SC07 Holds First Cluster Challenge
HPC Wire (11/22/07) Vol. 16, No. 46, Gorda, Brent
The SC Cluster Challenge at ACM's SC07 conference offered an exhibition
and competition where teams of undergraduate students could compete in a
demonstration of talent, technology, and accessibility of entry-level
supercomputing, specifically highlighting advancements in hardware
performance, ease of use clusters, and the power and availability of
simulations software. Six teams, composed entirely of students still
working on their undergraduate degrees, partnered with vendors to build
cluster systems capable of running HPC Challenge benchmarks and processing
data sets. During the event, the facilities experienced a power
interruption, which caused a hard crash for every team, forcing the
students to execute a recovery. All of the teams were up and running
within a few hours, with some choosing to run with automatic checkpoint
restart to protect against further interruptions. At the end of the
competition, the team from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada,
was declared the winner. While that team did not create the fastest
system, a combination of good preparation and a little luck during the
power outage gave the team the advantage. The competition demonstrated
that college and university students are capable of executing successful
simulation computing. The competition also served as a marker for
undergraduate programs, with several schools choosing to modify their
undergraduate curriculums to include more cluster and parallel computing
courses.
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Amazon Hopes Kindle Will Spark Interest in E-Books
San Francisco Chronicle (11/23/07) P. D1; Abate, Tom
Amazon.com has released Kindle, an electronic book reader the company
hopes will create a market for e-books much like how the iPod created a
market for paid music downloads. However, e-books have a troubled past and
experts question if the technology is truly ready. UC Berkeley computer
scientist and electronic publishing expert Erik Wilde says Kindle has some
advantages over similar e-readers, such as wireless download capabilities,
but that it also has severe limitations, such as not being able to clip and
email passages to friends, which would give it a huge advantage over real
books. "The more I see in terms of details, the more disappointed I am,"
Wilde says. Associated Press technology reporter Peter Svensson says
Kindle is underpowered, requiring a recharge after only a day, whereas a
competing Sony product can be used for several weeks on a single charge.
Kindle uses a new display technology that is more paper-like and readable
than backlit screens, but lacks color and creates somewhat blurry pictures.
Wilde says Kindle makes it hard to import and display PDF documents, which
business travelers could find useful. The Internet Archive's Brewster
Kahle says Kindle's only serious flaw is Amazon's effort to control what
users can download by blocking access to digitized and copyright-free
books.
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Can Computers Understand Us?
Manila Times (11/26/07) Suarez, Ike
The De La Salle University-Manila (DLSU) Advanced Research Institute for
Informatics, Computing and Networking recently held a symposium on
cutting-edge research in digital signal processing. At the symposium,
Georgia Institute of Technology professor of electrical and computer
engineering Chui Hui Lee said that initial progress has been made in
digital signal processing that uses information technology to enable the
intelligent reception, transmission, and processing of audio and video.
Lee predicts that advances will continue to be made in conjunction with
advances in other fields such as linguistics, neural psychology, and
bioinformatics. The Internet will also become more important as it will be
used to link computers and other devices for signal processing. DLSU
engineer Joel Ilao discussed some of the university's work on digital
signal processing and robotics, specifically an industrial robot capable of
processing sights and sounds for security and marketing purposes, and
another robot to monitor traffic and analyze vehicular movements, including
identifying the types and number of vehicles passing through a certain
area. University of the Philippines College of Engineering Dean Rowina
Cristina Guevarra discussed efforts to develop hardware and software that
could be used by call center agents to recognize the emotions of
callers.
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Making 'Second Life' More Like Real Life
Associated Press (11/21/07) Tabuchi, Hiroko
Researchers at Tokyo University recently demonstrated a position-tracking
system that would allow people to use their own bodies to navigate the
virtual reality world "Second Life." With the new technology, which makes
use of a mat printed with colorful codes and a regular Web camera to
calculate the user's position in three dimensions, people will be able to
turn left or crouch down to make their avatar turn left or crouch down.
