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• 17 Mar 2010 11:32

  Welcome to the March 17, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. How Privacy Vanishes Online Lie Detector to Fight Smugglers and Terrorists Software: Running Commentary for Smarter Surveillance? UIC Researcher Looks Toward a Communication Revolution Amputees Could Feel Artificial Limb If Put in the Virtual World Asian Health Research Gets the Grid Treatment Human Arm Transmits Broadband Expert: Bracket Seedings Irrelevant After Sweet Sixteen Round A New System Makes Household Communication Networks More Versatile AMARSi Project Could See Robots Learn From Co-Workers MSU Programmers Develop Land Mine Avoidance Game Cutting-Edge Tech for All From Indian Labs Traces of the Past: Computer Algorithm 'Reads' Memories Mobile Phone Allows Boss to Snoop How Privacy Vanishes Online New York Times (03/16/10) Lohr, Steve Personal privacy is being threatened as Internet users increasingly provide information about themselves on social networking sites, which can be collected and analyzed by computers to create a picture of a person's identity. "Personal privacy is no longer an individual thing," says Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Harold Abelson. "In today's online world, what your mother told you is true, only more so: people really can judge you by your friends." Although users can implement privacy controls on most Internet sites, researchers say that is rarely enough to protect privacy. For example, University of Texas professor Viatly Shmatikov and Stanford University researcher Arvind Narayanan were able to identify more than 30 percent of users of both Twitter and Flickr, even thought the accounts had been stripped of identifying information like account names and email addresses. At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers Alessandro Acquisti and Ralph Gross reported they could accurately predict the Social Security numbers for 8.5 percent of the people born in the United States between 1989 and 2003--nearly 5 million people. "When you're doing stuff online, you should behave as if you're doing it in public--because increasingly, it is," says Cornell University professor Jon Kleinberg.Lie Detector to Fight Smugglers and Terrorists WalesOnline (03/17/10) Researchers at Aberystwyth University and the University of Bradford have developed a thermal-imaging scanner that can reveal the physical signs of guilt, such as minute fluctuations in blood flow and temperature. The researchers say the system, called Real-Time Dynamic Passive Profiling, could be used to identify smugglers or terrorists at border control points. "This new technology is based on the modeling of facial expressions, eye movement, and pupil changes in both the visual and thermal domains," says Aberystwyth professor Reyer Zwiggelaar. "In the future, it could have many uses, because it tells us how people are really feeling." The researchers plan to test the system at U.K. ports and airports next month. "We aim to automatically analyze people's facial expressions and eye movements in response to a series of questions through video images and computer-based intelligent algorithms," says Bradford professor Hassan Ugail.Software: Running Commentary for Smarter Surveillance? ICT Results (03/16/10) European researchers have developed HERMES, a software surveillance system that automatically detects human motion, behavior, and facial expressions; generates a running commentary of what is happening; and virtually re-enacts events. HERMES consists of a scalable, flexible platform, which integrates software components that can detect events in real time and describe them semantically. The HERMES tracking technology functions like a human watching the same scene, making predictions about where a target is heading and reacting to other unusual events. The system can track people as they walk across a city with a combination of static cameras and pan-tilt-zoom cameras. Generating semantic information from video has led to the development of a tool that creates a virtual three-dimensional representation of the scene. "The virtual graphical representation of the footage is generated in near real time and can be displayed alongside the actual video stream," says Universitat Autonoma senior researcher Andrew Bagdanov.UIC Researcher Looks Toward a Communication Revolution Medill Reports (IL) (03/16/10) Jacobs, Kevin Andy Johnson, a professor in the University of Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory, is developing ultra-high-speed connections paired with high-definition video collaboration. Johnson says the technology is similar to commercial video phone services, but is more reliable, larger, and has a much clearer display. A stable, high-resolution video connection could change how people consult with doctors, auto mechanics diagnose cars, or businesspeople hold meetings, he says. The technology pairs life-sized display screens with near-instant Internet connections. "That gives us a much higher resolution interaction, and could make it much easier for remote groups to work together," Johnson says. However, the system will require the United States to upgrade its Internet infrastructure with fiber-optic cables to increase access speeds.Amputees Could Feel Artificial Limb If Put in the Virtual World Times of India (03/17/10) University College London computer scientist Anthony Steed will present a study on how virtual environments impact people with artificial limbs at the upcoming Virtual Reality 2010 Conference. In an experiment that had 20 volunteers play games in a virtual world in which an avatar's hands were represented as their own, the participants behaved as if the virtual hand was their own limb. Steed used a monitoring system to record the movements of muscles and nerve-endings firing. The monitoring system enabled him to track the reactions of the volunteers during the virtual game when a lamp on a table toppled onto the avatar's arm. The monitoring system showed that most of the participants made gestures with their arm that suggested an attempt to move it, and the volunteers acknowledged they had reacted as if the virtual hand was their own. When Steed conducted the experiment again, but using an arrow to represent the volunteers' arm, the participants showed no emphatic response to the falling lamp. The research suggests virtual reality can help amputees feel ownership of their prosthetic limb.Asian Health Research Gets the Grid Treatment SuperComputing (03/12/10) O'Neal, Chris Biomedical and health researchers discussed how they were using grid computing at the recent International Symposium on Grid Computing in Taipei, Taiwan. The Genomics Research Center (GRC) of Academia Sinica in Taiwan is using the GAP Virtual Screening Service (GVSS), developed by the Academia Sinica Grid Computing Center, to model potential drugs for Dengue fever. "The beautiful thing about GVSS is that even people who don't know about computational methods can easily submit their job," says GRC's Ying-Ta Wu. Meanwhile, KISTI and Chonnam National University in Korea and HealthGrid and the National Institute of Nuclear Physics and Particle Physics in France are working to find novel inhibitors for the enzyme HMA, which would help limit the complications and the progression of type 2 diabetes. And the National Electronics and Computer Technology Center in Thailand is using grid technologies to build a National Health Information System, while ASTI in the Philippines has developed a portal to make grid technologies more accessible for researchers.Human Arm Transmits Broadband New Scientist (03/15/10) McKenna, Phil Korea University researchers have developed a method for transmitting data at a rate of 10 megabits per second through a person's arm, between two electrodes on their skin placed 30 centimeters apart. The electrodes use significantly less energy than a wireless link because low-frequency electromagnetic waves pass through skin with little attenuation. The researchers say the technology has major benefits for the health care industry, including monitoring vital signs such as blood sugar levels or the heart's electrical activity. "If we use wireless for each of these vital signs we would need many batteries," says Korea University's Sang-Hoon Lee. A network transmitting through the skin could cut energy needs by about 90 percent, Lee says. The electrodes are coated with a flexible silicon-rich polymer and are 300 micrometers thick. Future versions of the device could be embedded beneath the skin for long-term monitoring applications.Expert: Bracket Seedings Irrelevant After Sweet Sixteen Round University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (03/15/10) Ciciora, Phil University of Illinois computer science professor Sheldon Jacobson recently completed a study on the NCAA's men basketball tournament showing that picking the higher-seeded team to beat the lower-seeded team usually only works in the first three rounds of the tournament. Once the tournament reaches the Elite Eight round, a team's seed in the tournament is irrelevant. "In the Sweet Sixteen round, the rankings still hold--but just barely," he says. Jacobson says the purpose of the study was to see if a team's seeding was a good predictor of how far the team ultimately would go in the tournament. He says the expectation was that higher-seeded teams had greater odds of winning, especially for games in later rounds. However, that did not prove true once the tournament was reduced to eight teams. At that point, "the odds of either team winning is reduced to a coin flip," Jacobson says. "People often overvalue seedings. The best advice is, pay attention to them early in the tournament, but as the tournament gets going, remember that their usefulness as a predictive measure fades."A New System Makes Household Communication Networks More Versatile Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain) (03/15/10) Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M) researchers have developed a configuration for a residential gateway (RGW) device, which would connect a residential communications network to an access network from any server. The RGW could be used to assist all household communications. "Other research focuses on defining which functionalities a residential gateway should have, while ours is aimed at facilitating the way to implement them and making them more flexible," says UC3M professor Jaime Garcia Reinoso. A RGW could connect the telephone, radio, TV, and any other device that uses an Internet Protocol to communicate over the Internet. The researchers say that an ADSL router with a RGW could be converted into a much more intelligent device. For example, Reinoso says the RGW would coordinate with the other devices to obtain the best performance possible and guarantee the necessary features. He says it also "frees up the users from awkward configurations since it is designed to be able to carry out all of its functions autonomously and efficiently."AMARSi Project Could See Robots Learn From Co-Workers Wired.co.uk (03/12/10) Cole, Emmet The Adaptive Modular Architecture for Rich Motor Skills (AMARSi) project aims to build humanoid robots that can autonomously learn and develop motor skills in open-ended environments by learning from the data provided by movement and rewiring their circuits to process and store the new knowledge they have acquired. Technology supporting the robots includes dynamic neural networks, new robotics hardware designs, and complex software algorithms. AMARSi relies on a biologically inspired view of motor skills that goes beyond traditional robotic designs, says project coordinator Jochen Steil. AMARSi researchers hope their architecture will enable robots to learn by interaction, which involves a combination of kinesthetic learning, imitation, and exploration. To develop advanced, autonomous robotic systems, scientists need to both reverse and forward engineer biological systems, says University of Washington research scientist Payman Arabshahi.MSU Programmers Develop Land Mine Avoidance Game The State News (03/14/10) McMillin, Zane Michigan State University (MSU) instructors and students are fine-tuning a computer video game designed to help unsuspecting children avoid land mines and other explosives in the Cambodian jungle. The Golden West Humanitarian Foundation approached MSU with the idea two years because it thought computer games would be an effective way to educate children about the dangers of unexploded ordnances (UXOs). The game has a pet accompany the player on a trek for food through a series of Cambodian landscapes, but the individual also will see UXOs, with warnings such as bright red lights emblazoned with a skull and cautionary words, that must be avoided. The game is a capstone project for students in MSU's game design and development specialization. Golden West plans to test the game on Cambodian children in April. The game will be compatible with One Laptop Per Child computers, and Golden West will be able to tweak game landscapes for distribution in other countries.Cutting-Edge Tech for All From Indian Labs Business Standard (India) (03/11/10) Shinde, Shivani; D'Monte, Leslie Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs India researchers are developing Web applications designed to make the Internet easier to use for illiterate populations and those in remote locations. One application enables users to take a picture of written text and email addresses, and automatically send the email based on the image alone. HP Labs also has developed technology based on touch and gesture, making the keyboard and mouse obsolete. The goal is to make interaction with the personal computer as simple as possible, says HP Labs India director Sudhir Dixit. Meanwhile, IBM's Spoken Web project is developing voice-enabled technology that helps people with little literacy to access and share information, perform business transactions, and create social networks using mobile or landline phones. IBM also recently announced a joint research initiative with the National Institute of Design in India and the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology to develop a common user interface platform for mobile devices geared toward elderly and illiterate populations in developing countries.Traces of the Past: Computer Algorithm 'Reads' Memories University College London (03/11/10) Brierley, Craig University College London (UCL) researchers have created a computer algorithm that can convert brain activity into visual images. UCL professor Eleanor Maguire led the study, which built on her previous research that demonstrated how spatial memories are recorded in regular patterns. "What is more interesting is to look at 'episodic' memories--the complex, everyday memories that include much more information on where we are, what we are doing, and how we feel," Maguire says. The researchers asked volunteers to memorize and then recall three short films. While the subjects were recalling the films, the researchers used an fMRI scanner to measure changes in blood flow within the brain. The computer algorithm then studied the patterns and identified which film the volunteer was recalling based only on the brain activity. "The algorithm was able to predict correctly which of the three films the volunteer was recalling significantly above what would be expected by chance," says study lead author Martin Chadwick.Mobile Phone Allows Boss to Snoop BBC News (03/10/10) Fitzpatrick, Michael KDDI Corporation has developed mobile phone technology that detects even the tiniest actions of the user by analyzing the movement of accelerometers embedded in the devices. Previous mobile phone sensors could only detect repetitive movements, but KDDI researchers say the new technology can identify activities such as walking, climbing stairs, and cleaning. "Technically, I think this is an incredibly important innovation," says International University of Japan's Philip Sugai. The KDDI system can detect more complex behavior by using analytical software to match patterns of common movements. The researchers say the system is designed to enable employees to work more efficiently and managers to evaluate employees' performance. "It's part of our research into a total ubiquitous technological society, and activity recognition is an important part of that," says KDDI's Hiroyuki Yokoyama. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 15 Mar 2010 16:59

