Computer Scientists Take the 'Why' Out of WiFi
University of California, San Diego (09/04/07) Kane, Daniel B.
University of California, San Diego computer scientists have developed an
automated, enterprise-scale WiFi troubleshooting system. UCSD computer
science professor Stefan Savage says that people expect WiFi to work, but
have a general understanding that WiFi systems can be inconsistent. "If
you have a wireless problem in our building, our system automatically
analyzes the behavior of your connection--each wireless protocol, each
wired network service and the many interactions between them," says Savage.
Manually diagnosing wireless access networks requires a massive amount of
data, expertise, and time, and wireless networks contain complexities that
wired networks avoid, such as problems in the shared spectrum, user
mobility, and authentication management. Additionally, the interaction
between wired and wireless networks can also be the source of problems.
UCSD computer science Ph.D. student Yu-Chung Cheng says, "Many problems are
transient--they're gone before you can even get an admin to look at
them--and the number of possible reasons is huge." In a paper on the
system presented at ACM's SIGCOMM 2007 conference, the researchers outlined
a set of modeling techniques for automatically characterizing the source of
WiFi problems, with a specific emphasis on data transfer delays unique to
802.11 networks. The system is used in the UCSD Computer Science building
and all wireless help desk issues are directed to the automated system,
which has been running for about nine months. "In the future, I think that
enterprise wireless networks will have sophisticated diagnostics and repair
capabilities built in," Savage says.
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Japan to Challenge Google in Search Technology
Financial Times (09/05/07) P. 1; Sanchanta, Mariko; Waters, Richard
Japan is encouraging the nation's technology companies to focus more on
providing services to fend off challenges in innovation from abroad,
including tech companies in the United States and consumer electronics
firms in South Korea and Taiwan. "The key to Japan's competitiveness has
been our core technology but we need to create a new value-added service
that is personalized," says Toshihide Yahiro, director of the information
service industry division at the ministry of trade. Tokyo wants local
companies to use their expertise in developing mobile phones, car
navigation systems, and other devices to build proprietary search and
information retrieval functions. Japanese officials want to challenge
Google and other foreign Internet services by developing new search
technologies for electronic devices. Japan has embarked on 10 state-led
partnerships involving next-generation search functions. A car navigation
system is the focus of a project involving NTT Data, the Toyota
Info-Technology Center, and Toyota Mapmaster. The ministry of trade has
set aside the equivalent of about $121 million to $129 million for the
project.
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Direct Brain-to-Game Interface Worries Scientists
Wired News (09/05/07) Cole, Emmet
Brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are being tested as virtual controllers
for video games, but scientists are concerned that the games may end up
controlling the user. For example, sometimes the devices force users to
slow down their brain waves, often leaving the user unable to focus.
"Imagine that somebody uses a game with slow brain-wave activity and then
drives a car while still in that state," says Niels Birbaumer, a leading
independent research in medical applications of BCIs. "You could have an
accident. I think it's a rare possibility, but it should be tested before
people do this." Although the technology has been successfully tested with
quadriplegics, scientists worry that its use for casual entertainment could
cause gamers to experience the effects of neurofeedback, a technique that
heightens awareness and control of brain waves by providing real-time
graphic representation of the user's brain wave activity similar to how
physiological information can be used to control a patient's blood
pressure, skin temperature, and heart rate in a process known as
biofeedback. For example, Smart BrainGames has developed a racing game
that requires users to be calm to reach optimum speed, but the game is
intended only for medical purposes and the FDA has approved the device only
for relaxation and "muscle re-education." "From a clinical perspective, we
are super concerned about any use of this technology that's being touted as
a toy or as entertainment," says Smart BrainGames co-founder Lindsay Greco.
Michelle Hinn, chair of the International Game Developers Association's
Game Accessibility Special Interest Group, says BCI games are great for
people with disabilities, but they may not be appropriate for the general
public.
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Digital Dandelions: The Flowering of Network
Research
University of California, San Diego (08/31/07) Kane, Daniel B.
At ACM SIGCOMM 2007 in Kyoto, Japan, University of California, San Diego
computer scientists presented techniques for creating annotated, Internet
router graphs based on observations of Internet characteristics. The UCSD
researchers previously created a map of the Internet using new algorithms.
