NSA to Defend Against Hackers
Baltimore Sun (09/20/07) P. 1A; Gorman, Siobhan
The National Security Agency is planning a new "Cyber Initiative," an
effort to enlist federal agencies to monitor Internet-based control systems
for electricity grids, subways, nuclear power plants, and other
infrastructure to prevent unauthorized intrusions. Initially, as many as
2,000 workers from DHS, NSA, and other agencies could be assigned to the
project. The plan is a major shift in NSA practices, according to former
and current intelligence officials. The new domestic role for the NSA,
which traditionally focused on the government's classified networks, would
require a revision of the agency's charter. NSA officials would not
discuss any specific programs, but did say that cybersecurity is a critical
objective for the agency. Cybersecurity has long been an unwanted
responsibility, with various federal agencies managing small portions of
it, but the NSA, for the most part, was not involved. The Department of
Homeland Security's first chief of cybersecurity, Amit Yoran, says that
although the government has made progress, in general federal efforts are
"somewhat spotty." One of the biggest problems is that the DHS is
responsible for the problem, but does not have the authority or expertise
to get other agencies and the private sector to adhere to regulations.
Current and former intelligence officials, including several NSA veterans,
warn that the new NSA network monitoring program could create new privacy
concerns. "If you're going to do cybersecurity, you have to spy on
Americans to secure Americans," says a former government official familiar
with NSA operations. "It would be a very major step."
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U.S. Facing Tech Labor 'Brain Drain' Due to Immigration
Law, Study Says
Investor's Business Daily (09/21/07) P. A4; Riley, Sheila
U.S. companies may soon face a serious "reverse brain drain" due to an
exodus of highly skilled foreign nationals returning to their home
countries, warns a new study of immigration statistics by Harvard
University, Duke University, and New York University researchers. Lead
author of the study, Vivek Wadhwa, who has posts at Harvard and Duke, says
U.S. immigration policy is creating a dangerous situation by making green
card applicants wait too long for permission to work in the U.S. A
significant number of Chinese and Indian foreign nationals in the United
States have graduate degrees, a highly desirable asset in their home
countries' growing economies. "These are highly educated people," Wadhwa
says. "India and China would be happy to add these people to their work
forces." The study found that more than half a million technology
professionals were waiting for green cards at the end of fiscal year 2006.
"There is much more demand for employment visas than anyone has realized,"
says study co-author and NYU sociology professor Guillermina Jasso.
"They're already in line for green cards that they will not get for six and
seven years." University of California at Davis computer science professor
Norm Matloff, who opposes expanding the visa program, disagrees with the
findings of the study, arguing that foreign workers will not leave so
easily after spending so many years trying to get a green card. Matloff
says the real issue is that employers are always looking for ways to save
on labor by hiring younger, low-wage foreign workers. The study also
examined international patent applications filed in the United States by
foreign workers. In 2006, 25.6 percent of international patent
applications had foreign nationals listed as inventors or co-inventors, up
from 7.6 percent in 1998.
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HP Labs to Narrow its Research Focus
SiliconValley.com (09/20/07) Poletti, Therese
HP Labs' new director Prith Banerjee is implementing significant changes
at HP Labs, including dramatically reducing the number of projects HP
researchers will work on. Over the next few months Banerjee and a
committee of HP researchers and executives will choose specific areas that
will become the company's primary areas of research. Banerjee says 20
percent of the labs' current 150 projects will be cut, and every year for
the next five years an additional 20 percent of projects will be cut. The
goal is to choose projects where HP could have the greatest impact in the
future. Funding will not be reduced and no employees will be let go as
part of the labs' restructuring. Banerjee also says that he will work to
establish new relationships with universities HP has partnered with before,
but that he wants to see HP driving more research rather than funding
proposals from individual professors and scientists. "We exchanged email,"
says David Patterson, former president of ACM and professor of computer
science at the University of California, Berkeley. "My impression is that
he is asking the question, 'If we have these world-class universities
nearby, isn't there some way that we can leverage those local resources in
a way that could make HP even more effective?'" Patterson agrees with
Banerjee that it is necessary to cut back on smaller projects so more
attention can be given to larger and potentially more rewarding
projects.
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Industry Experts to Showcase Innovative HPC
Applications
HPC Wire (09/19/07)
SC07's Masterworks sessions will give conference attendees an opportunity
to learn how high performance computing, communications, and storage
technologies are impacting everything from golf clubs, race cars, and
biofuels to household appliances. Masterworks will get underway Nov. 13,
2007, with a session that will have Torbjorn Larson of BMW discuss the move
by Formula One Racing to use computational simulations and CFD and high
performance computing in R&D, and the following program will have John
Picklo of Chrysler speak about the use of HPC in Nascar and other
motorsports. The use of HPC for research into biofuels and alternative
fuels will be the focus of afternoon talks by Mark Cooper, an expert in
complex trait genetics and molecular breeding at Pioneer Hi-Bred
International, and Sharan Kalwani of General Motors, while Dr. Thomas P.
