American Military Supercomputer Sets Speed Record
New York Times (06/09/08) P. C7; Markoff, John
An American military supercomputer created from components originally
designed for video-game machines has passed the petaflop threshold by
processing more than 1.026 quadrillion calculations per second. "This is
equivalent to the four-minute mile of supercomputing," says University of
Tennessee computer scientist Jack Dongarra. The Roadrunner is more than
twice as fast as the previous fastest computer, the IBM BlueGene/L based at
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. Roadrunner cost $133
million to build and will be used primarily to solve classified military
problems to ensure the nation's stockpile of nuclear weapons will continue
to work correctly as they age. The simulations will examine the first
fraction of a second during a weapons detonation. Before the supercomputer
is placed in a classified environment it will be used to explore scientific
problems such as climate change. The Roadrunner is based on a radical
design that uses 12,960 modified IBM Cell microprocessors, a chip
originally created for Sony's PlayStation 3 video-game console. Roadrunner
consumes roughly 3 megawatts of power and requires three different
programming tools because it uses three types of processors. Programmers
need to be able to keep all of the 116,640 processor cores in the machine
simultaneously occupied so the computer runs efficiently. "Roadrunner
tells us about what will happen in the next decade," says Lawrence Berkeley
National Laboratory director Horst Simon. "Technology is coming from the
consumer electronics market and the innovation is happening first in terms
of cell phones and embedded electronics."
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MSU Research: The More 'Wired' the Hospital, the Happier
the Patients
Michigan State University Newsroom (06/05/08)
Patients at wired hospitals tend to be happier with their health care
experience than other patients, reports Michigan State University professor
Pamela Whitten. In an analysis of patient-satisfaction surveys from 1,382
hospitals across the country, Whitten found that most patients expressed
higher overall satisfaction with 42 medical centers. The 42 medical
facilities were listed on the 2005 "most wired" list from Hospital and
Health Networks. "Patients from the most-wired hospitals reported higher
satisfaction related to the admission process, their experiences with
physicians, and personal issues such as sensitivity and pain," Whitten
says. With information technology, hospitals will be able to improve care
and evaluate their performance, Whitten says. "It's all about using
technology in ways that enable health care providers to use information to
better manage patient care throughout the hospital experience," she says.
The research appears in the April 2008 edition of Communications of the
ACM.
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Prototype of Machine That Copies Itself Goes on
Show
University of Bath (06/04/08)
An open-source prototype machine has successfully reproduced a set of its
own printed parts. The machine, called RepRap, short for replicating
rapid-prototyper, uses a technique called additive fabrication to produce
3D objects. The technique uses thin layers of molten plastic that solidify
to make objects. The RepRap project was created and is directed by the
University of Bath's Adrian Bowyer. "The possibilities are endless. Now,
people can make exactly what they want," Bowyer says. "If the design of an
existing object does not quite suit their needs, they can easily redesign
it on their PC and print that out, instead of making do with a
mass-produced second-best design from the shops. They can also print out
extra RepRap printers to give to their friends. Then those friends can
make what they want too." Both the original RepRap machine and a RepRap
machine printed by the original one will be on display at the Cheltenham
Science Festival. Complete plans for the prototype RepRap printer, and
detailed tutorials to assist motivated amateurs and professionals in the
assembly, are available for free at the RepRap Web site.
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Information at Thieves' Fingertips
Times Union (06/05/08) Rulison, Larry
The New York State Cyber Security Conference recently hosted cyber
security experts who demonstrated some of today's biggest cyber security
threats. University at Albany professor Sanjay Goel and a team of
researchers demonstrated how easy it is to steal personal information off
of "swipeless" credit cards by using small sensors, a laptop, and special
software. "The lesson is that as we advance technology, we're creating new
vulnerabilities we're not aware of," Goel says. One of the cards the team
demonstrated on was the American Express Blue card, which features a RFID
chip to enable quick swipeless payment. American Express spokeswoman Molly
Faust says the security measures used in the card and the company's payment
system would make any information downloaded from the card useless. Other
speakers at the convention discussed threats facing consumers, businesses,
and government agencies in the age of wireless Internet and advanced
computing technology. Keynote speaker Patrick Gray, a senior security
strategist for Cisco Systems and a 20-year veteran of the FBI, says
terrorists and nation states are constantly trying to attack the United
States and government agencies through cyberspace. New York's cyber
security office director William Pelgrin says the threats range from
international terrorists to teens trying to pull pranks, though such
"pranks" could cause significant damage. "The amount of malicious activity
out there is just getting louder and louder," Pelgrin says.
