Association for Computing Machinery, IEEE Computer
Society Award Computer Architecture Honors to James H. Pomerene
AScribe Newswire (07/10/06)
ACM and the IEEE Computer Society presented the 2006 Eckert-Mauchly Award
to James H. Pomerene at the International Symposium on Computer
Architecture last month in Boston. The top award of the computer
architecture community was created to honor researchers who have helped
advance computer and digital systems architecture, and Pomerene is a
pioneer in the field. Pomerene was an early contributor to the concepts of
cache, reliable memories, pipelining, and branch prediction. He was the
chief engineer when the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J.,
built the first electronic digital computer in the early 1950s, and helped
IBM unveil the first supercomputer in 1962 and an early parallel machine in
1965. The Parallel Network Digital Computer (PNDC) led to his advances in
highly available memory systems. The holder of 17 patents, Pomerene is the
author and co-author of a number of technical papers. The Eckert-Mauchly
Award comes with a $5,000 prize. For more information about the
Eckert-Mauchly Award, visit
http://awards.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=0261910&srt=year&year=2006&aw=148&ao=E
CKMAUCH
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Data Miners Dig a Little Deeper
USA Today (07/12/06) P. 1B; Kessler, Michelle; Acohido, Byron
Many companies are using sophisticated data-mining techniques to compile
information about their customers that are so advanced many people may not
even know that they are being monitored. In an effort to remain
competitive with their online counterparts, brick-and-mortar stores are
ramping up their own data-collection initiatives. Companies claim that
they preserve their customers' privacy by using information responsibly.
Yahoo!, for instance, maintains a ban on selling information from its
customer registration lists, and Microsoft claims that it only purchases
average income data by ZIP code, rather than individuals' specific earning
histories. But corporate data-mining activities pose a problem for privacy
advocates. "How can you provide that kind of useful information without
violating the privacy of individuals?" asks Stanford University professor
Hector Garcia-Molina, who is developing tools to prevent databases from
collecting too much information. Registered Yahoo! users, for instance,
should know that their every move within the company's network is being
monitored so that it can better target its advertising placements. Online
retailers use cookies to track their customers' Web-surfing histories.
Brick-and-mortar retailers collect basic customer profiles through loyalty
cards. As companies amass ever-greater troves of information, the demand
for data-mining software is on the rise, with sales up 30 percent since
2000. IBM's Jeff Jonas, who developed a software application that can
identify patterns in relationships between people, a program that has been
widely used by Las Vegas casinos, believes that the answer to privacy
advocates' concerns is better disclosure. "I would like to do business
with companies who are using my data the way I expect them to," he says.
"I want to avoid surprise."
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Election Corrections
U.S. News & World Report (07/09/06) Brush, Silla
Nearly six years after the disastrous 2000 election, and four years after
the passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), significant problems
remain in the nation's voting systems, despite the expenditure of billions
of dollars to replace outdated equipment. "We've made some substantial
progress," said House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), who co-sponsored
the 2002 election reform law, "but there is a lot left to be done." Much
of the $3.8 billion earmarked under HAVA went to replace lever and
punch-card machines, though $800 million has yet to be appropriated.
Thanks to the new systems, around 1 million votes were recorded in 2004
that would not have been counted in 2000, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology
Project found. While the improvements may be cause for celebration, the
security flaws that have accompanied the new machines have touched off a
fierce debate among lawmakers, election officials, and security experts.
In at least seven states, activists have filed lawsuits to block the use of
e-voting machines that do not produce a verifiable paper trail. With the
passage of legislation requiring voter-verified paper trails, 26 states
have tried to put security concerns to rest, though a recent study by the
Brennan Center for Justice at New York University found that the three most
commonly used systems are vulnerable to more than 120 security threats,
such as implanting malicious software in a machine via a wireless device.
