For Your Eyes Only: Custom Interfaces Make Computer
Clicking Faster, Easier
University of Washington News and Information (07/15/08) Hickey, Hannah
University of Washington researchers are developing Supple, a new approach
to user interfaces that puts each person through a brief skills test and
generates a mathematically-based version of the interface that is optimized
for the user's vision and motor abilities. Tests showed that Supple
narrowed the performance gap between disabled and able-bodied users by 62
percent, and disabled users strongly preferred the automatically-generated
interfaces. The Supple calibration starts with a one-time assessment of a
person's mouse pointing, dragging, and clicking skills. The test takes
about 20 minutes for an able-bodied person, and up to 90 minutes for a
person with motor disabilities. An optimization program then determines
how long it would take the user to complete various tasks, and creates the
interface that maximizes that person's accuracy and speed when using a
program. For example, for a user with cerebral palsy, using a trackball on
his or her chin to control the cursor, the program created an interface
with larger targets and expanded lists to minimize scrolling. Meanwhile,
for a user with muscular dystrophy, who used both hands to move a mouse,
making very precise movements but moving slowly and with great effort
because of weak muscles, Supple automatically generated an interface with
small buttons and a compressed layout to minimize movement.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Europe's High-Performance Computing (HPC) Training and
Education Needs Revealed in Comprehensive Survey
Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe (07/15/08)
A poll of high-performance computing (HPC) training and education
requirements was recently carried out among the top-tier computational
users across all partner sites within the Partnership for Advanced
Computing in Europe (PRACE) consortium, with the goal of assessing the
current educational needs of PRACE HPC users through the evaluation of
existing proficiency and satisfaction in traditional HPC methods and
solicitation of users' training needs for next-generation petascale
systems. The results of the survey indicate a critical need for
centralized HPC training repositories and channels for the circulation of
HPC technology. The poll uncovered a substantial segment of the HPC user
community that lacks understanding in basic precepts of HPC programming and
practice on both existing and unique architectures; a significant dearth of
expertise with mixed-mode programming; an unfamiliarity with Partitioned
Global Address Space languages shared by 93 percent of users; merely basic
or nonexistent proficiency in multicore programming techniques in 80
percent of respondents; a belief shared by more than 90 percent of survey
participants that training in performance optimization, debugging tools and
techniques, code testing, and compiler optimizations would work to their
advantage; and the recognition of a critical need for better HPC training
programs by the majority of respondents. Most of the survey participants
were excited at the prospect of benefiting from training provided by a
PRACE HPC Training and Education Infrastructure, and 95 percent of
respondents concurred that a pan-European centralized repository of
high-quality training material that is updated on a regular basis would be
advantageous.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Consortium Outlines Goals for Advanced, User-Friendly
Internet2 Infrastructure
Government Computer News (07/11/08) Jackson, William
A five-year strategic plan has been embraced by the Internet2 consortium
to ensure that the research and education network remains at the forefront
of performance without shutting out non-expert users. The Internet2
community also wants to stimulate a national telecommunications policy to
support an infrastructure for new communications requirements. The plan
details a central goal to supply scholars and researchers with the means to
facilitate next-generation collaboration and innovation, which will require
an expansion beyond the high-speed services currently available on
commercial networks. "There is an opportunity to tie the computing
infrastructure more closely to the application," says University of
California, Davis CIO Peter Siegel, who also chairs the Internet2 Steering
Committee's Research Advisory Council. "We have not yet built from the
network into the application layer." Once this is achieved, advanced
applications will be able to more effectively use the network and harness
information already in the network to help identify and integrate
applications' traits and requirements. The network's intelligence will
need to be boosted while new middleware will be required to act as an
application mediator. Siegel also points to the challenge of developing a
policy with government support for research and implementation without
suppressing the creativity of the Internet2 community. The activities of
Internet2 have been broadened to include advanced network applications,
middleware, tools, and services.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Goodbye to Faulty Software?