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Adapting Websites to Users
Technology Review (06/09/08) Naone, Erica
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of
Management are working to enable Web sites to automatically adapt to each
visitor so the sites present information in a way that each user wants to
see it. Although some Web sites already offer personalized features, they
primarily use information taken from a user's profile, stored cookies, or
lengthy questionnaires. The Sloan system adapts to unknown users within
the first few clicks on a Web site by analyzing each user's choices. Sloan
professor John Hauser says a Web site running the system would detect a
user's cognitive style, watching for traits such as whether or not they are
detail oriented, and would adjust accordingly. Every time the system
learned something new about the user the Web site would make a subtle
change until the Web site suddenly feels more natural, comfortable, and
easy to navigate. Hauser says users should not even realize the Web site
is being personalized. A prototype developed for British Telecom's Web
site is designed so that the first few clicks visitors make are likely to
reveal aspects of their cognitive style. For example, the first page users
see asks them to choose to compare plans using a chart or to interact with
a broadband advisor. Within about 10 clicks, the system understands the
user's cognitive style and morphs the Web site. In addition to guessing
each user's cognitive style, the system can track which versions of the Web
site are most effective for each cognitive style.
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Secret Messages Could Be Hidden in Net Phone Calls
New Scientist (06/02/08) Marks, Paul
Polish information scientists are developing a system for hiding messages
in Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) phone calls. Wojciech Mazurczyk of
the Institute of Telecommunications in Warsaw says it is possible to
replace some of the voice data packets that someone is sending with a
hidden message because VoIP uses the data transmission routine User
Datagram Protocol (UDP). With UDP, packets are not guaranteed to arrive in
the same order they were sent, and a voice message can survive if some go
missing, which means there is an opportunity to embed a message. "We
intentionally hold on to secret message packets for some time before
sending them," Mazurczyk says of the "steganographic" system for VoIP
networks. "This means when they are received they will not be treated as
voice packets but as lost ones." Mazurczyk is working with Krzysztof
Szczypiorski, and they hope to limit the number of packets needed to
maintain audio quality, as degradation would suggest someone may be
eavesdropping to pick up a message hidden in a call.
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Little Sensors Are Heavyweights in Rainforest Information
Gathering
University of Alberta (06/02/08) Poon, Ileiren
University of Alberta scientists are creating wireless sensor networks for
use in remote locations. One of the first projects, called ECOnet, will
place small sensors in rainforests in Brazil and Panama this fall. The
sensors will form a network that will create a 3D image of what is
happening in the atmosphere, says Alberta professor Arturo
Sanchez-Azofeifa. He says the sensor network is like taking a MRI of the
forest. To test the system, six sensors have been placed in the
university's Atrium Oasis, a tropical display greenhouse. Data collected
during ECOnet is available online for anyone to examine, allowing
scientists to collect information daily from remote locations without
having to travel. "You can take a snapshot of the environment you're
monitoring, or you can get more, long-term data, which will allow
scientists to determine if there are certain patterns that emerge or if
there are any anomalies occurring," Sanchez-Azofeifa says. The sensors are
still evolving, and Sanchez-Azofeifa expects them to become smaller and
less expensive to the point where it may be possible to fly over a location
and drop thousands of the sensors into the canopy. The sensors are
currently powered by small lithium batteries and have a life of about three
years, though that may change as well. Sanchez-Azofeifa says the school's
computer engineers are working on using the motion of the forest to power
the sensors.
