Bluetooth Is Watching: Secret Study Gives Bath a Flavor
of Big Brother
Guardian (UK) (07/21/08) Lewis, Paul
Bath University's Cityware project is an experiment to learn how people
move around cities that uses scanners at various locations to track
people's whereabouts via Bluetooth radio signals transmitted from devices
such as mobile phones, laptops, and digital cameras. The researchers
behind the project say their scanners do not have access to the identity of
the people being tracked. "The objective is not to track individuals,
whether by Bluetooth or any other means," says Cityware director Eamonn
O'Neill. "We are interested in the aggregate behavior of city dwellers as
a whole." However, privacy experts note that Bluetooth signals are
assigned code names that can indicate a person's identity to varying
degrees. Many people use pseudonyms, nicknames, initials, or abbreviations
to assign names to Bluetooth signals, and Cityware's scanners are picking
up signals that are listed using people's full names, email addresses, and
telephone numbers. "This technology could well become the CCTV of the
mobile industry," says Privacy International director Simon Davies. "It
would not take much adjustment to make this system a ubiquitous
surveillance infrastructure over which we have no control." Although
initially confined to the city of Bath, the Cityware project was expanded
once the software was made available online, and now more than 1,000
scanners around the world detect passing Bluetooth signals and send data to
Cityware's central database.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
With Security at Risk, a Push to Patch the Web
New York Times (07/30/08) P. A1; Markoff, John
Security researcher Dan Kaminsky has been urging companies to fix a
potentially dangerous flaw in the Domain Name System that could allow
hackers to redirect Internet traffic to copies of legitimate sites to steal
financial and personal information. Kaminsky warned Internet service
providers (ISPs) about the flaw before releasing information about it to
the public. Kaminsky had not planned to release specifics about the flaw
until August, but accurate details of the flaw were briefly published
online by a computer security firm, apparently by accident. Kaminsky says
he wanted to give Internet companies more time to patch the flaw. He
estimates that 41 percent of the Internet is still at risk. Kaminsky's
plan to eventually release specific details about the flaw will make it
easier for criminals, but also pushes ISPs to patch the flaw as quickly as
possible. Kaminsky's discovery and warning of the flaw highlights a
greater problem with the Internet. Kaminsky believes that full disclosure
of security threats can push network administrators to take action. "We
need to have disaster planning, and we need to worry," he says. Experts
say the rush to repair the flaw is a reminder that the Internet lacks an
entity to oversee the online activities of millions of users. "This drives
home the risk people face, and the consumer should get the message," says
VeriSign's Ken Silva. "Don't just take for granted all the things that
machines are doing for you."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
HP, Intel and Yahoo Study Ways to Make Web a
Utility
Reuters (07/30/08) Auchard, Eric
Hewlett-Packard, Intel, and Yahoo announced that they will collaborate on
a cloud computing project aimed at turning Web services into reliable,
everyday utilities. The companies are working with academic researchers in
Asia, Europe, and the United States to create an experimental network to
allow researchers to test Internet-based services that could be accessed by
billions of users at the same time. The goal of the project is to promote
open collaboration among industry, academic, and government researchers by
removing financial and logistical barriers associated with
computer-intensive, Internet-wide projects. The companies want to create a
level playing field for individual researchers and organizations of all
sizes and enable them to conduct research on software, network management,
and the hardware needed to deliver Web-wide services. Prabhakar Raghavan,
head of Yahoo Research and a consulting professor of computer science at
Stanford University, says no single institution is going to find a solution
to this challenge. Raghavan says the entire planet could eventually rely
on cloud computing the same way it relies on electricity.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Robo-Relationships Are Virtually Assured: British
Experts
Agence France Presse (07/30/08)
Creating robots capable of recognizing and responding to basic human
emotions is a logical step as people's lives become increasingly dependent
on technology, say British roboticists David McGoran and Matt Denton.
