A shortage of qualified U.S. computer science engineers is indicative of dwindling interest in the field among college students, said Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates at the Microsoft Research Faculty Summit on July 18. He is concerned about the decline in the number of students entering computer science, and said Microsoft and other tech giants have a responsibility to dispel IT's negative image and boost its appeal to students. Gates said Microsoft must emphasize the positive aspects of working in different areas of technology projects in order to counter the perception of computer science as a field characterized by social isolation and mind-numbing programming. "The greatest missing skill is somebody who's good at understanding engineering and bridges that to working with customers and marketing," he said. "I'd love to have people come to these jobs wanting to exercise people management, people dynamics as well as basic engineering skills." Gates' comments came about during a question-and-answer session with Princeton University computer science professor and former ACM President Maria Klawe, who cited findings from UCLA's Higher Education Research Institute estimating that computer science suffered a more than 60 percent drop in popularity as a major for incoming college students between 2000 and 2004. Her feeling was that students-- women in particular--view computer science as a less glamorous field to work in. Gates also used the summit to pledge his support for continued government investment in computer science, noting that technology plays a critical role in addressing social issues such as education and global health care.
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For-profit institutions such as Strayer University issued more computer science degrees than traditional U.S. colleges in 2001, according to a new report from the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). The NSF-funded report, "Preparing Women and Minorities for the IT Workforce: The Role of Nontraditional Educational Pathways," also said the typical students at for-profit schools are middle-aged minority females who are already employed at companies where IT skills are essential for promotion. The study's authors conclude that fewer and fewer "traditional" young college students are choosing computer science as a major. Even more disturbing is the paucity of female computer science majors, even though women account for over 50 percent of the current college population. "We've backed ourselves into thinking that computer science is a 'geek' culture, and this is preventing us from tapping into the level of diversity we have in our population and our schools," says AAAS report co-author Dr. Shirley Malcom. Interviews with college students revealed a pervasive perception of computer science as a socially isolating activity further reinforced among women and minorities by their unfamiliarity with "programming," although young students' attitudes were shown to undergo a dramatic transformation once they were exposed to computer science and its multifaceted career tracks. Malcom and other experts believe some colleges should adopt strategies employed by for-profit institutions and increase the accessibility, practicality, and encouraging aspects of computer science to attract younger students. The report also calls for voluntary standards that would give potential students information about the "quality, structure and reputation of programs" that they need to choose the best course of study.
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For information on ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit http://www.acm.org/women.

Search technology, mobile media, and social media will be areas of concentration at the new Yahoo! Research Labs-Berkeley laboratory, a joint venture between Yahoo! Research Labs and the University of California at Berkeley. The lab, expected to open next month, will be headed by founding director Marc Davis, a professor at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems (SIMS) and head of the school's "Garage Cinema" research group. Davis said the Yahoo!-Berkeley alliance will provide Yahoo! access to the university's intellectual capital, innovations, and leadership, while UC Berkeley will be able to conduct research on a previously unattainable scale through Yahoo! and its expansive user base. "Working with Yahoo!'s innovative scientists, engineers, designers, and users, we will do research and create technology that combine understanding context with the power of communities, enabling us to have an even greater impact in reaching and benefiting Internet users around the world," he exclaimed. Davis said the facility will focus on the invention of "sociotechnical" systems that "intimately connect people, media, and technology together on a large scale in order to address new challenges and opportunities that neither people nor machines can solve alone." SIMS dean AnnaLee Saxenian expressed enthusiasm for the venture as a collaborative framework that will offer the university research opportunities that it could not exploit by itself, given the massive technology and equipment investments involved. Meanwhile, Yahoo!'s Jeff Weiner said he expects the company's research and development efforts to benefit tremendously from the partnership, and yield next-generation search applications and core technologies that will allow people to pinpoint, use, and exchange content and information from any location.
