Big Future Beckons for Tiny Chips
BBC News (09/19/07) Fildes, Jonathan
Intel has displayed what the company says is the world's first working
chips built with transistors with features only 32 billionths of a meter
wide, meaning Moore's Law will remain intact for the foreseeable future.
Intel co-founder Dr. Gordon Moore says that he expects the law named after
him will continue for at least 10 years more. "Eventually, however, we're
down approaching the dimensions of individual atoms and that's clearly as
far as we can go down the path of shrinking dimensions," Moore says. The
next generation of chips displayed by Intel, known as Penryn chips, contain
transistors with features just 45 nanometers in size and pack 410 million
transistors in an area the size of a postage stamp. Penryn's successor,
called Nehalem, will be launched in 2008 and will nearly double the number
of transistors on the chip. Such tiny chips, which are also being released
by IBM and its partners Toshiba, Sony, and AMD, have poor performance in
their gate dielectrics and allow currents passing through their transistors
to leak, reducing the efficiency of the chip. To increase chip efficiency,
Intel replaced silicon dioxide gate dielectrics with metal hafnium. Moore
says the new materials' development and integration into working chips is
"the biggest change in transistor technology" since the late 1960s.
Hafnium is a high-K metal and is better able to store an electrical charge
than silicon dioxide. Silicon manufactures have already planned beyond
this next generation technology, as devices with features 22 nanometers in
size are expected to be released in 2011. The industry does expect to
reach a physical limitation eventually, though Moore does not think such
limitations will stop technology from advancing.
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Group Says E-Voting Paper Trail Wouldn't Improve
Security
IDG News Service (09/18/07) Gross, Grant
A report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
think tank concludes that requiring printouts as a back-up to electronic
voting would not improve security and would increase the costs of U.S.
voting systems. The ITIF says that voter-verified paper trail ballots used
with e-voting machines would prevent the use of more innovative voting
technology that providers better security, transparency, and reliability
than paper-only voting systems. The ITIF report also notes that people are
willing to trust computers with many other important functions such as
banking, medicine, and aviation. Supporters of paper-trail ballots dispute
the report's findings. "The argument that people trust computers in other
places is specious--safety-critical systems have been developed in other
contexts using rigorous standards that are not applied to voting machines,"
says Eugene Spafford, chairman of ACM's U.S. policy committee. ACM has not
called for e-voting machines to be abandoned, but suggests that e-voting
machines go through two levels of auditing, paper trails and random machine
audits, says Spafford, who notes that beyond the hacking threat, "errors,
bugs, and accidents can also result in problems unless there is an
independent, durable audit trail." Meanwhile, VerifiedVoting.org President
Pamela Smith disputes the report's suggestion that a growing technophobic
movement is driving mistrust for e-voting. "The harshest critics of
e-voting--in particular paperless e-voting--are computer technologists who
are the literal opposite of technophobic," Smith says. For more
information on ACM's e-voting activities, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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CS Profs and the DOD
Computing Research Association (09/18/07) Harsha, Peter
Recent policy changes at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA) have reduced university participation rates in DARPA-funded
computer science research projects. Between fiscal years 2001 and 2004,
the amount of funding from DARPA to U.S. universities for computer science
research fell by half, and evidence suggests that funding for universities
is currently lower still, writes the Computer Research Association's Peter
Harsha. Diminished support for university computer science not only
creates a gap in federal IT research and development, but also weakens the
"DARPA model" of research support. Since the early 1960s, the country has
benefited from the two different approaches to research that the NSF and
DARPA have taken. While the NSF focused primarily on small grants for
individual researchers, DARPA worked to identify key problems of interest
and to create and support communities of research to solve the problems.
DARPA-supported research in computer science over the past four decades has
established the U.S. economy and military as the most dominant forces in
the world, Harsha says. Reducing support for academic computer science
means some of the brightest computer scientists in the country are no
longer working on defense-related problems. Many experienced computer
science researchers say there is an entire generation of young researchers
who have no experience working on DARPA and Defense Department projects.
The Computer Science Study Group, managed by the Institute for Defense
Analysis for DARPA, focuses on introducing researchers to the needs and
priorities of the Defense Department by running workshops, mentoring, and
hosting tours of DOD facilities, but the group does little to bring DARPA
interests back into university research.
