Agile Approach Slashes Software Development Time
EUREKA (08/19/08)
The results of the EUREKA ITEA software Cluster AGILE project will make it
possible for manufacturers to develop embedded software in significantly
less time and at a much lower cost than is possible through traditional
techniques. The project has applied the approach to 68 pilot case studies
in a variety of industries. The use of embedded software in electronic
devices is growing faster than advances in the electronics themselves, but
the ability to produce software has not increased as quickly. "The amount
of software is growing very rapidly and it is increasingly difficult to
find the people and resources necessary to develop it all," says project
coordinator Pekka Abrahamsson of the VTT Technical Research Centre in
Finland. Problems also exist in the speed of development as it is
necessary to get solutions to market in optimum time and with sufficient
reliability. To solve these problems, AGILE focused on processes and
technologies needed to develop software systems faster and more reliably to
meet changing market needs. Agile technology involves a methodology that
stretches from the beginning of the development process to the end, but
generally focuses on the actual processes, techniques, and tools used to
create systems. "A set of values and a set of 12 principles provide the
underlying rationale for why we operate in this way," Abrahamsson says.
"And the process is very tightly time-framed with delivery in monthly or
even fortnightly cycles."
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Federal Judge Throws Out Gag Order Against Boston
Students in Subway Case
Wired News (08/19/08) Zetter, Kim
A federal judge in Boston has allowed the expiration of a temporary
restraining order against three Massachusetts Institute of Technology
students who discovered a vulnerability in the Boston subway's fare tickets
and cards. The restraining order prevented the students from presenting a
talk on the security vulnerabilities at the DefCon hacker conference in Las
Vegas. "It's great news for the free speech rights for these students,"
says the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Rebecca Jesche. "Although it's
extremely unfortunate that the students were not allowed to give their talk
at DefCon." A week before the scheduled DefCon talk, the students met with
the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) to reassure the
agency that they would withhold key information from their presentation and
would not teach someone how to defraud the system. Nevertheless, the MBTA
filed a motion for a restraining order. A district judge approved the
restraining order, citing the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, and implied
that the students' speech on how the MBTA system was vulnerable to hacking
was equivalent to someone actually hacking the MBTA system, or at least
assisting in the illegal hacking activity. However, that ruling was
overturned on the grounds that the Computer Fraud Abuse Act does not apply
to speech and that the MBTA failed to supply sufficient proof to merit a
restraining order or preliminary injunction. A lawsuit filed by the MBTA
still threatens the students, accusing them of hacking the MBTA system and
causing damages.
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U.S. at Risk of Cyberattacks, Experts Say
CNN (08/18/08) Griggs, Brandon
The next large-scale military or terrorist attack against the United
States may be launched by hackers half a world away through cyberspace,
which Internet security experts say could be just as devastating to the
U.S. economy and infrastructure as a physical attack. Experts say the
recent attacks on Georgia heralds a new kind of cyberwar, for which the
United States is not fully prepared. Tulip Systems CEO Tom Burling says
that no one has developed a way to prevent such attacks from happening.
"The U.S. is probably more Internet-dependent than any place in the world,"
Burling says. "So to that extent, we're more vulnerable than any place in
the world to this kind of attack." United States Cyber Consequences Unit
director Scott Borg says Internet security is a critical issue, and in the
United States, at every level, security is dependent on computers. "It's a
whole new era. Political and military conflicts now will almost always
have a cyber component," Borg says. "The chief targets will be critical
infrastructure, and the attacks will emerge from within our own computer
systems." A major challenge is that such attacks can be launched
anonymously, and relatively cheaply, from anywhere in the world. The U.S.
Department of Homeland Security created the National Cybersecurity Center
this year to coordinate federal cyberdefense efforts and improve
responsiveness, but a recent Homeland Security Department intelligence
report concluded that there are currently no effective means to prevent a
coordinated attack on U.S. Web sites.
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NSF Announces Expeditions in Computing Awards
National Science Foundation (08/18/08) Zacharias, Maria C.
The National Science Foundation's Directorate for Computer and Information
Science and Engineering (CISE) has awarded four new Expeditions in
Computing grants. The $10 million grants will enable teams of researchers
and educators to pursue potentially far-reaching agendas that could lead to
significant advancements in computing and benefit society as a whole. "We
created the Expeditions program to encourage the research community to send
us their brightest and boldest ideas," says CISE assistant director
Jeannette Wing. Wing says the four Expeditions will pursue long-standing
scientific questions of computing, create a new field of computational
sustainability, experiment with novel technologies for secure and
ubiquitous computing and communications, and explore the basic concepts of
what constitutes computing. The first project, the Expedition to
Understand, Cope with, and Benefit From Intractability, will work to bridge
the fundamental gaps in the understanding about the power limits of
efficient algorithms. "Computational Sustainability: Computational Methods
for a Sustainable Environment, Economy, and Society," will explore the
development and applications of computational methods to ensure a
sustainable environment, economy, and society. The Open Programmable
Mobile Internet 2020 project addresses issues emerging in the forthcoming
broadband wireless mobile revolution. The Molecular Programming project
will develop computer science principles for programming
information-bearing molecules, such as DNA and RNA polymers, and
demonstrate their applications experimentally.
