Bush May End Federal Tech Funding Program
IDG News Service (02/12/06) Thibodeau, Patrick
President Bush's proposed budget for 2007 eliminates funding for the
Advance Technology Program (ATP), a federal program that funds technologies
deemed "high-risk" that has long been a target of the administration.
Rejecting Bush's previous recommendation, Congress awarded the program $80
million this year, though that was roughly half the money that it garnered
the year before. Bush says the private sector should fund high-risk
research, including such ATP areas of focus as handwriting recognition,
fault tolerance software development, and cognitive learning systems.
While Bush and other critics say that the ATP is tantamount to corporate
welfare, the ATP's Michael Borrus argues that the program fulfills the
vital role of researching projects that are not yet well enough developed
to garner commercial funding. The ATP is subsumed under the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, which is actually slated for a 24
percent funding increase, though that spending is earmarked for information
security.
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EU Plan for Technology Institute Put to Test
Financial Times (02/13/06) P. 2; Parker, George; Boone, Jon
The proposal for the controversial European Institute of Technology (EIT)
is entering a pivotal stage this week as EU officials work to finalize
details to submit the plan for approval to European leaders at next month's
economic summit. An obvious symbol of the European Commission's concern
that Europe is falling behind in research and development, the EIT would
serve as "a pole of attraction for the very best minds, ideas, and
companies from around the world," according to EC President Jose Barroso.
The Commission says the percentage of Europe's gross domestic product
constituted by R&D lags behind that of both Japan and the United States.
However, critics of the program claim that its top-down, centralized
structure could undermine other initiatives promoted by the European
Research Council (ERC). Drawing on the MIT model of collaboration between
business and academia, however, Barroso sees no conflict. As proposed, the
EIT would be overseen centrally, but would function as a virtual
university, granting degrees and funding for research conducted throughout
Europe's existing universities. Championed by Microsoft Chairman Bill
Gates, the EIT would draw funding from the EU's central budget, member
states, and private industry. While Barroso describes the EIT as a
necessary instrument to revive the foundering ERC, EURAB, the EC's own
advisory group, has warned that the it could compromise the ERC's
objectives by ultimately undercutting its funding.
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Chinese Sensors of Internet Face 'Hacktivists' in
U.S.
Wall Street Journal (02/13/06) P. A1; Fowler, Geoffrey A.
While the Internet's growing pervasiveness in China has made it difficult
to police the activities of an estimated 111 million users, the Chinese
government is nonetheless attempting to reinforce its authority, requiring
all bloggers to register with the state and continuing its block on
objectionable content, such as Wikipedia and the BBC, as well as
dispatching roughly a dozen state agencies to monitor Internet activity.
Chinese Web censorship, sometimes referred to as the 'Great Firewall,' has
sparked an insurgent community of U.S.-based 'hacktivists' who have
developed programs such as Freegate, which links computers within China to
U.S. servers, enabling users to access prohibited sites. Other efforts
mask the identity of Chinese Web users through multilayered host messages
that obscure their trail, and adopt-a-blogger programs furnish Chinese
writers with external servers to transmit their message. Practitioners of
the Falun Gong--the banned Chinese spiritual group that has been persecuted
for alleged subversion--have contributed substantially to the development
of anti-censorship applications such as Freegate. Voice of America and
Radio Free Asia also contribute to Freegate, and a major boost in funding
could come from the renewed congressional consideration of legislation to
create an Office of Global Internet Freedom in response to harsh criticism
of Google, Microsoft, and others for complying with Chinese censorship
laws. Freegate, run by North Carolina-based programmer Bill Xia, cannot be
blocked by Chinese censors because it constantly switches the address of
its U.S. server. Freegate's effectiveness is limited in China, however, as
it is employed mostly by technically proficient users, and many Chinese
censor their own Internet use, consciously avoiding keywords and content
that could be considered subversive. Meanwhile, the government continually
devotes more resources to combating Freegate and other anti-censorship
applications.
