Intel to Unveil Chips for Improving Video Quality on the
Web
New York Times (11/12/07) P. C11; Markoff, John
Intel recently announced plans to launch a new family of microprocessors
the company says will speed up and improve online, high-definition video on
the Internet. Intel's Sean Maloney says the new chips' increased computing
power would begin to transform the blurry, small clips online into
high-resolution, full-screen programs that rival HDTV. The new series of
processors, developed under the code name Penryn, will first be used in
servers and high-end desktops that compress video. The chips will be the
first manufactured using a new process that Intel says increases computing
performance while reducing power consumption. The chips use a
re-engineered transistor that is about half the size of its predecessor,
allowing it to switch more quickly while requiring less power to switch,
and preventing power loss. The new chips measure just 45 nanometers, and
Intel says it will be able to put up to 820 million transistors on a single
silicon die. The first products based on the new chips, marketed as the
Intel Core 2 Extreme and Intel Core 2 Duo, will be available in the first
quarter of 2008. For better video compression, Intel has added a set of 46
instructions, called SSE4, to the microprocessors. Steve Fischer, the lead
designer of the new chips, says the instructions will create a new
generation of servers that enhance the compression of digital video. "This
is a step in the right direction," says analyst Richard Doherty, "and it's
probably the best use for this 45-nanometer technology over the next couple
of years."
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Newcomers Hit Top 10 in Supercomputer List
Nature (11/13/07) Stafford, Ned
The top spot on the TOP500 supercomputer list once again belongs to a
computer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), but five of the
top 10 spots on list were awarded to new machines. The LLNL supercomputer,
which uses an improved version of IBM's Blue Gene/L system, computes at
478.2 teraflops per second, nearly three times faster than the second-place
finisher. The supercomputer at the Julich Research Centre in Germany,
which computes at 167.3 teraflops, was second on the list. The list
highlights the increased use of supercomputing power by industry. About 57
percent of the TOP500 supercomputers are owned by businesses, and that
percentage is expected to continue to increase, according to Jack Dongarra
of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who is one of the four experts
who compile the biannual list. "The trend is more and more into business
and this trend will certainly continue," Dongarra says. Dongarra expected
a supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computer Center (TACC) at the
University of Texas at Austin to take the top spot on the list, but it was
not operational. He now expects the TACC supercomputer to be on the next
list, due in June. Looking further ahead, Dongarra believes that an IBM
supercomputer under development at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New
Mexico will break the petaflop barrier, probably in 2009.
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Robotic Aids for the Disabled and Elderly
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (11/14/07) Rotstein, Gary
People with limited mobility brought on by age or infirmity could be
helped significantly by robotic systems under development by Pitt and
Carnegie Mellon University, which received a five-year, $15 million grant
from the National Science Foundation to establish the Quality of Life
Technology Center. Technologies being developed include systems that
monitor people's ability to carry out basic functions in their homes,
identify decline, and then call attention to the problem so that assistance
can be arranged; robotic devices that can assist with getting out of bed,
preparing meals, and other tasks that become impaired as people's abilities
deteriorate; "virtual coach" technology that helps people with waning
mental skills perform daily tasks via a mobile device such as a watch or
cell phone; and in-car programs that maintain mobility by observing
people's driving ability, spotting potentially dangerous habits, and
providing guidance on how to correct those habits. Such breakthroughs
could extend the independence and productivity of disabled people and
prolong their time out of nursing homes, which would amount to tremendous
savings. Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute professor Martial Hebert says
creating a computerized system that records behavioral observations alone
is a major challenge, and the Quality of Life Technology Center's goal is
to employ such systems to anticipate future actions. To get feedback from
clients on problems and other issues their devices face, the center has
teamed up with long-term care providers and disability service agencies.
The center also has business advisers because the cost of the potential
products to consumers is substantial, while social scientists are enlisted
to evaluate the willingness of people to interact with robotic devices and
take instructions from them. The center will detail its progress on its
assorted projects to the NSF in March.
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Up Next: Cameras That Know Who You Photographed
CNet (11/14/07) Shankland, Stephen
Cameras outfitted with face recognition technology could streamline the
organization and retrieval of photos via autotagging, and Fotonation is
attempting to tackle the computational challenges to realize such an
advancement. Fotonation executive Eric Zarakov noted in an interview at
the 6sight digital imaging conference that the challenge is simplified by
the tendency among most people to photograph the same 25 or 30 persons, and
that a camera could be taught to only recognize those specific persons.