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US to Back 21st Century Learning
BBC News (08/16/08) Shiels, Maggie
The new National Center for Research in Advanced Information and Digital
Technologies, authorized by the higher education bill approved by the U.S.
Congress last month, will focus on advancing education in the 21st century
using computer and communications technologies. "America's reputation as
an international leader rests in the hands of our youth," says Sen. Chris
Dodd (D-Conn.). "It should be among our top priorities to provide our
students with the tools they need to maintain and build upon this
standing." The new center will support a "first of its kind" comprehensive
research and development program with the intention of improving all levels
of learning, from kindergarten to university, and from government training
to college. The Federal of American Scientists president Henry Kelly says
education is increasingly falling behind the rest of the economy and the
United States must rethink its basic approach to helping people learn.
Kelly says the center will concentrate on understanding how to use
technology to help people learn in more effective and interesting ways that
makes knowledge stick. The center will award grants for research on a
variety of issues, including taking technology that is effective in
industry and applying it to the classroom.
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Virtual Applications Reach Out to Real World
ICT Results (08/14/08)
European researchers working on the IMPROVE project have developed a
series of tools to break through virtual reality development bottlenecks
and foster the acceptance of virtual reality in new business areas.
IMPROVE focused on augmented reality applications and tools. Augmented
reality consists of mixing real objects and landscapes with
computer-generated images and designs, which could, for example, allow an
architect to see a virtual building on a real landscape or a car designer
to see how a small change would affect the existing body of a car. IMPROVE
project coordinator Pedro Santos says the researchers worked on
head-mounted displays, tiled displays, rendering and streaming software,
color calibration techniques, and novel interaction systems. The
researchers selected two design-intensive domains to test their
platform--architecture and automotive design--because the two areas were a
good fit. Car manufacturers have the budgets to invest in expensive
equipment that can quickly be used to improve systems, and architectural
companies could use virtual reality and augmented reality for a wide
variety of purposes. The IMPROVE team surveyed potential users to
determine what functionality they required. Santos says the architects
wanted to be able to review a virtual rendition of a proposed building
collaboratively and to test the impact of shadows, while car makers wanted
high-quality imaging for surface inspection.
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UC San Diego Researchers' New Algorithm Significantly
Boosts Routing Efficiency of Networks
University of California, San Diego (08/18/08) Mueller, Paul K.
University of California, San Diego computer scientists have developed XL,
a new algorithm for helping computer networks find the most efficient way
of sending data. The XL algorithm increases network routing efficiency by
suppressing updates from parts of the system, which previously forced
connected networks to continuously recalculate the paths used to send data.
"Routing in a static network is trivial," say the authors of a paper on
the algorithm, which will be presented at ACM SIGCOMM. "But most real
networks are dynamic--network links go up and down--and thus some nodes
need to recalculate their routes in response." The algorithm reduces the
overhead of route re-computation after a network change, allowing for the
support of larger networks. The major innovation in the new algorithm is
that it propagates only some network updates. The algorithm determines
which updates are important and which can be suppressed by establishing
three rules for update propagation. "The rules ensure that selected routes
are nearly as good as if complete information about the network were
available, but at a fraction of the overhead required for maintaining such
a state of perfect knowledge," says team member Ramamohan Paturi. The
researchers believe that the efficiency of link-state routing can be
further improved.
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Intel Offers $100,000 Prizes for Innovative Ideas
InformationWeek (08/19/08) Gonsalves, Antone
Developers should focus more on technology that will help improve life in
developing countries, Intel Chairman Craig Barrett said during his opening
keynote of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco on Aug. 19. The
chipmaker will offer four prizes of $100,000 each to developers who come up
with the best ideas for its Inspire/Empower Challenge. Projects will be
judged on the "sustainability and innovativeness" of the technology. The
event also featured developers that Intel believes are good examples of
pursuing innovation in areas such as education, health care, economic
development, and the environment. Johnny Lee, who recently earned his
Ph.D. at Carnegie Mellon University, discussed a Wii-based sensor for
tracking digital pens used to write on an electronic chalkboard.
Meanwhile, Columbia University's Miguel Angarita demonstrated how a camera
phone capable of reading the bar code on a health card could be used to
deliver medical records to doctors in remote offices during emergency
situations. Barrett also said the United States should encourage an
"environment for innovation" and spend more on education and research and
development.