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APAC Ramps Up Australian Computing
HPC Wire (02/10/06) Vol. 15, No. 6,Feldman, Michael
In a recent interview, John O'Callaghan, executive director of the
Australian Partnership for Advanced Computing (APAC), outlined the scope
and future of the organization. Initially created in 1999 to bolster
Australia's advanced computing capabilities through the development of a
grid infrastructure, APAC now comprises eight organizations in a national
partnership with each state individually represented, and supports the
activities of an estimated 2,000 researchers. APAC's top system, a
1,680-processor SGI Altix 3700 Bx2 cluster, checked in at No. 35 on last
November's list of the Top500 supercomputers. The recent upgrade to that
system provided APAC users with higher-resolution climate simulations and a
host of other processing capabilities. In response to ever greater storage
demands, the researchers are expanding the National Facility's data storage
system. Ultimately, APAC plans to integrate Australian research into the
global infrastructure by providing uninterrupted access to distributed
resources. The beneficiary of $25 million in annual funding, APAC has
coordinated the activities of a broad group of Australian research
organizations. APAC has supported the efforts of the Center for
Computational Prototyping, which is developing virtual engineering and
automated production techniques, and ac3, which hosts a digital TV service
and maintains a secure data center. O'Callaghan notes that researchers are
using APAC for a host of projects, including climate modeling,
astrophysics, and pharmaceutical research. He believes that APAC's biggest
challenge will be to implement a grid infrastructure that, while still
relatively immature, will nonetheless offer significant benefits for the
diverse body of Australian researchers for whom it is being created.
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Computer Downtime Rising up to Work on World's
Problems
San Antonio Express-News (TX) (02/12/06) Lorek, L.A.
The nonprofit World Community Grid has harnessed the excess computing
power of more than 250,000 PCs throughout the world to provide researchers
with faster processing capabilities for such complex problems as developing
new drugs for AIDS treatment. "The World Community Grid takes research
projects that were unimaginable by researchers before and makes them
possible," said IBM's Viktoris Berstis, who spearheaded the project's
development. Computer users can download software developed by United
Devices to make their excess processing power available to the grid. The
grid's first endeavor, the Human Proteome Folding Project, began in
November 2004, modeling the structures of roughly 120,000 protein domains
comprising 90 complete genomes. Without the aid of the grid, researchers
estimate that processing all the data would have taken the project's
central supercomputers 100 years. Rather than spend millions of dollars to
purchase and maintain additional supercomputers, the researchers harness
free computing power and divert their funds toward scientific advancement.
The grid's latest endeavor, the FightAIDS@Home project, is working to
develop better HIV treatments as drug resistance continues to evolve,
testing chemical compounds through millions of computations to stem the
reproduction of the proteins within HIV. The World Community Grid counted
263,000 PCs running in 157 countries as of last week, providing enough
processing power to rank the grid among the world's top five
supercomputers.
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Wireless to Organize--and Maybe Save--Lives
Reuters (02/11/06) Carew, Sinead
The popularity of wireless technology has some laboratories rushing to
insert electronic chips into a variety of different products. Sensor chips
may one day even be embedded into underwear to send laundry-related text or
voice alerts to cell phones, according to Institute for Global Futures
President James Canton. "It will tell you when it needs to get cleaned,"
Canton says. Others predict that wireless sensors may be helpful for
saving lives. MIT electrical engineering and computer science professor
John Guttag is currently studying how wirelessly connected medical devices
may automatically send warnings of a problem to the patient's mobile phone
and then on to a relative or a physician. Guttag cautions that such
devices would only work if they are sophisticated enough to avoid false
alarms. The use of cell phones, software, computers, and sensors can also
make our jobs easier and get rid of daily chores, according to researchers
at Motorola. Motorola human interaction researcher Tom MacTavish says
voice-recognition technology on cell phones could improve with the use of
pattern-recognition technology. Image-recognition technology is also in
the process of being developed, which could assist law enforcement with the
use of wireless devices that can read license plate numbers. Many analysts
predict location-aware phones will have an important impact in the future,
despite critics who are skeptical about focusing on sophisticated
applications, which they say will take years to develop.
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Security Gurus Report on the State of Cybersecurity at
Demo 2006
ZDNet (02/08/06) Farber, Dan
John Patrick led a discussion on the state of security with Arizona State
University cryptography professor Partha Dasgupta, Shinkuro CTO Hillarie
Orman, and Charles Palmer of IBM Research at the recent Demo 2006. The
panelists all say that security problems are here to stay. Not all
computer users today know enough about computers and security. "Some
products and techniques are bringing security down to the mainstream to
protect people who can't protect themselves, said Dasgupta. "It's a cat
and mouse game, but we need to bring it to level we can live with it."
Palmer said part of the problem is that computers were not designed with
security in mind, and today's hackers are more motivated by financial gain
than ever before. Dasgupta suggested the use of PKI and smart cards as a
way to improve security, despite the reluctance from financial institutions
to use smart cards. The experts all agreed that smart cards are not
invulnerable, and that they can be used to extract data, which is a problem
for high value transactions. Dasgupta also said teaching programming
students how to write safe code is not done anymore, which causes problems.
