Unmanned Cars Off to a Slow Start
Ventura County Star (CA) (10/28/07) Bruce, Allison
The preliminary round of DARPA's Urban Challenge took place at the former
George Air Force Base in southern California on Oct. 27, the first day of
test courses for the teams. The unmanned vehicles were put to the test on
three courses, including a simulated mall parking lot with human occupied
vehicles to act as obstacles, and a residential neighborhood that included
two-lane roads, a traffic circle, and a parking challenge. "This is really
amazing," says Scott Anderson, who teaches computer science at Fairmont
Preparatory Academy in Anaheim. "This event is really the bleeding edge of
large-scale field robotics." Some of the unmanned cars had difficulty
exiting the starting area, while others were more successful in navigating
the course. "It's very impressive to see which progress and techniques you
can see here," says Hans Ludwig Wolf, who was sent to watch the competition
by his company in Germany. "It's very impressive also how much money DARPA
will invest in this event. In Europe, we cannot imagine investing so much
for such a thing." The finalists for next week's competition are expected
to be announced on Nov. 1.
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Coalition to Diversify Computing Hosts Academic
Workshop
HPC Wire (10/26/07)
Assistant- and associate-level faculty and senior doctoral students from
groups underrepresented in the field of computing have until Friday, Nov.
9, 2007, to submit applications to the Coalition to Diversify Computing
(CDC) to participate in the first annual Academic Workshop for
Underrepresented Participants. Scheduled for Friday, Nov. 30, through
Sunday, Dec. 2, at the Hilton Hotel in College Station, Texas, the workshop
seeks to mentor faculty members and students from underrepresented groups
on the tenure and promotion processes in an attempt to improve their
numbers. There will be panels featuring a diverse senior faculty
discussing launching a research program, professionalism, and proposal
writing. ACM teamed up with the IEEE Computer Society and the Computer
Research Association to create the CDC to organize the workshop, which
received an NSF Broadening Participation in Computing grant. The money
will be used to fund participant travel, lodging, and meeting logistics. A
one-page document that provides a name, contact information, and two to
three paragraphs describing how the workshop would be helpful should be
sent to Valerie Taylor (Texas A&M University) at [email protected]. The CDC will notify
participants by Nov. 12.
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UD Researchers Race Ahead With Latest Spintronics
Achievement
University of Delaware (10/26/07) Bryant, Tracey
Shortly after demonstrating how an electron's spin can be electrically
injected, controlled, and detected in silicon, electrical engineers from
the University of Delaware and Cambridge NanoTech have shown that an
electron's spin can be transported through silicon wafers, proving silicon
can be used for spintronics applications. "Electron spin has a direction,
like 'up' or 'down,'" says University of Delaware assistant professor of
electrical and computer engineering Ian Appelbaum. "The goal of spintronics
is to use currents with most of the electron spins oriented, or polarized,
in the same direction." The researchers created a device that injects
high-energy, or "hot" electrons from a ferromagnet into a silicon wafer.
Another hot-electron structure, made from two bonded silicon wafers and a
thin ferromagnet, were able to detect the injected electrons from the other
side. "One hundred percent polarization means that all injected electrons
are either spin-up or spin-down," says University of Delaware doctoral
student Biqin Huang. "High polarization will be necessary for practical
applications." Appelbaum says the research points the way to spintronics'
future. "There's a lot of fundamental work to be done, which we hope will
bring us closer to a new age of electronics," Appelbaum says.
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CMU Gets Intel Tech Demonstration
Pittsburgh Tribune-Review (10/25/07) Heinrichs, Allison M.