Another HAVA provision, the creation of statewide voter databases to ensure
that no eligible voters are left off the registration lists, has taken a
backseat to the security debate, though it too has turned out to be costly
and time-consuming to implement. The absence of national oversight of the
election process is also troubling, as the U.S. Election Assistance
Commission, created under HAVA, is still struggling to solidify its funding
and authority. For information on ACM's e-voting activites and recent
report visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Trust in Global Computing
IST Results (07/12/06)
The same security concerns that plague the Internet also threaten to
undermine the promise that access to distributed mobile resources holds for
global computing. To shore up global-computing resources, researchers
working under the MYTHS project have developed "type-based" theories that
express an unvarying aspect of a program or code. "Your piece of software,
alone and out there in the wild, doesn't know who to trust and who not!"
says project coordinator Vladimiro Sassone. "That is why closed networks
exist. In a global computing environment you do not have the reassurance
of a closed network--you are dealing with agents that you cannot trust."
Software agents face their greatest challenge in environments where they
have limited information--environments where other agents might not be
trustworthy. Improved security will be essential for the ongoing
development of the Internet and agent-based services. Domains will have to
restrict agents' access, while agents themselves will need to guard against
attacks. Type-based security can be verified simply by inspecting the
code, while in other applications the programs must actually be executed to
ensure security, according to Sassone. The MYTHS researchers concentrated
on the fundamental aspects of programming languages and the core elements
that enable static detection of security violations. The team developed
methods to control resource access, conduct crypto-protocol analysis, and
manipulate XML data.
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University Gets NSF Grant to Figure Out Rubik's
Cube
Computerworld (07/10/06) Fisher, Sharon
Researchers in the computer science and electrical and computer
engineering departments at Northeastern University in Boston are getting 20
TB of storage as a result of a $200,000 grant from the National Science
Foundation. The grant will give them access to five times more storage
capacity than they normally have for a single project. Gene Cooperman,
director of the Institute for Complex Scientific Software, will use the
large storage space to study how Rubik's Cubes can serve as a model for the
combinatorial problems that arise in science and operations research.
"Operations research is about efficiently using resources," says Cooperman.
"The Rubik's Cube is the same kind of mathematical problem." He believes
his findings will be helpful in addressing operations research problems
with business applications, such as helping to discover the best way to
deliver goods to consumers. Other Northeastern researchers will use the
storage space for a security project that will involve tracking electronic
messages to look for security-related trends and indicators in magnetic
resonance imaging scans, analyzing viruses, and creating a honeypot
computer to lure hackers.
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Design Automation Conference Professional Development
Fund to Award More Than $165,000
Business Wire (07/10/06)
The electronic design automation (EDA) industry will award more than
$165,000 in professional development funds to professionals and students in
the EDA field during the 43rd Design Automation Conference (DAC). Up to
seven high school students from underrepresented groups in computer
science, computer engineering, or electrical engineering will receive
$4,000 each year, renewable for up to five years, through the P.O. Pistilli
Advancement in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering Program. ACM's
Special Interest Group on Design Automation (ACM/SIGDA) will join DAC and
EDAC in contributing $42,000 through the SIGDA/DAC University Booth Program
to help the university community travel to DAC and set up demonstrations of
EDA tools and projects. Also, the Young Student Support Program will
provide $28,000 for registration fees, banquet tickets, and the travel
expenses of students attending industry events; the DAC Graduate
Scholarships Program will provide $48,000; and the DAC/ISSCC Student Design
Contest will award more than $19,000 for promising electronic systems.
Over the past 12 years, DAC and its supporting societies have awarded more
than $3.57 million in professional development funds. "DAC has a strong
commitment to supporting continuing education through the professional
development fund," says 2005 DAC Chair William Joyner, overseer of the DAC
Professional Development Fund. "It has a tremendous impact on the EDA
community and helps contribute to the future success of the industry." DAC
is scheduled for July 24-28, 2006, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.
