U.S. Faces Competitive Disadvantage From Lack of Women in
Tech Jobs
Computerworld (09/25/07) Mearian, Lucas
University of California, Berkeley Chancellor Robert Birgeneau, the
keynote speaker at a workshop on women in technology held at MIT's Emerging
Technology Conference this week, said the lack of women and minorities in
computer science and technology is placing the United States at a
disadvantage in technology innovation. Birgeneau noted that none of the
top 50 university computer science departments in the U.S. are led by a
woman of color, a situation he calls embarrassing and an astounding waste
of talent. And although the number of women entering undergraduate and
post graduate technology programs has partially leveled off with the number
of men entering those programs, women are still significantly behind men in
academic positions, Birgeneau said. A study released last fall by the
National Academies revealed that at the top research institutions only 15.4
percent of full professors in social and behavioral sciences and 14.8
percent of full professors in life science are women. These are the only
fields in science and engineering where the percentage of women professors
reaches double digits. The study also found that women are likely to face
discrimination in every field of science and engineering. "We're at a
drastic disadvantage in the United States, which is outsourcing to other
countries like India and China, who are working madly to compete with us
and who are investing deeply in education," Birgeneau said. To learn more
about ACM's Committee on Women in Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Race Heats Up to Complete Speediest Supercomputer
Contra Costa Times (CA) (09/26/07) Boyd, Robert S.
Computer scientists worldwide are building what they hope will be the
world's fastest computer. In 2004, IBM won with the Blue Gene/L, which has
131,072 processors and is capable of performing 280 trillion calculations
per second. IBM's latest effort, called the Blue Gene/P, will be built at
Argonne National Laboratory and will have 884,736 processors, each one
approximately equal to a Pentium III processor. The biggest problem with
building these super-powerful computers involves the software that manages
and coordinates such a massive number of processors. "When it comes to
parallel computing, software is in a state of chaos," says Intel senior
research scientist Timothy Mattson. Some supercomputer designers are
capitalizing on the software and hardware used in video games, which are
known for their superb graphics and real-time responsiveness. One such
hybrid system, known as Roadrunner, will be built at the Los Alamos
National Laboratory next year and will be used primarily to monitor the
safety and reliability of nuclear weapons. The Blue Gene/P machine is
expected to reach processing speeds of 1 petaflop by the middle of next
year, and a top speed of 3 petaflops by the end of 2008. IBM's Dave Turek
says IBM's goal is to reach 10 petaflops by 2011 and 20 petaflops by 2017.
"The 10-petaflop system will be like the Hubble Telescope," says Jack
Dongarra, an expert at the Innovative Computing Laboratory at the
University of Tennessee at Knoxville. "In comparison, most of us use
computers that are like binoculars."
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Leading IC Engineers to Gather in Albany at SEMATECH
Workshop on 3D Chips
Business Wire (09/24/07)
The ACM/SIGDA Physical Design Technical Committee is co-sponsoring a
workshop on 3D chips Oct. 11-12, 2007, in Albany, N.Y., along with
SEMATECH. Leading engineers will share their ideas for maximizing
next-generation, three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) during the
workshop, "Thermal and Design Issues in 3D ICs." Broader architecture and
CAD tool challenges will also be a focus of the top 3D technologists.
Stacking silicon chips connected with through-silicon vias (TSVs) promises
to offer an improvement in functionality. "This approach has many
potential advantages--improved electrical performance, lower power
consumption, integration of different device types, and lower cost," says
Larry Smith, SEMATECH engineer and workshop chair. However, the design
community will have to address higher power densities and other key
challenges. "Our goal is to present a better understanding of these
issues, and of the design methodologies and thermal management solutions
that address them," Smith says. Experts from DARPA, IBM, Texas
Instruments, NTU-Singapore, Georgia Tech, and Tohoku University will be
among the presenters.