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Researchers in the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (Pear) program are trying to determine if the output of machines could be slightly but quantifiably affected by people's thoughts. The experiments involve the use of random event generators (REGs) as participants concentrate on controlling the machines' output; initial tests employed REGs that produced high-frequency random noise that was converted into ones and zeroes, while subjects focused on first generating more ones, then more zeroes, and then nothing. Subsequent tests include attempts to control a drum machine by thought, and participants have successfully directed one out of every 10,000 bits of data measured across all the experiments. Though this phenomenon is not well understood, the Pear scientists have ascertained that time, distance, and environmental conditions have no bearing on the test results. On the other hand, Pear lab director Robert Jahn says the tester's mood and attitude can have an effect, as can empathy with the machine and gender. Male testers often generate minuscule results that match their intent, while female testers tend to produce larger, more wildly divergent results; the most significant results are produced by pairs of the opposite sex with a romantic relationship. Skeptics criticize the researchers' observations largely because others have been unable to replicate the experiments' results, but Jahn believes mind-machine interaction is an example of what Carl Jung termed "acausal phenomena," or events that do not follow the usual laws of causality. The Pear lab is funded by private donations, and Jahn notes that one donor, McDonnell Aircraft founder James McDonnell, took an interest out of concern that critical electronic systems could be affected by stressed-out human operators.
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Reports on the death of the mainframe's viability are exaggerated, although the population of skilled mainframe programmers is shrinking thanks to the retirement of baby boomer mainframe specialists, and the fact that most computer science graduates are being trained on Windows or Unix operating systems. Sun Microsystems' Don Whitehead says the shortage of mainframe experts, along with cost issues and a paucity of mainframe applications to satisfy changing business requirements, is spurring customers to abandon mainframes. IBM is trying to reverse the decline in mainframe skills through its Academic Initiative zSeries program, which provides zSeries mainframes, software, and training to 150 participating universities in an effort to boost mainframe proficiency among students. IBM wants to have twice as many schools involved in the program by year's end, and the initiative's goal is to have 20,000 mainframe-savvy IT professionals in the market by the end of the decade. This is vital if the company is to continue selling its zSeries systems, because clients may choose smaller Unix or Windows-based systems if there are not enough competent mainframe programmers. Professor David Douglas of the University of Arkansas' Walton School of Business says getting students interested in mainframes is a challenge because "they've grown up with a mouse in their hand and a PC." Computer science people use Unix almost exclusively, while the majority of business schools employ Microsoft's Windows environment.
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Researchers at the University of California-San Diego's Calit2 have developed an open-source hardware and software platform that will offer the corporate and business communities unparalleled opportunities to advance new wireless RF technologies. CalRadio 1.0 is based on the 802.11b Wi-Fi standard, though principal development engineer Douglas Palmer says forthcoming versions will be compatible with future standards. CalRadio, which employs contributions from Symbol Technologies and Texas Instruments, will be on display at the MobiQuitous 2005 conference in San Diego. To facilitate software development, the ARM processor runs ucLinux, and the MAC for the 802.11b Wi-Fi standard is implemented through a DSP in C code, also allowing for easy modifications. Developers envision CalRadio's applications as a teaching tool, allowing students to test projects in a realistic setting. Calit2 researchers have made the device open source, so as to position CalRadio as the platform from which the next wireless standard could spring. The first shipments of CalRadio boxes are going to projects such as the NSF-funded Ramosphere and RESCUE, and WIISARD, an NIH-backed medical response system. CalRadio boasts 16 MB of memory and 4 MB of electrically erasable programmable read-only memory, with a DSP that runs at 100 MHz.