  Welcome to the March 15, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Berkeley Prof Helped Divvy Up Search to Many Servers Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle Safety Issues Loom as Humanoid Invasion Approaches For Quantum Computer, Add a Dash of Disorder Supercapacitors Boost Efficiency UMass Amherst Computer Scientists Develop an Emotion-Sensitive, Computer-Based Tutor That Improves Girls' Math Scores Computational Modeling Improves Refinery Performance Malicious Systems of a Feather Flock Together Researchers Use Light From LEDs to Send Data Wirelessly NSF Seeks New Approach to Helping Minority Students in Science IBM Will Research Mobile Access for the Elderly, Illiterate Computer Says No Analytical Eye: Viewing Through the Data Jungle Berkeley Prof Helped Divvy Up Search to Many Servers Wall Street Journal (03/15/10) Clark, Don ACM has named University of California, Berkeley computer science professor Eric Brewer the recipient of the 2009 ACM-Infosys Foundation Award for his contribution to the development of highly scalable Internet services. Brewer broke down jobs, which once required large and expensive servers systems, so they could be handled by many inexpensive, small machines. Brewer also developed a way to replicate computing chores so that if one server went down, another would provide the answer without users noticing an interruption. He also developed Brewer's wireless hypothesis, which suggests providing communications and computing capabilities to developing nations is more helpful than waiting for more conventional components of their economies to take shape. Instead of using Wi-Fi technology to cover a small area, Brewer developed technology called WiLDNet that can send signals in a single direction over long distances at a very low cost. Applications of WiLDNet include helping to remotely diagnose eye ailments by using wireless videoconferencing. "He demonstrated not only could you help people but you could advance the state of the art," says Berkeley computer science professor David Patterson. The award, which is sponsored by the Infosys Foundation, includes a $150,000 prize.Effort to Widen U.S. Internet Access Sets Up Battle New York Times (03/12/10) Stelter, Brian; Wortham, Jenna The U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) proposes to offer a 10-year plan to implement broadband Internet as the reigning communications network in the United States. FCC officials say the commission's recommendations will include a subsidy for Internet providers to wire rural U.S. regions currently without access, a voluntary auction of some broadcast spectrum to open up space for wireless devices, and the development of a new universal set-top box that links to the Internet and cable service. The FCC says the proceeds from the spectrum auctions alone should pay for the plan. About one-third of U.S. residents either lack broadband Internet access, cannot afford it, or opt not to have it. In a February address, FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said that broadband wiring would be of immeasurable help to the U.S.'s construction of cutting-edge computers and applications, otherwise "it would be like having the technology for great electric cars, but terrible roads." Another part of the plan calls for outfitting 100 million households with high-speed Internet with a maximum speed of 100 Mbps by the end of this decade.Safety Issues Loom as Humanoid Invasion Approaches New Scientist (03/10/10) Marks, Paul As robot technology advances, and their use puts them in closer contact with humans, safety has become a top priority for some researchers. "Safe interaction needs a lot more than speech and language processing on the part of the robot," says Bristol Robotics Laboratory's Chris Melhuish. Bristol researchers are developing facial interaction technology that will make it clearer what a human can expect from a robot. Meanwhile, the pan-European iCub open source humanoid robot project, led by the Italian Institute of Technology's (ITT's) Giorgio Metta, is developing robot skin that can measure contact pressure. The most dangerous part of a humanoid robot is the legs, says ITT engineer Darwin Caldwell, who is working to make robot legs with less impact energy by using joints with lightweight brushless motor drives, contact sensors, and spring-loaded limbs. "By introducing compliance we could have robots that interact safely for humans and ensure robots don't break themselves," Caldwell says. - May Require Free Registration For Quantum Computer, Add a Dash of Disorder Science News (03/11/10) Grossman, Lisa The augmentation of the coupling between light and matter in quantum systems by disorder could eventually lead to fast quantum computers that are easy to construct, according to a study from researchers at the Technical University of Denmark. They have demonstrated that randomly arranged materials can capture light just as well as ordered ones. The researchers built a waveguide featuring holes that were randomly drilled into a gallium arsenide crystal, and also incorporated quantum dots as a substitute for atoms that could become entangled with photons. The quantum dots were induced to emit photons by hitting them with a laser, and the researchers discovered that 94 percent of the photons stayed close to their emitters, creating spots of trapped light in the crystal. The quantum dots also emitted photons 15 times faster after a light spot formed around them. If these light corrals can be entangled with each other, the system could one day support a quantum network in a randomly organized crystal.Supercapacitors Boost Efficiency University of Waikato (03/11/10) Waikato University researchers have developed working prototypes of a supercapacitor that could enable mobile phones and laptop computers to run longer between charges. The supercapacitors are designed to absorb the waste energy from linear power supplies and reuse it. Waikato engineer Nihal Kularatna says the researchers continue to address the issue of limiting the electrical interference generated by linear power supplies. Today's electrical equipment operates at lower voltages, and linear power supplies are capable of delivering high quality power at low efficiency. Supercapacitors have a sizable internal surface area and electrical storage capacity, and are able to absorb and discharge electricity very rapidly. The efficiency of a low dropout regulator circuit has been improved from 42 percent to more than 80 percent, Kularatna says.UMass Amherst Computer Scientists Develop an Emotion-Sensitive, Computer-Based Tutor That Improves Girls' Math Scores University of Massachusetts Amherst (03/10/10) Lathrop, Janet University of Massachusetts Amherst (UMA) computer scientists have developed a computer-based, emotionally perceptive math tutoring program aimed at girls. "According to our studies, the extra support they need compared to boys is more about emotion than information," says UMA professor Beverly Woolf. Studies have shown that girls in fifth grade thrive on extra attention and respond to supportive characters and positive feedback. The software's computer-based lessons use these techniques as well as sensors and cameras that can recognize when students are happy, stressed, or feeling confident. During testing, girls preferred receiving emotional support that matches their mood, but it seemed less important to boys. Currently, the software can correctly identify the mood of the user about 70 to 80 percent of the time. Other groups, such as low achievement and special needs students, also have shown improvement after using the software.Computational Modeling Improves Refinery Performance Curtin News (03/10/10) Ratcliff, Shaun Advanced computer modeling has enabled British Petroleum (BP) to determine the best design and operating conditions for its oil refinery in Kwinana. BP teamed up with the Curtin University of Technology and the University of Newcastle to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for the refinery's catalyst strippers, which use steam to separate hydrocarbons from the process that breaks up heavy crude oil into smaller molecular parts. A team led by Curtin's Center of Process Systems Computations (CPSC) used the CFD model to evaluate the internal structure that impacts the interactions between gases and solids, and to determine the optimal mix of steam, catalyst, and hydrocarbons inside the stripper. CPSC director Vishnu Pareek says simulating a few seconds of real-time interaction in the catalyst stripper used to take weeks. "This project used innovative techniques to achieve realistic flow predictions with the least amount of computational effort required," he says. BP says the CFD model will help save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on steam usage.Malicious Systems of a Feather Flock Together Government Computer News (03/11/10) Jackson, William Indiana University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed a method for finding where malicious systems originate. The researchers performed a statistical analysis of Internet Protocol (IP) addresses from blacklists to identify Internet service providers, hosting services, or other autonomous systems with high levels of blacklisted IP addresses. "We wanted to be able to say if a particular network is doing a good job of cleaning up its machines," says Oak Ridge researcher Craig Shue. The researchers found that some autonomous systems have more than 80 percent of their IP addresses blacklisted. Three U.S.-based hosting providers accounted for more than six percent of one of the blacklists, a disproportionately large percentage for the size of the systems. "This indicates that some [autonomous systems] have either too lax a security policy or may be intentionally harboring cybercrime," the researchers say. The next step is to evaluate the quality of the blacklist data.Researchers Use Light From LEDs to Send Data Wirelessly Computerworld (03/10/10) Hamblen, Matt Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications researchers have experimented with using visible light from commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data wirelessly at speeds of up to 230 Mbit per sec. One advantage to using light to carry data over Wi-Fi or another system is that the lights are already in the room, says Fraunhofer researcher Jelena Vucic. A signal from a LED is generated by slightly flickering all the lights in unison at a rate millions of times faster than the human eye can detect. Although the bandwidth for commercial LEDs is limited to a few megahertz, Vucic's team increased the amount tenfold by filtering out all the light except for the blue part of the spectrum. The researchers say the data rate could be doubled with some modulation adjustments.NSF Seeks New Approach to Helping Minority Students in Science Chronicle of Higher Education (03/10/10) Basken, Paul U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) programs that assist specific racial and ethnic groups would be consolidated under a new proposal from the agency. According to the Obama administration's budget recommendations for the 2011 fiscal year, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program would be replaced by the $103 million Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, which would be allotted 14 percent more in funding than the three programs currently receive. NSF director Arden L. Bement Jr. says the number of minority students majoring in the sciences was not increasing fast enough under the old approach. "Linear growth is no longer acceptable, so we have to go into geometric growth," Bement says.IBM Will Research Mobile Access for the Elderly, Illiterate IDG News Service (03/09/10) Ribeiro, John Researchers at IBM Research India, India's National Institute of Design, and the University of Tokyo's Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology are investigating a common, open source user interface for mobile devices that will ease their use by older or illiterate people. IBM Research India's Nitendra Rajput says the goal of the research is to uncover common points and differences in the response to IT by both the aged and the illiterate, and to develop a multimode interface that both groups can access. He notes that although voice would seem to be the most applicable technology for access to information on mobile phones for illiterate people, it may not be the optimal choice for communicating information such as statistical tables or pictorial data. The researchers also are exploring other information accessibility options, including the use of images as an accessory to text and audio material.Computer Says No University of Leeds (03/08/10) Dixon, Guy Errors, bias, and the tendency to try to confirm what we think continue to impact decision-making when people rely on computers for extra information, says Leeds University professor John Maule. He notes that computers are designed to assume that people will act logically. "Many problems in how we make decisions have been attributed to limitations in how we memorize and process information, and computers are often used to overcome these restrictions," he says. "But because many computer systems have been developed without a full understanding of how people actually think, computers can lead people to make bad decisions." He believes people need to think more critically about how they approach the large quantities of information computers analyze and evaluate. Maule also says there is a need for more advanced information technology systems with an understanding of human psychology.Analytical Eye: Viewing Through the Data Jungle Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (03/10) Visualization techniques can help improve the understanding of the large volumes of data people accumulate, according to researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research (IGD). The researchers combined analytical methods and visualization techniques in a new system, Visual Analytics, which empowers users. "The user and the computer interact closely, but the user is always in the forefront," says IGD's Jorn Kohlhammer. "He or she makes the decisions, not the system." Today's business intelligence programs often use analytical methods that only display data in the form of lists or reports. However, Visual Analytics can display data in a mosaic of colored surfaces, which immediately catch the eye. Displaying information in different colors and in different patterns makes it easier to notice connections and relationships, and ultimately evaluate the data more accurately.

