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August 25, 2006

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Welcome to the August 25, 2006 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week.

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Pioneers Aim to Create New Language for the Web
Globe and Mail (CAN) (08/24/06) Schick, Shane

Pierre Levy, a research professor at the University of Ottawa, is developing a new language that he hopes will open an unprecedented dialogue between computers. In creating the Information Economy Meta Language (IEML), Levy is attempting to formulate a new alphabet that can describe the subtleties of all natural languages to create a more intuitive information index, enabling searches by concept, instead of keyword, for instance. "Today the search for information in computers or on the Web is made by sequences of characters. You can find information on a word like 'dog,' but it won't bring up anything related to 'chien' (the French word for dog)," Levy said. His language would generate a transparent search engine that would enable users to see which algorithms are used to retrieve the answers, to view the criteria used to rank pages, and even to select the criteria. Levy's project is just one of many underway aiming to go beyond the limits of HTML and make the Web a richer and more descriptive environment. The tools that will power the semantic Web, such as Levy's IEML, aim to surround information with meaning that can be understood by machines. The semantic Web is the grand vision of Tim Berners-Lee, director of the World Wide Web Consortium, who last year unveiled SPARQL, a language that would enable software to inquire about the semantics of online information. Languages such as SPARQL and IEML might not see immediate adoption, given that most companies are continuing to develop their HTML-based Web sites that work well enough for their needs. Semantic languages could receive a boost from the increasing mistrust about the quality of information that can be found on the Web. The globalizing economy could also drive support for semantic languages, as more and more companies around the world will insist that their Web sites can be understood by customers in their native language.
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EU Research Driving the Web Services Seismic Shift
IST Results (08/25/06)

Recognizing the growing importance of Web services, European researchers launched the Web Services and Semantics (WS2) project in July 2004, aiming to boost European participation in the development of standards for Web services. Although Europe is at the forefront of Web service adoption and deployment, it has fallen behind in the development of the necessary standards, the WS2 project found. "We evaluated the impact of the project by monitoring European participation in the various W3C working groups we support. We measured up to 70 percent European participation in these particular groups--North American participants are usually the majority," said Carine Bournez, technical coordinator for the project. As a result of the project, European participation increased in the Web Services Choreography Description Language Working Group, which works to enable individual services to interoperate over diverse networks. Participation also increased in the Semantic Web Services Interest Group, and the project helped create the Semantic Annotation for Web Services Description Language (SAWSDL), an important standard that will enable machine-readable annotation of the function of a particular service.
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EFF: Patent Ruling Hurts Open-Source Software
IDG News Service (08/23/06) Gross, Grant

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is lobbying the Supreme Court to overturn the so-called "suggestion test," a method used by a lower court for determining if an invention should be obvious to others, making it unpatentable. The EFF claims that by employing the method, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit could impede free and open-source software (FOSS) initiatives. The appeals court has repeatedly upheld patents for cases involving a combination of inventions, striking down only those where clear evidence can be presented that the combination was already suggested. The EFF contends that under the suggestion clause, it is too easy to convince a court that the invention is not obvious, and that it "has forced litigants to search through haystack upon haystack of technical knowledge for the exact needle in which someone, somewhere, bothers to state the obvious." The EFF attributes the "massive surge" in patents to the suggestion test, arguing that FOSS projects are especially vulnerable, because anyone could steal an idea and patent it. Also, many FOSS initiatives lack the resources to defend against patent claims, claims the EFF's Jason Schultz, adding that the legal costs can be high enough to drive many projects out of business altogether. In an earlier brief, Microsoft and Cisco also argued that the appeals court is too liberal in granting patents, claiming that the suggestion test diverts corporate resources away from innovation by requiring them to invest in "defensive, large-scale patenting." Others do not buy into the argument, such as independent inventor Stephen Wren, who claims that patents, if anything, are too difficult to obtain.
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The Search for a New HPC Language
HPC Wire (08/25/06) Feldman, Michael