"People know about artificial intelligence but the perception is that
robots are cold and calculating industrial automatons," McGoran says. "But
over the last decade, there has been a new field where robots have become
the opposite of that." McGoran has created the Heart Robot, named because
its "heart" is visible on the left side of its body. The robot is
programmed to react to sound, touch, and nearby movements, with its heart
beating at different rates. Denton has developed the iC Hexapod, a
six-legged robot with a miniature camera that can move the camera in
response to nearby movements. Both the Heart Robot and the iC Hexapod are
"emotibots," or robots programmed to react to human emotions. McGoran says
people respond to robots that mimic the emotions of humans. Denton agrees,
and adds that greater interaction with robots is inevitable. He says
people will form emotional bonds with their robots in the same way some
people care about their cars.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
UC San Diego's GreenLight Project to Improve Energy
Efficiency of Computing
University of California, San Diego (07/28/08) Ramsey, Doug
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) researchers are developing an
instrument to test the energy efficiency of computing systems in real-world
conditions in an effort to get computer designers and users to re-examine
how they build and use computers. UCSD's GreenLight project aims to
connect scientists and their labs to more energy-efficient "green" computer
processing and storage systems. "Project GreenLight will train a new
generation of energy-aware scientists, and it will produce energy
consumption data to help investigators throughout the research community
make informed choices about energy-efficient IT infrastructure," says UCSD
Chancellor Marye Anne Fox. A rapid growth in highly data-intensive
scientific research has resulted in an explosion of computing facilities
and a high demand for electricity. Energy use per computer server rack is
expected to grow from about 2 kilowatts per rack in 2000 to an estimated 30
kilowatts per rack in 2010. Meanwhile, every dollar spent on powering IT
equipment requires another dollar for cooling, essentially doubling the
cost of hardware over three years. The GreenLight Instrument will use
sensors in the controlled data center environment to measure temperature at
40 points in the air stream, humidity, energy consumption, and other
variables, and monitor the internal measurements of the servers.
Researchers hope the data will lead to ways of minimizing the power needed
to run computers, to make use of novel cooling systems, and to develop
software that automates the optimizing of power strategies for each
computing process.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
ALIFE Conference to Reveal New Approaches to Robot
Role-Play
University of Southampton (ECS) (07/29/08) Lewis, Joyce
The basic behavioral characteristics of embedded, embodied, evolving, and
adaptive systems will be the focus of the upcoming ALIFE conference at the
University of Winchester. This year's conference offers a record number of
paper presentations. One paper, "Self-Assembly in Physical Autonomous
Robots: the Evolutionary Robotics Approach," describes how self-assembly
can be used to artificially evolve robots with various roles to fulfill.
The University of Tokyo's Takashi Ikegami will open the conference with an
address on self-organization and autopoiesis in systems of birds, robots,
children, flies, cells, and oil droplets. The conference's keynote
speakers include Stuart Kauffman, author of "The Origins of Order;" Peter
Schuster, editor-in-chief of the journal Complexity; Eva Jablonka, author
of "Evolution in Four Dimensions;" and Andrew Ellington, a pioneer in the
field of synthetic biology. The Science and Engineering of Natural Systems
group at the University of Southampton's School of Electronics and Computer
Science is the host of ALIFE.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Researchers Help Define Next-Gen Social Networking
IDG News Service (07/28/08) Gohring, Nancy
Academic researchers predict that the next generation of social networking
will give more people tools for defining smaller online communities in a
way that mimics the real world. Rochester Institute of Technology's Liz
Lawley, speaking at Microsoft Research's annual Faculty Summit, says
current social tools are broken in regards to context and establishing
boundaries over who to share information with. Many social network sites
require users to become a part of a huge community, or force users to
choose whether someone is a friend or not, with no subtleties defining
relationships. "People want to create villages and they're being forced
into cities," Lawley says. "That's creating a huge tension in social
interactions." Academic researchers could help develop tools to allow for
such specific social networking, but first they must start using the tools,
Lawley says, as many have no idea how to use online tools such as sharing a
bookmark with other people or moderating comments on a blog. Lawley also
objects to some of the restrictions that separate children from adults
online. For example, Lawley says she cannot interact with her 14-year-old
son on Second Life because he has to be in the teen grid and she is in the
adult grid. Shutting down sites or isolating people will not solve the
problem of sexual predators, she says. And although there is merit in age
verification online, it should not be used to segregate users. Instead,
Lawley says it would be better for parents to teach young people how to
interact safely with adults online.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Europe and Japan Join Forces to Map Out Future of
Intelligent Robots
Innovations Report (07/29/08) Lau, Thomas
Making robots that can truly learn and adapt to unexpected situations like
humans, or be able to move with the fluidity and grace of animals, has been
a difficult challenge. However, significant progress has been made over
the last few years, and Europe and Japan are both set for a push toward a
new generation of intelligent machines. A conference jointly organized by
the European Science Foundation (ESF) and the Japan Society for the
Promotion of Science (JSPS) brought together researchers actively working
in the fields of cognitive science and robotics. Professor Florentin
Worgotter from Gottingen University in Germany suggested that with a
greater understanding of how animals coordinate their movements, the
principles involved in natural movement, such as mechanics, neuronal
feedback, and instantaneous adaptability, could be applied to robotics.