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To Fight Cyberwars, Air Force Recruits Part-Time
Geeks
Christian Science Monitor (06/05/08) P. 3; Lasker, John
The year-old Air Force Cyber Command (AFCYBER) is striving to recruit
enough cyberwarriors to establish the United States' cyber supremacy. The
Air Force is recruiting in new places and is relying heavily on the Air
National Guard to find enough computer experts. For example, the 262nd
Information Warfare Aggressor Squadron, an Air National Guard unit in
Washington state, has recruited guardsmen that work at Microsoft, Adobe,
and Cisco Systems. Meanwhile, the 177th Information Aggressor Squadron in
Kansas draws from Sprint and Boeing. Air Force secretary Michael Wynne
says the military must capitalize on the talent and expertise of the Guard
and Reserve members who may have direct ties and significant experience in
the high-tech industry. In addition to recruiting experienced high-tech
workers, the Air Force may make exceptions to their recruitment standards
and accept ex-hackers who may have committed computer-related crimes or
have a felony conviction for unlawfully cracking a network. The Air
Force's focus on cyberwarfare is raising questions abroad over what will
happen if the United States deploys offensive operations against foreign
Web sites and systems. The Air Force has already hinted that it may use
offensive tactics. "The pervasive nature of pro-jihad Web sites represents
a tangible and highly visible example of how our adversaries use elements
of cyberspace against us," Wynne says. "We cannot allow our adversaries to
operate freely there." There are also questions surrounding the military's
recruitment of IT professionals. Some worry that cyberwarriors from Cisco
or Microsoft could use their inside knowledge of a company's product to
help disable a foreign country or that back doors will be written into
popular programs.
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Robotics Handbook Explores Past, Present and
Future
IT News Australia (06/02/08) Tay, Liz
University of Naples, Italy, professor Bruno Siciliano and Stanford
University professor Oussama Khatib have published a "Handbook of
Robotics," a book designed to make the increasingly complex field of
robotics more accessible to engineers, doctors, computer scientists, and
designers. Siciliano says the project was inspired by the rapid growth of
robotics, because the increasing amount of publications in journals,
conference proceedings, and monographs is making it difficult for those
involved in robotics to keep track of the field's developments. The
multidisciplinary nature of robotics makes staying current on developments
even more difficult, Siciliano says. He says a common denominator in all
fields of robotics is the need to operate in a scarcely structured
environment, which requires increased abilities and a higher degree of
autonomy. Robotics is quickly becoming one of the leading fields in
science and technology, and very soon humanity is going to coexist with a
new class of technology artifacts, which will usher in a new wave of
ethical, social and economic problems, Siciliano says, requiring the
creation of Roboethics. Siciliano says Roboethics is an applied ethics
with the objective of developing scientific, cultural, and technical tools
that can be shared by different social groups. These tools aim to promote
and encourage the development of robotics for the advancement of society
and individuals and help prevent its misuse.
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Researchers Look to Cut Quantum Cryptography Costs
eWeek (05/29/08) Prince, Brian
National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers are supporting
a new method that will lower the cost of quantum key distribution. NIST
researchers have outlined a technique called detection-time-bin-shift
(DTBS), which is based on NIST's previously developed conventional
fiber-based QKD system. DTBS uses time-division multiplexing of a single
photon detector between two photon bases in a QKD system. The DTBS QKD
system generates sifted keys at a rate of more than 1 Mbps with a quantum
bit error rate of less than 2 percent over 1.1 kilometers of fiber. The
researchers set up an optical component to make the diagonally polarized
photons rotate another 45 degrees so they arrive later and in a separate
time bin at the same detector than the horizontal/vertical polarized
photons. This means that one pair of detectors can be used to record
information from both kinds of polarized photons in succession, reducing
the required number of detectors from four to two. In another protocol,
called B92, the researchers were able to lower the number of necessary
detectors from two to one. The researchers have gone a step further so
that the most common polarization-based protocol, known as BB84, now
requires one detector instead of four.
