Audit Finds Many Faults in Cleveland's '06 Voting
New York Times (04/20/07) P. A20; Driehaus, Bob
Following a five month audit, Ohio's newly elected secretary of state
Jennifer L. Brunner ousted Cuyahoga Country's entire four-member Board of
Elections for numerous problems at polling places during the 2004 election.
Cuyahoga County, which includes Cleveland, experienced problems that
included lines at polls several hours long, poorly trained and absent poll
workers, polling places that opened late, and problems with electronic
voting machines. The audit found that some batches of ballots registered
in optical scan machines were scanned twice, producing a double count of
those ballots, and other ballots were deleted because of flawed data and
were never rescanned due to human error. The county used machines from
Diebold Election Systems and Microsoft's JET file-sharing database system,
which was known to have problems that could result in database corruption.
Microsoft's Scott Massey said any database is subject to corruption if a
connection is lost while a transfer is in process. Massey confirmed the
committee's finding that Microsoft recommended that a operation as large as
Cuyahoga County's should use a different system. Former ACM President
Barbara Simons said, "There is no excuse for Diebold's having used such an
insecure and unreliable database. There were far more reliable databases
available over 20 years ago." The audit committee has recommended
extensive changes, including eliminating either optical scanners or
touch-screen machines, to ensure future elections are less troublesome.
For information about ACM's e-voting activities, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm
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Women in Science: Good News, Bad News
Harvard University Gazette (04/19/07) Walker, Ruth
Speakers at Harvard's fourth National Symposium on the Advancement of
Women in Science noted that the number of women in many scientific fields,
particularly computer science, is dwindling, and funding for the
advancement of women in science is insufficient. Frances Allen, an IBM
Fellow Emerita at the T.J. Watson Research Laboratory and the first woman
to win ACM's A.M. Turning Award, said the structure and requirements in the
field of computer science are largely responsible for the lack of women
professionals in the field. When Allen started in the 1950s, before
computer science was truly an area of study, programming was open to people
from a wide range of backgrounds and easily accessible to anyone with any
interest. As the field matured and became more structured in the 1960s,
the industry started requiring engineering degrees, which tended to exclude
women. "The workplace changed immensely. And in my view, the field has
not recovered since," Allen said, calling the number of women in the field
a "tragedy." Lucy Sanders, co-founder and CEO of the National Center for
Women and Information Technology, said she was a "reluctant leader" when
she was offered an advancement opportunity at Bell Labs, but that although
leadership can be frightening, women should not be hesitant to accept the
challenge. "It's a great deal of fun. Something that will force you to
learn new skills," Sanders said to the crowd of about 110 female college
and high school students. "Please, please go after leadership positions."
To learn about ACM's Committee on Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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Congress Takes New Stab at Patent System Overhaul
CNet (04/18/07) Broache, Anne
The most recent attempt at Congressional patent reform may stand a better
change than previous efforts as the newest bill is being presented in a
more unified way, with co-sponsors from both parties and identical bills
being introduced simultaneously in both the House of Representatives and
the Senate. The lead sponsors of the bill, all chairmen of key committees
handling intellectual property issues, vowed that this year's effort will
be different, and the bill's backers want the measure to pass both chambers
and be signed into law within the next few months. One of the Senate
bill's chief sponsors, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., said it is time for
patent reform because current patent law was "crafted for an earlier time,
when smokestacks rather than microchips were the emblems of industry." The
bill aims to improve the patent system by establishing mechanisms designed
to eliminate bad or obvious patents, impose new limits on monetary damages
awarded in infringement lawsuits, and set up an alternative to litigation.
The bills also attempt to switch the patent system away from granting the
patent to the person who claims to have discovered the invention first,
which can be difficult to prove, for the more globally practiced system of
granting the patent to the first person to file an application. A number
of large hardware and software makers and Internet companies were quick to
praise the bill's approach. IBM's John Kelly said the bill "will help
maintain our country's innovation leadership, reduce excessive litigation
and damages awards, and improve patent quality."