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• 12 Mar 2010 14:51

  Welcome to the March 12, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Conquering the Chaos in Modern, Multiprocessor Computers Software's Take on the Light Bulb Joke Race Matters Research Streamlines Data Processing to Solve Problems More Efficiently The HaptiMap Project Aims to Make Maps Accessible Through Touch, Hearing and Vision Interview With Chuck Thacker, PC Pioneer How to Build a Superluminal Computer International Deal Struck in Race to Build Quantum Computer Group Seeks to Open Source Data-Center Design Mobile Phones Learn to Lip Read Five Years, Half a Million Members, and 300,000 Years of Service to Society For Smaller Chips, Borrow 18th-Century Tricks NCSA to Provide Ember as Shared-Memory Resource for Nation's Researchers Conquering the Chaos in Modern, Multiprocessor Computers University of Washington News and Information (03/10/10) Hickey, Hannah University of Washington (UW) researchers have devised a method for coaxing predictable behavior out of modern, multiprocessor computers by automatically parceling sets of commands and assigning them to specific sites. The program runs faster than it would on a single processor, due to the concurrent calculation of the command sets. "We've developed a basic technique that could be used in a range of systems, from cell phones to data centers," says UW professor Luis Ceze. "Ultimately, I want to make it really easy for people to design high-performing, low-energy and secure systems." One application of the system can aid the proper testing of programs by making errors reproducible. A software-based version of this system, which could be used on existing machines, was presented this week by UW graduate student Tom Bergan at ACM's International Conference on Architectural Support for Programming Languages and Operating Systems.Software's Take on the Light Bulb Joke ICT Results (03/12/10) A European project has developed software to maximize packing efficiency through the creation of algorithms that employ a "constraint programming approach." The scheme's first step involves applying all of a problem's various constraints as a way to reduce possible solutions in an effort to find the best answer. The second step constitutes the actual search for the solution, which is accelerated and made more efficient by keeping the shrinkage of the search space active. The project researchers also have eliminated "forbidden regions," approaches to the problem that will ultimately lead to a dead end or an unworkable solution. An entire language to express a problem's constraints was developed as well. Such constraints include stability constraints for a pallet or business constraints such as maximum weights. The system, developed by the Net-WMS consortium, includes the spatial algorithms, the rule program, and a virtual reality module, which are interlinked into a software solution for modeling, simulating, and optimizing the packing process.Race Matters Inside Higher Ed (03/11/10) Jaschik, Scott Black college instructors play a significant role in encouraging black science students to persist as science majors, according to a study by Cornell University doctoral student Joshua A. Price. He examined data on more than 157,000 students who enrolled as first-time freshmen in one of the 13 four-year universities in Ohio between 1998 and 2002 and who said that they planned to major in science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (STEM). Price then analyzed the likelihood of black students who had a black instructor and female students who had a female instructor sticking with their STEM major compared to those who did not. He found that black students who had at least one black science instructor as freshmen were statistically more likely to remain STEM majors than those who did not. Meanwhile, the presence or non-presence of at least one female instructor had no significant statistical impact on the persistence of female STEM majors. The study also found that black STEM students were more likely than white students to wind up in STEM courses or sections led by black instructors.Research Streamlines Data Processing to Solve Problems More Efficiently North Carolina State University (03/10/10) Shipman, Matt Enabling systems to determine which pieces of information would help solve a specific problem will allow them to work faster, according to researchers at North Carolina State University. Professor Joel Trussell and former Ph.D. student Huiwen Zeng have developed a new analytical method that enables systems using large amounts of data to work more efficiently. "The work we've done here allows for a more efficient collection of data by targeting exactly what information is most important to the decision-making process," Trussell says. "Basically, we've created a new algorithm that can be used to determine how much data is needed to make a decision with a minimal rate of error." The researchers say the algorithm has potential applications in analyzing hyperspectral data from military cameras, analyzing imaging tests in medical facilities, and in analyzing video and camera feeds for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.The HaptiMap Project Aims to Make Maps Accessible Through Touch, Hearing and Vision Basque Research (03/09/10) A European consortium plans to develop toolkits and concepts for improving the multimodal perceptualizations of mobile devices. Researchers on the HaptiMap project believe that gestures, tactile/haptic interaction, and sound would make maps and location-based services more accessible for users of mobile devices, especially when they are walking or cycling, are in bright sunlight, or for users who may have poor eyesight. The project is expected to lead to new guidelines on accessibility issues, suggestions for extending current design practices, and the creation of new tools to help developers add adaptable multimodal components to applications. The HaptiMap project hopes to fund a commercial partner to develop a location-based service that allows users to interact with haptic, audio, and/or visual information. Sweden's Lund University is the coordinator of the project, whose 13 members also include the Finnish Geodetic Institute, the University of Glasgow, Queen's University, and TECNALIA.Interview With Chuck Thacker, PC Pioneer EE Times (03/09/10) Merritt, Rick In an interview, Microsoft researcher Charles Thacker, who received ACM's 2009 A.M. Turing Award, says the computer industry's journey toward a new programming model to tap multicore processing is only just beginning. "You have to have parallel computers before you can figure out ways to program them, but you have to have parallel programs before you can build systems that can run them well," Thacker says. His recent areas of concentration include the Berkeley Emulation Engine, version 3, an FPGA-based system for devising multicore architectures. He also developed Bee Hive, a multicore system used to investigate parallel architectures such as transactional memory. Thacker says the acceptance of the tablet PC, which he helped pioneer, has been limited because of less than stellar battery life and handwriting recognition capability, although the former problem has been rectified. In a nominating letter, fellow A.M. Turing Award recipient and Microsoft researcher Butler Lampson called Thacker "an engineer's engineer," noting that "his skills span the full range."How to Build a Superluminal Computer Technology Review (03/09/10) Vienna University of Technology physicists Volkmar Putz and Karl Svozil have devised a way to process information that exceeds the speed of light. They see no reason why a nonlocal quantum phenomenon such as entanglement cannot be exploited to process information at superluminal speeds, and they note that the phenomenon can lead to materials with a refraction index of less than 1. For instance, light passing through a vacuum can be coaxed to spontaneously organize into an entangled electron-positron pair, which then recombines to form a photon again. This is an instantaneous process that lets the photon "jump" across space, and a material with a minus 1 refraction index would promote this type of process, according to Putz and Svozil. They propose that a vacuum filled with either electrons or positrons would be sufficient. The next step is the immersion of a computer within this medium, facilitating superluminal computation. The resulting hypercomputer would surpass the power of Turing machines and support non-Turing computations.International Deal Struck in Race to Build Quantum Computer Waterloo Record (Canada) (03/08/10) Mercer, Greg Researchers at the University of Waterloo's Institute for Quantum Computing and Singapore's Centre for Quantum Technologies have agreed to collaborate to build the world's first quantum computer. Researchers from both institutes already have worked together on experiments and co-written research papers, and the agreement formalizes a partnership that has been in place for several years. "We both have a critical mass right now," says National University of Singapore provost Tan Eng Chye. "If we put them together, the chances we will be successful are much higher." The collaboration will complement work already being done at both institutes, says Singapore Institute director Artur Ekert. The agreement provides faculty at both institutes with access to each other's facilities and the right to use equipment that their institute doesn't have. "There is a friendly competition, but it is not adversarial," Ekert says. "There is a feeling now that we are working in a global village."Group Seeks to Open Source Data-Center Design IDG News Service (03/05/10) Niccolai, James The recently announced Open Source Data Center Initiative is looking to apply open source principles to the design and construction of data centers. The initiative, which will act as a repository and testbed for mechanical and engineering advances in data center design, hopes to attract innovations from small engineering firms, graduate students performing research with federal grant money, and other researchers. Group adviser Michael Manos hopes the initiative will motivate established engineering firms to rethink how data centers are built. "When you think of all the great things we've been talking about at data center conferences, about moving to greener designs and driving efficiency with new technologies--a lot of that innovation is being held back because competition for those ideas is not out there," he says. The group also will get involved in education, and will publish real-world data on the cost of implementing projects, such as fresh-air cooling systems, so customers have more transparency when making decisions.Mobile Phones Learn to Lip Read BBC News (03/05/10) Karlsruhe Institute of Technology professor Tanja Shultz demonstrated a prototype device for communicating without speaking at the recent CeBIT conference. The technology uses electromyography to detect the electrical signals muscles produce when someone speaks, which also is a technique commonly used to diagnose certain diseases. For the prototype, nine electrodes are attached to a user's face. "These capture the electrical potentials that result from you moving your articulatory muscles," Shultz says. The technology passes the electrical pulses to a device that records and amplifies them, and transmits the signal via Bluetooth to a laptop, where software translates the signals into text that can be spoken by a synthesizer. Shultz says the technology could be used by people who have lost their voice, or could support an instant translation system. Also, by integrating the lip-reading technology into mobile phones, commuters would be able to engage in silent phone conversations, Shultz says.Five Years, Half a Million Members, and 300,000 Years of Service to Society University of Texas at Austin (03/03/10) Dubrow, Aaron Since its inception more than five years ago, the World Community Grid volunteer distributed computer network has attracted 500,000 registered users and approximately 1.5 million connected devices, which have collectively performed more than 320,000 years of research in service to society. The Grid taps the computing muscle of off-duty computing cycles so that researchers can tackle a variety of Grand Challenge problems. The Grid divides the workload of massive calculations into small pieces that can be performed on a typical PC and then sent back to the Grid for reassembly. One Grid project supported by the Texas Advanced Computing Center is attempting to find drug-like molecules that can effectively halt the replication of dengue, West Nile, and hepatitis C viruses. In the past 12 months, between 30,000 and 100,000 PCs have focused on the problem.For Smaller Chips, Borrow 18th-Century Tricks New Scientist (03/05/10) Barras, Colin A team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has devised a new technique for printing much smaller computer chips that borrows from the original lithographic method and could lead to advances in ultra-high-density computer storage. Molecular transfer printing entails transferring ink from a master to a replica, wherein a master chip fabricated via conventional photolithography is coated with block copolymers. Two mixed copolymers self-assemble to form crystal patterns that reproduce those of the etched silicon chip, and then the chip is heated for several hours to lock the pattern in place as a copolymer film. UW-Madison research team leader Paul Nealey says the block copolymer technique permits printing at a "significantly higher resolution" than the master copy. He says the technique could be used in computer storage, where dense arrays of identically repeating punch-card-like patterns are required.NCSA to Provide Ember as Shared-Memory Resource for Nation's Researchers National Center for Supercomputing Applications (03/02/10) The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) soon will deploy a highly parallel shared memory supercomputer that will double the performance of its five-year-old predecessor, the Cobalt system. Ember, which will have a peak performance of 16 teraflops, will feature 1,536 processor cores and 8 TB of memory. It also will offer 170 TB of storage with 13.5 GB/s I/O bandwidth. "There has been a clear increase in the demand for shared memory resources," says TeraGrid Forum chairman John Towns, whose persistent infrastructure team at NCSA will deploy and support Ember. "Allocation requests for shared-memory systems have consistently exceeded the available resources--by as much as sevenfold in a recent review of requests--and have been followed by a series of results highlighted in TeraGrid publications." The system will support applications that require large-scale shared memory architecture. Researchers will be able to access Ember initially through the U.S. National Science Foundation's TeraGrid and then in March 2011 through the eXtreme Digital program.

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• 10 Mar 2010 13:40

  Welcome to the March 10, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Computing Prize Winner Did Not Rest on His Laurels Machine-Learning Revolutionizes Software Development Could This Be The Robot Servant Who Will Serve You Breakfast In Bed? A Little Black Box to Jog Failing Memory A 4.2 Million (Pound) Grant Ensures a Sustainable Future for Software Mapping the Malicious Web Japan Baby-Robot Teaches Parenting Skills NC State Research Advances Voice Security Technology Life and Death of Online Communities New 'Hearing' Maps Are Real Conversation Starters Context Is Ev . . . Well, Something, Anyway Scientists Devise Global Food Alert Developing Web Technologies to Share Secure Information Assessing the State of U.S. Science and Engineering Computing Prize Winner Did Not Rest on His Laurels The Wall Street Journal (03/09/10) Clark, Don ACM has named computer science pioneer Charles P. Thacker the recipient of the 2009 A.M. Turing Award for his many contributions, which includes the Alto, a machine developed more than 30 years ago at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) that is often credited as the world's first personal computer. Thacker says the inspiration for the Alto came from PARC manager Bob Taylor's vision of computers as machines capable of transforming documents and other communications media. He says innovations such as dynamic random access memory chips enabled the PARC team to outfit the Alto with bit-mapped computer displays. ACM also cites Thacker's contributions to the invention of Ethernet and his work on tablet-style computers since becoming a researcher at Microsoft in the 1990s. Thacker "is a real genius," says former PARC researcher and fellow A.M. Turing Award winner Alan Kay. "We don't like to sling that word around in our field, but he is one. He is magic."Machine-Learning Revolutionizes Software Development ICT Results (03/09/10) European researchers from the Milepost project used machine-language technology to develop a method for automatically optimizing software compilers for re-configurable embedded processors. The technology can learn how to get the best performance from the hardware, which enables the software to run faster and use less energy. The system learns to predict the optimal compiler solution for any program by analyzing the execution time of different compiler options. "If you can run things faster and more energy efficiently, you may be able to choose a different piece of hardware than before--perhaps a cheaper option for the same performance," says University of Edinburgh professor and Milepost project coordinator Michael O'Boyle. The Milepost team also launched a code-tuning Web site. Developers can upload their software code to the site and receive input on how to manipulate their code so it works faster. "We can use machine-learning technologies to look at multicore and heterogeneous platforms and we will be looking at dynamic online adaptation," O'Boyle says.Could This Be The Robot Servant Who Will Serve You Breakfast In Bed? London Daily Mail (03/08/10) Bates, Claire Tokyo University researchers have created Kojiro, a humanoid robot that is learning to mimic how people walk. Kojiro has a skeletal structure similar to that of humans, which allows it to move in a more natural way, as it can bend and twist by bending and twisting using its artificial spine. The spine's design will enable scientists to develop lighter and more flexible robots in the future, says Tokyo professor and Kojiro researcher Yuto Nakanishi. Kojiro uses lightweight motors to pull cables attached to specific locations on the body, which simulates how muscles and tendons contract and relax when people move. Kojiro has 60 degrees of free movement using a system of about 100 cable-tendons. Sensors are used to keep track of Kojiro's various positions, and an accelerometer and two gyroscopes help the robot maintain balance. The researchers say more work is needed on the algorithms that control the robot's movements to enable it to handle complex actions.A Little Black Box to Jog Failing Memory The New York Times (03/09/10) P. D6; Bhattacharjee, Yudhijit Microsoft researchers have developed Sensecam, a system for creating digital archives of a person's experiences that could help people suffering from memory disorders. Sensecam features a small black box containing a digital camera and an accelerometer to measure movement. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers had one subject go on three excursions with a Sensecam, a voice recorder, and a global positioning system (GPS) unit. The researchers found that the best way to help the subject remember the experiences was to focus on a few key images that might unlock the memories related to it. For a location-based experience, Sensecam uses data provided by the GPS and the accelerometer to determine which images might be the most salient. "The design is intended to give the patient the ability to engage actively with the experience instead of simply flipping through some pictures," says CMU's Matthew Lee. At Dublin City University, Alan Smeaton compares Sensecam images to categorize them by activity. At the University of Toronto, Ronald Baecker is studying the usefulness of complementing Sensecam images with an audio narrative created by a loved one.A 4.2 Million (Pound) Grant Ensures a Sustainable Future for Software University of Southampton (ECS) (03/09/10) Lewis, Joyce Academics and software engineers from the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, and Southampton have established the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), which will partner with about 30 to 40 research communities across the United Kingdom to develop ways to keep their software current and to help them develop it to meet new requirements. SSI will optimize strategies for sustaining software and provide communities with best practices for improving it for future users. "The issue at the moment is that there are no coordinated ways of sustaining important research software once it comes to the end of its funding," says SSI director Neil Chue Hong. "The creation of the SSI will ensure that important software is sustained so that it can continue to contribute towards high quality research."Mapping the Malicious Web Technology Review (03/09/10) Lemos, Robert Websense researchers have developed FireShark, software that automatically monitors malicious activity on Web sites. Websense researcher Stephan Chenette says the experimental system scans the Web, identifies the source of embedded content in Web pages, and determines whether any code on a site is acting maliciously. FireShark then creates a map of interconnected Web sites and looks for potentially malicious content. FireShark, which maps nearly one million Web sites and servers per day, decodes the HTML, Javascript, and other code embedded in each Web site, looking for the ultimate source of content. "When you graph multiple sites, you can see their communities of content," Chenette says. Websense researchers plan to release a plug-in for Firefox that will reveal the content hubs that a site is linked to.Japan Baby-Robot Teaches Parenting Skills Agence France Presse (03/10/10) de Freytas-Tamura, Kimiko Tsukuba University engineering students have developed Yotaro, a baby humanoid robot designed to teach young people about parenting. Yotaro's face is made out of soft translucent silicon and is backlit by a projector connected to a computer to simulate sneezing, sleeping, and smiling, while a speaker emits sounds such as giggling or crying. Sensors detect physical contact and can change the robot's mood based on the frequency of the touches. Yotaro also simulates a runny nose with a water pump that releases body-temperature droplets of water through the nostrils. Meanwhile, the University of Osaka recently unveiled a robot that mimics a crawling baby as part of a research project to study the way humans learn to move and speak. The Osaka robot has 22 motors and 90 tactile sensors and microphones located near the eyes and ears. When told to move forward, the baby-bot will wave its legs and arms, gradually learning which movements will enable it to push itself up and crawl, says Osaka professor Minoru Asada.NC State Research Advances Voice Security Technology North Carolina State University (03/08/10) Shipman, Matt A North Carolina State University (NCSU) research team led by professor Robert Rodman has developed a computer model that accelerates the voice identification process without sacrificing accuracy. Existing computer models take several seconds or longer to compare acoustic profiles and identify a speaker, which is too long for the technology to be widely used, according to Rodman. "In order for this technology to gain traction among users, the response time needs to improve without increasing the error rate," he says. The researchers modified existing computer models to make the authentication process work more efficiently. "This is part of the evolution of speech authentication software, and it moves us closer to making this technology a practical, secure tool," Rodman says.Life and Death of Online Communities University of Haifa (03/08/10) An online chat channel is more likely to survive over time when the community is heterogeneous, or when it has turnover and new members continue to join the group, according to researchers at the University of Haifa and the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The team surveyed 282 chat channels begun on the same day over the course of six months. The survey found that the greater the turnover among members, the more likely a chat community will sustain itself over time. Moreover, chat groups are more likely to survive when they have a higher number of messages between members from the first day of activity through the end of its second week. The researchers also found that chat communities that have an irregular ratio between the number of messages and the number of members after two weeks are more likely to survive. "The present study shows that prediction of an online community's survival chances cannot be based on quantitative data relating to the size of the group or even to its growth rate alone," says Haifa's Daphne Raban. "A social predictor, on the other hand, can much better predict its chances."New 'Hearing' Maps Are Real Conversation Starters Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (03/05/10) Cardiff University researchers have developed software that creates audibility maps of proposed room designs. The maps show hotspots where conversations would be inaudible if the room was noisy, enabling architects to adjust their designs to eliminate them and maximize audibility. Cardiff University professor John Culling says the software is specifically designed to improve the acoustics of indoor spaces where a large number of people meet, chat, and interact. He says the software also produces results much faster than other acoustic software. The key to the software is a mathematical equation that is based on research examining how people take in sound through both ears as it travels around a room. Culling says the work will be useful in areas where audibility is important, such as rail and airport announcement waiting areas. He says the research also will help in the future development of hearing aids and cochlear implants.Context Is Ev . . . Well, Something, Anyway MIT News (03/05/10) Hardesty, Larry Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a way to improve object recognition systems by using information about their context. The researchers used a set of more than 4,000 images and 107 different types of objects and created an algorithm that sorted the images into a hierarchical map of the object categories. In the map, each object is connected to at most one object above it in the hierarchy, which greatly reduces the number of connections the system must consider. The connection between two objects is given a weight that describes how often the objects appear together in the image set. When the system analyzes a new image, it uses object recognition algorithms to create a list of candidate objects and a confidence score. In testing, the system had a success rate of about 25 percent. "We absolutely cannot afford to take our eye off the ball of the component recognition systems that need to feed these context engines," says University of California, San Diego professor Serge Belongie. To be useful, object recognition systems need to be much more precise than today's prototypes, Belongie says.Scientists Devise Global Food Alert Kingston University London (United Kingdom) (03/04/10) Coslett, Cara Kingston University scientists have developed a computer tool for monitoring food products. Kingston professor Declan Naughton says the program, which analyzes the alerts of other food-monitoring programs around the world, can provide detailed information on which countries are trading contaminated food as well as detect contaminated food more quickly. "No other system can reflect the complexity of this information in a snapshot form," Naughton says. He worked with statistician Andrea Petroczi and computer programmer Tamas Nepusz to develop the system. "We'd like to develop the tool to create an international alert system that will provide real-time information about emerging patterns and problems," Naughton says. He also believes the technology could be used to help prepare for malicious attempts to contaminate food and even monitor other kinds of global health hazards.Developing Web Technologies to Share Secure Information PhysOrg.com (03/02/10) Semantic Web technology will be a key tool in the development of a standard policy language for sharing information between agencies, countries, and organizations. Research conducted by a team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) will help the U.S. Air Force exchange resources and data securely, as well as adapt to new or changed policy dynamically without modifying code. "We are creating for the first time a policy interchange language or Interlingua grounded in Semantic Web technologies that will enable a secure exchange of information between entities using different languages to express their security constraints," says MIT's Lalana Kagal. Interlingua will use translations to capture key functions and characteristics, and facilitate translations of commonly used policy languages. "We would like to see the interchange language become standardized so that there would be widespread use, development of more tools and protocols around it," Kagal says. Assessing the State of U.S. Science and Engineering ScienceNews (02/27/10) Vol. 177, No. 5, P. 32; Lanzerotti, Louis New Jersey Institute of Technology physicist Louis Lanzerotti, chairman of the National Science Board's Science and Engineering Indicators committee, says the board's recent report to the White House on the state of science and engineering is generally positive. The United States is very robust in terms of research and development (R&D), but there are areas where it is falling behind the rest of the world, according to Lanzerotti. He notes that countries such as Japan and South Korea are surpassing the United States in the portion of their gross domestic product committed to R&D. Lanzerotti also notes a slight uptick in the performance of basic research by U.S. industry since around 2006 or 2007, a trend he says mirrors what is happening worldwide. Lanzerotti maintains that the public perception of science and engineering in the United States is very high, with 75 percent to 80 percent of the population viewing it in a positive light. "I think a very important point is that scientists rank as high in public respect as do firefighters," he says. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 08 Mar 2010 15:11

