patterns," he says. "The challenge is to discover those data sets, understand how they were collected, and use them to address the important climate change questions for science and society."Open Shop for Environmental Data European Sensors Anywhere (SANY) project researchers have developed a system for accessing and reusing environmental data from a variety of sources. The system enables the free exchange and use of environmental monitoring data regardless of its source. Numerous sensors around the world, and even in space, observe and report the condition of land, atmosphere, and oceans for a variety of purposes. The researchers say the creation of a single system to provide access to this data could assist in important decisions, such as how to adapt better to climate change. SANY uses a service-oriented architecture that enables applications to be built from modular components accessed over the Internet. For example, one service may obtain data while another plots a map, and another could process the data in a specific way. "The SANY Sensor Service Architecture allows everybody who makes environmental observations to advertise them over standardized service interfaces," says SANY coordinator Denis Havik. "Anybody who needs environmental data can go and search for it--or look in a catalog--and retrieve it using standardized methods." The SANY system converts all data, regardless of its source or format, into a standard format established by the Open Geospatial Consortium, and can work with both raw and processed sensor data. The researchers have been running pilot programs to demonstrate the potential of the SANY approach, including an air quality program to demonstrate the feasibility of seamless presentation of data from independent monitoring networks.Distinguished Professor Peter Hunter Wins the Rutherford Medal University of Auckland (NZ) (11/19/09) Professor Peter Hunter, director of the University of Auckland's Bioengineering Institute, has been awarded the Rutherford Medal, New Zealand's highest science honor. Hunter was chosen due to his leading role in the Physiome Project, a major international effort to build sophisticated computer models of all human organs. Hunter started working on the Physiome Project in 1996, following many years of work in developing the world's first anatomically based computer model of the human heart, which included developing new ways of modeling the structure and function of heart tissue. "The Physiome Project started off by looking at the heart, but it soon spread to the lungs, then the musculoskeletal system, and now all 12 organs in the human body," Hunter says. "The idea is to create mathematical models that link gene, protein, cell, tissue, organ and the whole body into one cohesive framework that will eventually become a Web resource for diagnosing and treating patients, surgical planning, education, and the design of medical devices." Hunter says the Physiome Project is still in the early stages, but there have already been some exciting applications created by the project, such as heart models used to diagnose cardiac disease. The United States has invested about $100 million in the Physiome Project so far, and the European Commission has invested about $400 million.Are Nations Paying Criminals for Botnet Attacks? Network World (11/17/09) Messmer, Ellen Countries that want to disrupt other nations' government, banking, and media resources can simply hire cybercriminals to launch botnet attacks, according to new report by McAfee that interviews 20 cybersecurity experts. McAfee's Dmitri Alperovitch says botnet attacks are hard to trace because of the anonymous nature of how they are requested and paid for. William Crowell, former deputy director of the U.S. National Security Agency, says that "anyone can go to a criminal group and rent a botnet. We've reached a point where you only need money to cause disruption, not know-how, and this is something that needs to be addressed." The July 4th, 2009, cyberattacks launched against South Korea and the United States prompted Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich.) to urge the United States to "conduct 'a show of force or strength' against North Korea for its alleged role in the attacks," the report says. Alperovitch says there is no concrete evidence that North Korea was behind the cyberattacks, but points out that it was unusual that the botnet was concentrated entirely in South Korea. Alperovitch also notes that North Korea gets its Internet link from China because North Korea never took ownership of the top-level domains it was assigned by ICANN. Countries that are known to be expanding their cyberwarfare capabilities include the United States, France, Israel, Russia, and China, according to the report. Major cyberconflicts have the potential to hurt businesses and individuals, indicating a need for greater public discussion about such issues.Internet Still Under U.S. Grip: Forum Delegates Agence France Presse (11/18/09) Zayan, Jailan Delegates at the recent Internet Governance Forum have raised concerns that ICANN is still primarily under U.S. control. The new agreement between ICANN and the U.S. Commerce Department was intended to assuage these concerns by creating global panels to review ICANN's work in key areas. However, some delegates still called for the body to be replaced by an international one. "The U.S. still has a key to the back door" when it comes to Internet administration, said Keisuke Kamimura, a researcher at the Center for Global Communication at the International University of Japan. "Regarding accountability and transparency, they have identified it as an issue to be reviewed, but more needs to be done." Chencqing Huang, head of the Internet Society of China, said ICANN should be replaced. "We want to have an international organization under the framework of the United Nations to replace ICANN," Huang said. Others at the forum said the developing world still lacks adequate representation in ICANN. "We, the people of the developing world, are there," said Fuad Bajwa, a member of the United Nations IGF Multistakeholder Advisory Group and an ICANN member. "From my experience in ICANN, I saw less staff members from my part of the world." Despite these objections, ICANN said that it is a multi-stakeholder body and noted that no country has ever been refused domain registration.Invisibility Visualized: New Software for Rendering Cloaked Objects ScienceDaily (11/13/09) Researchers at Germany's Karlsruhe Institute of Technology have developed a new visualization tool that will enable users to see what a cloaked object looks like in real life. Designed to handle complex media, such as metamaterial optical cloaks, the software is able to show the visual effects of a cloaking mechanism and its imperfections. The latest issue of the Optical Society's Optics Express features full-color images in which a virtual museum nave is rendered with three walls, a ceiling, and a floor. A large bump appears in the reflecting floor covered by an invisibility device. The carpet cloak in the middle of the room hides the effect of the bump and any object hidden underneath it, as the observers see a flat reflecting floor. However, the observers still see the invisibility cloak due to surface reflections and imperfections. "It's important to visualize how an optical device works," notes the software's developer Jad C. Halimeh.The Mandelbulb: First 'True' 3D Image of Famous Fractal New Scientist (11/18/09) Aron, Jacob Daniel White has created an image, the Mandelbulb, that he says is the most accurate three-dimensional (3D) representation to date of the Mandelbrot set, a fractal equation named after Yale University mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot, who coined the term "fractal." Previous attempts at a 3D Mandelbrot image do not display real fractal behavior, White says. "I was trying to see how the original [two-dimensional] Mandelbrot worked and translate that to the third dimension," he says. "You can use complex maths but you can also look at things geometrically." White's approach works due to the properties of the "complex plane," a mathematical landscape in which ordinary numbers run from east to west while imaginary numbers run from south to north. Multiplying numbers on the complex plane is the same as rotating it, while addition is like shifting the plane in a particular direction. Creating the Mandelbrot set requires repeating these geometrical actions for every point in the plane. In 2007, White published a formula for a shape that was close to a 3D Mandelbrot, but still lacked true fractal detail. White then began a collaboration with Paul Nylander, who realized that raising White's formula to a higher power would create the desired effect. White acknowledges that the Mandelbulb is still not quite a "real" 3D Mandelbrot, as there are still areas without enough detail. "If the real thing does exist--and I'm not saying 100 percent that it does--one would expect even more variety than we are currently seeing," he says.NIST Demonstrates ‘Universal’ Programmable Quantum Processor for Quantum Computers National Institute of Standards and Technology (11/16/09) Ost, Laura National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) physicists have demonstrated the first "universal" programmable quantum information processor capable of running any program allowed by quantum mechanics that uses two quantum bits (qubits) of information. The processor could be used in a future quantum computer and represents the first time any research group has advanced beyond demonstrating individual tasks on a quantum processor. The NIST researchers analyzed the quantum processor using methods common in traditional computer science by creating a diagram of the processing circuit and mathematically determining the 15 different starting values and sequences of processing operations required to run a given program. "This is the first time anyone has demonstrated a programmable quantum processor for more than one qubit," says NIST postdoctoral researcher David Hanneke. "It's a step toward the big goal of doing calculations with lots and lots of qubits." NIST researchers performed 160 different processing routines on two qubits, which Hanneke says is a large and diverse enough sample to fairly represent two-qubit programs.

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• 19 Nov 2009 04:32

  Welcome to the November 18, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. There's No Business Like Grid Business New Social Networking Tool to Improve Well-Being Awareness Feds Mull Rules, Fees to Spur Net Access Cellphone App to Make Maps of Noise Pollution Evaluators Sought for Degree Programs in Computing Software Knowledge Unnecessarily Lost IBM Announces Advances Toward a Computer that Works Like a Human Brain Who's Talking About Me? New Supercomputer to Boost Aussie Research 3D Web Will Save High-Performance Computing Industry, Intel CTO Says A New Tool for Real-Time Credit Card Fraud Prevention Planting Seeds for a Fertile Future Facebook Offers Poor Personal Data Protection Hackers Create Tools for Disaster Relief Scientists Put Interactive Flu Tracking at Public's Fingertips There's No Business Like Grid Business ICT Results (11/16/09) The European Union-funded GRid enabled access to rich mEDIA (GREDIA) content project has developed a platform that makes the grid's resources available to business users. "Many business applications need to work fast and need to work with huge amounts of data," says GREDIA coordinator Nikos Sarris. "The grid is ideal for that, but software developers don't use it because they don't know how." Sarris says the GREDIA platform will help business application developers exploit the grid without requiring them to become grid technology experts. He says the system is reliable because it is distributed across numerous machines, and it optimizes business transactions using algorithms that make the most of the grid's distributed resources. The project developed and demonstrated two business services: one allows any number of sources using almost any kind of device to be used as a news-gathering team; a second is designed for the banking industry. The banking applications enable lenders to use their home computers or handheld devices to securely provide information. The program authenticates information, combines it into a profile, and calculates credit rankings using a protocol specified by the lender.New Social Networking Tool to Improve Well-Being Awareness University of Southampton (ECS) (11/18/09) A social networking tool called Healthii has improved personal and group well-being and interactions, according to researchers at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science. A study of 10 Healthii users over five weeks reveals that half felt they were more reflective, eight said they were more aware of other group members, and half said they would really miss this level of communication when the trial ended. Healthii was designed to help users of social networking sites and microblogs understand how they and their peers are doing, and to help them enhance their quality of life at work. The application uses graphical avatars to show the level of busy-ness, enjoyment, stress, and health of users, and adding a numeric code would allow a person to quickly communicate that he or she is feeling very busy, enjoying the task, averagely stressed, but feeling a bit under the weather, for example. The field of Human-Computer Interaction tends to focus on designing to support efficiency or productivity in tasks, says dr schraefel. "That's important, but we're now beginning to consider how to design systems to support well-being while engaged in everyday tasks to enhance quality of life," says schraefel. "Eventually, we hope to inspire designers and researchers not only to explore these attributes in social networking applications, but also to consider the potential for well-being measures across Human-Computer Interaction the same way we consider efficiency today," says Ph.D. student Paul Andre.Feds Mull Rules, Fees to Spur Net Access Wall Street Journal (11/18/09) P. A1; Schatz, Amy The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is debating whether it should force Internet service providers (ISPs) to share their networks with rivals and increase the fees charged to consumers' phone bills to pay for broader Internet access. The proposals, which are heavily opposed by telecommunications and cable companies, are a reversal from the Bush administration, when regulators reduced government control of Internet and phone service. The new Democrat-controlled commission is considering if more government oversight is necessary to ensure competition and more affordable Internet service. The FCC will examine possible solutions in December and make a formal recommendation in February when it is scheduled to release its National Broadband Plan for improving broadband speed and access. FCC officials estimate that the plan could cost $20 billion to $350 billion, depending on the speed offered, to connect all U.S. households to high-speed Internet service. One potential solution would revive open access rules, which would require ISPs to lease their networks to rivals at government-regulated rates. Open access rules are in place in Europe and some Asian countries, and consumer advocates argue that open access is a major reason why Internet service is cheaper and faster in those countries. Cable and phone companies argue that they will have little reason to invest in networks if they are required to offer below-rate access to competitors.Cellphone App to Make Maps of Noise Pollution New Scientist (11/18/09) Ananthaswamy, Anil The European Union requires member states to create noise maps of their urban areas once every five years. Instead of deploying sensors all over a city, the maps are usually created using computer models to predict how various sources of noise affect the surrounding areas. However, those maps are not an accurate reflection of residents' exposure to noise, says Sony Computer Science Laboratory researcher Nicolas Maisonneuve, who has developed NoiseTube, a downloadable software app that uses smartphones to monitor noise pollution. NoiseTube records any sound picked up by the phone's microphone and marks the location using the device's global positioning system capabilities. Users also can label the data with additional information, such as the source of the noise. The recording is converted into a format that can be mapped using Google Earth. The software checks against weather information to reject data that may have been distorted by high winds, for example. Locations with sustained levels of noise are labeled as dangerous. The software currently must be calibrated to work with the microphone used in each individual smartphone, but the researchers are working on a method of automatically calibrating microphones.Evaluators Sought for Degree Programs in Computing ACM (11/18/09) CSAB, Inc.--the lead society within ABET, Inc. for the accreditation of programs in computer science, information systems, IT, and software engineering--is seeking evaluators for degree programs in computing. The role of a CSAB evaluator includes visiting college campuses to review facilities, curriculum, faculty qualifications, student achievement, and other key program areas. Program evaluators are expected to serve for at least one three-year term and to be available to make a minimum of one school visit each year. Candidates with an industrial background must have at least five years of experience as a working practitioner in a computing-related field, hold an advanced degree, and have a minimum of one degree in a computing-related field. Recent contact with computing graduates and experience in evaluating them (for example, recruiting, hiring, interviewing, or working with graduates) is also required. Desired qualifications include one or more years of management experience in a computing-related discipline, experience evaluating computing degree programs (such as industrial advisory committees, curriculum committees, and undergraduate teaching experience), and experience in evaluating the criteria for success in a computing career (for example, career monitoring, academic advisory activities, making hiring and promotion decisions). Interested candidates should apply directly at www.abet.org/volunteer.shtml/. Applications are due by Dec. 31.Software Knowledge Unnecessarily Lost Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (11/18/09) Dutch researchers Remco de Boer and Rik Farenhorst, working on the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research's Joint Academic and Commercial Quality Research & Development program, investigated how software architectural knowledge can be better disseminated and retrieved. Designing and building large software systems requires a great deal of creativity and knowledge, but architects without access to the right knowledge often end up unnecessarily reinventing the wheel. Farenhorst explored how software architects can share knowledge more easily and discovered that many architects simply do not talk with each other enough, often because they want to receive knowledge but are less willing to pass on their own knowledge. Farenhorst recommends using fixed templates to record architectural knowledge in combination with open communication facilitated by forums that allow architects to find each other. Remco de Boer studied the role of auditors who assess the quality of software systems, which often requires searching through piles of paperwork for specific information, such as the decisions an architect made during the design process. De Boer developed a method for guiding auditors through the information in a more efficient manner. Both researchers conducted their efforts through the GRIFFIN project, which aims to describe how and why software engineers make their decisions about software architecture.IBM Announces Advances Toward a Computer that Works Like a Human Brain San Jose Mercury News (CA) (11/18/09) Bailey, Brandon Researchers from IBM's Almaden Research Center and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat's brain, while researchers from IBM and Stanford University say they have developed an algorithm for mapping the human brain in unprecedented detail. The researchers say these efforts could help build a computer that replicates the complexity of the human brain. In the first project, an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab was used to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, enabling researchers to observe how information "percolates" through a system similar to a feline cerebral cortex. The research is part of IBM project manager Dharmendra Modha's efforts to design a new computer by first better understanding how the brain works. "The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities," Modha says. "It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-liter bottle of soda." Modha says a major difference between the brain and traditional computers is that current computer are designed on a model that differentiates between processing and storing data, which can lead to a lag in updating information. However, the brain can integrate and react to a constant stream of sights, sounds, and sensory information. Modha imagines a cognitive computer capable of analyzing a constant stream of information from global trading floors, banking institutions, and real estate markets to identify key trends and their consequences; or a computer capable of evaluating pollution using real-time sensors from around the world.Who's Talking About Me? Technology Review (11/18/09) Naone, Erica Web experts are developing technologies capable of tracking online conversations in real time, even when those conversations are distributed across the Web. For example, popular videos and articles often get re-posted and discussed on hundreds of sites, and the creators of that content may want to be able to follow those discussions. In response, new Web protocols have been developed that provide notifications when new content is available. One protocol, pubsubhubbub, can push content out to feed readers as it is updated. Another, Salmon, enables comments to "swim upstream" to connect to the original post. In a keynote address at the recent Defrag 2009 technology conference, speaker Kevin Marks said that these types of technologies are needed for today's Web, where content rapidly flows from one site to another. Gathering this distributed content and related discussions could be critical for people who want to participate in the conversation that surrounds the content they post online, particularly because people are increasingly likely to discuss and interact with content away from the site it was originally posted, according to PostRank chief technology officer Ilya Grigorik. For protocols like Salmon to work, they would have to be adopted by both content publishers and services that may subscribe, distribute, or discuss that content. When new content appears, the publisher could use pubsubhubbub to notify subscribers, who would use Salmon to send back any information or discussions to the publisher.New Supercomputer to Boost Aussie Research Computerworld Australia (11/16/09) Edwards, Kathryn Australia recently unveiled the Sun Constellation, a 140 teraflop machine that will be the country's most powerful supercomputer. The $15 million Sun Constellation, which ranks among the world's top 40 supercomputers, has 180 Sun Blade x6275 Server Modules implemented in two computer racks, but there are plans to expand to 14 racks by the end of 2009. The total system leverages the Sun Lustre Storage System and the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 648. The Sun Constellation also has an energy consumption rate of 604 kilowatts. The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) will operate the supercomputer, which will be housed at the Australian National University (ANU). The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, ANU, the Australian government, and other partners will use the supercomputer for research projects, such as computational chemistry, nanotechnology, astronomy, photonics, medicine, and environmental science. Australia also has plans to introduce a 1 petaflop or 2 petaflops next-generation machine in 2011. "Australia's now back in business in the high-performance computing league," says NCI director Lindsay Botten.3D Web Will Save High-Performance Computing Industry, Intel CTO Says Network World (11/17/09) Brodkin, Jon Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner believes that three-dimensional (3D) Web technologies will revive the high-performance computing (HPC) industry. Rattner, who delivered the opening address at the SC09 supercomputing conference, said HPC demand is currently limited to small markets. However, he said virtually the entire population could benefit from HPC if the right platform became available. "High-performance computing doesn't need a killer app as much as it needs a killer application framework," Rattner said. "It needs a platform in which people can leverage the power of high-performance computing to do just about anything they can imagine." Rattner believes the killer application framework is the 3D Web, powered on the back end by cloud technologies and the HPC industry. The 3D Web will power virtual worlds and create new ways for people to interact, as well as new platforms for businesses to test products. Guest speaker Aaron Duffy, a biology researcher at Utah State University, said he is using 3D simulations to study how environmental conditions affect fern populations over several generations. Fashion Research Institute CEO Shenlei Winkley, another guest speaker, said 3D modeling and simulation programs have reduced design times by 75 percent and sample costs by 65 percent. "This is the killer application infrastructure platform that will power growth and increase [research and development] capability in high-performance computing," Rattner said.A New Tool for Real-Time Credit Card Fraud Prevention Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (Spain) (11/12/09) Martínez, Eduardo Researchers from several European institutions, led by the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid's School of Computing, are creating a services development platform that will be able to process millions of data per second. The researchers say the new technology could help fight real-time credit card fraud, mobile telephony SIM card cloning, and fraudulent unpaid telephone calls. Banks and credit card companies have several systems in place to detect fraudulent credit card use, but they all detect fraud after it has been committed, aiming to identify the fraud and prevent cardholder losses. The new system will implement real-time fraud detection, preventing improper credit card use and cardholder losses because improper payments will not be authorized. The same technology can be applied to mobile phones, where SIM card copying or the fraudulent use of telephone lines is only detected after the crime. The real-time system is being developed as part of the Scalable Autonomic Streaming Middleware Project (Stream), which aims to build a platform for real-time processing of massive data flows. The major technological innovation is that Stream uses large node clusters to process massive data throughput of millions of data per second.Planting Seeds for a Fertile Future University of Texas at Austin (11/11/09) Dubrow, Aaron The National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched the iPlant Collaborative, a $50 million, five-year project that will create the cybernetic infrastructure needed to solve grand challenge problems in plant biology. iPlant will provide the ability to draw from resources and talents in remote locations, enabling plant, computer, and information scientists from around the world to collaboratively work on questions of global importance. iPlant co-director Dan Stanzione, deputy director of the Texas Advanced Computing Center at the University of Texas, Austin, says feeding the world is a crop production problem, and sustaining a breathable atmosphere is a plant problem, so solving these problems is of vital importance. "iPlant is the first attempt at this scale to build a cyberinfrastructure that fills the gap between building a supercomputer and what scientists do in their labs," Stanzione says. Filling that gap requires identifying the technical and structural obstacles that prevent researchers from using high-performance computing systems to find solutions. Over the past decade, NSF has supported numerous individual projects in plant sciences. iPlant will integrate the disparate data that was created through those projects to create a comprehensive network of knowledge.Facebook Offers Poor Personal Data Protection SINTEF (11/17/09) A study of Norwegian Internet users and social media found that people are willing to post their personal information on social media sites even when they are not aware how it will be used. Conducted by SINTEF for the Norwegian Consumers' Council, the researchers found that 60 percent of Norweigan Internet users are on Facebook. SINTEF's Petter Bae Brandtzaeg and Marika Luders conclude that Facebook offers relatively poor personal data protection due to the service itself, its design, the level of competence of its users, and their lack of awareness of how to protect themselves. "Facebook has become an important arena for social participation in our personal environment," Brandtzaeg says. "However, it is becoming ever more easy to gather and aggregate personal information, outside the control of users." Still, people are willing to post their personal information because so many other people use Facebook, and they rarely hear of unfortunate incidents. Respondents were usually not aware that Facebook uses personal information for commercial purposes, and their personal information also can be used against them, such as when they apply for a job. The researchers say that people and objects will be woven together ever more closely by the next wave of Internet media such as Google Wave and mobile smartphones. "This can make us even more vulnerable to failures of personal data protection," Luders says.Hackers Create Tools for Disaster Relief CNet (11/15/09) Mills, Elinor The first-ever Random Hacks of Kindness recently took place in Mountain View, Calif., bringing software developers together to focus on how technology could be used to help people get information and find each other during emergencies. Organized by Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, NASA, the World Bank, and SecondMuse, the event is viewed as a way to bring technologists together to solve real-world problems and create a community of developers to build tools to help emergency workers. "We're trying to seed the community," says Google Crisis Response's Jeffery Martin. "We're saying, partner with the private sector and we can push technology forward and innovate." Developers used social media sites such as Twitter and short message service (SMS) for information sharing to build about a dozen tools. One project would use laptops, routers, mobile devices, USB keys, and Wi-Fi to create a mesh network during a disaster. A group primarily from NASA took first place with a mobile application for easily notifying loved ones that "I'm OK" via SMS by clicking one button. The organizers plan to hold the next Random Hacks of Kindness event in early 2010 in Washington, D.C. View Full Article | Return to Headlines Scientists Put Interactive Flu Tracking at Public's Fingertips OSU News (11/12/09) Caldwell, Emily Ohio State University (OSU) researchers have combined several computer systems to analyze massive amounts of genetic data collected from publicly available isolated strains of the H5N1 virus, the cause of the avian flu. The researchers then developed a Web-based application using Google Earth that enables health officials and the public to visualize how the virus moved around the world. The researchers say the visualizations are the most comprehensive map of how the avian flu has been transmitted among sites in Asia, Africa, and Europe. To create the visualizations, the researchers developed a new method for analyzing genetic data that generates more complete information about the flu's spread. The method, combined with the growing availability of sequenced genomes of isolated flu strains, is expected to help public health officials make better-informed predictions about how the H1N1 flu will evolve. "We are taking into account more data but at the same time, we're making simpler visualizations, allowing users to choose what they want to see," says OSU professor Daniel Janies. "We waded through all of the complexities so people in the public health realm who want to determine how a flu virus got from point A to point B can find that out, and we'll have better public health outcomes as a result." View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 16 Nov 2009 11:42

