ACM, Infosys Create $150,000 Computing Award
IDG News Service (08/20/07) Gross, Grant
ACM and the Infosys Foundation have created the ACM-Infosys Foundation
Award, a new award to recognize mid-career computer scientists, around age
40, for outstanding innovations. The award will be given annually to a
computer scientist, or a small group of computer scientists, and comes with
a prize of $150,000, the second-largest monetary prize for ACM awards.
Infosys decided to donate the money for the award to celebrate its 25th
anniversary in 2006. Infosys CEO S. Gopalakrishnan says the company hopes
the award will inspire students to consider careers in computer science.
"Our goal is to identify breakthroughs that have broad implications well
beyond the scope of the innovation itself and that reflect an underlying
scientific or engineering methodology that is remarkable for its rigor or
for its sheer audacity," Gopalakrishnan says. ACM and Infosys decided to
leave the qualifications for the award fairly open and available to any
mid-career computer scientist in any core computing field who has created
an outstanding innovation. ACM President Stuart Feldman says computer
science will change and the sponsors did not want to exclude any new
branches that may join the field. Feldman expects there will be a backlog
of nominees for the first few years. ACM plans to announce the first
winner in early 2008.
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With Labor Crunch in IT on the Horizon, Why Are Careers
Failing to Lure Women?
Wall Street Journal (08/21/07) P. B5; Worthen, Ben
The IT industry, which already has a low percentage of women, continues to
fail to attract new women to the field, and with an IT labor shortage
looming, many are wondering why women are not interested in joining the IT
work force. The National Center for Women and Information Technology
reports that although women hold 51 percent of all professional positions
in the work force, they accounted for only 16 percent of IT professionals
in 2006, down from 29 percent in 2004. Additionally, only 13 percent of
corporate officers at Fortune 500 technology companies are women. "Women
feel discrimination in IT," says NCWIT communications director Jenny Slade,
pointing out that women who enter the IT industry leave at a higher rate
than men. A Women in Technology International survey of 2,000 female IT
workers found that 48 percent of respondents feel their opinions are not as
acknowledged or as welcomed as those of their male counterparts, and 44
percent say they are given fewer opportunities to participate in or lead
large initiatives. Slade says consequently women feel they need to leave
the IT industry to find advancement opportunities. Over time the problem
has become self-perpetuating as women cite a lack of women in the field as
one of the primary reasons they leave IT. Women are also avoiding IT
before they choose a profession. In 1985, women received 37 percent of
computer science undergraduate degrees, but in 2006 women received only 21
percent, according to the NCWIT. The number of incoming freshmen women
majoring in computer science dropped 70 percent between 2000 and 2005, and
teenage girls are less interested in computer science than other scientific
fields.
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New Devices Promise Touchy-Feely Computing
New Scientist (08/20/07) Busse, Matthew
Several haptic technologies were on display at ACM's recent SIGGRAPH 2007
computer conference. The Gravity Grabber, developed by Susumu Tachi and
colleagues at the university of Japan, uses two tube-shaped objects that
fit over a person's thumb and forefinger. Each tube has a set of motors
that drive a belt that wraps around the tip of the person's finger and can
be tightened to give the feeling of holding an object. The Haptic
Telexistence, another device developed by Tachi, is designed specifically
for remote manipulation. The device has a large metal controller that
wraps around the user's hand that is used to manipulate a corresponding
robotic hand. Each fingertip on the robotic hand has LEDs and a small
camera. The amount of light reflected off of an object back to the camera
reveals the object's shape and how tightly it is held. An equivalent force
is then applied to the user's fingertips through an array of tiny pegs that
pop up and send a tiny amount of electric current that stimulates nerve
fibers. Electro-tactile feedback is better than other feedback techniques
such as vibration, says project team member Katsunari Sato, and is even
capable of simulating the sensation of texture and possibly heat.