ICT Results (07/15/08)
A team of European researchers believes that it will be possible to create
software that is guaranteed to be free from bugs. "The software industry is
still very immature compared to other branches of engineering," says
Chalmers University computer scientist Bengt Nordstrom. Nordstrom believes
the entire approach to software design needs to be rethought, replacing the
usual approach of validating a program through a lengthy testing process
with a design philosophy that guarantees from first principles that a
program will act as it should. The key is a reformation of mathematics
called type theory based on the notion of computation, in which the
specification for a computational task is stated as a mathematical theorem.
The program that performs the computation is essentially the proof of the
theorem, and by proving the theorem the program is guaranteed to be
correct. The European Union has funded a series of projects to develop type
theory since 1989. Nordstrom was coordinator of the TYPES project, which
supported cooperation on type theory between researchers at 15 European
universities and research institutes and 19 associated academic and
industrial organizations. TYPES has released several open source programs,
including proof editors that, in type theory, are the key to guaranteeing
bug-free programs. "This is a very slow process, it takes many years to get
ideas from the universities into industry, but I think it's slowly taking
place," Nordstrom says.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
This Is Robot Country
Christian Science Monitor (07/17/08) P. 13; Peter, Tom A.
Pittsburgh is emerging as the robotic answer to Silicon Valley, with
next-generation robot technology being developed there thanks to the
convergence of Carnegie Mellon University's (CMU) robotics program and
remnants from the metropolis' industrial heyday. Pittsburgh's first foray
into robotics took place in 1927 with Westinghouse Electric's development
of a machine that could pick up a phone and adjust the water level of a
dam. "It's really just been in the last few years that we've seen real
product-driven, market-focused [robots] emerge," says William Thomasmeyer
of the National Center for Defense Robotics. More than 30 robotic
companies are currently based in Pittsburgh, and Thomasmeyer says robotics
could become a leading industry for the city in the next five to 10 years
with the continuance of present trends. Old mills and plants left vacant
by the decline of Pittsburgh's steel industry are perfect places for
robotics companies to take up residence, as their unoccupied open spaces
can be used to test inventions. The growth of the robotics industry could
also help restore the market value of neighborhoods eroded by urban blight.
"The dream is that you're giving people a relationship to technology
that's long term, changing their viewpoint as a consumer, and thinking of
themselves as somebody who can be an inventor or producer," says CMU
professor Illah Nourbakhsh.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Artificial Life Conference Celebrates Its 21st Birthday
in Winchester
University of Southampton (ECS) (07/16/08)
The newly formed Science and Engineering Natural Systems group in the
University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer Science
(ECS) will host this year's International Conference on Artificial Life
(ALIFE). The event, which takes place from August 5-8, will include 150
participants. Conference chairman Seth Bullock from ECS says the field is
on the verge of synthesizing living cells, a feat the artificial life
community could only dream of when it was created in the late 1980s. This
year's conference has attracted hundreds of biologists, computer
scientists, physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, social scientists,
and technologists from around the world, who will gather to hear some of
the latest research findings in areas such as artificial cells and the
simulation of massive biological networks. One of the presentations will
describe a new program for automatically identifying spam emails that was
inspired by the human immune system, and another presentation will describe
using the techniques of artificial life to model the development of
consciousness. "ALIFE is continuing to put new ideas into the common
consciousness of scientists," Bullock says. "This type of
interdisciplinary exchange is critical to the development of scientists
equipped for current challenges in understanding and managing complex
adaptive systems such as ecologies, climate, the economy, and the Web."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Quantum Leap
Technology Review (07/17/08) Rugani, Lauren
An international research team has taken a step toward the creation of a
working quantum computer through a demonstration that the quantum state of
a single electron can be controlled in a silicon transistor through the
alteration of the voltage applied to the transistor. "This represents a
nice step towards future devices where performance is determined by
manipulation of quantum states of single atoms," says Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory researcher Thomas Schenkel. Prefabricated transistors
constructed for nanotech research were employed by the researchers, and
each transistor was comprised of a pair of crossed nanowires. Electrodes
containing arsenic were linked to the bottom nanowire, which when charged
would sometimes attract arsenic atoms into the transistor. When the
researchers applied voltage across 100 transistors, they discovered a
half-dozen transistors that seemed to have individual arsenic atoms
embedded in the nanowire, and that the quantum state of one of the atom's
electrons could be controlled by varying the voltage across the top
nanowire. The researchers were able to draw distinctions between three
atomic states in all six devices through the use of scanning tunneling
spectroscopy, and one of those states corresponded with the electron being
in two places simultaneously, which is essential for quantum computing.