Gielda of Whirlpool will end the day by discussing how HPC is used
throughout the process of designing everyday appliances. A highlight of
the second day of Masterworks will be a presentation by Eric Morales of
PING Golf, who will discuss how HPC is used to test, simulate, and build
leading-edge golf clubs. Masterworks will end on Thursday, Nov. 15, with a
CTO panel that will be chaired by Suzy Tichenor, vice president of the
Council of Competitiveness. SC07 is sponsored by ACM and the IEEE Computer
Society, and is scheduled for Nov. 12-16, 2007, in Reno, Nev. For more
information about SC07, or to register, visit
http://sc07.supercomputing.org/index.php?searchterm=SC07
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Is the U.S. at Risk From Cyberwarfare?
IDG News Service (09/20/07) McMillan, Robert
Commerce could take a serious hit from cyberattacks, given the degree to
which elections, banking, and point-of-sale systems have migrated online.
"As we become more networked and more wired, our vulnerabilities increase,"
notes Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis director James
Mulvenon, who cites the May shutdown of Estonian Internet servers and the
subsequent crippling of Estonia's banking system as a case in point. The
Homeland Security Department's Gregory Garcia says preparing for
cyberattacks involves many of the same procedures as gearing up for other
online threats. "For our purposes, we really need to focus on reducing our
vulnerabilities so those attacks don't happen in the first place," he
explains. One of the sticking points in plans for the United States to
wage cyberwarfare against other countries is that such attacks could have a
cascading effect that damages civilian systems and services that may not be
intended targets. There is also the additional threat of rogue elements
who may launch cyberattacks without the approval of their government.
Cyberwarfare planners will for now continue to proceed with caution out of
concern for unintended consequences, according to Mulvenon.
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'Pulp-Based Computing' Makes Normal Paper Smart
New Scientist (09/19/07) Inman, Mason
MIT researchers are developing technology that could be used to make paper
embedded with wires, sensors, and computer chips, creating "pulp-based"
computing. MIT researchers, working with colleagues at Concordia
University in Montreal, Canada, are blending traditional paper-making
techniques with electronic components. MIT researcher Marcelo Coelho says
paper-making is an ancient process, but the ability to make paper
responsive and interactive has only recently become available. The team
first produces a layer of paper pulp and adds wires or conductive ink
before adding another layer of pulp and pressing and drying, embedding the
electronics in the paper. The electronics in the paper can create paper
with speakers or touch sensors. Making paper with two layers of conductive
ink allows the paper to sense when it is being bent, which could be used to
add sounds to books, creating a more interactive form of story telling.
This technique could also be used to make cardboard boxes that can sense
how much weight is inside them by measuring the stress on their walls.
"Paper-based computation is an expression of one future area for
electronics--flexible and stretchable circuits," says Jean-Baptiste Labrune
of the University of Paris-Sud in Orsay, France. "This means that we could
think about computational objects without the traditional limits of
electronics."
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ACM Joins MentorNet Partnership to Expand Career
Resources
AScribe Newswire (09/18/07)
ACM has partnered with MentorNet in a deal that will enable ACM student
and professional members to join the e-mentoring network for free. ACM CEO
John R. White says access to MentorNet should provide ACM's 20,000 student
members with a competitive advantage in the job market. MentorNet's
One-on-One proprietary technology will match students with professionals in
industry, government, and higher education who are experts in their area of
interest. Undergraduate and graduate students, post-doctoral candidates,
and untenured faculty will be able to develop a personal email relationship
with professionals in their field, receive tailored coaching and MentorNet
Community publications, participate in Web-based discussion groups, and
take advantage of special events and promotions. ACM professional members
will be able to serve as mentors to ACM student members who are enrolled in
the MentorNet Program. "The MentorNet program will help ACM unite
computing professionals and ACM student members to provide our students
with valuable advice and feedback on issues related to academic success,
career choices, and getting started on a successful professional path,"
White says. To learn more about becoming a volunteer mento, visit
http://www.acm.org/mentornet
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International Blue Ribbon Task Force to Address Critical
Challenge of the Information Age
UCSD News (09/19/07) Froelich, Warren R.