  Welcome to the March 8, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Putin Spearheads Innovation Effort Robot Bred in Wales to Seek Life on Red Planet System to Facilitate Internet Use By Disabled Is Evaluated Hunting Mobile Threats in Memory 3D Graphics & Reality Fuse on the Fly 'Microrings' Could Nix Wires for Communications in Homes, Offices The Next Secure Hash Algorithm Had Better Be a Good One Aerial Surveillance Technology Could Keep Soldiers Safer Printable Sensors to Detect Fingers Without Touching Quantum on Quantum Blue Ribbon Task Force Report: Preserving Our Digital Knowledge Base Must Be a Public Priority Survey: Educators Aren't Discussing STEM Careers With Students Data, Data Everywhere Putin Spearheads Innovation Effort Moscow Times (03/04/10) Medetsky, Anatoly Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin announced that the government would spend more than a tenth of its budget on science and innovation this year. "We have assigned about 1.1 trillion rubles ($36.8 billion), or more than 10 percent of the federal budget, for fundamental and applied sciences, higher education, high-tech medicine, and specialized federal programs," Putin said. The government increased its science and innovation spending by more than 300 billion rubles in 2009 compared to 2008. The new effort to promote science and innovation includes requiring competition for scientific projects and giving preference to innovative options when the state buys products and services. Separately, Putin announced that Russia has allocated 1.1 billion rubles ($37 million) to develop supercomputer technologies in Russia. Last year Russia launched its fastest supercomputer, Lomonosov, at the Moscow State University's Research Computing Center. Lomonosov has a peak speed of 420 teraflops and is ranked as the 12th fastest computer in the world.Robot Bred in Wales to Seek Life on Red Planet Western Mail (Wales) (03/08/10) Williams, Sally Aberystwyth University researcher Stephen Pugh has developed a picture-taking robot designed to look for signs of life on Mars. Pugh is fine-tuning the robot's onboard panoramic cameras and teaching it to point and shoot at features on the planet's surface. "I have been looking in particular at how the robotic rover can point its camera at specific targets, such as rocks, without human intervention," he says. The research's long-term goal is to increase scientific data for all future planetary missions. "NASA has already found evidence of ice on Mars, but I don't think rover will find evidence of anything more than water because if it was there I think we would have found it by now," Pugh says. The researcher is developing software that will enable the robot to discover locations of interest more quickly and to choose targets for pictures by itself, without communicating with scientists on Earth.System to Facilitate Internet Use By Disabled Is Evaluated Basque Research (03/04/10) Bulegoa, Prentsa University of the Basque Country (UBC) researcher Markel Vigo recently published his Ph.D. thesis on the Web Accessibility Quantitative Metric (WAQM), a system that automatically measures the accessibility level of a Web page. WAQM can measure the level of accessibility according to the type of disability of each person and automatically create an accessibility report for each Web page. This allows users to conduct an Internet search and have criteria related to their specific disability taken into consideration. The system uses the Unified Guidelines Language to give each Web page a score, which is shown next to the Web page's link, based on its level of accessibility. Vigo says his system gives people with disabilities more control when carrying out a search on the Internet. WAQM also can create different accessibility grades based on the type of device that is being used. Each user gets a profile based on information about the type of disability, the Internet device of choice, and other factors, and this profile is used to personalize the accessibility report for each Web page.Hunting Mobile Threats in Memory Technology Review (03/05/10) Naone, Erica Xerox PARC scientist Markus Jakobsson has developed a way to detect malware on mobile devices that can catch unknown viruses and protect a device without draining its battery or straining its processor. The approach relies on having a central server monitor a device's memory for signs that it has been infected. The system checks a device by shutting down nonvital applications to make sure nothing is running except the detection software and the operating system. If malware is present and active, it will need to use some random access memory (RAM) to execute instructions on the device. The central server contacts the detection software to see if malware is using RAM by measuring how much memory is available. Once a device passes this check, the system can be certain that no malware programs are actively running, at which point it can scan secondary storage for dormant malware. Jakobsson notes the system is designed to find existing malware, and is not a prevention program.3D Graphics & Reality Fuse on the Fly University of Oxford (03/04/10) Wilton, Pete Oxford University researchers have developed the Parallel Tracking and Mapping (PTAM) program, a camera-tracking system for fusing real and three-dimensional (3D) computer-generated visuals. PTAM enables users to project virtual objects or characters into a video stream that appears on real world surfaces. "The blending of real and virtual worlds is common enough in films and television, but is usually achieved by extensive processing of the recorded images or by filming in studios with known objects at fixed locations," says Oxford professor David Murray. "The PTAM software allows developers to augment a camera's video stream in real time and in everyday locations." PTAM builds a map of thousands of features from objects and scenes, tracks accurately and at a standard frame rate, and calculates the camera viewpoint and angle. The technology also could improve global positioning systems and digital compasses, and provide support for satellite, 3G, and Wi-Fi signals.'Microrings' Could Nix Wires for Communications in Homes, Offices Purdue University News (03/03/10) Venere, Emil Purdue University researchers have developed a device that uses microring resonators to convert laser pulses into bursts of pulsating radio-frequency signals that avoid interference. The researchers say the technology could eliminate the need for wires when transferring data in homes, offices, and cars. The technology could enable all communications to be transmitted from a single base station, says Purdue professor Minghao Qi. Similar technology could eventually be developed to both transmit and receive signals. The key factor in making the breakthrough practical is that the pulses transmit radio frequencies of up to 60 gigahertz, which does not require a license in the United States. The unlicensed band also is permitted globally, which would allow the system to be implemented worldwide. The system's tiny silicon microring resonators filter out certain frequencies and allow others to pass. The microring filter can be tuned by heating the rings, which causes them to change and filter out different frequencies.The Next Secure Hash Algorithm Had Better Be a Good One Government Computer News (03/03/10) Jackson, William The National Institute of Standards and Technology is in the middle of a multi-year competition to pick the next hash algorithm, to be called SHA-3, which will be used to protect government files. Katholieke Universiteit Leuven professor Bart Preneel says SHA-3 will need to be sophisticated enough to withstand hacker attempts for the next 20 years. "It is unlikely there will be another competition (for SHA-4) before 2030," Preneel says. However, some observers say the selection process is moving too quickly. "I think they should pick three winners, not one, and spend several years studying them," says former National Security Agency technology director Brian Snow. The contest started with 51 algorithms, which were narrowed down to 14 in the first round. Researchers are now examining the 14 algorithms and are expected to pick a final five in late 2010. Both Snow and Preneel are concerned that not enough time is being given to thoroughly vet the remaining algorithms before a final choice is made.Aerial Surveillance Technology Could Keep Soldiers Safer Engineering & Physical Sciences Research Council (03/02/10) McLaughlin, Simon Cranfield University researchers have developed an autonomous computer framework for use in multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (MUAVs). The framework enables one operator to control numerous vehicles from a safe position on the ground, which the researchers say makes surveillance missions significantly cheaper. The framework allows an operator to program a mission objective and, through a series of control algorithms, it manages each vehicle's functions, including navigation, guidance, path planning, and decision making. "We have to be absolutely certain of the behavior of the UAVs if they are operating over civilian areas or in a battle situation," says Cranfield professor Antonios Tsourdos. The framework also increases the chances of a mission being conducted safely and successfully. In addition, MUAVs using the framework can be used by search and rescue services and for environmental surveillance, as well as for other civil applications, such as mining and traffic control.Printable Sensors to Detect Fingers Without Touching Engineer Live (03/01/10) The European Union 3Plast research consortium plans to develop sensors that can be printed onto plastic film and attached to everyday objects. The sensors are being designed to respond to changes in temperature and pressure, which would enable them to detect the movement of a finger. "The sensor is combined with an organic transistor, which strengthens the sensor signal," says project leader Gerhard Domann. Researchers have already printed sensors onto film, and are now optimizing transistors that can amplify changes in temperature and pressure. "By providing everyday objects with information about their environment--for example, whether a person is approaching--by means of pressure and temperature sensors, we can create and market new devices that can be controlled just by pointing a finger," Domann says. It will likely take several years to print sensors on large surfaces, he says.Quantum on Quantum Science News (02/27/10) Vol. 177, No. 5, P. 28; Petit, Charles Researchers at Harvard University and Australia's University of Queensland have designed and constructed a quantum computer capable of simulating and calculating the behavior of a molecular quantum system. The two photons that function as qubits in a quantum device are entangled, meaning that their states are linked and consistent over distance, thus augmenting the quantum computer's ability to explore all possible solutions to a complex problem at once. The researchers tasked the computer with calculating the energy levels of the hydrogen molecule. Through simulation of the quantum forces inherent in the electrons of atomic bonds themselves, the computer's photons accurately nailed the energy levels to within 6 parts per million. This milestone is "great, a proof of principle, more evidence that [a quantum computer] is not pie in the sky or cannot be built," says University of California, Berkeley professor Birgitta Whaley.Blue Ribbon Task Force Report: Preserving Our Digital Knowledge Base Must Be a Public Priority UCSD News (02/26/10) Zverina, Jan The Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital Preservation and Access recently released a report addressing the problem of ensuring that digital information will be accessible in the future. The report provides principles and actions to facilitate long-term economic sustainability and context-specific recommendations geared toward four specific scenarios--scholarly discourse, research data, commercially-owned cultural content (such as digital media), and collectively produced Web content such as personal Websites and blogs. "Valuable digital information spans the spectrum from official e-documents to some YouTube videos," says Task Force co-chair Fran Berman. The report also cites four distinct prioritized courses of action--organizational action, technical action, public policy action, and education and public outreach action. The report concludes that preservation strategies need to develop at their own pace. "A key element of a robust sustainability strategy is to anticipate the effect of these changes and take steps to minimize the risk that long-term preservation goals will be impacted by short-term disruptions," says Task Force co-chair Brian Lavoie.Survey: Educators Aren't Discussing STEM Careers With Students eSchool News (02/25/10) Stansbury, Meris Science and math educators are keeping classes knowledgeable and interesting, but they are not promoting science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) careers, according to most students surveyed by Harris Interactive for the American Society for Quality (ASQ). High school student respondents also say they do not think STEM knowledge is crucial to acquiring a good job. "We believe that as students get older and begin to diversify their studies and become more aware of the wide range of available career opportunities, they start to think that math and science aren't necessarily critical to their job hunt," says ASQ's Maurice Ghysels. He says that teachers often leave out discussions of career options because of time and budget constraints. One of the challenges is that teachers themselves may have little knowledge of the wide variety of available STEM career options. Despite these drawbacks, there are ways to kindle interest in STEM careers among students, one of them being to offer hands-on lab activities and real-world examples of STEM applications at an earlier educational level such as elementary school.Data, Data Everywhere Economist (02/25/10) The explosion of digital information has brought with it major benefits as well as drawbacks, and among the latter is the paucity of storage space to house all that data and the increasing difficulty of guaranteeing data security and shielding privacy. Factors underlying the surfeit of information include technological innovations, coupled with plummeting prices for digital devices. The volume of digital information increases by a factor of 10 every five years, and Cisco projects that the amount of traffic streaming over the Internet annually will balloon to 667 exabytes by 2013. Accompanying the growth of data is the advent of data scientists, who combine the talents of software programmers, statisticians, and storytellers/artists to sift meaning out of the information deluge. Although the increasing digitization of the world is likely to bring advantages to all kinds of fields and industries via data aggregation and analysis, currently the data flood has greatly contributed to major problems such as the recent financial crisis, where it became apparent that banks and rating agencies were long reliant on models which, although they required a massive amount of data to be fed in, did not mirror actual financial risk.