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Visualisation Highlights Flood Risk
Monash University (08/18/2008)
An interactive visualization tool for predicting flood risk in a region of
Australia that has experienced significant flooding in recent years has
been developed by researchers at Monash University. The tool can be used
to create scenarios of how climate change is affecting Lakes Entrance in
East Gippsland. "Until now there has been no way of visualizing what may
happen during a flood event at Lakes Entrance," says Ph.D. student Peter
Wheeler. Wheeler developed the Lakes Entrance Visualization tool with the
help of professors Jim Peterson and Joshphar Kunapo, and Master's student
Matthew Coller. The team says strategic planning decisions for low-lying
coastal settlements in other areas of Victoria also need to be made. "The
methodology of this tool can be applied to these other areas, which will
help with flood contingency planning and the identification of at-risk land
parcels and infrastructure," Wheeler says.
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Spin Flip Trick Points to Fastest RAM Yet
New Scientist (08/13/08) McAlpine, Kate
German researchers have developed prototype magnetoresistive random access
memory (MRAM) technology, which is being heralded as the future of
computing by hardware manufacturers. MRAM is a faster and more efficient
version of the RAM currently used in computers, offering high speeds but
using less power. MRAM stores data by changing the north-south direction
of a tiny magnet's magnetic field. Each variable magnet is placed next to
a magnet with a fixed field. Reading the stored data is done by running a
current through the pair of magnets to determine the direction of the
variable magnet's field. The type of MRAM that many manufacturers are
backing uses the spins of electrons to flip the magnetic fields, a
technology called spin-torque MRAM. Santiago Serrano-Guisan and Hans
Schumacher of the Physical-Technical Federal Laboratory of Germany, working
with the University of Bielefeld and Singulus Nano-Deposition Technologies,
have built a spin-torque system that is significantly faster than any other
system. The system is built from tiny pillars 165 nanometers tall. The
top of each pillar acts as a variable magnet that stores data, while the
bottom is the fixed magnet. A current runs from the bottom of the pillar
to the top, with its electrons lined up by the permanent-magnet region at
the bottom. When the electrons reach the pillar's other end, they flip the
variable magnet region's field to match. The field can be flipped back by
reversing the current. The German researchers developed a way to observe
and control the field's adjustment during and after the change, which could
lead to devices significantly faster than before.
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No Time to Question the Need for Speed
Stuff (NZ) (08/18/08)
In 2006, the New Zealand government paid $43 million to meet the capital
costs of the high-speed Kiwi Advanced Research and Education Network
(Karen). The Karen network was turned on 20 months ago with the intention
of facilitating research between universities and other research
organizations in New Zealand and around the world. In September, the New
Zealand cabinet will review its business model and determine whether the
network was worth the investment. Some believe that establishing the
network was a matter of national pride, as it enabled New Zealand to host
the biannual Asia Pacific Advanced Networking conference. Karen can
transfer data between New Zealand institutions at speeds of 10 gigabits per
second, and offers a 620Mbps link to the United States and a 155Mbps
connection to Australia. Research and Education Advanced Network New
Zealand (Reanzz) CEO Donald Clark says the network is currently running at
an average of between one and four percent of capacity. However, Clark
says the point of a research network is to have plenty of unmetered
bandwidth available on demand, and if the network ever averaged 20 percent
capacity it would be time to upgrade. Waikato University head of computer
sciences Tony McGregor says a "massive" international trend towards
e-research, where individual researchers from around the world collaborate
using Internet networks, makes Karen a vital resource. Reanzz will
continue to look for new customers to use the network, which is expected to
see increased traffic as schools, libraries, and even some businesses are
allowed to access the network.
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University of Toronto, IBM to Launch Supercomputer
Reuters (08/14/08) Dabrowski, Wojtek
IBM will help the University of Toronto build a supercomputer capable of
performing 360 trillion calculations per second. The most powerful
supercomputer in Canada, and one of the 20 fastest machines in the world,
it would use IBM's iDataPlex system, which holds twice as many processors
per unit as standard systems. The completely water-cooled supercomputer
would also link together more than 4,000 servers. "Every aspect of the
system has been put together to be the most powerful and yet the most
energy efficient," says IBM's Chris Pratt. Scientists at the university
and its associated research hospitals will use the supercomputer for a wide
range of projects in aerospace, astrophysics, climate change prediction,
and medical imaging. The Canadian Foundation for Innovation, in
partnership with the province of Ontario and the university, is funding the
construction and operating cost, which will be $47 million over five years.
The team will begin installing the supercomputer this autumn and it is
expected to be fully operational by next summer.
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Computer Scientist Aims for a Better-Networked
Military
Washington University in St. Louis (08/06/08) Fitzpatrick, Tony
Washington University in St. Louis professor Patrick Crowley has received
a one-year, $499,765 grant from the Defense Advanced Research Agency for
his research project, titled "Revolutionizing Defense Communications with a
Diversified Internet Infrastructure." The grant is the second phase of
Crowley's participation in the DARPA Computer Science Study Group (CSSG).