"This technology lets you take the actions you'd use in real life and
transpose them to the virtual world," says lead researcher Michitaka
Hirose. Meanwhile, researchers at Keio University are considering enabling
people to control their avatars by simply thinking commands such as
forward, right, or left. Junichi Ushiba makes use of an interface that
attaches electrodes to the user's scalp to sense activity in the brain's
sensory-motor cortex, and then software to translate the brain activity
into signals that control the avatar. However, Ushiba's team is still
perfecting the timing of thinking to the delivery of commands to the online
characters. "I want to go left, so I think, 'left'--but then the avatar
turns too far to the left before I can get rid of the command in my head,"
says research student Takashi Ono.
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Internet Users Give Up Privacy in Exchange for
Trust
Economic & Social Research Council (11/26/07)
New research funded by the Economic and Social Research Council suggests
that Internet users are likely to provide more personal information online
if they consider the Web site to be trustworthy. "Even people who have
previously demonstrated a high level of caution regarding online privacy
will accept losses to their privacy if they trust the recipient of their
personal information," says Dr. Adam Joinson, head of the Privacy and
Self-Disclosure Online project. However, Internet users who have some
concerns about a Web site will become more guarded alter their behavior.
The way in which questions are worded and response options are designed,
such as giving Internet users the opportunity to choose "I prefer not to
say" or select their salary from a broad scale, often results in users
providing as little information about themselves as possible. "One of the
most interesting aspects of our findings is that even people who genuinely
have a high level of concern regarding privacy online may act in a way that
is contrary to their stated attitudes when they come across a particular
set of conditions," Joinson says. The level of trustworthiness may
ultimately determine the degree of helpful information that online services
obtain from people who visit their Web sites.
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Standards Suggested for Writing Secure Java
Network World (11/20/07) Greene, Tim
The Secure Programming Council has created a series of documents that
outline the skills coders need to write Web applications that are more
capable of withstanding attacks. The first of these documents was released
earlier this month and lists the skills that the council believes are
essential to writing Java and JavaEE code that is free of flaws that
hackers could exploit. SANS Institute director of researcher Alan Paller
says that some schools and groups offer secure coding courses, but the
curriculums are developed based on the instructors' knowledge and best
efforts, often contain security gaps, and do not adhere to industry
standards for what the course should include. Paller says the Secure
Programming Council documents are intended to address such shortcomings by
drawing from existing texts as well as input from secure-coding trainers
and businesses that work to train in-house programmers in secure training.
"It's a common body of what people need to know, benchmarks for employers
and teachers," Paller says. The Java paper, "Essential Skills for Secure
Programmers Using Java/ JavaEE," focuses on data dandling, authentication
and session management, access control, Java types and virtual machine
management, application faults and logging, encryption services, and secure
architecture and coding principles. Future papers will cover C, C++, .Net
languages, Perl, and PHP.
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If Man Is From Mars, Computers Are From Outer
Space
The Inquirer (UK) (11/21/07) Grossman, Wendy M.
Donald Norman's 1988 book, "The Design of Everyday Things," argued that
technology needs to adapt and be easier for humans to use. After working
as a "user experience architect" at Apple from 1993 to 1997, Norman has
reversed his position. In his new book, "The Design of Future Things,"
Norman argues that since humans are more adaptable than machines, and going
forward people will need to work with more complex cars, appliances, and
other technologies, then people are the ones who will have to change.
Norman particularly fights the idea that as computers become more advanced
they will naturally be easier to use, arguing instead that humans need to
be better able at using advanced computers. "I'm thinking that people are
from Earth and machines are from outer space," Norman says. Norman also
questions the proponents of singularity technology. "I don't go for the
singularity arguments," says Norman, "but I do worry about the hybrid,
where we're going to add more and more prostheses--electronic, then nano,
eventually biological--into ourselves, and so we'll be a different species
with perfect memory, better eyesight, better hearing, stronger." Norman
wonders what will happen when the latest human technologies are
incompatible with earlier versions.