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• 05 Mar 2010 12:43

  Welcome to the March 5, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. IBM Researchers Claim Chip Design Advance Researchers Find Weakness in Common Digital Security System Feds Weigh Expansion of Internet Monitoring Anita Borg Institute Announces Women of Vision Award Winners Project PEPPHER Announced Speech Study May Help Phone Booking Lines New Organisation to Coordinate European Scientific Computing Grids Architects and Engineers Bridge the Grid Chasm Body Acoustics Can Turn Your Arm Into a Touchscreen Researchers Develop 3D Graphics Capability for Firefox The Power of Plant Clock Computing Recommendation Algorithm Wants to Show You Something New Researchers Engage Communities to Support Women in Information Technology Careers IBM Researchers Claim Chip Design Advance Wall Street Journal (03/04/10) P. B8; Glader, Paul; Clark, Don IBM researchers say they have developed new semiconductor technology that could change the way computer chips communicate, while boosting speed and lowering energy consumption. The researchers combined silicon and germanium to create an avalanche photodetector, which can convert light into energy. The photodetector uses pulses of light rather than copper wires to transmit information between chips, and is among the fastest and least power-hungry of its kind, according to the researchers. "By 2020, it may be the dominant way Google, governments, banks, and other large users are doing their computing," says analyst Richard Doherty. The system uses thin glass fibers rather than cables, yet creates connections that enable more data to flow at a higher speed. The researchers say their system can detect 40 gigabits of data per second and operates at 1.5 volts. The photodetector can detect weak pulses and amplify them without adding background noise. - May Require Paid Subscription Researchers Find Weakness in Common Digital Security System University of Michigan News Service (03/03/10) Moore, Nicole Casal University of Michigan (UM) researchers have found weaknesses in the RSA authentication encryption method, which is used to protect both media copyright and Internet communications. The scientists discovered they could breach the system by varying the voltage supply to the holder of the "private key," which would be the consumer's device in the case of copy protection and the retailer or bank in the case of Internet communications. Private keys contain more than 1,000 digits of binary code and would take longer than the age of the universe to guess, says UM doctoral student Andrea Pellegrini. However, using the voltage disrupting method, the UM researchers were able to obtain the private key in about 100 hours. Changing the electric current confuses the computer and causes it to make small mistakes in its communications with other clients. These faults reveal small pieces of the private key. After enough faults were created, the researchers were able to reconstruct the key offline without damaging the device.Feds Weigh Expansion of Internet Monitoring CNet (03/04/10) McCullagh, Declan A future expansion of Internet communications monitoring to the private sector is being considered by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the National Security Agency. DHS cybersecurity official Greg Schaffer says the department is assessing whether its Einstein 3 system for detecting and preventing cyberattacks "makes sense for expansion to critical infrastructure spaces" over time. Although some civil-liberties advocates warn the technology could be used to snoop on private networks, Schaffer dismisses such notions. "As a practical matter, you're looking at data that's relevant to malicious activity, and that's the data that you're focused on," he says. However, Tor anonymity project programmer Jacob Appelbaum says that expanding Einstein 3 to private companies would be tantamount to partly outsourcing security, and warns that "anyone with access to that monitoring system, legitimate or otherwise, would be able to monitor amazing amounts of traffic."Anita Borg Institute Announces Women of Vision Award Winners CIO (03/02/10) Levinson, Meridith The Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology has named Kathleen R. McKeown, Kristina M. Johnson, and Lila Ibrahim the winners of the 2010 Women of Vision Awards. McKeown, a computer science professor at Columbia University, is the winner in the innovation category for her work in natural language processing in artificial intelligence, information extraction, and human-machine interaction. Johnson, the Under Secretary for Energy and the dean of Duke University's Pratt School of Engineering, is the winner in the leadership category. At the U.S. Department of Energy, Johnson is working to reduce greenhouse gases, and she led Duke's effort to expand its engineering school. Ibrahim, general manager of Intel's Emerging Markets Platform Group, is the winner in the social impact category for leading Intel's efforts to use technology to support education, health, and e-governance around the world.Project PEPPHER Announced HPC Wire (02/26/10) The European PErformance Portability and Programmability of Heterogeneous many-core aRchitectures (PEPPHER) project is developing a methodology and architecture for applications that can be ported across different types of both homogeneous and hybrid multicore systems while preserving critical aspects of performance. The project features a high-level compositional framework for developing applications from parallelized components, compiler support for efficient translation of components to different target architectures and configurations, algorithms capable of static as well as dynamic adaptation to different architectural parameters, efficient run-time support for scheduling compiled components on available cores of different types, and hardware support mechanisms for programmability and portability. The PEPPHER methodology enables different components to be both expressed and compiled by the methods most relevant to the architectures on which the component may operate. Lasting until the end of 2012, PEPPHER involves four European universities--the Universities of Vienna, Chalmers, Linkoeping, and Karlsruhe--INRIA, European SMEs Code play and Movidius, and one of Intel's European labs.Speech Study May Help Phone Booking Lines University of Edinburgh (03/04/10) Computer scientists at the University of Edinburgh and Stanford University are developing ways to improve automated phone systems by studying phone conversations and how speech recognition systems process the discussions. The research highlights a number of speech recognition errors committed by computer-based systems. For example, the researchers found that "umm" and "err" sounds often cause problems for speech recognition systems, and men tend to use these sounds more frequently than women. Also, computers often fail to identify the first word of a phrase, either because they cannot put the word into context or because people inhale just before they begin to speak. Words that sound similar and can be used in a similar context also often cause problems for speech recognition systems, especially when they are not enunciated properly. The researchers also found that computer systems tend to have problems with variations in pitch, tone, and speed.New Organisation to Coordinate European Scientific Computing Grids Science & Technology Facilities Council (03/02/10) Coles, Karen The European Grid Initiative (EGI.eu) will coordinate a European-wide grid computing infrastructure that will enable scientists to share computers to carry out collaborative research projects. "The creation of EGI.eu and continued development of a European-wide infrastructure for grid computing will enable researchers across the continent to make the next leap in world-leading science," says the Science & Technology Facilities Council's Neil Geddes. EGI.eu will coordinate clusters of computers in more than 50 countries through the National Grid Initiatives (NGIs). EGI.eu and the NGIs will direct the progress, operations, maintenance, and sustainability of the EGI infrastructure. EGI.eu interim director Steven Newhouse says the grid infrastructure's "core software and operational tools have been refined over the last six or more years to become increasingly stable and secure."Architects and Engineers Bridge the Grid Chasm ICT Results (03/01/10) The European Union-funded BEinGRID project aims to convert cloud computing research into technology that can solve real-world problems. For example, BEinGRID researchers created GridforArchitects, an online, on-demand rendering service that creates three-dimensional mockups from blueprints. GridforArchitects, delivered via a Web portal, finds the necessary computing resources in the cloud. "It offers all the necessary computing power, so customers do not need to invest in expensive equipment they only need part of the time," says BEinGRID's Damien Hubaux. The project also developed cloud computing tools for advanced manufacturing and engineering, such as Computational Fluid Dynamics, which provides millions of calculations necessary to analyze fluid flows and other data of importance to the automotive and aeronautics industries.Body Acoustics Can Turn Your Arm Into a Touchscreen New Scientist (03/01/10) Marks, Paul Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Microsoft have developed Skinput, a skin-based interface that turns the human body into a touchscreen. Skinput merges the ability to detect the ultra-low frequency sound produced by tapping the skin with a finger, and the microchip-sized "pico" projectors found in some cell phones. Skinput projects a keyboard or menu onto the user's forearm and hand from a projector built into an armband. The armband also contains an acoustic detector, which calculates which part of the display should be activated. The researchers have identified various locations on the forearm and hand that make distinctive acoustic patterns when tapped. The acoustic detector contains five piezoelectric cantilevers, each designed to respond to certain bands of sound frequencies. Skinput also could be used to wirelessly transmit commands to electronic devices, such as cell phones and PCs.Researchers Develop 3D Graphics Capability for Firefox IDG News Service (MA) (03/03/10) Kirk, Jeremy Researchers have incorporated faster software for generating three-dimensional (3D) images into Firefox and plan to release the modified version of the browser within the next two weeks. Saarland University professor Philipp Slusallek helped demonstrate the modified browser at the recent CeBIT trade show, using a Wikipedia entry on Venice with 3D graphics of the city's palaces. "You can stand on the balcony and actually look at Venice from the top floor," Slusallek says. With faster real-time ray tracing technology integrated into the browser, images are described using XML3D, and 3D scenes can be natively rendered. "With the integration of HTML, it means that every Web programmer can directly apply their entire knowledge to 3D," he says. The built-in ability for viewing 3D graphics also should mean the capability will be used by more people. The researchers say that support from the World Wide Web Consortium would lead other software vendors to use the technology in their browsers.The Power of Plant Clock Computing Technology Review (03/01/10) Research into the use of process algebra to model the circadian rhythm in plants might yield computing efficiency that is several orders of magnitude greater than that of silicon-based computation. Conventional computational techniques are ill-suited for modeling a plant's biological processes because the processes do not involve independent sequential steps. However, University of Edinburgh researcher Ozgur Akman and colleagues used Bio-PEPA process algebra to simulate the circadian rhythm of the green alga Ostreococcus tauri. Bio-PEPA was used to produce a model of the various feedback loops in the alga's clock, and to investigate the clock's reaction to factors such as shifts in light patterns and genetic mutations. The plant clock model has been used to make some projections about the behavior of actual Ostreococcus populations. Process algebra features a property that is frequently neglected--the fact that it is not equivalent to a standard sequential Turing machine.Recommendation Algorithm Wants to Show You Something New Ars Technica (02/26/10) Johnston, Casey An international group of researchers have developed a new algorithm for recommender systems designed to address the challenge of diversity when making recommendations to users. The researchers say that people are most interested in recommendations and information originating from users that are somewhat similar but different enough that they can introduce something new. To widen the field of user interest, the authors developed a hybrid of two algorithms. One was based on recommendations from random walks between highly connected users and material. The other mimicked the process of heat diffusion, spreading ratings at a decreasing level of potency as the recommendations came from farther away. By combining the heat diffusion approach with the more accurate random walk, the researchers found that they could establish a body of recommendations that combined novelty items with safer choices. In addition, combining both algorithms allowed for more accurate recommendations than using either alone.Researchers Engage Communities to Support Women in Information Technology Careers Virginia Tech News (02/24/10) Elliot, Jean Virginia Tech's Appalachian Information Technology Extension Service (AITES) is a research-based extension program designed to provide support for young women seeking careers in information technology (IT) in the Appalachian region. The researchers say girls from the targeted regions tend to choose fields and careers not related to technology because of preconceived notions, stereotypes, and lack of support from those around them. The AITES program works to increase community capacity and support economic development in the targeted regions through the development of community cohort teams. The teams focus on training parents, teachers, and school counselors to be good support systems for girls who are interested in technology. The researchers say the "train-the-trainer" model greatly increases the reach of AITES. "With the multiplier effect of the train-the-trainer model, the circle of informed individuals in the community who reach the girls will get wider every day, so that eventually girls will be reaching girls," says Virginia Tech researcher Peggy Meszaros.