Last year, as part of the CSSG, Crowley traveled for 20 days visiting
Defense Department (DoD) sites, including military bases, intelligence
agencies, combatant commands, military contractors, and civil agency
headquarters, talking with officials to get a comprehensive understanding
of the organization. For the second phase of the CSSG program, Crowley
will design a new kind of network for the DoD that will link all components
of the DoD, so that every foot soldier, commander, tank, and transport
vehicle are networked, to better manage information in real time. "Imagine
tactical combat-type situations where commanders in part of a region want
to understand the location and states of all the platforms, equipment and
personnel in real-time," Crowley says. "The core idea is information
sharing. What had been lacking was knowledge of platform components. Now
we have that knowledge and can try it out."
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Gates Speaks of Software-Writing Revolution
Associated Press (08/12/08)
Microsoft's Bill Gates says the dramatic growth of the Internet will
eventually help eliminate "the last constraints we have" and lead to a
software-writing revolution. Speaking at a forum marking the 10th
anniversary of Microsoft's Asian research division, Gates said that
technology currently in development will transform how people use computers
as well as expand their ability to interact with machines. Greater
Internet connectivity will give users better services, providing remote
access to a variety of software and information, Gates says. "That will
eventually lead to machines that have lots of server capacity, lots of
low-cost computing, low-cost storage," Gates says. "And that will let us
write software in an even more ambitious way, eliminating the last
constraints we have." Gates believes that uses for computers will expand
to encompass all interactive techniques, such as touch, sight, and speech.
Gates also praised the work of Microsoft's Asian research division, and
praised science and technology as a force for positive change. Gates says
major developments in Internet services and computer interfaces are at a
good stage of development in the labs, and should be widespread within 10
years, while more advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence or
robotics, could be available within 20 years.
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From Lego Robots to Hammers and Nails, Linux Gets
Embedded
Network World (08/08/08) Fontana, John
At the LinuxWorld conference, small vendors and independent developers
showcased a variety of embedded Linux projects, ranging from a wirelessly
controlled Lego robot to a device designed to aid information sharing in
third-world countries. The nonprofit Literacy Bridge displayed its Talking
Book Device, which contains a low-cost digital audio recorder with playback
for distributing the spoken word. The Talking Book Device will cost under
$10 and is scheduled for production in mid 2009. The device is intended to
provide a library of easily retrievable recordings on topics such as
helping people recognize symptoms of tuberculosis or explaining how to
prevent dehydration. The device also contains a USB cable for uploading
and downloading information between devices or external sources, and a
built-in microphone allows users to record conversations or specific
instructions. Literacy Bridge executive director Cliff Schmidt says the
Talking Book Device is a way of replacing the Internet for document
distribution. Meanwhile, the Linuxstamp project is a general-purpose
processor module that includes a standard Linux kernel, and a SD card,
Ethernet, and USB/serial converter, intended for use in initial product
design so users do not have to build an entire motherboard. Linuxstamp
developer Paul Thomas says the project is an example of open source
hardware because the instructions for building the hardware are freely
available. Thomas demonstrated a small Lego robot fitted with a USB
wireless transmitter and a PC application that served as a remote control.
"We are on the cusp of seeing what Linux did for software repeated on the
hardware side," Thomas says.
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Why Complex Systems Do Better Without Us
New Scientist (08/06/08) Vol. 199, No. 2668, P. 28; Buchanan, Mark
Research by Swiss Federal Institute of Technology physicist Dirk Helbing
suggests humans' desire to force complex systems into a regular,
predictable model is misguided, and a much better strategy is to cede a
certain degree of control and let systems work out solutions on their own.
"You have to learn to use the system's own self-organizing tendencies to
your advantage," he argues. Helbing and Stefan Lammer at Germany's
Technical University of Dresden have considered whether traffic lights
could be engineered to reduce congestion by giving the devices the means to
adapt their behavior rather than have engineers shape traffic into patterns
that seem favorable. The researchers have found that traffic lights, when
provided with some simple operating rules and left alone to organize their
own solution, can do a better job. Helbing and Lammer have crafted a
mathematical model that assumes a fluid-like movement for traffic and
describes what happens at intersections. The researchers make the lights
at each intersection responsive to increasing traffic pressure via sensors.
Lights that only adapt to conditions locally might give rise to problems
further away, and to address this the researchers have engineered a scheme
in which neighboring lights share their information so that what occurs
around one light can affect how others respond, preventing the formation of
long traffic jams. Helbing and Lammer have shown through simulation that
this setup should substantially reduce overall travel times and keep no one
waiting at a light too long, even though the lights' behavior runs counter
to accepted human concepts of efficiency.
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