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A Flexible Approach to New Displays
ICT Results (06/02/08)
European researchers are working on the FlexiDis project, an effort to
create a new generation of robust, flexible displays that can be curved to
fit the shape of a product or even rolled up like a magazine. FlexiDis
project coordinator Eliav Haskal of Philips Research says the research
needed to develop flexible displays is too great a job for one company,
institute, or university. As a result, many organizations have combined
their resources to test a variety of materials and techniques. Creating a
flexible display requires developing an alternative to glass. One
possibility was thin metal, which is particularly promising for a new kind
of light-emitting element called organic light-emitting diodes (OLED).
However, constructing metal-based backplanes suitable for OLEDs was too
difficult, so the FlexiDis partners turned to plastic as the basis of the
display backplane, which had its own challenges. Conventional transistors
are typically made at temperatures that are too hot for most plastics.
Instead of trying to reduce the temperature of the standard process, the
researchers developed two alternatives. The first used a heat resistant
plastic called polymide. The other alternative was to use organic
thin-film transistors (TFTs), which can be deposited at much lower
temperatures. Now, the FlexiDis partners have developed three new
technologies for producing flexible, plastic backplanes.
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Paralyzed Man Takes a Walk in Virtual World
Agence France Presse (06/02/08)
Researchers in Japan have enabled a paralyzed man to meet another person
in the Second Life virtual world and hold a conversation. The man, who is
unable to use a mouse or a keyboard in the conventional way, used his
imagination to walk and chat with another virtual person. The researchers
at Keio University had the 41-year-old patient wear headgear with three
electrodes that monitored brain waves related to his hands and legs. The
meeting and the conversation, which were aided by an attached microphone,
was a first for a paralyzed person in such Internet-based virtual worlds.
The researchers also hope to allow paralyzed people to use only their brain
waves to create text messages. "In the near future, they would be able to
stroll through Second Life shopping malls with their brain waves ... and
click to make a purchase," says Junichi Ushiba of the department of
biosciences and informatics.
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Instant Messaging Proves Useful in Reducing Workplace
Interruption
Ohio State University Research News (05/20/08)
Researchers at Ohio State University and the University of California,
Irvine have found that workers who use instant messaging software at work
report fewer interruptions than colleagues who do not. The study
challenges the belief that instant messaging leads to an increase in
disruption. Some researchers have speculated that workers would use
instant messaging in addition to email and the phone, leading to additional
interruptions and lower productivity. However, the researchers found that
instant messaging is often used as a substitute for another, more
distracting form of communication. Ohio State professor and study
co-author R. Kelly Garrett says using instant messaging leads to more
conversations on the computer, but those conversations are briefer. "The
key take away is that instant messaging has some benefits where many people
had feared that it might be harmful," Garrett says. "People who used
instant messaging reported than they felt they were being interrupted less
frequently." Garrett says the key to using instant messaging efficiently
hinges on for what purpose the technology is being used. For example,
instead of dropping in on someone unexpectedly, many use instant messaging
to see what coworkers are doing and where they are in a project. Many also
use the technology to get quick answers to general questions or inquire
about current work tasks instead of engaging in longer face-to-face
conversations.
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Researchers Breach Microsoft's CardSpace ID
Technology
IDG News Service (05/30/08) Kirk, Jeremy
Three researchers from the Horst Gortz Institute for IT Security at Ruhr
University in Bochum, Germany, say they have been able to breach
Microsoft's CardSpace technology, which aims to protect Web users from
identity theft. In their attack on the technology, the researchers
modified the victim's DNS settings and directed him to a malicious Web
server. The Web server then stole an authentication token containing
information such as the victim's address and credit card number. This
token is normally sent by a CardSpace-affiliated third-party identity
provider to verify the identity of the user to the Web site that is asking
for this information. Although this method of breaching CardSpace has yet
to be used in the real world, attacks could begin to occur in the near
future, the researchers noted. For its part, Microsoft said that it is
looking into the research.