For more information on DAC, or to register, visit
http://www.dac.com/43rd/index.html
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SIGGRAPH 2006 in Boston: New Technology Corrects Blurry
Photographs
Business Wire (07/11/06)
Top researchers will present a method for transforming a seriously blurred
photograph into a clear image during ACM's SIGGRAPH 2006, the 33rd
International Conference and Exhibition on Computer Graphics and
Interactive Techniques. The ground-breaking technology will be presented
as part of the SIGGRAPH 2006 Papers Program, which is scheduled to open
July 31, 2006 at 8:30 a.m. and end Aug. 3 at 5:30 p.m. The research paper,
"Removing Camera Shake From a Single Photograph," will be presented
Tuesday, Aug. 1, at 3:45 p.m. Photographic examples of the technique,
which assumes a uniform blur of an image and negligible in-plane camera
rotation, are available upon request. Camera shake and image blur ruin the
photographs of millions of people each year. SIGGRAPH 2006 will be held in
Boston from July 30 through Aug. 3. The conference and exhibition are
expected to attract nearly 25,000 computer graphics and interactive
technology professionals from around the world. For more information about
SIGGRAPH, or to register, visit
http://www.siggraph.org/s2006/
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Game on: UCSC Will Offer Video Game Design Major This
Fall
Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA) (07/11/06) King, Matt
Starting this fall, the University of California, Santa Cruz, will offer a
major in computer game design, earning students a bachelor's degree in
computer science. The program, the first of its kind to be offered in the
UC system, will teach students about the technical, narrative, and artistic
aspects of interactive games. "Millions now play massively multi-player
online games, which constitute a new cultural force," said Warren Sack,
assistant professor of film and digital media at UCSC. "Digital media
courses will provide students with the tools they need to understand this
cultural transformation." The new program is also seen as a way to boost
enrollment in the school's computer science program. UCSC is developing a
new lab to support the program, and has recruited renowned game-design
professor Michael Mateas. With the video-game industry having tripled in
the last decade, EA Sports is having difficulty finding qualified
candidates to fill its positions, according to company spokeswoman Tammy
Schacter. As the gaming industry continuously expands into areas such as
education and cell phones, a solid background in computer science and game
design could lead to a stable and well-paying job, according to Ailive's
John Funge. Though gaming has grown into a $7 billion industry, some still
consider the field frivolous. "That was a big concern for us," said Ira
Pohl, chair of the computer science department. "I think the thing that
mediates that is that the program is what we call computer-science heavy.
We're creating a new degree that has the right amount of artistic
creativity with rigorous computer science."
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This Is a Computer on Your Brain
Wired News (07/12/06) Sandhana, Lakshmi
Working under DARPA funding, researchers at Columbia University have
developed a new brain-computer-interface technology that could enable
people to search through images 10 times faster than human capacity will
allow. DARPA says the technology, known as C3 Vision, or the cortically
coupled computer vision system, will make the job of federal agent easier
by allowing them to rapidly process hours of video footage. The system
taps into the ability of the brain to recognize an image far more quickly
than the person can identify it. "Our human visual system is the ultimate
visual processor," said Paul Sajda, director of the Laboratory for
Intelligent Imaging and Neural Computing at Columbia University. "We are
just trying to couple that with computer-vision techniques to make
searching through large volumes of imagery more efficient." The signal
that the brain emits when it observes something of interest can be detected
by an electroencephalogram. The technology, which ranks images according
to the neural signatures the brain emits as users comb through video
footage or streaming images, is the first computer-vision system that links
to the human brain. "The major weakness of computer-vision systems today
is their narrow range of purpose," said Steven Gordon, professor of
information systems and technology at Babson College. While existing
computer systems are largely unable to spot suspicious activities, humans
are quite skilled at detecting them. The system's strength comes from the
synergistic combination of computer vision and human cortical vision.
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Open Source Casts New Mold for Type Design
CNet (07/11/06) Shankland, Stephen
Though traditionally devoted to programming, the open-source movement has
also been extended to type design. Partnering with the GNOME Foundation,
Bitstream released a font family called Vera in 2003. Intended for
open-source use, Vera was available for anyone to use to create their own
type, so long as the result was given a different name. Though Vera now is
essentially dormant, one of its derivatives, DejaVu, has become the default
font for the latest update to Ubuntu Linux, Dapper Drake, and it could soon
be adopted as the default for Red Hat's Fedora. "DejaVu, from purely a
user perspective, seems to be the one that has the momentum and benefits
behind it," said Rahul Sundaram, a board member for the Fedora Project.
