ACM/IEEE Seek CC2001 Curriculum Recommendations
ACM (04/27/07) Apt, Allan
The distressing drop in student enrollment in computer science throughout
the U.S. has, in part, prompted the need to reevaluate the current CS
curriculum. ACM and the IEEE are asking for industry feedback on the 2001
Computing Curriculum, hoping this insight will help better define the
opportunities the field offers and draw more student interest. The recent
plunge in student interest in computing has been accompanied by criticism
of the relevance of the current curriculum to critical job skills. The ACM
Education Board and the IEEE Computer Society are providing the opportunity
for input with the launch of the Interim Review of the 2001 Computing
Curriculum for Computer Science (CC2001). A Web site (
http://campus.acm.org/public/comments/comments_cc2001.cfm ) has been
established to provide comments, criticisms, and, most importantly,
contributions. The review period extends to June 30, 2007. In 2001 the
Computer Science volume was published as the first in a series of five
curriculum guidelines that became known as the Computing Curricula Series.
To provide timely guidance in the fast-changing computing field, ACM and
IEEE-CS directed that an interim review of each volume be conducted after
approximately five years. A meeting open to members will also be held on
May 11 at the Stanley Hotel, Estes Park, near Boulder, Colorado. Anyone
wishing to attend (at their own expense) should send their request to Alan
Apt ([email protected]), ACM Education
Manager.
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IU Computer Scientist Honored by ACM for Contributions,
Leadership
Indiana University (04/26/07)
ACM has named Indiana University computer science professor David S. Wise
the winner of its 2007 Outstanding Contribution Award. Wise helped provide
computer scientists, engineers, and researchers in related fields with an
outlet for communicating with each other in leading the creation of the
Federated Computer Research Conference. He created the subscription and
copyright policy of ACM's Digital Library, which helped improve its
usability and content, and he also pressed for early inclusion of
newsletters and conference proceedings for ACM's Special Interest Groups.
Wise served as the chair of the SIG on Programming Languages, and was also
the vice president and secretary-treasurer of the organization. ACM named
Wise an ACM Fellow in 2004 for his leadership and contributions to
functional programming. Applicative programming, multiprocessing
architectures, and algorithms are among his research interests. ACM will
honor Wise at its annual Awards Banquet, which is scheduled for June 9 in
San Diego, Calif.
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Nation's Cyber Plan Outdated, Lawmakers Told
Washington Post (04/26/07) Krebs, Brian; Mcloone, Sharon
Plans and policies for securing the nation's critical online
infrastructures are severely flawed and outdated, experts told lawmakers at
a House subcommittee hearing on April 25. Practices such as report cards
and policies addressing cybersecurity as an end rather than a means is
"procedurally correct but factually stupid," said biostatistician Daniel
Geer in written testimony. Jim Lewis, a security expert with the Center
for Strategic and International Studies, told the Emerging Threats
Cybersecurity and Science and Technology subcommittee that the nation's
current cybersecurity strategy is outdated and has "shifted too much of the
burden for security to the private sector and did not resolve key issues
regarding responsibility within the government." Professionals for Cyber
Defense President Sami Saydjari provided written testimony urging lawmakers
to start a $500 million "Cyber Manhattan Project" that would be run by the
country's top experts, adding that preparing for cyber war will take more
than three years and require infrastructure for critical computer systems,
experienced defenders, and a national program. "The U.S. is vulnerable to
a strategically crippling cyber-attack from nation-state-class
adversaries," Saydjari said. Lewis said that a new comprehensive strategy
is needed to address issues such as how many interagency groups and
committees are working of the same cyber issues, and also called cyber
espionage the greatest current threat to the United States. House Homeland
Security subcommittee chair James Langevin (D-R.I.) questioned the wisdom
of funding cuts for HSD's science and technology directorate and questioned
the administration's cybersecurity efforts.