A new international Blue Ribbon Task Force on Sustainable Digital
Preservation and Access, funded by the National Science Foundation and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will work to preserve society's most important
digital data. The task force will be assisted by the Library of Congress,
the National Archives and Records Administration, the Council of Library
and Information Resources, and the Joint Information Systems Committee of
the United Kingdom. "It is impossible to imagine success in the
Information Age without the availability of our most valuable digital
information when we want it now and in the future," says Fran Berman,
director of the San Diego Supercomputer Center and UC San Diego and
co-chair of the Task Force. "It's critical for our society to have a
long-term strategic plan for sustaining digital data and we are excited
about the potential for the task force to help form that plan." Berman and
co-chair Brain Lavoie, a research scientist and economist with the Online
Computer Library Center, will assemble an international group of leaders to
develop recommendations for the economic sustainability of digital
information. Over the next two years the task force will listen to a broad
set of international experts from the academic, public, and private
sectors. After two years, the task force will develop a comprehensive
analysis of current issues and actionable recommendations to create
sustainable strategies for data preservation. "In addition to developing
sound technical processes for preserving digital information, we must also
ensure that our preservation strategies are economically sustainable,"
Lavoie says. "The work of the panel will be an important step toward
achieving that goal."
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Instructors Anticipate Computer Science Revival
Green Bay Press-Gazette (WI) (09/20/07) Zarling, Patti
The dot-com bubble and reports of companies sending work overseas has led
to a drastic drop in undergraduate enrollment in computer science and
related fields, but administrators say students are starting to return,
largely because the jobs never left. "There are plenty of good jobs in
CS," says St. Norbert College associate professor of computer science
Bonnie McVey. "There's a great need for design and analysis." The
Computing Research Association reports that the number of incoming
undergraduates at all degree-granting institutions nationally who said they
were planning to major in computer science fell 70 percent between 2000 and
2005. By the fall of 2006, the number of new computer science majors was
half of what it was in 2000. However, 7,798 new students reported planning
on majoring in computer science in the fall of 2006, down only slightly
from the 7,952 new majors reported in the fall of 2005, indicating that the
numbers may be stabilizing, according to the CRA. University of
Wisconsin-Green Bay professor of information and computing science William
Shay says that although the numbers show a clear drop, it may be due to a
cyclical process. "It wasn't just the dot-com, but Y2K was also
everywhere, and companies were spending a lot of money on those things,"
Shay says. "We used to have a lot of internships in companies, and then it
completely died down. Now they're coming back."
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RIT Joins Library of Congress Partnership to Preserve
Online Games and Virtual Worlds
Rochester Institute of Technology (09/19/07)
Researchers from the Rochester Institute of Technology will participate in
an initiative to develop standards for preserving virtual worlds and online
games. The Preserving Virtual Worlds project, which the Library of
Congress will administer under the National Digital Information
Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIPP), will focus on basic
standards for metadata and content representation, and also use archiving
case studies of video games, electronic literature, and the Second Life
virtual world to study preservation issues. "This is incredibly important
work because the worlds we are playing with today will be gone in a flash,
with no recordable way of recreating them for future generations," says
Andrew Phelps, director of game design and development and RIT's principal
investigator on the project. "Virtual worlds are affecting millions of
people in their daily lives and while we can record and store some of the
social commentary that happens about them from the outside, it seems almost
silly that we in fact can't store the original work beyond a scant number
of years." RIT's Christopher Egert, assistant professor of IT, and
Elizabeth Lawley, director of the Laboratory for Social Computing in the
Center for Advancing the Study of Cyberinfrastructure, will also be
involved in the project. They will join researchers from the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Stanford University, the University of
Maryland, and Linden Lab on the project, which has received a $590,000
grant from the Library of Congress.
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Does Antivirus Have a Future?
London Guardian (09/20/07) Grossman, Wendy M.
The continued effectiveness of antivirus software is in doubt as sneakier,
more commercial, and more sophisticated malicious software emerges and is
used to launch new kinds of attacks. Antivirus vendors hear such
skepticism regularly, and Sophos technology consultant Graham Cluley says
that regardless of malware's refinement or methodology, its arrival at a
computer remains consistent and conventional, in that it is transmitted as
a piece of executable code that can be spotted by security software before
it can cause harm. Cluley adds that antivirus software's current
capabilities may be underestimated by certain parts of the software
community, and notes that AV software is in a state of continuous evolution
and has become less dependent on virus signatures. Yet a Panda Security
poll of 1.5 million consumer PCs found that 37 percent had fully updated
security, and nearly 25 percent of them were still compromised by malware.