The key to a practical quantum computer is the entanglement of its quantum
bits (qubits), and Schenkel thinks that adjacent qubits could be coupled by
drawing an electron away from its atom. "While this result is an important
one, the real challenge to making future single-dopant devices is in
figuring out how to position the [arsenic atoms] into the silicon host with
the required precision," notes University of Maryland scientist Bruce
Kane.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
UPM School of Computing Researchers Open Up a New Road
for the Computational Representation of Languages
Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (07/16/08)
An intelligent computational model of the descriptive grammar of the
Spanish language has been created by researchers at the Validation and
Business Applications Group (VAI) of the Universidad Politecnica de
Madrid's School of Computing (FIUPM). Carolina Gallardo and Jesus
Cardenosa sought to replace the use of linguistic theories, which can be
expressed mathematically, due to concerns about coverage and cost.
Descriptive grammars exist for all languages, are affordable, and can be
used without linguistic experts. The researchers used the Royal Academy of
the Spanish Language's Descriptive Grammar of the Spanish Language (GDLE),
applying knowledge elicitation methodologies proper to knowledge
engineering. The model could potentially be used to build natural language
processing applications ranging from language analysis to generation for
less dominant languages.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Better Computer Chips Raise Laptops' Abilities
USA Today (07/15/08) P. 1B; Kessler, Michelle
Chipmakers are focusing more on features for small, portable computers as
sales of laptops continue to soar. The Centrino 2 next-generation laptop
chips introduced on Monday by Intel are not only faster than their
predecessors, but they also offer better graphics and battery life. For
example, the new chip line features an ultra-low-power processor and other
energy-saving tools. Last month, chief rival Advanced Micro Devices rolled
out laptop chips that are capable of detecting whether a computer is
plugged in and adjusting power levels accordingly. More people are using
their laptops to watch movies, play games, and use graphics-heavy programs,
and computer chip companies have responded by making more powerful
standalone graphics chips. AMD says it has improved its graphics processor
for its new chip line, and Nvidia, which specializes in graphics chips, is
focusing more on the laptop. Intel's new chips also feature the latest
Wi-Fi technology, and the company plans to offer chips using the new
wireless Internet standard WiMax later in the year.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Computer Dream Team to Help Find Water
Fairfax Digital (07/11/08)
Researchers from Melbourne University and three other Australian
universities recently won the Imagine Cup challenge in Paris for their
Smart Operational Agricultural toolKit (SOAK), a computerized system for
managing farm water resources. SOAK provides farmers with a software
dashboard of reports and tools designed to help them better manage limited
water resources from their computer. SOAK uses satellite maps of each
property to oversee the system, and relies on GPS sensors placed around
paddocks to measure and record information such as soil moisture and dam
depth. Farmers can use the system to get instant updates on their water
storage volumes using a mobile phone or PDA. The program is designed so
some crops or paddocks can be assigned more water than others, and by
defining the crop's lifecycle, the farmer can enable SOAK to determine when
a crop requires the most water. SOAK also distinguishes between the
different water resources that are used on a farm. SOAK can also integrate
weather forecasting, so if heavy rains are predicted the system will not
irrigate a paddock before the rain. The system is designed to reduce
inefficient water use and to use smart technology to direct water where it
is most needed at certain times. A user could log on to SOAK using a Web
browser to manage the farm's water resources from anywhere in the world.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Trying to Give Robots a Human Touch
Seattle Post-Intelligencer (07/06/08) Paulson, Tom
University of Washington (UW) professor Yoky Matsuoka wants robots to
function more like human beings. Her lab at UW is full of mechanical hands,
fingers, and arm parts, but she knows that even a human's little finger is
far more complex and flexible than today's robots. For example, she says a
simple task such as using a needle to sew a ripped seam becomes