  Welcome to the November 16, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Supercomputers With 100 Million Cores Coming By 2018 Disease-Matching Software Could Save Children ECS Researchers Present Learning Technologies in USA Contact Lenses to Get Built-In Virtual Graphics Working Together to Design Robust Silicon Chips Intel Says Shape-Shifting Robots Closer to Reality Stanford-Led Research Helps Overcome Barrier for Organic Electronics How Secure Is Cloud Computing? What Computer Science Can Teach Economics Tough Choices for Supercomputing's Legacy Apps New 'finFETs' Promising for Smaller Transistors, More Powerful Chips Jaguar Supercomputer Races Past Roadrunner in Top500 It's All Semantics: Searching for an Intuitive Internet That Knows What Is Said--and Meant Supercomputers With 100 Million Cores Coming By 2018 Computerworld (11/16/09) Thibodeau, Patrick A key topic at this week's SC09 supercomputing conference, which takes place Nov. 14-20 in Portland, Ore., is how to reach the exascale plateau in supercomputing performance. "There are serious exascale-class problems that just cannot be solved in any reasonable amount of time with the computers that we have today," says Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility project director Buddy Bland. Today's supercomputers are still well short of exascale performance. The world's fastest system, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Jaguar, reaches a peak performance of 2.3 petaflops. Bland says the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is holding workshops on building a system 1,000 times more powerful. The DOE, which is responsible for funding many of the world's fastest systems, wants two machines to reach approximately 10 petaflops by 2011 to 2013, says Bland. However, the next major milestone currently receiving the most attention is the exaflop, or a million trillion calculations per second. Exaflop computing is expected to be achieved around 2018, according to predictions largely based on Moore's Law. However, problems involved in reaching exaflop computing are far more complicated than advancements in chips. For example, Jaguar uses 7 megawatts of power, but an exascale system that uses CPU processing cores alone could take 2 gigawatts, says IBM's Dave Turek. "That's roughly the size of medium-sized nuclear power plant," he says. "That's an untenable proposition for the future." Finding a way to reduce power consumption is key to developing an exascale computer. Turek says future systems also will have to use less memory per core and will require greater memory bandwidth.Disease-Matching Software Could Save Children ICT Results (11/13/09) Software developed by the Heath-e-Child project is capable of comparing a variety of structured and unstructured data to help identify rare or life-threatening diseases in children and then model the potential progression of those diseases. The software can search and compare patient data from hospitals throughout Europe, allowing doctors to study how patients with similar data at other hospitals were treated and whether treatment was successful. The Health-e-Child system links anonymized databases of patient information from hospitals in Paris, Genoa, Rome, and London, and there are plans to extend the network to 25 hospitals. For unstructured data such as images, the project has developed tools that translate visual information into a machine-readable language. The project's three-dimensional (3D) registration tool for magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and its MRI erosion-scoring system for juvenile idiomatic arthritis have been recognized as major advances. The project's CaseReasoner tool enables doctors to search thousands of disease diagnoses, treatments, and outcomes to find similar cases. And the CardioWiz tool can be combined with MRI scan measurements to rapidly generate animated 3D models of a patient's heart that can be used to simulate the effects of heart surgery or drug treatments.ECS Researchers Present Learning Technologies in USA University of Southampton (ECS) (11/11/09) Lewis, Joyce Researchers from the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) presented the most recent developments in the school's Learning Societies Lab at a recent symposium at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center. ECS' Mike Wald discussed new features for the lab's Web-based Synote program, including the ability to synchronize live notes taken via Twitter with synchronized lecture recordings and transcripts created through IBM's speech-recognition software. E.A. Draffan, also from the ECS Learning Societies Lab, gave a presentation on how people with disabilities will access Web 2.0 technologies as technology continues to evolve. Draffan's lecture focused on the need to enhance the knowledge of a wider network of informal experts and academic staff to enable them to introduce disabled students to the many Web-based tools that are currently being developed. He says doing so would enable disabled students to further develop their skills and potentially become informal experts capable of sharing the strategies they have developed. "In the past, people used their assistive technologies mainly with desktop computer applications, now they are spending far more time online," Draffan says. "They also are collaborating and communicating via social networks, blogs, and wikis, which are not always accessible; however, often with the support of friends and tutors, they find workarounds and go on to build their own strategies."Contact Lenses to Get Built-In Virtual Graphics New Scientist (11/12/09) Venkatraman, Vijaysree University of Washington researcher Babak Parviz has embedded nanoscale-sized circuitry into a contact lens in an effort to create a new kind of heads-up-display (HUD). The lens harvests radio waves to power a light-emitting diode (LED), which would be used to project floating images in front of a user's eyes. Parviz says that one of the limitations of current HUDs is their limited field of view, but a contact lens could provide a much wider field of view. The circuitry for the contact lens requires 330 microwatts, but does not need a battery. Instead, a loop antenna receives power from a nearby radio source. Parviz says future version of the contact lens could harvest power from a user's cell phone, potentially as the phone sends information to the lens. Advanced lenses also will have more pixels and an array of microlenses to focus the image so it appears suspended in front of a user's eyes. He says the lens could be used to view subtitles when someone is speaking a foreign language, directions for an unfamiliar area, captioned photographs, or information for pilots. "A contact lens that allows virtual graphics to be seamlessly overlaid on the real world could provide a compelling augmented reality experience," says Human Interface Technology Laboratory director Mark Billinghurst.Working Together to Design Robust Silicon Chips EUREKA (11/10/09) Garcin, Philippe Cooperation between researchers, chipmakers, and tool suppliers working on the EUREKA MEDEA+ microelectronics Cluster ROBIN project has led to improved design methods for silicon chips. The researchers say the project has created a process that solves problems far earlier in the design phase, enhancing integrated circuit design techniques. Project partners formalized the problems; specified software tools, models, and design flows with strong interoperability; and proposed test cases. The project focused on optimizing the design method for both existing 130 nm and 90 nm and future 65 nm and 45 nm technologies by defining the most efficient trade-offs between circuit robustness, in regards to yield and reliability, and the efficient use of technology affecting performance, specifically density and power consumption. For example, on inter-block couplings, the project enabled a decrease of simulation time by a factor of four in critical radio-frequency circuits. The researchers say the benefits of the project have been demonstrated in automotive, telecommunications, and multimedia applications.Intel Says Shape-Shifting Robots Closer to Reality Computerworld (11/12/09) Gaudin, Sharon Researchers at Intel and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) say distributed computing and robotics could be used to make shape-shifting electronics a reality in the not-too-distant future. The researchers are working to take millions of millimeter-sized robots and enable them to use software and electromagnetic forces to change into a variety of shapes and sizes. CMU professor Seth Goldstein and Intel researcher Jason Campbell recently reported that they are able to demonstrate the physics needed to create programmable matter. "It's been pretty hard but we've made a lot of progress," Campbell says. "Optimistically, we could see this in three to five years." Programmable matter is called claytronics, and the millimeter-sized robots are called catoms. Each catom would contain its own processor, and would essentially be a tiny robot or computer with computational power, memory, and the ability to store and share power. The goal is to program millions of catoms to work together by developing software that focuses on a pattern or overall movement of the entire system of tiny robots. Each robot will be smart enough to detect its own place in the pattern and respond accordingly. Part of the research effort involves developing new programming languages, algorithms, and debugging tools to get these systems to work together.Stanford-Led Research Helps Overcome Barrier for Organic Electronics Stanford University (11/10/09) Orenstein, David Stanford University researchers have determined why some transistors made of organic crystals do not allow electricity to flow through them as easily as other electronics, a discovery that will help make organic electronics better. The researchers have shown that how boundaries between individual crystals are aligned can make a 70-fold difference in how easily electrical charges can pass through transistors. Although organic semiconductors could greatly benefit the electronics industry, performance from transistor to transistor is far more inconsistent than in silicon-based chips. The researchers found that the "grain" boundaries between crystals can cause the path that electrical charges must flow through to be extremely inefficient, often zigzagging back and forth. To test the importance of the boundary alignment, the researchers grew crystals of an organic semiconductor using a process that ensured consistent alignment from crystal to crystal in a uniform direction. The researchers then made transistors in which charges could flow through molecules that were well aligned, and others in which the molecules were misaligned, and found that the well-aligned transistors performed far better. "By better understanding what goes on at these boundaries, and how detrimental they are, improvements can be made at the chemistry end as well as at the design and fabrication end of the process," says Stanford graduate student Jonathan Rivnay. "This way devices can be more reproducible and better performing."How Secure Is Cloud Computing? Technology Review (11/16/09) Talbot, David The recent ACM Cloud Computing Security Workshop, which took place Nov. 13 in Chicago, was the first event devoted specifically to the security of cloud computing systems. Speaker Whitfield Diffie, a visiting professor at Royal Holloway, University of London, says that although cryptography solutions for cloud computing are still far-off, much can be done in the short term to help make cloud computing more secure. "The effect of the growing dependence on cloud computing is similar to that of our dependence on public transportation, particularly air transportation, which forces us to trust organizations over which we have no control, limits what we can transport, and subjects us to rules and schedules that wouldn't apply if we were flying our own planes," Diffie says. "On the other hand, it is so much more economical that we don't realistically have any alternative." He says current cloud computing techniques negate any economic benefit that would be gained by outsourcing computing tasks. Diffie says a practical near-term solution will require an overall improvement in computer security, including cloud computing providers choosing more secure operating systems and maintaining a careful configuration on the systems. Security-conscious computing services providers would have to provision each user with their own processors, caches, and memory at any given moment, and would clean systems between users, including reloading the operating system and zeroing all memory.What Computer Science Can Teach Economics MIT News (11/09/09) Hardesty, Larry Professor Constantinos Daskalakis in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is applying the theory of computational complexity to game theory. He argues that some common game-theoretical problems are so challenging that solving them would take the lifetime of the universe, and thus they fail to accurately represent what occurs in the real world. In game theory a "game" represents any mathematical model that associates different player strategies with different results. Daskalakis' doctoral thesis disputes the assumption that finding the Nash equilibrium for every game will allow the system's behavior to be accurately modeled. In the case of economics, the system being modeled is the market. Daskalakis' thesis illustrates that for some games, the Nash equilibrium is so difficult to calculate that all the world's computing resources could never find it in the universe's lifetime. In the real world, market rivals tend to calculate the strategies that will maximize their own outcomes given the current state of play, rather than work out the Nash equilibria for their specific games and then adopt the resulting tactics. However, if one player changes strategies, the other players will change strategies in response, driving the first player to shift strategies again, and so on until the feedback pathways eventually converge toward equilibrium. Daskalakis contends that feedback will not find the equilibrium faster than computers could calculate it.Tough Choices for Supercomputing's Legacy Apps ZDNet UK (11/12/09) Jones, Andrew The future of supercomputing holds several significant software challenges, writes Numerical Algorithms Group's Andrew Jones. The first challenge is the rapidly increasing degree of concurrency required. A complex hierarchy of parallelism, from vector-like parallelism at the local level through multithreading to multi-level, and massive parallel processing across numerous nodes, also present unique challenges, Jones says. Additionally, supercomputing will have to handle a new wave of verification, validation, and resilience issues. Although petaflop and exascale computing holds much promise, Jones says experts question whether some current applications will still be usable. Experts argue that some legacy applications are coded in certain ways that make evolution impossible, and that code refactoring and algorithm development would be more difficult than starting from scratch. However, Jones notes that disposing of old code also throws away extremely valuable scientific knowledge. Ultimately, he says that two classes of applications may emerge--programs that will never be able to exploit future high-end supercomputers but are still used while their successors develop comparable scientific maturity, and programs that can operate in the exascale and petascale arena. Jones says that developing and sustaining these two fields will require a well-balanced approach among researchers, developers, and funding agencies, who will have to continue to provide investments in scaling, optimization, algorithm evolution, and scientific advancements in existing code while diverting sufficient resources to the development of new code.New 'finFETs' Promising for Smaller Transistors, More Powerful Chips Purdue University News (11/10/09) Venere, Emil Purdue University researchers are developing new transistors based on a fin-like structure that could enable engineers to develop faster and more compact circuits. Unlike conventional, flat, silicon-based transistors, the fins, which are called finFETs, for fin field-effect-transistors, are made from indium-gallium-arsenide. The Purdue researchers say they are the first to create finFETs using atomic-layer deposition--a common production process--which could make the new finFET technique a practical alternative to silicon transistors. FinFETs could allow engineers to bypass silicon's limitations in keeping pace with Moore's Law, as shrinking electronic devices made from conventional silicon-based semiconductors is becoming increasingly challenging. However, in addition to making smaller transistors, finFETs also can conduct electrons at least five times faster than conventional silicon transistors. "The potential increase in speed is very important," says Purdue professor Peide Ye. "The finFETs could enable industry to not only create smaller devices, but also much faster computer processors." The fin-like design is crucial to preventing current leakage, partially because the vertical structure can be completely surrounded by an insulator, while a flat device can only have an insulator on one side.Jaguar Supercomputer Races Past Roadrunner in Top500 CNet (11/15/09) Ogg, Erica The Jaguar Cray XT5 supercomputer can process 1.75 petaflops and is now the fastest computer in the world. The Jaguar supercomputer switches places with IBM's Roadrunner, which saw its processing speed decline to 1.04 petaflops from 1.105 petaflops, apparently due to a repartitioning of the system, and is now in second place on the Top500 list of supercomputers. The list, which is compiled two times a year, will be unveiled Tuesday at the SC09 conference in Portland, Ore. The Kraken, another Cray XT5 system, has risen to third from fifth place by posting a processing performance speed of 832 teraflops, while IBM's BlueGene/P, at Forschungszentrum Juelich in Germany, is No. 4 with 825.5 teraflops. The Tianhe-1, at No. 5, marks the highest ranking ever for a Chinese supercomputer. Sandia National Laboratories' Red Sky, a Sun Blade system with a LINPACK performance of 423 teraflops, is the newcomer to the top 10. Hewlett-Packard accounted for 210 of the 500 fastest supercomputers, followed by IBM with 185. Eighty percent used Intel processors, and 90 percent used the Linux operating system.It's All Semantics: Searching for an Intuitive Internet That Knows What Is Said--and Meant Scientific American (11/09/09) Greenemeier, Larry The push to develop the Semantic Web recently received fresh support through a National Science Foundation grant, which has been awarded to researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The $1.1 million grant will support the creation of a software programming tool kit by mid-2010 that will allow scientists and researchers to make data from their work available to a larger audience. A Semantic Web would enable researchers to present their searches in a more natural way. A semantic interface would allow a researcher to visit a single research site, describe the desired information, and allow ontologies and semantics to find not only that information, but any relevant related information the research may have overlooked. "The Semantic Web has its own query language that takes advantage of meanings of concepts and their relationships," says Tom Narock, a faculty research assistant at NASA's Goddard Earth Sciences and Technology Center and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. "You ask your question at very high level, and it takes care of filling in the details for you." View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 13 Nov 2009 18:50

