Groundwork for Cybersecurity R&D Agenda Begins
Federal Computer Week (04/18/06) Sternstein, Aliya
The National Science and Technology Council has issued an advance release
of the "Federal Plan for Cyber Security and Information Assurance Research
and Development," a 121-page report advocating a stronger partnership
between government and industry and the establishment of R&D priorities.
The plan also recommends implementing new technologies, road maps, and
metrics, though it stops short of making specific budgets and funding
requirements. The report comes in response to calls from industry
officials and lawmakers to shore up federal cybersecurity and information
assurance research. The report draws on the recommendations of several
recent calls for heightened cybersecurity, including a 2005 report by the
now-dissolved President's Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC)
and the Cyber Security Research and Development Act of 2002. The report
also considered the budgetary recommendations of a memo detailing spending
priorities for fiscal 2007, including cybersecurity R&D funding for the $3
billion Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and
Development program, as well as supercomputing and sophisticated
networking. Bush administration officials emphasized the collaborative,
interagency framework for cybersecurity R&D advocated in the report, which
itself was developed by more than 20 government bodies under the
Interagency Working Group on Cyber Security and Information Assurance.
Citing PITAC as a major influence, the report identifies authentication,
access control, and attack protection as some of the key areas in need of
funding.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
SIGGRAPH Submissions Set Record High
Animation Magazine (04/20/06) Ball, Ryan
ACM SIGGRAPH has reported a record number of submissions for its Computer
Animation Festival, which will coincide with the 2006 edition of SIGGRAPH.
ACM SIGGRAPH received 726 entries, a 25 percent increase from last year,
and chose 97 projects for excellence in computer-generated imagery and
animation. "From across the globe, the word is out that the Computer
Animation Festival is one of the premier venues for showcasing artistic and
technical talent in the film world," said Terrence Masson, chair of this
year's festival. "The bar of excellence has risen even higher and this
year's crop of accepted pieces is diverse, thought-provoking, and
technically superb." Alex Weil's "One Short Rat," which tells the story of
a rat who finds love, danger, and destiny throughout an odyssey that takes
him from New York City to a futuristic lab, took Best in Show honors. The
festival, held in Boston from July 30 to August 3, will host 25,000
computer graphics and interactive technology professionals from around the
world.
For more information on the ACM SIGGRAPH conference, see
http://www.siggraph.org/
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
New Video-Conferencing Method Cheaper, More
Sophisticated, Developers Say
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (04/19/06) Mitchell, Melissa
Researchers from the University of Illinois and the University of
California, Berkeley, have developed a sophisticated videoconferencing
system that distributes 3D camera clusters over Internet2, producing large
immersive video displays after compressing and decompressing the streams.
TEEVE, or Tele-immersive Environments for EVErybody, is currently being
tested in the labs of Illinois and Berkeley. Unlike other next-generation
videoconferencing systems, TEEVE uses relatively inexpensive off-the-shelf
products to deliver an immersive effect where users can see each other from
all angles. "TEEVE is a great technology because it allows for more
cost-effective cyberspace communication of people in their full body size,"
said Klara Nahrstedt, computer science professor at Illinois, adding that
the technology is ideally suited for conducting activities involving
physical movement in cyberspace. The technology could also be used for a
host of entertainment purposes, and the researchers have been pleased with
the results of testing that relayed and projected the movements of two
dancers in the schools' labs, enabling them to stay in sync with each
other. "With TEEVE we want to allow distributed artists such as dancers to
train, design new choreography, and experiment with different movements in
the cyberspace," Nahrstedt said. The technology could soon enable
physiotherapists to interact with their patients online, adult children to
better monitor their parents' health, and students to learn new sports or
movement activities, such as yoga or tai chi, though it will be six to
seven years before applications such as TEEVE are institutionalized in the
corporate and academic environments. Nahrstedt continues to research
techniques to simplify the human-computer interface and develop a real-time
processing capability to rival the quality of television and radio
broadcasts.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
UCI Students Bring Female Perspective to Male-Dominated
Field
Orange County Register (CA) (04/20/06) Hardesty, Greg
The University of California, Irvine, has launched a broad campaign to