increasingly complex as it requires the coordinated use of all the fingers,
thumbs, palm, forearm, and a precise combination of moving the needle with
the proper amount of force, velocity, and orientation. "We take these kinds
of motions for granted, but looked at from an engineering and robotics
perspective they are very complicated," Matsuoka says. She says the last
quarter-century of attempts to build robots has largely ignored the wisdom
of biology and arrogantly tried to engineer a better, mechanical version of
humans. Matsuoka has taken a different approach that focuses on why humans
evolved the way they did to build a mechanical hand based on biology. One
discovery that Matsuoka and her team made was that the rough surface of the
bones in the fingers was an essential development, rather than an
unimportant side effect of bone development. When Matsuoka made the
mechanical "bones" smooth, the routing cables, which serve as artificial
tendons, stopped working, so the bones were made rough again. Matsuoka's
work could lead to robotic devices that could benefit people with spinal
cord injuries or other disabilities that limit the body's functions.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Japanese Team Developing Palm-Held 3D Display
PhysOrg.com (07/14/08)
People could soon hold a three-dimensional (3D) image of someone in the
palm of their hand using a device that is being developed by Japanese
imaging experts. The gCubik gadget is a 3.9-inch cube that has panels with
tiny lenses on liquid crystal displays. Users will be able to view the
gCubik from three sides, see different images from various angles, all
without using special glasses. "Suppose you have a picture of your
girlfriend smiling on your desk," says Shunsuke Yoshida, a researcher at
Japan's National Institute of Information and Communications Technology.
"She could be smiling as a 3D image in a cube." The device is still in the
prototype stage, and uses only still images. However, the team wants to
enable 3D images to move in real time, allow viewing from all six sides of
the box, and enable gCubik to produce vocal sounds for the images.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
IBM Software Boosts Web Access for Visually
Impaired
IDG News Service (07/08/08) Williams, Martyn
IBM has introduced new software that promises to make the Web more
accessible for blind and partially sighted users. The visually impaired can
use the software to report problems with the text or descriptive tags to a
central database, and they will able to request that additional descriptive
text be added to better explain the items on a Web page. Internet users
around the world will be able to check the database for submitted problems
and then resolve them by adding text labels. The information will be
incorporated into a metadata file that is loaded each time a visually
impaired user visits the site. "Every day we find images without
alternative text (the text description of an image that usually accompanies
it in the HTML code), but there is no way for me to say, 'I want to have a
description for this image,'" says Tokyo-based researcher Chieko Asakawa,
who is blind. "It's a simple motivation, but if we can report this kind of
problem without difficulty and have it easily understood by sighted people,
I think it's going to be great." Available as a beta release through the
AlphaWorks Web site, the software could potentially be expanded to improve
the Web for people who are deaf or hard of hearing or have motor
disabilities, Asakawa says.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
On a Small Screen, Just the Salient Stuff
New York Times (07/13/08) Markoff, John
The introduction of the Apple iPhone has sparked a rush to re-format Web
sites to accommodate the device's small screen, and this trend demonstrates
that site designers can focus the user's attention and deliver pertinent
data free of clutter by streamlining the site interface to its most basic
functions. "By having fewer items to scan for on a small display, users
can find what they want more quickly and can be more confident that they
have made the right choice," notes Ben Shneiderman, founder of the
University of Maryland's Human-Computer Interaction Library. "If you just
put the juicy stuff up there it works better." The iPhone is currently the
best handheld for viewing the Web thanks to its software design and higher
screen resolution. The original iPhone could be used as a window onto a
full-size newspaper Web page, but the device has shifted away from the
window metaphor and toward customized vertical orientation, allowing users
to scroll up and down rather than sideways to view information. Donald