Shuuji Kajita from the Japanese research group AIST demonstrated biped
robots that use new walking techniques based on the Zero-Moment Point
principle, which is designed to ensure that a top-heavy system such as a
humanoid robot can walk without losing its balance or placing too much
stress on its points of contact. Another major focus of the ESF/JSPS
conference was enabling robots to be adaptable and learn from their
mistakes. University of Tokyo professor Yasuo Kuniyoshi said that
traditional artificial intelligence techniques have not succeeded in making
adaptable robots. He said current techniques break down events that a
robot has not been programmed to expect into smaller parts in an attempt to
analyze them. The problem is that the robot has no context in which to
decide how to act. Alternative approaches involve imposing constraints on
the robot's interactions that allow more intelligent behavior to emerge.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Birdsong Not Just for the Birds
University of Bonn (Germany) (07/29/08)
Computer scientists at the University of Bonn in Germany are using the
bird song archives of Berlin's Humboldt University to develop a voice
detector that can recognize the characteristic bird songs of different
species of birds. Many species of birds in Europe are being put on the red
list of endangered species, but no one knows exactly how many birds are
left in some species and obtaining a reliable count would require
unreasonable amounts of time and energy. To solve this problem, University
of Bonn computer scientists have developed detectors that can automatically
recognize bird songs. By placing microphones at selected points in the
wild, the system can record all sounds made over a period of time.
Software then searches through the hundreds of hours of recorded material
and determines how many birds of which species have been singing and for
how long. Daniel Wolff of the Institute of Computer Science at the
University of Bonn listened to various bird songs, scrutinized the songs in
a spectrogram, and transferred the characteristics to algorithms based on
mean frequencies and other characteristics. The bird song detectors are
currently only calibrated for individuals species, but Wolff believes it
will be possible to link them to a superdetector that can recognize
numerous species, which could be combined with GPS coordinates to map bird
populations.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Clarifications Sought on Data Mining
Federal Computer Week (07/24/08) Bain, Ben
Several experts at a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) conference on
implementing privacy protections in government data mining said there is
confusion over what constitutes data mining. They said the lack of an
agreed-upon definition and specific rules governing different types of data
mining increases the chances of privacy violations. The DHS' 2007 annual
privacy office report to Congress stated that there is no consensus on what
constitutes data mining. The Data Mining Reporting Act, passed as part of
an anti-terrorism law in 2007, defines data mining as "a program involving
pattern-based queries, searches, or other analyses of one or more
electronic databases." University of Massachusetts computer science
professor David Jensen says data mining means many things to many different
people, and that definitions that portray data mining as a process of
filtering or extraction are easy to understand and to misinterpret. He
says more useful definitions explain that data mining is a process
involving making inferences based on probability ratings. Vanderbilt
University law professor Christopher Slobogin says people could be hurt if
authorities use data-mining techniques in good faith but use bad
information, or if they intentionally use data mining maliciously.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Meet Robo Habilis
ICT Results (07/23/08)
The European research project SENSOPAC has developed a human-like arm and
hand that is controlled by an electronic brain modeled after the human
cerebellum. SENSOPAC coordinator Patrick van der Smagt led an
international team of neuroscientists and roboticists in the effort to
create an intelligent, flexible, and sensitive robotic arm. To develop a
robotic skin as sensitive as human skin, the researchers studied how human
skin senses features such as the direction pressure is coming from. To
mimic the skin's sensing abilities, researchers at the German Aerospace
Center created a thin, flexible material filled with a form of carbon that
changes resistance under different pressures. The material allows
researchers to combine information from sensors in different parts of the
skin to minimize the number of information-carrying wires. "We can soon
integrate hundreds of detector elements and get the information out with
just five wires," van der Smagt says. "And we have the ability to
distinguish between shape, the amount of force, and the direction of
force." The artificial arm contains 58 motors in opposing pairs, coupled
with non-linear springs to control the arm. The hand uses 38 opposing
motors and can snap its fingers, pick up an egg, or carry a cup of coffee.