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When faced with the contamination of their PCs by malware and other unwanted programs, many owners are opting to toss their infected machines and replace them with uncorrupted models, rather than go to the trouble of repairing them. Pew Internet and American Life Project director Lee Rainie characterizes such a response as entirely reasonable, given the incessant flood of malicious software, adware, spyware, defective programs, diminishing performance, and system crashes. In addition, Rainie says the threat of system corruption is escalating, and that "the arms race seems to have tilted toward the bad guys." Symantec's Vincent Weafer estimates that the ranks of computer viruses have swelled by more than 100 percent in the last six months alone, while adware and spyware programs have increased by approximately 400 percent; Symantec executives partly attribute this development to the growth of high-speed Internet access. Especially worrying is malware that can conceal itself from cleansing and removal programs, which makes the scrubbing of corrupted PCs a more complicated and often manual task, according to Weafer. Yale computer science professor David Gelernter says the software industry is chiefly responsible for this lamentable state of affairs, and points out that people are less and less willing to clean their PCs. Meanwhile, anti-infection tools such as firewalls, antivirus programs, and spyware-removal software are far from 100 percent effective. Some users, after acquiring new systems, are modifying their behavior to lessen the chances of PC corruption; for instance, San Francisco physician Terrelea Wong refuses to loan her computer out to friends, because she suspects her old system became infected through indiscriminate use of the Internet by her and her friends.
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Later this year, the European Commission and the European Space Agency are launching the first four of what will be a fleet of 30 satellites in their Galileo project designed to compete with the Global Positioning System (GPS). Seeking to capitalize on the inconsistent and often inaccurate signals that GPS provides, Galileo will link its satellites to the 24 satellites GPS currently has in orbit to offer an array of strictly commercial applications. GPS frequently loses its signal in highly developed areas, and offers no service indoors; Galileo will solve both of those problems, as well as offer the reliability the U.S. military, which owns and operates GPS, cannot. Developers tout Galileo as a revolution on the order of the Internet or the cell phone, citing far-reaching applications in security, insurance, and transportation. Manufacturers could embed tracking devices in expensive electronics to catch thieves, and car insurance companies are considering basing premiums on the exact driving habits of customers. Governments could implant criminals with tracking devices that are currently only moderately effective, but Galileo's tracking potential raises some concerns among civil libertarians over an unwelcome and possibly dangerous encroachment into everyday life. Galileo's promoters counter that people who wish not to be seen can simply switch the tracking device off. They also cite the benefits of human tracking, such as planting a device on a toddler that would alert parents if it wandered too far away.
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IT companies need to do a better job of retaining women, concludes a recent study by researchers at Penn State University. Particularly important is extending flexibility to women as they bear and raise children, which could include part-time shifts, telecommuting, and child-care subsidies. The study represents a departure from previous research that focused on entry barriers for women in IT, as it demonstrates that "it doesn't get any easier for women even after they have their feet in the door," said Mark Wardell, associate professor of labor studies and sociology. The study, funded by the Computer and Information Systems Engineering Division of the National Science Foundation, found that women are 2.5 times more likely to leave IT jobs than men, and that they earn $15,000 less on average. Women are also more inclined to opt for jobs with high-quality health benefits and for organizations four times larger than those that attract men. On average, men were found to work two hours more per week, which fails to account for the average wage disparity or the gap in peak wages; the highest paid woman in the survey reported an income of $539,000, while the top man earns $900,000. In the 14 years after college, roughly 14 percent of men dropped out of the IT field, compared to 33.6 percent of women. The study also found that in the dynamic and continuously evolving IT arena, very few respondents reported participation in post-collegiate certification programs or seminars.
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For information on ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit http://www.acm.org/women.

Last week's World Poker Robot Championship was won by Hilton Givens' PokerProbot program, which emerged as the victor after an intensive three-day tournament of limit hold 'em. The challenge for writing poker-playing programs lies in the fact that the state of the game is undetermined for players, who cannot see their opponents' cards. Neither PokerProbot nor Catfish, the program that placed second, could be called pros: For instance, both bots were sometimes unwilling to wager strong holdings in the final rounds of a hand. Nevertheless, University of Alberta professor Jonathan Schaeffer believes a formidable poker-playing bot is an inevitability, in the face of advancing computer power and playing algorithms. Online poker players generally looked upon the World Poker Robot Championship with scorn, arguing that the event was nothing more than a cheating contest. Steve Baker with GoldenPalace.com, the competition's sponsor, counters that the use of poker bots, even without promotion, is unavoidable, and says the contest could actually spur online poker sites to come up with effective measures to prevent cheating. Software that aids or makes decisions for a player is prohibited by most poker Web sites, but enforcing such rules is tough.