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• 03 Mar 2010 11:49

  Welcome to the March 3, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. US Plan to Make Hacking Harder Revealed Skills Experts Bemoan Poor IT Teaching The Interpreter in the Laptop Striving to Map the Shape-Shifting Net Software Sniffs Out Criminals By the Shape of Their Nose What's Next for High-Performance Computing? Bio-Inspired Computer Networks Self-Organise and Learn 3D Display Made of Flying Pixel-Copters in the Works Nanomachinery Lights Up Making Sense of Mountains of Data Deluge of Scientific Data Needs to Be Curated for Long-Term Use Attack Unmasks User Behind the Browser The Grill: Tom Mitchell Researchers Envision High-Tech Applications for 'Multiferroic' Crystals US Plan to Make Hacking Harder Revealed Financial Times (03/03/10) P. 4; Menn, Joseph The Obama administration has declassified part of its plan to improve the security of cyberspace in an attempt to cultivate greater collaboration between government and civilian groups. More cooperation between the private sector and the U.S. National Security Agency is the centerpiece of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI). The declassified abstract of the plan reveals that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security will operate a new security system, called Einstein 3, that analyzes email and other data traffic into and out of federal networks. CNCI also urges merged oversight of federal spending on research and development in cybersecurity, with a particular focus on "leap-ahead" technology. Although the initiative acknowledges that traditional security approaches "have not achieved the level of security needed," it says the federal government is now outlining "grand challenges" for the research community to help solve the most difficult problems.Skills Experts Bemoan Poor IT Teaching V3.co.uk (03/02/10) Marshall, Rosalie Information technology (IT) needs to be taught a different way in schools if the industry is to deepen its talent pool, experts in the United Kingdom said during a recent e-Skills event. British Computer Society CEO David Clarke says that although young people are more connected than anyone else in society, they view IT as boring in school because it is taught in a secretarial manner. Students are trained to copy the teachers' instructions, but they prefer to learn in groups and work on practical tasks, Clarke says. The Confederation of British Industry's (CBI's) Lizzie Holman says the same problem exists at the degree level. CBI statistics show that 64 percent of science, high technology, and IT employers believe students do not receive relevant content for the workforce. Europe faces a potential shortage of 384,000 information and communication technology practitioners by 2015, according to the European Commission.The Interpreter in the Laptop Karlsruche Institute of Technology (02/25/10) Zuber-Knost, Elisabeth Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) scientists will demonstrate several research projects at the upcoming CeBIT conference. In KIT's language-to-language translation device, automatic language recognition is combined with automatic translation and language synthesis technologies. The system serves as an automatic interpreter of lectures and parliamentary debates. It recognizes and translates language in real time and can be read as a continuously output text or heard over loudspeakers or smartphones. KIT researchers also have developed a system, based on the principle of electromyography, which enables people to speak soundlessly and still to be understood by a conversational partner. Meanwhile, the KIT Institute for Cryptography and Security developed a system that enables mobile users to generate a joint secret that can be used for encoding communications. The system creates a "joint key" for communication partners from the interferences of the radio transmission channel. KIT researchers also have developed Semantic Media Wiki, an extension of the Media Wiki software that enables users to typify cross references within a Wiki.Striving to Map the Shape-Shifting Net New York Times (03/01/10) Markoff, John Some researchers who study the architecture of global networks believe that peering is fundamentally transforming the Internet's configuration, with far-reaching ramifications for the Web's stability and security. Arbor Networks' Internet Observatory Report found that the bulk of Internet traffic by volume flows directly between major content providers such as Google and consumer networks such as Comcast, while 30 percent of all traffic is produced and consumed by 30 "hyper giant" portals such as Microsoft, Facebook, and YouTube. The edge of the Internet is getting thicker due to the emergence of massive peering fabrics, which may be fortifying the network's resilience. "The rise of these highly connected data centers around the world is changing our model of the Internet," says Cornell University researcher Jon M. Kleinberg. However, he notes that the advent of giant distributed data centers as part of the development of cloud computing services is enlarging the dark Internet, compounding scientists' difficulty in constructing a complete model. "The Internet as we know it is pretty much vanishing, in the sense that much of the traffic is being routed through lots of new layers and applications, much of it wireless," says Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, director of Northeastern University's Center for Network Science.Software Sniffs Out Criminals By the Shape of Their Nose University of Bath (03/02/10) Just, Vicky University of Bath scientists have developed a biometric system for identifying people based on their nose shape. The researchers used a photographic system called PhotoFace to scan the three-dimensional shape of volunteers' noses and used software to analyze them according to six main nose shapes. The researchers focused on the ridge profile, the nose tip, and the section between the eyes at the top of the nose. The researchers say their system offers a good recognition rate and a faster rate of image processing than whole face recognition techniques. "The technique is able to achieve a level of detail that is beyond current competing technologies and can be extended to a myriad of other applications, ranging from industrial surface inspection to cosmetics," says University of West England professor Melvyn Smith. The researchers plan to build a larger database of noses to test the software to see if it can identify individuals from a bigger group of people or from blood relatives.What's Next for High-Performance Computing? UCSD News (02/24/10) Zverina, Jan The fusion of high-performance computing (HPC) and high-performance data (HPD) could potentially result in the generation of robust systems that are at least one order of magnitude faster than anything the HPC community currently uses for certain applications, says San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) interim director Michael Norman. Last November, SDSC announced plans to construct Gordon, a data-intensive supercomputer that is expected to read latency-bound files at 10 times the speed and efficiency of current HPC systems with the help of flash memory solid state drives. Ultimately, Gordon will possess 245 teraflops of total compute power, 64 TB of digital random access memory, and 256 TB of flash memory. Gordon also will assist in the integration of HPC and HPD because it is designed for data-intensive predictive science as well as data-mining applications.Bio-Inspired Computer Networks Self-Organise and Learn ICT Results (02/26/10) Researchers working on the European Union-funded PERPLEXUS project have developed a computing platform inspired by biological systems in which a self-configuring wireless network connects several modules to enable them to operate as a coherent group. PERPLEXUS is based on the ubidule, a purpose-designed module that can take information from the environment, share data wirelessly, and adapt its behavior to different circumstances. In large networks, ubidules can evolve to specialize in a certain task, which other ubidules then delegate to them. The researchers say that ubidules can model grid-based problems in the physical sciences, as well as more challenging biological and social sciences problems. Another branch of the PERPLEXUS project involved a fleet of all-terrain robots equipped with ubichips. The researchers developed a strategy known as collective robotics, in which groups of robots communicate with one another to perform a task and are more effective than the same robots acting individually.3D Display Made of Flying Pixel-Copters in the Works New Scientist (02/25/10) Barras, Colin Flying pixels have the potential to offer a more immersive three-dimensional (3D) viewing experience than 3D television sets, according to engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The engineers describe their unique 3D display, called Flyfire, as a flock of tiny aircraft carrying multicolored light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The pixels can hover in front of a viewer and form an image, but they also can change their position to add greater depth to the image. "It's a 3D display with a dual aspect--it can show an image like a traditional display, but then those pixels can move and transform into another shape," says MIT's E. Roon Kang. The initial proof-of-principle experiments used quad-rotor helicopters more than 10 centimeters across, and the precise control of their altitude was within three centimeters. Kang says it could take at least five years to make a display with 1,000 or more of the small flying pixels. MIT's Emilio Frazzoli says onboard controls and a central control system also will be needed to coordinate pixel movement. - May Require Free Registration Nanomachinery Lights Up Royal Society of Chemistry (02/25/10) Brindley, Lewis Nagoya University researchers have developed a light-activated switch to turn nanomachines on and off. The team used tiny triggered tweezers made of DNA to open and close in response to ultraviolet (UV) and visible light. "We are designing DNA nano-robotics that are mechanically operated by light rather than chemical fuel," says Nagoya researcher Hiroyuki Asanuma. The researchers focused on a loop of DNA that looks like a hairpin with two arms. At the end of each arm, azobenzene groups are integrated into the DNA sequence. Under visible light, the azobenzene groups adopt the trans isomer, allowing the base pairs to join together. When UV light is applied, the azobenzene groups switch to the more sterically-constrained cis isomer. The system is fully reversible, allowing it to have great potential to be applied to other nanotechnologies that use DNA. "To be able to switch biomolecular conformational changes is of considerable interest for many applications in biomedicine and bionanotechnology," says Technical University of Munich's Friedrich Simmel.Making Sense of Mountains of Data Technology Review (02/25/10) Naone, Erica Microsoft Live Labs researchers have developed Pivot, a tool designed to visually organize large data sets. Pivot presents data in the form of several images accompanied by textual data. Users can zoom into the images to study individual pieces of data, or zoom out to see items grouped according to certain criteria. Data collections can contain a few images with static data attached, or they can be large and connected to a feed of changing data. Pivot is based on Microsoft's Seadragon, software designed for manipulating large amounts of visual information. Users can make their own collections of data by converting images to the Deep Zoom format used by Seadragon, and annotate them using a format based on extensible markup language. Pivot also could provide a better way to sort through Internet search results, because users could sort through thousands of results visually, instead of just looking a list of the top 10 search results.Deluge of Scientific Data Needs to Be Curated for Long-Term Use University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (02/24/10) Ciciora, Phil University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor Carole Palmer says data curation is an important part of supporting and advancing research. "This is especially important in data-intensive science, where the power of discovery lies in applying computational approaches to large, aggregated data sets," Palmer says. She says researchers need to plan around data-management requirements from the beginning of their projects, and to think in terms of a data set's lifecycle. The biggest hurdles to overcome in collecting, curating, and managing data over a long period of time involve cost and labor. Even with the Internet and search engines, data stored online does not last nearly as long as data preserved in print. "We're just beginning to do the research needed to guide how we build large-scale, multidisciplinary data repositories and collect and manage data in ways that add value and promote sharing and integration across laboratories, institutions, and disciplines," Palmer says.Attack Unmasks User Behind the Browser Dark Reading (02/23/10) Higgins, Kelly Jackson Vienna University of Technology researchers have developed the "deanonymization" attack as a way to reveal the identity of Internet users based on their interactions in social networks. The attack uses social networking groups as well as traditional browser history-stealing tactics to single out specific users. The researchers focused on Germany's Xing business social network and Facebook and matched stolen browsing histories with social network group members to identify users. "It is the combination of history stealing and group information that is novel," says Vienna University post-doctoral researcher Gilbert Wondracek. Criminals could use the deanonymization method for targeted attacks, which only requires that the victim visit a malicious Web site that contains the attack code. There is no fix for the attack, but users can turn off their browsing history or use a private-browsing mode to minimize the risk.The Grill: Tom Mitchell Computerworld (02/22/10) Mitchell, Robert L. Tom Mitchell, head of Carnegie Mellon University's Machine Learning Department, says that advances in machine learning could bring about a transformation in psychology and neuroscience. Mitchell says that his group has trained an algorithm to study functional magnetic resonance imaging scans of a person's brain activity and determine what object they are thinking about. "We can look inside your brain when you see the color red, and we can look inside my brain when I see the color red, and we can ask, 'Is it or is it not the same pattern of neural activity?' " he notes. Mitchell speculates that people could conceivably be networked to exchange information so that one person can tell what the other is thinking. He observes that a number of researchers are developing brain-computer interfaces that can enable the decoding of a person's thoughts. This could be particularly useful for "locked in" patients who are speech- and mobility-disabled.Researchers Envision High-Tech Applications for 'Multiferroic' Crystals Florida State University (02/11/10) Ray, Barry Florida State University (FSU) researchers have discovered four crystals that possess properties which could lead to the development of a new generation of computer chips and other information storage devices. "We identified these four crystals as 'multiferroic,' meaning that they are simultaneously ferromagnetic and ferroelectric in nature when cooled to a specific temperature," says FSU professor Naresh Dalal. Multiferroic crystals could be used to create high-powered computer memories that could hold far more information than is currently possible, says FSU professor Sir Harold Kroto. "Theoretically, it might be possible to design devices that are much smaller and faster than the ones we use today to store and transmit data," Kroto says. The researchers say that electronic devices using multiferroic crystals would have far less environmental impact than devices used today. "The four new multiferroic crystals that we have identified all substitute other, less toxic metals for lead, which is a potent neurotoxin," Dalal says.