Intel Research in Pittsburgh, Pa., recently present some of its newest and
most innovative technologies in development at an open house at Carnegie
Mellon University. One of the presentations focused on shape-changing
objects, known as the "Claytronics Project," made of thousands of tiny
computers the size of a grain of sand. Another presentation described
independently thinking robots capable of making decisions in uncertain
situations, while a third presentation looked at software capable of
searching tens of thousands of medical scans for similarities. Carnegie
Mellon associate professor of computer science Seth Goldstein says that
although the Claytronics Project technology exists only in concept and
animated videos, he believes such morphing tiny computers could be a
reality within five or six years. Meanwhile, Intel Research scientist Sidd
Srinivasa was able to program a robotic arm to decide how to place mugs
into a dishwasher rack. "Lots of things that people do very easily, robots
find very hard to do," says Srinivasa. "You can tell a robot what to do,
but getting it to analyze a situation and decide on the best course of
action is a challenge." The Interactive Search Assisted Decision Support
(ISADS) software allows doctors to take scans of mammograms or skin cancer
images and search a database for images that match. The system then can
give the doctor treatment methods other doctors have used in the past and
the results of that treatment. ISADS needs to be approved by the U.S. Food
and Drug Administration before it can be used on patients, but Intel is
working with the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center to start a program
for approval.
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Supercomputing Challenge at Historic Conference
O'Reilly Radar (10/25/07) Oram, Andy
SC07, an international conference on high performance computing sponsored
by ACM and IEEE, will host supercomputing challenges for students for the
first time this year. In the challenge, six teams of student programmers
will work to build cluster computers using whatever combination of hardware
and software that can run off of a 30-amp circuit. During the 48-hour,
round-the-clock competition students are unable to receive outside help.
The computers will then run a series of calculations, including the High
Performance Computing Challenge cluster developer benchmark, the General
Atomic and Molecular Electronic Structure System used for predicting the
properties of polymers and complex chemical substances, the Parallel Ocean
Program for determining the effects of the climate, and the Persistence of
Vision Raytracer, a program that creates realistic lighting effects in
three-dimensional scenes. Any operating system can be used, and the team
that processes the most data with accurate results will win the
competition. Brent Gorda, high performance computing architect at
Livermore Labs, is coordinating the cluster challenge.
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FIU, FAU Partner on Research Project With $2.3 Million
Grant
Boca Raton News (FL) (10/26/07) King, Dale M.
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.3 million grant to
Florida International University and Florida Atlantic University to oversee
an initiative in which researchers and students around the world will use a
cyber-infrastructure powered by thousands of machines to work together and
solve problems. Over the course of five years the grant will support the
collaborative research of computer science faculty and students traveling
abroad for opportunities at universities in Europe, Asia, and South
America, as well as at IBM International Research Labs and the
supercomputing center in Barcelona. The Global Living Laboratory for
Cyber-Infrastructure Application Enablement will be based at FIU. As part
of the NSF's Partnership for International Research and Education (PIRE)
Program, FIU and FAU faculty and students will use the cyber-infrastructure
to address societal issues in the areas of disaster mitigation, health
care, and life sciences. "This partnership, with the support from NSF,
will not only help to advance the state-of-the-art in computing research,
but also make a major impact in further enhancing the quality and
competitiveness of our students, particularly Hispanic students, in
computer science," says FIU Computer Science Dean Yi Deng, principal
investigator for the project. Borko Furht, chair of Computer Science and
Engineering at FAU, says the "award will allow our students to have a great
experience abroad and bridge the cultural gap in the United States and
other countries."
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TopCoder Finds Tech Top Guns
Investor's Business Daily (10/29/07) P. A7; Bonasia, J.
The TopCoder Collegiate Challenge will draw 120 student software
programmers to Walt Disney World on Oct. 30th for a three-day competition
for prize money, bragging rights, and possible employment opportunities.
The majority of the contests take place over the Internet, with programmers
submitting ideas and programs that have been requested by TopCoder's
clients. The best programs win money for the programmers, while the
program becomes the client's software, developed at a much lower price than
if the company had to hire a team of developers. Additionally, because
each project is divided into different pieces, no single programmer can
jeopardize the security of the complete project, and programmers can chose
to work only on projects that interest them. "This is a business model
about how great programmers can do their best work," says Bill Taylor,
co-founder of Fast Company magazine. "Obviously the economics of it are
brilliant, as you only pay for the best ideas." TopCoder also hosts live
events for companies, where the best programmers are flown in to compete.
The competitions may lead to job offers. "I can make much more money at
this than I did as a regular software contractor," says Michael Paweska,
one of TopCoder's best programmers.