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Sun and I.B.M. to Offer New Class of High-End
Servers
New York Times (04/26/07) P. C10; Markoff, John
Sun Microsystems and IBM both introduced new high-end server systems that
provide an early glimpse into a new era of computing. Sun's machine,
designed by the company co-founder Andreas Bechtolsheim, is an ultra-fast
video server potentially powerful enough to send different standard video
streams simultaneously to everyone watching television in a city the size
of New York. IBM's machine is a video game server that blends a mainframe
computer with the company's Cell microprocessors, creating a system that
could support thousands of users interacting in a three-dimensional
simulated on-screen world, described as the "metaverse." Both machines
will cost hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars, but they
represent that the modern computing world is moving away from the era of
cheap microprocessors that started two decades ago. Former ACM President
David Patterson, a computer scientist at the University of California,
Berkeley, said he believes that is still more to be done with combining
microprocessors, but "if the future of computing is the data center and the
consumer gadget," the two new machines could be the wave of the future.
"It's a new era--it's the era of application-specific computing," said
Bernard S. Meyerson, chief technologist of IBM's Systems and Technology
Group. Meyerson said that IBM has introduced hybrid computing, and that
computers will now be custom-designed for specific purposes.
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Driving Interactivity Needs Inform Real World
Designers
AScribe Newswire (04/26/07)
Auto safety and interaction design will be a focus of the ACM
Computer-Human Interaction Conference (CHI 2007) on April 30, in San Jose,
Calif. CHI 2007 is highlighting the issues because people are increasingly
talking on the telephone, retrieving directions, and making entertainment
choices while driving. "With the increasing number of cars on the road,
longer commutes, and the proliferation of complex information and media
features used in cars, there is a greater need for careful interaction
design in automobiles," says Dr. David M. Krum of Bosch Research and
Technology Center. Other organizations that will have speakers at the
conference include Ford and IBM. Aside from industry representatives,
experts from Stanford University, Drexel University, and the Manchester
Business School in the United Kingdom will also address the gathering.
They will discuss the potential distractions of interaction, and the
challenges of applying interaction design to automobiles. More than 2,500
professionals from around the world are expected to attend CHI 2007, which
will begin April 28 and end May 3. The ACM Special Interest Group on
Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI) is the sponsor of CHI 2007. For more
information on CHI 2007, visit
http://www.chi2007.org/
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Computer Scientists Unveil Next-Generation
High-Performance Processor at The University of Texas at Austin
University of Texas at Austin (04/24/07)
University of Texas at Austin computer scientists have designed and built
a prototype general-purpose computer processor dubbed TRIPS that could
potentially manage trillions of calculations per second. The researchers
say the Tera-op, Reliable, Intelligently adaptive Processing System
processor could be used in industrial, consumer, and scientific computing.
TRIPS uses a new type of processing architecture called Explicit Data Graph
Execution that, unlike conventional architectures that process one
instruction at a time, can process large chunks of information
simultaneously with greater efficiency. Current multicore processors are
actually multiple processors bundled together, with each individual
processor running at about the same speed as previous generations. TRIPS
is different because it contains two processing cores, each of which are
capable of 16 operations per cycle with up to 1,024 instructions
simultaneously. Current high-performance processors are generally only
capable of four operations per cycle. University of Texas at Austin
associate professor of computer sciences and co-designer of TRIPS Doug
Burger said, "The TRIPS prototype is the first on a roadmap that will lead
to ultra-powerful, flexible processors implemented in nanoscale
technologies."
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Robotic Flower? New Internet-Controlled Robots Anyone Can
Build
Carnegie Mellon News (04/26/07) Spice, Byron; Watzman, Anne
In an effort to create greater interest in robotics, Carnegie Mellon
University researchers have developed a series of robots that can be built
by almost anyone using off-the-shelf parts, but are capable of connecting
to the Internet wirelessly. The Telepresence Robot Kit (TeRK) was
developed by robotics professor Illah Nourbakhsh and members of the
Community Robotics, Education and Technology Empowerment (CREATE) Lab with
the goal of making highly capable robots accessible and affordable to
college and pre-college students, and anyone else with an interest in
robots. TeRK is not sold as a complete set of parts, but rather the plans
and the brains of the robot, a device called Qwerk developed by the CREATE
Lab and the Charmed Labs of Austin, Texas, are available online. The rest
of the robot is designed to be built using parts available at most hardware
stores. Several designs are available, including a wheeled robot with a
video camera, and a flower robot designed to open and close based on moods
or use it petals to play catch. Qwerk controls the motors, cameras, and
other devices, and is actually a full-fledged computer with a Linux
operating system that can use any computer language, has a field
programmable gate array, and accepts USB peripheral devices such as Web
cameras and GPS receivers. Nourbakhsh said building such a capable robot
would have been all but impossible five years ago, but is practical today
because of widespread broadband Internet access and the availability of
hotspots in public and residential settings.
