Proposed National Database Raises Privacy Concerns
eWeek (05/22/07) Prince, Brian
The enormous database required to handle the expansion of the Employee
Eligibility Verification System (EEVS) proposed under the Secure Borders,
Economic Opportunity and Immigration Reform Act of 2007 currently being
discussed by Congress has raised concerns from security experts over
procedures, privacy, and security. Under the controversial bipartisan
legislation, employers would have to submit identifying information
provided by all members of the American work force, about 150 million
people according to the U.S. Department of Labor's Bureau of Labor
Statistics, to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. The data of
current and potential employees would be checked against database records,
and anyone who failed the check would be ineligible for work. The expanded
EEVS would also allow employers to compare a photo ID of a person to
digital photographs stored in a database. Businesses that do not comply
with the proposed regulations would be subject to civil penalties ranging
from $5,000 to $75,000 for each unauthorized employee. Currently,
participation in the EEVP is voluntary. Some IT analysts noted that the
federal government has done a poor job of protecting personal data and
minimizing database errors in the past. "The government definitely seems
to have two consistent problems--one is bad data getting into the database
� and the other is getting bad data out of the database," said Gartner
analyst John Pescatore. The legislation does have language requiring
proper security measures, including developing algorithms to detect
potential identity theft and the misuse of the EEVS by employers or
employees, but Pescatore said such security measures need to be in place
and tested before any such database goes online. Forrester Research
analyst Khalid Kark said he is not concerned about the technology, but
rather with the people and the policies that will govern the use of the
technology.
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Three Wishes for a Future Internet? GENI Project Will
Soon Be at Your Command
National Science Foundation (05/21/07)
The National Science Foundation has selected BBN Technologies to serve as
the GENI Project Office and work closely with the computer research
community to build and experiment with new and different designs and
capabilities that will shape the Internet in the 21st century. Deborah
Crawford, acting assistant director of NSF's Computer and Information
Science and Engineering directorate, said improving the Internet beyond
what it is today may require large-scale, systematic research initiatives
focusing on the most difficult scientific and technical challenges. Chip
Elliot, principal investigator and leader of BBN Technologies, said, "GENI
will give scientists a clean slate on which to imagine a completely new
Internet that will likely be materially different from that of today. We
want to ensure that this next stage of transformation will be guided by the
best possible network science, design, experimentation, and engineering."
At an NSF workshop in 2005, where the idea for GENI was first presented, a
team of researchers lead by Princeton University's Larry Peterson proposed
that GENI would consist of a collection of physical networking components,
including links, forwarders, storage, processor clusters, and wireless
subnets, forming what is collectively called the GENI substrate. On top of
the substrate, a software management framework allows network experiments
to utilize a piece of the substrate, meaning thousands of experiments may
be running at the same time. GENI will also include mechanisms that allow
end users to participate in and evaluate experimental services. "GENI
creates an opportunity for stunningly ambitious research," said Elliott.
"NSF's support of this initiative will ensure that brilliant minds across
the whole sweep of networking and distributed-system research have the
opportunity to try a wide variety of innovations in a very large-scale,
shared experimental environment."
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Carnegie Mellon Professor Honored for Computational
Complexity Breakthrough
Carnegie Mellon News (05/21/07)
ACM will award its 2007 Godel Prize to Steven Rudich, a computer science
professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and Alexander A. Razborov, a
computer scientist at the Russian Academy of Science. The ACM's Special
Interest Group on Algorithms and Computing Theory honored Rudich and
Razborov for their contributions to addressing the P vs. NP problem, which
involves the computational complexity behind the security of ATM cards,
computer passwords, and electronic commerce. The issue is a question of
whether the class of problems with solutions that can be quickly recognized
(complexity class NP) is the same as the class of problems with solutions
that can be quickly generated (complexity class P). Although Rudich and
Razborov did not formulate a mathematical proof to answer the question,
they presented research in 1994 and published a paper in 1997 that shows
that natural proofs techniques will not solve the problem and that earlier
results seem to have a contradictory double life. "Of all the prizes I
could win, I would choose this one," Rudich says of the award, which is
named after the Austrian-American mathematician who was one of the first
researchers to attempt to solve the problem. ACM will award the $5,000
prize to Rudich and Razborov during the ACM Symposium on Theory of
Computing, which is scheduled for June 11-13, 2007, in San Diego.