Singapore's Agency for Science, Technology and Research researcher Farzam
Farbiz is also investigating ways to simulate touch with electrical
stimulation by examining how stimulating forearm muscles with electricity
can produce the sensation of hitting a tennis ball. Tohoku University in
Japan researcher Satoshi Saga has developed a device that could give robots
a more human-like sense of touch and feel. The device has feathers
embedded in a silicone gel mounted over a checkered pattern with a video
camera beneath. Moving the feathers moves the gel and allows a different
amount of light to be picked up by the camera, which a computer can
calculate as pressure.
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Official Threatens to Fine E-Vote Firm
Contra Costa Times (CA) (08/22/07) Harmon, Steven
California Secretary of State Debra Bowen on Tuesday threatened to fine
Election Systems & Software nearly $15 million and ban the company from
doing business in California for three years for possibly selling as many
as 1,000 uncertified machines to five California counties. Bowen accused
ES&S of illegally selling 972 uncertified AutoMARK version 1.1 machines.
The AutoMARK version 1.0 is a certified machine and is used by disabled
voters in 14 California counties, including Los Angeles. If Bowen finds
ES&S made unauthorized changes to the AutoMARK machine in version 1.1, she
could ask a court or an administrative judge law to impose a $10,000 fine
per violation, a total of $9.72 million, as well as a refund of nearly $5
million for the $5,000 machines. Bowen first became aware of the possible
new version when ES&S applied for certification of a system that was
already in place in five counties. If ES&S is banned from doing business
in the state, counties that use ES&S machines would have to switch to
another vendor, though Bowen plans to use the funds from the fines to help
counties replace ES&S machines. An ES&S spokesman did not directly address
Bowen's accusations, but said the company will work with her and that ES&S
has a long history of complying with extensive and thorough examinations of
its voting technology.
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Baucus Proposing Free College Tuition
Associated Press (08/20/07)
Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.) says he will introduce legislation that calls
for providing free college tuition for math and science majors. The bill,
the Education Competitiveness Act, is a $25 billion education incentives
package that also provides help for rural teachers and more money for
pre-kindergarten programs. Baucus says the goal is to better prepare
children for school and to get more children into college, ultimately to
make the United States more competitive, particularly with countries such
as China and India. "I think the challenge is fierce, and I think we have
a real obligation to go the extra mile and redo things a bit differently,
so we leave this place in better shape than we found it," Baucus says. The
first provision would offer a full scholarship to any high school graduate
majoring in math, engineering, science, or technology at any university,
but students would be required to work or teach in a related field for at
least four years after graduation. The bill would also create 25,000
merit-based scholarships for teaching students in the same fields, with the
same requirement that graduates must teach the subject for at least four
years. The legislation would also create grants to help states supplement
teacher wages in often underserved rural areas, and to establish and expand
pre-kindergarten programs.
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NIST Prepares for Final Awards in IT R&D Funding
Program
Government Computer News (08/20/07) Jackson, William
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is evaluating proposals
for what will be the last set of Advanced Technology Program awards, a
program implemented in 1990 to accelerate the development of challenging,
high-risk technologies that have the potential for significant commercial
payoff. The program encourages the research and development community to
develop projects that would normally be considered too risky for private
enterprises. The America Competes Act authorizes funding for NIST for the
next three years, and would double NIST's research and development budget
over 10 years, but also eliminates the Advanced Technology Program. While
no new awards will be given after this year, the America Competes Act
provides funding for previous and pending ATP awards. The Consolidated
Appropriation Act set aside $179.2 million for ATP this year, $61 million
of which will go to new grants. NIST plans to announce award recipients
for 2007 by Sept. 30. This year, ATP accepted proposals in all technology
areas, but focused on technologies for advanced and complex systems,
challenges in advanced materials and devices, 21st-dentury manufacturing,
and nanotechnology.