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Lawmakers Call for E-Voting Paper Trails
IDG News Service (04/18/07) Gross, Grant
U.S. lawmakers are pushing to have paper printouts incorporated into
electronic voting systems to ensure there is a paper record of voting
results. In a highly contested congressional election in Florida, more
than 18,000 voters failed to cast ballots on e-voting machines, and the
Republican candidate won by fewer than 400 votes. Gracia Hillman, a member
of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, warned Congress not to rush
paper-trail requirements, as at least 180,000 direct recording electronic
machines across the country would have to be upgraded or replaced. Hillman
said introducing new equipment while trying to recruit and train poll
workers for a presidential election, which is only a year and a half away,
creates the possibility of colossal confusion. Missouri Secretary of State
Robin Carnahan called on Congress to create flexible time frames for any
changes in e-voting requirements, telling Congress not to create
expectations that are unobtainable for local election officials. Randolph
Hite, director of information technology architecture and systems for the
U.S. Government Accountability Office, said several groups have voiced
concerns about the security and reliability of electronic voting systems,
and called on federal, state, and local authorities to focus their
attention on correcting the very legitimate problems. An extensive GAO
review found that many jurisdictions did not use the most current voting
system standards, and many do not consistently monitor election
performance.
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Birdwatching Goes Hi-Tech With Online Video Camera
Game
UC Berkeley News (04/19/07) Yang, Sarah
University of California, Berkeley and Texas A&M University researchers
have developed Collaborative Observatories for Natural Environments-Sutro
Forest (CONE Sutro Forest), an online game that allows players to earn
points by taking live photos of birds, using a remotely controllable
robotic video camera and classifying the wilds birds they see. CONE Sutro
Forest uses a collaborative control interface that allows dozens of people
to simultaneously share control of the video camera, using highly
responsive algorithms to compute the optimal camera viewpoint to satisfy
players, according to UC Berkeley professor of engineering Ken Goldberg.
Goldberg, who developed the technology behind the game with Texas A&M
Dezhen Song, says the game now features a new relay server for faster and
more responsive video streaming, a database of images and biological
information about the wild birds likely to be spotted in the Sutro Forest,
and a scoring system that rewards players based on the rarity of the
photographed birds as other features of the game. Song said, "We hope that
this project increases public awareness about how technology can help with
natural observation."
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15 European Countries Sign Pact to Develop
High-Performance Computing
Innovations Report (04/18/07) Lau, Thomas
Fifteen countries in Europe recently agreed upon a Memorandum of
Understanding for a new initiative, "Partnership for Advanced Computing in
Europe," which is designed to strengthen science, engineering, and
supercomputing technologies in Europe. Thibaut Lery, Science Officer to
the European Science Foundation, said, "High-performance computing and
network-related services have become essential, not optional, to the
aspirations of research communities." The central project will build a new
supercomputer center with multiple, interconnected supercomputers,
estimated to cost about 400 million euros. The 15 countries with computer
centers involved in the project will cover most of the costs, with the
European Union aiding through the 7th Research Framework Programme. The
goal of the project is to provide scientists in Europe access to
supercomputers. The countries involved in the agreement include Austria,
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Spain,
Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom.
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Developments Needed in Software Design
Daily Reveille (04/18/07) Ette, Freke
Integrated input from other fields will be needed if software design is to
improve, independent IT consultant Alfred Spector said during a lecture at
Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge. He said the computer science
community currently focuses on programming code, adding that there needs to
be a research field just for software processing. "It is not a holistic
discipline studied in the same way as the classical humanities or
engineering," Spector said during a lecture entitled, "Towards a Software
Science of Design." According to Spector, software production has become
so complex, making a change in the approach to software design a necessity.
"A software science of design would facilitate software production by
helping to understand, codify, and integrate currently understood
approaches to design but also by creating better approaches and tools," he
added. Spector noted that not only does software production tend to be
late and over budget, but applications are often loaded with errors as
well.
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NASA to Test Portable Robot Surgeon
Associated Press (04/18/07) Blankinship, Donna Gordon
The University of Washington on Wednesday showed off Raven, a mobile
surgical robot that could be used to tend to wounded soldiers in war zones,
to perform complicated medical procedures in remote areas of developing
countries, and to nurse sick astronauts in space back to health. And next
month, Raven will be tested in the NASA-designed Aquarius Undersea
Laboratory off the coast of Florida to provide a simulation of operation in
zero gravity. The UW BioRobotics Lab enlisted the services of all kinds of
doctors, engineers, and computer scientists to develop Raven. "We've all
had to learn how to go into the different realms," says Jacob Rosen, an
associate professor who also serves as the co-director of the BioRobotics
Lab. Raven differs from robots that are currently used in hospitals in
terms of portability and communications. Breaking down and reconstructing
Raven will be easy enough for non-engineers to do, and the robot's portable
parts only weigh about 50 pounds. Raven can be controlled from miles away,
and doctors sitting in front of a computer and manipulating moveable metal
arms in Seattle will be providing the digital instructions during the May
7-18 underwater experiment.