Legacy code is the inevitable result when a language becomes popular enough among the development community to build a critical mass of applications and libraries. While this phenomenon has been a tremendous boon to languages such as Fortran, C/C++, and Java, applications and communities sometimes evolve beyond the capacity of the initial language model. In high-performance computing, legacy code has particularly impeded development. The Message Passing Interface (MPI) that usually accompanies the Fortran or C code that powers most supercomputing applications is not sophisticated enough for large-scale development, and the code itself is unable to provide the high level of abstraction that has become so integral to modern software design. Among the most promising developments in the search for a new language is OpenMP, which uses compiler directives, library routines, and environment variables to parallelize existing languages such as Fortran and C. DARPA remains dedicated to developing a new high-level HPC language that is more scalable than the MPI and OpenMPI models to produce petascale systems, according to Rusty Lusk of the Argonne National Laboratory. "Nobody loves MPI," Lusk said. "When people criticize it, I'll stand up and defend it. But when we developed MPI, the idea was that it would be used to write portable libraries; actual users should never have to confront it. But a user language has never really evolved." The new languages should support different strains of parallelism and higher levels of programmability and performance. At last month's HPCS conference, Cray, Sun, and IBM gave a presentation on the state of their current language development projects--Chapel, Fortress, and X10, respectively. None reported a complete implementation or even a formalized specification, though DARPA will continue to fund the projects at least through the end of next year.
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Hoping to Overtake Its Rivals, Yahoo Stocks Up on Academics
Wall Street Journal (08/25/06) P. A1; Delaney, Kevin J.

Yahoo is aggressively hiring academic researchers to help overcome some of its biggest challenges, including bringing its technology up to par with rival Google. In one example of Yahoo's new commitment to basic research, the company hired former Harvard University economist Michael Schwarz to tackle problems such as protecting women from unwanted solicitations on an online dating site. Yahoo is also turning to fundamental research out of the realization that it has not fully capitalized on recent Web phenomena such as social networking and online video. At the core of Yahoo's efforts is its push to record its millions of users' Web habits, and to find how they are influenced by the company's services. Internet companies have identified the ability to mine vast amounts of data to analyze consumer behavior as a cornerstone of their competitive strategy. Though vast troves of raw Web data can be a dream come true for economic researchers looking for as large and representative a sample as possible, privacy concerns abound when consumer advocates feel that Internet companies are peering too closely into their customers' lives, particularly in the wake of the recent data exposure at AOL. Also, technology companies have a checkered past when it comes to turning basic research into marketable products. Yahoo has not said how many academic researchers it plans to hire, but in the past year, the company has hired luminaries in microeconomics, Web search, and artificial intelligence. The opportunity to work at a major Web company such as Yahoo and analyze the behavior of its 500 million monthly visitors can be a boon for researchers, who often struggle to find datasets large enough to test their theories.
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Ontario Puts $2.7M Towards IT Training for Low-Income Women
ITBusiness.ca (08/23/06) Lysecki, Sarah

The Ontario government in Canada is investing $2.7 million to help train low-income women for jobs in the information and communications technology industry. The Community MicroSkills Development Center in Toronto will receive $2 million for its IT training programs, and Conestoga College in Kitchener will receive about $750,000. The funding comes at a time when women are underrepresented in the ICT industry. Women account for only 25 percent of the IT workforce, according to a November report from the Software and Human Resource Council. Moreover, a University of Engineering and Enrollment survey in April 2005 reveals that females make up only 18 percent of the students who are enrolled in computer science-related courses at the undergraduate level. "We think the program announced today is a great first step to launch IT careers for these women," says John Boufford, president of the Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS). Boufford's organization offers the Women in IT (WIT) program, which seeks to educate high school girls about the career opportunities available to those who study computer science.
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Googling Your TV
Technology Review (08/24/06) Roush, Wade