Orman added that computer security started with a trusted operating system
and that is where it will return to. The panelists were also asked if they
thought the NSA could crack 128-bit encryption, and Dasgupta said the
answer is unknown. Other forms of security, such as biometrics, were
another popular topic of discussion.
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Chips That Really Get Under Your Skin
CNet (02/08/06) Krazit, Tom
At the recent International Solid State Circuits Conference, scientists at
the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology presented a chip
that is implanted in a user's forearm to function as an audio signal
transmission wire that links to an iPod. Many of the presentations
featured devices that conserved power, though this chip goes a step
further, harnessing the human body's natural conductive properties to
create personal-area networks. It is not practical to wire together the
numerous devices that people carry with them, and Bluetooth connections
fall prey to interference, leading scientists to explore the application of
the human body as a networking cable. The Korean scientists augmented an
iPod nano with their wideband signaling chip. When a user kept his finger
pressed to the device, it transmitted data at 2 Mbps, at a consumption rate
lower than 10 microwatts. Researchers from the University of Utah also
presented a chip that scans brainwave activity by wirelessly streaming data
through monitors in the hopes of creating prosthetics that quadriplegics
could operate with their brain waves, though both projects are still in the
preliminary research stages.
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Computer Senses User's Frustration
Discovery Channel (02/06/06) Staedter, Tracy
Researchers at Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Graphics in Rostock,
Germany, are developing technology that will put computers more in tune
with the feelings of its users; the team plans to demonstrate the
emotion-sensing tool at the CeBIT Exhibition in Hanover in March. The
emotion-sensing technology consists of a wireless electronic glove that
measures heart rate, blood pressure, and skin temperature, and transmits
the information to a base unit that stores it on a memory card and then
sends it to a computer database. Software has been developed to analyze
the data and find patterns that would indicate the emotional state of a
computer user. For example, the combination of rapidly rising heart rates
and the fall of skin temperature below a certain level may indicate that
computer users are not happy. And such a conclusion might prompt the
computer to tone down the background color of the screen, lower the volume
of background music, adjust graphics and the flow of information, or even
apologize. "With humans, somebody who ignores feelings of others is not
liked as much as somebody who shows some sort of emotional feedback," says
computer scientist Christian Peter. "Why should it be different with
computers?" Peter and his team are also developing a tool that uses a
regular Web cam to read the face of a computer user.
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Not Quite a Lie Detector But...
Excalibur Online (02/08/06) Vanderhart, Tessa
Researchers at Queen's University are testing a new spin detector program
on speeches delivered by Canadian politicians. Based on deception detector
research conducted at the University of Texas, the software is able to
identify "markers" such as exception words, negative emotion, actions, and
correlations to unusual syntax that are likely to suggest the use of
deceptive language. "We'll be able to label politicians who spin more
overtly," says David Skillicorn, a professor of computer science at Queen's
University who developed the algorithm. Skillicorn noted that the Liberals
party had the highest spin score of 124, but said that was likely the
result of their being the incumbent party. The NDP received a score of 88,
and the Conservatives used the least amount of spin, according to their
score of 73. The Queen's University researchers have also used the
computer program to analyze the email correspondence between Enron
employees. Communications specialists question the need for such
technology, and journalism experts say it is their job to determine when a
politician has resorted to using spin.
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Students Win Video Contest
The Poly Post (California State Polytechnic University) (02/07/06)
Sanchez, Melina
This year's Security Video Contest, sponsored jointly by EDUCASE/Internet2
Computer and Network Security Task Force and the National Cyber Security
Alliance, received 62 entries from students at 17 universities. The
contest, designed to promote cyber security awareness among college
students, divided the winners into two categories, one addressing the broad
spectrum of security issues, with the other focusing on one specific topic.
The $1,000 top prize in the single subject category went to California
State Polytechnic University's Johnson Chau, Kevin Atef, and Michael Wong
for a three-minute video detailing a scenario in which a fictional
character engages in online banking and dating and eventually falls prey to
a phishing scam. "The contest results show that the student community is a
talented resource that colleges and universities should tap to enhance
their security awareness programs," said Shirley Payne, security and
coordination policy director at the University of Virginia. The three Cal
Poly students had never been enrolled in a course together, but met through
the school's chapter of the IEEE's Students With an Interest in the Future
of Telecommunications program, which aims to prepare students for
networking and telecom careers. Selected for content, creativity, and
quality of information, the winning entries will be used on campuses
nationwide to promote cyber security.