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House Committee Chair Wants Info on Cancelled DHS
Data-Mining Programs
Computerworld (09/18/07) Vijayan, Jaikumar
House Committee on Homeland Security Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.)
asked Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff to produce
a detailed list of all IT programs that were canceled, discontinued, or
modified due to privacy concerns. Thompson also requested information on
how much money the DHS spent on each program, the names of contractors
involved in the projects, and information on how privacy issues are now
being addressed. Thompson's inquiry follows the cancellation of DHS'
Analysis Dissemination Visualization Insight and Semantic Insight (ADVISE)
data-mining program, after $42 million had been spent on the project but
privacy concerns had not been properly addressed. In a letter to Chertoff,
Thompson expressed his concern over the "apparent litany" of DHS programs
that have been canceled or modified after millions of dollars had been
spent because of a failure to address privacy concerns early in the
process. Thompson notes that a report by the DHS' inspector general showed
that the department's privacy office was unaware that an ADVISE pilot
program was using real data. In addition to the ADVISE program, Thompson
has requested information on the $100 million Computer Assisted Passenger
Prescreening system, the $8 million Multi-State Anti-Terrorism Information
Exchange pilot project, and the $140 million Transportation Security
Administration's Secure Flight effort, all of which were cancelled due to
privacy concerns or security vulnerabilities.
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Clock to Tick Down U.S. Privacy
Washington Times (09/18/07) P. A3; Hudson, Audrey
The American Civil Liberties Union's "Surveillance Society Clock" is
counting down until the U.S. government stops spying on private citizens as
part of the war on terror, and the clock is quickly approaching midnight.
"The extinction of privacy is a real possibility," says Barry Steinhardt,
director of the ACLU's Technology and Liberty Project. "We believe that
privacy is not yet dead--it is a patient on life support." The ACLU clock
is modeled after the "Doomsday Clock," created by the Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists in 1974 to warn against the possibility of a nuclear
holocaust. Steinhardt says rapid advancements in technology and data
mining are leading to the possibility of a "1984-style surveillance
society" and creating a false sense of security. "The false security of a
surveillance society threatens to turn our country into a place where
individuals are constantly susceptible to being trapped by data errors or
misinterpretations, illegal use of information by rogue government workers,
abuses by political leaders--or perhaps most insidiously, expanded legal
uses of information for all kinds of purposes," says a new ACLU report on
mass surveillance by the government. The clock is currently set at six
minutes before midnight, and will be updated as events warrant moving the
time closer to or further away from midnight. "With a flood of new
technologies that expand the potential for centralized monitoring, a
president who believes he can unilaterally sweep aside the laws that
restrain government spying ... we confront the possibility of a dark future
where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is
recorded, compiled and stored away, ready for access by the authorities
whenever they want," the report says.
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Penn Engineers Design Electronic Computer Memory in
Nanoscale Form That Retrieves Data 1,000 Times Faster
University of Pennsylvania (09/17/07) Reese, Jordan
University of Pennsylvania scientists have developed nanowires capable of
storing computer data for 100,000 years and are also more energy efficient
and 1,000 times faster than existing portable memory devices such as Flash
memory and micro-drives. The researchers developed a self-assembling
nanowire made of germanium antimony telluride, a phase-changing material
that can switch between amorphous and crystalline structures, the key to
the computer memory system. The nanoscale devices, about 100 atoms in
diameter, were fabricated without conventional lithography. Instead, a
self-assembly process was used in which chemical reactants crystallize at
lower temperatures mediated by nanoscale metal catalysts to spontaneously
form nanowires that were 30-50 nanometers in diameter and 10 micrometers in
length. Memory devices were then fabricated on silicon substrates. Tests
of the device shows extremely low power consumption during data encoding,
only 0.7mW per bit, and data writing, erasing, and retrieval took only 50
nanoseconds, 1,000 times faster than conventional memory devices. "This
new form of memory has the potential to revolutionize the way we share
information, transfer data, and even download entertainment as consumers,"
says Ritesh Agarwal, one of the developers and an assistant professor in
the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.
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The Singular Question of Human vs. Machine Has a
Spiritual Side
Wall Street Journal (09/19/07) P. B1; Gomes, Lee
There are people who believe there will one day be a point of
"singularity" when human intelligence is overtaken by machine intelligence,
and they speculate that a new, super-intelligent organism cross-bred from
man and machine could be one of the monumental developments this
singularity could bring about. Lee Gomes writes that singularity advocates
talk at length about the need for Artificial General Intelligence (AGI),
which is seen as a key singularity milestone. Yet he says AI researchers
have been trying, so far unsuccessfully, to achieve this goal since the
1950s. "There is a schism between the AGI and the AI worlds," Gomes notes.
"The AGI faction thinks AI researchers have sold out, abandoning their
early dreams of 'general' intelligence to concentrate on more attainable
(and more lucrative) projects." Gomes agrees with this assessment, but
while AI researchers insist that the revision of their approach was
unavoidable given the naivete of their earlier ambitions, singularists are
undaunted in their belief that new approaches will yield AGI breakthroughs.