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The Future of Computing, According to Intel
Technology Review (09/26/07) Greene, Kate
Although Intel recently demonstrated a low-power, eight-core chip, Intel
Research director Andrew Chien is already looking beyond eight-core
processing to terascale computing, and is working with computer scientists
at Intel and universities around the world to find the best uses for these
machines. Some of the major projects at Intel include the idea of
inference and understanding the world. "The big idea is all about this
question of whether inference and sensors are really the missing piece to
make ubiquitous computing come to fruition," Chien says. "We can build
small devices that fit into our pocket, but the things we're falling short
on are inference, making the devices work together well, and making them
interact with us in natural ways." Chien says the first step is to develop
devices that understand our actions and our environment. "There's a
difference about what you want to be interrupted with when you're being
idle, standing in a line, [versus] when you're going through the security
procedure," he says. "Imagine if the sensor detects your motion and other
information from your environment, such as the Internet signal, and it has
knowledge of your past behaviors, so it can actually figure out if it's
crucial that the incoming phone call goes through." Privacy and keeping
such information secure is a significant concern, so Intel has devoted
significant resources to creating platforms that are inaccessible to
others, as well as determining how much information should be kept on a
local device, uploaded to a network, or deleted altogether. Chien says
such technology could be available in five to eight years. "The precursors
for this technology are all there, though, and I see a huge need for it,"
he says.
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Survey: Developers Slow to Adopt GPLv3
eWeek (09/25/07) Taft, Darryl K.
Just 6 percent of developers are working on open-source software using the
new GNU General Public License Version 3 license, while two-thirds have no
plans to adopt it over the next year, and 43 percent say they are likely to
never implement GPLv3, reveals a new Evans Data survey of approximately 400
developers. What is more, almost two times as many developers said they
were less likely to participate in a project that uses the latest version
than respondents who said they were likely to get involved. "GPLv3 is
controversial because it imposes restrictions on what you can do with
programs implemented under this license," says Evans Data CEO John Andrews.
"Developers are confused and divided about those restrictions."
Developers also took issue with the inability of licensees to sue for
patent infringement. The alliance between Novell and Microsoft has a
negative impact on open-source developers, 70 percent of respondents
added.
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Online Game Helps People Recognize Internet Scams
Carnegie Mellon News (09/24/07) Spice, Byron; Watzman, Anne
Carnegie Mellon University computer scientists have developed
Anti-Phishing Phil, an online fishing game that teaches people how to
recognize and avoid email "phishing" attempts and other Internet scams.
During testing at the Carnegie Mellon Usable Privacy and Security (CUPS)
Laboratory, people who spent 15 minutes playing the game were better able
to spot fraudulent Web sites than people who spent 15 minutes reading
anti-phishing tutorials and educational material. The lab is now testing
the game on the general public through its Web site. Participants are
asked to take a short quiz, play the game, and then take another quiz. "We
believe education is essential if people are to avoid being ripped off by
these phishing attacks and similar online scams," says CUPS Lab director
and associate research professor in the School of Computer Science's
Institute for Software Research Lorrie Cranor. "Unlike viruses or spyware,
phishing attacks don't exploit weaknesses in a computer's hardware or
software, but take advantage of the way people use their computers and
their often limited knowledge of the way computers work." The game managed
to improve users' accuracy in spotting dangerous Web sites from 69 percent
to 87 percent. "We designed the game to teach people how to use Web
addresses, or URLs, to identify phishing Web sites," says Ph.D. student and
lead developer of Anti-Phishing Phil Steve Sheng.
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MIT Model Could Improve Some Drugs' Effectiveness
MIT News (09/23/07) Trafton, Anne
A computer modeling approach developed at MIT could improve a class of
drugs based on antibodies by predicting which structural changes in an
antibody will improve its effectiveness. The model examines a specific
antibody and runs through possible amino-acid substitutions, calculating
which substitutions would create a more effective interaction with the
target. The model was created using both laboratory experiments and
computer simulations by MIT professors Dane Wittrup and Bruce Tidor.