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Student Facebook Use Predicted by Race, Ethnicity,
Education
Northwestern University (11/19/07) Leopold, Wendy
A new study from Northwestern University found that college students'
choice of social networking sites is often related to their race,
ethnicity, and parental education. The study found that white students
generally chose Facebook, Hispanic students prefer MySpace, and Asian and
Asian-American students are least likely to use MySpace. African American
students did not show a statistically significant preference toward a
particular social networking site. Asian and Asian-American students were
most likely to use Xanga, though a significant amount do use Facebook. The
education level of the students' parents also correlates with social
networking choices. Students with parents who finished college are
significantly more likely to use Facebook, while MySpace users are more
likely to have parents that have less than a high school education.
Students who live at home with their parents are less likely to use a
social networking site than students who live by themselves, with a
roommate, or at school. Additionally, women were found more likely to
engage in person-to-person online communication than men. The findings of
the study contradict the common belief that social networking sites are
being used to expand students social and cultural experiences and suggest
social networking sites actually create a two-tier social system. "In a
two-tier system, some college students cultivate lots of networks and
social capital while others benefit considerably less from this important
part of the college experience," says author of the study Eszter Hargittai.
The study appears in the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication.
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Researcher Lands Computer Security Grant From Air
Force
University of Texas at Dallas (11/18/07)
The U.S. Air Force has awarded a $350,000 grant that will enable
University of Texas at Dallas computer science professor Kevin Hamlin apply
his computer security technology to larger applications and more computer
architectures. Over the next three years, Hamlen will use the grant money
to transition older programming languages to today's safer languages.
"It's extremely difficult to write a program that does not have
vulnerabilities in it, mainly because these languages were designed in the
70s and early 80s when nobody was thinking about computer security," Hamlen
says. His technology is designed to automatically rewrite untrusted code
before execution, which preserves the functionality of the program and
effectively disables any malicious code. He has spent the last several
years working on the rewriting technology. The grant money comes from the
Air Force's Young Investigator Research Program, which targets talented
scientists and engineers who have received Ph.D.s within the last five
years.
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The Fruits of a Wireless World
ICT Results (11/21/07)
Prototype user-centered systems that would potentially allow millions to
fully exploit third-generation mobile technology have been developed by the
Wireless World Initiative. The goal of the EU-funded MobiLife project was
to tap innovations in mobile applications and services in support of
everyday activities by matching new applications and services with enabling
technologies and service components and frameworks. The main results of
the project have been documented in a "MobiLife Book" that delineates
fundamentals such as definition of service architecture/infrastructure with
compatible, user-centered components in mind; context awareness'
importance; privacy and trust; personalization; and associated support
services. The objective of the SPICE project was to produce prototype
systems that would glue together the various existing platforms so that
users would have a seamless and consistent experience, and its focus
included prototype middleware systems that help facilitate communication
and interoperation between different platforms, content management and
delivery systems to effect access to content across domains, and
intelligent service enablers for managing user profiles, content
information, and proactive service adaptation. Realizing the radio
ecophere's diversity to the greatest degree possible was the goal of the
E2R project, which developed end-to-end reconfigurable systems that users,
providers, operators, and regulators could select in the context of
heterogeneous systems. Such systems will let users affordably access their
chosen service whenever and wherever they prefer. The burgeoning
population of mobile subscribers calls for more powerful wireless networks
supported by more efficient utilization of available radio bandwidth, and
the WINNER project sought to develop more efficient prototype radio access
technologies, find mechanisms to facilitate different radio access networks
to interoperate, and create efficient and effective spectrum usage
techniques.