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Student-Friendly GIS Leads to Real-World Science Inquiry
and Fulfills NRC Report's Recommendations
EurekAlert (02/08/06)
Schools throughout the United States are now using student-friendly
geographic information systems (GIS) software designed by researchers at
Northwestern University. The researchers designed My World GIS with the
needs of K-12 teachers and computing environments of schools in mind, in
bringing students dynamic and customizable mapping capabilities that will
allow them to see spatial patterns. "My World software's unique strength
is enabling students as young as middle school to visualize and analyze
geographic data," says Daniel Edelson, associate professor of education and
computer science at Northwestern. Edelson is also the director of
Northwestern's Geographic Data in Education Initiative (GEODE), and his
team designed My World GIS, which was first published in 2004. My World
GIS is a timely tool, considering the National Research Council recently
published a report that calls for using GIS to help students think
spatially. However, until now, GIS had only been designed for scientists
and was too complex for elementary and secondary school students. Edelson
and GEODE are studying whether GIS helps develop spatial reasoning
abilities, and whether there is an impact on how science and geographic
content is understood.
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They Saved the Internet's Soul
Wired News (02/08/06) Singel, Ryan
When the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the 1996 Communications Decency
Act (CDA) it preserved the Internet as the free-for-all space it is today.
This now has become a landmark case in recognizing the essential free
speech nature of the Internet, and it prevented the government from
imposing "decency" standards on the Internet that would have had a
wider-than-expected muzzling effect. The 1996 CDA made Web sites and ISPs
legally responsible for all content on their sites and services, and this
would have forced companies to severely limit message board postings,
blogs, and all sorts of content. The ACLU challenged the CDA in court and
won, though at the time no one knew whether the Supreme Court would see the
Internet as a zone of speech, or in terms of the licensing restrictions
imposed on television broadcasters. Center for Democracy and Technology
staff counsel John Morris remembers how back in 1996 the legal team
attacking the CDA had to bring computers into courts to educate judges
about the Internet. These days 75 percent of the U.S. population uses the
Internet to keep in touch, peruse news, download music, blog, and for other
purposes. However, a free and open Internet still faces threats. The U.S.
Justice Department plans to appeal an injunction preventing enforcement of
the 1998 Child Online Protection Act, and censorship by governments such as
China not only affect the Internet, but have influenced Google and
Microsoft to cooperate with their censorship relating to search-engine
users and bloggers, respectively.
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Sorting Out the Patent Craze
Working Knowledge (HBS) (02/06/06) Grant, Sara
Standard setting organizations (SSOs) face the responsibility of striking
a balance between the interests of consumers and the interests of sponsors
when facilitating widespread adoption of new technologies, and Harvard
Business School professor Josh Lerner explores how SSO certification
influences user acceptance of standards in his paper, "Certifying New
Technologies." Standards bodies cannot be one-sided, otherwise adoption
could be stifled by end users who feel the group is not giving their needs
due consideration. Lerner says the chief benefit of SSOs is their ability
to let tech companies coordinate with other firms much more easily than if
they had to negotiate individual contracts, thus lowering the odds that the
firms will practice opportunism. The professor comments that SSOs are more
likely to make deep commitments to standardization if people expect them be
effective standardizers. Conversely, initial skepticism about the group
severely reduces the likelihood of success. Among the most challenging
problems facing SSOs today is the courts' unwillingness to embargo
companies that manipulate the standard setting process for selfish reasons,
says Lerner. He notes, for instance, that patent applicants strategically
file divisional patents in an effort to shape their patents to changing
circumstances while keeping the priority date affiliated with the original
application.
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Researchers Fired Up Over New Battery
MIT News (02/08/06) Halber, Deborah
Researchers at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems
(LEES) have developed an application that could result in the first major
economically feasible alternative to the conventional battery since
Alessandro Volta's original design in the 19th century. LEES researchers
Joel Schindall, John Kassakian, and Ph.D. candidate Riccardo Signorelli
have developed a nanotube-based ultracapacitor that can hold the equivalent
charge of conventional batteries. Capacitors store energy electrically,
rather than the less efficient chemical reactions that provide energy to
batteries. Atomic-level electrical field storage improves the capacity of
current commercial ultracapacitors, which, having only recently become
economically viable, can be found in a host of electronic devices, such as
fuel-cell cars and computers. Much larger than conventional batteries,
ultracapacitors suffer from physical limitations that have severely
undercut their storage capacity, and the best models still hold roughly 25
times less energy than a comparably sized lithium-ion battery. The
vertical alignment of single-wall carbon nanotubes could overcome those
limitations, however. By aligning the nanotubes vertically, the LEES model
regulates the pore size of the carbon, and greatly reduces the surface
area. "This configuration has the potential to maintain and even improve
the high performance characteristics of ultracapacitors while providing
energy storage densities comparable to batteries," said Schindall.