Gomes entertains the notion "that the discussion of singularity involves a
sublimated spiritual yearning for some form of eternal life and an
all-powerful being, but one articulated by way of technical, secular
discourse," and he perceives significant intersection between singularists
and proponents of "life extension." He adds that the popularity of the
Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence program among singularists
reflects a desire for a messianic figure from space, which seems to again
indicate that the need for spiritual enlightenment through advanced
technology is a running theme among the singularity set.
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Reverse-Engineering the Brain for Better Computers
EE Times (09/18/07) Maxfield, Clive
University of Texas at San Antonio researchers are trying to build a
better computer by reverse-engineering brain neurons. UTSA biology
researchers are using Interactive Supercomputing's Star-P software to run
biologically-realistic simulations of molecular diffusion in neurons with
the hope that understanding how neurons process chemical signals when a
person learns and retains information will result in more reliable
computers that have stochastic computing components. Stochastic computing
is a type of artificial intelligence that uses probabilistic methods to
solve problems. The human brain has trillions of different types of
neurons, each with complicated branching dendrites, so running the complex
simulations to model even a single neuron requires massive amounts of
computational performance and memory resources. To meet these requirements
the researchers used a Star-P license to link their desktop computers to an
eight-processor parallel cluster, and the team will soon be able to use a
120-processor cluster thanks to an additional license from ISC. In
addition to advancing computing techniques, UTSA's research could lead to
other neurobiological research breakthroughs, particularly in sensory
acquisition, motor learning, and neurological diseases such as Alzheimer's,
Parkinson's, schizophrenia, and epilepsy.
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New Research Seeks to Enhance Quality and Security of
Wireless Telemedicine
Rochester Institute of Technology (09/17/07) Dube, Will
Researchers at the Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of
Alabama are working to advance the use of radio frequency identification
(RFID) technology in cardiac sensor networks, a new wireless technology for
telemedicine delivery. The researchers will work on improving the security
of the systems, reducing the possibility of identity theft and
cyber-terrorism. "Telemedicine technology can greatly increase the quality
of medical care while also decreasing health care costs," says Rochester
Institute of Technology assistant professor of computer engineering Fei Hu.
"Through this project we hope to increase the integration of RFID into
existing cardiac sensor networks, ensure the overall security of the system
and promote the implementation of the technology in nursing homes and adult
care facilities across the country." One of the major challenges of the
project is concern over the security of wireless networks used in
telemedicine delivery. Hu and University of Alabama computer science
professor Yang Xiao will research the use of anti-interference technology
to reduce radio distortion on the networks, and design and test new RFID
security systems that will decrease the chance of information being stolen.
"There are well known security challenges associated with cardiac sensor
networks and RFID," Hu says. "It is my hope this research will assist in
better protecting these systems and allow greater numbers of doctors and
patients to take advantage of the benefits of telemedicine."
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Multi Robot Underground Pipeline Explorer Being Developed
at Louisiana State University
Louisiana State University (09/15/07)
Robots will improve the maintenance of underground pipelines in the
future, according to robotics and computer science experts at Louisiana
State University. A team of researchers from LSU's Robotics Research
Laboratory (RRL) and computer science department has developed a prototype
miniature robot that is capable of easily maneuvering through pipelines
four to six inches wide in diameter, and is testing it under different
conditions. The team behind the Autonomous Pipeline Exploring Robots
(APER) project believes that hundreds of inexpensive robots could be used
to traverse Tees and elbows, discover problems, and provide data for
mapping underground pipelines. "Most of the pipelines be it gas or sewage
or water requires manual maintenance operations, so we are focusing on
completely autonomous maintenance operations by employing these cheap tiny
robots," says Jong Hoon Kim, chief architect of APER. "The basic theme of
our research is to employ many robots to map the pipeline simultaneously,
which will result in efficient mapping and faster search operations." The
researchers say the Pipeline Explorer will lower costs, improve efficiency,
and inspire other applications.
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Click Go the Votes, Click, Click, Click...
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (09/18/07) Timson, Lia
Australia is making progress in bringing its electoral system into the
digital age, with the country's first electronically aided federal vote
slated for this year. As many as 2,500 Australian Defense Force (ADF)
personnel scattered throughout the world will be able to vote remotely
using the ADF's satellite and ground-based telecom infrastructure. The
votes will be encrypted and wired electronically to the tally room through
the ADF intranet. The ADF test was recommended by the Joint Standing
Committee into Electoral Matters, as was a machine-assisted voting test for
the visually impaired scheduled to operate in 29 locations this year.