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Molecular 'Amplifier' Boosts DNA Computing
New Scientist (11/15/07) Ananthaswamy, Anil
A significant advancement in DNA computing was recently made with the
discovery of a method for amplifying weak chemical signals that can be
tailored to specific molecules. Conventional electronics use electrons to
carry information, but DNA-based circuits use high and low concentrations
of DNA fragments. Chemical amplification is essential if DNA computing is
ever going to have practical applications. A polymerase chain reaction
(PCR) can take a small amount of DNA and amplify it, but the process
requires enzymes. Erik Winfree, who developed the building blocks for DNA
circuits at the California Institute of Technology with David Zhang, has
demonstrated how to perform DNA amplification without enzymes, making the
process simpler and more usable as it can be applied to any DNA strand.
Through a process that binds and separates strands of DNA, the team was
able to amplify the DNA up to 900 times. The reaction is also programmable
so that exact sequences of various molecules can be chosen to fit the
design of a particular DNA-based digital circuit. The process is not as
effective as PCR, but it does establish some principles on how to design
such systems from scratch without using enzymes.
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Making Communications Technology More Social
Age (Australia) (11/20/07) Head, Beverley
University of Melbourne researchers are exploring how technology can be
used to support phatic communications, the chitchat that makes
communication personal and establishes human relationships. Melbourne
professor Dr. Martin Gibbs, who has been researching domestic
communications since 2004, says globalization and increased time pressures
places a strain on phatic communication, as even close friends and family
often resort to using technology designed for occasional and rapid bursts
of information exchange in business for causal and personal communication.
Gibbs believes that specially developed phatic technologies could help
people re-connect on a more personal level and lead to "socially beneficial
applications of technology," which could be used to help people quit
smoking or take better care of their health. Some social networking tools
support some elements of phatic communications, but Gibbs believes that
specially designed phatic communications technologies will become
increasingly important, and has designed several concept technologies to
demonstrate how phatic technology could evolve. One such technology is
Collage, a wall-mounted touch screen device that allows families in
different locations to interact with one another by sending pictures and
text messages using Collage devices in their homes. As more pictures and
messages are added to the screen, older ones get covered and pushed to the
background, like a digital fridge with art work. "The notion of phatic
technology is that it is designed for social support rather than
information exchange," Gibbs says. "It needs a different approach to
business technologies, which are all about efficiencies and
productivity."
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Your Next Poker Partner May Be Software
Sydney Morning Herald (Australia) (11/14/07) Moses, Asher
Software capable of defeating even the best human poker players could
create a serious problem for the multibillion dollar online poker industry
and players, who could someday be scammed by software-aided cheaters.
Although such software is still under development, computer programs are
already able to beat most humans at checkers, backgammon, scrabble, bridge,
and connect four. In July, two of the world's best poker players narrowly
defeated a computer program at Texas Hold 'Em during the first Man-Machine
Poker Championship. The program, called Polaris, was developed over the
course of 16 years by the computer poker research group at the University
of Alberta. Polaris contains several fixed strategies, but is also able to
adapt based on moves and mistakes made by the opponent. "We won, not by a
significant amount, and the bots are closing in," says Phil Laak, one of
the competing world champion players. Professor Jonathan Schaeffer,
founder of the poker research group, says that despite the rapid progress
it could be several years before computer programs seriously challenge the
top humans in no-limit games and games with three or more people at the
table. Schaeffer also says the university will do everything in its power
to prevent people from misusing the poker program in online gaming.
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Europe Researches Millimeter-Scale Swarming Robots
EE Times (11/19/07) Ben-Artzi, Amir
Researchers in Europe are working to develop millimeter-scale robots that
will be able to communicate with each other. The project, codenamed
I-SWARM, brings together experts in micro-robotics, distributed and
adaptive systems, as well as self-organizing biological swarm systems, and
is coordinated by Joerg Seyfried at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany.
The researchers will use the latest techniques to develop an artificial
ant, which could allow for the production of swarms of up to 1,000
microrobots. The robots would use solar power; have limited, pre-rational
on-board intelligence; and feature different types of sensors,
manipulators, and computational power.