The map, which looks like the head of a digital dandelion, includes
Internet nodes and linkages. The map is mostly a randomly generated graph
that retains the essential characteristics of a small corner of the
Internet, but doubles the number of nodes. The graph annotations used to
create the map include information on relevant peer-to-peer business
relationships that help determine how packets of information move across
the Internet. "Our work allows computer scientists to experiment with a
range of random graphs that match Internet characteristics," says paper
co-author Priya Mahadevan. "This work is also useful for determining the
sensitivity of particular techniques--like routing protocols and congestion
controls--to network topology and to variations in network topology." The
source code for the topology generator will be made publicly available to
help a variety of studies that may benefit from the technology. "The
techniques we have developed for characterizing and recreating Internet
characteristics are generally applicable to a broad range of disciplines
that consider networks, including physics, biology, chemistry, neuroscience
and sociology," says UCSD professor Amin Vahdat, senior author on the paper
and director of UCSD's Center for Networked Systems.
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Princeton Engineers Develop Low-Cost Recipe for
Patterning Microchips
Princeton University (09/02/07) Parker, Hilary
Researchers at Princeton University have devised a simple strategy for
making nanopatterns on microchips. A self-formation process, the technique
involves painting a thin polymer film onto a rigid plate such as a silicon
wafer, and then placing a second plate on top to create a polymer sandwich
that is heated to support adhesion. Afterwards, the plates are pried
apart, which results in fractures into two complementary sets of nanoscale
gratings on each plate, with the distance between the lines being four
times the thickness. The fracture-induced structuring process is the work
of Stephen Chou, the Joseph C. Elgin Professor of Engineering and his
graduate students Paru Deshpande and Ying Wang; and William Russell, dean
of the Graduate School, and his graduate student Leonard Pease III. "It's
remarkable--and counterintuitive--that fracturing creates these regular
patterns," says Russell. They have applied for a patent for the
fracture-induced structuring process, which they believe will be
cost-effective for large-scale use in industry. The team published their
research Sept. 2, 2007, in the online version of Nature Nanotechnology.
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HPC Challenge Awards at SC07
HPC Wire (08/31/07)
The awards session for the annual HPC Challenge Award Competition is
scheduled for Tuesday, November 13, 2007, during the SC07 conference. The
HPC Challenge is designed to encourage the development of HPC hardware and
software capabilities that will help make the use of HPC systems more
productive. The competition will be based on the HPC Challenge benchmark
suite that was developed at the University of Tennessee under the DARPA
High Productivity Computing Systems program. Global HPL, Global
RandomAccess, EP STREAM (Triad) per system, and Global FFT are the most
challenging benchmarks, and they will be the focus of the competition.
There will be four awards, at $750 each, for best performance on a base or
optimized run in each category. A second class of awards will focus on
most productivity. For this $2,000 award, which may be split among the top
entries, implementation will be weighed on performance as well as on code
elegance, clarity, and size. The HPC community has until Oct. 27 to submit
entries. For more information about SC07, or to register, visit
http://sc07.supercomputing.org/
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Faster Wireless in Works to Transfer Movies, Other Large
Files From Gadget to Gadget
Associated Press (09/05/07) Bluestein, Greg
Georgia Tech professor Joy Laskar and other scientists at the Georgia
Electronic Design Center have been testing the use of extremely high radio
frequencies to transfer large data files over short distances. Researchers
say the high frequencies, in the unlicensed 60 gigahertz band, are an
underutilized resource and could one day become the conventional way to
wirelessly and quickly transfer high-definition video, large audio
collections, and other large files over short distances. A similar
short-range system, known as ultra-wideband (UWB), is now available on the
market following several years of negotiations between different companies
and engineering organizations. UWB is already being used for wireless
communication with a docking station and could also be used for
high-definition video transmission, but the maximum speed for UWB is about
480 megabits per second, about the speed of a high-speed computer cable.
The 60 GHz band offers far greater speeds. "There will be a constant
pressure for speed and it will never cease," says Philips' M. Kursat
Kimyacioglu. "We need much faster wireless data networking technologies to
make much faster downloads and back-ups and higher resolution HD video
streaming." Laskar says the research is far from over, but that hopefully
the major challenges can be solved in about a year. If that happens, the
hardware for transferring files could be available by 2009, and new TV sets
could include the high-frequency chips the following year.
