Can We Make Software That Comes to Life?
Telegraph.co.uk (08/05/08) Highfield, Robert
A conference of 300 biologists, computer scientists, physicists,
mathematicians, philosophers, and social scientists in Winchester, England,
is focusing on the creation of a truly artificial life form. Reed College
professor Mark Bedau will present the argument that research into
artificial life will be a critical tool in the discovery of an as-yet
undetermined mechanism in people's understanding of how complex organisms
evolved. He says that although organisms breeding inside a computer is a
workable concept, such systems rapidly break down because genetic
possibilities are predefined. "Evolution on its own doesn't look like it
can make the creative leaps that have occurred in the history of life,"
says conference co-organizer Seth Bullock. "It's a great process for
refining, tinkering, and so on. But self-organization is the process that
is needed alongside natural selection before you get the kind of creative
power that we see around us." The integration of self-organization and
natural selection represents biology's greatest challenge, Bullock says.
At the Riken research institute, Masashi Aono and Masahiko Hara have
converted a single-celled organism into a computer to solve the traveling
salesman problem by tapping the amoeba's response to light. Another
conference participant, Essex University's Hugo Marques, will discuss an
attempt to emulate the relationship between the human brain and body by
giving a robotic consciousness a skeleton to reside in.
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An Energy Diet for Power-Hungry Household PCs
New York Times (08/06/08) P. C2; Lohr, Steve
Microsoft, the nonprofit Climate Savers Computing Initiative, and a
startup called Verdiem are collaborating on a project to find ways for the
world's 1 billion PCs to use less energy. The Climate Savers group is
distributing Edison, free software that helps consumers become more energy
efficient. Studies show that half of all electricity consumed by a
standard PC is wasted. Gartner estimates that 40 percent of all carbon
dioxide emissions resulting from information technology and
telecommunications are attributable to PCs, with data center computers
accounting for 23 percent, and the rest coming from printers and
telecommunications equipment. "If you are going to tackle climate change
and curb energy use, you have to deal with consumer devices like PCs," says
the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) Andrew Fanara. The
EPA's Energy Star program has developed voluntary power-management
standards for PCs, but Fanara estimates that less than half of PCs meet
Energy Star standards, partially because more energy-efficient hardware
adds to production costs. Edison is a consumer version of Verdiem's PC
energy-saving software sold to corporate customers. Other
energy-management tools are available from a variety of companies, but
Edison allows for more flexibility, specifically in making the settings
more or less stringent, analysts say.
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Designers on Quest to Build $12 Computer
Boston Herald (08/04/08) Kronenberg, Jerry
A group of computer designers at MIT's International Development Design
Summit are trying to develop a $12 computer. Derek Lomas is basing the
computer on a device he saw people using in Bangalore, India, in which a
cheap keyboard was combined with a Nintendo-like device and connected to a
home TV. Lomas and others at the MIT symposium hope to improve the system,
based on old Apple II computers, to have rudimentary Web access and other
features. "We see this as a model that could increase economic
opportunities for people in developing countries," Lomas says. He thinks
that with some help from programmers, the Apple II computers can be
developed into more capable devices and give schools in third-world
countries computer labs. A six-member team at the MIT conference is
working on writing improved programs and connecting the devices to the
Internet using cell phones. The group also wants to add memory chips to
allow users to write and store their own programs. Apple II enthusiasts
have been recruited to help with the programming, and the group has
contacted an Indian nonprofit that has expressed interest in using the
devices.
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Visualizing Open Source Software Development
UC Davis News and Information (07/30/08) Fell, Andy
Code_swarm, a new open source program developed by Michael Ogawa, a
computer science graduate student at the University of California, Davis,
creates short, colorful movies of the development process of open source
software. Modeled after music videos, Code_swarm uses dancing points of
light, rings of color, and a soundtrack as it displays the contributions of
programmers to open source applications. The names of developers float
across the screen to show the stage of their involvement in a project, then
float away if they stop contributing. Colored dots move toward the names
to show which developer worked on new files, and form rings around the
names. They hover together when developers worked on the same or related
files, and they are farther apart when they worked on different parts of
the application. "The viewer gets an impression of the dynamics of the
project: Who the big players are, whether they work on the same or
separate files, and the scale of the project in time and space," Ogawa
says.