"Making drugs out of huge, complicated molecules like antibodies is
incredibly hard," says Janna Wehrle, who supervises computational biology
grants at the National Institute of General Medical Sciences, which backed
the research. "Dr. Tidor's new computational method can predict which
changes in an antibody will make it work better, allowing chemists to focus
their efforts on the most promising candidates. This is a perfect example
of how modern computing can be harnessed to speed up the development of new
drugs." The MIT model has already been used to create a new version of
cetuximab, a drug commonly used to treat colorectal cancer, that is 10
times more effective at binding to the target than the original drug.
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Apple: 'Unlocking' Software Damages iPhone
USA Today (09/25/07) P. 4B; Graham, Jefferson
Apple recently issued a formal statement that said using any software to
unlock an iPhone causes "irreparable damage" to the system. Apple also
cautioned that such software will cause havoc with the iPhone when it is
combined with a new software update that allows iPhone users to access a
new feature to buy music downloads through a wireless Internet connection.
Previously, Apple has released software updates that prevent others from
hacking into its products, but Apple's Phil Schiller says that is not the
case with the iPhone. "We tested the phones and discovered that some of
these unlocking programs permanently damage software," Schiller says. Some
Web sites offer unlocked iPhones for sale, while other sites sell software
to allow iPhone owners to unlock the phone themselves. Digital Media
analyst Phil Leigh says Apple's warning will make consumers think twice
before attempting to unlock their phone, but hackers will continue to break
the code and find ways around the new software update. "Consumers will
scream and yell about this, but in the end, they don't have much of a
choice," Schiller says. "The iPhone is a mass-market product, and Apple
doesn't want people to circumvent it."
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Not Much Anonymity for Unprotected File-Sharers
University of California, Riverside (09/25/07)
University of California, Riverside researchers, in a paper titled "P2P:
Is Big Brother Watching You?," show that about 15 percent of users on
file-sharing networks are on the networks to look for illegal file-sharing
for the recording industry or the government. "We found that a naive user
has no chance of staying anonymous," says UCR graduate student Anirban
Banerjee. "100 percent of the time, unprotected file-sharing was tracked
by people there to look for copyright infringement." However, the research
did show that "blocklist" software such as PeerGuardian, Bluetrack, and
Trusty Files is fairly effective at creating anonymity, reducing the risk
of being observed to about 1 percent. "Of course no one is suggesting that
illegal downloading is a good idea," says UCR computer science professor
Michalis Faloutsos. "But the P2P technology is here to stay and these
industries would be better off trying to find ways to provide affordable
and convenient alternatives that would allow computer users to download
their products legally." UCR's paper was named "best paper" at the
International Federation for Information Processing Networking 2007
conference.
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Purdue-Led Network Awarded $18.25 Million NSF Grant to
Grow Users, Translate Nanoscience Into Nanotechnology
Purdue University News (09/20/07) Fiorini, Phillip; Tally, Steve
The National Science Foundation has awarded a five-year, $18.25 million
grant to Purdue University's Network for Computational Nanotechnology to
support the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative with broader
capabilities and services for computer simulations. "This additional
funding will help us expand these sophisticated computational tools to
researchers, educators, and even industry," says Purdue professor Mark
Lundstrom. "With the help of our five partner universities, we are growing
beyond our roots in nanoelectronics to new areas such as nanofluidics,
nanomedicine, nanophotonics, and applications of nanoscience to the
environment, energy, the life sciences, and homeland security." NSF
nanotechnology advisor Mihail Roco says the project demonstrates his
agency's commitment to working with the American educational system and
research institutions to make sure that nanotechnology's potential is
fulfilled and that its benefits to society are equally shared. The portal
to the network is the nanoHUB, a freely accessible Web-based gateway that
is used by upwards of 3,000 national and international researchers and
educators per month. Major topics of discussion on the nanoHUB include
nanotransistors, carbon nanotubes, quantum dots, and nanoelectronics.