  Welcome to the November 13, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Creating 3D Models With a Simple Webcam CIO Blast From the Past: 40 Years of Multics, 1969-2009 Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis Robots Perform Shakespeare to Learn How to Save People Software for Solving Life-Threatening Medical Puzzles Breaking the Botnet Code Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision Google Launches New Programming Language: Go India Prof Tips Fastest Prime Number Detection Algorithm Minority Students Earned Greater Number of Academic Degrees in Fiscal Year 2006 Super-Fast Quantum Computer Gets Ever Closer: Quantum Particles Pinned Down NIST Test Proves 'the Eyes Have It' for ID Verification Creating 3D Models With a Simple Webcam University of Cambridge (11/11/09) University of Cambridge researchers have developed a simple and affordable method for constructing virtual three-dimensional (3D) models, which should make 3D modeling more accessible. The new program requires only a basic Web camera in order for users to build 3D models of textured objects in real time. The system collects live video when an object is moved in front of the Webcam, and then reconstructs the object online. The software detects points on the object, uses them to estimate object structure from the motion of the camera or the object, and computes the Delaunay tetrahedralization of the points. The system records the points in a mesh of tetrahedra, which is where the object's surface mesh is embedded. The invalid tetrahedra are removed to obtain the surface mesh based on a probabilistic carving algorithm and the object texture is applied to the 3D mesh in order to clean up the final reconstruction and produce a realistic model. The Cambridge team presented the system at the 20th British Machine Vision Conference in London.CIO Blast From the Past: 40 Years of Multics, 1969-2009 CIO Australia (11/11/09) Gedda, Rodney Four decades ago, Multiplexed Information and Computing Service (Multics), widely considered the basis of contemporary time-sharing systems, was first employed for information management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). MIT professor and ACM 1990 A.M. Turing Award winner Fernando J. Corbato led MIT's Multics project. He says the implementation of Multics was driven by the need for "a higher-level language to program the bulk of the system to amplify the effectiveness of each programmer." Corbato says that "Multics was designed to be a general-purpose, time-sharing system so the focus was less on the novelty of the applications and more on the ease of developing and building applications and systems." He counts the Unix programming language to be Multics' most significant legacy, noting that both Multics and Unix exploited their hardware effectively. Among the features used in modern computing that Corbato lists as being first developed or thought up with Multics are hierarchical file systems, file access controls, and dynamic linking on demand. "The real legacy of Multics was the education and inculcation of system engineering principles in over 1,400 people directly associated with operating, maintaining, extending, and managing the system during its lifetime," he says. "Because we made documentation and publications a mainstay of the project, countless others have also been influenced."Tinkering Makes Comeback Amid Crisis Wall Street Journal (11/12/09) P. A1; Lahart, Justin The economic crisis and the reduced costs of high-tech tools and materials are fueling a resurgence in tinkering and experimentation. U.S. engineering schools are reporting a comeback in student interest in hands-on work, while workshops are springing up all over the United States in which people can exchange ideas as well as tools. "A lot of people are pretty disappointed with an image of a career in finance and they're looking for a career that's real," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Michael Cima. Computer numerical-controlled tools, which carve metal and other materials into whatever design is fed into the computer attached to them, are becoming more affordable. Engineering school undergraduates are taking advantage of the increased affordability and accessibility of high-tech tools previously only available to senior researchers. The new tinkerers are creating a wide variety of inventions, from devices that Tweet how much beer is left in a keg to robots that assist doctors. Decreases in U.S. spending on research and development has provoked concerns that innovation will no longer give the economy the jump it used to, but the tinkering craze may offer some hope as the inventions lead to new companies. NYC Resistor co-founder Bre Pettis says he is witnessing a "merging of [do it yourself] with technology. I'm calling it Industrial Revolution 2."Robots Perform Shakespeare to Learn How to Save People Texas A&M Engineering News (11/13/09) Schnettler, Tim A production of William Shakespeare's "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at Texas A&M University will feature both human and robotic performers. An AirRobot helicopter and six toy radio helicopters will serve as the production's fairies. The robotic performances are being used by the Texas A&M's Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering to learn more about how people react to the flying devices. "It's now possible for these unmanned aerial vehicles to be used for evacuation or for crowd control," says Texas A&M professor Robin Murphy. "But what's missing is understanding what makes a person trust or fear the robot." Over the course of the production's rehearsals and first performances, the researchers have documented several surprises, including that people thought the robots were smarter and tougher than they really are. Initially, people would handle the robots rather roughly, and launch them from different positions, resulting in damage. The actors also showed little fear of the robots, which Murphy says could cause people to become complacent and possible ignore a robot's instruction or walk into the rotor blades and be hurt. "The robots by themselves apparently aren't scary, so we need additional research to make them move like friendly hummingbirds or angry bees to get the desired effect," she says.Software for Solving Life-Threatening Medical Puzzles ICT Results (11/11/09) University of Athens researchers have developed AITION, new software that can integrate medical data from a tumor patient and run an analysis to determine the factors that are stimulating tumor development. AITION combines up to 30 correlated variables--gathered through demographic, environmental, genetic, and clinical data as well as images such as MRIs and CAT scans--to provide an overview of the causal relationship between the various factors. AITION displays its results as a knowledge model, a graphical network of medical factors with links that represent the correlations between the factors. Doctors can use the knowledge model and improve upon it by adding more information about the patient. The model can be used to test the likely affects of different types of medication, surgery, or treatments on the tumor's growth and the patient's health. University of Athens researcher Harry Dimitropoulos says causal-probabilistic algorithms within AITION are well established and reliable. However, because the diseases are rare, there is limited data available. The next step in AITION's development will be to link it to medical data ontologies to provide more context for AITION's probability calculations and predictions. AITION researchers also want to expand the number of variables that can be considered in AITION's calculations of causal probability. "In theory, AITION can be expanded to as many features as you want," Dimitropoulos says. "We are preparing a mechanism that uses partitioning and parallel processing to create sub-graphs that can then be merged. But this is research at an early planning stage."Breaking the Botnet Code Technology Review (11/11/09) Lemos, Robert Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have developed a way to disrupt botnets by automatically reverse engineering the communications between compromised computers and the controlling servers. The researchers say that automatic reverse engineering can decipher the structure and purpose of the communications between the controlling server and the botnet. Their new technique translates both the commands received by a client and the responses it sends. "The communications protocol of the botnet is the core of the botnet," says CMU PhD student Juan Caballero, the lead author of a paper on the research. "That is how the attacker sends commands to the botnet." The researchers ran botnet code on a virtual machine and analyzed the movement of information between a computer's registers before it was encrypted. Watching for changes in the memory registers enabled the researchers to derive the structure of the botnet communications and infer the function of the various components of each command. The researchers have built Dispatcher, a tool that can analyze botnet communications and inject new information into the communications stream. Security researchers say Dispatcher could them help reverse engineer botnets. "It would solve a problem that the world has--having enough people to analyze botnets," says SecureWorks senior security researcher Joe Stewart. "You have a cadre of enthusiasts who could use this to help them."Secret Math of Fly Eyes Could Overhaul Robot Vision Wired News (11/12/09) Keim, Brandon Researchers at Australia's University of Adelaide have created an efficient method for extracting motion patterns from raw visual data by transforming the brain cell activity behind a fly's vision into mathematical equations. They say their system could be used to program the vision systems of miniaturized battlefield drones, search-and-rescue robots, automobile navigation systems, and other computerized vision systems. "We can build a system that works perfectly well, inspired by biology, without having a complete understanding of how the components interact," says Adelaide computational neuroscientist David O'Carroll. "We can get an answer using tens of thousands of times less floating-point computations than in traditional ways." O'Carroll says unlike existing techniques that require lots of processing power, the Adelaide method uses only a fraction of a milliwatt. The algorithm is composed of a series of five equations, through which data from cameras can be processed. Each equation represents tricks used by flies to handle changes in brightness, contrast, and motion. The algorithm does not return a frame-by-frame comparison of every pixel, but instead emphasizes large-scale changes by ignoring like-colored and unshifting areas. "We started with insect vision as an inspiration, and built a model that's feasible for real-world use, but in doing so, we've built a system almost as complicated as the insect's," O'Carroll says.Google Launches New Programming Language: Go eWeek (11/10/09) Taft, Daryl K. Google has unveiled Go, a new programming language the company says offers the speed of working in a dynamic language such as Python and the performance and safety of a compiled language such as C or C++. "Go is a great language for systems programming with support for multi-processing, a fresh and lightweight take on object-oriented design, plus some cool features like true closures and reflection," according to the Google Go team in a blog post. However, Google is not using the experimental language internally for production systems. Instead, Google is conducting experiments with Go as a candidate server environment. "The Go project was conceived to make it easier to write the kind of servers and other software Google uses internally, but the implementation isn't quite mature enough yet for large-scale production use," according to the FAQ on the Go language's Web site. With Go, developers should find builds to be spontaneous. Large binaries will compile in just a few seconds, and the code will run close to the speed of C. Go is the second programming environment Google has released this fall. In September, Google released Noop, a Java-like programming language.India Prof Tips Fastest Prime Number Detection Algorithm EE Times India (11/13/09) Manindra Agrawal, an Indian professor who developed a deterministic polynomial time algorithm for detecting prime numbers, will receive the 2009 G.D. Birla Award for Scientific Research. Agrawal, a professor at IIT Kanpur who also heads its department of computer science and engineering, has conducted pioneering research on theories of computation and algorithms. The award was created to honor significant achievements made by young Indian scientists, and comes with a cash prize. The deterministic polynomial time algorithm enabled Agrawal to solve a problem that has stymied mathematicians for nearly 200 years. "It is faster than other existing solutions and is foolproof," Agrawal says.Minority Students Earned Greater Number of Academic Degrees in Fiscal Year 2006 National Science Foundation (11/04/09) Mixon, Bobbie Students in underserved populations earned a greater number of academic diplomas in almost all categories in fiscal year 2006 compared to fiscal year 2004, according to a new report from the National Science Foundation. Asians exhibited the largest rate of increase among U.S. citizens and permanent residents who earned bachelor's degrees at 10.5 percent, while the smallest rate increase was exhibited by American Indian/Alaska Natives at 1.3 percent. Meanwhile, the number of Latinos and blacks receiving master's degrees increased 13.1 percent and 13 percent respectively, while white students exhibited a growth rate of 5.9 percent. The report also estimates a 3.9 percent increase in awarded science and engineering bachelor's degrees, a 1.6 percent climb in master's degrees, and a 13.6 percent rise in doctoral degrees. Computer sciences generally demonstrated the largest increase among doctoral students at 53.2 percent, but also the most precipitous decline among bachelor's and master's degree students. Education suffered the steepest decline among doctoral students at 7.7 percent.Super-Fast Quantum Computer Gets Ever Closer: Quantum Particles Pinned Down Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) (11/09/09) Scientists at the Delft University of Technology were able to gain control over the environment of a quantum particle, which is a key step in the potential development of a quantum computer. The environment of a quantum particle consists of other quantum particles that push and pull its spin and prevent it from staying in one specific state for any significant length of time. The team at Delft's Kavli Institute for Nanosciences had already used a quantum dot--a quantum-scale box--to direct the spin of an electron. Now, the researchers have applied an electrical current to the nano-box, which enabled them to influence the spins of other quantum particles in the environment. Directing the electrical current to the nano-box resulted in a situation in which the spins in the environment did not occur at random. By stabilizing the environment of a quantum particle, researchers will be able to keep a quantum particle in different states at the same time, or superposition, for a longer period.NIST Test Proves 'the Eyes Have It' for ID Verification National Institute of Standards and Technology (11/03/09) Brown, Evelyn National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) computer scientists have released a report that demonstrates the ability of iris recognition algorithms to maintain their accuracy and interoperability with compact images, which means they could be used for large-scale identity management applications. The success of iris recognition largely depends on the ability of recognition algorithms to process standard images from the cameras currently available, which requires images to be captured in a standard format and prepared so they are compact enough for a smart card or for transmission across global networks. The images also must be detailed enough to be identifiable by computer algorithms and be interoperable with any iris-matching product. NIST scientists are working with the international biometrics community to revise iris recognition standards. NIST launched the Iris Exchange IREX program to encourage the development of iris recognition algorithms that use images conforming to the ISO-IEC 19794-6 standard. The international standard, currently under revision, defined three competing image formats and three compression methods. The first IREX test narrowed the field by determining which ones consistently performed at a high level. Two of the image formats that centered and cropped the iris were found to be the most effective, while two compression formats were found to create small enough file sizes for storage and transmission while retaining enough detail.