Electronic polling and tabulation was carried out with a direct-recording
electronic (DRE) voting machine and an electronic voting and counting
system (eVACS) by the ACT in 2001 and 2004, and the tests determined that
the ACT system was secure and reliable. But the Australian Electoral
Commission balked at the cost of installing eVACS at all 7,700 national
polling sites, while concerns over the duration of screen-based voting and
the need to redesign the ballot paper for use with a DRE screen also led
the joint committee to conclude that there was "no need to rush into the
widespread implementation of DREs, especially when the costs may
overwhelmingly outweigh the benefits." In addition, the ACT decided not to
implement remote e-voting for Australians through the Internet, touch-tone
phones, interactive digital TV, mobile SMS, and private intranet because
such a move would eliminate polling place attendance, which was deemed to
be a "key contributor to Australia's democracy." Australian software
developer Alex Pollard warns that full security cannot be appended to
e-votes, and says the paper-based system is trustworthy because scrutineers
from the big political parties maintain a honest vote tally. Pollard says
he would have fewer objections to e-voting systems if they provided an
auditable paper trail and count.
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Japan Eyes Robots to Support Older Population
Reuters (09/12/07)
Robots are rarely found outside of industrial sites in Japan, but the
nation's researchers hope to change that as the population ages.
Approximately 40 percent of the population will be over 65 by 2055, and
robotics researchers want to provide assistance to the elderly by
developing robots that are capable of operating in homes. The labor force
will also take a hit due to its older population, and the researchers are
eyeing smart robots for offices and other venues as well. Researchers at
the University of Tokyo have teamed up with experts at Toyota, Fujitsu,
Mitsubishi, and several other top Japanese firms to lay the foundation for
the development of next-generation robots in the next 15 years. They plan
to unveil prototypes capable of performing mundane tasks in 18 months. The
new robots do not have to look human, says Isao Shimoyama, dean of Tokyo's
Graduate School of Information Science and Technology. Currently, about 10
buildings use a vacuuming machine (a droid with wheels) to clean their
floors, and about a handful of shopping malls and corporate sites use Enon,
a guide and patrol robot that has a humanoid upper body but no legs.
Two-legged humanoid robots are unlikely to find their way into homes for
some time.
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Employers Back Initiative to Turn Youngsters on to
IT
Computer Weekly (09/17/07) Thomson, Rebecca
E-Skills UK has signed up Microsoft, Cisco, Vodafone, BBC, LogicaCMG, and
John Lewis for a new initiative that seeks to create a positive image of
information technology in the minds of students. Since 2001, the number of
students pursuing IT-related degrees has fallen about 50 percent, even
though the sector has played a key role in the prosperity of the United
Kingdom, says E-Skills UK CEO Karen Price. E-Skills UK expects to add more
companies to its Revitalize IT scheme, which also includes schools and
universities as participants. Launched Monday, the two-year pilot will
have employers lead 50 workshops in London and the South East for 40,000
students, and assist universities in developing their curricula for the IT
job market. "The employer involvement is a major boost for us," says
Richard Pettinger, director of the information for business program at
University College London. "It is no longer enough to teach computer
science--you have to put it in context." There are plans to expand the
program nationwide if it is successful.
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Copyright Office Chief: I'm a DMCA Supporter
CNet (09/17/07) Broache, Anne
The Digital Millennium Copyright Act is not perfect, but it is doing what
it is supposed to do, says the U.S. Copyright Office chief. Speaking at
the Future of Music Policy Summit in Washington, D.C., Marybeth Peters,
Register of Copyrights, said she is not opposed to the controversial 1998
law. Consumer groups criticize the DMCA because of its impact on fair use
rights, and programmers, open-source advocates, and some hackers have come
out against the law because of its anticircumvention dictate. When asked
about the anticircumvention rules by an audience member, Peters said: "I
think that's a really important part of our copyright owners' quiver of
arrows to defend themselves." Peters said she has come around on the issue
of having the Copyright Office decide locked content disputes. "In
hindsight, maybe that's not such a bad thing," she said. Peters did
suggest the DMCA is not tough enough on hosted companies for legal
liability.
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Business by Numbers
Economist (09/13/07) Vol. 384, No. 8546, P. 85
The application of creative computation to business complexity is
reflective of the proliferation of algorithms throughout our daily life.