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Congress Gets Competitive With Bills
InternetNews.com (04/26/07) Mark, Roy
With strong support from both parties, the U.S. Senate recently passed
several pieces of legislation greatly increasing federal funding for
research and education in an effort to boost student interest in science,
technology, engineering, and math. On average, U.S. colleges and
universities produce about 1 million graduates a year, but only 70,000 of
those graduates have degrees in engineering. In comparison, China and
India produce 6.4 million college graduates yearly, with almost 1 million
degrees in engineering. The America Competes Act, which passed the Senate
88-8, lays the foundation for a national "innovation infrastructure" and
calls on the National Academy of Sciences to identify barriers preventing a
more innovative U.S. economy. Under the proposed legislation, funding for
the National Science Foundation will be doubled from $5.6 billion to $11.2
billion gradually, and the Department of Energy's Office of Science budget
will double to more than $5 billion over the next 10 years. The National
Institute of Standards and Technology will also receive a bigger budget and
will be required to use no less than 8 percent of its annual budget on
high-risk, high-reward research. Several grants, scholarships, and
programs, including expanding statewide specialty schools in math and
science, will also be created to attract more students to science,
technology, engineering, and math studies. "This bill slingshots our
economy forward," says Sen. Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.). "We are not giving
[our students] the tools to compete." Meanwhile, the House passed
legislation that provides grants to spur pure research by young scientists
and a bill to provide for 25,000 new STEM teachers.
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Leadership Alliance Targets Minorities in
Computing
HPC Wire (04/27/07)
The National Science Foundation awarded a three-year, $2 million grant to
create the Empowering Leadership (EL) Alliance, a national alliance led by
Rice University that will establish a nationwide network to engage
underrepresented minority student in computing disciplines. The network,
which will be composed of dozens of leading universities, professional
societies, laboratories, research centers, and corporations, will strive to
keep minority students interested in computing careers by providing them
with research opportunities, professional development, and mentoring
programs. "At universities across the country, we are seeing what I call
the 'loss of the precious few.' Research shows that isolated, unsupported
students of all kinds will leave and environment that does not meet their
needs," said Rice University professor Richard A. Tapia, director of the EL
Alliance. "Students migrate to more welcoming degree programs and
departments where they recognize that they have support, a vested interest,
and a high probability of success. Those that do complete bachelor's
degrees in the computing disciplines may have had such a painful journey
that they are unlikely to consider graduate school, and another opportunity
for diversifying our national leadership in computing and advanced
technology has been lost." To prevent the "loss of the precious few," the
EL Alliance will provide students with summer research opportunities with
experienced and successful computer researches, mentoring, meetings with
national leaders, professional development programs, career support, and
online speaker series and meetings to discuss challenges and engage
minority role models.
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IBM, Intel, and Microsoft Tout Technology Future
InformationWeek (04/25/07) Claburn, Thomas
At this week's Gartner IT/xpo, Intel director of technology management
Jerry Battista, Microsoft Research principal researcher Eric Horvitz, and
IBM research executive for communications industries Paul Bloom fielded
questions and offered a look into the future of computing technology that
featured photo-realistic virtual words, desktop file manipulation using
hand gestures, and presence information relayed by ubiquitous sensors.