Riya is developing technology to search through online photo albums to
recognize individuals, while Polar Rose is generating 3D facial models in
an attempt to enhance recognition. Cameras could be configured to
recognize locations through geotagging, which can be employed to seek
photos whose location is known to the user and to determine what precisely
is in a picture the user already has at hand. SiRF Technology founder
Kanwar Chadha forecasts that in-camera GPS systems that facilitate
automatic geotagging will eventually emerge. Marian Stewart Bartlett of
the University of California-San Diego's Machine Perception Lab
demonstrated her work on expression detection at the 6sight event. A
camera cannot currently support expression detection, which requires a
sophisticated computer run by people with advanced degrees. But such a
milestone may not be too far off, in view of the fact that Sony has rolled
out a camera that can detect smiles.
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The Ever-Changing Supercomputing Conference
HPC Wire (11/12/07) Vol. 14, No. 1,
Oak Ridge National Laboratory director of information technology services
Becky Verastegui says that being chair of the Supercomputing Conference was
one of the most challenging opportunities of her entire career.
Verastegui, who has been involved with the conference for the past eight
years, says more people are using supercomputers than ever before and
things that were not thought possible even five years ago are currently
being studied using supercomputer simulations. Among the new features at
the SC07 conference is the Cluster Challenge, which was developed around
the fact that computational power that is so easily accessible today
significantly outperforms what was considered the best systems at national
labs only 10 years ago. "In fact, a small cluster today--less than a half
rack--would have topped the Top500.org Web site at that time," Verastegui
says. "The Cluster Challenge will showcase the significance of this and
highlight how accessible clusters are to anyone today." Several other new
features at the conference include a Doctoral Research Showcase that will
allow Ph.D. students graduating within the next 12 months to present a
short summary of their research, and a Masterworks session that will
include presentations on novel and innovative ways of applying advanced
computing, communications, and storage technologies to achieve the
breakthroughs needed to guarantee a competitive advantage.
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Study Compares States' Math and Science Scores With Other
Countries'
New York Times (11/14/07) P. A17; Dillon, Sam
American students, even in low-performing states such as Mississippi and
Alabama, perform better on math and science tests than students in most
foreign countries, including Italy and Norway, concludes a new American
Institutes of Research study. However, American students in even the best
performing states such as Massachusetts are significantly outperformed by
students in Asian countries such as Singapore and South Korea. "In this
case, the bad news trumps the good because our Asian economic competitors
are winning the race to prepare students in math and science," says the
study's author and chief scientist Gary W. Phillips. The study compared
standardized test scores of eight-grade students in all 50 states with
those of their peers in 45 countries. Gage Kingsbury, a director at the
Northwest Evaluation Group, which administered testing in 1,500 school
districts, praised the study's methodology, but says it is difficult to
compare scores internationally because in many countries children do not
start school at the same age and often not every child attends the eight
grade. Kingsbury says such differences mean it would be a mistake to infer
too much about the relative success of the education system across the
states and nations examined in the study. Education Sector co-director
Thomas Toch says the real value of the study is that it provides a
high-level perspective of the nation's education system. "It shows we're
not doing as badly as some say," says Toch.
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SC07 Day 3: Programming Bits and Atoms
ZDNet (11/13/07) Burnette, Ed
Neil Gershenfeld, director of MIT's Center for Bits and Atoms, encouraged
listeners to reconsider true statements such as two states make up binary
information, during his keynote address Tuesday morning at SC07.
Gershenfeld, an expert in digital fabrication, sees personal fabrication as
the killer app of the field. From his perspective, it may no longer be
about sending computation or energy around the globe, but rather the means
for creating it. People prefer to measure and modify the world, and the
shrinking scale of biological systems has the world on the cusp of a
fabrication revolution, Gershenfeld says, adding that a computer is a tool
and a program is a thing. During the Q&A, an audience member noted that,
"If programs are things then bugs are consequential." Still, we should not
be afraid of digital competition, Gershenfeld said. "Biological systems
have been competing successfully for millions of years," he noted. The
forward engineering of biology is already working for us, said
Gershenfeld.