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Hackers are often based in India, Korea, or China, with differing time zones and language barriers increasing the difficulty facing security enforcement agencies in the United States. The most prevalent cyberattacks are carried out by a network of zombies, or compromised computers that are remotely controlled without notification to the computer's owner. Currently, China is home to 21 percent of new zombies with the United States at 17 percent and South Korea at 6.8 percent, according to CipherTrust. Hackers overseas are carrying out attacks due to a high prevalence of broadband in China and South Korea but a lack of proper security software, according to Anti-Phishing Working Group Chairman David Jevans. Another factor boosting the prevalence of overseas attackers is the fact that even small amounts of money provide significant incentive to a hacker in a developing country than to a hacker in the United States. The Forum of Incident Response & Security Teams, an international clearinghouse for response to security incidents among government agencies, universities, and organizations, recommends companies implement a computer security incident response team, keep security patches and antivirus software updated, monitor network traffic for strange behavior, and join security groups in order to share valuable security information among members. Meanwhile, a broad, international coalition of trade groups, companies, and law enforcement organizations are working to stem cyberattacks from abroad by tightening global cooperation and establishing automatic filtering systems to block email traffic from specific regions. HoneyNet Project President Lance Spitzner says today's hackers are in it for the money not fame. He says, "It's not so much a security issue. It's a crime issue now."
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Amid the recent publication of a report from the UN's Working Group on Internet Governance that outlines four proposals for a future administrative body for the Internet, only one of which keeps the autonomy of ICANN intact, ICANN President Paul Twomey says that world governments would be wise to note the advantages of the current model of Internet governance provided by his organization. Rather than promote an administrative body run solely by governments, Twomey says "the pragmatic benefit to the international community is to have a multi-stakeholder focus for discussion." He says ICANN fulfills this role by allowing both private and public stakeholders to debate Internet policy and procedures. Governments are specifically invited to take part via ICANN's Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC), which Twomey says is an "integral part of ICANN." In response to the U.S. government's recent announcement of four "principles" that indicate it will continue to play a significant role in the Internet's root zone file, Twomey says that contrary to media reports, the U.S. government has not asserted that it will insist on continuing its control of the root zone after the completion of the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS). In his recent interview, the ICANN president also reiterated his support for the process that led to the renewal of VeriSign's contract to run the .net registry. In response to concerns over ICANN's budget, which is expected to climb above initial estimates to $23 million, Twomey says all interested parties are involved in negotiations to ensure that spending is conducted wisely while ICANN continues to expand its global reach.
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Search engines that can help users locate desired ontologies are necessary in order to realize effective knowledge reuse, which is crucial to the development of the Semantic Web. The ontology-ranking AKTiveRank system is described by University of Southampton researcher Harith Alani and University of Sheffield researcher Christopher Brewster as a tool for rating ontologies according to how well they represent the given search teams. AKTiveRank calculates four measures for exploring specific structural components of concepts (class match, centrality, density, and semantic similarity), and produces the ontology's ranking by combining the resulting values. Alani and Brewster's experiments with AKTiveRank indicate that the values of the semantic similarity measure exhibit perhaps the greatest degree of variability, while the values of the class match measure demonstrate more consistency than the other three measures. Values that exhibit a good value dispersion are generated by the centrality measure, which lends weight to the belief that an ontology's more central concepts are usually more detailed. The density measure appears to confirm that ontologies with relatively denser representations of given classes are ranked higher than those with more sporadic representation. Alani and Brewster assessed the practicality of AKTiveRank's output by distributing a paper-based questionnaire to a small group of ontology experts. Results indicated that while the system is useful, there is plenty of room for improvement, with particular emphasis on re-examining the parameters employed in the AKTiveRank process in view of human knowledge engineers' requirements.