The researchers say their goal is to create a microchip that will allow the
arm to carry out tasks requiring human-level skills in a real-world
setting.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
How Secure Is Your Network? NIST Model Knows
National Institute of Standards and Technology (07/22/08)
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) computer scientists
are helping managers safeguard valuable information more efficiently by
applying security metrics to computer network pathways to assign a probable
risk of attack to guide IT managers in securing their networks. "We
analyze all of the paths that system attackers could penetrate through a
network, and assign a risk to each component of the system," says NIST
computer scientist Anoop Singhal. "Decision makers can use our assigned
probabilities to make wise decisions and investments to safeguard their
network." NIST researchers evaluate each route and assign it a risk based
on how challenging it would be for a hacker. The paths are determined
using a technique called attack graphs, which was jointly developed by
Singhal and research colleagues at George Mason University using NIST's
National Vulnerability Database (NVD) to determine risk. The NVD
repository includes a collection of security-related software weaknesses
hackers could exploit. For example, in a simple system composed of a
firewall, a router, a FTP server, and a database server, an attacker would
try to find the simplest path to the database server. Attack graph
analysis would detect three potential attack paths and assign an attack
probability based on the score in the NVD database. Reaching the objective
would require multiple steps, so the probabilities of each component are
multiplied to determine the overall risk. The next step is to expand the
research to handle large-scale enterprise networks.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Security Flaws in Online Banking Sites Found to Be
Widespread
University of Michigan News Service (07/22/08) Moore, Nicole Casal
More than 75 percent of bank Web sites had at least one design flaw that
could expose online banking customers to cybercriminals looking to take
their money or even identities, revealed a University of Michigan (UM)
study. UM computer science professor Atul Prakash and doctoral students
Laura Falk and Kevin Borders examined the Web sites of 214 financial
institutions in 2006. The researchers said the vulnerabilities came from
the layout of the Web sites and included placing log-in boxes and contact
information on insecure Web pages, or failing to keep users on the site
they initially visited. Prakash says some banks have taken steps to fix
these problems since the study was conducted, but overall there is still a
significant need for improvement. "To our surprise, design flaws that
could compromise security were widespread and included some of the largest
banks in the country," Prakash says. "Our focus was on users who try to be
careful, but unfortunately some bank sites make it hard for customers to
make the right security decisions when doing online banking." Some of the
design flaws Prakash's team looked for included placing secure login boxes
or contact information on insecure pages, redirecting customers to a site
outside the bank's domain for certain transactions without warning,
allowing inadequate user IDs and passwords, and emailing security-sensitive
information in insecure emails. The research was presented at the fourth
Symposium on Usable Privacy and Security, which was held July 23-25, 2008,
at Carnegie Mellon University.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Jumping Robot Makes Light Work of Stairs
New Scientist (07/24/08) Marks, Paul
A new robot, ScoutRobot, has the ability to jump up stairs. Developed by
Dong Hwan Kim and colleagues at the Seoul National University of Technology
in South Korea, ScoutRobot could lead to other wheeled robots capable of
leaping onto or over obstacles. Jumping robots may even be better at
overcoming vertical obstacles than track robots, some of which can already
climb stairs but do so at a significantly slower pace. Previous attempts
to develop jumping, wheeled robots typically involved using a motor to
compress a spring before releasing it against the ground, which would send
the robot upwards and forwards. However, the combined weight of the
jumping mechanism caused the robots to land heavily and damage delicate
components. Kim and his team developed an ultra-lightweight version of a
pneumatic ram. Powered by compressed air stored in two-liter plastic
bottles, the ram is fired to launch the robot to the required height. To
determine how much force is needed, an onboard processor calculates how
fast the robot is traveling, how far it is to the obstacle, and the
obstacle's height. The processor then calculates the jump and sends a
signal to a solenoid valve that sends high-pressure air into the ram. Upon
landing, the robot tilts slightly forward, and a small motor-powered arm
rights the robot.