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Workforce Issues Complicate Planning for
Cyberattacks
GovExec.com (10/25/07) Nagesh, Gautham
The Homeland Security Department is struggling to recruit and retain
expert cybersecurity officials, which is impairing the department's ability
to carry out certain tasks. More specifically, the workforce dilemma has
slowed the department's development of a far-reaching cyberattack recovery
plan, according to Gregory Wilshusen, director of information technology at
the Government Accountability Office. In 2006, DHS outlined a strategy for
how corporations and the government could recuperate from an
Internet-disrupting cyberattack. DHS delegated response coordination to
the National Communications System, as well as protection of security
infrastructure and hardware. The National Cyber Security Division would be
in charge of securing the integrity of the data under attack and software
applications. However, to date, "there is no public-private plan for
recovery and there is no date by which such a plan must exist," says
Wilshusen. Multiple factors have hampered DHS from preparing a complete
strategy, including the agency's organizational and leadership disarray.
Wilshusen attributes DHS' struggle to retain the best talent to "the nature
of cybersecurity work," which typically involves long hours of fast-paced
and rigorous work. Other reasons for the plan's delay include
cyberattacks' constantly evolving nature as well as the Internet's
extensive interconnectivity.
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Meet Your Future Employee
Computerworld (10/23/07) Stackpole, Beth
Experts say members of Generation Y are entering the workforce with
relatively low prospects of IT careers for several reasons, including a
perception of the profession as cloistered, tedious, and obsessively
technical; dwindling job opportunities stemming from the IT outsourcing
boom; and a lack of business communication skills highly desired by
employers. Another turnoff is the long hours such jobs demand,
particularly for people striving for a healthy work/life balance. "To
another generation, IT was cool because no one else knew much about it,"
says Marquette University IT professor Kate Kaiser. "This generation is so
familiar with technology, they see it as an expected part of life" and do
not consider it a basis for a whole career. Kaiser is working with her
peers and members of the Society for Information Management to revise the
national IT curriculum to emphasize strong business, communication, and
project management skills, and also collaborates with other schools,
technology companies, and IT professionals to improve young people's view
of tech careers. A Challenger, Gray & Christmas poll of 100 human resource
professionals found that writing skills were deficient for over 50 percent
of entry-level workers while critical thinking was less than adequate for
27 percent. Some industry observers think Generation Y's preference to
interact virtually via digital technology such as instant messaging and
cellular telephony is obstructing their development of live communication
skills. Members of Generation Y also feel a sense of entitlement in terms
of employment, expecting to have access to cutting-edge technology and
flexible scheduling. Some observers say certain entitlements demanded by
Generation Y are unreasonable, and the best way to strike a balance between
what IT workers want and what employers want is to reach a compromise.
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Video Search Makes Phone a 'Second Pair of Eyes'
New Scientist (10/25/07) Knight, Will
Accenture Technology Labs researchers have developed the Pocket
Supercomputer, a system that enables ordinary 3G cell phones with video
cameras to search for information on objects captured by the camera. The
technology could be used, for example, to record a video of a book and
receive an online price comparison or a review. To use the system a user
sends live video footage from the cell phone to a central server, which
quickly matches on-screen objects to images previously entered into a
database. The server then sends any relevant information back to the user.
The server uses an algorithm called the Scale-Invariant Feature Transform
(SIFT) that processes hundreds or thousands of reference points that
correspond to physical features such as edges, corners, or lettering. SIFT
works with any object orientation, but objects must first be carefully
photographed and entered into the database. Microsoft has developed a
similar system, called Lincoln, that uses still photographs to match
objects, and Evolution Robotics has developed a video system called ViPR
that is currently available in Japan. SIFT algorithm developer David Lowe
says, "It will take some time for consumers to learn about such systems and
start to incorporate them in their daily life."
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Peacebots Picket Robotic Violence
Bryn Mawr College (10/25/07)
A group of robotic students from Bryn Mawr College programmed robots to
protest the "Robot Conflict," the robot fights that were taking place as
part of Robot Day, sponsored by the Northeast Robotics Club. The
protesting robots, which were programmed by four students in an
introductory computer science course, carried signs such as "Make Code Not
War," and "Extendable Arms Are for Hugging." The protest was done
partially in fun, but also to raise awareness for some important issues.