Google is developing software that could track viewers' TV-watching habits just as it keeps tabs on the search terms people use and the Web sites they visit to serve up relevant advertisements. Similarly, Google would use the software to send ads to users' computers based on their programming preferences. The software requires no set-top box like the earlier abortive attempts at interactive TV, instead using a computer's built-in microphone to record five-second snippets of sound from a room, which it then condenses to a digital fingerprint after filtering each snippet for audio from a TV. It then scours an Internet server for an identical fingerprint that corresponds to a pre-recorded show. Upon finding a match, the software displays ads or other information that relates to the snippet on the user's computer. While allowing a computing company to record sounds in people's homes may not seem like an idea destined for widespread adoption, particularly in the wake of the massive data disclosure at AOL, the software uses a fingerprinting technology that makes it impossible for Google to listen in on any sounds other than what comes from the TV. Google is betting that the prototype will eventually lead to a commercial product, and the technology community is watching expectantly, as it could be a crucial step in the convergence of TV and Web content. The technology builds on the work of computer science researcher Yan Ke and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, who developed software to reduce audio fragments into tiny fingerprints by converting them into two-dimensional graphs. Computer-vision algorithms then sift out background noise and condense the graphs into just a few electronic bits. Google's prototype only collects the fingerprints from a viewer's home, funneling them into its audio database server where it compares them with almost 100 hours of recorded video.
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$2.4M Grant Funds Research Into Scanning Texts for Terror Threat
Pitt Chronicle (08/23/06) Hoffmann, Karen

The University of Pittsburgh will assist the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in its effort to develop new ways to analyze and track free text that could provide clues on potential terrorist activity. Pitt researchers will develop new information analysis techniques and computational technologies that will help DHS uncover common patterns across different sources of information. "The goals of the work will be to identify facts and entities, as well as beliefs and motivations, expressed in text, and to create new methods for linking events and beliefs across documents, and tracking them over time," says Janyce Wiebe, lead researcher and a computer scientist at Pitt. Researchers from Cornell University and the University of Utah will assist Pitt, which will receive $2.4 million over three years as a DHS University Affiliate Center (UAC). Rutgers University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Southern California are serving as UACs as well, and will also work closely with a number of National Laboratories in implementing discrete mathematics in computing applications. "The biggest challenge facing this critical area is the need for improved methods to quickly and accurately analyze, organize, and make sense of vast amounts of changing data," says Jeffrey W. Runge, acting Under Secretary for Science and Technology.
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Women in Technology: The ITWales Interview
ITWales.com (08/23/06) Earls, Sali

In a recent interview, four women working in IT in the United Kingdom shared their thoughts about what schools and the industry can do to boost female participation in technical fields. The perception that IT is a masculine and unstimulating industry is at the core of why women are so underrepresented in the field, said Microsoft's Clare Barclay. IT is actually a vibrant, fast-paced industry that has a very real impact on improving the world, she says. Barclay calls for greater inclusion programs that generate an environment in which women feel comfortable networking, and appeals to women already in the field to evangelize it to others. BT's Ann Beyon added that most people consider IT a strictly scientific endeavor, when it is really more of an art. Given the multitude of applications for technology, computing really can have as much to do with people's lifestyles as it does with the technical aspects, concurs Symantec's Amanda Jobbins. Increasing exposure to IT as an interactive vehicle for all kinds of information in schools will improve the overall perception of technology and help break down the gender barrier. Promoting awareness of the diversity of job opportunities is important as well, so that women do not simply look at computing in terms of software development and gaming. Making the impact that science can have on practical skills clear is important for women to understand the relevance of IT, and they should have career counselors and mentors to help reinforce that message. As far as the industry is concerned, companies need to do more to implement flexible working practices when it comes to having children, Jobbins said. "It's a practical reality of life that women are going to want to slow down their careers for a few years mid-career, but in terms of the long term value of that employee, that is really a very small price to pay to retain a skilled contributor," she said.
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Math Professors Solve 'Cocktail Party' Problem
TechWeb (08/24/06) Jones, K.C.