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'Not So Fast, Supercomputers,' Say Software
Programmers
Purdue University News (05/22/07) Tally, Steve
Multicore computing promises to dramatically boost the performance of
supercomputers, but some computing experts wonder whether hardware has
overtaken many software developers' abilities. "In the future you won't be
able to get a computer that's not multicore, and as multicore chips become
ubiquitous, all programmers will have to learn new tricks," notes Purdue
University research scientist Faisal Saied, who adds that a great deal of
high-performance code used by industry is non-parallel. Many corporations
are understandably uneasy about reengineering their code base, given the
effort they have devoted to their software. Raytheon Systems engineering
fellow Steve Kirsch explains that this dilemma illustrates the need for the
hardware and software industries to become familiar with each other.
"Their futures are tied together in a way that they haven't been in recent
memory, and that will change the way both businesses will operate," he
says. Kirsch points out that new computer languages may be a requirement
for the parallel programming that multicore computers need. Computer
scientists believe the commoditization of parallel computing will carry
benefits for both consumers and high-performance computing users. Head of
Purdue's Computer Science Department Susanne Hambrusch reports that
programming languages researchers and industrial collaborators are crafting
new programming models and tools that streamline the authoring of multicore
computer programs.
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Promising Antispam Technique Gets Nod
CNet (05/23/07) McCullagh, Declan
A draft standard for the DomainKeys Identified Mail system, designed to
detect and block fake email messages, on Tuesday received initial approval
from the Internet Engineering Task Force. The DomainKeys system, backed by
Yahoo, Cisco System, Sendmail, and PGP corporation, will provide businesses
with "heightened brand protection by providing message authentication,
verification, and traceability to help determine whether a message is
legitimate," the companies said in a joint statement. The DomainKeys
system is more promising than most other antispam and antiphishing
technologies, writes Declan McCullagh, because it uses a cryptographically
secure digital signature to verify that an email is from a legitimate
source. When a site such as PayPal sends an email to customers about their
accounts, the outgoing mail is marked with a digital signature. The
signature, which is embedded in the message headers and is normally not
visible, is automatically checked by mail servers and compared to PayPal's
Internet domain name to verify the digital signature is valid and PayPal
was where the message originated. Any message that does not contain a
valid signature is probably spam or a phishing attack and while the
DomainKeys standard does not specify that messages with invalid signatures
should be marked as junk mail, Internet service providers are likely to as
a service to their customers. DomainKeys is a revolutionary development in
the war against email attacks as it cannot be countered, unlike most other
email security technologies, which rely on lists of known fraudsters and
spammers or scan the contents of the message, McCullagh says. The digital
signatures, which use public key cryptography, are believed to be
impossible to copy or forge. DomainKeys does have a few hurdles,
particularly that both the sender and the recipient's email systems would
need to be upgraded to use the system, and it does not do anything to
filter spam from legitimate companies.
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Malaysia - Where Computing Is Cool for Girls
ScandAsia.com (Thailand) (05/23/07) Jumnongjit, Rapeepat
Computer technology is a male-dominated field in many areas around the
world, but in Malaysia computing is a popular education track and is
considered a suitable career for women. In Malaysia, women account for
half of the student body in computer subjects, and are even the majority in
some specific fields. Vivian Anette Lagesen, who has been studying how
different countries view gender and computer science, says that several
factors account for the high population of women in computing in Malaysia.
Computing is considered a suitable career path for women because the work
is indoors and not physically demanding and it is seen as compatible with
what women are supposed to be in Malaysian culture. Computing jobs are
also high paying, so women view them as a path to financial independence
and security. Lagesen also says that many of the female students studying
computing would like an academic career, which would provide them with
flexible work that can fit with family responsibilities. At the university
in Malaysia where Lagesen did her research, the majority of the academic
staff in computing were women, including all four department directors.
Lagesen says the cultural difference is that in Malaysia, computing is not
seen as a masculine profession. "We have to stop reproducing an opposition
between femininity and technology." Lagesen says.