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Smart Phone Suggests Things to Do
Technology Review (11/13/07) Greene, Kate
Researchers at Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) have developed Magitti,
software that allows mobile phones to suggest entertainment and dining
options based on the user's previous choices and text messages. Magitti
initially suggests some general activities, events, and dining options
based on the time of day and the user's location, but as Magitti learns
more about the user's behaviors and preferences it alters its
recommendations. For example, if a user prefers eating lunch at an
inexpensive place, but frequently goes to expensive restaurants for dinner,
Magitti picks up on this trend by comparing the GPS location of the
restaurant with a database of establishments and will make appropriate
recommendations. Magitti also examines the phone owner's text messages to
make recommendations, as text messages often include information on future
plans. Magitti does raise some questions over privacy and security, which
is why the system erases text messages after a certain amount of time, but
PARC senior researcher Victoria Bellotti says that people will accept a
trade-off between privacy and convenience once they see the benefits of the
system, much like how consumers are willing to use credit cards even though
it creates an electronic record of their movements and purchases. Magitti
also needs to be better at distinguishing certain activities, because
eating at a restaurant, grabbing a quick bite at a deli, and eating at home
are all very different things but are currently categorized as eating in
the system.
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More Security Education Needed to Avoid a Cybersecurity
Disaster, Experts Warn
SearchSecurity.com (11/07/07) Westervelt, Robert
A panel of prominent security experts at the Information Security
Decisions conference recently warned that although the United States is
currently more prepared than ever for a major cybersecurity attack, more
needs to be done to increase awareness about cybersecurity issues and
better educate future IT professionals. "We need to provide resources for
future problems," said Eugene Spafford, executive director of Purdue
University's Center for Education and Research in Information Assurance and
Security. "Patching the latest problem isn't getting us anywhere." The
panelists agreed that it would probably take a major cybersecurity event
for the public to become truly motivated enough to demand better security.
The panelists also agreed that backdoor Trojan horse programs and herds of
bots would continue to be a problem, but it is unknown if they will be used
for isolated incidents for personal gain or to take down national
electronic infrastructure. Businesses continue to focus on data protection
and external attacks, a necessity as financial gain has become the primary
motivation behind the majority of attacks according to the panel, but more
needs to be done to protect against internal threats as they become a
bigger problem. Spafford says there is a greater temptation for insiders
and enterprises no longer have a typical perimeter, necessitating more
defenses closer to valuable data. The panel praised vendors' efforts to
better educate developers on safe coding practices and to spread best
practices in the security development lifecycle. The panel did not call
for federal regulations requiring vendors to develop more secure products,
arguing that there is not enough public outcry for the government to enact
such legislation, but did say that market forces are pushing vendors to
enact more standards and to better educate their workforce on security
issues.
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Finger-Friendly 'Tactile Interface' Could Aid Blind
Computer Users
Johns Hopkins University News Releases (11/12/07) Sneiderman, Phil
A team of researchers from multiple universities is using a $330,000 grant
from the National Science Foundation to develop a dynamic electronic
surface that would allow blind or visually impaired people to "feel"
mathematical graphs, diagrams, and other visuals displayed on computer
screens. The prototype will be able to simulate relatively simple graphs,
while future versions could eventually allow blind people to feel more
complex images such as pictures and maps. The project is led by City
College of New York assistant professor of chemical engineering Ilona
Kretzschmar, while Johns Hopkins University research professor James E.
West was chosen to be on the team for his extensive knowledge on how to
move electrical charges through plastic or polymer materials. The
interface's design features an electro-active polymer film that can
slightly rise and possibly even wiggle when exposed to electrical signals.
The device may also use sound feedback to help users move their fingers
over the graph or diagram. "Eventually, if we can show this is feasible, I
think this device will open up the world for people who are blind or
visually impaired," West says. "The interface could help them sense
contours and changes in shape and texture and use their fingers to perceive
some of the computer images that people with normal vision take for
granted."
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Human Error Puts Online Banking Security at Risk
Queensland University of Technology (11/07/07)
Improved security for online banking is unlikely to eliminate hacker
attacks if customers do not do their part to protect their accounts,
according to a new study from researchers at Queensland University of
Technology. In its study on SMS systems, Mohammed AlZomai, from QUT's
Information Security Institute, says usability and human error were more of
a problem than technical security issues. Sending a one-time password via
SMS to the mobile phone of a customer for each transaction has become a
typical method for authentication, says AlZomai. However, customers often
do not notice a discrepancy between the account number in the SMS message
and the intended account number. When QUT changed five or more digits in
the account number, the attack was successful 21 percent of the time, and
when it altered only one digit the attack had a 61 percent success rate.