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Japan Working to Replace the Internet
Kyodo News (08/20/07)
Japan plans to develop a next-generation network that would replace the
Internet. Yoshihide Suga, Japan's communications minister, says an
organization that will bring together business, academic, and government
interests will be established this fall. The group will head the efforts
to pursue research and development for the new network. The ministry sees
the Internet as lacking in data throughputs and security. The new network,
which could be ready for commercial use in 2020, would be faster, offer
more reliable data transmission, hold up better against computer virus
attacks, and suffer fewer breakdowns. Japanese officials also see the
initiative as a way for the nation to take the lead in developing new
Internet technology and setting global standards, which they hope will
better position local hardware and software providers in the global
market.
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Live From Hot Chips 19: Keynote 1, Vernor Vinge
CNet (08/20/07) Glaskowsky, Peter
Former San Diego State University computer science professor and
science-fiction writer Vernor Vinge's keynote address at the recent Hot
Chips conference outlined several scenarios for the future of the
integrated-circuit industry. In his speech, titled "Digital Gaia," Vinge
said that as embedded systems become smaller, smarter, and better
connected, including a knowledge of their location and environment, the
network these systems exist on will become an independent computing and
communication platform, a digital Gaia. Vinge believes that new services
should be designed to operate on this platform as current systems will be
unable to perform properly. The first scenario Vinge describes is that the
process we are accustomed to under Moore's Law reaches a termination point,
which Vinge believes is unlikely as long as there is an economic demand for
technological improvement. The second scenario is that hardware complexity
will surpass software's ability to operate, which Vinge believes is more
likely and may ultimately prevent the development of practical artificial
intelligence. Vinge points out that multicore processors are already
creating such a problem. The third scenario results in "wide-area hardware
failures of embedded microcontrollers," not by external causes such as EMP
attacks, but by failures of the system itself. Vinge concluded by
suggesting that integrated circuits could possibly one day be considered a
new domain of life equal to plants, animals, fungi, and bacteria.
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Stanford University's EyePoint: Web Surfing With Eye
Gaze
Computerworld (08/20/07) Robb, Drew
Stanford University doctoral researcher Manu Kumar has improved the
accuracy of eye-tracking technology by using more computing power. Kumar
has developed the EyePoint system, which allows people to use their hands
and eyes to interact with computers. The technology could potentially
serve as an alternative to the use of the mouse. "Using gazed-based
interaction techniques makes the system appear to be more intelligent and
intuitive to use," says Kumar, who adds that some users say the system even
seems to read their minds as they engaged in Web surfing or other everyday
pointing and selecting tasks. EyePoint works by having a user magnify the
area they are viewing on a screen by pressing a hot key on the keyboard,
look at the link within the enlarged area, then activate the link by
releasing the hot key. Headsets or monitor frames with infrared
capabilities are typically used for eye tracking, but following eye
movements alone only results in an accuracy to about one degree of visual
angle. "What is really exciting is that the processing power of today's
computers is completely changing the kinds of things we can use for
computer interfaces," says Ted Selker, associate professor at the MIT Media
and Arts Technology Laboratory. Selker expects eye tracking to become a
standard computer interface in five years.
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Open Source Developers Face H-1B Visa Puzzle
LinuxWorld (08/20/07) Romeo, Jim
Sixty-six percent of 225 U.S.-based organizations surveyed in July by
Gartner Group anticipated an increase in IT staff in the next 12 months,
compared to 61 percent in 2006, but the number of openings appears to be
far exceed the permitted limit of H-1B visas allocated by Congress. One
open source developer currently working in the United States on an H-1B
visa comments, "There's a great concern over undocumented immigrants and we
tend to get bundled together with that issue." Critics say many small and
midsize open source firms are being hurt by the H-1B program. "First ...
they make it more expensive to hire the worker you want because of the H-1B
overhead," says Open Source Software Institute (OSSI) member Russ Nelson.