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Sensor Rise Powers Life Recorders
BBC News (08/29/07) Seward, Liz
Hewlett-Packard's Trusted Systems Lab director Martin Sadler predicts that
by 2057 there could be at least 1 million devices for every resident in the
United Kingdom, and that a person's entire life could be recorded on a
network of intelligent sensors. However, Sadler warns that such massive
amounts of collectable personal data could lead to some difficult ethical
dilemmas. There already are an abundance of sensors and recording devices
in our everyday world, Sadler notes, including closed-circuit TVs, wildlife
monitoring devices, mobile phone cameras, and GPS devices. A 2002 study
calculated that there were about 4.2 million CCTV cameras in the United
Kingdom, or about one camera for every 14 people. Researchers at
Microsoft, Hewlett Packard, and MIT have already developed devices that
record a person's every move. Sadler says most of the applications will be
"innocent and harmless." He says, "We imagine by 2057 our motorways,
rivers and costal defenses, farms, businesses, homes and neighborhoods and
bodies will all be highly instrumented." Sadler's predictions are echoed
by Oliver Sparrow, a scenario planner who has advised the U.K. government
and international organizations. Sparrow says advances in technology and a
better understanding of physics would lead to a new breed of devices that
are too small to see and capable of permeating the space around us and even
our bodies to record everything. Sadler and Sparrow both believe that
there needs to be more public debate about such sensor technologies and how
they are used.
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Q&A: Researcher Says Skilled Foreign Nationals Need Green
Cards, Not H-1B Visas
Computerworld (08/30/07) Thibodeau, Patrick
Although one out of every four international patent applications filed
under the Patent Cooperation Treaty are submitted by foreign nationals
living in the United States, unless the federal government does something
to make it easier for foreigners to obtain green cards or permanent
residency, many of those inventors may leave the United States, causing a
"reverse brain drain," concludes a new study. The study, "America's New
Immigrant Entrepreneurs," written by researchers at Duke, Harvard, and New
York universities, was led by Duke adjunct professor Vivek Wadhwa. Wadhwa
says the United States is experiencing a brain drain similar to what
countries such as India experienced when so many highly educated foreigners
came to the U.S., except now they are leaving the country and returning to
tech centers in their native countries. Wadhwa says some venture
capitalists estimate that 100,000 skilled workers have returned to China
and 50,000 have returned to India over the last few years. There are over
a million skilled workers and their families waiting for permanent resident
visas, but immigration policy mandates that only 8,400 green cards can be
issued to China and 8,400 to India every year. Wadhwa suggests increasing
the total number of permanent resident visas from 120,000 per year to
either 250,000 or 300,000 and removing all per-country limitations until
the backlog is cleared. Wadhwa says the H-1B visa creates more problems
than it solves by distorting market forces and allowing companies to bring
in workers who will work for lower salaries than American workers. He says
it should be eliminated in favor of permanent resident visas. Although he
also believes the country's priority should be to encourage American
children to study math and science and participate in technical fields,
until the nation accomplishes this he says we must rely on foreign
nationals to keep the United States competitive.
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IT Workers Second-Guess Career Choice
eWeek (08/31/07) Perelman, Deborah
A surprising number of IT professionals say that although they love what
they do, they are not sure the IT industry is the best place to be doing
it, and many say they are steering their computing-inclined children away
from the IT industry. However, this is not a universal opinion, and the IT
job market and the overall health of the IT sector has improved greatly
recently, with more students about to enter the talent pool and earn high
salaries in some sectors. Still, issues such as offshoring remain a sore
point for many workers. A 2007 CEO Survey by Deloitte shows that
technology company CEOs believe their use of offshoring will increase over
the next few years, with 45 percent of respondents saying they currently
use offshoring and 55 percent saying they plan to in the near future.
Nearly one-third of respondents said they expect to have 10 percent of
their work force offshore in the next five years. As for the often talked
about shortage of IT professionals, the reality is that only workers with
the most highly sought-after skills are in high demand, and everyone else
is having difficulty finding work, IT workers say. In general, the
combination of outsourcing, H-1B visas, and the commoditization of the IT
workforce makes other career paths seem safer and more secure.
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EU Project Builds Artificial Brain for Robots
Cordis News Service (08/27/07)
Scientists in Spain have designed microchips that make use of a full
neuronal system to serve as an artificial brain for a robot that would
interact with humans. The development of the man-made cerebellum by
researchers at the University of Granada is part of Sensopac (SENSOrimotor
structuring of perception and action for emerging cognition), a four-year
project of the EU to build a robot with more human-like movements and
interactions. Within the next two years, the project will work to
integrate the artificial brain into a robot designed by the German
Aerospace Center. Physicists, neuroscientists, and electronic engineers
from Europe's top universities are involved in the project. "Although
robots are increasingly more important to our society and have more
advanced technology, they can not yet do certain tasks like those carried
out by mammals," says Eduardo Ros Vidal, a professor at Granada who
coordinates its contribution to the project. Sensopac also has plans to
develop an artificial skin, make the robot look more like a human, and make
it information-sensitive.