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DAC Survey Results: A New Perspective on EDA?
Electronic Design (05/21/07) Kelf, Dave
A recently completed Design Automation Conference (DAC) survey compares
the perception of DAC exhibitors with conference statistics. The report
shows that attendance is up for each of the past three years, and the
number of exhibitors has also increased, from just over 200 to almost 250
over the course of the last five DACs. Senior leaders and engineering
managers from most of the top electronics companies represented 40 percent
of non-exhibitor attendees, and the number of press and analyst group
attendees almost doubled between 2004 and 2006. All of the exhibitors with
suites report they were 85 percent to 100 percent utilized, with the
majority of their time spent meeting with key customers, and many
exhibitors said they expect a high return on their DAC investment. The
rise in attendance at DAC bodes well for the entire electronic design
community, as the conference has traditionally been a forum that is a key
trend setter in the electronic design business. Revenue for the Electronic
Design Automation industry has been up this year, and continues to show
growth. Some problems have included multicore processor-related design
issues and manufacturing problems, but investors, commentators, and
stakeholders all believe that EDA is a "maturing" business. Large firm
acquisitions of smaller companies are expected to become more prominent as
well. With industry growth evident at DAC, experts question what it will
take to create the same recognition of the industry's growth at a
nationwide and worldwide scale.
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Web History Team Seeks to Preserve e-History, Seeks
Canadian Help
Canadian Press (05/22/07) Bennett, Dean
Mark Weber and his team at the Web History Center in Indiana are working
to preserve as many Internet artifacts as they can without collapsing
inward under the sheer volume of data. Weber is trying to preserve
historically important pieces of software, programs, data, correspondence,
photos, videos, and screen shots. Weber and his colleagues spoke at the
recent World Wide Web Conference in Banff, Alberta, Canada, looking to
enlist people to help archive the best Canadian e-work throughout the
years. Weber said that even for Web giants such as eBay electronic
preservation can be challenging, noting that eBay had difficulty searching
through its own tape backups and storage space while trying to create a
homepage montage of its Web pages throughout its history. University of
Alberta humanities computing professor Sean Gouglas called archiving the
Internet a laudable, but daunting task. Gouglas said, "On the Internet the
knowledge base grows exponentially. It's extraordinarily difficult to keep
up and collect an accurate view of what has transpired." Gouglas believes
that representative samples of political, educational, and corporate Web
sites can serve as an example of both technical history and social history.
The Web History Center recently collaborated with the California-based
Computer History Museum to preserve historic artifacts from the information
age.
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What's New in Science
The Daily (University of Washington) (05/23/07) Ghose, Tia
University of Washington computer science researchers have created a
simulation of a future where radio frequency identification (RFID) is used
in multiple aspects of everyday life. Evan Welbourne, a computer science
and engineering graduate student who installed the RFID reader system, said
33 RFID readers were placed on four floors in the Paul G. Allen Center for
Computing Science and Engineering and participants had RFID tags placed on
their bags, computers, ID badges, and personal belongings. The researchers
were able to track the movement of people and objects throughout the
building and envisioned using RFID tags for tasks such as finding personal
belongings or tracking when employees go to lunch. The group recently
received approval from the University of Washington's Human Subjects
Division to expand its experiment, and by the summer an additional 50 to
100 computer science and engineering students and professors will be able
to track their own activities. Assistant professor of computer science and
engineering Magda Balazinska says the experiment has already raised
concerns over privacy. "It's easy to see privacy concerns by violating our
own privacy," Balazinska says. "On one had it's neat, but at the same time
that could really be abused." However, despite RFID's increasing use,
there is little agreement on who owns the data, who can access RFID
records, and how such information should be used. "There's not even a
question of whether this technology will be deployed," Balazinska says.
"The question is: Can we propose good privacy models by deploying it
faster?"
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New Computer Model Predicts Crowd Behavior
Arizona State University (05/22/07)
Arizona State University assistant professor in the School of Geographical
Sciences Paul M. Torrens is developing a computer model that will
realistically simulate the reaction and behaviors of people in a crowd.
