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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