Battista highlighted massively multi-core processors that, as an example,
can condense a two-hour soccer game into 10 to 15 minutes of highlights
automatically, by assigning processors to track each of the players and the
ball, as well as analyzing the audio and processing the video. Horvitz
discussed the development of "intention machines," which predict users
intentions and deliver pertinent information. Horvitz said Microsoft was
spending about 25 percent of its research budget on artificial
intelligence-related projects. Horvitz also showed off surface computing,
which uses a lunchbox-sized motion tracking and projection unit to turn any
surface into a computer display and input device. Bloom said IBM has
shifted away from a focus on pure technology research, and is now
researching service-oriented business possibilities, citing a Gartner
prediction that by 2009, 80 percent of IT systems will track where people
are and how best to accommodate them. IBM is working on a presence
infrastructure called Presence Advanced Services for Telecommunications
Applications (PASTA) that provides IT systems with presence information.
IBM is also developing a service called BusinessFinder, which Bloom
described as a "presence-based electronic yellow pages," and a system that
designates modes of contacted based on where the user is located called
Presence Zones.
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$105 Million Goes to Computing Center
Stanford Report (04/25/07) Orenstein, David
The Army's new Army High-Performance Computing Research Center will be
developed by a multi-institution team led by Stanford University with the
help of a $105 million, five-year grant awarded by the army. The research
center will be used for advanced simulations to develop new materials for
military vehicles and equipment, improve wireless battlefield
communication, improve detection techniques for biological or chemical
attacks, and stimulate innovations in supercomputing. Work on wireless
communications will try to improve how commanders and soldiers use
information from reconnaissance sources such as airplanes, submarines,
sensor arrays, and soldiers in the field. The research center will also
focus on improving computations with better hardware and algorithm designs.
Future director of the research center Charbel Farhat, a member of the
Stanford School of Engineering's Institute for Computational and
Mathematical Engineering and an expert on supercomputer simulation, said
the research will likely produce products that benefit society in general,
such as lightweight materials developed for armored vehicles that could be
used in cars and trucks to make them lighter and more fuel efficient.
Additionally, $1.5 million a year will be allotted to the program for an
educational outreach program for middle- and high-school students.
Institutions participating in the center, which include Morgan State
University in Maryland, New Mexico State University at Las Cruces, and the
University of Texas at El Paso, will work with nearby school teachers to
augment their math, science, engineering, and computing programs.
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Similar Programming for Multicore Computers
Technology Review (04/27/07) Greene, Kate
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers are exploring a way to
make parallel programming easier in order to take full advantage of the
computing potential available in multicore computers. Many experts believe
that unless parallel programming is made easier, computing progress will
stall. In single core systems, software code basically runs sequentially,
with each task occurring one after another, but in multicore systems tasks
get split up among the cores and when different tasks need to access the
same piece of memory and fail to properly synchronize the data can become
corrupted and cause the program to crash. MIT researchers have designed
StreamIt, a computer language and a compiler that basically hides
parallel-programming challenges but also allows for full use of multicore
processors. StreamIt, developed by MIT professor of electrical engineering
and computer science Saman Amarasinghe, is expected to be available for use
on commercial chips made by IBM, Sony, and Toshiba by this summer.
Amarasinghe's solution is based on a concept called data flow that steams
data sequentially through a sort of pipeline. The compiler scans for
independent functions, and can place separate tasks on different cores to
prevent tasks from interfering with each other or attempting to access the
same piece of memory. University of California, Berkeley professor of
computer science Ras Bodik said StreamIt is a solid idea and based on well
known concepts, but suspects that software engineers will need to use
several tools, such as transactional memory that allows multiple tasks to
access the same piece of memory at the same time, to truly unlock
StreamIt's potential.
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Pitt Scholar Finds Success in Her Computer Science
Work
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (04/25/07) Templeton, David
Neven Abou Gazala believes that women should strive to enter and thrive in
the male-dominated world of computer science, and hopes her own work will
dispel the illusion that the computer industry is dominated by geeks and
nerds. This August, Gazala expects to receive her doctoral degree from the
University of Pittsburgh and expects to obtain a teaching position at a
prestigious U.S. college of university where she can continue her research
in computer power management. University of Pittsburgh's computer science
department chair Rami Melhem said, "She has done very good work in power
management that's very crucial and gaining importance every day." Even
without earning her doctoral degree, Gazala has already established an
impressive list of credentials in computer science, including 10 published
papers on computer power management and winning a 2006 Google Anita Borg
Memorial Scholarship for being an outstanding woman in computer science.