dispel the myths that computing is a male-dominated industry in decline. A
team of female computer science students at UCI has developed a computer
role-playing game for girls in middle school and high school that offers an
alternative to the violence that pervades the male-dominated gaming
culture. Their entry into the national Games 4 Girls contest sponsored by
the University of Illinois, "Eterative Tale," has players take a
personality test, answer multiple choice-questions, and make key decisions
as they attempt to capture the highest rank of scholar for the game's
female hero. "We didn't want 'Barbie Goes Shopping' or 'Barbie Goes Scuba
Diving,'" said Ray Ray Shen, a 20-year-old student in UCI's School of
Information and Computer Sciences. Computer science encompasses a far
broader spectrum of activities than just programming, said UCI associate
professor of informatics Andre van der Hoek, yet that is what is taught in
high school. To achieve a broader relevance by teaching computing in the
context of real-life applications, van der Hoek helped establish the
informatics department three years ago. While the dot-com days of instant
riches have passed, van der Hoek notes that computer science can still be a
viable, even lucrative career. Female role models are helpful in
attracting women to the field, he notes. As the team of four UCI students
prepared their entry for the Games 4 Girls competition, they discovered the
broader significance of computer science on their own. Said Shen, "These
are lessons that apply throughout life: Keep trying. Be determined. Never
give up."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
The Search for Voice Activation
Technology Review (04/21/06) Greene, Kate
Google has been tight-lipped about how it will use its new patent for
"voice interface for a search engine," though speculation is mounting that
it could soon unveil voice-activated search for mobile devices. Google has
recently hired several speech-recognition researchers, indicating that it
is beyond at least the early stages of development. "They've put together
a very strong group of people who are experts in speech-recognition
technology," said Nelson Morgan, director of the International Computer
Science Institute. Google's activity comes as the use of mobile devices
for applications beyond voice is taking off around the world. Worldwide,
28 percent of mobile-phone users access the Web through their phones, and
in the United States, where three-quarters of U.S. households now have a
mobile phone, consumers are increasingly using the platform for non-voice
applications such as text messaging and email. The development of mobile
Internet search has lagged behind, however, stymied by miniature keypads
and unfriendly interfaces. Morgan says voice-activated systems' reliance
on statistics sometimes causes them to return errant results. The systems
often find spoken words unintelligible and sometimes ask the user if he is
searching for the system's highest-ranked result. Limited access to a
narrowly defined dictionary often yields the best results, Morgan says,
though that approach is impractical for searching on the open Web.
Instead, Google's system would return results for a few possibilities of
what the user might have been saying, relying more on the strength of its
algorithms than having the very best speech-recognition technology.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Faster, More Efficient Searching of Medical Images
IST Results (04/21/06)
The Danish-led DSSV project has made significant strides in the
application of mathematics to the searching and indexing of medical images
within hospital databases. The project, which concluded in November, was
launched with the long-term goal of creating software to enable hospital
workers to rapidly search and match magnetic resonance images, 3D
tomography scans, and X-rays. "Let's say a doctor has a new patient with a
broken bone," said project coordinator Mads Nielson. "He remembers seeing
a similar fracture and wants to recall how he treated that patient, but
doesn't remember the case number. By inputting the X-ray of the new
patient, this computer system would allow finding the relevant, digitally
stored image of that kind of fracture." The project brought together
mathematicians and computer scientists from four European universities to
create new algorithms to compare shapes, which are difficult to express
mathematically, Nielson notes. The researchers developed improved
processes for applying singularity and scale-space theories to form
algorithms capable of describing an object by its deep structure. In
developing the algorithms, the researchers sorted through different
theories about how singularities in an image arise and disappear. Computer
vision is still in its early stages, and researchers have yet to settle on
a common direction, though medical companies are pressing for
standardization, Nielson says.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Gonzales Calls for Mandatory Web Labeling Law
CNet (04/20/06) McCullagh, Declan
The Bush administration has proposed a mandatory rating system that would
require commercial Web site operators who post sexually explicit content to