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What Women Want
CIO (11/15/07) Vol. 21, No. 4, P. 28; Orlov, Laurie M.
Women's impulse to avoid IT careers might be better explained by focusing
less on what they hate about the field and more on what aspects of the
field are attractive to women, and CIOs acknowledge that the marketing
effort for IT is seriously lacking and suffers from obsolete, inaccurate
characterization, writes consultant Laurie M. Orlov. "This emphasis on
programming, robotics, computer science, and engineering won't get women
interested in working for your IT organization," she contends. "In fact,
it is exactly that tech focus that obscures the true nature of enterprise
IT jobs and the background and skills necessary to excel at them." What
the field requires is candidates from a wide spectrum of undergraduate and
graduate curricula who desire to learn how companies function, who are
capable of working with global project teams, and who can perceive business
processes rather than electronic connections, Orlov says. The expected
outsourcing of traditionally "geeky" IT jobs is creating a hunger for
business analysts, program managers, vendor managers, relationship
managers, information architects, and other professionals with exceptional
communications, negotiation, and management skills, and Orlov says the
secret to eliminating the stereotypical image of IT workers is to tap
"better information about what business technology really is, how women of
a variety of backgrounds can be and are successful, and finally ... the
explicit support and engagement of the 86 percent of top IT executives who
are men." Strategies Orlov advocates to attract more women to IT include
promoting a business technology concentration in the workplace, reaching
out to women in undergraduate business schools and liberal art colleges,
and marketing business technology careers to young women.
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Q&A: Intel's CTO Sees Computing's Future in Multicore
Machines
Computerworld (11/19/07) Vol. 41, No. 47, P. 38; Anthes, Gary
Intel senior fellow Justin R. Rattner believes, after being largely
ignored by the market, the time has come for parallel and distributed
processing. Rattner says microprocessor speeds will only be capable of
modest growth, as power conservation has become such an important issue.
The inability to improve microprocessor speed will give rise to multicore
and many-core processors, which will require a new generation of
programming tools. "Given the rudimentary state of parallel software, the
investment across the entire computing industry will be very large,"
Rattner says. "Retraining existing programmers and educating a new
generation of developers coming out of school is another formidable
challenge. It will take years, if not decades, to reach the point where
virtually all programmers assume the default programming model is parallel
rather than serial." Rattner predicts that in five years all new software
will be written for multicore processors, though a lot of existing software
such as work processors will not need to be rewritten. Rattner says
hundreds of universities worldwide are reintroducing parallel programming
in their curricula, and Intel and other companies are working on funding
programs to restart academic research in parallel programming and
architectures.
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Transistors Go Vertical
IEEE Spectrum (11/07) Vol. 44, No. 11, P. 14; Adee, Sarah
Current leakage is a growing problem as transistors shrink with each new
generation of microchip, and a transistor redesign is necessary to head off
this problem. Three-dimensional rather than planar transistors are gaining
credibility, as demonstrated by the proposals that chip manufacturers will
present at the International Electronic Device Meeting in December. The
FinFET is the most common multigate transistor design, and it requires the
channel that links the source and drain to be a thin, finlike wall that
protrudes out of the silicon substrate--but etching it out of the silicon
is a major challenge. University of California, Berkeley professor Tsu-Jae
King Liu, co-inventor of the FinFET, says DRAM manufacturers will be the
most likely early adopters of multigate technology. Leo Mathew of
Freescale Semiconductor, which will be among those unveiling multigate
devices at the December conference, says the manufacturer's new transistor
features a finlike channel that resembles an upside-down T.
STMicroelectronics has its own concept, a dual-gate planar transistor in
which the gates vertically sandwich the channel connecting the source and
drain. Key to this breakthrough is finding a way to precisely align the
gates. "It has the same electrical advantages as FinFET, but with probably
the highest performance ever published," claims STMicroelectronics' Thomas
Skotnicki.
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