Gazala has developed hardware that lowers power consumption in processing
and hard-drive memory while performing tasks with low power requirements,
as well as produced software that further reduces battery drain. "I think
now we have more opportunity than men in the field," Gazala said.
"Everyone wants to recruit women and have good women on the team." Gazala
hopes that a teaching position will allow her to continue her research and
eventually accomplish her goal of developing a laptop that can go 10 days
without needing to be recharged. For information about ACM's Committee on
Women and Computing, visit
http://women.acm.org
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A Summer Merger? Leaders of the 2 Big Academic Computing
Networks Think They Can Make It Work
Chronicle of Higher Education (04/26/07) Fischman, Josh
Tracy Futhey of National LambdaRail and Jeffery Lehman of Internet2,
chairs for their respective groups, said they believe their two networks
could merge this summer. Lehman said that a merger between the two
academic computing networks had not happened sooner because members
believed the networks were designed to do different tasks, but now realize
the networks can co-exist. Internet2 was created over a decade ago to
provide researchers with a high-speed bypass around regular Internet
traffic to send large packets of research information, and currently has
about 300 university members and dozens of corporate partners. LambdaRail
is a test bed for network engineers to experiment with new technologies,
testing the limits of traffic, often testing the network to the breaking
point. Lehman said the conflict between the two networks stemmed from
researches depending on high-speed network connectivity being hesitant to
share a network with people who constantly might break it. Academic
researchers were essentially left with two Internet providers, so
universities had to choose which was best for their many research needs and
maintain contacts and arrangements with both networks. The two chairs said
the six-person team charged with writing a detailed merger agreement should
have a draft by early May, which the Internet2 and LambdaRail boards of
directors can vote on during special meetings, perhaps by June.
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Does Moore's Law Help or Hinder the PC Industry?
Extreme Tech (04/24/07) Gardiner, Bryan
A discussion of Moore's Law by Gartner analysts Brian Gammage and Carl
Claunch led to agreement that Moore's law is a key driver in the computer
industry, but is also often misunderstood. Gammage attested that most
people assume Moore's Law means that the speed and power of processors
doubles every 18 to 24 months, when in actuality the law "is all about the
density ... the density of those transistors, and not what we choose to do
with it." He said this increased transistor density has also accelerated
replacement cycles for computers and servers, which many people feel is a
negative trend for the PC industry because it saddles users with the cost
burden. Claunch and Gammage agreed that computer suppliers are facing
tighter prices and margins as a result of Moore's Law, with Claunch
observing that the cost of doubling the number of transistors is not
doubling concurrently every 18 to 24 months. One of the benefits Gammage
saw as a result of Moore's Law was the creation of many jobs in the
computer industry, while other advantages he cited include periodic
innovation and agility in the industry, increased power efficiency, and the
law's tendency to create a level playing field. On the other hand, Claunch
cited electronic waste, a lack of replacement parts, excessive premium
price tiers, and embedded CO2 from all the discarded computers as problems
that possibly stem from Moore's Law. Claunch concluded the debate with the
recommendation that Moore's Law not be perceived "as simply good or evil,
but rather a mix of both."
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60-Mile Wi-Fi
Forbes (04/23/07) Vol. 3, No. 7, Zhao, Michael
Wildnet is a wireless networking scheme in which a pair of transmitters
can send 5 million bits of data per second over a maximum distance of 60
miles. Wildnet creator and Intel Research Berkeley Lab director Eric
Brewer says he wants to connect the world's poorest communities with this
technology as part of his ultimate goal of "improving the quality of life,
health care, and education in the developing world." Deploying Wildnet is
inexpensive, involving a cheap Intel computer board with commercially
available Wi-Fi radio chips that use the free Linux operating system to tap
the publicly available radio spectrum. Wildnets have been established in
Asia and Africa, and the deployment in southern India has yielded
tremendous benefits for poor villagers, sparing them from making a long,
arduous trek to eye clinics. Brewer says Wildnet complements satellite,
Wi-Fi, WiMax, and cellular broadband technologies. Wildnet was developed
under the aegis of Brewer's Technology & Infrastructure for Emerging
Regions project, which is currently sponsored by the Intel Berkeley
Research Lab. The next challenge Brewer wants to tackle is the provision
of data processing aid for microlenders in impoverished nations.