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A Photo That Can Steal Your Online Credentials
IDG News Service (08/01/08) McMillan, Robert
Researchers at the Black Hat computer security conference in Las Vegas
next week will demonstrate an attack that could steal online credentials
from users of popular Web sites. The attack uses a new type of hybrid
software file the researchers have dubbed a GIFAR. By placing the file on
Web sites that allow users to upload images, the researchers can circumvent
security precautions and take over the Web page users' accounts. NGS
Software's John Heasman says the GIFAR is a Java applet in the form of an
image. GIFAR is a contraction of the graphics interchange format (GIF) and
Java Archive (JAR), the two file types that make up the applet. The
researchers will demonstrate how to create the GIFAR, while omitting a few
details to prevent it from being used for a widespread attack. To a Web
server, the file looks exactly like a GIF file, but a browser's Java
virtual machine will open the file like a JAR file and run it as an applet,
giving the attacker an opportunity to run Java code on the victim's
browser, which treats the applet as though it was written by the Web site's
developers. The researchers say the attack could work on any site that
allows users to upload files, possibly even sites that are used to upload
banking card photos or sites such as Amazon.com. The GIFAR attack can be
prevented by improving filtering tools so Web sites can detect the hybrid
files, and Sun could also improve the Java runtime environment.
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Small, Cheap, Swarming Robots Unveiled
Daily Telegraph (UK) (08/05/08) Highfield, Roger
University of Southampton researchers Alexis Johnson and Klaus-Peter
Zauner unveiled a group of swarm robots inspired by bees, ants, and other
social creatures at the Eleventh International Conference on Artificial
Life in Winchester, England. The inexpensive coin-sized bots could be used
for basic research on emergent behavior, which examines how individual
creatures cooperate, such as how to form flocks of birds, swarms of
insects, or shoals of fish. Zauner says applications for swarm robots
include tasks such as monitoring pollution spills. "Armed with sensors,
they can map out a danger zone if a barrel of pollutants in a storage area
has leaked, and move if it continues to spread," Zauner says. Swarm robots
also could be used on roads to quickly close a line following an accident,
with each robot displaying a bright sign to warn traffic. Zauner says
swarm robots could also be used to help explore other worlds as a swarm of
inexpensive robots is more robust and reliable than a single expensive
all-purpose robot. Swarm robots could also be used to create vast arrays
of solar panels in space. A small swarm of 25 prototype robots can run for
more than two hours between charges, and are constructed using basic
manufacturing techniques, eliminating the need for hand assembly and
lowering their cost. Johnson says the robots can already detect when their
energy is low and charge themselves at special charging stations.
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Software Predicts Where El Nino Will Strike Next
New Scientist (08/05/08)
Researchers have developed software that will make it easier to determine
where El Nino events are having an influence other than in the Pacific
Ocean, and ultimately help in forecasting the weather. The software is
designed to map temperature around the world as an interconnected network.
Temperature measurements for several locations are plotted daily to nodes
of the network, and links between nodes are calculated if their
measurements change in the same way. The researchers entered climate
records from 1979 to 2005 into the application, and most of the links are
stable and form a "skeleton" to the world's climate. Some links
occasionally break and then re-form under normal climate conditions, but
during an El Nino event they "blink" on and off every few weeks, revealing
where it is having an effect, says Avi Gozolchiani from Bar-Ilan University
in Ramat-Gan, Israel. "Their behavior becomes much more erratic," says
Gozolchiani, the leader of the team behind the software.
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Relays Pass Baton to Next-Gen Broadband Networks
ICT Results (07/30/08)
The European Union-funded FIREWORKS project aims to deliver
fourth-generation (4G) broadband wireless access (BWA) systems to
hard-to-reach areas such as remote communities and large buildings with
thick walls that interfere with wireless signals. The FIREWORKS project
concentrated on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing access-based
networks with an emphasis on those designed for BWA, particularly WiMax and
Wi-Fi. FIREWORKS' systems promise to be able to provide, for the first
time, seamless operation between WiMax and Wi-Fi networks, enabling users
with a mobile device to move from one network to another without a drop in
service. One of the main challenges the researchers faced was how to
maximize the use of overlapping transmissions. The project developed new
algorithms that ensure, whatever transmission protocol is used, the best
combination and clearest reception. The benefits of FIREWORKS will likely
not be made available until the next generation of BWA networks are
deployed in Europe, starting in 2010.
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Microsoft Rolls Out Publishing and Research Tools for
Academics
Chronicle of Higher Education (07/31/08) Monaghan, Peter
Microsoft has released a set of software tools intended to help scholars
and publishers write, edit, and publish academic articles, as well as
navigate difficult copyright issues and find and share scholarly data. The
tools are add-ons for Microsoft Office Word and are available for free to
licensed users of Word and other Microsoft products. One tool, the Article
Authoring Add-in for Word 2007, enables authors to structure and annotate
their documents according to formats required by publishers and digital
archives. The tool allows users to create documents in the format
developed by the National Library of Medicine's PubMed Central. Users will
also be able to shape the software to suit other formats because the code
for the software is openly accessible and freely adaptable. The products
are intended to make it easier for authors and editors to electronically
embed into papers details about the research process and results, such as
bibliographies and key phrases. Microsoft says the goal is to help readers
who conduct searches in electronic databases find relevant articles more
easily.