Mathematics researchers at the University of Missouri-Columbia have mathematically solved the "cocktail party" problem, and say their solution is more reliable than existing programs used to separate sound and reproduce voices. Professor Dan Casazza says separating voices that are similar in their pitch continues to be a problem for today's programs. "Our solution shows that we can pull out each voice individually, not just with the words, but with the voice characteristics of each individual," adds professor Dan Edidin. Casazza and Edidin were assisted by Radu Balan of Siemens Corporate Research on the mathematical research, which could be used for law enforcement, homeland security, and intelligence efforts. "Theoretically, our solution says you should be able to pick up voices on a squeaky old microphone and then separate them all out so that you can hear what each person is saying in his or her own voice," says Casazza. The researchers still hope to create an algorithm for their mathematical solution for pulling voices out of a crowd. Part of the funding for the research comes from the National Science Foundation and the National Security Agency.
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Fighting Fire With Robots
Philadelphia Inquirer (08/23/06) Avril, Tom

In a novel approach to machine automation, a group of academic researchers has developed firefighting robots that work together as a team to assist their human counterparts. Though still a few years away from battling an actual blaze, the three-wheeled machines are a significant departure from roboticists' earlier attempts to build one big device to do everything. The idea is similar to a colony of ants working in concert. "You distribute the task among many, many guys," said Vijay Kumar, chair of the mechanical engineering department at the University of Pennsylvania. In a trial at a robotics conference at Penn, graduate students designated one robot as the firefighter, and had four others roam around the lab, constantly pinging it with radio waves and ultrasound to keep track of its position. The robots were developed by researchers at Penn, Carnegie Mellon University, and MIT. As recently as five years ago, scientists had difficulty coordinating the actions of two or three robots, but today's complex algorithms enable them to manage dozens. The idea is for humans to remain above the details of a particular operation, instead directing the team of robots with high-level instructions. The military is taking particular interest in the research, though it could also be used for search and rescue, monitoring the environment, and building living quarters for astronauts in space. The amount of robotics research conducted throughout the world has doubled in the past three years, thanks to cheaper components and advances in processing power, said George Bekey, a robotics pioneer with the University of Southern California. Bekey and his colleagues wrote a report earlier this year warning that the United States, which lost its edge in industrial robots in the 1980s, is at risk of falling behind in other aspects of robotics. Japan, South Korea, and the European Union all spend more than the U.S. on robotics research and development, the report found.
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The Cutting Edge of Haptics
Technology Review (08/25/06) Graham-Rowe, Duncan

A team of Italian scientists has developed a new interface that can trick the human sense of touch into perceiving a flat surface as sharp or pointed. The technology simulates very fine sensations of pressure without actually pressing against the skin, possibly leading to a virtual knife that could give added realism to haptic systems such as surgical simulators. The field of haptics aims to simulate all manner of shapes, textures, and sensations. "It's a way of improving the perceptual quality of the rendering surfaces," said haptics expert Sile O'Modhrain of the new technology. In theory, researchers could develop a machine capable of altering its texture and shape to any form, but such a machine would be impractically large and complex, so researchers are instead trying to trick the human senses. To simulate sharpness, the researchers used a haptic interface consisting of a thimble attached to the end of an extendable, motorized arm. A user has a free range of motion when placing their forefinger inside the device, and intricately controlled motors give force feedback, impeding the movement of the thimble to create virtual surfaces. By applying lateral resistance to the user's movement, the scientists were able to create the feeling of running a finger along the edge of a variety of different surfaces.
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Teens Target for Creative Recruitment
Computerworld Canada (08/18/06) Guzman, Mari-Len