AV software is making a transition from blocking bad software to passing
only benevolent software, while drive-by attacks--malware that is
automatically downloaded when one visits a contaminated Web site--are
becoming increasingly common. Malware authors' motivation is also
changing, from a desire to hack for the challenge of it or for bragging
rights to a desire to turn a profit. University of Auckland researcher
Peter Gutmann estimates that a talented virus programmer can earn up to
$200,000 a year. New viruses are also being designed for stealthiness so
that they can linger on a user's system without being spotted, increasing
the amount of time they have to wreak havoc. Experts expect security
software's deployment and strategy will be rethought, and Columbia
University computer science professor Salvatore Stolfo predicts that
"eventually, systems implanted in machines will learn your own personal
behavior and protect by detecting abnormalities."
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Carnegie Mellon Building Robot for Lunar
Prospecting
Carnegie Mellon News (09/20/07) Spice, Byron; Watzman, Anne
Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute researchers are building
Scarab, a robotic prospector for NASA that will be able to maneuver over
rocky slopes and anchor itself as a stable platform for drilling in soil.
The four-wheeled robot will never leave Earth, but will be used to
demonstrate technologies that a lunar rover would need to find any possible
concentrations of hydrogen, water, and other chemicals that could be used
to produce fuel, water, and air. Scarab is built with a drill that allows
the robot to dig up to a meter deep for geological core samples. "A lunar
prospector will face a hostile environment in the perpetual darkness of
craters at the moon's southern pole, where ground temperatures are minus
385 degrees and no energy source is at hand," says CMU professor William
"Red" Whittaker, the project's principal investigator. "It's a place where
humans can't work effectively, but where Scarab will thrive, even while
operating on the electrical power required to illuminate a 100-watt light
bulb." To navigate in darkness, Scarab will use new, low-power,
laser-based sensors. Additionally, Scarab will have to demonstrate the
ability to travel over miles of sandy, rock-filled terrain and serve as a
stable drilling platform. The robot must also find a balance between being
light and efficient and being heavy enough to apply enough downward
pressure for drilling. "Scarab is successful because it achieves the
design simplicity of a single-purpose machine while accomplishing the
multiple purposes of driving and drilling in darkness," says NASA's John
Caruso.
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Artists 'Draw on Air' to Create 3D Illustrations
PhysOrg.com (09/19/07) Zyga, Lisa
Brown University computer scientists Daniel Keefe, Robert Zeleznik, and
David Laidlaw have developed Drawing on Air, a system that allows artists
to draw 3D objects in the air while wearing a virtual reality mask.
Drawing on Air uses drawing guidelines, force feedback, and a two-handed
interaction system to help artists draw 3D curves and objects more
precisely, transferring the image to a computer for 3D modeling, design,
and illustration programs. The two-handed method is based on "tape
drawing," a controlled, two-handed technique for drawing in 2D. Drawing on
Air artists hold a stylus in one hand to draw and a tracker connected to
the virtual reality system in the other. The tracker defines the direction
of the line, and both hands are used to examine the work from different
angels. The two-handed method is better for experts and can be difficult
to learn, so a one-handed method was also developed. Drawing on Air was
also used to create bats based on data from a bat flying in a wind tunnel,
which revealed information on the animal's anatomy in motion, useful
information to biologists studying bat flight. "If we can boost the
precision with which scientists can interact with their 3D data using a
computer, then many more scientific uses for virtual reality technology may
become possible," Keefe says.
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Virtual Worlds Open Up to Blind
BBC News (09/18/07) Adams-Spink, Geoff
Students participating in Extreme Blue in Ireland, hosted by IBM, are
conducting research that could lead to online virtual worlds accessible to
blind people. Some estimates predict that 80 percent of active Internet
users will participate in virtual worlds in four years, and IBM says they
want to ensure that blind people are not excluded. The student researchers
have developed an audio equivalent of the virtual world that uses 3D sound
to create a sense of space. For the project, known as Accessibility In
Virtual Worlds, the researchers used the online environments in Active
Worlds because it provided greater flexibility than Second Life, which was
used to make the world more hospitable to the blind. "When the user comes
into the world, the items are described as well as their positions," says
Colm O'Brien, one of the four researchers who worked on the project.
"There is also sound attached--for example, if there's a tree nearby you
will hear a rustling of leaves." The project also focused on developing
tools that use text to speech software to read any text conversations that
users have in the virtual world. Avatars in the virtual world can have a
"sonar" attached to them so the user gets an audible cue that another user
is approaching.