Fonts are typically proprietary designs belonging to foundries, though
developers working to improve GNOME and other graphical applications in an
attempt to make Linux an increasingly viable alternative to Windows
recognize the importance of having their own fonts. Updated monthly,
DejaVu has characters that support a host of international languages,
including Chinese, Cyrillic, and Arabic. Stepan Roh launched the DejaVu
project in March 2004 because Vera was missing certain glyphs that he
needed for the Czech language. Like many open-source projects, DejaVu
began with its creator developing small programs that automated the work of
others, and gradually a community developed. "Whenever I heard about or
found a new Vera derivative and decided that it was worth merging (because)
it had superior design or superior glyph coverage, I asked the author for
permission," Roh said.
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WPI to Host Gathering of Indoor Personnel Location and
Tracking Experts
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (07/07/06)
Early next month, Worcester Polytechnic Institute will host a conference
for researchers in the emerging field of indoor personnel location and
tracking. Indoor positioning tracking has proved a unique challenge, as
the signals from GPS satellites, though capable of pinpointing one's
location to within a few feet, have trouble inside buildings, where their
accuracy is degraded by bouncing off walls and other surfaces. The WPI's
personnel location and tracking research group is developing radio and
radar technology to determine the location of first responders inside
buildings. The participants in the August workshop will include
representatives from private industry, academia, and government agencies.
Among the technological solutions the workshop attendees are investigating
are enhanced GPS, inertial navigation and dead reckoning, which tracks
direction and distance using gyroscopes and accelerometers, and RFID,
though each technology has its drawbacks. Enhanced GPS, which augments GPS
satellite signals with other positioning information, such as cell phone
towers, has yet to achieve the level of accuracy required by first
responders. The gyroscopes used in inertial navigation must be frequently
realigned. RFID applications can only be used inside buildings that have
preinstalled monitoring stations. The WPI research group is developing an
alternative system that exploits the principles of orthogonal frequency
division multiplexing (OFDM), which relays high-speed data over both wired
and wireless channels, and integrates into the radio spectrum. First
responders would wear transmitters that continuously emit OFDM signals,
while vehicles surrounding the building would be equipped with receivers to
detect and decipher the signals through complex, custom-made algorithms.
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The Shirt That Checks Your Heart, the Hat That Checks
Your Brain
Financial Times Survey (07/12/06) P. 6; Cane, Alan
The concept of the wearable computer, a notion that dates to the
wristwatch, has gotten new life as state-of-the-art electroconductive
materials can now be woven directly into fabric. The sleeve of a
firefighter's jacket could emit a warning of toxic materials, or a person's
sweater could generate a feeling of warmth when a call comes from a loved
one, for instance. Wearable computing could have unintended consequences
for society, however, warns British Telecom's Robin Mannings. The mobile
phone is the first ubiquitous platform for wearable computing, according to
MIT Media Lab's Sandy Pentland. "With telecom operators' revenues from
voice services dropping quickly, everyone is looking for digital data
services to stoke growth. The model of a wearable computer is exactly
that...and it is working." Pentland cites the migration of Google Maps,
email, and digital cameras toward the mobile space, as well as the
emergence of devices such as Oakley Bluetooth glasses. The interface,
rather than the actual processors, has become the signature feature of
consumer electronic devices, says Ken Blakeslee, chairman of Webmobility
Ventures. Style is therefore an important aspect of new technologies,
Blakeslee believes. "People don't want to be seen carrying chunks of
technology." Medicine and health could see the most important applications
of wearable computing technology, many experts believe, though privacy
advocates are concerned about the prospect of devices that could track a
person's movements around the clock.