"Second, they tie the worker to the corporation that created the job, so
the worker is not free to change jobs." OSSI executive director John
Weatherby has fewer issues with the H-1B program, and notes that his
organization works with many software development firms that are either
wholly open source shops or use open source as a component of their
solutions and service offering. OSSI is also involved in project
management for certain open source efforts on a national as well as global
level. Executives who use the H-1B program strongly disagree with critics'
claim that it allows foreigners to steal jobs from U.S. workers, and argue
that there are in fact more positions available than there are domestic
workers. They are calling for a more realistic H-1B program cap that takes
projections of future economic growth into account.
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Processor Design Gets Mathematical Sweetener
IST Results (08/15/07)
The property specification language (PSL), a new microchip specification
language, has been adopted by the IEEE as a standard specification
language, creating an industry standard for microprocessor design. PSL,
which will replace ambiguous English descriptions with mathematically
precise definitions of processor functions and design, applies to every
stage of microprocessor design and could save millions of dollars for
microchip producers. When designing a microchip, engineers need to
describe with precise detail the chip specification for each stage of the
microchip creation process, including design, fabrication, verification,
and final function. Each stage of development requires engineers to
rewrite the English specification as a mathematically precise function.
Additionally, each stage of development uses different languages, which
vary between microchip companies, creating an industry that is prone to
mistakes. During a two-year 7 million euro project, PROSYD demonstrated
reductions in design error up to 100 percent, and increased design
efficiency between 16 percent and 22 percent. Cindy Eisner, PROSYD
coordinator and senior architect for verification technologies at the IBM
Haifa Research Lab, says as designers become more familiar with PSL, even
greater improvements in efficiency can be expected.
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Computers Help Chemists in Superbug Battle
VNUNet (08/21/07) Jacques, Robert
Researchers in Canada say computer analysis of drugs can be used to
quickly come up with emergency medications if new infectious agents and
antibiotic-resistant superbugs appear. "In the case of new infectious
threats, there might be no time to develop a completely new drug 'from the
ground up' as the corresponding toxicological studies and regulatory
investigations will take years to complete properly," says Artem Cherkasov,
of the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. The scientists plan to
use a new computer system to identify vulnerable cellular components of a
pathogen using proteomics. Cherkasov says they will enter the key
structures into the system, and use some aspects of artificial intelligence
to determine which drugs have the best chance for activity against the
target and for antimicrobial activity. The highest-rated compounds then
could be tested in a laboratory against the pathogen and eventually used to
treat people who have become infected. New developments in
chemo-informatics, which combines chemistry and computer science, have made
it possible to use computational models to search for "antibiotic
likeness."
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Grid Experts Address Barriers to Distributed
Applications
Grid Today (08/20/07) Jha, Shantenu
Grid computing entails the coordination of decentralized resources while
employing standard, open, general-purpose interfaces and protocols to
provide appreciable qualities of service, while the issues that the grid
applications community must presently contend with are distinct from the
issues of five years ago. Infrastructure status was generally considered
to be the major early obstacle to grid-enabling applications five years
ago, whereas today other hindrances are asserting themselves. The
Distributed Programming Abstractions theme was launched at NeSC/eSI to
facilitate a better comprehension of the more effective use of distributed
infrastructure for the development of grid applications. A workshop was
held which determined that the MPI library offered a useful standard for
developing parallel applications as the most widely used and
best-understood parallel model employed for standardization, and that new
tools and models to aid the composition of applications were more desirable
than a distributed computing language in this situation. Another part of
the workshop listed the numerous programming models/abstractions and then
recognized common elements to allocate them to high-level categories of
Composition, Messaging, Component, Services, and Grid Aware (grid
libraries). Identifying and categorizing a full range of applications was
undertaken in subsequent sessions. In general, workshop participants
identified a need for classification and analysis of available/potential
distributed application programming abstractions; a similar categorization
for distributed applications and consequential application mapping; and a
gap analysis of the programming abstractions.