An algorithm is basically a step-by-step technique for performing a task,
and the kinds of problems businesses are applying algorithms to are
generalized into two categories; one category is process improvement, while
the other is data analysis. One reason algorithms are growing in
importance is because businesses are seeking to harness data in order to
deliver personalized service to customers. "Optimization" algorithms are
being used by many companies, including mail services, logistics firms, and
telecoms operators. Jeff Gordon with the Covergys call center operator
warns that "if you get the algorithm wrong and put customers into the wrong
hands you degrade the [call center] experience. No one likes being handed
off to someone else." The most powerful algorithms are those that can
manage continuous change, and operators are exploring ways to combine
algorithms that find the shortest route through a network with those that
control the speed of the data stream. Meanwhile, companies are using
statistical algorithms to cope with complex datasets, while algorithms'
affiliation with Internet search engines is widespread. The effectiveness
of algorithms depends on the proper alignment of several elements,
including the provision of an intuitive user interface and users with
algorithm proficiency.
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If RSA Is Cracked, Here's Plan B
New Scientist (09/15/07) Vol. 195, No. 2621, P. 31; Graham-Rowe, Duncan
Two research groups, one from the University of Queensland in Brisbane,
Australia, and the other from the University of Science and Technology of
China, in Hefei, say they have successfully created quantum computers that
can run a routine called Shor's algorithm, a development that could have a
profound impact on cryptography and how we protect our banking, business,
and e-commerce data. Some say that quantum computing is nowhere near
developed enough for real-world code breaking, but others say that
cryptography will have to develop beyond current prime-number-based
encryption techniques. The ability to run Shor's algorithm indicates the
quantum computers are capable of using quantum processes to factorize large
prime numbers. Almost every strong encryption system relies on a regular
computer's inability to factor such numbers in a reasonable amount of time,
exactly what the two groups claim to have done. However, Jon Callas, head
of technology at cryptographic software developer PGP, says the work done
by the two groups is significantly behind current cryptography techniques.
Callas says the researchers only used four qubits, whereas current
cryptography uses about 4,000 bits, which would require a quantum computer
with about 50 trillion qubits. Eventually, the number of qubits in quantum
computing is expected to surpass the point where it can outperform
traditional computers and the length encryption keys can reach, but that
could be 50 years away. When that point is reached, however, there are
other cryptographic systems that even quantum computing will have trouble
with. Hash chains, for example, use a sequential encoding process, and
there is currently no known way to break them using a quantum computer.
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Peer to Patent Project Sees First Submissions
Software Development Times (09/01/07)No. 181, P. 8; Handy, Alex
The Peer to Patent Project, designed by the New York Law School's
Institute for Information and Policy and the U.S. Patent and Trademark
Office (USPTO), launched its pilot trail in mid June, giving
computer-related patent seekers the opportunity to fast-track their patent
applications. The Peer to Patent Project allows computer-related patent
applicants to post their application online so the public can post links to
prior art and vote on the validity of the application during an 18-week
comment period. The most valid comments are sent to the USPTO with the
applications, which can be quickly processed and thus skip the estimated
40-month waiting period for standard patent approval. Some big technology
companies are already submitting patent applications to the Peer to Patent
Project, including a cryptography application by IBM, a digital rights
management application from Microsoft, and three patent applications from
GE. New York Law School research fellow and Peer to Patent Project manager
Christopher Wong says with support from major companies such as IBM and GE
it is hard to argue against the validity of the project. Wong hopes when
the project is completed next year that the USPTO will find a permanent
place for the project. Wong says the project specifically focuses on prior
art, the largest bottleneck in the approval process.
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Cultural Modeling in Real Time
Science (09/14/07) Vol. 317, No. 5844, P. 1509; Subrahmanian, V.S.
Policymakers' prediction of political, economic, and social groups'
behavior can be aided through the use of computer models under development,
according to V.S. Subrahmanian of the University of Maryland Institute for
Advanced Computer Studies. Previous behavior models have required a
sizable construction effort, involving surveys done by hand or through
interviews, or statistics gathered through close observation of subjects.
However, such models are inapplicable in politically turbulent regions such
as modern-day Sudan or Iraq. Software development is only now starting to
tackle the challenge of building behavioral models in real time. Among the
tools that can be utilized to model political parties, terror
organizations, companies, regulatory bodies, and other entities is the
Cultural Reasoning Architecture (CARA), which uses stochastic modeling
agents, and The Resource Description Framework Extractor (T-REX) program,
which employs socio-cultural-political-economic-religious variables. The
last step in the process is to predict the actions of the modeled group's
members once a set of determining conditions has been established. "The
ability to access real-time information on these topics, to rapidly analyze
the possible actions that interested parties might engage in, and to
determine how best (e.g., with methods of game theory) to respond, will
provide a key tactical advantage to organizations that are entering foreign
cultures with goals as diverse as stopping terrorism or improving corporate
profits," Subrahmanian concludes.
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