Canadian universities and technology associations are working to drive student interest in computer science in an effort to meet the growing needs of the industry. Enrollment in computer engineering, computer science, and software engineering dropped 11 percent from 2002 to 2005, according to the Software Human Resource Council (SHRC). In 2003, 3,100 students graduated from Canadian universities with degrees in computer science or computer engineering, while the SHRC forecasts an annual demand of almost 35,000 tech workers. "Where are the other 32,000 going to come from?" asks SHRC President Paul Swinwood. IT enrollments suffer from the widely held impression left over from the dot-com bust that the industry is inherently unstable. That impression, coupled with the wave of retiring baby boomers, forecasts a potentially acute labor shortage. Intuit Canada has been actively partnering with universities and government agencies to boost computer science enrollments. "Government and business should work together to help educational institutions fill the computer science programs and provide incentives there," said Intuit's Stephen King. EDS is also taking matters into its own hands by participating in job fairs and establishing centers of expertise in different regions of Canada. It is recruiting .NET professionals in Winnipeg and J2EE experts in Ottawa, for instance. King suggests that creating a positive work environment through initiatives such as career development and fitness programs will improve employee retention rates.
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How Could the Internet Be Governed: Perspective From Bulgaria
CircleID (08/22/06) Markovski, Veni

The current sentiment that U.S. control of the Internet is detrimental fails to first propose a working, functional model for international control of the Internet before throwing stones at a system that right now works well, opines Veni Markovski, chairman of the Internet Society of Bulgaria. For example, a recent call for comments by a global organization called the IGP found that 87 percent of respondents want Internet governance to become global, rather than continue via ICANN under the aegis of the U.S. Commerce Department, reports Syracuse University's Milton Mueller. This opinion pool included members of the global Internet technical community and some ccTLD operators, yet the U.S Commerce Department recently renewed ICANN's contract and therefore its own control over the Internet, for the next few years. Markovski argues that these critics fail to consider that today's Internet works well, and that a model must be developed to ensure an equal or better future for the Internet under global governance before a transition occurs. In addition, nations today do have control over the Internet through their own national laws and legislative processes, notes Markovski. Bulgaria itself allows a free and open development of the Internet after a brief introductory period in which some government officials attempted to exert control, but were rebuffed, he says. Bulgaria's experience could help create a model for a more interdependent, less unilateral global governance of the Internet that would require "lots of work, with lots of checks and balances," Markovski writes.
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Joke Generator Raises a Chuckle
BBC News (08/23/06)

Computer scientists in Scotland want to improve computerized speech aids by enabling the technology to generate novel language. The researchers from the Universities of Dundee, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh are involved in the System to Augment Non-Speakers Dialogue Using Puns (Standup) project to develop software that creates jokes for children who use computer speech aids. In a recent trial at a school near Glasgow, the researchers learned that the children enjoyed telling jokes to each other, even if the software generated jokes that were not overly funny. The program comes up with jokes such as: "What do you get when you cross a car with a sandwich? A traffic jam." The software has a pun template that is designed to write some or all of a punch line based on a chosen word or compound word, then phonetically compare the word with other words in its dictionary to write the opening line of the joke. Such novel use of language is necessary if good communication skills are to be developed, says Dr. Annalu Waller, a computer scientist and project researcher at Dundee. "It gives these kids the ability to control conversations, perhaps for the first time, it gives them the ability to entertain other people," adds Waller. The researchers are interested in having manufacturers integrate the software into computerized speech aids for children.
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FTC Chief Critiques Net Neutrality
CNet (08/21/06) McCullagh, Declan

The debate over Net neutrality has moved to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) with FTC chairman Deborah Platt Majoras voicing strong opposition to the legislation and calling it unnecessary. "I ask myself whether consumers will stand for an Internet that suddenly imposes restrictions on their ability to freely explore the Internet or does not provide for the choices they want," said Majoras during the Progress and Freedom Foundation's annual conference. The Senate is currently considering Net neutrality laws that would put regulations on broadband providers. Google and Yahoo are in favor of the proposed laws, while Comcast is opposed. Opinion on the issue has been divided along political lines with Republicans taking sides with broadband providers and Democrats in favor of the amendment. Majoras' latest comments may convince some senators to change their minds since the FTC has the same authority as the FCC over fraudulent broadband provider practices. The FTC says it has the authority to regulate "anticompetitive, deceptive, or unfair" practices by broadband providers. Majoras said the FTC has developed the Internet Access Task Force to more closely examine Net neutrality legislation.
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The Greening of the Data Center
eWeek (08/21/06) Vol. 23, No. 33, P. 21; Fogarty, Kevin