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Internet2, NLR Update Their Merger Soap Opera
Network World (04/18/07) Duffy, Jim
Internet2 and National LambdaRail (NLR) have reopened negotiations for a
merger between the two organizations, an idea that for the past few years
has gone through a turbulent negotiation process. In July 2005, the two
organizations started thinking about a merger to reduce redundancies,
relieve the financial burden of universities funding multiple initiatives,
and help Internet2 develop its next-generation "Abilene" network, which is
leased from Qwest and expires in October 2007. In late 2006, negotiations
were called off because of governance issues and an "adversarial approach"
by both parties, according to NLR director Polley Ann McClure. Internet2
and NLR issued an update this week on their merger talks in which they
state that they have been working together again to "develop a plan for
leveraging the community's assets to create a national backbone
architecture that best serves the research and education community's
needs," wrote NLR and Internet2 chairs Tracy Futhey and Jeffery Lehman. A
Network Planning team will develop plans for the technical aspects of the
merger while a six-member Merger Planning Team, led by the two chairs, will
focus on the business aspects of the merger. The letter asks interested
parties to be patient during the merger, and to expect another update on
April 24 at the Internet2 Member Meeting.
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The Hard-Thought Race for Intelligent Gaming
Guardian Unlimited (UK) (04/19/07) P. 5; Gambotto-Burke, Alexander
Artificial intelligence (AI) in video games is widely considered to be
drastically different and far more rudimentary than AI in the academic and
technology research world, but video game developers are trying to
incorporate more sophisticated AI in video games to create more unique and
interactive experiences. Steve Grand is the creator of the Creatures AI
experiment, arguably one of the few games that actually used true AI to
teach characters in the game to eat, talk, and defend themselves. Grand
says AI in most games are actually "IF/THEN" statements, but developers are
realizing that what could pass as advanced AI in older games with
cartoon-like graphics is no longer acceptable now that graphics have
improved so dramatically. Peter Molyneux, developer of the upcoming game
Fable 2, believes that a hybrid approach toward game AI is necessary to
create both the dramatic, emotional experience players are expecting and
the interactive, learning video game characters needed to match the rest of
video game technology. Grand believes that video games can benefit AI
research. "I think it's probably the best environment for AI that exists,
at least until we've cracked some of the huge problems that are holding
back robotics," Grand says. "When you write a game, your only
responsibility is to be entertaining. It's not a mission-critical
environment, so this gives you plenty of scope for new ideas."
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Modified Ink Printer Churns Out Electric Circuits
New Scientist (04/18/07) Simonite, Tom
Leeds University researchers printed electronic circuits using a standard
Hewlett Packard ink-jet printer loaded with a solution of metal salts and
water. After printing a pattern with the metal salts solution, an ascorbic
acid (vitamin C) reducing agent was printed over the pattern to make solid
silver form. The technique was used to print a variety of circuits and
radio antennas on different surfaces, including paper, cotton, and acetate.
Desktop printers make tiny dots that bleed slightly into each other
instead of overlapping, so multiple printings on the same circuit were
needed to ensure conductivity. Graham Martin from the University of
Cambridge said that ink-jet technology could make new kinds of devices
possible, but it will be difficult to compete with existing technology, as
it may be difficult to lower the resistance on printed circuits to current
standards. Martin believes that ink-jet printing has a future, because
circuit boards are currently made by cutting a design out of a layer of
metal, which is a more intensive process requiring more energy.