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Software Via the Internet: Microsoft in 'Cloud'
Computing
New York Times (09/03/07) P. C1; Markoff, John
Microsoft recently announced plans to provide free software that connects
its Windows operating system to software services hosted on the Internet, a
technique known as "cloud" computing. Microsoft hopes its new online
applications will be competitive against similar online services offered by
Google and other online software providers that already offer software
applications online and have a significant head start. The Microsoft
Windows Live software suite will include an updated electronic mail
program, photo-sharing applications, and a writing tool designed for
bloggers. Microsoft wants the Windows Live package to make the company the
digital curator of all of a user's information, whether it's on a PC,
mobile device, or the Internet. Millions of Internet users already use Web
applications either to create or store data. For example, Google offers
several cloud computing applications, including email, photo sharing, and a
word document and spreadsheet application. Microsoft is counting on its
large user base to make Windows Live a success, and plans to provide some
applications for free, such as photo-sharing and disk storage, while
charging for others, including computer security and a variety of
business-oriented services for small and medium businesses. Microsoft's
competitors are upset because four years ago Microsoft argued against
adding compression features that would allow Web applications to perform
better, but now Microsoft has developed its own compression standards that
could make Windows Live perform better than its competitors.
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A High-Tech Helping Hand for Soldiers
Philadelphia Inquirer (09/04/07) Holcomb, Henry J.
The Wearable Intelligent Reporting Environment (WIRE), developed by
Lockheed Martin, is designed to help soldiers in the field by recording
their activity and turning speech it records into documents so soldiers do
not have to write reports after a hard day on patrol. If approved,
soldiers would wear a headset with an earphone and microphone designed to
separate voices from gunfire and other noise. The headset is connected to
a rugged but lightweight computer tucked into the soldier's combat vest.
The system allows soldiers to dictate a report while in the field, all
without taking their hands off their weapons or their eyes off of the
action. The computer asks for responses that fill out forms designed for
different situations and asks about words or situations it does not
understand. The computer automatically creates a report and sends it to
commanders, along with data from the soldier's GPS receiver. Data from
multiple patrols can be analyzed immediately to fine-tune strategy and
tactics. WIRE is designed to work with headsets and batteries already used
by the military, and because the device does not have a video screen a
single charge lasts as long as most patrols. WIRE also has significant
potential for law enforcement applications. Crime analysis expert Robert
Cheetham says fresh digital reports from the field would be extremely
valuable to police commanders and could allow them to detect patterns and
prevent future crimes.
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ICANN's Whois Privacy Reforms Stalled Again
Computerworld (08/28/07) Vijayan, Jaikumar
ICANN's workgroup dedicated to solving differences over proposed privacy
changes to the Whois database has failed to develop a proposal for
reforming the way Whois data is handled. The failure to reach an agreement
perpetuates a long-standing holding pattern on proposed reforms to how
Whois data is managed. GoDaddy's Tim Ruiz says the Whois debate has been
ongoing for years and it is time for ICANN to bring it to a conclusion.
"It's been clear for some time that unanimity, or even consensus, on any
changes is not possible," says Ruiz. Ruiz was part of the 60-person
working group, which included service provider representatives, registrars,
and law enforcement authorities. Companies, intellectual property holders,
and law enforcement officials support open access to the Whois database as
it helps find phishers, trademark and copyright violators, and other online
criminals. Privacy advocates believe unrestricted access could expose
individual domain registrants to spam and unwanted surveillance and argue
that Whois should be shielded from public access. The Whois task force has
been working for more than four years to address the concerns of all sides
involved and recently came up with the Operational Point of Contact (OPoC)
proposal, which would allow domain name registrars to continue to collect
contact information but would require them to prevent public access to the
database, except in cases where law enforcement authorities and other
parties could demonstrate a valid need for access. The OPoC proposal
failed to gain support, partially because of how access proposals would be
handled and concerns over who should be able to access protected Whois data
and under what conditions.
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UTEP Awarded $5 Million to Create Cyberinfrastructure
Center
University of Texas at El Paso (08/21/2007)
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $5 million grant to the
University of Texas at El Paso to establish a cyberinfrastructure center.