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Virtual World Is the Safest for Miners
University of Adelaide (08/01/08) Gibson, Candace
Virtual reality and video games will be used to train miners in South
Australia. Researchers from the University of Adelaide and the University
of New South Wales will develop a simulated mining environment, including
the hazards that miners face as they work at heights and use ladders,
scaffolds, and elevated work platforms. "Virtual reality simulation and
computer gaming are powerful tools for conditioning human behavior," says
Adelaide professor Anton van den Hengel, director of the Australian Center
for Visual Technologies. "Both technologies enable users to experience a
range of situations that would otherwise be impossible, or prohibitively
dangerous or expensive." BHP Billiton will use the virtual reality
simulator model to train miners at its Olympic Dam mining site. Other
participants in the $430,000 collaborative project include TAFE, the
national industry skills council Skills DMC, and the Resources and
Engineering Skills Alliance.
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Language Lessons for Robots
The Engineer (UK) (07/28/08) Nguyen, Anh
Plymouth University researchers are building two robots that will use
software that allows them to interact with each other and exchange learned
information, such as the meaning of words, in a manner similar to humans.
"Robots still don't know the meaning of things," says Plymouth's Tony
Belpaeme. "The only techniques we have at the moment are using
mathematical tricks and statistics to produce more or less sensible
replies." Belpaeme says the goal is to let computers and robots truly
experience the meaning of words by going through a process where the
meaning of words is gradually learned, similar to how children learn. The
first robots in the Plymouth project will be designed to encourage human
interactions. The robots will feature a long robotic arm with a face
instead of a grasper so the robot can look at objects from all sides. The
robot will have speakers, a microphone and two cameras in the robot's head,
which will be used to identify humans, make eye contact, track human gaze
and interpret pointing gestures and correlate them with the object being
pointed at. Belpaeme says the goal is to make the robot look cute and
trick people into teaching the robot as though they were teaching a small
child.
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Microsoft Research Lab Opens Quietly Next to MIT
Xconomy (07/29/08) Buderi, Robert
Microsoft's new research lab in Kendall Square in Cambridge, Mass., is the
company's first research outpost in the United States not on the Web Coast
and its sixth research facility worldwide. Already a small group of
renowned mathematicians, economists, and computer scientists have joined
the lab, which has also reached a partnership agreement with MIT. The
lab's managing director, mathematician Jennifer Chayes, says the reception
illustrates the latent computer science potential in the region. Chayes
says the lab's scientists have created a mini-intellectual frenzy around
some of the topics being researched at the lab, which, like other Microsoft
Research labs, will be published in open literature in an effort to emulate
academic institutions. Chayes and fellow lab member and husband Christian
Borgs, the lab's deputy managing director, have identified four core areas
of focus: computer science theory and mathematics, economics, social
science, and design. Chayes and Borgs expect to build the social sciences
and design work quickly because they feel the convergence of these fields
creates tremendously interesting and potentially valuable areas for study.
The lab has already established agreements to hold joint seminars or
symposia with MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems.
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The Barcelona Supercomputer Center Has a New Prototype to
Investigate the Supercomputing of the Future
Barcelona Supercomputing Center (07/30/08)
The Barcelona Supercomputing Center (BSC) has developed MariCel, a new
prototype for a supercomputer that would be 10 times faster than the most
powerful machine in the world. MariCel, which means sea and sky in
Catalan, will help define the hardware components and the software stack
for the 10 petaflops supercomputer. "MariCel is part of an initiative to
create a common supercomputing structure for Europe," says BSC's Francesc
Subirada. "On this prototype, similar to the architecture of the American
Roadrunner, we will test the latest software technologies, some of them
developed at the BSC." MariCel will be based on the Cell and Power6
processors. The European Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe
project will use the prototype supercomputer. The code for the
Kaleidoscope project, which is developing the latest seismic imaging
technology, will run on MariCel.
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The Next Big Thing in Humanities, Arts and Social Science
Computing: Cultural Analytics
HPC Wire (07/29/08) Franklin, Kevin D.; Rodriguez'G, Karen
In this article University of California, San Diego professor Lev Manovich
talks about cultural analytics, which he describes as a new approach to
culture facilitated by the convergence of the arts, humanities, social
science, and digital technologies. He notes that computer-based analysis
and visualization of large data sets and data flows are important tools
used by science, business, government, and other entities, and that these
methods should be applied to cultural data, which is abundant thanks to
digitization initiatives by museums, libraries, and companies over the last
decade, and the prosperous growth of cultural Web content. Among the
things Manovich cites as key sources for cultural data sets are media
content; digital traces left by people's discussion, generation,
publication, consumption, sharing, editing, and remixing of the media; Web
sites that supply statistics about cultural preferences, popularity, and
cultural consumption in different areas; and blogs that document the most
notable developments in various cultural areas. Manovich says his interest
lies in the analysis and visualization of patterns in both past and present
culture, the application of statistical analysis on visual media, and the
use of this work as an interface for computational analysis. He expects
user-generated content and professionally produced content to grow rapidly
in keeping with current trends, and that the use of supercomputers for
cultural analytics is justified by the massive data sets this will entail.