place FTC-developed "marks and notices" on their sites, or risk a maximum
prison sentence of five years. The legislation is intended to "prevent
people from inadvertently stumbling across pornographic images on the
Internet," said Attorney General Alberto Gonzales during an event at the
National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. The proposal also
criminalizes the practice of putting deceptive "words or digital images" in
source code to mislead site visitors about sex, and bans the posting of
sexually explicit material on commercial Web sites' home pages if it can be
viewed "absent any further actions by the viewer." ACLU legislative
counsel Marv Johnson criticized the legislation as an unreasonable
limitation of free expression, and cited a mandatory rating system backed
by criminal penalties as being "antithetical to the First Amendment." The
Bush administration's endorsement of a penalty-backed rating system closely
echoes an initiative suggested during the Clinton administration, but
interest flagged because of the difficulty of labeling news sites, among
other things. UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh said the Bush
administration's proposal may have a better shot at judicial approval: He
noted that since the definitions of sexually explicit material have been
employed elsewhere in federal law, "it has the virtue of relative clarity,"
which is "probably constitutional." In his address, Gonzales urged ISPs to
start retaining customer activity records that may be needed for criminal
prosecutions, and hinted that this practice may have to be made mandatory
by new laws.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
HPC User Forum Tackles Leadership Computing and
Storage
HPC Wire (04/21/06) Vol. 15, No. 16,
Last week's HPC User Forum saw a record 133 participants from the United
States, Japan, and Europe who gathered in Richmond, Va., to hear
presentations on data management, leadership computing, and HPC storage
systems. For the last three years, HPC has been the fastest-growing sector
of IT tracked by IDC, posting aggregate growth of 94 percent since 2002.
The increases in the budgets of the National Science Foundation, the
Department of Energy's science program, and NIST in President Bush's 2007
budget indicate strong administration support, noted Simon Szykman,
director of the National Coordination Office for Networking and Information
Technology Research and Development. Szykman was also encouraged by the
meeting's focus on storage performance and cost, citing the steady and
disproportionate increases in the cost of advancing Moore's Law, Linpack,
and hard drive capacity when measured against the resulting gains in
performance. Forum participants reported the application of HPC to
numerous industries, including oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico,
aerospace design and construction, and automotive design. Some vendors are
attempting to reach petaflop-levels of computation as early as 2008 in
response to the demand for better simulations that incorporate more data.
Topping the wish-lists of the attendees were improved scalability, data and
metadata access, and security. Multicore processors, I/O interfaces, and
storage protocols will also be important considerations for the future of
HPC, said presenter Dave Ellis. With latency lagging behind bandwidth,
COPAN Systems' Aloke Guha said that the industry will have to rely on
tiered solutions such as SSD-Disk-MAID-tape.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Women's Rights
Computing Business (04/20/06) Smith, Sandra
IT companies in the United Kingdom are experiencing a shortage in skilled
workers at a time when the number of female employees in the industry
continues to decrease, writes Toshiba UK IS director Sandra Smith. The
decline from approximately 50 percent of all IT workers in the 1960s to 27
percent in 1997 and 21 percent in 2004 is not only an equal opportunity
issue, but also an economic matter when one considers that innovation,
productivity, competitiveness, and the U.K. economy are all at stake.
Toshiba hosted a roundtable discussion four months ago, and the
participants agreed that the industry needs to focus more on retaining
experienced IT professionals who are women, luring back females who left
the industry to start a family, and encouraging more young girls to
consider tech careers. IT companies will need to become much more flexible
to keep women with experience and convince females who left the industry to
raise a family to return. Meanwhile, young women account for just 17
percent of all students majoring in computer science, and although 76
percent of U.K. schoolgirls aged 11-17 have a strong interest in
technology, the majority are not interested in pursuing an IT career. The
IT industry will need to team up with the government on a long-term plan to
improve the perception that young girls have of IT, and show them that IT
companies are in need of IT skills. The skills shortage is already making
it difficult for companies to keep their top talent, while salaries are
rising.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
New York Rushes to Comply With E-Voting Rules
Computerworld (04/19/06) Songini, Marc L.