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MacArthur Foundation Explores Virtual Worlds
Chicago Tribune (08/16/07) Storch, Charles
The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's five-year, $50 million
commitment to closely examine the impact of digital technology on how young
people learn, play, and participate civically will include $2 million in
prizes for innovations in digital media and learning. Individuals,
nonprofits, and corporations will have until Oct. 15, 2007, to submit their
applications for the new awards. One category is for "entrepreneurs and
builders of new digital environments for informal learning" and offers
prizes of $250,000 and $100,000, and the other category is for
"communicators in connecting, mobilizing, circulating or translating new
ideas around digital media and learning" and offers prizes of $30,000 to
$75,000. A MacArthur spokesman says applicants "are strongly encouraged to
include a partnership with formal or informal learning or
community-servicing institutions, when relevant to the proposal." A
network of educators and digital innovators will oversee the competition,
and a panel of experts in the field will serve as judges. The Chicago
philanthropy will announce the winners in January. The Second Life
Community convention Aug. 24-26 in Chicago, for which MacArthur is funding
a series of programs, will give the foundation another opportunity to
investigate digital media and virtual worlds.
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Most Teen Computer Hackers More Curious Than
Criminal
USA Today (08/20/07) P. 5D; Elias, Marilyn
Teenagers mostly commit cyber crimes due to curiosity and not criminal
motivation, said University of San Francisco psychologist Shirley McGuire
at the American Psychological Association conference. A survey of about
4,800 San Diego-area high school students revealed that 38 percent copied
software illegally, while 18 percent accessed someone's computer or Web
site without permission. However, only about one in 10 students said their
intentions were for causing trouble or making money, while several cited
the excitement and challenge as their motivation. Additionally, boys were
more likely than girls to participate in hacking and make unauthorized
software copies. "In the vast majority of instances, it's not a crime
because it's not done with criminal intent," says University of Illinois in
Chicago researcher Steve Jones. He adds that parents should play a more
active role in educating teens about the peril of copyright issues online
and that they should also trust their children. Nancy Willard of the
Center for Safe and Responsible Internet Use says most kids hack "just to
see if they can do it" and that schools should implement programs pairing
students with industry professionals that foster and promote positive PC
activities.
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Flight Plan for Security
Government Computer News (08/13/07) Vol. 26, No. 21, Jackson, William
Seymour Goodman of the Georgia Institute of Technology argues that the IT
community must take a proactive stance toward securing cyberspace, and
suggests using the Civil Aviation Convention as a prototype. The
convention, to which nearly every country belongs, concentrates on
standardizing rules for guarding the aviation infrastructure, and mandates
operational competence in participating countries. As a result, the
aviation industry is relatively safe despite its innate risks and high
target profile. Meanwhile, the current information infrastructure was
designed to be easily accessible, and "access is the enemy of security,"
according to Goodman. There are currently some 1.3 billion users of the
Internet in over 220 countries. The majority of email traffic is spam,
malware has infected roughly 14 percent of American household PCs, and
today's global, interactive networks have no single source of authority or
control. While the Council of Europe's Convention on Cybercrime is
attempting to address such issues, its emphasis on law enforcement is too
passive, says Goodman. Moreover, the convention does not insist that
member countries create strategies for enforcing its regulations. In
comparison, the Civil Aviation Convention insists that participating
countries be able to fulfill and enforce its safety standards. A similar
scheme in the cybersecurity world may find a helpful vehicle in the
International Telecommunication Union, suggests Goodman.