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• 11 Nov 2009 12:58

  Welcome to the November 11, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Ranked Association Conference of the Year Inventing Language China Plans for Humanoid Olympics Rutgers Computer Scientists Work to Strengthen Online Security NASA Showcases 'Green' Missions at SC09 Conference University of Basque Country Research Proposes Improvements for Electronic Voting by Internet The Green500 Expands its Coverage of Energy-Efficient Supercomputers Web Security Tool Copies Apps' Moves Social Tags Complement the Learning Resource Metadata, a Finnish Researcher Finds Out Theme-Park Dummy Trick Becomes Teleconference Tool Metagenomics and the Computing Challenges of Microbial Communities What Happens When Good Robots Go 'Bad'? SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 Ranked Association Conference of the Year Asia Image (11/09/09) The ACM SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 conference, held in Singapore, overcame logistical and economic obstacles to become an unqualified success, earning the Association Conference of the Year Award from the Singapore Excellence Awards. "SIGGRAPH Asia 2008 enriched Singapore's conference landscape and provided a unique visitor experience in its combination of art, technology, science, and industry programs," says conference chair Lee Yong Tsui. "It was an event that brought in different communities in the computer graphics industry all in one location in Singapore." Lee says the award the conference earned constitutes "a great honor and an endorsement of [ACM SIGGRAPH's] successful conference format and the incredible dedication of its volunteer members, chapters, and contributors globally. It will also encourage the association to further its efforts in Singapore and Asia, to help bolster the art, technology, and talents in the region."Inventing Language MIT News (11/10/09) Hardesty, Larry Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Barbara Liskov, winner of ACM's 2008 A.M. Turing Award, recently delivered the first lecture of MIT's 2009 Dertouzos Lecture Series. Liskov, who received the Turing Award in part for the work she did in the 1970s establishing the principles for the organization of programming languages, began her talk by describing the environment in which she performed her pioneering work. Liskov explained that in the fall of 1972, after reviewing the literature in the field, she developed the idea for what is known now as abstract data types. After developing that idea, Liskov says she and some collaborators created a programming language, CLU, which put most of her ideas into practice. The remainder of Liskov's lecture focused on a demonstration that CLU prefigured many of the ideas common in modern programming languages, such as polymorphism, type hierarchy, and exception handling. During a question and answer session, Liskov said the secret to her success was not working that many hours a day, going home at night, and not working in the evening. "I always found that downtime to be really useful," she said. Liskov also stressed the importance of working on interesting research, instead of research that is most likely to get published.China Plans for Humanoid Olympics BBC News (11/06/09) China has announced plans to hold a robot Olympics in 2010, in which humanoid robots will compete in 16 different events ranging from athletics to machine-related tasks such as cleaning. The organizers expect more than 100 universities from around the world to participate in the competition, which they believe will drive innovation and lead to the development of robots that are more flexible and helpful. The event will take place at the Harbin Institute of Technology, home of a robot research group that has built a successful team of soccer-playing humanoids. However, a specific date for the robot Olympics has not been set. China faces a crowded calendar for robot sports and other competitive events. The 2010 RoboGames are scheduled for April in California, and there is an annual competition for robots that can mix cocktails, light cigarettes, and chat with bar patrons called Roboexotica. The world cup for robots, which drew entries from 400 teams in 35 nations last year, will take place June 2010 in Singapore, and the Federation of International Robot-Soccer Associations runs a similar event.Rutgers Computer Scientists Work to Strengthen Online Security Rutgers University (11/09/09) Blesch, Carl Rutgers University computer scientists are developing an alternative to online security questions that is designed to be easier for legitimate users and more secure. "We call them activity-based personal questions," says Rutgers professor Danfeng Yao. "Sites could ask you, 'When was the last time you sent an email?' Or, 'What did you do yesterday at noon?' " Initial studies suggest that questions about recent activities are easy for legitimate users to answer but harder for attackers to guess or learn. "We want the question to be dynamic," Yao says. "The questions you get today will be different from the ones you would get tomorrow." Initial results from the system will be presented at ACM's Conference on Computer and Communications Security, which takes place Nov. 9-13 in Chicago, Ill. Rutgers researchers found that questions related to time were more robust than other questions. Yao says online service providers can create security questions using data from a user's email, calendar, or transactions, though computers would need to use natural language processing tools to synthesize understandable questions and analyze answers for accuracy. Yao has proposed additional studies to determine the practicality of the new approach and how it could best be implemented.NASA Showcases 'Green' Missions at SC09 Conference SpaceRef.com (11/04/09) Milestones by five NASA research centers in the fields of science, engineering, and technology will be showcased at the ACM-sponsored SC09 supercomputing conference, which takes place Nov. 14-20, in Portland, Oregon. More than 45 demonstrations will be exhibited, including how NASA is tapping supercomputing resources to better model and comprehend how regional weather events are shaped by global forces. To accommodate the growing need for computational power and Earth science research, the high-end computing systems at the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division and the NASA Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS) have recently been enhanced. NAS added 9,216 cores to its Pleiades supercomputing cluster, while NCCS expanded its Discover system with another 8,192 cores. "Discover's faster processors enable more accurate and timely projections of changes in the Earth's environment," says NCCS project manager Phil Webster. "In support of climate science, Discover has been used to complete a re-analysis of 30 years of satellite observing system data to reconstruct a more accurate picture of the Earth's climate and weather--NASA's most ambitious re-analysis to date." NAS' Rupak Biswas says the simulations generated on the supercomputers, when coupled with satellite observations and experimental data, support NASA's science, aeronautics, exploration, and space operations missions. The environment and sustainability are the themes of SC09, and NASA's Greenspace Initiative supports environmental efforts in the fields of aviation, global prediction monitoring and response, clean energy, and sustainable systems.University of Basque Country Research Proposes Improvements for Electronic Voting by Internet Basque Research (11/09/09) Bulegoa, Prentsa The democratic process can be augmented by information and communications technologies that increase public engagement, says University of Basque Country researcher Maider Huarte Arrayago, who did her doctoral work on systems for electronic voting via the Internet. Arrayago's study of online electronic voting systems revealed that such systems fulfill the requirements of equality and secrecy very well, while universal suffrage and liberty are not as well represented. To comply with the requirements of liberty, Arrayago proposed the enhancement of the voting system's reliability and flexibility. Facilitating universal suffrage, meanwhile, would involve both defining a human-machine interface that accounts for the heterogeneity of the voters' capacities and boosting the mobility of electors without impairing communication protocols. Arrayago's proposed system improves reliability by only maintaining the secrecy of the passwords to be used in the protocols, which reinforces robustness, transparency, and the lodging of complaints in private. To promote more flexibility, Arrayago defined systems and protocols that do not impact the digital paper-vote format and the count methodology, while permitting the reader to interrupt the vote-casting process at any time and start over. To achieve compliance with the universal suffrage precept, Arrayago suggested the augmentation of both existing and future interfaces. She concluded that the cryptographic methods used to satisfy the equality and secrecy requirements restricted certain characteristics of the liberty principle, while existing security techniques and tools or their use are insufficient if the software is not properly crafted.The Green500 Expands its Coverage of Energy-Efficient Supercomputers Virginia Tech News (11/02/09) MacKay, Steven The Green500 list, Virginia Tech's ranking of the 500 fastest supercomputers according to their energy efficiency, is expanding the definition of a supercomputer to include a wider range of high-end computing, which will be ranked on the Little Green500 list. Virginia Tech also is exploring energy efficiency in more innovative computing with the Open Green500 and the HPCC Green500 lists. The primary TOP Green500 list will continue to rank the world's fastest supercomputers to counter the trend of achieving computing performance at any cost. "While institutions may require more and more supercomputing resources each year, we cannot afford to continue building new power stations to support such resources," says Green500 co-founder and Virginia Tech professor Wu Feng. "We need to be more efficient at all scales of supercomputing." The Little Green500 list will expand the definition of a supercomputer to include any machine used for commodity supercomputing that could have been on the Top500 list within the past 18 months. The Open Green500 list will allow supercomputers to use a combination of single-precision and double-precision to generate a correct double-precision result for LINPACK, which Feng hopes will stimulate innovation. The HPCC Green500 list will use the High Performance Computing Challenge benchmark for its performance results.Web Security Tool Copies Apps' Moves Technology Review (11/09/09) Mims, Christopher Microsoft researchers have developed Ripley, a way to secure Web applications by cloning the user's browser and running the application remotely. Ripley, announced at ACM's Computer and Communications Security Conference, which takes place Nov. 9-13 in Chicago, prevents a remote hacker or malicious user from changing the behavior of code running inside a Web browser by creating an exact copy of the computational environment and running that copy on the server. Ripley also relays all of the user's actions, including mouse clicks, keystrokes, and other inputs, from the client to the server as a compressed event stream. The behavior of the clone code is compared to the behavior of the application running on the user's browser. If any discrepancies occur, Ripley disconnects the client. "You cannot trust anything that happens in the client," says Ripley lead developer Ben Livshits. "It's basically the devil in the browser from the developer's point of view." Livshits says Ripley is completely invisible to the end user and will not affect the normal function of a Web application. Ripley can even enhance the performance of Web applications, because the clone program is written in .Net, which is 10 to 100 times faster than the JavaScript used on the client side. University of California, Berkeley researcher Adam Barth says Ripley is part of a larger trend to protect the integrity of client-side programs. "The work suggests that security would benefit if we validated more than we're validating today," Barth says.Social Tags Complement the Learning Resource Metadata, a Finnish Researcher Finds Out Open University of the Netherlands (11/05/09) Social tagging can help people find educational resources in digital repositories that are filled with millions of learning materials, says Open University of the Netherlands PhD candidate Riina Vuorikari. She says that adding free, non-hierarchical keywords to the digital learning materials would bring self organization, flexibility, and robustness to learning resources portals. The user, item, and tag allow for more cross references between content from heterogeneous repositories, which can enable users to discover more learning resources across language, country, curriculum, repository, and other contexts. Moreover, future applications for learning resources should make better use of social recommendation systems that work in multiple languages, which is especially relevant to Europe, Vuorikari says.Theme-Park Dummy Trick Becomes Teleconference Tool New Scientist (11/02/09) Simonite, Tom A trick used in theme-park animatronics could help people act more naturally during videoconferences. Shader lamps is a technique that projects an animated face that looks three dimensional (3D) onto a blank dummy face, and the trick could be used to project a person's face onto an animatronic double at a meeting. Before the dummy's blank face can be animated, the real person must have still photographs taken from the front and side to create a 3D model of their head, which allows the output from a single camera to be distorted to make the image look correct when projected onto the dummy. The user wears a headband to track head movements that can be matched by the dummy, and the person can see the dummy's surroundings using a panoramic camera in the dummy's head. University of North Carolina computer scientist Greg Welch says the shader lamps system has several advantages over conventional videoconferencing. "In existing [two-dimensional] videoconferencing systems, the remote person is kind of a second-class citizen: they're in this box sitting in one place, they look different," Welch says. The camera position on conventional videoconferencing also can make it difficult for viewers to determine where an on-screen person is looking. Future versions of the system may use multiple projectors to portray the sides of the users face. Making the system more mobile could allow doctors to visit patients who are unable to leave their house or in remote locations.Metagenomics and the Computing Challenges of Microbial Communities Computing Community Consortium (11/06/09) Feiereisen, Bill; Libeskind-Hadas, Ran New technologies are enabling researchers to sequence samples of microorganisms taken from their environment, but the relatively new field of metagenomics still has to deal with considerable science and computing challenges. Understanding large microbial communities is likely to improve human health, and researchers now have complete DNA sequences of thousands of organisms in databases. However, a single gram of soil can have about 1 trillion base pairs of DNA, which makes analyzing the gene sequencing data a challenge. Metagenomics researchers will need programs that are capable of asking the right biological questions, and current high-performance computers still cannot handle the enormous amount of data. The design of new algorithms and cloud-computing technologies are needed. According to the National Academies of Science publication "The New Science of Metagenomics: Revealing the Secrets of Our Microbial Planet," there should be significant technical, computational, and biological development, as well as specific applications, during the next 20 years.What Happens When Good Robots Go 'Bad'? MSNBC (11/05/09) Mapes, Diane A study by University of Washington researchers led by doctoral student Tamara Denning calls attention to the possibility of household robots being hacked by malevolent parties and reprogrammed for nefarious purposes. Such purposes could include psychological attacks, spying, and vandalism. Denning and colleagues examined three commercially available household robots, and discovered that all three had the potential of being hijacked. "The main concern was in terms of threats to the owners' privacy, such as spying and eavesdropping," Denning notes. "Someone could log into the robot remotely and then they could drive the robot around the home and look and listen." The researchers also determined that remotely controlled robots could be used to damage or destroy fragile objects, or cause psychological distress by placing objects on the floor in such a manner as to communicate a threat or an insult, to name one example. Robotics developer Emilie Kopp says it is more likely that hackers would compromise household robots out of a desire for bragging rights rather than out of criminal intent. "It's very similar to computer security, the way that users of desktop computers have to worry about spam and malware," Denning says. "One possible trajectory is that people will have to think about security with their home robots, as well."