The computer model could be used by city planners, shopping center
developers, and public safety and health officials to simulate situations
that would be impossible to create in a live experiment, such as the
evacuation of a city or large building. Torrens' goal is to create a
simulation program that accounts for the panicked and desperate state that
people would feel under such situations. The current behavior modeling
programs have not proven to have the veracity this model could have,
according to Torrens. In Torrens' model, each simulated person will
behave independently and have different characteristics, such as age, sex,
size, health, and body language. The program will also account for crowd
and environmental features such as group panic and safety levels. Torrens
said the model will be used for realistic experiments exploring "what if"
and unforeseen scenarios that could affect cities. Additionally, the model
can be used to explore sustainability in downtown settings, such as how can
a city promote walking instead of driving and how pedestrian flow can fit
better with city traffic. The spread of a pathogen through a city could
also be simulated. The completed prototype model collects data from each
element in the simulation every 60th of a second. Torrens' research is
funded by a $400,000, five-year National Science Foundation CAREER
Award.
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Better Internet Security Means Technological
Breakthroughs
Kansas City infoZine (05/21/07) Charbonnet, Aariel
At the American Association for the Advancement of Science's briefing on
cyber security and the protection of U.S. infrastructure, University of
Illinois computer science professor Carl Gunter said more efficient
Internet security could improve the quality of living while reducing its
cost. Gunter said if more efficient Internet security techniques could be
developed, assisted living programs, emergency response efforts, and the
cost of household electricity, among other fields, could be improved.
Gunter described a scenario where a patient's medical information could be
instantly transferred to hospitals and other health care providers from
their homes. Such a system, which hinges on better Internet security,
could take frequent, efficient readings of an individual's vital signs,
which would be particularly helpful to sleep apnea and diabetes patients.
In a similar scenario, Gunter described how improved Internet security
would allow for networked electrical meters, or "smart meters," that
automatically measure and report a household's electricity consumption, and
because electricity is more expensive at certain times of the day, the
smart meter would notify consumers of peak usage time, allowing people to
"shop for power." Emergency response networks would also benefit from
improved Internet security, Gunter said, noting that the only communication
system to withstand Hurricane Katrina was a surveillance camera network.
However, Carnegie Mellon University's Software Engineering Institute senior
staff member Howard Lipson cautioned that "the Internet wasn't design to
resist highly untrustworthy users. You can't be surprised when we apply
all these high-level functions to the Internet, and there are security
problems."
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ARIN: It's Time to Migrate to IPv6
Ars Technica (05/21/07) Van Beijnum, Iljitsch
The American Registry for Internet Numbers (ARIN) Board of Trustees has
passed a resolution aimed at preventing people from submitting fraudulent
information when attempting to register addresses in the IPv4 address
space. ARIN, which oversees the distribution of IP addresses in North
America, should "take any and all measures necessary to assure veracity of
applications to ARIN for IPv4 numbering resources" and "encourage migration
to IPv6 numbering resources where possible," the board's resolution states.
An ARIN representative predicts that the submission of fraudulent
information will increase as the amount of available IPv4 space decreases;
the representative also predicts that IPv4 addresses could begin running
out as soon as 2010. Statistics from ARIN show that 68 percent of the IPv4
address space has been allocated, 19 percent remains available, and 13
percent is unavailable. ARIN and other groups have been touting the
supposed benefits of IPv6, but the fact remains that IPv4 provides access
to more content and more users.
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Academic Group Releases Plan to Share Power Over Internet
Root Zone Keys
Syracuse University (05/18/07) Costello, Margaret
Syracuse University scholars have published a plan to decentralize
authority over the Internet domain name system (DNS) as it shifts to a new,
more secure technology known as DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC). The
proposal by the Internet Governance Project (IGP), a consortium of academic
experts based at Syracuse's iSchool, who produce research and policy
analysis on worldwide Internet governance, would decentralize control over
the process of digitally signing the root zone file using public key
encryption, preventing any one organization from controlling the "master
keys" to the Internet. Concern over such a scenario arose after news of a
U.S. Department of Homeland Security report on DNSSEC raised fears that the
United States might make a power play to control the master keys. Under
the IGP proposal, multiple, nongovernmental organizations would control
signing the root zone file. IGP's Brenden Kuerbis said the proposal
"increases the resilience of the system, eliminates the threat of political
interference in Internet administration, and diffuses liability among the
entities involved." The proposed DNSSEC Internet standard improves
Internet security by authenticating query and response transactions made
between domain name resolvers and nameservers.