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New Agreement With Leading Chinese University Will
Strengthen Indiana's IT Efforts
Indiana University (07/10/06)
Indiana University and China's Tsinghua University have joined forces in a
collaborative research project to focus on student exchanges and broadening
global adoption of the Internet for scientific research. Tsinghua is
considered by many to be the MIT of China because its students rank at the
top of a rigorous admissions process. The partnership is expected to
attract more funding for Indiana's supercomputing and
information-technology projects, as well as bringing some of China's
premier science and IT students to Indiana for advanced study. That, in
turn, should help draw more U.S. students into technical programs. The
partnership also establishes research projects in engineering, management,
and security for high-speed broadband networks, particularly those that
scientists rely on to transfer large volumes of data. Just as Indiana
oversees the Internet2 network, Tsinghua manages a similar system known as
CERNET. "Managing these networks is a complex and difficult matter," said
Indiana Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Michael
McRobbie. "IU and Tsinghua both have expertise in these areas, and we want
to work together jointly in solving the problems that arise in the
operation of international high-performance networks." The two
universities are in the preliminary stages of conducting a joint
China-United States conference on network security that will attempt to
develop international standards on combating viruses, worms, and other
Internet-born threats.
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Duke Professors Investigate Military Computing
Challenges
Duke University News & Communications (07/11/06) Todd, James
Twelve computer science and engineering professors recently spent a day at
Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., as part of a Defense Department program
aimed at introducing junior professors to the technical challenges that the
military faces. The Computer Science Study Panel (SC2P) brings scholars
from a variety of universities to military bases and provides briefings on
the military's current and projected uses of technology. "They're getting
good briefings and displays on a variety of operations," said retired Lt.
Gen. Peter Kind. Duke University computer science professor Ronald Parr
said that one of his objectives was to identify the military's research
priorities. Parr noted the gap between the military's short-term
requirements and the long-term research that is conducted in university
labs, citing his own work developing algorithms for robotic navigation of
unfamiliar territory. While it might not fundamentally alter researchers'
methods, CS2P gives participating professors a sense of how their work
could be practically applied in military settings. DARPA also allows each
participant to apply for a $500,000 research grant.
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Swiss Ponder Future Role of the Internet
Swissinfo (07/08/06) Allen, Matthew
A group of Swiss Internet experts has developed a series of proposals for
the UN-supported Internet Governance Forum (IGF) to consider at its
inaugural meeting this October, though some are concerned that the forum
lacks the clout to exact any substantive changes or that its influence
could be undermined by politically motivated groups. The concept of the
IGF was born at last year's UN World Summit on the Information Society
(WSIS) out of concerns that the United States plays too dominant a role in
the maintenance of the Web through its control of ICANN. Swiss diplomat
Markus Kummer warns against rehashing the same political concerns at this
October's meeting, however. "IGF's first meeting should not get lost in
procedural debates, repeat WSIS debates, or turn into a diplomatic
conference," he said. Instead, he hopes that the meeting will provide a
chance to work through the difficult issues of copyright, security, access,
and the language of the Internet. Providing financial and technological
assistance to developing countries looking to gain access to the Internet
will likely be another issue at the top of the conference's agenda.
Participants at a recent conference at Zurich's Federal Institute of
Technology expressed their skepticism at the ability of a UN conference to
carve through the debate and reach concrete decisions, particularly at a
conference that will be addressing so many complex issues. "I hope that
this will not be just another UN forum at which people find it easy to talk
but difficult to reach decisions," said Wolf Ludwig of the Swiss Platform
for the Information Society. "I am not sure the IGF really has the means
to exert pressure on governments which is why we have to make the
governance of the Web site a public issue."