The U.S. District Court in Albany and the U.S. Department of Justice have
yet to respond to the New York State Board of Elections regarding the
submission of a plan to comply with e-voting rules last week. The federal
government has threatened to sue the state for missing the January deadline
to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which requires all
voting precincts in the county to have at least one handicapped-accessible
e-voting machine and every state to have a comprehensive database on
voters. The state plans to speed up the certification process so that new
voting gear will be in place for this year's primary and general elections,
and to have handicapped-accessible voting devices certified and acquired by
the Sept. 12 primaries. New York also plans to have guidelines for
implementing a temporary voter registration database by July 1. NYSVoter 1
will serve as a central repository for information on voters, with each
being assigned a unique identifier. New York intends to have a permanent
database system, which will be based on NYSVoter 1, up and running by next
spring. HAVA has caused some problems for other states, including
California, which is in the process of implementing e-voting systems and a
registration database.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Experts Plan for a High-Tech Globe
Yale Daily News (04/19/06) Aitken, Kate
The growing role of technology in areas such as health, education, law,
non-profits, media, and management, and the difficulty in bringing
different regions of the world up-to-date on technology, were the main
topics of discussion during a symposium at Yale University's School of
Management. At the Symposium to Explore Technology's Impact on Society,
i-flex solutions Chairman Rajesh Hukku described technology as a tool that
the poor could use to empower themselves both socially and economically.
World Health Organization program manager Joan Dzenowagis noted that
although mobile technology could improve access to technology in certain
regions of the world, cost remains a factor. Though technology was
expected to have a bigger impact on the world, advances have been positive,
said BBC World technology correspondent Clark Boyd. "Blogs in Iran help
people trade opinions, podcasts in Peru teach new agriculture techniques,
cell phones in India help fisherman check market prices and in Kenya help
individuals find out about new job opportunities," he said. And Yale
computer science professor David Gelernter added that people in other parts
of the world have an opportunity to obtain an education that is similar to
what is offered in the United States because university-level classes are
available online.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
New Chip Design Delivers Better Performance, Longer
Battery Life for Cell Phones, WiFi, and Other Wireless
Communications
University of Rochester News (04/19/06)
Researchers at the University of Rochester have designed a wireless chip
that uses just 10 percent of the battery power consumed by today's designs,
and will use much less still as the next generation of wireless devices
appears. Electrical and computer engineering professor Hui Wu, who was an
early developer of the injection locked frequency divider (ILFD) circuit
design, has solved the last obstacle to implementing the technique by
ensuring adequate resolution within a wide range of frequencies. For a
phone to ensure that it is relaying transmissions on the appropriate
frequency, it maintains a highly reliable and accurate clock, produced by a
circuit known as a phase-locked loop that accounts for a considerable
amount of the battery usage of wireless devices. In the traditional
scheme, digital circuitry gauges the frequencies by counting each of the
clock's pulses and sending electricity to the chip that designates its
nodes as ones or zeros. Executed billions of times a second, this
technique consumes significant amounts of energy, whereas an ILFD device
can multiply the clock's pulses to obtain the appropriate frequency. A
divider then checks the accuracy of the multiplier by undoing its work and
comparing the result to the initial clock. Until Wu's design, frequency
dividers were unable to quickly and reliably divide by numbers other than
two. He changed the circuitry from a three-transistor model to five
transistors which, through a technique he calls differential mixing, now
enables the frequency divider to divide by three, as well as two, making
the power-saving ILFD technique viable for the first time. Wu's
"Divide-by-Odd-Number ILFD" will be of increasing importance as the
frequencies of Wi-Fi and other networking devices move up the spectrum into
the 60 GHz band.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Tech Industry Attacks State Anti-RFID Laws
CNet (04/19/06) Broache, Anne
The electronics industry is lobbying against proposals in numerous states
that would limit and even outlaw use of radio-frequency identification
(RFID) chips on personal identification documents such as drivers'
licenses. Though most of these proposals are stalled, a bill introduced in
California last week would ban the issuance of licenses or other ID cards
using "radio waves to either transmit personal information remotely or to
enable personal information to be read from the license or card remotely."