Purdue professor and nanoHUB project director Gerhard Klimeck says the site
allows researchers and students to avail themselves of resources that they
would have to install and implement themselves under other
circumstances.
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Digital Education a Virtual Reality
Inside Bay Area (CA) (09/23/07) Llanos, Connie
The use of technology in education is becoming more widespread, with both
online learning and more advanced teaching techniques in the classroom
becoming more popular. In 1999, California State University, Northridge
offered only 30 online classes, whereas today the school has about 12,000
students enrolled in 300 different online courses, a 10-fold increase in
less than a decade. Additionally, two-thirds of CSUN's 32,000 students
receive some type of online academic service through the university's
learning management system. Online learners can even participate in
physics experiments or work through a complicated engineering formula
online. "There's an academic transformation going on right now," says CSUN
associate professor of computer science Steven Fitzgerald. "These new
technologies are allowing students to participate interactively and
allowing them to make it to class without having to face traffic or fight
for parking spaces." The technical revolution in education does have some
drawbacks, as cheating, particularly plagiarism, have become far easier.
Additionally, online slang has started slipping into assignments, forcing
some professors to learn such sayings in addition to high-tech programs and
devices. The change to a more technical education system seems inevitable,
though many believe this is the best way to reach the current and future
generations. "The way that students learn is different than what it was in
the past," says Mark Pracher, a technology grant writer for Pierce College
in Woodland Hills. "We need ways to present information differently, engage
students in classroom activities and help them understand the material."
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Playstation3 Helps Robots See
EE Times (09/24/07) Merritt, Rick
Researchers from Dartmouth and the University of California at Irvine won
a $10,000 award this week at the Power.org technical conference in Austin,
Texas, for enabling a robot to see similar to the way humans do. The team
used brain research to develop new vision algorithms, which were ported to
the Cell processor. The machine was initially able to recognize a bar
stool in the image of an office setting in three minutes when the algorithm
was implemented on a 2 GHz Intel Core 2 Dupo processor and used with a PC,
but had a recognition rate of one second, or in real time, when three
Playstation3 consoles were linked to a PC. The algorithm was designed to
analyze shapes and objects and then compare them in a new image. The brain
algorithm is the same algorithm used for language processing. "We aim to
put all the speech and vision recognition into a working robot, so we need
real-time performance," says Andrew Felch, an associate research professor
at Dartmouth's Neukom Institute for Computational Science. The research
could pave the way for the development of small robots that are capable of
following commands and then autonomously performing other tasks such as
delivering packages.
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'Self-Aware' Space Rovers Would Be Speedy
Explorers
New Scientist (09/21/07) Reilly, Michael
Current robotic explorers such as NASA's Spirit and Opportunity move
slowly, advancing for 10 seconds before stopping to scan for hazards for 20
seconds, but the next generation of space rovers could move much faster.
University of Vermont's Josh Bongard has designed a simulated rover that
explores an area much faster by "imagining" itself and its immediate
surroundings. Instead of using cameras like current rovers do, Bongard's
simulated rover uses two tilt sensors to obtain information on its
surroundings. The rover first slowly drives through an area while
gathering tilt data. Then it builds 15 different simulations of the
greater surrounding area and makes "educated guesses" using the sensor data
about what features are likely to exist in the surrounding areas. The
rover combines all 15 models and identifies the direction in which the
models vary the most before exploring that specific area and testing its
models against the new tilt data gathered. Combining a physical model with
the robot's "curiosity" allows it to explore at an ever faster rate, and
while the simulated rover is basically blind, the same technique can be
applied to robots with cameras to make them faster as well. Bongard says
that robots with a greater self-awareness are a key step toward more
human-like intelligence, though he points out that his simulated rover is
far from conscious.