"I feel that the ground has been set to start thinking of culture as data
[including media content and people's creative and social activities around
this content] that can be mined and visualized," Manovich says. "In other
words, if data analysis, data mining, and visualization have been adopted
by scientists, businesses, and government agencies as a new way to generate
knowledge, let us apply the same approach to understanding culture."
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Building an HPC Linux Cluster Has Gotten Simpler, Beowulf
Leader Says
SearchEnterpriseLinux.com (07/24/08) Derringer, Pam
Donald Becker, who helped launch NASA's Beowulf Project, notes that more
than 75 percent of high-performance computing (HPC) systems costing $1
million or more run Linux, according to the Top500 supercomputer list. An
even higher percentage of machines costing $50,000 to $1 million run Linux,
with most of them using the Beowulf model, Becker says. After the Beowulf
Project proved the feasibility of low-cost cluster computing, the team
worked on other problems that made commodity-based HPC challenging,
including designing better hardware, building in diagnostics, adding
debugging features, tuning the BIOS settings, creating libraries, and
improving software. However, significant hurdles remain. Becker says
building a HPC cluster is still too complex and requires extensive training
to install, configure, and use, and long-term administration is also
difficult. He says HPC systems built on the Beowulf model still need more
power, plug-in capabilities, reliable booting, and improved software and
networking to create a unified system that is easier to manage. Becker is
now working on making HPC Linux clusters more accessible by automating the
configuration of the operating system, enabling a single full install on a
master node with a diskless, single-system image. He is also working with
the Linux community to improve the network boot process to allow it to
automatically identify any hardware and upload the correct drivers.
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When Computers Meld With Our Minds
Discover (07/25/08) Cass, Stephen
Futurist and retired computer science professor Vernor Vinge says that if
we can learn to manage the massive amounts of digital information
constantly being generated, we will be on track for using technology to
create superhuman intelligence within our lifetime. Almost any amount of
information about the reality that surrounds us could be useful if it were
correlated, he says. Most of the information gathered today can be handled
through automated processing, and the primary purpose of humans is to
utilize our human judgment and intuition. Vinge says the places where
human judgment and intuition are needed are becoming smaller and smaller,
but are still essential. The smaller areas of focus mean our attention is
more easily diverted to other areas, causing us to jump from one area to
the next, creating the human version of information overload. Vinge says
as we continue down this path, human nature may have to change to
accommodate our prescribed roles in the world. He says technological
advancements may also lead to a world with thalience, an idea created by
science fiction writer Karl Schroeder in which every object knows what it
is, where it is, and can communicate with nearby objects. Such objects
would effectively turn reality into its own database, Vinge says.
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Google's Open Source Android OS Will Free the Wireless
Web
Wired (07/08) Vol. 16, No. 7, P. 135; Roth, Daniel
Google's Android operating system is an open source mobile platform, which
any programmer can write for and any handset maker can install, and is
expected to hit the market this fall. Nearly any new phone will be able to
run Android, and several phone manufacturers have dedicated Android phones
on the way. However, the Android operating system is only a start as
Android-based phones will continue to evolve as users add applications from
independent developers to take advantage of the seamless Web access it
enables. Android is a fully customizable system that allows any
application to be removed or swapped for another. Software normally
accounts for about 20 percent of the cost of a phone, so by providing
Android to mobile carriers for free, Google is making possible lower-priced
handsets in an effort to get more consumers interested in using smart
phones. Android has even been designed to account for the limits of the
carriers' networks to avoid using too much data, giving the users a solid
experience without wasting the wireless spectrum. Android could possibly
turn the phone into a useful tool for Web surfing and cloud computing, with
voice functions such as phone calls simply being another application.
Wireless developers say Android jumps the barely 0.5 mobile world to Web
2.0, but caution that poorly designed Android phones or lack of access to
wireless networks could derail the technology. So far, Google's Open
Handset Alliance has attracted only Sprint and T-Mobile, but the company is
working to lure other carriers by providing mobile advertising. "We've
learned from computers that it's really nice to have complete connectivity,
to be able to connect anything in a kind of open way," says Google's Larry
Page. "For a lot of people and a lot of the time during your life, the
phone is your main computing platform. We look at those technologies and
say, Wow, we could do a whole lot more."
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