Click Here to View Full Article
- Web Link May Require Paid Subscription
to the top
NSF Funds UIC to Build New Virtual Reality Display
Electronic Visualization Laboratory (07/18/08) Leigh, Jason
The National Science Foundation has awarded $450,000 to the University of
Illinois at Chicago's Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) to build
the OmegaTable, a modular multi-sensory touch tabletop for two- and
three-dimensional visual data interaction. The virtual-reality device will
allow scientific communities to share, view, and interact with large-scale
2D and 3D data, and will enable computer scientists to study the
integration of multi-sensory touch and gestural interaction techniques for
the manipulation of 2D and 3D data. "Integrated visualization instruments
with powerful computing capabilities are becoming important in domain
science because scientists have access to more and more types of electronic
data," says EVL director Jason Leigh. "These displays are the new
microscopes and telescopes, enabling researchers to magnify and zoom in on
interesting phenomena in today's digital world." The OmegaTable will have
a resolution of at least 24 million pixels, and will be able to display 2D
and autostereoscopic 3D simultaneously, without having to wear special
equipment. By incorporating gestural controls, users will be able to
experience virtual reality without the need for special glasses, handheld
controls, or gloves. The researchers say that interaction is crucial for
obtaining meaningful data interpretation, enabling them to explore what-if
scenarios, and for explaining complex scientific concepts to public
audiences.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
TGen Awarded $1.99 Million Grant to Advance Highly
Parallel Supercomputing
Tgen (Translational Genomics Research Institute) (07/16/2008)
A $1.99 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) will
enable the Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) to team up with
Arizona State University (ASU) to build a scalable supercomputer. TGen and
ASU will also build a number of computational and statistical tools. The
parallel cluster-computing system will be used to study the molecular
profiles of diseases, including Alzheimer's, diabetes, coronary heart
disease, melanoma, pancreatic cancer, colon cancer, multiple myeloma, and
breast cancer. "The parallel supercomputing system supported by this NIH
grant provides a powerful resource for ASU and TGen engineers, researchers,
biomedical informaticians, computer scientists, and biologists to interact
in solving complex computational problems that will lead to better disease
diagnosis and prognosis," says Deirdre Meldrum, dean of ASU's School of
Engineering and director of the Center for Ecogenomics at the Biodesign
Institute. The greater bandwidth and storage capabilities of the
supercomputer will facilitate the development and use of computational
models and algorithms at nearly 24 trillion operations per second.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Hands-On Computing
Scientific American (07/08) Vol. 299, No. 1, P. 64; Brown, Stuart F.
Multi-touch computer screens could make a mouse or keyboard unnecessary
for enhanced collaboration by being able to follow the instructions of many
fingers at the same time. Perceptive Pixel has developed a wall-size
screen that is responsive to as many as 10 fingers or multiple hands, and
early adopters of the technology include intelligence agencies that require
fast comparison between geographically coordinated surveillance images in
their war rooms. Among the challenges of refining multi-touch screen
technology are sensing the precise location of fingers, and developing
software routines capable of tracking the finger movements and converting
them to instructions for what should be happening with on-screen images.
Perceptive Pixel founder Jeff Han devised a multi-touch screen that
produces 10 or more streams of x and y coordinates simultaneously, and he
points out that "the traditional [graphical user interfaces] are really not
designed for that much simultaneity." Perceptive Pixel's design involves
projectors that transmit images through an acrylic screen onto the surface
facing the viewer, and when fingers, styli, or other objects make contact
with the surface, infrared light shone inside the acrylic sheet by
light-emitting diodes (LEDs) scatters off the objects and back to sensors;
the data is interpreted as movements by software. Microsoft, meanwhile,
has created a multi-touch table called Surface that projects imagery up
through the acrylic top. In addition, an LED light source shines
near-infrared light that reflects off fingers or objects back to various
infrared cameras, while a computer tracks finger movements by monitoring
the reflections.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top