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Darwin's Ideas Evolve Design
EE Times (02/06/06)No. 1409, P. 13; Brown, Chappell
Evolutionary principles are giving rise to new design approaches in such
diverse fields as bioinformatics and artificial systems, and researchers
believe these approaches will have a transformative effect on the field of
engineering. "We now realize that the processes of mutation and
selection--which in nature seemed to apply only to living forms--can also
be applied to inorganic realms," says Michigan State University professor
Richard Lenski. "I have become convinced that the wedding of biological
principles with engineering materials, both software and hardware, offers
tremendous potential for technology in many forms." John Koza cites 21
cases on his
www.genetic-programming.com Web site where genetic algorithms produced
results that competed with or outclassed the results in patented,
human-made designs--and even yielded patentable inventions in several
instances. Lenski explains that bioinformatics and computational biology
have vast potential for producing revolutionary breakthroughs at the point
where biology and computational science intersect, which he defines as
"experimental evolution and engineering." The growing momentum surrounding
the evolvable systems field stems from the increasing real-time flexibility
delivered by configurable chips. Computer scientists seeking effective
methods for modeling complex system behavior could get invaluable
assistance in the standardization of biological data so that a wide variety
of groups can access and share it. Merging standardization with the
Internet could lead to advances in comprehending fundamental life and
evolutionary principles.
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Now Hear This
New Scientist (02/04/06) Vol. 189, No. 2537, P. 44; Boyd, John
Researchers at Japan's Waseda University are working on robots capable of
more natural speech and interaction with people, and the potential
applications of such a breakthrough include reduced bandwidth load for cell
phone communications; improved control over artificial vocal cords for
people who cannot speak; and better tools for speech training and language
learning. The underlying goal of research into speaking robots is
understanding how the human brain controls speech actuators when people
talk: "What we don't clearly know is...how the different circuits in the
brain work together to produce speech sounds," says Waseda University
computer scientist Masaaki Honda. "And we won't understand it exactly
until we can reconstruct the brain circuitry and machinery of speech."
Honda is the creator of the Waseda Talker, a robot that produces human-like
speech sounds by pushing compressed air through an artificial vocal tract
equipped with motors that move the lips, tongue, and vocal cords. The
device is also outfitted with teeth and a nasal cavity. Key to the Talker
model's development over the years was the increasing flexibility of its
palate, tongue, and lips; with the addition of such elements as protruding
lips and a new control mechanism for the vocal cords, the Talker could
generate more natural-sounding speech. The robot can mimic certain words
by copying humans, with the help of sound analysis software. The machine
could one day mimic words on its own once researchers have developed a
computer model for voicing phonemes.
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Hidden in Plain Sight
Queue (02/06) Vol. 4, No. 1, P. 26; Cantrill, Bryan
A lack of software observability is responsible for lengthy and often
needless diagnosis of serious performance problems that usually have a
relatively simple root cause, according to Bryan Cantrill with Sun
Microsystems' Solaris Kernel Development Group. Software cannot manifest
itself physically, which means modifying the software is the only way to
observe the software being executed; but such constructs can slow down the
system by their very presence. Avoiding this scenario supports the paradox
that addressing performance problems seen in production requires
replicating the problems in either a development or test environment.
Cantrill also notes that performance problems are usually introduced at the
highest software abstraction layers, but are often first seen at and blamed
on the lowest abstraction layers. Therefore, it stands to reason that
unintentional or unnecessary work could be eliminated by moving up the
software stack to uncover underlying performance problems instead of
focusing on their cascading symptoms in the lower stack. Shifting the
observability infrastructure's focus from software development to
production and from programs to systems is Cantrill's solution, and it
requires the optimization of software when it ships, dynamic
instrumentation of the production system, and, above all, absolute safety
of the infrastructure. Sun's DTrace system was designed with dynamic
production system instrumentation in mind, and it offers the flexibility of
such instrumentation without sacrificing safety by drawing a line between
the system's manner of instrumentation and the framework that consumes the
data. "The architectural elements of DTrace--safe and heterogeneous
dynamic instrumentation, arbitrary actions and predicates, and scalable, in
situ data aggregation--allow for unprecedented observability of production
systems," Cantrill writes.
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