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Digital Journal Mavericks: The Woman Creating New
Human-Tech Relationships
Digital Journal (05/31/08) Silverberg, David
The deeper integration of people's digital lives and services within their
daily physical lives through the development of electronic devices that can
learn how to engage with people is the mission of MIT's Ambient
Intelligence Group, according to lab founder Pattie Maes. "We want to make
it possible to access digital info that is relevant to what you're
currently doing," Maes says. "If you meet someone in person, you should be
able to get info about that person, like what online interactions they had
that relate to you." Maes says this rationale dovetails with younger
generations' preference for constant connection. One project the group is
focused on is next-generation Post-It notes or Quickies, which feature a
special stylus that communicates with ultrasound to a pair of sensors on a
clip-on part of the note. The handwriting digitization element can learn
certain words and their meaning by character recognition, while an RFID tag
affixed to each Quickie enables the note to be efficiently organized and
stored for easy access on a PC. Another project devised by Maes' lab is
the Augmented Mirror, which can display personalized information based on
which family member is looking into it. Still another Ambient Intelligence
Group project is the Relational Pillow, a pillow that can transmit
light-filled messages to another pillow using light and touch sensors as
well as a Wi-Fi connection.
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Birth Pangs for the 'Semantic Web'
New Scientist (05/31/08)No. 2658, P. 26; Giles, Jim
Wikipedia and several other large data sources have over the past year
made the change to formats that will ease the combination of their data as
a step toward the establishment of a Semantic Web, while software that
integrates these sources is also under development. The semantic version
of Wikipedia, named DBpedia, was created by a team at Germany's University
of Leipzig and the Free University of Berlin, who have devised software
that analyzes Wikipedia content and restructures it into a list of
statements about "things," such as people and places. This format will
ultimately enable users to find information using questions rather than by
searching for phrases. Web pages can be tagged in a manner that allows
computers to comprehend what kind of information they contain and thus
combine data from different sources in interesting ways, using the World
Wide Web Consortium's Resource Description Framework. A Semantic Web could
place the ability to develop mashups in the hands of users rather than
programmers, but the lack of an easy method for searching the Semantic Web,
among other things, makes the likelihood of its realization uncertain.
Some Web experts say that Semantic Web proponents have devoted too much
attention to the technical aspects of their schemes, and this has failed to
make content creators buy into the Semantic Web concept. Web developers
and users may instead employ less complicated semantic systems, such as the
metadata tags currently used to represent shared bookmarks.
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When Robots Live Among Us
Discover Magazine (05/27/08) Hapgood, Fred
As scientists project that humanoid robots will play increasingly vital
roles as caregivers, servants and even sexual and parental surrogates in
the future, the issue of people having emotional relationships with
robots--and how this could affect humans' relationships with each
other--arises. The migration of robots to humanoid forms and behaviors is
a reflection of their growing versatility, and the fact that the human form
is the most practical design for solving real problems. Another factor in
the move toward humanoid robotics is the shift in thinking away from
centralized control of the body by a brain or central computer and toward
the body's distributed interaction with the environment. University of
Vermont roboticist Josh Bongard is exploring this theory with machines that
evolve models for bodily behavior and learn to perform actions--say,
traversing uneven terrain--through refinement of these models. Human-robot
interaction--and thus human-robot relationships--would be a necessary
element of domestic robotic applications, and the effectiveness of
collaborations between robots and people would be boosted by easier
understanding between the participating entities. Sustaining an emotional
relationship with a robot may depend on the level of sincerity exhibited by
the machine, and there is considerable debate over how humanlike a robot
has to be before it is judged to be sincere. Empathizing with robots may
not require a perfectly realistic machine when only a humanoid face may do,
says Bryce Huebner, an experimental philosopher at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill. Some experts doubt that people will prefer robots
to other people because robots do not follow a biological life cycle and
thus do not cultivate the complex relationships facilitated by that cycle
as humans do; others see no reason why intimate relationships with
robots--including erotic relationships--should be precluded by human
psychology.
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