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'Laura' Makes Digital Health Coaching Personal
Boston Globe (05/21/07) Elton, Catherine
Northeastern University computer science professor Timothy Bickmore has
created a virtual health coach called "Laura" that can help patients
remember to take pills on time or encourage them to get out for a walk.
Bickmore hopes that as the population of baby boomers continues to age,
virtual coaches such as Laura will be able to bridge the gap between the
growing number of patients and the insufficient number of health care
professionals. Other online health care experiments include tailored voice
messages delivered to a person's phone coupled with Internet sites and chat
groups to help people exercise or quit smoking. A portable pill box called
Med-eMonitor chimes when it is time to take a pill, can sense if the
patient took the pill out of the box, has a screen that can ask patients
questions, and can connect to a phone line to send data to trained health
coaches who can then send messages to patients or contact their doctor.
Such high-tech health care programs are particularly useful for today's
complex medical regimens, which frequently require patients to take a
half-dozen pills or more per day. Bickmore says that in some cases
research has shown that patients actually prefer dealing with a computer
than an actual health care professional, as they feel less intimidated
asking questions and less guilty about using a computer's time. He says
people are also more honest with computer when disclosing "socially
undesirable behaviors" such as drug and alcohol use. Nevertheless,
Bickmore says the most essential aspect of health care is human-to-human
interaction, and although technologies such as Laura are not a replacement,
they can help deal with the limitations in the current health care
system.
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If I Only Had a Brain
The Age (05/22/07) Spinks, Peter
Research suggests that people's relationships with robots are closer the
more the robots physically resemble humans, and roboticists are working on
androids whose potential functions could include assistive elder care and
replacements for servile robotic aides. Current androids have limited
dexterity and movement, no autonomy, and are unable to communicate
intelligently with people. But they are becoming more and more humanlike
in appearance thanks to remarkable innovations in artificial skin,
musculature, and motion. Roboticists speculate that future androids will
incorporate neural networks, fuzzy logic, and genetic algorithms running on
an array of fast, miniature processors that engage in parallel processing
and simultaneous communication over super-fast networks, with brain and
body functions most likely coordinated and synchronized by one or more
master processors. It was reported in the December 2006 edition of
Cognitive Processing that French scientists had proposed to create software
that generates a level of artificial consciousness, but one French computer
scientist, professor Catherine Pelachaud of the University of Paris,
strongly doubts that robots can attain the uniquely human qualities of
consciousness and feeling. "I do not believe they will have them one day,"
she says. "Moreover, I am not sure this would be a good idea." Some
researchers are investigating the incorporation of mood-detection software
and an elementary level of social and emotional intelligence in robots so
that they can match a person's emotional state, which could be a key step
in the quest for true artificial intelligence.
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DHS Seeks Research on Nine Cybersecurity Areas
Federal Computer Week (05/21/07) Lipowicz, Alice
Industry, government labs, and academia have until June 27, 2007, to
submit white papers to the Homeland Security Department on how to improve
the protection of data against emerging threats and intrusion strategies.
The initiative is part of the Cyber Security Research Development Center
program of DHS, which is interested in areas such as botnet and malware
protection, composable and scalable systems, cybermetrics, data
visualization, routing security, process control security, real-time
assessment, data anonymization, and insider threat detection and
management. The final date for accepting final proposals is Sept 17. The
Science and Technology Directorate also plans to award up to $4.5 million
for research involving technologies that offer solutions in the nine
categories. "A critical area of focus for DHS is the development and
deployment of technologies to protect the nation's cyberinfrastructure,
including the Internet and other critical infrastructures that depend on
computer systems for their mission," says the 43-page agency announcement
published by the directorate.