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• 10 Nov 2009 00:12

  Welcome to the November 9, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. ACM Names 84 Distinguished Members for Advances in Computing Technology Researchers Develop a Facial Biometrics System Capable of Creating a Facial DNI Validity of Software Patents Goes on Trial Today at Supreme Court Video Fingerprinting Offers Search Solution Triple Shadows and Fake Reflections: Future Graphics Splitting Up Search Labour Shortage in IT Industry Despite Recession Queen's Research Could Protect Front Line Troops Unlimited Compute Capacity Coming, IBM Says Michigan State Collaboration Spawns Robotic Fish to Monitor Water Quality Computer Science Provides a More Sound Way to Test for Sleep Apnea Is AES Encryption Crackable? ACM Names 84 Distinguished Members for Advances in Computing Technology ACM (11/09/09) ACM has recognized 84 members as 2009 Distinguished Members. The number of honorees has more than doubled from a year ago, and ACM says the increase is a reflection of the growth of its membership and its initiatives around the world. About one third of the designees come from Europe, Asia, Russia, Australia, South America, and other areas outside of North America. "As an international society, ACM is pleased to recognize the growing number of nominees from countries across the globe who have met the stringent criteria required for the Distinguished Member grade," says ACM President Dame Wendy Hall. "These prominent men and women have demonstrated creativity, leadership, and dedication to computing and computer science." The Distinguished Members Program was created to recognize computer scientists, engineers, and educators who have made computing contributions that have sparked innovation. Thirty-six recipients come from international high-technology companies and have made achievements in areas such as data mining, systems engineering, memory and storage systems, processor designs, artificial intelligence, and mobile services platforms. Forty-eight recipients come from academia and have made achievements in areas such as programming languages, design automation, neural network techniques, grid computing, and natural language programming.Researchers Develop a Facial Biometrics System Capable of Creating a Facial DNI Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain) (11/04/09) Researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) have developed a facial biometrics system based on individual models. UC3M study author David Delgado Gomez says the objective is to create a model for each person that highlights the most distinguishing features on each face. Delgado says one way to describe a person is through traits that other people do not have, and their new system aims to apply that approach to an algorithm. The researchers say the most complicated part is combining facial geometry and facial texture. "With only the geometric information, very low classifications are obtained, which is why we combine this information with that of facial texture to obtain a more robust model, and a statistical way of combining them occurred to us, which offered very good results," Delgado says. The researchers have shown that when their system is used in a controlled environment it can achieve 95 percent accuracy. The biggest challenge to facial-recognition systems is lighting, which can change the color of a person's face. Aging also is a challenge as people's faces can become heavier, thinner, or more wrinkled.Validity of Software Patents Goes on Trial Today at Supreme Court USA Today (11/09/09) P. 7B; Tessler, Joelle The U.S. Supreme Court will consider what types of inventions should be eligible for a patent as part of a case that could undermine legal protections for software. The question facing the Supreme Court is whether the "machine or transformation" test the Patent Office uses to determine if an application is patentable is the right standard. The Patent Office denied a patent request for a method of hedging weather-related risk in energy prices that can lock in prices during unusually cold weather. The patent applicants appealed the decision. A ruling in favor of the U.S. Patent Office could restrict patents on business methods and processes, such as online shopping techniques, medical diagnostic tests, and procedures for executing trades on Wall Street. Analysts say the worst-case scenario for the technology industry would be if the ruling invalidated many existing software patents, or made them more difficult to defend in lawsuits. "Technology companies care about this case, because it will define what you can and cannot get a patent on," says the Business Software Alliance's Emery Simon. James Carmichael, a former judge on the Patent Office board of appeals, says the software industry would lose a major incentive for innovation if the government stops issuing software patents. An unfavorable outcome could force companies to apply for patents using new strategies or rely more on copyright and trade secret protections.Video Fingerprinting Offers Search Solution ICT Results (11/09/09) The European Union-funded DIVAS project has developed a new way of sorting and searching audiovisual content. DIVAS project researchers set out to develop a way of quickly indexing and searching compressed video files regardless of their compression format or where they are stored, says DIVAS project manager Nick Achilleopoulos. DIVAS researchers developed two software engines. One creates fingerprints from compressed audio and video. The other uses these fingerprints to execute content-based searches. "The fingerprint extraction software defines audio and video features much as a human viewer perceives audiovisual elements," Achilleopoulos says. "It builds the fingerprint based on visual features, such as scene changes, the way the camera cuts and moves, the brightness level, and the movement of people and objects." The fingerprints are stored in the XML format in combination with the MPEG 7 multimedia content description standard, creating a searchable and accessible video index. The researchers say the technology could be used by media companies and Internet search providers looking for faster methods of indexing and searching videos, as well as by production companies looking to track down pirated versions of copyrighted works.Triple Shadows and Fake Reflections: Future Graphics New Scientist (11/06/09) At the second annual ACM SIGGRAPH Asia conference, which takes place December 16-19 in Yokohama, Japan, computer graphics professionals and researchers will demonstrate the most recent developments in graphics. For example, Seoul National University researchers will use high-speed, high-resolution photography to reveal how water breaks into sheets and droplets as it splashes over an object. The researchers built a computer model that focuses on the interface between air and water, allowing it to simulate the complex dynamics of the interface. A team from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has developed a new take on shadow art, which presents users with a seemingly random assortment of objects that, when lit in a certain way, creates a recognizable two-dimensional (2D) shadow. The 2D shadow art uses a computer model to calculate the object shape needed to cast up to three distinct shadows simultaneously. Researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Informatics say they have developed a program that makes creating reflections far easier than existing methods. Current models produce reflections by tracing the path that virtual light rays take through a model's three-dimensional space. The Max Planck program enables users to manipulate those rays so the desired effect is created. Meanwhile, researchers at China's Tsinghua University have developed a photo-editing program that requires users to just roughly sketch and describe images they want to combine and the system then searches through online photo libraries to find, isolate, and reproduce the desired images in a new combined image.Splitting Up Search Technology Review (11/06/09) Graham-Rowe, Duncan Researchers at Yahoo!'s Labs in Barcelona, Spain, have developed a distributed search approach that spreads the search index and additional data out over a larger number of smaller data centers instead of a centralized model. The smaller data centers would contain locally relevant information and a small portion of globally replicated data. Most search queries common to a particular area could be answered using information stored in the local data center, while other, more generic queries could be forwarded to other data centers. The concept of distributed search engines is not new, but until recently such a system was considered too expensive and too slow or that searches would return results that favor locally stored information. To create a viable distributed system, Yahoo!'s Ricardo Baeza-Yates and colleagues designed their system so statistical information on page rankings could be shared between different data centers, which allows each data center to run an algorithm comparing its results with the results from other data centers, ensuring the best result is returned to the user. Duke University professor Bruce Maggs calls it a valid approach and notes that it "also saves considerably on everything else in the same proportion, such as capital costs and real estate." The results of a feasibility study on the researchers' distributed search approach were presented at ACM's recent Conference on Information and Knowledge Management in Hong Kong.Labour Shortage in IT Industry Despite Recession Otago Daily Times (New Zealand) (11/05/09) Lewis, John A new survey by New Zealand's Ministry of Economic Development found a significant shortage of skilled labor in the information technology (IT) industry, despite the recession and resulting job losses. The situation has prompted the University of Otago to increase its incoming information science students by up to 100 percent over the next two years. New Zealand's Information and Communications Technology chief Brett O'Riley says 83 percent of the companies surveyed had difficulties recruiting qualified staff, and those difficulties were having a significant impact on their business. The survey also found that companies were expecting to experience continued growth in staff levels during the coming months, and more than 50 percent of companies surveyed were planning to appoint technical staff. O'Riley says the survey demonstrates there will be continued employment opportunities in a variety of highly paid roles, including programming, project management, and network and systems engineering, in the IT and telecommunications industries. University of Otago professor Martin Purvis says about 80 IT and computer science students graduate from the university each year, and most, if not all, receive multiple job offers. The university is working to encourage secondary school pupils to study information technology at a higher level. O'Riley says that information and communications technology "education and skills are a global employment passport."Queen's Research Could Protect Front Line Troops Queen's University Belfast (11/04/09) McElroy, Lisa Researchers at Queen's University Belfast's Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) are developing advanced communication systems that could help protect soldiers on the front lines. The researchers are exploring the use of highly specialized antennas that would be worn by combat troops to provide covert, short range, person-to-person battleground communications. The project could result in advanced wireless systems that allow small squads of soldiers to share real-time video, covert surveillance data, and tactical information with each other through helmet-mounted visors. "Through our work we aim to overcome some formidable challenges as the proposed wireless devices will be expected to operate in a range of environments much more exacting than those encountered in civilian life," says CSIT lead researcher Simon Cotton. "Our job is to help make them a reality by modeling how the devices would work in real life, how the signals would be transmitted to and from the body of each user, and what types of antennas would be required to allow them to function properly." The researchers plan to model specific combat scenarios using state-of-the-art animation normally used to create video games. Cotton says the research also could lead to new technologies for emergency services and the sports and entertainment industries.Unlimited Compute Capacity Coming, IBM Says Computerworld Canada (11/03/09) Ruffolo, Rafael IBM Canada Lab director Martin Wildberger predicts that unlimited computing capacity will become a reality in the near future, putting the power of modern mainframes in devices such as smartphones. Wildberger, speaking at the recent IBM-sponsored Center for Advanced Studies Conference in Toronto, said the world is becoming increasingly digitized, and sensors and radio-frequency identification technologies are becoming more "abundant, pervasive, and ubiquitous." Simultaneously, the world is becoming more interconnected through mobile phones and increasing online access, which has raised the awareness and expectations of consumers and forced businesses to react faster. These trends have made an unlimited amount of data available to businesses, and the ability to use that data has become an important challenge. Wildberger noted, for example, that automotive companies are looking at driving pattern information to develop a real-time system capable of detecting if a driver is falling asleep. Despite such possibilities, Wildberger said that IBM data shows that 85 percent of computing capacity is idle, and 70 cents of every dollar spent on information technology goes toward maintaining systems instead of taking advantage of new data. He said the companies that invest in becoming smarter and successfully capitalizing on the data created in a world with unlimited computing capacity will be the most successful.Michigan State Collaboration Spawns Robotic Fish to Monitor Water Quality MSU News (11/02/09) Fellows, Mark Michigan State University professors Xiaobo Tan and Elena Litchman are developing robots that swim like fish to explore underwater environments. "Fish are very efficient," Tan says. "They can perform very efficient locomotion and maneuvering in the water." Robotic fish could be used to collect precise data on aquatic conditions. "The robotic fish will be providing a consistent level of data that hasn't been possible before," Litchman says. "Such data are essential for researchers to have a more complete picture of what is happening under the surface as climate change and other outside forces disrupt the freshwater ecosystems." The robotic fish will contain sensors to monitor temperature, dissolved oxygen, pollutants, and algae. Tan is also developing electronics so the devices can navigate and communicate underwater. To mimic how fish swim, Tan developed fins for the robotic fish that use electro-active polymers that change shape when exposed to electricity. Similar to actual muscle tissue, ion movements twist and bend when voltage is applied to the polymer. The effect also works in reverse, which would allow for slender "feelers" to signal maneuvering circuits, creating an electro-active central nervous system. The robotic fish will wirelessly communicate with a docking station after surfacing at programmed intervals, and could be linked with other robotic fish for coordinating maneuvers or a single relay.Computer Science Provides a More Sound Way to Test for Sleep Apnea National Science Foundation (11/02/09) Cruikshank, Dana W. University of Houston computer scientist Ioannis Pavlidis and University of Texas Health Science Center physician Jayasimha N. Murthy are developing a less invasive method of diagnosing sleep apnea. Diagnosing sleep apnea usually requires a sleep study, which involves at least one night of overnight monitoring in a sleep lab. "During a sleep study a subject has an average of more than 20 sensors attached to the head and body. It's a very complex procedure where many physiological parameters are simultaneously monitored to help in the diagnosis of sleep disorders," Murthy says. "However, these sensors can disturb sleep and contribute to the patient's anxiety." The researchers have developed a new procedure that uses a thermal infrared camera to monitor breathing waveforms and airflow as subjects breathe in and out of their noses. The measurements are processed using computational algorithms to provide results that have proven to be as accurate as traditional methods. The researchers say their method provides doctors with more information about a patient's breathing. "In contrast to the traditional one-dimensional methods, this new method is an imaging one and thus, multi-dimensional," Pavlidis says. "We get not a single, but multiple values for each nostril at every point in time and this makes a lot of difference when it comes to appreciating subtle pathology."Is AES Encryption Crackable? TechNewsWorld (11/03/09) Germain, Jack M. The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) system was long believed to be invulnerable to attack, but a group of researchers recently demonstrated that there may be an inherent flaw in AES, at least theoretically. The study was conducted by the University of Luxembourg's Alex Biryukov and Dmitry Khovratovich, France's Orr Dunkelman, Hebrew University's Nathan Keller, and the Weizmann Institute's Adi Shamir. In their report, "Key Recovery Attacks of Practical Complexity on AES Variants With Up to 10 Rounds," the researchers challenged the structural integrity of the AES protocol. The researchers suggest that AES may not be invulnerable and raise the question of how far is AES from becoming insecure. "The findings discussed in [in the report] are academic in nature and do not threaten the security of systems today," says AppRiver's Fred Touchette. "But because most people depend on the encryption standard to keep sensitive information secure, the findings are nonetheless significant." AirPatrol CEO Ozzie Diaz believes that wireless systems will be the most vulnerable because many investments in network media are wireless, and there is no physical barrier to entry. Diaz says that exposing the vulnerability of the AES system could lead to innovations for filling those gaps. Touchette says that AES cryptography is not broken, and notes that the latest attack techniques on AES-192 and AES-256 are impractical outside of a theoretical setting.

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• 07 Nov 2009 05:35

  Welcome to the November 6, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Online Collaboration With Built-In Clarity Secretary Clinton Announces New Initiatives to Bolster Science and Technology Collaboration With Muslim Communities Around the World US and Australia Dominate MAGIC Robot Competition Short List Dartmouth Professor Finds That Iconic Oswald Photo Was Not Faked Applause for the SmartHand ACM Announces Initiative for Long-Term Preservation of Content in Its Digital Library MU Research Leads to Improved Human, Object Detection Technology A New System Preserves the Right to Privacy in Internet Searches Innovation Spending Looks Recession-Resistant Tim Berners-Lee: Machine-Readable Web Still a Ways Off Futurists' Report Acknowledges Dangers of Smart Robots $1.2M Project Speeds Research Data Processing UM Students to Experiment With Future Ford Sync System Applications Online Collaboration With Built-In Clarity ICT Results (11/06/09) The European ECOSPACE project has developed a standardized architecture for online group collaboration. The project's researchers analyzed collaboration applications from various companies to identify the most common and essential aspects of the programs. The researchers then used their findings to develop a standardized architecture with software building blocks, or basic collaboration services, which would allow the collaboration applications to interoperate. The architecture uses a semantic ontology to define and correlate the concepts and terms used by the applications. Prototypes of the system allow users of common collaboration tools to all work on the same documents and projects. The ECOSPACE project also developed several tools to eliminate other barriers to online collaboration, including understanding who is available for collaboration, what their job is, and how they are progressing. One development is an expectation awareness tool that automatically tracks users' expectations, and can help keep users aware of upcoming deadlines or notify them when a deadline has been missed. The tool makes goals and expectations explicit. Meanwhile, ECOSPACE's collaboration mining tool oversees a project's progression by keeping track of who is making changes or is involved in an online project, information that is normally not visible.Secretary Clinton Announces New Initiatives to Bolster Science and Technology Collaboration With Muslim Communities Around the World National Science Foundation (11/04/09) Zacharias, Maria C. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced new initiatives aimed at promoting science and technology collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. Clinton named Bruce Alberts, Elias Zerhouni, and Ahmed Zewail as the first three U.S. Science and Technology Envoys. Clinton also announced that the State Department will expand positions for environment, science, technology, and health officers at U.S. embassies. "We want to help Muslim majority communities develop the capacity to meet economic, social, and ecological challenges through science, technology, and innovation," Clinton says. The U.S. Science Envoy program is part of President Obama's New Beginning initiative with Muslim communities. At a speech in Cairo, Egypt, Obama pledged that the United States would "appoint new science envoys to collaborate on programs that develop new sources of energy, create green jobs, digitize records, clean water, and grow new crops." Over the next few months, the science envoys will visit countries in North Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia to form partnerships in all areas of science and technology. The envoys will be supported by new embassy officers who will engage international partners on a range of environmental, scientific, and health issues.US and Australia Dominate MAGIC Robot Competition Short List Computerworld Australia (11/06/09) Clarke, Trevor The organizers of the Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) have created a list of 12 teams to develop their proposals. Ten teams will receive $50,000, and the remaining two teams have the opportunity to self-fund their projects. The U.S. Department of Defense and Australia's Defense Science & Technology Organization are sponsoring MAGIC to encourage innovation in robotics, including next-generation military robots. "The quality of the submissions was very strong and exceeded our expectations," says Greg Combet, Australia's Minister for Defense Personnel, Material, and Science. The competition received 23 entries, and the final list included five teams from the United States, four from Australia, and one each from Canada, Japan, and Turkey. The list will be reduced in June 2010 to five teams, which will receive another $50,000 to complete their projects for a Grand Challenge Event that will take place in Australia in November 2010. Most of the teams are partnerships between universities and companies.Dartmouth Professor Finds That Iconic Oswald Photo Was Not Faked Dartmouth News (11/05/09) Knapp, Susan Dartmouth College computer scientist Hany Farid says the iconic photograph of Lee Harvey Oswald holding a rifle and Marxist newspapers is not a fake and was almost certainly not altered. Oswald and others claimed the photograph was a forgery due to seemingly inconsistent lighting and shadows. Farid and his team have developed digital forensic tools to determine if digital photos have been manipulated. The tools can measure statistical inconsistencies in the underlying image pixels, improbable lighting and shadow, physically impossible perspective distortion, and other changes made by photo manipulation. "The human brain, while remarkable in many aspects, also has its weaknesses," Farid says. "The visual system can be quite inept at making judgments regarding 3D geometry, lighting, and shadows." The lighting and shadows in the Oswald photo appear to be incongruous with outdoor lighting. To test this possibility, Farid created a three-dimensional model of Oswald's head and portions of the backyard scene, which he used to determine that a single light source--the sun--could explain all of the shadows in the photo. "It is highly improbable that anyone could have created such a perfect forgery with the technology available in 1963," Farid says. "As our digital forensic tools become more sophisticated, we increasingly have the ability to apply them to historic photos in an attempt to resolve some long-standing mysteries."Applause for the SmartHand American Friends of Tel Aviv University (11/04/09) Tel Aviv University (TAU) researchers and European scientists have succeeded in wiring an artificial hand to the existing nerve endings in the stump of a person with a severed arm. The bionic hand, called the SmartHand, resembles a real hand in function, sensitivity, and appearance. It features four electric motors and 40 sensors to replicate the movement of a human hand and provide a sensation of feeling and touch. The project's first human subject has been able to perform complicated tasks such as eating and writing, and says he has been able to "feel" his fingers once again. TAU researchers developed the interface between the body's nerves and the device's electronics. "Perfectly good nerve endings remain at the stem of a severed limb," says TAU professor Yosi Shacham-Diamand. "Our team is building the interface between the device and the nerves in the arm, connecting cognitive neuroscience with state-of-the-art information technologies." He says the challenge was to make an electrode that was not only flexible but that could be implanted in the human body and function properly for at least 20 years. After only a few training sessions, the human subject is operating the artificial hand as if it was his own, Shacham-Diamand says. The researchers say the same technology could be used to build a bionic leg. They say the SmartHand prototype currently looks very "bionic," but future versions could have artificial skin that will look human and provide the brain with even more tactile feedback.ACM Announces Initiative for Long-Term Preservation of Content in Its Digital Library ACM (11/05/09) ACM announced that it is providing institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to help preserve their electronic resources. The services, which will be provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address the scholarly community's need for long-term solutions for reliable, secure, and deliverable access to their growing collections of digital content. ACM is providing these services to protect the online collection of resources in its Digital Library, which is used by more than 1 million computing professionals and students around the world. "By partnering with Portico and CLOCKSS, we are able to meet a growing demand in the library community for a trusted, reliable third-party archive, and to ensure that digital collections remain accessible to future scholars, researchers, and students," says ACM Group Publisher Scott Delman. "Scientific discovery and the educational process are not possible without reliable access to the accumulated scholarship of the past and secure preservation of the scholarly record, and these agreements are a clear step forward with the relationship between the ACM and the library community." ACM hopes that the long-term digital preservation of content will make it easier for libraries to free up resources invested in print collections in favor of innovative electronic products and services. Portico preserves material through migration, which involves transitioning content from one file format to another as technology advances and file formats become obsolete. CLOCKSS uses Archive Nodes, which are stored at libraries chosen to be the custodians of the archived materials, and are located throughout North America, Europe, and Asia.MU Research Leads to Improved Human, Object Detection Technology MU News Bureau (MO) (11/02/09) Jackson, Kelsey University of Missouri researchers are developing software that would enable computers to search within videos and identify humans and specific objects, as well as perform other video analysis tasks. "The goal of our research is to improve how computers interpret the content of a video and how to identify it," says Missouri professor Tony Han. "There are lots of possibilities with video-based detection, and it could come at quite a low cost compared to object and human detection using other sensors, such as thermal sensors." Intelligent video surveillance would enable automated systems to quickly call for help if it detects that a human is falling, or make a car stop immediately if it detects a pedestrian in its way, for example. Han and his students are developing algorithms for automatic object detection, and have manually labeled more than 3,000 images with object locations to test their algorithms. This fall, Han and his students participated in the PASCAL grand challenge in object detection, a contest in which researchers compete to detect objects in 20 categories. Han and his team came in first place for detecting potted plants and chairs and second place for detecting humans, cars, horses, and bikes.A New System Preserves the Right to Privacy in Internet Searches Plataforma SINC (11/05/09) Researchers from Rovira i Virgili University, Autonoma of Barcelona, and Oberta of Catalonia have developed a system that protects the privacy of Internet search engine users through a new computer protocol. "It is a model based on cryptographic tools, which distort the profile of users when they use search engines on Internet in such a way that their privacy is preserved," says Rovira i Virgili University's Alexandre Viego. The researchers note that there are systems that provide anonymous navigation, but say their system provides a significant improvement in response time over anonymous systems, though it still delays searches slightly. The new protocol has already been tested in both closed research center intranets and on the Internet, and the results have made the researchers optimistic about a global implementation model. The researchers are currently working on the development of a final user version, and believe that it will soon be easy to integrate the system into the major platforms and browsers.Innovation Spending Looks Recession-Resistant New York Times (10/30/09) Lohr, Steve Corporate research and development (R&D) spending and patent activity have held up surprisingly well during the recession, according to a new Booz & Company survey of the 1,000 largest R&D spenders. The survey found that R&D budgets rose 5.7 percent during the recession in 2008, compared with a 10 percent increase in 2007. "The thing that surprised us was that R&D spending didn't actually drop," says Booz partner Barry Jaruzelski. "But innovation is a fundamental strategy for these companies to hold onto their markets and gain an edge on their competitors." The survey indicates that 70 percent plan to maintain or increase their R&D spending in 2009. Spending varied by industry, with 90 percent of the top-spending auto companies cutting back, while 80 percent of the top-spending software and Internet companies increased their spending. Booz also found that innovation activity tends to be resilient in economic downturns, noting that patent applications increased 25 percent during the Depression years of 1929 through 1932. Patent applications rose to 505,596 in 2008, and about 520,000 are expected to be filed this year. Many of the applications involve alternative energy, energy conservation, nanotechnology, and smartphone hardware and software.Tim Berners-Lee: Machine-Readable Web Still a Ways Off Government Computer News (10/30/09) Jackson, Joab World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the machine-readable Web is still a ways off and faces numerous obstacles. He says recent initiatives such as the U.S. government's Data.gov, specifically its spreadsheets and application programming interfaces, do not do enough to improve the reusability of data. There also are not enough commercial products available to easily transition Web sites to the Semantic Web. Berners-Lee says data published online should be put in the Resource Description Framework (RDF). However, he says few Web site managers are trained in RDF, and few Web development applications use the standard, so semantic Web enthusiasts need to reach out to the rest of the world to encourage its adoption. The use of RDF should not require building new systems, or changing how site administrators operate, according to Berners-Lee. Instead, scripts can be written in Python, Perl, or other languages to convert data in spreadsheets or relational databases into RDF for end users. Berners-Lee says the Semantic Web's complexity is partially responsible for its slow uptake, and he notes that supporting RDF "is still remarkably difficult as a paradigm shift."Futurists' Report Acknowledges Dangers of Smart Robots Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (PA) (11/02/09) Cronin, Mike A forthcoming report from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) will explore whether robots could eventually become so intelligent that they pose a threat to society. Although some researchers are concerned about the legal and ethical use of artificial intelligence, most computer scientists do not believe the radical view that robots could come to dominate the future, says Microsoft researcher Eric Horvitz, who united the group to write the report. However, some researchers believe intelligent machines could threaten humanity, while others are concerned about what people may do with computers based on artificial intelligence. Horvitz says there is still plenty of time to address these concerns as the technology advances. The report marks the first time that AAAI scientists have come together to discuss artificial intelligence's potential positive and negative impacts on society, Horvitz says. Carnegie Mellon University professor Tom Mitchell says the real danger is the prospect of computer viruses becoming intelligent. Mitchell says an intelligent virus with speech-recognition abilities could be hidden in someone's electronic device and eavesdrop on conversations. Toyota Technical Institute at Chicago professor David McAllester believes it is inevitable that fully automated intelligent machines will be able to design and build smarter, better versions of themselves, an event known as the Singularity. The Singularity would enable machines to become infinitely intelligent, and would pose an "incredibly dangerous scenario," he says. The report also focuses on ethical and legal issues that are likely to arise as robots become more ingrained in society.$1.2M Project Speeds Research Data Processing University of Western Ontario (10/29/09) Mayne, Paul Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network has provided $1.2 million to researchers at the University of Western Ontario to develop a new high-speed network for handling huge amounts of research data from synchrotrons in Canada and the United States. When completed, Active Network for Information for Synchrotron Experiments (ANISE) will be capable of processing and providing feedback on data moving at rates of up to 10 terabytes per day. Synchrotrons have largely been used to gather and store data until now, says Mike Bauer, director of Western's Shared Hierarchical Academic Research Computing Network (SHARCNET). ANISE will allow for near real-time processing and enable users of synchrotrons to respond to experimental data within minutes. The project promises to improve the efficiency of labs, as their industrial and academic partners around the world would no longer have to wait days to analyze data. Researchers from SHARCNET will work with Canadian Light Source, IBM Canada, and IBM Research on the project.UM Students to Experiment With Future Ford Sync System Applications Crain's Detroit Business (10/29/09) Walsh, Dustin Ford Motor is giving University of Michigan (UM) electrical engineering and computer science students an opportunity to create software for future generations of its Sync system. Ford has partnered with the university's College of Engineering to launch "American Journey 2.0," a research project in which students will develop, beta test, and program open source applications for their in-car connectivity concept. The Sync system makes use of technologies such as data-over-voice, global positioning systems, and a text-to-speech engine, and Ford now wants to take advantage of social networking capabilities and other Web 2.0 functions. The students are likely to develop applications that will track driving habits and offer gas mileage tips, as well as social networking applications. "Research like this pushes the envelope of current technology and helps us identify and solve the next set of challenges in the evolving arena of vehicle connectivity," says UM professor Jason Flinn. "What excites me about this project is that it gives our students the opportunity to unleash their creativity using cutting-edge technologies that connect the vehicle and the 'cloud.' " The winning application will be installed in a Ford Fiesta, and the team will take it to the 2010 Maker Faire convention.