The robot fights were intended to get young attendees interest in robotics,
but Bryn Mawr associate professor of computer science Doug Blank, who
taught the class that programmed the protestor robots, says the fights do
little to attract young women to the field. "This kind of event appeals to
a specific demographic," Blank says. "I think that using this as a
community-outreach activity just tends to perpetuate the current situation
in science and technology fields." Rebecca Rebhuhn-Glanz, a first-year
student who programmed a robot for the protest, says the fights were
interesting, but probably not the best way to attract young people to the
field. "If I were designing a robot, that's not what it would be doing,"
she says. "We had one of our robots drawing, and I think we reached more
of the little kids with that." Blank says that violence also does not make
a very good pedagogical tool. "I think there are better ways to get kids
involved in engineering, and to get more kids involved in technology," he
says.
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Can a Robot Find a Rock?
Astrobiology (10/25/07)
It is a surprisingly difficult proposition for a robot to distinguish a
rock from soil, says Carnegie Mellon University Field Robotics Center
research professor David Wettergreen in an interview. "The simple answer
is that soil is made of busted up rocks, and in the difficult cases you
have a rock of the same composition as the soil it's sitting on," he notes,
adding that distinguishing between rocks and soil involves a combination of
numerous features--color, texture, 3D structure, and edges--at multiple
scales. Wettergreen details an upcoming experiment in which a robot will
attempt to perform basic geologic mapping through the use of planning
software, finding and measuring rocks and mapping boundaries between
different mineral distributions. The system will apply an
information-optimal strategy whereby it will study where it has the least
data about the geologic boundary and try to acquire more information.
Wettergreen feels that in the area of exploration, robots have a crucial
role to play as scouts. "For reasons of risk and cost and efficiency and
the value of human life, it makes sense to send robotic systems most places
first before you send people," he says. This is a particularly pressing
issue with the development of plans to revisit the moon and send a manned
mission to Mars.
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eScience: It's Really About People
HPC Wire (10/26/07) Vol. 16, No. 43,
People are the magic ingredient in the eScience initiative through the
ability of the infrastructure's creators to comprehend users' requirements
and work cultures, and e-Science Institute research theme leader Alex Voss
says these builders "need to talk about fostering, rather than building
infrastructure." He was on a panel that discussed breaking down the
barriers that currently impede scientists from becoming e-scientists as
part of the 2007 Microsoft eScience Workshop in North Carolina on Oct.
21-23. The panelists all concurred that scientific communities require
easy access to stored data and simple-to-use interfaces and applications in
order to utilize eScience grids. Director of the University of Chicago's
Computation Institute Ian Foster says that "probably the single thing we
can do that will make the biggest difference [is] go out and tell the story
about successes when applications work, and also tell them when
applications don't work, so they can avoid the pitfalls." The San Diego
Supercomputer Center's Phil Papadopoulus says the eScience community must
tackle the challenge of accessing data stored in different areas, including
behind firewalls, offline, and remotely. Infrastructure builders must also
create repeatable systems, he says. May Wang of the Emory-Georgia Tech
Nanotechnology Center for Personalized and Predictive Oncology attributes
the biomedical community's relatively slow adoption of eScience practices
to a lack of intuitiveness in eScience tools, and the non-inclusion of
general computer science in the educational curriculum of medical
scientists. "Teaching the basics of computer science, learning some of the
computer science languages and how to use computer tools to solve problems
would help to overcome some of the barriers," she says.
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New Technology Watches Granny's Step
ICT Results (10/24/07)
European Union researchers have developed Attentianet, a system that will
allow seniors to stay in their homes longer before moving to retirement
homes and assisted living centers. Attentianet uses a phone line to
communicate to a tele-assistance center and provides users with an alarm
trigger for emergencies. "It is quite a simple application that can be
enhanced with new technologies, like ADSL, which gives bigger bandwidth to
provide additional applications like videoconferencing and mobile
features," says Attentianet developer Jose Luis Jorge Marrase. The service
includes enhanced video assistance through broadband communications and
video telephony, and a mobile system with location tracking for when users
leave their homes. The easy-to-use mobile phone has only two buttons and
can trigger a call to the tele-assistance center, where an operator can
pinpoint the user's location. Some of the mobile systems can even detect
if the user has fallen down. The location tracking system uses AGPS, which
is faster than GPS, requires less battery power to run on a mobile device,
and is very precise. However, AGPS does not work in indoor environments,
and Attentianet researchers are exploring indoor systems to compensate.