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Wireless Wises Up
Computerworld (04/16/07) Anthes, Gary
Software-defined radios and cognitive radios could make wireless networks
far more powerful and useful. Software-defined radio (SDR) replaces a
significant potion of the hardware in radio frequency devices such as cell
phones, GPS units, and wireless laptops with software, giving these devices
new functions and capabilities, such as switching from a cell phone to a FM
radio receiver to a GPS unit at the command of the user or even by remote
control. Cognitive radios go a step further and are actively aware of the
surrounding environment. Cognitive radios can automatically switch between
frequencies to find the best available frequency, and have the ability to
remember locations and connections. An example might be a GPS-equipped
cell phone remembering an area as being a dead spot and then searching for
an alternative communication path when in that area again. Andrew Lippman,
the leader of the Viral Communications Group at the MIT Media Lab, says
cognitive radios can even work in tandem with one another, rather than
communicating only with a central router, server, or cell tower, and can
determine the most effective route to send a signal. The radios act like a
bucket brigade, carrying messages along from one to the next, with signal
strength decreasing when the units are closer to one another to save
energy.
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UMass Researchers Spotting Weak Links on Distributed
Nets
Network World (04/09/07) Dubie, Denise
A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst has
developed a computer-based tool that will allow government agencies and
companies to measure how vulnerable their large distributed networks are to
a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. With the measurement tool, users
will be able to rank their managed nodes and links in terms of usage and
vulnerability. "Previous measures ignored how users of networks would
readjust subject to a failure and could not rank nodes and links in a
reasonable way," says Anna Nagurney, a UMass professor and director of the
Virtual Center for Supernetworks at the university's Isenberg School of
Management. Users also will be able to determine the level of loss in
efficiency of network components and links that have been damaged, and
measure user readjustment after a disruption. "We expect that the measure
will have a wide practical use also in peacetime since it provides a
quantifiable way in which to identify which network components should be
best maintained based on actual usage and costs," notes Nagurney.
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UW-Madison Launches New High-Speed Research
Network
Wisconsin Technology Network (04/16/07) Plas, Joe Vanden
The University of Wisconsin-Madison has developed a network that is 20,000
times faster than a typical home broadband connection. The Broadband
Optical Research, education, and Sciences Network, or BOREAS-Net, runs a
loop of fiber-optic cable between UW-Madison, Iowa State University, the
University of Iowa, and the University of Minnesota. BOREAS-Net was
created in response to federal granting agencies demanding improved
computing power and research collaboration between institutions of higher
learning. Ed Meachen, associate vice president of learning and information
technology for the University of Wisconsin System, said the new network
will improve connectivity for researchers as well as satisfy the demands
for an improved network infrastructure from grant agencies. UW-Madison's
CIO Ken Frazier said any outage in the BOREAS-Net loop, which features
links to Internet2 in Chicago and Kansas City, Mo., would be essentially
unnoticed because traffic would be instantly rerouted to the other access
point. Frazier added that this redundancy and overall capacity is
extremely attractive to organizations issuing research grants that rely on
state-of-the-art network service.
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Too Soon for Definitive Standards?
SD Times (04/15/07)No. 172, P. 34; Feinman, Jeff
The technologies undergirding mashups need further refinement before
definitive standardization can take place, according to the World Wide Web
Consortium and others. Dan Gisolfi of IBM argues that mashup technologies
are still in a very innovative phase, which suggests that "the need for
consolidation isn't necessarily there yet." The bulk of mashups are
founded on HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, notes chair of the W3C's data access
working group Lee Feigenbaum. Gleaning Resource Descriptions from Dialects
of Languages (GRDDL) and the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language
(SPARQL) can play an important role in the generation of mashups, despite
the fact that neither technology has specifically emerged as a mashup
standard. Whereas many current mashups are based on screen-scraping, GRDDL
can provide a RDF representation based on transformation algorithms, which
are usually XSLT-formatted. SPARQL, meanwhile, can be used by a mashup
creator to basically define his or her API, explains Feigenbaum. The W3C
placed SPARQL a few steps away from final recommendation as a standard, but
downgraded the technology to working draft status because of a "few bugs,"
says Feigenbaum. But SPARQL could soon become fully recommended because
Feigenbaum says he and his team are planning to publish the spec's last
full draft by the end of April.