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• 04 Nov 2009 23:16

  Welcome to the November 4, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Amir Pnueli, Distinguished Computer Scientist and Researcher, Dies Social Networking Meets Ambient Intelligence Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine? NC State Research Shows Way to Block Stealthy Malware Attacks Robots Primed for 'Are You Being Served' Role in Arabic Anita Borg Institute, CSTA and the University of Arizona Hold K12 Computing Teachers Workshop First Test for Election Cryptography Animated Ink-Blot Images Keep Unwanted Bots at Bay HTML 5 Progresses Despite Challenges AI Spacesuits Turn Astronauts Into Cyborg Biologists New Keys for the Diffusion of Information in Social Networks New Honeypot Mimics the Web Vulnerabilities Attackers Want to Exploit Taking a Touching Approach to Transport Ticketing and Home Care for the Elderly Will Smart Grid power IPv6? Endowment Fund to Support ICT Research Amir Pnueli, Distinguished Computer Scientist and Researcher, Dies ACM (11/04/98) New York University computer science professor and ACM A.M. Turing Award winner Amir Pnueli passed away suddenly on Nov. 2. He received international recognition as a pioneer in verification, the process of formally demonstrating that systems behave as their designers intended. Pnueli's introduction of temporal logic, a formal method for specifying and reasoning about the behavior of systems over time, to computer science earned him ACM's 1996 Turing Award. The award praised his 1977 paper, "The Temporal Logic of Programs," as a landmark in the field of reasoning about dynamic system behavior. Pnueli additionally shared the 2007 ACM Software System Award for Statemate, a software engineering instrument that lets developers formally specify their programs' exact desired behavior.Social Networking Meets Ambient Intelligence ICT Results (11/04/09) European researchers working on the ASTRA project are combining the instant sharing capabilities of social networking with emerging ambient intelligence systems that use sensors and smart objects to create an awareness of a user's activities. The researchers say that combining the two technologies could create a new way to stay in touch with friends and relatives. The ASTRA system would use smart objects and sensors distributed throughout a person's office or home to continually update their status information, automatically informing friends and families if a user is busy in a meeting or doing a chore and unable to answer the phone, for example. "Not only is this information generated automatically, depending on the criteria set by each user, but it does not have to be displayed on a computer screen or in any other distracting way," says the Research Academic Computer Technology Institute's Achilles Kameas. "In a smart home or office environment, the system could let users know if someone is available for a phone call or not simply by changing the color of the frame of a photo of them." Phillips Electronics and mobile operator Telenor are conducting trials of the ASTRA technology, and Kameas says the response from test users has been positive, though some have raised concerns about privacy and security issues. He says the ASTRA system is similar to Facebook in that users can determine how much information is shared and who has access to that information. The researchers plan to launch a follow-up initiative for adaptive pervasive awareness systems based on the concept of a trustworthy personal "bubble" to ensure privacy.Is the U.S. Killing Its Innovation Machine? HarvardBusiness.org (11/03/09) Patterson, David A. The Bush administration's edict that the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) give the lead role in information technology (IT) research projects to companies rather than academia has severely weakened the U.S. IT industry. Restoring the original model is key to undoing the damage and protecting the country's global domination of IT, writes University of California, Berkeley professor and former ACM president David A. Patterson. Another flaw in the Bush-era DARPA operational model was the requirement that DARPA-funded programs reach milestones in 12 to 18 months or face cancellation, a prospect that Patterson calls "absurd." He writes that as a result of these policies, "not much progress has been made in solving some of the biggest IT problems confronting us. One worth singling out in particular is developing technology so software can run on multi-core, or parallel, processors." Patterson says that under the leadership of Tony Tether, DARPA allocated tens or hundreds of millions of dollars to private companies, but none of the research they performed with those funds has made much of a dent in the parallel processing challenge. He warns that if another nation successfully meets this challenge, "the software center of the universe could move from the United States to someplace else."NC State Research Shows Way to Block Stealthy Malware Attacks NCSU News (11/03/09) Shipman, Matt North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have developed a way to block rootkits and prevent them from contaminating computer systems. Rootkits often work by hijacking a number of hooks, or control data, in a computer's operating system. "By taking control of these hooks, the rootkit can intercept and manipulate the computer system's data at will," says NCSU professor Xuxian Jiang. To prevent a rootkit from taking over an operating system, Jiang's research team determined that all of an operating system's hooks had to be protected. "The challenging part is that an operating system may have tens of thousands of hooks--any of which could potentially be exploited for a rootkit's purposes," Jiang says. "Our research leads to a new way that can protect all the hooks in an efficient way, by moving them to a centralized place and thus making them easier to manage and harder to subvert." By placing all of the hooks in one place, the researchers were able to leverage hardware-based memory protection to prevent the hooks from being hijacked. The research will be presented at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Chicago on November 12.Robots Primed for 'Are You Being Served' Role in Arabic Agence France Presse (11/03/09) Galal, Ola Researchers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have developed "the world's first Arabic-speaking conversational humanoid robot," says UAE University professor Nikolaos Mavridis. The robot, named Ibn Sina, could be used as a receptionist, sales staff, or shopping assistant, Mavridis says. "There [are] a number of things he can do on his own: answer a couple of questions, connect to the Internet to get information and show you things on the screen regarding what you want to buy," he says. "We're very close to being able to get him to work as a receptionist or a helper in a mall." The robot speaks in classical Arabic, and can answer questions with human-like facial expressions. The physical robot, including motors used to make facial expressions, was created by Hanson Robotics, while UAE University researchers developed the software. Mavridis and his team worked for more than a year to develop the software that functions as the mind of the robot and provides vision, speech, memory, and motion. The robot can detect faces and objects, transcribe speech to text, and understand people speaking and talk back.Anita Borg Institute, CSTA and the University of Arizona Hold K12 Computing Teachers Workshop Business Wire (11/03/09) The high level of interest in the first K–12 Computing Teachers Equity Workshop at the 2009 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing indicates that computer science and information technology teachers are very concerned about engaging an increasingly diverse student population. More than 650 teachers applied for the workshop, and at least 100 attended the event. University of California, Los Angeles senior researcher Jane Margolis, author of "Stuck in the Shallow End: Race, Education, and Computing," delivered the keynote speech. The workshop addressed the need for systematic change in public education if underrepresented minority students and girls are to help meet the growing need for computing professionals. Participants discussed potential solutions for recruiting diverse students, teaching methods, and creating curriculum that appeals to diverse groups. A white paper on equity issues in computer science education will be published before the end of the year, and will include solutions for teachers, STEM practitioners, and other interested stakeholders. "The K12 Computing Teachers Workshop at the Grace Hopper Celebration was created to help address one of the greatest challenges facing the high technology industry, the need to bring more students into the technical pipeline," says the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology's Deanna Kosaraju.First Test for Election Cryptography Technology Review (11/02/09) Naone, Erica An election in Tacoma Park, Md., held this November will be the first to use Scantegrity, a new vote-counting system that uses cryptography to ensure that votes are cast and recorded accurately. Scantegrity's inventors say the system could eliminate the need for recounts and provide better assurance that an election was conducted properly. Scantegrity allows voters to check online to ensure their votes were counted correctly, and officials and independent auditors can check to make sure ballots were tallied properly without seeing how an individual voted. Scantegrity developer David Chaum says the system uses a familiar paper ballot, which requires that voters fill in the bubble next to the name of their preferred candidate. The ballot is then fed into a machine that scans it and secretly records the result. The difference from other systems is that a special type of ink and pen are used, and when the voter fills in a bubble on the ballot a previously invisible secret code appears. The voter can record the code or codes and check them online later. If the code appears in the online database, the ballot was counted correctly. Every ballot has its own randomly assigned codes, which prevents the process from revealing which candidates a voter selected. Auditors can ensure all votes were counted correctly by comparing a list of codes corresponding to votes and a list of the results. University of Maryland, Baltimore County professor Alan Sherman says Scantegrity is fundamentally better than other systems in regards to integrity, and makes it possible to audit elections with much greater accuracy and certainty.Animated Ink-Blot Images Keep Unwanted Bots at Bay New Scientist (11/03/09) Barras, Colin Indian Institute of Technology Dehli computer scientist Niloy Mitra says that Completely Automated Public Turing test to tell Computers and Humans Apart (CAPTCHA) security tests would be more difficult for computers to solve, and easier for humans, if they were animated. Mitra, along with Tel Aviv University's Daniel Cohen-Or and colleagues in Taiwan, have developed "emerging images," which are seemingly random assortments of blotches from which a coherent image emerges after a few seconds. To create the emerging image, the researchers developed an algorithm that identifies key features within an original image and converts those features into an array of ink blots. The algorithm then removes a number of the splats to make it harder for bots to reconstruct the original shape while leaving enough information for a human to identify the image. The number of splats and the background noise can be adjusted to make the emerging image easier or harder to spot. Tests on 310 volunteers showed that 98 percent recognized more than 80 percent of the emerging images at the easy setting. And a test of three state-of-the-art software systems found that computers were only able to identify whether an image contained a horse or a human 51 percent to 60 percent of the time. When the researchers used the algorithm to convert three-dimensional animations into emerging videos, they found that all volunteers could spot the animated figure even when the emergence setting was on very hard. Mitra says adding animation makes recognition much easier for humans and much more difficult for computers.HTML 5 Progresses Despite Challenges InfoWorld (11/03/09) Krill, Paul Development of HTML5 is progressing, but the highly anticipated upgrade to the Web language still faces some major hurdles, particularly its lack of a standard video codec, says the World Wide Web Consortium's (W3C's) Philippe Le Hegaret. HTML5 features new video capabilities, support for offline applications, and the Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) specification. It is scheduled to move to a candidate recommendation phase by the end of 2010, which would last two years before final adoption could occur, according to Le Hegaret. "The underlying issue is finding a video format that is royalty-free," he says. "So far, we haven't been able to provide one video format that can satisfy everyone." Fallback scenarios could involve having a developer define a page to work in the Safari and Firefox browsers, and then provide two video formats. Le Hegaret says HTML5's multimedia capabilities could give developers less reason to use proprietary technologies such as Microsoft's Silverlight or Adobe Flash, except that those technologies would still be more advanced than HTML5. Although he praised SVG, which provides a language for describing two-dimensional graphics and graphical applications in XML, he said Microsoft's lack of support for SVG in Internet Explorer remains an "elephant in the room." However, Le Hegaret noted that Microsoft has not released plans for Internet Explorer 9, which could include SVG support.AI Spacesuits Turn Astronauts Into Cyborg Biologists Wired News (11/02/09) Keim, Brandon A research team led by University of Chicago geoscientist Patrick McGuire has successfully tested a feature-identifying system that could one day be used by "cyborg astrobiologists." The algorithms were able to pick out lichen from surrounding rock, and could be capable of handling other types of data. The team has incorporated a Hopfield neural network, a type of artificial intelligence for finding patterns in incoming data, into the system. McGuire envisions space explorers wearing data-crunching Hopfield networks on their hips. "You would have a very complex artificial intelligence system, with access to different remote sensing databases, to field work that's been done before in the area, and it would have the ability to reason about these in human-like ways," he says. McGuire hopes to train the network to process different textures, and then conduct analysis ranging from the microscopic to landscape-wide scales. The system could be used to search for Martian meteorites on Earth or uploaded to Mars-roving robots, until humans are ready to explore the surface of the planet on their own.New Keys for the Diffusion of Information in Social Networks Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain) (11/02/09) Information in social networks travels at an unexpectedly slow pace over the Internet with the exception of a few mass events, according to a study by researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and IBM. The researchers say the spread of information in social networks is largely determined by the heterogeneity of internauts in their response time. Traditional models estimated that internauts respond in approximately one day and, consequently, it takes one day for information to be transmitted. However, the study found that the spread of information occurs at two speeds due to user activity. "Those who respond very quickly to emails, technology addicts who are always connected, are the ones responsible for spreading certain rumors or campaigns quickly via Internet," says UC3M professor Esteban Moro. The study found that more interesting information spreads faster because people forward the message more quickly. However, if information is not very interesting, diffusion is slower because it is controlled by people who take a long time to respond, causing some rumors or information to remain dormant in social networks long after it has been released. The researchers created a mathematical model that explains why viral campaigns take so long to work and assesses a campaign's potential impact. "With this experience, we have been able to predict, within a small margin of error, how many people will receive the information, and how long it will take to reach them," Moro says. "It is the first time that we have come up with quantitative models which enable us to predict what is happening."New Honeypot Mimics the Web Vulnerabilities Attackers Want to Exploit Dark Reading (10/29/09) Higgins, Kelly Jackson Glastopf is a new open source Web server honeypot project that enables researchers to study Internet attacks by acting as Web servers with thousands of vulnerabilities that provoke cybercriminals into attacking. Glastopf creator Lukas Rist says the program dynamically emulates vulnerabilities that attackers are looking for, so the decoy is more realistic and can gather more detailed information. "Many attackers are checking the vulnerability of the application before they inject malicious code," Rist says. "My project is the first Web application honeypot with a working vulnerability emulator able to respond properly to attacker requests." Rist built Glastopf through the Google Summer of Code program, in which student developers write code for open source projects. Glastopf uses a combination of known signatures of vulnerabilities and records the keywords an attacker uses when visiting the honeypot to ensure they are indexed in search engines, which attackers regularly use to find new targets. The project has a central database to collect Web attack data from the honeypot sensors, which are installed by participants who want to share their data with the database. "The project will contribute real-world data and statistics about attacks against Web apps--an area where we do not have good collection tools yet," says Rist's project mentor Thorsten Holz. He says Glastopf tricks an attacker by returning content that is often found on vulnerable versions of Web applications, such as characteristic version numbers or similar information.Taking a Touching Approach to Transport Ticketing and Home Care for the Elderly EUREKA (10/27/09) Tuikka, Tuomo The EUREKA ITEA software Cluster SmartTouch project used near-field communications (NFC) technologies to provide easy-to-use touch-based interactive mobile services, such as paying transportation fares or choosing a meal through a touch-based mobile device. The project has developed a service platform for a variety of uses, including accessing and controlling home entertainment and caring for the elderly. The ITEA project united a number of technology and service providers, researchers, and commercial companies to explore how NFC technology can be applied to commercial products. The project incorporated protocols, enablers, applications, security, and privacy, and created an inexpensive and open solution with no gateway requiring complex configurations. The ITEA consortium enabled participating companies to update their product portfolios with NFC technology, and a variety of commercial products and services are already being marketed as a direct result of the project, including a touch-based menu for ordering food; smart systems for paying for transportation, cinema tickets, and sporting events; and systems to enable the elderly to use electronics in the home. Will Smart Grid power IPv6? Network World (10/29/09) Marsan, Carolyn Duffy The Obama administration's effort to transform the U.S.'s electric transmission system into a smart grid could help accelerate the adoption of the next-generation Internet standard IPv6. The Smart Grid would deploy new smart electric meters, automated utility substations, and new sensor networks capable of capitalizing on the abundant space and built-in security provided by IPv6. The White House recently announced that it has awarded $3.4 billion in stimulus grants to electric utilities in support of 100 modernization projects. The grants are being matched by private sector funds for a total investment of more than $8 billion in the U.S.'s electricity grids over the next three years. Federal officials say the Smart Grid will support Internet standards, though it is still undecided whether it will support the current Internet architecture built on IPv4 or whether it will help promote IPv6. Although IPv6 has been available for more than a decade, its adoption has been slow due to a lack of an urgent driver to compel companies to upgrade their routers, servers, and applications to support IPv6. However, IPv4 is approaching the limits of its capacity in terms of space, and Internet experts say it is critical for Smart Grid projects to embrace IPv6. "If Smart Grid is going to be successful, it will support tens of millions of devices or potentially hundreds of millions of devices," says American Registry for Internet Number CEO John Curran. "We don't have that much IPv4 address space left for that project." The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) also is pushing for IPv6's adoption. "IPv6 is honestly a better solution," says former IETF chair Fred Baker. "If you're putting 5,000 homes in a single subnet, you can do that in IPv4, but I wouldn't want to try it … We can do it in a simpler, more scalable and more robust way with IPv6." View Full Article | Return to Headlines Endowment Fund to Support ICT Research CSIRO (10/22/09) Finlay, Jo Australia will continue to serve as a hub for research into wireless technologies as a result of new funding from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund. An initial round of grants has been announced, and up to $10 million will go toward a project that will expand the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization's (CSIRO's) research into next-generation applications, including those that have the potential to support Australia's National Broadband Network. The Science and Industry Endowment Fund will provide $2 million to help CSIRO and Macquarie University establish a joint professorial chair and associated appointments in wireless communications over seven years. Also, $7.5 million will be provided over two to three years to establish up to 100 scholarships and fellowships in information and communication technology mathematics, engineering, and other scientific disciplines. The scholarships and fellowships will help Australia address its skills shortage in areas such as computer science, electrical engineering, mathematical sciences, and physics. "We are in a position to continue to deliver real benefits to Australia from research into high-speed wireless communications," says CSIRO group executive Alex Zelinsky. CSIRO is providing the Science and Industry Endowment Fund with $150 million from the proceeds of its Wireless Local Area Network technology licensing program. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 02 Nov 2009 17:44