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• 01 Mar 2010 18:31

  Welcome to the March 1, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. PRACE Evaluated Additional Prototypes for Next Generation Architectures IBM Speeds Up Data Analysis With New Algorithm How to Spot Suspicious VoIP Signals In Networks We Trust Tech Industry Searching for Girls Gone Geek The Safe Way to Use One Internet Password Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above 'Exaflood' of Data Mobile Monitor for Drivers' Safety An Emotion Detector for Baby HP Labs Opens Singapore Research Hub GPS Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks Nanotech Breakthrough to Revolutionise Microchip Manufacturing Software Muse Helps Bloggers Score Hits Game Trains Soldiers in a Virtual Iraq or Afghanistan Tomorrow's Forecast: Clear With a Chance of Tremors PRACE Evaluated Additional Prototypes for Next Generation Architectures Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (02/26/10) The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe's work package for future petaflop computer technologies beyond 2010 recently assessed 12 prototypes for next-generation computer architectures. The evaluation included full systems, system components, software prototypes, and several research activities. For example, CINES and LRZ jointly evaluated a hybrid system containing both thin and fat nodes and compute accelerators within a shared file system. NCF assessed a system of ClearSpeed/PetaPath accelerator boards together with the ClearSpeed programming language. CEA looked at the performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) using CAPS hybrid multicore parallel programming. The CSC studied the maturity of OpenCL and performance improvements for multi-GPU programming on NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Firestream cards. CSCS evaluated the PGAS programming model using the Cray Compiler Environment for UPC and CAF. And EPCC evaluated the HARWEST Compiling Environment for developing programs on the FPGA-based Maxwell supercomputer.IBM Speeds Up Data Analysis With New Algorithm IDG News Service (02/25/10) Shah, Agam Researchers at IBM's laboratories in Zurich have developed a new algorithm that can sort, correlate, and analyze millions of random data sets in minutes. Without the algorithm, the analysis would have taken days for supercomputers to process, says IBM researcher Costas Bekas. He says the algorithm could be used to analyze data measuring electricity usage and air or water pollution levels. The algorithm also could be used to break down data from global financial markets. The algorithm combines models of data calibration and statistical analysis that can assess measurement models and relationships between data sets. Bekas says the algorithm, which can analyze nine terabytes of data in less than 20 minutes, makes data analysis more cost and energy efficient because it reduces the load on supercomputers.How to Spot Suspicious VoIP Signals Technology Review (02/25/10) Researchers at the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland have studied the characteristics of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an attempt to gain a better understanding of ordinary traffic. Security remains an issue for VoIP calls, which can be hijacked and used to send confidential information over the Internet. Wojciech Mazurczyk and colleagues decided to study ordinary VoIP calls so experts would have a way to compare and contrast regular calls with those that have been embedded with stolen data. VoIP calls can be compromised by changing the order in which the digital packets are sent, or by deliberately delaying certain packets that have embedded data, a technique known as Lost Audio Packet Steganography (LACK). The team's research shows that packets are not normally re-ordered in a way for hiding data, so attacks that re-order data are not a real threat. However, LACK attacks would be difficult to spot because of the routine loss of data packets.In Networks We Trust ICT Results (02/24/10) European researchers working on the Remote EnTrusting by RUn-time Software authentication (RE-TRUST) project have proposed a solution to trusted computing that they say offers better security and authentication. RE-TRUST uses logic components on an untrusted machine to allow for remote entrusting authentication. "RE-TRUST will have a major impact on all commercial applications and solutions where security or trust is a concern, independently of whether they are based on a client-server or a peer-to-peer paradigm," says RE-TRUST coordinator Yoram Ofek. RE-TRUST solutions could work with peer-to-peer networks to enable them to become a new trusted distribution channel. The RE-TRUST team also developed trust solutions for code mobility, reconfigurable computing for software protection, and orthogonal replacement. "All applications and solutions running over a network, such as the Internet, can benefit from the RE-TRUST approach," Ofek says.Tech Industry Searching for Girls Gone Geek MSNBC (02/21/10) Tahmincioglu, Eve The flagging attraction of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions to young women is partly attributed to the geek factor, or the perception of such careers as uncool, socially isolating, and primarily geared toward males. The National Center for Women & Information Technology estimates that about 17 percent of high school girls take advanced computer science placement exams, which represents the lowest percentage of females among all such tests. Meanwhile, the number of women earning computer science degrees fell from 37 percent in 1985 to 18 percent in 2008. AT&T Labs researcher Amanda Stent says that "a movement to reclaim the notion of 'geek' " is underway to reverse this trend, and she is a member of a group dedicated to encourage more young women to become passionate about science and technology. Stent stresses that engineers, technologists, and scientists often work in groups and invent community-building, societally beneficial products.The Safe Way to Use One Internet Password Queensland University of Technology (02/25/10) Wilson, Rachael Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Ph.D. researcher Suriadi is investigating using an anonymous credential system, an Internet authentication system from the 1980s, to enable Web users to securely log in only once per Internet session. Suriadi says future single sign-on systems could give users access to multiple accounts--including email, bank, and shopping--but would need to provide extreme privacy to avoid hackers. He says the anonymous credential system could enhance the security and privacy of a single sign-on system. "The system works by revealing as little information about who you are as necessary for logging into an account, therefore allowing you to remain anonymous," Suriadi says. A single sign-on system backed by the anonymous credential system requires the cooperation of business and organizations to enable it, Suriadi notes.Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above 'Exaflood' of Data Chronicle of Higher Education (02/24/10) Fischman, Josh Researchers remain optimistic about the prospect of keeping track of the exaflood of data, from gene sequences and distant pulsar signals to YouTube videos and email. During the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one session gave scientists and other academics an opportunity to learn more about some current strategies for storing data and using it productively. University of California at San Diego professor Larry Smarr demonstrated how genetic sequences from ocean bacteria can be coupled with environmental information about the organisms. Smarr said researchers were able to target specific gene sequences, annotated with helpful information. Meanwhile, Google researcher Hal Varian said the company's Google Insights for Search analytical tools used information on individual searches for Toyota automobiles to accurately predict its sales volume.Mobile Monitor for Drivers' Safety The National (UAE) (03/01/10) Chung, Matthew Abu Dhabi University (ADU) researchers have developed Driver Riskometer, a smartphone application that tracks a user's mobile phone activity while driving. The application records the vehicle's top and average speed, the number of calls made, the time spent on calls, and the time spent tapping the phone's keys. The driver's performance is scored at the end of a trip on a scale of one (very safe) to seven (very risky). Studies have found that drivers using mobile phones are four times as likely to cause a crash as those not using a phone. "The idea is to give people feedback about their risk on the motorway and get them to enhance their driving," says ADU professor Ashraf Khalil. Drivers can check their records for a single journey or for a given day or month. After each trip, the overall risk score is recalculated based on the more recent performance.An Emotion Detector for Baby ScienceDaily (02/24/10) Japanese scientists have developed a statistical program that could enable portable baby-monitoring devices to determine whether infant cries mean a baby is sleepy, hungry, needs a change, or is in pain. Tomomasa Nagashima and colleagues at the Muroran Institute of Technology used a sound pattern recognition strategy to analyze infants' crying patterns. The team analyzed the frequency of cries and the power function of the audio spectrum to classify different types of crying. Nagashima and colleagues were able to correlate the different recorded audio spectra with the emotional state of a baby as confirmed by the parents. Recordings of a crying baby with a painful genetic disorder helped the researchers differentiate the cries of babies who are in pain. They were able to achieve a 100 percent success rate in classifying pained cries and normal cries via their technique.HP Labs Opens Singapore Research Hub Business Week (02/24/10) Ricadela, Aaron Hewlett-Packard (HP) Labs announced the opening of a new research and development (R&D) center in Singapore. The Singapore lab will work with HP labs in Bristol, England, and Palo Alto, Calif., on research in cloud computing and software development. The Singapore lab is located in a government-owned research facility called Fusionopolis. HP says the lab in part will work to meet the needs of telecom companies. According to a recent National Science Foundation report, Singapore, China, and South Korea are the fastest growing countries for overseas R&D by U.S. companies. The Singapore lab is part of HP's renewed effort to generate cutting-edge technology developments from its scientific centers in Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. HP Labs director Prith Banerjee has urged labs in China, England, India, Israel, and Russia to work with each other to produce more inventions that can be turned into revenue-producing technology for the company.GPS Vulnerable to Hacker Attacks BBC News (02/23/10) Palmer, Jason Experts warn that technology reliant on satellite navigation signals is increasingly vulnerable to attack from widely available equipment. At a U.K. conference at the National Physical Laboratory, professor David Last said the global positioning system's (GPS's) biggest vulnerability is the extreme weakness of the signals that reach receivers, which allows jamming by Earth-based equipment to be executed. Such jamming has been conducted by military systems for years to disrupt adversaries' navigation systems, but small jamming devices are increasingly available online. Moreover, receivers can be fooled into accepting erroneous data by bogus GPS signals, Last warned. Seagoing vessels are especially susceptible to GPS hacking, given that their systems increasingly use satellite navigation directly as well as feed GPS signals into other equipment.Nanotech Breakthrough to Revolutionise Microchip Manufacturing Silicon Republic (02/22/10) Kennedy, John Researchers at Ireland's Tyndall National Institute (TNI) have designed and fabricated a junctionless transistor, a breakthrough they say could revolutionize microchip manufacturing. In TNI's transistor, the current flows along a thin silicon wire and is controlled by a "wedding ring" structure that electrically squeezes the wire in same way the flow of water can be stopped in a hose by squeezing it. TNI professor Jean-Pierre Colinge says the transistor "significantly reduces power consumption and greatly simplifies the fabrication process of silicon chips." Colinge says the design can be fabricated on a miniature scale, which should lead to major cost reductions. "Minimizing current leakage is one of the main challenges in today's complex transistors," he notes. "The Tyndall junctionless devices have near-ideal electrical properties and behave like the most perfect transistors."Software Muse Helps Bloggers Score Hits New Scientist (02/18/10) Campbell, MacGregor Researchers at IBM's Watson Research Center have created Blog Muse, software that helps bloggers with writer's block. Blog Muse is designed to generate a list of topics for bloggers to write about, based on other users' suggestions or the profiles of other writers. Although a test involving 1,000 IBM employee-bloggers did not lead to an increase in the number of blog posts, those using the software were twice as likely to receive comments, have an increase in readership, and receive higher ratings on their posts from readers. The IBM employee-bloggers were divided into three groups, with one receiving suggestions for topics from Blog Muse, another receiving random ideas, and a third group that did not get any assistance. Four weeks later, 64 percent of the group that used Blog Muse suggestions rated the ideas as "good," while 37 percent of the group that received random suggestions rated the topics as "good."Game Trains Soldiers in a Virtual Iraq or Afghanistan UT Dallas News (02/23/10) Stockton, Sarah University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) researchers are developing First Person Cultural Trainer, a computer training tool designed to make it easier for military personnel to perform missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The three-dimensional interactive game teaches soldiers the values and norms of Iraqi and Afghan cultures. Previously, training has been done by building actual villages and hiring actors to replicate a particular culture. The researchers worked to make the game's characters look, sound, and act as much as possible like the people they are meant to represent, says UTD professor Marjorie Zielke. "Much of the cultural data is being developed in real time by the military," Zielke says. "By having it in a systems-based approach that is composable ... we can respond to the data as soon as it becomes available." Tomorrow's Forecast: Clear With a Chance of Tremors University of Texas at Austin (02/10/10) Dubrow, Aaron The goal of the Southern California Earthquake Center's (SCEC's) CyberShake project is to accurately predict earthquake activity for the next 50 years. The CyberShake predictions, called seismic hazard maps, have the potential to preserve lives and save billions of dollars by predicting catastrophic earthquakes. To create the most recent maps for CyberShake, SCEC partnered with the Texas Advanced Computing Center to take advantage of its Ranger supercomputer. The researchers hope that computational simulations eventually will become the dominant predictor of seismic hazards. CyberShake ultimately will be part of a system that incorporates real-world seismic changes as they happen, producing daily ground motion forecasts. The methods developed by the CyberShake team will affect many disciplines that use high-performance computing. For scientific computing applications that run serially, the CyberShake's methodology is an important innovation. Automated use of high-performance computing also could impact atmospheric research, high-energy physics, and biomedical research. View Full Article | Return to Headlines

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• 24 Feb 2010 11:08

  Welcome to the February 24, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Experts Warn of Catastrophe From Cyberattacks Light-Based Computing, Quick as a Thought Just Like Mombot Used to Make Magnet Magic Puts Phone Control in the Air Glasgow University Teams With Intel for Nanoscale Memory Design Stopping Stealthy Downloads Photos of the Future Rutgers Researchers Show New Security Threat Against 'Smart Phone' Users Computers Turn Flat Photos Into 3-D Buildings What Is the Identity of Identity in the Digital Age Sketch-Interpreting Software Data Center Project Could Produce Jobs, Partnerships Near-Threshold Computing Could Enable Up to 100x Reduction in Power Consumption Malaysian Women Redefine Gender Roles in Technology Experts Warn of Catastrophe From Cyberattacks CNet (02/23/10) Mills, Elinor A panel of experts told U.S. senators at a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that the United States would be defeated in an all-out cyberwar, and reducing this vulnerability will not occur until the government takes a more active interest in safeguarding the nation's network. Former director of national security and national intelligence Michael McConnell warned that greater government involvement may not happen until after a "catastrophic event" transpires. The focus of the hearing was the Cyber Security Act of 2009, which would oversee organizations and companies that supply critical U.S. infrastructure, mandate licensing and certification for cybersecurity professionals, and sponsor grant and scholarship programs.Light-Based Computing, Quick as a Thought PIK Research Portal (02/24/10) Eickemeier, Patrick A consortium of European research institutions is working on a new, photonic computing model under the aegis of the PHOCUS project. The system envisioned by the project uses light to communicate, potentially raising energy efficiency far above that of current supercomputers. The reservoir computer concept is inspired by the rapid information processing architecture of the human brain, in which stimuli or inputs are fed into neural networks or reservoirs. Inputs remain detectable in the reservoir for a certain time, and this input memory, coupled with the emerging response of the reservoir, converts the input into a large number of dynamical states of the reservoir, producing a high-dimensional state space. The researchers say that photonic systems could be employed to comprehend and eventually imitate some of the brain's functionalities. PHOCUS' ultimate target is photonic deployment of reservoir computing, running at high data rates, as an alternative to supercomputers for operations that require reduced size and less power consumption.Just Like Mombot Used to Make New York Times (02/23/10) Daly, Ian; Aoi, Yasue Robots that serve and prepare food have been developed by various institutions and companies, mainly to promote new technological breakthroughs, to imbue robots with personalities to help overcome an animus toward them, and to position the machines for work in other industries. For instance, researchers at Switzerland's Learning Algorithms and Systems Laboratory invented the Chief Cook Robot, an omelet-making machine that can be "taught" to perform complex tasks. Underlying such efforts is the desire to change the often threatening and distrustful way we perceive robots, says NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory roboticist Heather Knight. The spate of food-serving and food-making robots calls attention to the fact that developers are migrating away from a previous focus on efficiency and toward one of personality and more comfortable human-machine interaction.Magnet Magic Puts Phone Control in the Air New Scientist (02/23/10) Fleming, Nic Deutsche Telekom (DT) researchers have developed MagiTact, software that makes it possible to control a cell phone by moving a hand-worn magnet close to it. MagiTact works on devices with a compass sensor, such as the Apple iPhone and Google's Nexus One. The software tracks changes to the magnetic field around a cell phone to identify different hand gestures. "The idea is to develop a way to interact with mobile devices through more natural human gestures," says DT researcher Hamed Ketabdar. Meanwhile, Hasso Plattner Institute researchers are working to improve touchscreen interaction by adding a touch-sensitive pad to the back of devices and by studying the angles at which users' fingers touch the screen to make buttons smaller.Glasgow University Teams With Intel for Nanoscale Memory Design Electronics Weekly (UK) (02/23/10) Williams, Alun The European Union is funding research into the design of future microchips. Glasgow University professor Asen Asenov says developers need new circuit and system design to shrink the size of transistors for more powerful circuits. Glasgow is participating in the Tera-scale Reliable Adaptive Memory Systems (TRAMS) consortium, along with Intel Iberia, Interuniversitair Micro-Elektronica Centrium, and the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya. "We hope this project will result in new chip design paradigms for building reliable memory systems out of unreliable nanoscale components cheaply and effectively, heralding the era of terascale computing," Asenov says. TRAMS will focus on next-generation complementary metal-oxide semiconductor transistors and microchips.Stopping Stealthy Downloads Technology Review (02/22/10) Krebs, Brian SRI International and Georgia Tech researchers have developed Block All Drive-By Download Exploits (BLADE), free software that can stop Internet attacks brought on by visiting a Web site. BLADE acts by halting downloads that are initiated without the user's consent. In 2009's fourth quarter, about 5.5 million Web pages contained software designed to install unwanted malware on visitors, according to Dasient. The researchers tested BLADE and found that it blocked all of the more than 5,150 malicious programs unleashed by the 1,205 drive-by URLs they tested. Adobe's PDF Reader accounted for more than half of the applications targeted by the drive-by exploits and Sun Microsystems' Java platform attracted about 25 percent of all drive-by attacks, with most of the remaining exploits being aimed at Adobe Flash and Internet Explorer. Experts say that BLADE still needs to be tested in real-world settings, and SRI's Phil Porras notes that it cannot stop all Web-based malware, such as social-engineering attacks.Photos of the Future The Independent (02/24/10) Piesing, Mark Stanford University researchers are developing the Frankencamera, an open source digital camera that they hope will lead to a computational photography revolution. "Computational photography will change how we do photography," says Stanford professor Marc Levoy. "It would allow you to fix things that you can't currently--whether by combining pictures in a different way, or by fiddling with optics so that more is recorded than on a normal camera." The goal is to turn the camera into a powerful computer, with the ability to change the focus of a shot after it has been taken, take three-dimensional photographs, and convert photographs into drawings, diagrams, or watercolors. Meanwhile, Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Ramesh Raskar notes that researchers are already exploring the next step beyond computational photography. For example, Raskar notes that Microsoft is developing software to generate "sense photographs," which capture the sense of the real experience, not just what the camera and computer are able to record.Rutgers Researchers Show New Security Threat Against 'Smart Phone' Users Rutgers University (02/22/10) Blesch, Carl Rutgers University (RU) computer scientists have demonstrated how rootkits could surreptitiously instruct a smartphone to eavesdrop on a meeting, track its owner's location, or rapidly drain the battery. Smartphones "run the same class of operating systems as desktop and laptop computers, so they are just as vulnerable to attack by malicious software, or malware," says RU professor Vinod Ganapathy. Rootkit attacks on smartphones could be especially effective because smartphone users tend to carry their phones with them all the time, which creates opportunities for attackers to eavesdrop, extract personal information, or pinpoint the users location using the phone's global positioning system. View Full Article - Link to Publication Homepage | Return to Headlines Computers Turn Flat Photos Into 3-D Buildings New York Times (02/22/10) Markoff, John Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) and Cornell University are developing PhotoCity, a system that uses graphics algorithms to create three-dimensional (3D) renderings of buildings, neighborhoods, and cities from unstructured collections of two-dimensional digital photos. To improve the quality of the renderings, the researchers plan to combine their system with a social game that permits teams to add images where they are needed to improve the visual models. The researchers also plan to accept public submissions, in an effort to collect 3D renderings of cities such as New York and San Francisco. The emergence of such collaborative systems has great promise for capturing the creative abilities of people and networked computers, says the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's Peter Lee.What Is the Identity of Identity in the Digital Age ICT Results (02/15/10) The Future of Identity in the Information Society (FIDIS) is a network of excellence established to prepare Europe for emerging digital identity issues. "We concluded that it is not one, single concept, but rather it is a host of pieces of information about an individual," says FIDIS' Andre Deuker. According to FIDIS, a person's identity comprises all of the pieces of information that define a particular individual, from their DNA to how they like their coffee. One FIDIS project is photo response non-uniformity, which can identify the camera that took a particular picture by looking at the information underlying a specific image. Other FIDIS initiatives include special radio frequency identity tags and identity management systems (IMSs). FIDIS examined several IMS platforms and created a database for them, with the hopes that it will lead to greater interoperability between systems.Sketch-Interpreting Software MIT News (02/19/10) Hardesty, Larry Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed a system that can interpret sketches drawn on computer tablets. The sketch-recognition technology grew out of a collaboration with Pfizer, says MIT Ph.D. student Tom Ouyang. "We once visited their labs, and we noticed that on all their whiteboards and even on some of their windows they had all these chemical structures drawn using dry-erase markers, and when we talked to them they mentioned that they used these graphical diagrams all the time," Ouyang says. The system combines information about the physical appearance of the final sketch with information about how it was drawn. Ultimately, the researchers see the software as part of a larger project to make interactions with computers as natural as interactions with human beings. "We want to interconnect this with some of the other things we've done with speech and Web-based lookup so that one could walk up to the whiteboard and sketch a molecule and say, 'Has anybody published anything like this?'" says MIT professor Randall Davis.Data Center Project Could Produce Jobs, Partnerships Binghamton University (02/18/10) Coker, Rachel Binghamton University (BU) researchers are studying a holistic approach to data centers that could make them much less costly to operate and significantly reduce the carbon footprint for information technology. "The amount of energy we spend running our data centers in the U.S. is about 2.5 percent of the total national energy expenditure," says BU professor Kanad Ghose. Meanwhile, the number of data centers is growing because of increasing demand for online services. Ghose says that most data centers only run at 40 to 60 percent of their maximum capacity. Cooling the data centers also requires a lot of energy. Ghose and BU professor Bahgat Sammakia are developing ways to spread the workload across all the machines in a network, planning in advance for the workload allocation and the cooling budget. The researchers are planning to set up an experimental data center to improve energy efficiency. Ghose wants to achieve an energy reduction of about 15 percent, which could translate into savings of more than 25 percent.Near-Threshold Computing Could Enable Up to 100x Reduction in Power Consumption PhysOrg.com (02/17/10) Zyga, Lisa University of Michigan (UM) researchers are developing near-threshold computing (NTC) technology, which could allow electronic devices to operate at lower voltages than normal. The researchers say that NTC could enable future computer systems to reduce energy requirements by 100 times or more. NTC allows for advanced scaling of complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) devices, while improving energy efficiency. "The major impact of the work is that, for a fixed battery lifetime, significantly more transistors can be used, allowing for greater functionality," says UM professor Ronald Dreslinksi. NTC also could help decrease power requirements without overturning the entire CMOS framework. Operating at near-threshold voltages could allow devices to require less energy while minimizing energy leakage. The researchers say that NTC could have nearly universal applications in data centers and personal computing. NTC also could be useful in sensor-based systems. By reducing the power requirements by up to 100 times in sensors, NTC could lead to future sensor designs.Malaysian Women Redefine Gender Roles in Technology Stanford News (02/08/10) Schechter, Ruth In Malaysia, women make up between 50 and 60 percent of the computer industry's employees and many of them hold management positions. Computing and programming are considered "women-friendly" professions because men do not see indoor work as masculine and much of Malaysian society stigmatizes women who work outdoors as lower class. "In the U.S., technology and masculinity are very connected, which is not the case in Malaysia," says Lulea University of Technology professor Ulf Mellstrom. Women initially left their villages to seek jobs in the electronics industry. Those jobs were replaced with technological jobs, which enabled newly educated women to assume positions of authority. Mellstrom says the transition was facilitated for women in computer science by role models from the electronics industry. He says the critical mass of women in the computer sciences has created "a symbolic space" that continues to provide new role models for other women.