Researchers also plan to add video chat services and content exchange
systems such as IPTV in the next few months.
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The Grill: Linus Torvalds in the Hot Seat
Computerworld (10/22/07) Vol. 41, No. 43, P. 20; Moon, Peter
When asked why he thinks a lot of companies have concerns about free
software, Linus Torvalds, Linux Foundation fellow and creator of Linux,
responded that he believes adoption is going at a fairly high rate, but
that switching operating systems it a big change and widespread adoption
could take a decade or two. "We've come a long way. Is there a long way
to go? Sure," he says. "There are technical issues, support
infrastructure, and just people's perceptions that just take a long time to
sort out." As for Microsoft's claims that free software and some email
programs violate some of Microsoft's patents, Torvalds says the claims are
Microsoft's attempts to spread fear, uncertainty, and doubt because
Microsoft cannot compete on technical merit or on price, so Microsoft
continues to feed off the inertia of the market by creating doubt about
open source software. Torvalds says that he does not have any
anti-Microsoft issues, but that he works on open source because he thinks
it is interesting and a better model for how to do things. Asked about the
Microsoft and Novell partnership and the interoperability of Windows and
SUSE Linux, Torvalds responded, "I don’t actually think the
Novell-Microsoft agreement matters all that much in the end, but I think it
would be healthier for everybody if there wasn't the kind of rabid hatred
on both sides. I'd rather just worry about the technology. The market
will take care of itself."
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Space Station: Internal NASA Reports Explain Origins of
June Computer Crisis
IEEE Spectrum (10/07) Oberg, James
On June 13, the International Space Station's functions were crippled by
the faulty design, construction, and operation of the station's critical
computer systems, according to an internal NASA technical report. It was
first assumed that the failure was a result of external interference, which
dictated a remedy in which a power-monitoring device was circumvented on
two of the three downed computers with jumper cables. This tactic appeared
to work, and analysis teams brainstormed to find the cause of the failure
and to determine whether the jumper cable solution was only a temporary
fix. The connection pins from the bypassed power-monitoring device were
discovered to be wet and corroded, which triggered a "power off" command
leading to all three of the allegedly redundant processing units that was
designed to shield the units from power glitches beyond the protective
capabilities of normal power filters. Water condensation was identified as
the source of the corrosion, and the NASA report presumes that the damage
was "the result of repeated emissions of condensate from the air separation
lines" of a malfunctioning dehumidifier. The Russian engineers' knee-jerk
impulse to blame their American partners when the failure occurred is also
disheartening. If such a failure occurred on a mission to Mars, the
results would probably be lethal to the crew, because they would be out of
range of support and resupply missions.
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Cerf on the Net
Government Technology (10/07) Towns, Steve; Jones, Jessica
Vint Cerf, outgoing chairman of ICANN and Google chief Internet
evangelist, discusses, among other things, the future shape the Internet
may take. Looking five or six years ahead, Cerf anticipates the increased
availability of applications on mobile devices, faster Net access speeds in
both the wired and wireless domains, higher numbers of Internet-enabled and
network-manageable devices, and the growing incorporation of sensor-type
systems into the Internet. Further out, he projects the emergence of a
networking platform for deep-space communication--an initiative he is
developing with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA. Cerf says the IPv4
address space will be depleted by about 2011, which will necessitate
preparations to move to IPv6 by that time. Another necessary development
will be enabling the domain name system to express identifiers using
scripts other than Roman characters, and the enhancement of the Domain Name
Security System (DNSSEC) with digital signature technology. On the issue
of Net neutrality, Cerf comments that from Google's perspective, "our
interest is keeping the network as open as possible. Once the consumer
gets access to the network, they should be free to go anywhere in the world
to get any application." Cerf says security has become a major factor in
the continued growth of the Internet because so many people have become
network-reliant, and governments should not abdicate their responsibility
in ensuring security. He says DNSSEC and IPsec can mitigate some of the
security threats, but governments must take an interest in protecting Web
users from fraud, harassment, and abuse through legislation.
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