"This is a strong indication that the SMS transaction authorization method
is vulnerable," AlZomai said. "According to our study only 79 percent of
users would be able to avoid realistic attacks, which represents an
inadequate level of security for online banking."
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On Your Mark, Get Set, Develop: Google Offers $10M for
Android Apps
TechNewsWorld (11/13/07) Noyes, Katherine
The Open Handset Alliance (OHA) has made the Android software development
kit available for the new Android platform, and Google has announced it
will sponsor a $10 million developer's challenge. "We believe that the
Android platform offers developers a unique opportunity to create truly
innovative mobile software," says Google's Andy Rubin. "We're challenging
developers to stretch their imaginations and skills to leverage the full
capabilities of this new platform and to create something amazing." Cash
prizes ranging from $25,000 to $275,000 will be awarded to developers whose
applications are picked by a panel of judges. Android is a mobile platform
built on the Linux 2.6 kernel that offers an operating system, libraries, a
multimedia user interface, and phone applications. Android's application
model allows developers to extend, replace, and reuse existing software
components to create integrated mobile services. The challenge is divided
into two periods, with Challenge I accepting programs through March 3,
2008, and Challenge II launching after the first handsets built on the
platform become available in the second half of 2008. Judging will be done
by a panel of technology and mobile experts chosen from OHA member
organizations and the industry as a whole. Awards will be given to
developers whose applications utilize all that the Android platform offers
in order to provide customers with compelling experiences, Google says.
Developers will retain all intellectual property and all other rights to
their applications.
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Google Scientist to Demo Quantum Computer
ZDNet UK (11/09/07) Judge, Peter
D-Wave Systems will bring in Google scientist Hartmut Neven to demonstrate
what D-Wave says is the first practical quantum computer at this week's
SC07 conference. Neven, an image recognition specialist, will show an
image-recognition algorithm running on the device, which is supposedly the
first commercially viable quantum computer, though many have their doubts
as to the validity of that claim. D-Wave's system uses "adaibatic quantum
computing," in which a device is designed to solve a problem and find an
answer using a process called "annealing." D-Wave chief technology officer
Geordie Rose says decoherence time is not a problem because the system can
operate with thermal noise. In February, D-Wave demonstrated a 16-qubit
computer called Orion, but scientists are skeptical that D-Wave
demonstrated true quantum computing, particularly as no results have been
published in peer-reviewed journals. "Over the last year, rather than
answering scientists' questions about what, if anything, they've actually
done that's novel, they seem to have descended ever further into the lowest
kind of hucksterism," says MIT assistant professor of electrical
engineering and computer science Scott Aaronson. Aaronson says Orion is
probably a classical computer with 16 very noisy superconducting quantum
bits, which let information into the system and act like classical bits.
Rose says D-Wave has not had its system externally validated because the
only meaningful measure of validation for technology is how it performs
against systems currently in use.
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New Technology Can Be Operated by Thought
Science Daily (11/09/07)
Physically disabled people can compose and send emails and operate a
television by thought thanks to advances in brain-machine interface (BMI)
technology, and further breakthroughs may even make the mental operation of
prosthetic limbs a reality in time. "By permitting the subject to
adaptively recode the generated neural activity, the overall performance of
the [BMI] device is dramatically increased," says the University of
Pittsburgh's Andrew Schwartz. "Furthermore, as we have progressed in this
work, it has become apparent that the basic idea of 'intention' during
learning is very important and can be addressed by the direct observation
of the neuronal transformations taking place during this fundamental
processing." Thought-controlled operation of PCs by severely handicapped
patients has been facilitated by a brain computer interface (BCI) developed
by the Wadsworth Center in Albany, N.Y., and Wadsworth Center researcher
Eric Sellers says the system can conceivably function with little technical
oversight and offer significant improvements to communication and quality
of life. Meanwhile, Washington University School of Medicine researchers
have developed a BCI that allows individuals to mentally control a cursor
on a computer screen, a wheelchair, and a robotic arm, and a current focus
is the use of the BCI to improve the rehabilitation of stroke and brain
injury patients using data demonstrating that one hemisphere of the brain
can compensate for functions impaired by damage to the other hemisphere.
The project involves repurposing the interface to respond to signals from
only one hemisphere. University of Chicago graduate student Dennis Tkach
and fellow researchers are concentrating on the modification of BMI systems
for use by paralysis victims through the harnessing of congruent neural
activity.