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• 22 Feb 2010 14:38

  Welcome to the February 22, 2010 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. Want a Job? Get a Computer Science Degree Truly Random Numbers Phone Game Needs No Server Stanford Software Is Gaining the Sophistication to Comprehend What Humans Write A Virtual System Which Facilitates Access and Adapts Contents to the Student Robot Provides 3-D Images of Dangerous Locations Can Mobile Phones Help People EatWell? Battling Zombies, Botnets and Torpig Clemson Researchers Develop Hands-Free Texting Application USB Fingerprints Identify 'Pod Slurping' Data Thieves UWM Engineer Creates Unique Software That Predicts Stem Cell Fate When Cars Go to Driving School Virtual Museum Guide Want a Job? Get a Computer Science Degree Network World (02/22/10) Marsan, Carolyn Duffy Leading universities are reporting that enrollment in computer science and engineering is up significantly this year as students discover computer-related degrees offer better job prospects and earnings potential. "The government has made it clear that computer science is a growth field, and I think that message is getting back to students and their parents," says Bruce Porter, chair of the Department of Computer Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Corporate recruitment of top computer science graduates has stayed strong despite the economic downturn. Last spring Georgia Tech's College of Computing had the highest job placement rate of any major on campus, as well as the highest starting salary. "The financial sector--credit card companies, insurance companies--are very much interested in computer science students, as are defense companies and software development and networking companies," says Georgia Tech's Cedric Stallworth. Last year, computer science graduates from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign received an average of 2.3 job offers and had an average starting salary of more than $72,000. The number of students enrolling as computer science majors is up 40 percent from last year at Stanford University and Carnegie Mellon University reports that computer science applicants are up 14 percent from last year and 76 percent from 2005.Truly Random Numbers AlphaGalileo (02/22/10) German researchers have developed a random number generator that uses a computer memory element, a flip-flop, to create an extra layer of randomness. The flip-flop switches randomly between two states of either one or zero. Just before the switch, the flip-flop is in a "metastable state" where its behavior cannot be predicted. After the metastable state, the contents of the memory are completely random. A larger array produces a more random number. The University of Hagen's Bernhard Fechner and BTC AG's Andre Osterloh's experiments with arrays of flip-flop units found that the extra layer produces a number that is 20 times more random than conventional methods. The researchers say their random number generator can protect systems from third-party snooping, making private and sensitive transactions on the Internet more secure.Phone Game Needs No Server Technology Review (02/19/10) Graham-Rowe, Duncan Multiplayer games on mobile devices, such as phones, typically depend on remote servers for communication between devices and game hosting, but a new augmented reality game developed by researchers at Vrije Universiteit in the Netherlands requires no such server. The game employs the Ibis computing middleware system, which was originally designed for high-performance, distributed computing chores. The researchers adapted the system to operate on Android phones so that the handsets can run a lightweight communication server that enables a direct interface with the game via a 3G or Wi-Fi connection. The game was created in response to Google's Android Developers Challenge 2 and designed to use data fusion, combining numerous aspects of the device's hardware to blend game play with real-world events. The researchers say the game's networking methodology could be used in situations in which significant infrastructure is not always available, such as disaster relief or military operations.Stanford Software Is Gaining the Sophistication to Comprehend What Humans Write Stanford Report (CA) (02/18/10) Orenstein, David Stanford University professor Chris Manning is working to enable computers to process human language well enough to use the information it conveys. Manning says that as computers improve, and are better able to understand online content, they will be able to deliver more relevant search results and help summarize and act on information that is most important to the user. He says the fundamental challenge is getting computers to understand at least a reasonable amount of what they read. Manning, along with Stanford professor Dan Jurafsky, has been developing software that uses probabilistic machine learning to understand sentences by recognizing parts of speech and sentence structure. The researchers also have created software that examines a word's context when deciding what a word means. The technical solution, called joint inference, is to look for other words in the sentence that are statistically shown to be relevant. Another technology under development is robust textual inference, which can read a passage of text and determine if its conclusion is supported.A Virtual System Which Facilitates Access and Adapts Contents to the Student Carlos III University of Madrid (Spain) (02/22/10) Researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) are developing Project FLEXO, a virtual platform for different teaching methods that can be customized to specific student profiles. The FLEXO platform seeks to provide "a wide variety of resources to individuals learning any given subject, and with adaptive resources, that is, resources which can change as an individual advances in his/her educational experience," says UC3M's Abelardo Pardo. The project also aims to facilitate access to content in different learning management systems, as well as adapt to changes in a student's learning technique. The researchers say the system is currently in the development stages and might not be ready for another year and a half. The research is limited to e-learning, which uses information technology for user training, recruitment, and education.Robot Provides 3-D Images of Dangerous Locations Missouri S&T News (02/19/10) Researchers from the Missouri University of Science & Technology and the University of Missouri-Columbia have built a remote-controlled robot equipped with an infrared camera and light detection and ranging (LIDAR) technology. "We can get a [three-dimensional (3D)] map of rooms by sending the robot inside or having it look through a window," says Missouri S&T professor Norbert Maerz. Maerz and a team of students have used their prototypes to map the insides of houses, university buildings, and cave passages in the local Mark Twain National Forest. The technology can provide detailed information about floor plans, but it also can "see" people and objects inside a space. In addition, the technology can detect structural damage such as cracks in beams, which would enable engineers to make safety recommendations after natural disasters. "The main idea is to assess safety in dangerous areas," Maerz says.Can Mobile Phones Help People EatWell? Georgia Tech Research News (02/17/10) Terraso, David Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate Andrea Grimes has created EatWell, a mobile phone-based tool for people who want to eat healthier. EatWell enables people to record and share audio stories with other members of their community via mobile phones. Grimes believes people who want to live a healthier lifestyle would benefit from the opportunity to hear stories of how others overcome the urge to eat, try new recipes, or find healthy alternatives at restaurants. Grimes conducted a pilot study that revealed users felt engaged with the content and connected to people they did not know, even though they offered few statements of encouragement or comments of collective action. She also wants to enable people to take photos of their health-eating efforts, caption them, and display them for other members of their community. "We're interested in seeing how displaying the content in this way that's publicly visible affects their interest in sharing," Grimes says.Battling Zombies, Botnets and Torpig University of Calgary (02/17/10) University of Calgary (UC) researchers are developing a range of technologies to prevent and detect cyberattacks and botnets. "It's an issue of scale," says UC professor John Aycock. "If you control an entire network of tens or hundreds of thousands of home computers, you can do an awful lot of damage." Aycock says that most experts believe that botnet creators have gone from basement hackers to sophisticated online invaders with possible links to organized crime. "The motivation used to be to put another notch in your belt, today it's very much money-driven," says University of California, Santa Barbara professor Richard A. Kemmerer. Last year Kemmerer led a research group that took control of the Torpig botnet and posed as hackers. The researchers saw more than 180,000 infections, obtained 8,310 account credentials at more than 400 different institutions, and uncovered 70,000 passwords. Kemmerer says a preemptive approach is the only way to ensure effective Internet security.Clemson Researchers Develop Hands-Free Texting Application Clemson University (SC) (02/16/10) Johnson, Wanda Clemson University researchers have developed VoiceTEXT, an application that could make it safer for people to engage in cell phone texting while driving. VoiceTEXT, which provides a hands-free alternative to texting that enables drivers to simply speak to their cell phone, was created by a team led by Clemson professor Juan Gilbert. "Through the car's speaker system or through the driver's own Bluetooth headset, drivers can give a voice command that delivers a text message," Gilbert says. "The recipient's phone recognizes the voice as a text message and the other person is able to respond appropriately." Gilbert says VoiceTEXT could be a better way to curb texting-related accidents than an outright ban on texting.USB Fingerprints Identify 'Pod Slurping' Data Thieves New Scientist (02/16/10) Marks, Paul Intellectual property thieves who engage in so-called pod-slurping attacks leave a "USB fingerprint," according to Vasilios Katos and Theodoros Kavallaris of the Democritus University of Thrace in Greece. The researchers found that every USB stick and iPod or iPhone has a distinctive transfer rate when copying data from a PC's hard drive, due to differences in microcircuitry and the components of each device. By consulting the Windows registry, a company would be able to determine whether its files have been copied. Document folders for any file can be checked after a USB device has been plugged in as the computer registry counts copying as file access. A pod-slurping attack can be assumed to have taken place when the time it took to access all files matches the transfer rate of the USB stick or iPod plugged into the PC at that point. Kavallaris plans to automate Windows registry trawling, which would make it easier to determine which files have been copied.UWM Engineer Creates Unique Software That Predicts Stem Cell Fate University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (02/16/10) Hunt, Laura L. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UWM) professor Andrew Cohen is developing software that analyzes time-lapse images capturing live stem cell behaviors. The software will enable scientists to search for mechanisms that control stem cell specialization and could lead to new research into causes of cancer. The software is designed to isolate the genes and proteins that control the specialization process. "This is a brand-new set of tools for developmental biologists, and it supports an area where no other predictive solutions exist," Cohen says. The software is 87 percent accurate in determining the specific "offspring" a stem cell with produce, and 99 percent accurate in predicting when self-renewal will end in specialization. Cohen's program is able to track and make predictions for up to 40 cells in real time, and he says it outperforms humans in detecting differences in how the cells change over time.When Cars Go to Driving School ICT Results (02/08/10) The European Union-funded DRIVSCO project was launched to design a car smart enough to learn how the user drives and to send a warning when the user is not driving safely. The project's researchers have developed a vehicle that tracks a driver's every move, matches those actions with what it "sees" down the road, and learns how that driver normally handles situations. With infrared headlights, stereo cameras, and advanced visual processing, the system can see better at night than humans can. "What we wanted was a system that learns to drive during the day by correlating what it sees with the actions a driver takes," says DRIVSCO's Florentin Worgotter. And much like a person learning to drive, the system gets better over time, Worgotter says. After processing terabytes worth of information, DIVSCO was able to produce real-time predictions of how a particular driver would handle most highway or country road situations, but city driving is still too complex for the system to master.Virtual Museum Guide Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (02/10) Zollner, Michael Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics Research IGD scientists have developed augmented-reality animation software that can take users on virtual tours through museums. The Fraunhofer IGD software runs on a minicomputer and is controlled by a touch screen. The researchers say the program indicates a trend toward mobile, virtual guidebooks. Fraunhofer IGD researcher Michael Zollner says they programmed the software to recognize images, and it knows where the center of the camera is pointing and can superimpose the relevant overlay, such as text, video, or animation. The original image is visible under the overlays, so visitors always know where they are on the virtual tour. The researchers tested the software in the iTACITUS project, in which the team programmed a portable computer to act as an electronic tour guide for the Royal Palace of Venaria in Italy.

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