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Float Like a Robot Butterfly
New Scientist (04/14/07) Vol. 194, No. 2599, P. 26; Marks, Paul
Miniature robots that fly and hover using architectures patterned after
the aerodynamic principles of insect flight are being developed by
researchers such as the University of Bristol's Andrew Conn, California
Institute of Technology engineer Michael Dickinson, and University of
California, Berkeley microsystems engineer Ronald Fearing. The first
challenge engineers face is producing enough lift, which insects accomplish
by beating their wings down and forward at a rapid clip, and then spinning
them back and upward. Conn revealed at a recent conference in Glasgow a
hummingbird-sized wing mechanism propelled by two motorized, rocking cranks
that mimic the beating/rotating movement of insect wings and facilitate
more maneuverability, although the device's weight currently prevents
liftoff. Dickinson's team, meanwhile, is focusing on the wing dynamics of
flies and honeybees to research the theory that a microsized robotic
aircraft would fly more successfully by imitating the flexing of the
insect's thorax, a schematic adopted by Fearing for his Micromechanical
Flying Insect (MFI). The MFI prototype has a "thorax" and wings stimulated
by a pair of piezoelectric actuators driving a jointed carbon fiber
mechanism, while the thorax flexes via a hinge that links the thorax to the
wings and allows it to impel their beating/rotating motion. Fearing
originally modeled the MFI's flight after that of a fly, but switched to a
bee configuration to attain more lift. The robots must be engineered to
remain stable and land safely by emulating the way bugs monitor the
"optical flow" of surrounding surfaces, and Fearing thinks the addition of
a fisheye lens and a light-sensitive chip will help address this need.
Mechanical bugs could boast more maneuverability than miniature versions of
conventional aircraft or helicopters.
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NASA Invites Open-Source Partners
Federal Computer Week (04/16/07) Vol. 21, No. 9, P. 10; Robinson, Brian
NASA is inviting the open-source community to help create Web 2.0
collaboration software for space exploration under the auspices of the
upcoming CosmosCode project. NASA launched the project by issuing a
request for quotations for Partnership Software that would help facilitate
online collaboration between the agency and entrepreneurial partners.
Developed applications will serve as a module in a content management
system to be used by NASA during a June conference at the Ames Research
Center, and the agency will later issue the software to the open-source
community for additional refinement. The NASA Open Source Agreement is the
only government license listed on the Open Source Initiative's tally of
sanctioned licenses. NASA already has several dozen open-source
applications; NASA computer scientist Patrick Moran notes that NASA's World
Wind, which can display zoomable satellite images of any location, is one
such application. He thinks contractural problems and cultural
intransigence will hinder a stampede to develop open-source software
despite the government's enthusiastic use of it. "I am super enthused to
see NASA recognize that open source is the way to go for collaboration
tools," said Gallagher. "Open source will be the dominant model for
e-government inside of five years."
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The Memory Hacker
Popular Science (04/07) Vol. 270, No. 4, P. 66; Handelman, Stephen
Memory restoration and a cure for cognitive dysfunction could be the key
benefits of an implantable device designed to re-create thought, which
University of Southern California neuroscientist Ted Berger has been
developing for the past decade. The project is in an early phase, but has
reached an important milestone with the creation of a chip that is able to
converse with live rat brain cells; Berger believes his concept is viable
because cognitive dysfunction is, in his words, "essentially a
signal-processing problem." Among the agencies underwriting Berger's
project are the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of
Health, the Pentagon's Office of Naval Research, and the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency. Making the chip bidirectional--a sender as well
as a receiver--is the major challenge Berger's team faces. The effort
dovetails with Berger's long-term goal to reduce higher brain functions to
a simple set of mathematical equations. The memory chip is designed to
redirect sensory input--sound, sight, taste, etc.--around damaged
hippocampal tissue by mathematically mimicking the functions of the injured
neurons; the input signals would be intercepted, digitized, and processed
by the chip, which would then convert them back to analog signals and
reroute them back into the hippocampus. Among the technical challenges is
devising a technique for reducing the heat output of the implant's
transistors to prevent damage to healthy brain cells. Berger's work has
courted controversy, with ethicists warning that the memory chip could
shatter concepts of identity and alter healthy memories. Director of
Dartmouth College's Neukom Institute for Interdisciplinary Computational
Scientists Richard H. Granger Jr. is convinced that "replicating memory is
going to happen in our lifetimes, and that puts us on the edge of being
able to understand how thought arises from tissue--in other words, to
understand what consciousness really means."
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