At heart of the issue are fears that as the technology becomes ubiquitous,
it could eventually be employed for the secret tracking or unauthorized
collection of personal data contained on the chips. The electronics
industry says a lot of the fears are ungrounded and that current laws
proscribing the theft of personal information could be broadened to
incorporate RFID. "Consumers don't know what RFID does, so to them it's
voodoo, it's magic," said Marc Anthony Signorino, technology policy
director for the American Electronics Association, which represents about
2,700 companies. "Part of our job is to educate them about what it can do
and what it cannot do." Experts say concerns are so widespread that new
federal Department of Homeland Security regulations expected later in the
year setting standards for states to roll out a national ID for all
Americans, perhaps by as early as 2008, will not require those cards to
employ RFID.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
NSF Begins to Measure Societal Impacts of Research
Science (04/21/06) Vol. 312, No. 5772, P. 347; Mervis, Jeffrey
The National Science Foundation is launching an initiative to gauge the
effects of past research and better predict the impact of future endeavors
tentatively dubbed "the science of science policy." The initiative comes
out of the realization that scientists do not know enough about the
development process to satisfy policymakers making investments of public
money. The NSF's social, behavioral, and economic sciences division, which
is leading the measurement initiative, will hold three workshops to provide
researchers with the intellectual underpinning of the program. The NSF
hopes to receive $6.8 million from Congress in the form of a down payment
on a program it says could eventually lead to the creation of a half-dozen
major research centers at U.S. universities. In its 2007 budget request,
the NSF stated that the initiative would enable policymakers to "reliably
evaluate returns received from R&D investments and to forecast likely
returns from future investments." At the first workshop, held on May 17 to
18, scientists will discuss the origins of individual and group creativity
and innovation in the scientific process. On June 1 to 2, scientists at
the second workshop will analyze the impact of cultural, political,
demographic, and economic currents on the creation and implementation of
knowledge. Then, in July, an international forum will develop
recommendations for improving surveys and other measurements of a country's
technological strength.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
For Developers, Communication Takes Center Stage
eWeek (04/17/06) Vol. 23, No. 16, P. D1; Coffee, Peter
The development of innovative enterprise applications has come under
increasing regulatory scrutiny, though IBM Rational's Lee Nackman sees in
the heightened levels of governance the opportunity for communication
between developers and business-unit managers, enabling them to work past
their linguistic and environmental barriers. Nackman argues that business
executives do not need to be directly involved in the details of the
development process, or even be able to read the code that developers
produce, but that they should instead be engaged in a dialogue with the
developers to ensure that they are working toward a common goal. "When you
look at various approaches to software development that involve iteration,
one of the key ideas is that you can actually produce something concrete in
a relatively short period of time that you can then interact with the
business stakeholder [about] and get feedback," Nackman said, evoking the
principles of agile development, which correlate frequent delivery of
working code to customer satisfaction. Nackman believes that an honest
discussion of the decision-making process is integral to developing a
cohesive enterprise architecture. That decision-making process, the
essence of governance, must be tailored to the desired end, argues Nackman,
noting that sometimes the specific technology used to achieve a goal is
superfluous to its business value. Object-oriented languages and
service-oriented architectures can facilitate a flexible model of
governance that hinges on interface, rather than implementation, Nackman
believes. He also argues that open-source initiatives demonstrate the
viability of a decentralized governance model requiring no formal
organization. Most importantly, developers must know the business value of
their project, Nackman says, arguing that a common characteristic of
companies that successfully deploy IT is a concrete understanding of how it
aligns with the goals of the business.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Students Compete to Build Firefighting Robots
Chronicle of Higher Education (04/21/06) Vol. 52, No. 33, P. A44;
Carnevale, Dan
Trinity College in Hartford, Conn., drew more than 120 teams from around
the world for its 13th annual robot-firefighter competition last week. For
the contest, the teams were required to build small and completely
autonomous robots that have the ability to make their way through a maze,
which was designed to represent the floor plan of a house, find a burning
candle, and blow it out. The robots often found the fire within 20
seconds. Though speed is extremely important, considering what can happen
to a house after 30 seconds, the contest places even more value on
efficiency because a commercial firefighting robot would have to be
reliable 100 percent of the time. David J. Ahlgren, a professor of
engineering at Trinity and director of the competition, says the contest
can help facilitate the development of a larger, commercial robot within
the next 10 years. For the first time, the participants were able to use
multiple robots that work as a team, and a group of students from Trinity
made use of six robots that used infrared and other sensors to distinguish
a wall from a flame. A team from Shanghai won the expert division of the
competition, which required the robot to search two floors, put out two
candles, find an "infant," and emit a signal that would lead a human
rescuer to the baby.