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The U.S. State Department was heavily criticized by the ACLU and others for its proposal to replace current paper passports with "e-Passports" equipped with radio frequency identification (RFID) tags that store the same data as the old passports as well as digital photos designed to thwart counterfeiting when used in conjunction with facial recognition systems at U.S. borders. The ACLU questioned the data's safety and its method of storage, and also hinted that e-Passports could be exploited by people equipped with RFID tag readers for the purposes of identity theft or unsanctioned government monitoring. ABI Research's Erik Michielsen insists that RFID-enabled passports will deter ID theft and offer better security than paper passports, but the State Department has yet to disclose a straightforward e-Passport encryption policy. The plan provoked over 2,400 submitted public comments, many of them negative, which prompted the government to put the e-Passport rollout on hold until privacy issues have been resolved. A Big Research/Artafact poll estimates that 66 percent of respondents are worried that the government will abuse the RFID data, while 42 percent are afraid that retailers will do the same. Meanwhile, the Real ID Act passed by both the House and Senate makes RFID augmentation of driver's licenses mandatory in U.S. states.
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Today's challenges for IT executives call for business as well as technology skills, and over the last few years U.S. colleges have started offering programs that combine master's degrees in business administration and computer technology to accommodate this trend. Students in dual-degree programs can acquire their degrees faster than they would via separate programs because some courses in each field overlap, though additional fortitude is needed to complete the many more courses in MS/MBA programs. Louis Lataif, dean of Boston University's School of Management, says candidates in BU's MS/MBA program are 27.5 years old on average, have about five years of professional work experience under their belt, and are nearly half female and about 33 percent non-American. Amar Gupta of the University of Arizona's Eller College of Management believes graduates of dual-degree programs will have the skills to become next-generation tech entrepreneurs, and says business leaders are taking an interest in an MS/MBA program he has launched. Not everyone thinks a person needs dual degrees to be a successful IT executive: Consultant Marcie Schorr Hirsch says continuing education is vital to professionals, but there is a diversity of courses--industrial design classes, for example--to choose from. However, employers tend to look more favorably on candidates with dual degrees, and some school officials note that companies visit the campus for the specific purpose of hiring dual-degree students. In addition, dual-degree graduates may earn higher salaries.
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Virtual reality is changing the face of higher education, as professors are using computer simulations as teaching tools to convey interactive images of material that previously had been 2D abstractions. Bernard Frischer, director of the Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities at the University of Virginia, uses his Shuttle XPC to project a simulation of ancient Rome, where through the click of a mouse he can take his students on a fly-by, showing 3D images of structures and buildings at different periods of the empire. Frischer is hopeful that computer models will assume the popularity of the scholarly journal, incorporating the same peer-review process and citation standards. Virtual reality as a teaching tool is nothing new, though the idea has yet to catch on in the mainstream. An earlier project, the Cave Automative Virtual Environment (CAVE), allowed participants to move virtual objects in a room through the use of a wand and gained some notoriety, though the technology cost up to $1 million; variations of the CAVE have been used to simulate blood flow and archaeological digs. Head-mounted displays, where the user wears glasses or goggles connected to a computer, enable a person to see objects in stereo vision, though support for these devices has fallen off in recent years. The relatively narrow use of these technologies led Frischer to Shuttle computers, which retail for under $2,000 and carry the most advanced graphics cards available. The trend toward accessibility and affordability may bring CAVE and head-mount technologies back closer to the mainstream, as technologies such as GeoWall are catching on in universities. Frischer is excited about virtual reality and the prospect of "planet Earth in a time bar," where people through the click of a mouse could "fly down into that event and get into that virtual environment."