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College of Engineering Receives $1 Million Computing
Technology Grant
Virginia Tech News (09/21/07) Nystrom, Lynn
Virginia Tech's College of Engineering has received a $1 million grant
from Fujitsu technology and services to create "digital opportunities" for
underserved students and for pre-college students interested in studying
math, science, or engineering at Virginia Tech. The grant will allow
Virginia Tech to provide one-on-one utilization of technology for students
in summer pre-college and pre-freshman programs. The wireless services in
the college of engineering facilities allow any education space to become a
computer laboratory with access to the Internet and engineering
instructional software. The grant will be used to purchase 308 tablet PCs,
digital cameras, projectors, printers, and scanners. During the academic
year the tablet PCs can be used for outreach activities conducted by
undergraduate students, and as loaner computers for students who cannot
purchase a computer. Associate dean of distance learning and computing
Glenda Scales and associate dean for academic affairs and director of
Virginia Tech's Center for the Enhancement of Engineering Diversity Bevlee
Watford hope that the grant will provide young learners with a better
understanding of technology, hands-on and interactive theme-based
activities, and a foundation of basic computer skills. The grant will also
be used to improve Virginia Tech's CEED program, which provides summer
pre-college academic enrichment experiences for under-served students,
including a two-week summer camp for high school girls.
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The World on Your Desktop
Economist Technology Quarterly (09/07) Vol. 384, No. 8545, P. 18
The increasing integration of the Internet with real-world data is
supporting the creation of a multi-functional "geoweb" thanks to the
emergence and intertwining of powerful, inexpensive computers,
high-resolution commercial satellite imaging, and broadband connectivity.
Virtual views of the earth that can display weather, the precise location
of buildings, and other information contributed by users are being
generated and made available by Google. These geobrowsers are being put to
a wide variety of uses, including the coordination of disaster relief
efforts, archeological investigation, geographical queries for potential
clients, grassroots activism, etc. There is a lot of interest surrounding
mash-ups, in which virtual maps are combined with other sources of data.
The emerging geoweb architecture features data hosted separately from the
images and models of the geobrowser, which builds, integrates, and presents
the information in new ways. New kinds of efficiencies are extracted from
the combination of the geoweb's visualization and networking capabilities
with the data quality and analytical acumen of geographic information
systems. There are ethical concerns about the use of geoweb technology, an
example being a call for Google to blur Google Earth imagery after its
geobrowser was employed to plot an abortive airport attack. There are also
worries that geobrowsers that display imagery of increasing precision and
detail are being used or could be used to conduct intrusive surveillance on
citizens. "When the coverage is everything and everywhere, there is going
to be a big problem," warns Electronic Frontier Foundation lawyer Lee
Tien.
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Using Spam Blockers to Target HIV, Too
BusinessWeek (10/01/07)No. 4052, P. 68; Baker, Stephen; Greene, Jay
A team led by Microsoft Research's David Heckerman set out to build a tool
that could block unwanted spam email through the thorough mapping out of
thousands of possible spam indicators, and spammers responded to their
efforts by modifying these identifiers to get around the blockers, for
instance by substituting a "1" for the "i" in "Viagra." This virus-like
mutation of spam inspired Heckerman, who is also a physician, to apply the
principles behind the spam-blocking technology to the development of
software that can detect the AIDS-causing HIV virus. The application of
the spam blocker to AIDS research is not so surprising, as many of
Microsoft's researchers stretch into other disciplines regularly.
Heckerman analyzes both spam and HIV through the study of statistical
relationships in their features, which mutate constantly. The Microsoft
scientist draws parallels between spamming methodologies and the infection
of cells by HIV, which is done when the virus injects its own genetic
material into the cell and then replicates itself by the thousands,
spawning mutants that are sometimes drug-resistant. Cells infected by HIV
frequently carry mutated "signposts" that cannot be deciphered by immune
systems, leading to cases in which drugs that are effective against one
form of the virus are ineffective against another form. The hope of
Heckerman and his colleagues is that their work could not only be fed into
the generation of successful vaccines, but also lead to an effective tool
for damming the deluge of junk email.
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