Experts in computer science, mathematics, and earth and environmental
sciences will use the Cyber-ShARE Center of Excellence to develop software
applications, services, and other digital tools that will help improve the
nation's cyberinfrastructure. Scientists will be able to use the
applications developed by researchers at Cyber-ShARE to gather and compute
data over the Internet for projects. "Traditionally, research is done at
large institutions throughout the world and it's difficult to share
information others are working on," says Ann Q. Gates, chair of UTEP's
Department of Computer Science. "But the whole promise of
cyberinfrastructure is that it breaks down those boundaries and allows
scientists and educators to do state-of-the-art research." Cyber-ShARE
will also make its information and applications available to the public,
provide opportunities in Web-based research to college students, and offer
outreach programs to middle and high school students and teachers.
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Software Relies on Many Chefs
Baltimore Sun (08/31/07) P. 1E; Bishop, Tricia
Technology companies are warming to open-source software development, in
which a product's source code is made publicly accessible and programming
enthusiasts are encouraged to assess and modify the code to create improved
or derivative products. A decade earlier, such a practice went against the
corporate business model, and was vehemently opposed. Gartner forecasts
that the software domain will be "restructured" by open source, while IDC
analysts describe open source as "the most significant all-encompassing and
long-term trend that the software industry has seen since the early 1980s."
Advocates say open-source development encourages the creation of cheaper,
better, and more secure technology because it is often reviewed by numerous
programmers around the world. Open-source security software is used by the
Defense Department and the National Security Agency to safeguard their
networks. Open-source firms subscribe to one of three primary business
models. Software is free in all three models, but one model sells support
services, another sells upgrades, and the third sells hardware that is
bundled with open-source software. Critics of open-source development
complain that the practice leads to cumbersome, overwritten software that
devalues programmers' contributions because they are unpaid. They also
claim that the free nature of a lot of open-source software wrecks revenue
models.
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Robots Surf the Web to Learn About the World
New Scientist (08/18/07) Vol. 195, No. 2617, P. 22; Reilly, Michael
Robots and computer programs are learning to associate words with objects
by going online and Googling the words, using the retrieved images to make
the connection. "If you give a robot visual capabilities, it could pretty
much do anything," argues the University of Maryland in College Park's Alap
Karapurkar. Carnegie Mellon University researcher Paul Rybski goes a step
further. He says, "You could tell a robot, 'car,' and it could learn what
a car looks like, that they're used for driving, then it could download a
driver's manual, hop in the car and drive away." Rybski and colleague
Alexei Efros put together the first Semantic Robot Vision Challenge at the
annual American Association for Artificial Intelligence conference to test
the theory. The competition involved instructing robots to search the
Internet for images relevant to 20 object words, and then look for the
objects in a 6-meter-square area. Robots were entered in the contest by
five teams. The first step for the robots was converting the hundreds of
images resulting from queries into descriptions that could be used to
identify objects in the real world, and this was achieved through the use
of software that analyzes the shading patterns in all of the resulting
images to outline telltale characteristics and organize them into a sort of
fingerprint. Several robots were equipped with stereo cameras to search
for objects, which took snapshots for comparison to the fingerprint index.
The robot that scored the highest--seven out of 20 found objects--was
built by a team of University of British Columbia researchers. The
software the robots run on could be applied to the significant improvement
of Web image searches.
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Toward a PeopleWeb
Computer (08/07) Vol. 40, No. 8, P. 63; Ramakrishnan, Raghu; Tomkins,
Andrew
Key characteristics of users and objects will stop their reliance on
individual Web sites and move toward global availability, write Yahoo
Research's Raghu Ramakrishnan and Andrew Tomkins. A global object model
will combine with portable user context into a "PeopleWeb" that will
engender richer content architecture and facilitate substantial changes in
online communities and information discovery. There are typically four
primary manifestations of online metadata: Anchor text (the underscored
text in a hyperlink that can open up to another page), tags (single words
or brief phrases placed on a resource to assist in the retrieval or sharing
of that resource), page views, and reviews/comments. Yahoo produces
roughly 8 percent of global clicks, encompassing about 110 billion clicks a
month; approximately 10 million new pieces of valuable anchor text are
generated daily, reviews come to 6 million, and eBay reports an average of
7 million new structured listings daily for 2006. The generation of
meaningful object descriptions through social interaction can be
significantly enhanced via a global name scheme, although a Web search
cannot adequately produce all references to an underlying object. A global
object model can effect the tagging of all objects with certain metadata
types. Stars, tags, attention, and text (STAT) are the most broad examples
of such types, and Ramakrishnan and Tomkins expect STAT metadata to be
integrated with user reputation measures to yield overall rankings of
object quality in numerous contexts. Additional type-specific metadata
will undoubtedly enhance these rankings, the authors write.
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