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Microsoft and IBM highlighted major research initiatives earlier this year when Microsoft announced that five young professors would receive $200,000 grants and IBM named five employees as IBM Fellows. Microsoft awarded its 2005 New Faculty Fellowship grants to MIT professor Fredo Durand, whose concentration in computation photography emphasizes the convergence of computer science, physics, math, and visual perception; UC Berkeley's Dan Klein, who is researching computerized language translation; Georgia Tech's Subhash Khot, who is focusing on the design of efficient algorithms; the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill's Wei Wang, who is investigating how relationships among proteins can be extrapolated through the use of 3D imaging; and Harvard's Radhika Nagpal, who is researching the application of biological approaches to distributed systems. IBM vice president of technology Sharon Nunes said the IBM Fellowships are awarded to leading innovators with "a sustained record of technical accomplishments" as well as the skills to interact with business executives in technical strategy sessions. Evangelos Eleftheriou earned his fellowship through his work with reducing the noise around hard disk drives, while Yun Wang was honored for enabling IBM's DB2 database to rapidly manage multiple complex queries. Other IBM Fellows included Eduardo Kahan, for his contribution to service-oriented architecture and Web services; Larry Ernst, who developed software that boosts the output and image quality of printers; and Bradley McCredie, who designed POWER3 and POWER4 processors employed in IBM eServers.
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Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.) is concerned with the erosion of America's leadership in science and innovation, and he announced his Math and Science Incentive Act of 2005 in an effort to help reverse this erosion. The proposal would pay the interest on education loans for science, engineering, or math undergraduates who promise to work in their field for a minimum of five years. Wolf also recommended that President Bush support a threefold increase of the federal research and development budget over the next 10 years, and refused to accept the White House's contention that the current budget was sufficient. He subsequently announced a Washington, D.C., "innovation summit" where academic and industry leaders will meet in the fall to more deeply discuss the issue. Wolf is chairman of the appropriations subcommittee on science, state, justice, and commerce, and in January the National Science Foundation and NASA were placed under his group's authority. He says he tried to increase the fiscal year 2006 budget for NASA's aeronautics portion and NSF as best he could, but the amount of funding authorized for the agencies was an obstacle. Wolf was inspired by former House speaker Newt Gingrich's book, "Winning the Future: A 21st Century Contract with America," which states that America's security and economic future is dependent on leadership in science and technology. Gingrich criticizes the country for its poor support of science, and argues that without government funding it is up to scientists to "behave like citizens" and back Wolf and other congressional proponents of science.
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Several IT projects aim for goals ranging from improved data center heat management to accelerated secure data transmission to clear voice over Internet protocol (VoIP) communications to context-specific cell phone message delivery. Duke University and Hewlett-Packard Labs researchers have collaborated on a more energy-efficient method for cooling data centers using several algorithms designed to prevent the creation of local hot spots: One algorithm reduces the workload for a server when the heat of its surroundings increases, while the other scans the data center in its entirety and assigns a lower number of tasks to servers more likely to recirculate hot air. Computer models demonstrate that the algorithms could lower cooling costs by 25 percent and boost the reliability of data centers. The execution-only memory (XOM) processor is an effective fix for encryption security holes, at the cost of data transmission speed. Researchers at the University of California, Riverside, and the University of Texas at Dallas have created a security solution that can initiate decryption in the absence of data and speed up secure transmission, although new processors with additional on-chip memory and updated software are necessary for the technique to be widely adopted. Researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara, have devised a method to make VoIP conversations less garbled, which could help WLAN voice, video, and multimedia's mainstream penetration; using a simulation of a network, the researchers determined what specific combination of elements is needed to support the optimal conversational quality and the highest packet error. Three Nokia researchers have designed cell phone software that allows senders to assign specific times and destinations to text messages. One of the hurdles this technique faces is guaranteeing the privacy of recipients.
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