  Welcome to the November 2, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Intel Claims Memory Research Milestone Meeting Notes Progress for Women in Academic Science, but More Work to Do Software That Fixes Itself Study: No Shortage of U.S. Engineers Thwarting Cyber Criminal Xerox Claims Breakthrough in Printable Circuitry SPECIAL: Listen, Watch, Read--Computers Search for Meaning U.S. Cyber War Policy Needs New Focus, Experts Say Holding the Line Against Forgeries Cell Phones Become Handheld Tools for Global Development Living Wallpaper That Devices Can Relate To The Past, Present and Future of AI CALVIN: Clarifying California's Old and Murky Water Problems Intel Claims Memory Research Milestone InformationWeek (10/29/09) Gonsalves, Antone Intel and Numonyx recently announced a breakthrough in computer memory research that they say could eventually result in a less expensive and better-performing alternative to existing memory technologies. The two companies have been collaborating on a type of non-volatile memory called phase-change memory (PCM), and report that they have successfully stacked multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single 64 Mb die. By creating a vertically integrated memory cell composed of PCM and an ovonic threshold switch, the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to use the technologies to create chips that cost less and offer better performance and memory densities than traditional NAND flash memory. PCM could provide a better alternative to NAND because it uses significantly less voltage. While NAND uses an electrical charge to store and read memory, PCM uses heat on chalcogenide glass, the same material used in re-writable optical media. Lower voltage use enables PCM to store more memory in a single die while using less power, and at a smaller scale than is possible with NAND. However, switching to PCM may require significant changes to production processes.Meeting Notes Progress for Women in Academic Science, but More Work to Do Chronicle of Higher Education (11/01/09) June, Audrey Williams The current state of women in academia was addressed during the annual meeting of the grant recipients of the U.S. National Science Foundation's Advance program. Advance grants have helped fund initiatives for increasing the number of female scientists and engineers, as well as creating family-friendly university policies, networking groups, and mentor programs to help schools retain them. University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) president Freeman A. Hrabowski III says it is time to focus more on the attitudes of department chairs, professors, and top administrators rather than the numbers. At UMBC, which received a $3.2 million Advance grant in 2003, 54 percent of assistant professors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are women. "You can't change attitudes unless you know what people really think," says Hrabowski. He says colleges must continue to work toward institutionalizing the effects of the Advance grants in the current economic climate. "Even when we're cutting the budget, we have to say we really believe in this, and we're going to keep doing it," he says. - May Require Paid Subscription Software That Fixes Itself Technology Review (10/29/09) Naone, Erica Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers led by professor Martin Rinard have developed ClearView, software capable of finding and fixing certain types of software bugs within a few minutes. Rinard, who presented the software at ACM's recent Symposium on Operating System Principles, says the goal is to create an "immortal, invulnerable program." ClearView can operate without assistance from humans and without access to a program's underlying source code. By observing a program's normal behavior and creating a set of rules, ClearView can detect certain errors, including those caused by malicious programs. ClearView detects any anomalies that violate the rules and provides several potential patches that would force the software to follow the rules. The patches are applied directly to the binary, bypassing the source code. ClearView analyzes the possible solutions to decide which ones are the most likely to work and installs the top candidates and tests their effectiveness. If additional rules are violated or the patch crashes the system, ClearView rejects those solutions and finds another. The researchers say the system is particularly effective on a group of machines running the same software. They tested ClearView by installing it on a group of computers running Firefox and using an independent team to attack the Web browser using 10 different approaches. ClearView successfully blocked all of the attacks by detecting the anomalies and terminating the application before the attack could take effect.Study: No Shortage of U.S. Engineers BusinessWeek (10/28/09) Herbst, Moira The United States, contrary to popular belief, is not lacking graduates in the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields, according to a study by researchers at Georgetown and Rutgers universities. The study suggests the problem is that many of the top graduates are taking financial and consulting jobs. "It is now up to science and technology firms to attract the best and the brightest graduates to come work for them," says Rutgers professor Hal Salzman. The researchers say that employers could address recruiting challenges for the best talent by increasing the appeal of careers in STEM fields through bigger salaries and other incentives. However, Microsoft and other employers say the problem of drawing talent would more likely be solved by adding more of premium candidates to the talent pipeline than by boosting salaries. At a hearing of the U.S. House Committee on Science and Technology last March, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates cited a decline in student interest in the sciences and contended that immigration policy needs to be changed to help fill the void in the labor market. He pushed for an extension of the period that foreign students can work in the United States following graduation, elevating the current limits on H-1B visas, and issuing many more green cards annually. Critics of the Georgetown/Rutgers study's conclusions include Computer Science Teachers Association executive director Chris Stephenson, who says that high schools have steadily been dumping computer science courses over the past six years. "It's clear that the number of students taking computer science is dropping," she says.Thwarting Cyber Criminal Norwegian University of Science and Technology (10/30/09) Researchers at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) say they have developed a digital signature system that is 17,000 times faster than current systems used for verification and 10,000 times faster in providing a digital signature. They say the new system, MQQ, was developed as a way to address the biggest pitfalls in current data security systems. Existing systems, when used with smart card applications or at credit card payment terminals, are often slow, do not protect against quantum computing attacks, and have not been optimized for parallel processing. MQQ was developed using a trapdoor function, which is generated by quasigroup string transformations based on multivariate quadratic quasigroups. The researchers say that MQQ's security is enhanced by a signing speed that is 10,000 times faster than corresponding RSA and elliptical curves digital signatures. The researchers also say that MQQ is one of the first algorithms specially designed for parallel processing, which allows the system to benefit from the recent trends in multicore parallel processing. "Due to the nature of its design, MQQ is secure against quantum computing attacks," says NTNU professor Dailo Gligoroski. He says MQQ also has been found to be secure against all known multivariate quadratic attack methods.Xerox Claims Breakthrough in Printable Circuitry V3.co.uk (10/30/09) Thomson, Iain Xerox says it has developed a new form of silver ink that aligns its molecules to conduct electricity more efficiently. The breakthrough enables electronics to be produced on a wider range of materials and at lower costs because a clean room would no longer be needed to print circuitry on new materials. "We will be able to print circuits in almost any size from smaller custom circuits to larger formats such as wider rolls of plastic sheets, unheard of in today's silicon-wafer industry," says the Xerox Research Center of Canada's Hadi Mahabadi. Printing circuitry on materials such as plastics was impossible because traditional metallic inks typically require a temperature of more than 800 degrees centigrade. However, the new ink is liquid at about 140 degrees. "We have found the silver bullet that could make things such as electronic clothing and inexpensive games a reality today," says Xerox's Paul Smith.SPECIAL: Listen, Watch, Read--Computers Search for Meaning ICT Results (10/30/09) The European MESH project has developed an integrated platform that combines semantic search with a variety of other tools to deliver more relevant results for a wider variety of sources. The MESH system can search annotated files such as photographs, videos, sound recordings, text, document scans, or any other media to find relevant responses to semantic search terms. The platform uses a variety of techniques, including optical character recognition, automated speech recognition, automatic annotation of video, and photographs that track salient concepts. While building its semantic search platform, the MESH project also developed some cutting-edge technology, says MESH project coordinator Pedro Concejero. For example, the project's automatic annotation for video is capable of identifying the general scene setting, detecting the general topic of the video, and recognizing the number of salient objects, such as people, within a scene. Concejero says the MESH platform could find use in numerous standalone commercial applications. The project's researchers will continue to develop new applications.U.S. Cyber War Policy Needs New Focus, Experts Say Computerworld (10/29/09) Gross, Grant Three cybersecurity experts recently told a meeting of the Congressional Cyber Caucus that current U.S. policies for protecting the United States against various forms of attack won't work for defending against cyberwarfare. Rand Corp.'s Martin Libicki said a policy of cyberdeterrence modeled after the strategy for nuclear attacks is problematic, largely because it is difficult to identify attackers, particularly when some nations appear to be sponsoring private attackers. Libicki also said it may be difficult for the U.S. to follow through with counterattacks when U.S. cyberexperts do not know how much damage those attacks could do. Good Harbor Consulting's Paul Kurtz said it is still unclear what the U.S.'s cyberwarfare policies will look like, which is particularly troublesome because the United States lacks a definition of what constitutes an act of cyberwar. Additionally, it may be unwise to label some countries as cyberadversaries, Kurtz said. For example, although the Chinese government is often blamed for encouraging or sponsoring cyberattacks, the U.S. government needs to engage the Chinese about cyberdefense. U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit director Scott Borg said the U.S. government needs to recognize that cyberattacks can cause "horrendous damage," and that attacks on targets such as electricity generators could have a long-lasting effect, primarily due to the U.S.'s limited ability to support new parts for damaged generators. Most of the parts for electricity generators come from China and India, and Borg said that emergency planners have not found a way to replace those parts quickly. He said shutting down electricity in a large area of the U.S. for several months would have the same level of economic damage as a nuclear attack.Holding the Line Against Forgeries New York Times (10/29/09) Wall, Barbara Eric Postma, an artificial intelligence professor at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, estimates that forgeries account for about 99 percent of the artwork for sale on the international market. Postma says that "auction houses could be doing more to protect client interests by having a more open attitude toward innovations that may help to establish authenticity." He says that new computer technology-based methods could make a substantial contribution to art authentication. His team has developed algorithms that can evaluate paintings based on brush stroke configurations, pigment, and canvas weave. Postma says that this digital analysis technique successfully indicated that a painting attributed to Vincent Van Gogh for many years was probably a forgery because its brush strokes were too prominent. Postma says the works of Rubens, Gauguin, and Monet are currently undergoing analysis, and "provided we have a large enough database of paintings to work from, I see no reason why we could not apply our methods to Old Masters and modern works of art alike." He says an ultimate goal is to invent an algorithm that can encompass a painting's entire visual structure. Postma acknowledges that many art historians view digital analysis with suspicion, partly because the algorithms are still under development, and partly because a full service is infeasible until a sufficiently large painting database has been constructed.Cell Phones Become Handheld Tools for Global Development UW News (10/29/09) Hickey, Hannah University of Washington (UW) doctoral students have developed Open Data Kit, a free suite of mobile tools that can be used by organizations that need inexpensive methods for gathering information. Open Data Kit uses the open source Android mobile operating system to turn cell phones into versatile data-collection devices. For example, the students say the devices could provide organizations with the ability to take pictures of deforested areas, add the location coordinates, and instantly submit that information to a global environmental database. Open Data Kit already is being used by the Grameen Foundation Technology Center to evaluate its Ugandan text-messaging information hotline, D-Tree International is using the suite in Tanzania to guide health workers treating young children, the University of California, Berkeley's Human Rights Center is using the platform to record human rights violations in the Central African Republic, and this fall the Jane Goodall Institute and the Brazilian Forest Service will use the suite to monitor deforestation. Open Data Kit can be used to collect data; store, view, and export data on remote servers; and manage devices in the field from a central office. The Open Data Kit also enables a phone to quickly record a location, scan a bar code instead of requiring the numbers to be entered by hand, and upload data automatically using a cellular network.Living Wallpaper That Devices Can Relate To New Scientist (10/28/09) Campbell, MacGregor The Living Wall project, led by Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab researcher Leah Buechley, features an electronically enhanced wallpaper that can interact with other devices, including lamps, heaters, and music systems. The wallpaper uses magnetic and conductive paints to create circuitry in attractive designs. Combining the wallpaper's circuits with inexpensive temperature, light, and touch sensors, light-emitting diodes, and Bluetooth capabilities turns the wallpaper into a control surface capable of communicating with nearby devices. For example, a user could touch a certain flower to turn on a lamp or adjust the room's temperature. "Our goal is to make technologies that users can build on and change without needing a lot of technical skill," Buechley says. To create the electronic wallpaper, the researchers started with steel foil sandwiched between layers of paper coated with magnetic paint. Conductive paint was then used to create the wallpaper's visual motif as well as the circuits, which can be attached to sensors, lights, and other devices. The system runs at 20 volts, drawing approximately 2.5 amps when fully loaded with devices. "You can go up and touch the wall and not even feel a tingle," Buechley says. She says the wallpaper is intended to demonstrate how existing technology can be used in innovative ways in materials and applications that are usually thought of as low tech.The Past, Present and Future of AI TechRadar (10/24/09) Hardwidge, Ben The idea that fully-fledged artificial intelligence (AI)--thinking machines that could mimic human intelligence precisely--would be realized by the year 2000 was driven by early breakthroughs in the field, such as the Logic Theorist program. The program successfully utilized a computer to solve logic problems through a virtual reasoning system that employed decision trees. However, since then the AI field has been one of deferred dreams, as many of the milestones predicted for the turn of the millennium have yet to come to pass. "The reality of the engineering requirements [of AI] and what it really takes to make this work was much harder than anybody expected," says David Ferrucci, leader of the IBM Watson project team. He cites the development of chess-playing computers as an example of an advancement that created false hope about AI overall. The enormous difficulty computers have in emulating distinctly human abilities, such as communicating with people via natural language, demonstrates what a hard challenge AI creators face. Among the latest AI achievements is Aberystwyth University's Adam, a robot that can make scientific discoveries using a method known as abduction. "Adam can ... abduce hypotheses, and infer what would be efficient experiments to discriminate between different hypotheses, and whether there's evidence for them," says Aberystwyth's Ross King. "Then it can actually do the experiments using laboratory automation." However, King says the really complex problems involve humans interacting.CALVIN: Clarifying California's Old and Murky Water Problems CITRIS Newsletter (10/09) Slack, Gordy The CALifornia Value Integrated Network (CALVIN) is an economic-engineering water model that taps 70 years' worth of hydrological data compiled from various sources to simulate California's water storage and distribution system. CALVIN simulates the engineering structures of the state's water system along with economic demands for water so that users can assess the impact of changing either economic or engineering parameters. CALVIN must be fed reliable data, and advancements in accurate sensor technology have been key to providing this function. "This revolution in sensors has buried us in numbers," says University of California, Davis (UC Davis) professor and CALVIN co-creator Jay Lund. "And the numbers are meaningless, unless you organize them so they bear insights into what's really going on and how it's likely to play out in the future. That's what is really exciting and important about the work. We're trying to develop insights, not numbers." UC Davis researchers have employed CALVIN's data-crunching abilities to help California resolve complex and pressing water challenges, such as the disposition of the San Francisco Bay Delta.