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Scholars Develop Protocol for 'LBS,' New Wireless
Internet Technology
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (05/08/07) Mitchell, Melissa
University of Illinois professor of urban and regional planning T. John
Kim, along with University of Illinois postdoctoral fellow Sung-Gheel Jang,
have developed the protocol for international standard for geographic
information systems (GIS), which Kim says is the "backbone" of location-
based services (LBS). He says LBS will become as common as cell phones and
likely will change the way we do business, interact with each other, and
navigate through our daily lives. Kim says LBS has been introduced on cell
phones in Korea and Japan and is now becoming available in the United
States through a combination of the Internet and GIS, information,
positioning, and Intelligent Transportation System technologies. "LBS
combine hardware devices, wireless communication networks, geographic
information and software applications that provide location-related
guidance for customers," Kim says. "It differs from mobile position
determination systems such as global positioning systems in that
location-based services provide much broader, application-oriented location
services." LBS goes beyond providing directions and works more like a
hotel concierge, providing information on the nearest stores and
attractions. LBS technology can also be adapted for a variety of
functions, including sending locations of people requiring emergency
assistance and providing information about traffic congestion. Kim says
the LBS protocol has been adopted and published by the International
Organization for Standardization and endorsed by 29 nations so far.
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Carbon Nanonets Spark New Electronics
Scientific American (05/07) Vol. 296, No. 5, P. 76; Gruner, George
Cheap and flexible electronic products such as "electronic paper,"
wearable devices, printable solar cells, and flexible touch screens and
displays could be realized with random networks of carbon nanotubes, which
supply guaranteed electrical conduction by ensuring alternative pathways
for electrons. Devices based on these "nanonets" can be produced through
simple manufacturing techniques, and their durability makes them suitable
for portable devices subject to heavy daily use and misuse. Nanonets also
eliminate the high cost and reliability problems inherent in the
fabrication of products that employ single carbon nanotubes. In addition,
their high degree of transparency is a plus in applications where light
transmission is a requirement. The first application of carbon nanonets is
expected to be active-matrix displays, and the power source for the
portable devices that use such displays could also be provided with the
help of nanonets that function as electrodes as well as high-surface-area
elements for capturing and storing electric charge. Assembling thin films
of nanonets is no simple matter, and much effort was devoted to this
challenge until researchers led by UCLA physics professor George Gruner and
University of Florida chemist Andrew Rinzler hit upon a method to produce
such films at room temperature. Carbon nanonet films imbued with
semiconducting properties can serve as a foundation for field-effect
transistors, while nanonet devices can be transformed into chemical sensors
by adding "recognition molecules" that react with a target chemical or
biological molecule.
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Medal of Honor: Thomas Kailath
IEEE Spectrum (05/07) Vol. 44, No. 5, P. 44; Perry, Tekla S.
Stanford University professor Thomas Kailath earned IEEE's 2007 Medal of
Honor for his work with algorithms that facilitated great advances in
digital communications and semiconductor processing. He has focused for 40
years on algorithms that detect signals distorted by physical obstructions,
use antenna arrays to separate wireless signals via directional
determination, and offset the distortion of optical systems employed in
semiconductor processing. During his student days at MIT, Kailath worked
on a master's thesis to develop a model for the continuously shifting
channels of the Rake communications system and then identify channels by
feeding in "test" signals, and his research in this area later had a major
bearing on the development of cell phone systems. At Stanford, Kailath and
a graduate student organized a theory for using a separate feedback channel
to supply information concerning noise in a communications channel and
adjust the incoming signals to negotiate the noise. One of Kailath's
challenges was to ascertain the best heating and cooling process for
semiconductors, and he achieved this by mathematically modeling a cylinder
of silicon and applying multiple, independent, and non-uniform heat sources
to prevent warping. Another accomplishment was the provision of an
efficient means to compensate for the distortion of optical systems that
focus the beam used to etch microchip circuits through commensurate
distortion of a mask. Among the startup companies Kailath had a hand in
founding was Integrated Systems, Numerical Technologies, Excess Bandwidth,
and Clear Shape Technologies. These companies concentrated in such areas
as mathematical modeling methods to predict flaws in chips, symmetric DSL
technology, control systems and signal processing, and commercial
compensation of lens distortion in semiconductor processing.
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