It is tricky to efficiently manage a data center's power consumption as the number of servers required for the center increases. Data center managers are pulling double duty as heating, ventilating, and air conditioning (HVAC) experts as well as IT administrators, and the reduced size of servers entails higher levels of power consumption and heat output. Even in an ideally designed data center, more chassis than necessary must be purchased and left partly empty to provide ventilation, says Berkeley National Laboratory staff scientist Jon Koomey. Yet the Uptime Institute estimated that 90 percent of corporate data centers have far more ventilation capacity than is required, but still suffer from inefficient heat management. Canadian furniture retailer Slumberland has realized an energy-efficient data center in which almost all the technology is centralized and airflow is optimized for cooling: The air conditioning units pump air into the center through floor grates; cool air streams through server racks and warm air is vented out via ceiling outlets. Although the rise of data-center power consumption is partially attributable to the growing power capacity of processors, the biggest culprit is the trend toward centralization of corporate computing, reports IDC analyst Vernon Turner. "Buying a bigger server is OK, but trying to buy a server that's stacked in the same chassis has pushed us into unnatural acts in the data center," he says. "You're trying to force things together that don't necessarily play well because they have different requirements for power and cooling." The EPA is working on a way to rate server energy in keeping with the Energy Star program, by providing an objective and consistent measure of how much energy a piece of equipment actually expends, according to Koomey.
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Exclusive Q&A: Linus Torvalds
Red Herring (08/21/06) Vol. 3, No. 31, P. 30

The growing interest that venture capitalists and large companies have for open source will be good for the open-source community, Finnish engineer Linus Torvalds says in an interview with Red Herring. Torvalds, who in 1991 created the core software that would eventually become the Linux operating system, says open-source developers now know they can make money. What is more, open-source programmers can focus more on tasks such as quality assurance, documentation, and support, according to Torvalds, who now lives in Portland, Ore. Torvalds also likes the emergence of open-source licensing because it allows for just the right mix of technology and money. He says commercial companies have not diluted the spirit of the open-source movement, adding that they have strengthened it and have helped to provide some balance. Torvalds says he focuses more on the technical end of Linux so he does not know what to expect over the next five years, other than development tends to be the result of an open market based on customer needs and the desire to head off future problems. Now that Linux has overcome the hurdles of acceptance and perception, Torvalds says the open source community still faces legal challenges such as bad patents.
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To Build a Better World
R&D (08/06) Studt, Tim

Inventor, engineer, and entrepreneur Dean Kamen--president of DEKA Research and Development and founder of the For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology (FIRST) program--is devoted to bettering people's lives, specifically toward boosting children's interest in science and technology and improving the standard of living for impoverished people. Kamen believes the United States' global innovation lead is slackening, a trend accelerated by declining numbers of U.S. engineering graduates. He argues that the government, schools, and industry must present a consistent message that scientists and engineers will be very important people so as to interest kids in the field. "I'm concerned that the U.S. feels it has a birthright where innovation happens," says Kamen, who notes that global numbers of science and engineering graduates paint a very different picture. He says U.S. engineers distinguish themselves from those in other countries with their out-of-the-box thinking, which is encouraged by America's free culture. But Kamen also warns that inadequate protection of intellectual property dampens investment and risk-taking. According to him, demonstrating an invention's clear value and relevance to society is key to its success. Kamen's dedication to such pursuits, along with his many inventions, have earned him the title of 2006 Innovator of the Year from R&D Magazine.
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