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link May Require Paid Subscription
to the top
Quantum Computing: When Photons Go AWOL
New Scientist (04/15/06) Vol. 190, No. 2547, P. 47; Anderson, Mark
Quantum information researcher James Franson has made an amazing discovery
while attempting to improve the way in which particles of light, or
photons, carry information. While working to prevent a "swap gate" from
failing as photons travel through optical fiber, he has learned that bits
of empty space can become entangled. One photon would cross over and
result in two photons traveling through the same fiber, which prompted
Franson to make use of a "watcher" to prevent the quantum state of a photon
from changing or evolving. "In the quantum Zeno effect, a randomly
occurring event can be suppressed by frequent observation to determine
whether or not it has occurred," says Franson. Rather than use a single
photon, Franson fired a laser beam into each of the fibers, and he
discovered that the "holes," or regions of empty space, in the two
different beams of photons became entangled. With quantum entanglement,
information on the transmitted quantum bits does not have to be encoded,
which makes Franson believe a new way of processing information could come
from his discovery. "These kinds of correlations can be used to implement
secure communications--quantum cryptography--or to transmit an unknown
state via quantum teleportation," he says. Experiments on photon holes
still must be conducted, and he believes the holes should be far apart and
that laser beams should travel through fibers in opposite directions.
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link May Require Paid Subscription
to the top
Embedded Experts: Fix Code Bugs or Cost Lives
EE Times (04/10/06)No. 1418, P. 1; Merritt, Rick; Goering, Richard;
Lammers, David
Good programming discipline and management support in software engineering
can mean the difference between life and death because many embedded
systems--particularly those whose function can prolong or protect human
life--rely heavily on software, said speakers at the recent Embedded
Systems Conference. Instances where software glitches had severe, often
deadly consequences include a radiation system in Panama that gave 28
patients lethal overdoses in May 2001, and the crash of a U.S. Army
helicopter whose software contained 500 errors in just the first 17 percent
of tested code. "We aren't afraid of software, but we need to be, because
one wrong bit out of 100 million can cause people to die," warned
consultant Jack Ganssle. He urged software engineers to incorporate
rigorous up-front testing into the design process, while Embedded Research
Solutions CTO Dave Stewart said engineers must always return to the start
of the testing suite to ensure that the changes they make because of
failures do not introduce new bugs. He also advised engineers to create
error-handling modes in their programs that must exist as just another
system state and regard errors as one of many potential inputs. Ericsson
Labs' Lorenzo Fasanelli said programmers must routinely classify all inputs
and system states as well as note any unauthorized inputs or edge states,
while programs should regularly monitor and document their own performance,
down time, and memory integrity. Programmers must realize that the most
popular programming languages, C and C++, are highly susceptible to bugs,
according to Saks & Associates President Dan Saks. Systems architect Kim
Fowler said engineers need to caution management by providing examples of
past failures or the kinds of problems that long feature lists, tight
budgets, and abbreviated schedules could lead to.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top