Norman with the Nielsen Norman Group says the iPhone is very useful for Web
sites that do not require a great deal of searching.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
'Prefetching' Scheme Saves Time, Energy
Government Computer News (07/08/08) Jackson, Joab
Two University of Arizona researchers have discovered a technique to save
energy when using a computer while maintaining access to data through a
concept called "context-aware prefetching." Igor Crk and Chris Gniady
presented their findings at the recent Usenix conference in Boston. The
approach runs a small program that logs user actions and notes which chains
of actions generally lead to interactions with the hard disk. The
researchers say that monitoring user interactions with applications
provides an opportunity to predict upcoming power mode transitions and
eliminate the delays associated with those transitions. The researchers
wrote a program that, when sensing a sequence of actions that generally
results in hard-drive use, will instruct the hard drive to power up before
it is actually needed. Prefetching is used in many systems, but in most of
those approaches the hard drive is activated whenever the user does
anything, whether it is a task that may result in hard drive use or not,
only powering down the hard drive when the user does not interact with the
computer for a set period of time. The new approach correctly predicted
hard-drive use 79 percent of the time, reducing spin-up delays by an
average of 35 percent, while maintaining low energy consumption.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Researchers Rebuild Their Effort to Rebuild the
Internet
Chronicle of Higher Education (07/18/08) Vol. 54, No. 45, P. A11; Young,
Jeffrey R.
Concerns that the collapse of the Internet is imminent are particularly
worrying for colleges, whose campus activities often depend on high-speed
networks, and providing a sturdier next-generation network was the goal of
the Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) project. However,
reservations about the project led to the rechartering of the initiative's
research advisory panel, and the invitation of researchers from fields
outside of computer science--such as social scientists, economists, and
networking theorists--to offer insights so that GENI can be even more
impactful. Taking online social behavior into consideration, for example,
could help lead to the design of systems that predict users' activities and
make appropriate adjustments in advance, says Jeannette M. Wing with the
National Science Foundation's Computer and Information Science and
Engineering Directorate. One of the project's goals is to provide a
testbed for radical computer networking concepts that could facilitate new
features, augment network security, and boost data speeds. The development
of several virtual test tracks is a focus of the GENI Project Office.
While the project currently plans to construct a pair of nationwide
backbones as well as other experimental domains in the coming months,
GENI's initial plan was to quickly erect a large nationwide test network,
an idea that was met with skepticism. "I do see the need to think about
new approaches, but I don't know if actually building a real network is
sensible," says University of Minnesota professor Andrew M. Odlyzko.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Enigma Variations
Economist (07/10/08) Vol. 388, No. 8588, P. 88
The development of a photon detector by Andrew Shields and colleagues at
Toshiba's research laboratory in Cambridge, England, is viewed as an
important step in the enablement of practical quantum cryptography, which
promises unbreakable codes for messages. The device can count single
photons at room temperature, and represents a simple tweaking of the design
for avalanche photodiodes that are being used to detect multiple photons,
which should ease implementation. In an avalanche photodiode, the striking
of a semiconductor by photons can be read by detecting positively charged
"holes" in the crystal lattice left by the displacement of electrons caused
by the photonic impact, but determining the number of photons that have
arrived requires analysis of the signal just after it has been formed.
Shields has tackled this challenge through a technique that filters out
noise and allows the signal to be extracted. Without a practical photon
counter, photon repeaters that do not destroy quantum states cannot be
constructed. Shields' device allows cryptographers to harness the
phenomenon of quantum entanglement, in which photons share quantum states,
to support this breakthrough.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top