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Computer Program Traces Ancestry Using Anonymous DNA
Samples
Rensselaer News (09/20/07) DeMarco, Gabrielle
An international group of computer scientists, mathematicians, and
biologists have developed a computer algorithm that can trace the genetic
ancestry of individuals in a few minutes, without requiring prior knowledge
of their background. Previous computer programs required information on an
individual's ancestry and background, but the new algorithm uses specific
DNA markers known as single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) and requires
only a DNA sample such as a cheek swab. "Now that we have found that the
program works well, we hope to implement it on a much larger scale, using
hundreds of thousands of SNPs and thousands of individuals," says Petros
Drineas, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute assistant professor of computer
science and senior author of the study. The program will be used to help
people understand their backgrounds and to help historians and
anthropologists study how humans became such a hugely diverse, global
society. The program was more than 99 percent accurate in identifying the
ancestry of hundreds of individuals, including people from genetically
similar populations, such as the Chinese and Japanese, and people from
genetically complex populations such as Puerto Ricans, who can come from a
variety of backgrounds including Native American, European, and African
decent.
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Of Greed and Ants
Economist (09/13/07) Vol. 384, No. 8546, P. 86
Over the years computer algorithms have been developed to perform specific
functions--Bubble sort for enabling smaller items in a list to bubble to
the top, for example--but the latest development is basing algorithms on
biological systems. Thorsten Schnier, a researcher at Cercia, a branch of
the computer science department at Britain's University of Birmingham, says
algorithms based on biological systems offer great potential. For example,
ants release pheromones as they search for and retrieve food. Other ants
can follow the pheromones to find food sources. Such techniques can be
applied to algorithms that send virtual ants into a simulated network. At
first the algorithm sends random "ants," but eventually the virtual ants
can follow the equivalent of a pheromone trail to their destination.
Meanwhile, more powerful computers and the buildup of a mass of data have
enabled researchers to enhance existing algorithms. Greedy algorithms, for
example, are designed to find the best possible outcome for any situation.
They are often used in network routing to find the shortest possible path
to a destination. However, greedy algorithms are notoriously
short-sighted, says MIT computer science professor Erik Demaine. But they
are improving and could eventually surpass human experts in some fields,
says Yale University professor Ian Ayres.
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What's So Super About Supercomputers, Anyway?
Chronicle of Higher Education (09/21/07) Vol. 54, No. 4, P. A24;
Carnevale, Dan
The primary topic at the National Science Foundation symposium on
"Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation" was how supercomputers could be
used to solve many of the world's problems and why more computing resources
have not been devoted to these problems. United Technologies Corporation
chief scientist of controls Clas A. Jacobson says that even with increases
in computing power computers are still limited in the amount of information
they can process, while supercomputers are not available to everyone who
needs them. These shortcomings have led to researchers taking short cuts
and focusing on small samples of data instead of the big picture because
analyzing data on some topics, such as human behavior, would overwhelm even
the most powerful supercomputers. "Computing is a means to an end,"
Jacobson says. "It's not the answer by itself." Other speakers at the
symposium said supercomputers are often limited because of computer
scientists' ignorance of subjects other than computer science. State
University of New York at Buffalo professor of computer science and
engineering Russ Miller says computer science departments need to recruit
graduate students with undergraduate degrees in fields such as biology,
physics, and humanities in order to broaden the scope of computer
science.
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Bet on It!
IEEE Spectrum (09/07) Vol. 44, No. 9, P. 48; Cherry, Steven
Software and services that help companies tap the "wisdom of crowds" to
project public response to new products, sales revenue, or the price of new
commodities are being developed and marketed. These services essentially
establish a stock market of ideas, and France-based financial consultant
Chris F. Masse forecasts that one out of 10 Fortune 500 companies will have
publicly disclosed their use of internal prediction markets while another
10 percent will be experimenting with some projects by the end of the
decade. The adoption of prediction markets in the United States is such
that a group of notable economists released a statement requesting that
such markets be exempted from gambling regulations, noting that "using
these markets as forecasting tools could substantially improve decision
making in the private and public sectors." Prediction markets use real
currency or some other medium of legitimate value to lower the likelihood
that participants will misrepresent themselves, while the use of actual
money also buoys the accuracy of the markets by winnowing out those
confident enough to bet cash on their projections. On the other hand, the
use of money can encourage people to attempt market-rigging. Most
corporate prediction markets give employees an account with which to start
making wagers, thus motivating more betting. Numerous prediction markets
employ a double auction format in which bids are submitted by buyers and
sellers. Many companies are still hesitant to use prediction markets
because of reluctance on the part of managers to cede control over
decisions. "An organization adopting prediction markets needs to make two
major adjustments: deciding to start making formal predictions about the
future and choosing to use prediction markets as the mechanism," says
Microsoft's Harry Berg. "In my experience, the first adjustment is greater
than the second."
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