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Graphics Chips Rev Up Research
BBC News (11/09/07) Ward, Mark
Scientific researchers are starting to realize that graphics cards are a
cheap source of supercomputer-level processing power. "They give a
phenomenal bang for the buck," says University of Oxford professor of
scientific computing Mike Giles. Giles says the way graphics cards are
built makes them very good at the repetitive computational tasks often used
by scientists to test theories, models, and predictions. University of
Wisconsin-Madison professor of electrical and computer engineering Susan
Hagness is using microwaves to scan tissue for cancers, then processing the
information through a mini computational cluster made out of several
graphics cards. The system allows the results of a screening mammography
to be returned in a few hours rather than days. Giles, who uses graphics
processors for financial modeling, says the chips excel at doing the same
thing many different times, as opposed to traditional chips that are better
at doing numerous different things at the same time. He says graphics
cards have more processing cores than traditional chips and each of the
cores could run one of the repetitive simple tasks. The financial models
Giles runs tests the same algorithm on each core, but each core gets
different random numbers as input. Additionally, each individual core on a
graphics card is just as good at handling simple tasks as traditional
processors. "Each core is logically very simple but its floating point
capability is the same as an Intel chip," Giles says. Graphics card
manufacturers are also making it easier for scientists to use their
products, with graphics card maker Nvidia recently releasing software to
help researchers write code for their cards.
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Researcher Models Effects of a Suicide Bombing: Results
of Crowd Configurations
Florida Institute of Technology (10/30/07)
A crowd formation in which people stand or sit in vertical rows is the
safest way to minimize injuries and fatalities if a pedestrian suicide
bomber were to strike, according to Zeeshan-ul-hassan Usmani, a computer
science doctoral student and Fulbright Scholar at the Florida Institute of
Technology. Usmani used virtual simulation to come up with his findings,
which are preliminary. People in a crowd in the form of a circle are at
the greatest risk, considering Usmani discovered the formation has a 51
percent death rate and a 42 percent injury rate, with an effectiveness of
93 percent. Usmani plans to model physical objects such as landscape and
furniture and such social variables as crowd behaviors and add these
variables to the simulation. Emergency response and counter-terrorism
activities stand to benefit from his research, which he plans to present at
the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation, & Education Conference in
Orlando, Fla., on Nov. 27.
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The State of the Art in Machine Conversation: HAL's Still
Pure Hollywood
Ars Technica (11/08/07) Timmer, John
Yorick Wilks, a professor of computer science who directs the Institute
for Language, Speech, and Hearing at the University of Sheffield, has
written a perspective in the Nov. 8 issue of Science that addresses the
latest developments in human-computer conversation. More experts are
taking a cue from PARRY, in making statistical analysis of large samples of
spoken and written conversations a priority. Google has taken this
approach with its new translation service. Though statistical models
enabling computers to perform statistical analysis of language in use,
ultimately allowing machines to "teach" themselves language, continues to
improve, progress is also being made on speech recognition and the
recognition of personal and general history. In humans, the latter
capability enables them to pick up a contradiction from an earlier
statement, which may be the result of a change in opinion or even a joke.
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's CALO project is an early
attempt to move in this direction. Nonetheless, the general conversation
abilities of HAL will take some time.
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China Special: Quantum Revolution
New Scientist (11/07/07)No. 2629, P. 68; Huang, Gregory T.
Building a quantum computer by combining quantum memory with the new
cluster states architecture is the goal of Jian-Wei Pan of the University
of Science and Technology of China. He believes this technique could be
scaled up to execute useful calculations with greater ease and reliability
than any other scheme developed thus far. Pan is convinced that the
harnessing of photons for quantum communication is the best approach, and
cluster states are designed to solve the problem of maintaining the
stability of quantum entanglement between quantum bits (qubits). In a
cluster states scheme, each step of a calculation has its own set of
qubits, eliminating the need to manipulate and thus risk disrupting the
entanglements during the calculations. The problem is that many more
qubits must be entangled before the calculation begins, and these
entanglements must be saved for longer than is necessary with other
methodologies. Pan's team is focused on addressing these challenges, and
in May they disclosed the development of the first four-qubit cluster state
using just two photons. Quantum memory serves to keep track of many
photons' states to make the approach scalable, and Pan and colleagues are
aiming to use this kind of storage to establish entanglements of 100 or
more qubits so that practical quantum computing can be initiated.
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