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Tangled Net
National Journal (07/08/06) Vol. 38, No. 27, P. 28; Clark, Drew
The telephone/cable sector and Internet companies are on opposite sides
over the issue of network neutrality, and have collectively spent over $50
million in making their respective cases before Congress. Net neutrality
is the idea that carriers should be regulated by the government to ensure
that their networks are open to traffic from all broadband content
providers. The phone and cable companies claim such a measure goes against
the principles of the free market and the trend toward deregulation, while
their Internet company counterparts say a lack of net neutrality encourages
discriminatory pricing that hurts competition and the innovation that comes
with an open Internet. The Bell companies promised not to block traffic on
the Internet by agreeing to adhere to connectivity principles established
by the High Tech Broadband Coalition, but at the heart of the net
neutrality debate is the issue of whether those companies can set up an
Internet "fastlane" into which the content of companies willing to pay the
toll could be diverted, leaving the rest stuck in slower lanes. Internet
companies that were already paying network operators a heavy bandwidth fee
saw a two-tiered system as a vehicle for extortion, and harbored fears that
it would give operators the keys to the Internet, empowering them to hinder
or even destroy entrepreneurial firms through discrimination. Bells do not
want net neutrality rules to be established out of concern that they would
threaten their ability to gain a national video franchise without going
through municipal regulators. The Senate Commerce Committee recently
passed a telecom reform bill that contained no net neutrality provisions,
but a lawmaker has promised to block the measure with a filibuster on the
basis of the provision's absence. Amazon's Paul Misener warns that "the
phone and cable companies will fundamentally alter the Internet in America
unless Congress acts to stop them." However, Cisco Systems' Jeff Campbell
counters that the Bells simply "want the freedom to be able to negotiate
commercial deals."
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The Plot to Hijack Your Computer
BusinessWeek (07/17/06)No. 3993, P. 40; Elgin, Ben; Grow, Brian
IT-Harvest estimates that spyware accounts for 11 percent of all Internet
ad business, but its method of attracting business--by surreptitiously
installing advertising programs, which then cause pop-ups to appear on the
screen and inhibit, even cripple, the computer's performance--has
engendered a great deal of public scorn and triggered a lawsuit by New York
Attorney General Elliot Spitzer against one spyware company for false
advertising, trespassing, and computer tampering. It is feared that
spyware and its practitioners could seriously, perhaps irreparably tarnish
the online ad industry. Critics charge that the people who run spyware
companies--one of the most infamous being Direct Revenue, which Spitzer's
lawsuit targets--are greedy opportunists who cynically exploit consumers,
as demonstrated by widescale ignorance of consumer complaints. Spitzer
says he discovered instances in which Direct Revenue spyware was downloaded
with misleading user agreements or a complete lack of disclosure. Though
Direct Revenue has made reforms, notably dropping its most devastating
spyware programs, as verified by computer security firms and anti-spyware
activists, the company is still considered to be the root cause of many
irritations. Trend Micro spyware research manager Anthony Arnott reports
that Direct Revenue is still rated by the public to be one of the 10
most-despised spyware firms. Savvy consumers can lower the risk of their
systems getting infected by spyware by using widely available security
software and avoiding online offers of free products.
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Mobile Web Services: A New Agent-Based Framework
Internet Computing (06/06) Vol. 10, No. 3, P. 58; Adacal, Mustafa; Bener,
Ayse B.
Mustafa Adacal and Ayse Bener of Bogazici University propose an
agent-based mobile services framework designed to adapt Web services to
mobile environments through the use of wireless portal networks, the
elimination of XML processing on mobile clients, and the provision of
dynamic service selection and quick application development and
implementation for Web service providers. The framework retains the
standard Web service architecture's three core supports--a service
provider, requestor, and registry--with the addition of a service broker, a
workflow engine, and a mobile Web service agent to bring the scheme into
compliance with wireless portal networks and address the processing
overhead on mobile devices as well as the data load on wireless connections
with restricted bandwidth. Adacal and Bener split the framework's
operational model into three processes: Service development and
publication, service discovery, and service execution. Experiments with
several test applications demonstrate that the removal of XML processing on
mobile clients and SOAP-message transfer over wireless connections yield
improved response time and data load. However, Adacal and Bener deduce
that the framework has two shortcomings--a lack of support for background
processing and the preparation needed due to the framework's receipt of
user input from a Web page. The researchers are currently focused on
inserting an interface layer into their framework, and one possibility
under investigation is a way to integrate interface modules within the
workflow document.
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