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The Ultimate Answer Machine
InformationWeek (08/06/07)No. 1149, P. 40; Hoover, J. Nicholas
Next-generation search engines are under development that will enable
natural language queries, a single stream of multimedia results, greater
accuracy and summarization of results, automated categorization,
preference-determined relevance, shared searching, and other sophisticated
functions. Future search engines will be capable of performing searches on
the user's behalf, based on previous queries, and without prompting. Such
ability requires a great deal of computation and a redesigned interface,
according to IDC analyst Susan Feldman. Powerset CEO Barney Pell predicts
that search engines' comprehension of meaning will be dramatically enhanced
over the next 10 years, through such milestones as the application of
linguistics to interpret questions, study Web content, and polish results
via user interaction. Search engines that possess detailed knowledge about
the searcher can make better educated guesses about the searcher's intent,
and companies such as Google are pushing personalization technology that
can facilitate such queries, although the storage of search-related
information in corporate databases has aroused concerns about privacy. The
emergence of Web 2.0 technologies has hastened the momentum for social
search with concepts such as shared searches, social bookmarking, tagging,
and search systems that improve as more people employ them. Social
bookmarks and tag clouds do not have infinite applications: Autonomy CEO
Mike Lynch reports that an overabundance of tags reduces the reliability of
searches, while a paucity of tags can vastly inflate related search
results. In addition, Google engineer Matt Cutts says spammers and search
engine optimization abusers are eager to exploit tagging and social
bookmarking.
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Recognizing Gestures
EDN (08/16/07) P. 44; Cravotta, Robert
Gesture interfaces are becoming more complex and capable, broadening the
scope of control for many different kinds of electronic devices used in
games, infotainment, and industrial and medical environments. The bulk of
the advances in emergent gesture interfaces will stem from more
sophisticated software algorithms that maximize the advantages and offset
the shortcomings of each type of input interface. Some of the interfaces
concentrate on encompassing a wide spectrum of gestures to mimic the
manipulation of a real-world tool instead of sending abstract instructions
to a computer. A great deal of the properties that support reliability and
usability in a gesture interface, such as predicting or deducing intent,
are non-obvious to users. Numerous gesture-recognition interfaces are of
the direct-control variety whereby users explicitly guide the system to
carry out actions, while embedded or "invisible" interfaces offer even more
potential applications through their ability to determine user intent by
mere implication. The interface's success, regardless of its richness and
intuitiveness, is a direct reflection of how capably the interface
addresses uncertainty with the user. One technique an interface can use to
compensate for errors or misunderstandings is for the system to restrict
the series of potential inputs to only those with an authentic context,
while another strategy is to yield sufficient relevant feedback so that
users can change their expectations or habits in an appropriate manner. If
neither of these approaches work, designers can use a context-relevant
response to accommodate a given input's uncertainty. Devices equipped with
contemporary interfaces must consider how to contend with wireless and
network connectivity between systems in order that the user perceives them
as one, unified system.
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Blueprint for a Green Laptop
Popular Science (08/07) Vol. 271, No. 2, P. 70; Aaronson, Lauren
Designers are working on more environmentally friendly laptops whose
greenness is sustained throughout their entire life cycle. To eliminate
the problem of petroleum-saturated plastic cases, plant-based polymers
called bioplastics, which can be produced with less energy and oil than
traditional plastics, are being looked into. Discarded laptops are a
mounting waste problem, but this could be addressed by making laptop
upgrading easier and cheaper; the enormous power consumption by laptop
displays could be relieved by the jettisoning of backlights through the use
of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs). The energy requirements of
manufacturing a laptop could be slashed by the advent of more efficient
plants, such as a Texas Instruments facility in Richardson, Texas, that
will use 20 percent less electricity and 35 percent less water while also
emitting considerably fewer pollutants. Another energy-saving measure
being implemented for laptops is the use of solar energy technology, while
the European and U.S. governments have decreed that toxic ingredients be
phased out of electronics. Laptops could shed 10 percent of their energy
consumption by replacing hard drives with flash memory, while one solution
to the costly and time-consuming process of computer recycling would be for
manufacturers to outfit laptops with radio-frequency ID tags so that
recyclers could be instantly told how to retrieve components instead of
examining each unit individually.
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