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• 31 Oct 2009 04:11

  Welcome to the October 30, 2009 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Defense University Builds China's Fastest Supercomputer MIT Researchers Developing Robotic Driving Companion GENI Goes Global Slump Sinks Visa Program Professor Working to Advance Computing as a Science Muscle-Bound Computer Interface Google CEO Imagines Era of Mobile Supercomputers Augmented Reality System Lets You See Through Walls Electrical Engineers Go Head to Head With Genius on Music Playlists Safety First for Robots Embedded Systems--The Whole Picture Open Source Identity: Ruby on Rails Creator David Heinemeier Hansson Are Militaries Lagging Their Non-State Enemies in Terms of Use of Internet? An Interview With Chris Gunderson Defense University Builds China's Fastest Supercomputer Xinhuanet (China) (10/29/09) Fei, Yu; Ruixue, Bai; Yushan, Wang China's National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) has unveiled the Tianhe supercomputer, the fastest supercomputer in China. Tianhe runs at 563.1 teraflops on the Linpack benchmark and is theoretically capable of petaflop performance. NUDT president Zhang Yulin says the system is expected to be used to process seismic data for oil exploration, perform bio-medical computing, and help design aerospace vehicles. If Tianhe had been operational for the most recent Top 500 list, it would have ranked as the world's fourth-most powerful supercomputer. NUDT says that approximately 200 computer scientists worked on Tianhe over two years. The supercomputer was housed at the NUDT campus in Changsha, and is scheduled to be moved to the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin at the end of this year. Tianhe features 6,144 Intel CPUs and 5,120 AMD GPUs. "As far as I know, a combination of CPU and GPU is something new used to make a petaflop computer," says NUDT professor Zhou Xingming. "After it's installed in Tianjin, we plan to add hundreds or thousands of China-made CPUs to the machine, and improve its Linpack performance to over 800 teraflops." Tianhe also could be ranked as the world's fifth-greenest supercomputer on the Green500 List, which is compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech to rank the world's most energy-efficient supercomputers.MIT Researchers Developing Robotic Driving Companion Computerworld (10/29/09) Gaudin, Sharon Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA), a robot that would act as a helpful companion for drivers. The robot would be capable of picking up a driver's usual routes and regular destinations, monitoring facial expressions for signs of fatigue or agitation, using visual clues such as winking and smiling, and communicating verbally to make suggestions about alternate routes, fuel level, energy efficiency, safe behavior, and gas stations with the lowest prices. AIDA would be embedded in the dashboard and use the Internet to provide real-time information about traffic, businesses, and gas stations along the driver's route. "With the ubiquity of sensors and mobile computers, information about our surroundings is ever abundant," says professor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT's SENSEable City Lab. "AIDA embodies a new effort to make sense of these great amounts of data, harnessing our personal electronic devices as tools for behavioral support." The MIT team is working with Audi and the Volkswagen Group of America's Electronics Research Lab on the project.GENI Goes Global International Center for Advanced Internet Research (10/29/09) Mambretti, Joe; Brown, Maxine D. A consortium of network researchers has received a three-year grant from the U.S. Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) program to develop iGENI, an international version of GENI. The GENI research initiative was launched by the U.S. National Science Foundation to create a virtual laboratory for researching and exploring future Internets at scale. Led by Northwestern University's International Center for Advanced Research (iCAIR), the consortium includes the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego; Cisco Systems; and BBN Technologies. "The iGENI initiative will enable our consortium to extend and build on these partnerships in order to develop and implement a large-scale distributed environment for GENI researchers, and to make that environment available to many more research communities," says iCAIR's Joe Mambretti. IGENI will integrate multiple network resources, segments of national research and education network infrastructures, a national wide-area private network run by Cisco called C-Wave, and components of the international optical-networking Global Lambda Integrated Facility. "One of the consortium's major strengths has been its ability to develop teams, tools, and infrastructure on an accelerated schedule," EVL's Maxine Brown. "Each consortium member has over a decade of experience of active involvement in international networking infrastructure, projects, and community development."Slump Sinks Visa Program Wall Street Journal (10/29/09) P. A1; Jordan, Miriam; Sheth, Niraj; Fowler, Geoffrey A.; et al. The H-1B visa program, designed to import skilled technology workers into the United States from overseas, will have thousands of vacancies for the first time in six years because of the economic downturn. Anti-immigrant sentiment in Washington and climbing costs related to hiring foreigners also have contributed to the fall-off in visa applications. "The best and the brightest who would normally come here are saying, 'Why do we need to go to a country where we are not welcome, where our quality of life would be less, and we would be at the bottom of the social ladder?' " says University of California, Berkeley visiting scholar Vivek Wadhwa. Another factor is greater economic momentum in countries such as China and India, which is enabling would-be immigrants to find new career opportunities in their homelands rather than going to the United States. Just 46,700 petitions for H-1Bs have been filed this year as of Sept. 25, whereas last year the 65,000-visa ceiling was reached in just 24 hours. Last year, 44 percent of approved H-1B visa petitions were for systems analysts or programmers, while university professionals comprised the second largest category. High-tech companies have long been petitioning the U.S. Congress to raise the cap on H-1Bs. Concurrently, some U.S. lawmakers have been urging restrictions on the program, arguing that it displaces U.S.-born employees.Professor Working to Advance Computing as a Science UA News (AZ) (10/28/09) Everett-Haynes, La Monica University of Arizona professor Richard T. Snodgrass has received a U.S. National Science Foundation grant to promote computation as a true science. Snodgrass, an ACM Fellow, says the process of computational thinking is universal and highly valued in subjects such as physics, biology, and chemistry. "The problem with computer science is that a few people think it equals programming," he says. "But that doesn't emphasize the great ideas behind computer science, and that's what we want to bring out in this grant." Snodgrass and Peter Denning, director of the Cebrowski Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, will use the three-year, $800,000 grant to elevate the status of computing and encourage students, particularly girls and women, at the K-12 level to enter the field. The grant will enable them to develop and organize the "Field Guide to the Science of Computation." The guide will feature various levels, from beginner to graduate students and professionals, and provide an organized body of information on computing, including theoretical frameworks and models related to automation, communication, evaluation, design, and other topics. ACM's education board and the Computer Science Teachers Association also will collaborate on the three-year project. Snodgrass said the grant came just before the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution endorsing the need to support computer science education at the K-12 level. The resolution designated the week of Dec. 7 as National Computer Science Education Week.Muscle-Bound Computer Interface Technology Review (10/28/09) Greene, Kate Researchers at Microsoft, the University of Washington, and the University of Toronto have developed a human-computer interface that uses muscle movement for hands-free, gestural interaction. A band of electrodes attached to the user's forearm is used to read electrical activity from different arm muscles. Signals are correlated to specific hand gestures, such as touching a finger and thumb together or gripping an object with a certain degree of tightness. The researchers say the technology could be used to scroll through and select songs on a MP3 player or to play a game without a controller. The project is focusing on bringing muscle interfaces to healthy individuals looking for richer input modalities, says Microsoft researcher Desney Tan. The researchers' most recent interface uses six electromyography sensors and two ground electrodes positioned in a ring around a user's right forearm to sense finger movement, and two sensors on the left forearm to sense hand squeezes. The system's software needs to be trained to associate the electrical signals with different gestures. "Most of today's computer interfaces require the user's complete attention," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Pattie Maes. "We desperately need novel interfaces such as the one developed by the Microsoft team to enable a more seamless integration of digital information and applications into our busy daily lives." The interface was demonstrated at the recent ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology.Google CEO Imagines Era of Mobile Supercomputers InformationWeek (10/28/09) Claburn, Thomas Google CEO Eric Schmidt believes the future of computing lies in smart mobile devices and data centers. "A billion people on the planet are carrying supercomputers in their hands," Schmidt says. "Now you think of them as mobile phones, but that's not what they really are. They're video cameras. They're GPS devices. They're powerful computers. They have powerful screens. They can do many, many different things." Schmidt says over the next few years mobile technology will continue to advance and consumers will be exposed to new applications that are unimaginable now. For example, Google's Android phone division is working on an application that can take pictures of bar codes, identify the corresponding product, and compare prices online. Another Android application can translate a picture of a menu written in a foreign language. Cloud computing will provide the computational muscle for many of these future services, which Schmidt says is probably the next big wave in computing. He also believes that computing will continue to bring major changes to our society. "We're going from a model where the information we had was pretty highly controlled by centralized media operatives to a world where most of our information will come from our friends, from our peers, from user-generated content," Schmidt says. "These changes are profound in the society of America, in the social life, and all the ways we live."Augmented Reality System Lets You See Through Walls New Scientist (10/23/09) Giles, Jim Carnegie Mellon University researchers displayed a prototype of a system that would enable drivers to see through walls at ACM and IEEE's recent International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality. The ability to see what is happening at dangerous junctions, such as blind corners, would make driving less hazardous, the researchers say. The team developed an augmented reality system that uses one camera to capture what the driver sees, another to record the blocked scene, and a computer to layer the feed of the second camera on top of the image from the first camera. Combining the images makes a wall transparent. The system has to alter images of the hidden scene so they appear as if they are being viewed from the position of a person driving a car, and prevent images of moving objects from being distorted. The team also is developing software that would integrate feeds in footage from a city's network of closed-circuit TV cameras. Cars could be built with an onboard video processor to pick up the wireless feed from the roadside cameras, the team says.Electrical Engineers Go Head to Head With Genius on Music Playlists UCSD News (10/27/09) Kane, Daniel University of California, San Diego (UCSD) engineers recently measured the performance of music recommender systems they built from scratch against that of the Genius music recommender system featured in Apple's iTunes. "The system we are developing can analyze and recommend completely unknown songs by new bands as accurately as it analyzes the most popular hits," says UCSD PhD student Luke Barrington. Researchers at the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering found that Genius seems to actually capture acoustic similarities between songs by averaging statistics about how millions of listeners buy and play music. Barrington contends that Genius in reality knows nothing of song acoustics, but its success as a recommender system stems from the fact that it taps acoustic analyses of music performed by millions of people. "Our computer system works by listening to the music--it doesn't know anything about artists or albums or charts," he says. The UCSD researchers learned that the playlist generator, which they constructed using their own auto-tagging algorithms, delivered performance that was equal to that of Genius under certain circumstances. Moreover, the UCSD music recommender works for songs with which Genius is unfamiliar. The accuracy and scope of the auto-tagging algorithms are being constantly improved through music discovery games the UCSD engineers created for Facebook, which produce song-word combinations that the engineers feed into the algorithms.Safety First for Robots The Engineer (United Kingdom) (10/26/09) Zolfagharifard, Ellie A three-year project by Edinburgh University researchers aims to combine the most recent advances in mathematics and engineering to develop robotic systems capable of handling flexible objects in extreme environments. The researchers have developed a technique that uses a topological model to account for the position of objects in relation to each other. The technique is based on Gauss' theory of linking numbers, which calculates the relationship between threads. "By considering the topological space using this theory, we are able to capture the invariances in the environment," says Edinburgh's Sethu Vijayakumar. "Topology-based motion synthesis is a fairly radical change in concept for programming robots. Our hope is that it will lead to robots that act more like humans." The researchers, collaborating with the Honda Research Institute Europe, plan to have a prototype humanoid robot that can dress itself by 2013. Vijayakumar says the research could lead to robots that can of help people out of burning buildings, or are capable of performing complex tasks in uncontrolled environments, such as nuclear clean-up operations. Taku Komura, the project's principal investigator, says one of the biggest challenges will be recording movements and feeding that information back to the robots.Embedded Systems--The Whole Picture ICT Results (10/28/09) The European Union-funded ANDRES project was launched to find ways of helping embedded system designers find the best balance between static, reconfigurable, and analog hardware and the software those systems run. Their solution is a process that allows a designer to build an idea from an initial concept to a physical system using a modeling language and FOSSY, a design tool to assist with reconfigurable hardware. "At the core of this ANDRES framework is a modeling language plus component libraries that enable the designer to describe these integrated systems containing hardware, software, and analog components," says project coordinator Frank Oppenheimer. "That means you can focus on the application, not the technologies." The designer can use the framework to simulate the proposed system to see how it works and to test modifications before specifying how it will be implemented. The modeling language is an extension of SystemC and the ANDRES framework can be used with existing simulators for SystemC. The complete ANDRES system will be made available through an open source license to encourage the design community to adopt and continue to improve the system.Open Source Identity: Ruby on Rails Creator David Heinemeier Hansson Computerworld Australia (10/22/09) Gedda, Rodney One of the most popular and successful open source software development initiatives is Ruby on Rails, created by David Heinemeier Hansson. With Rails, thousands of developers can organize sophisticated applications rapidly and consistently, and the development environment also has supported the advent of a Web application framework in which elements are employed for database connectivity and other common tasks. "I think the fundamental thing that set Rails apart was a culture of putting the programmer first," Hansson says. "The idea that Web programming should be fun and that programmers should be enjoying themselves." He believes that Rails gave the interest in frameworks a leg up, particularly for PHP programmers. Hansson says Rail is under constant development, and he responds to criticism that Rails is not sufficiently swift with the answer that it certainly could be faster, but then so could everything else. "We continue to work on it as much from a sense of professional pride as from a sense of practical need," Hansson says. He also says that cloud computing seems like a natural fit for Rails, since it promises to accelerate hardware deployment in the same sense that Rails promises to accelerate software development.Are Militaries Lagging Their Non-State Enemies in Terms of Use of Internet? An Interview With Chris Gunderson Ubiquity (10/09) Vol. 10, No. 10, Denning, Peter An acceleration in cyberattacks against military networks and servers has brought the issue of what action the global defense community is taking to protect military systems and the worldwide Internet to the fore. Network-centric warfare expert Chris Gunderson with the U.S. Naval Postgraduate School says that "despite spending billions of dollars with the expressed purpose of fielding network-centric capability, the defense community has generally not succeeded at implementing distributed netcentric systems. Rather, we cling to the notion that military communications requirements are unique." Gunderson says this has worked to the advantage of U.S. enemies, who "have applied the netcentric principles to achieve information superiority via the open Internet and World Wide Web." He believes it is necessary for the U.S. military--and the global defense community--to abandon private networks as a means for most communications. Gunderson characterizes information overload as the "fog" of netcentric war, and he suggests several solutions to this problem. The first solution is to train our information provider network in practices that send vital information and avoid burdening netcentric fighters with large data volumes. The second step is to make the fighters capable of independent innovation and thus more adaptive to changing conditions. "As the new [netcentric] processes prove their value, larger programs will gradually adopt them as a matter of course," Gunderson predicts.

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