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What Will the Next 50 Years Bring in Robotics
Research?
PhysOrg.com (04/24/07)
Key intelligent robotics researchers and top science communicators hope to
use the "Rights to Robots" public debate to bring greater attention to the
ethical implications of the direction of robotics projects. The debate
between members of the "Walking With Robots" network took place on Monday
in London, and addressed issues such as whether conscious robots should
have human rights, whether robots can care for the elderly, and whether
they can perform as soldiers. Professor Noel Sharkey of the University of
Sheffield facilitated the debate between Owen Holland of the University of
Essex, Dr. Tony Hirst of Open University, Murray Shanahan of Imperial
College London, and Alan Winfield of the University of the West of England
in Bristol. The U.K. Office of Science and Innovation's Horizon Scanning
Center recently commissioned a study on artificial intelligence
developments over the next 20 to 50 years, and the experts plan to use the
report, "Utopian Dream or Rise of the Machines?," as they consider the
issue of ethics in robotics research. "The problem is that robots may be
required to make decisions that could affect our lives much sooner," says
Sharkey. "While some governments are beginning to draw up ethical
guidelines, we need to initiate proper public consultation and informed
public debate now."
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Robo-Girls
IEEE Spectrum (04/07) Hospodor, Joe; Hospodor, Andy
All-girl teams are becoming a force to be reckoned with at regional high
school robotics tournaments, and among the contests where girls are
starting to make their presence known are For Inspiration and Recognition
of Science and Technology (FIRST) events designed to stimulate interest in
science and technology among young people. FIRST gives all teams a
standard set of components, and each team must design and construct a robot
that fulfills a specific function--placing rings on a rack, in the case of
one regional competition--in six weeks. After that, the teams' machines
are pitted against each other in the tournaments that test their
reliability and precision. In this year's competition, California is
hosting 19 teams, all but nine of which are strictly female. Among the
notable all-girl teams performing at this year's Los Angeles regional was
the Royal Robotrons of Louisville High School, who were mentored by
California State University professor Tarek Shraibati. He works in the
university's manufacturing systems engineering and management department,
and is also the father of one of the team members. The Royal Robotrons and
other teams are demonstrating through their participation in FIRST contests
that girls can compete in robotics.
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The Promise of Plasmonics
Scientific American (04/07) Vol. 296, No. 4, P. 56; Atwater, Harry A.
Plasmonics is the science of producing electron density waves or plasmons
with light, and scientists have learned that they could squeeze optical
signals into tiny wires with this method. Computer chip designers could
use plasmonic circuits to build faster chip interconnects for transmitting
large volumes of data across the chip. California Institute of Technology
professor Harry A. Atwater cites two developments that have been critical
to the progress of plasmonics research: A recent increase in computing
power that permits the accurate simulation of electromagnetic fields
generated by plasmonic effects, and the emergence of unique techniques for
building nanoscale structures that have enabled the construction and
testing of minuscule plasmonic devices and circuits. Plasmons can produce
signals in the soft x-ray range of wavelengths through the excitation of
materials with visible light, and minute plasmonic devices could be
mass-produced using a process similar to lithography. Atwater's lab has
recently devised a low-power version of a "plasmonster" switch that could
increase the speed and usefulness of plasmonic circuits through a
three-terminal configuration that boasts transistor-like properties.
Improvements in microscope resolution, LED efficiency and brilliance, and
chemical and biological sensor sensitivity are other potential applications
for plasmonic technology. There is speculation among some researchers that
plasmonic materials could render objects invisible by changing their
surrounding electromagnetic field.
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