Turtles to Test Wireless Network
Associated Press (07/04/07) Gorlick, Adam
Computer engineers at the University of Massachusetts have built a
wireless communications network that will enable biologists at the school
to map the comings and goings of snapping turtles, which ultimately may
help save the species. The biologists believe such tracking and charting
of their whereabouts within a 10-mile range of the Deerfield River in
western Massachusetts could prevent the snapping turtle from becoming the
eighth freshwater turtle species to make it on the state's endangered
species list. The computer science researchers have created TurtleNet, a
network of postcard-sized waterproof computers that have been attached to
the shells of turtles with a combination of orthodontic cement and duct
tape. The computers are lightweight and do not weigh down the turtles, and
the gadgets will not disturb their mating habits. The devices are designed
to periodically note the location and body temperature of the turtles, and
when they come within a tenth of a mile of each other they swap
information, which helps extend the battery life of the computers. The
units also feature solar panels to recharge the batteries. The relay of
information between turtles ends when they pass a single base station,
where the data is accumulated before it is transmitted back to the
UMass-Amherst campus about 15 miles away. "A lot of existing technology
works great as long as you're not moving around and have stable networks
and people who could recharge batteries," says Jacob Sorber, a doctoral
candidate in computer science who designed the network.
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Hackers Hired to Crack Calif. Electronic Voting
Machines
KABC-TV (Los Angeles) (07/02/07) Miranda, Nannette
California is conducting a test to see if three types of electronic voting
machines approved for use in California elections are vulnerable to
hackers. A team of independent hackers from across the country is trying
to break into and rig the results on the machines. "The goal is to put to
rest any controversy about voting systems or the voting equipment itself,"
says California Secretary of State Debra Bowen. California is the first
state to require a full review of voting machines, as well as the first to
require the machine vendors to pay for the review. "Our concern is the
voter walking up and doing something strange on the machine," University of
California Davis computer scientists Matt Bishop says. "Another thing
we're concerned about is someone, for example, somehow manipulating the
machines that count the votes so they count the votes incorrectly."
California already requires paper trails and public audits, but the hacking
program is another effort to ensure voters that their ballots will be
counted. "The goal of this review is for us to do that on voting systems
where we can be confident that the effect we have on the presidential
primary is the effect that California voters intended," Bowen says. The
hackers have until July 20th to break the system.
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Award Honors Peh's Research and Outreach
Princeton University (07/02/07)
The Computer Research Association's Committee on the Status of Women in
Computing Research has named Princeton University's Li-Shiuan Peh the
winner of its 2007 Anita Borg Early Career Award. The association uses the
annual prize as an opportunity to recognize a female computer scientist or
engineer who has made key contributions in research and "has had a positive
and significant impact on advancing women in the computing research
community." Peh, an assistant professor of electrical engineering, has
focused on the performance and power consumption of interconnection
networks in her research. She holds three patents. Peh has served as the
faculty co-adviser of the Princeton Graduate Women in Science and
Engineering organization since 2003, and has helped to initiate a number of
activities to get more females of all ages interested in science and
engineering. She has also organized summer workshops for women and
underrepresented minorities in computer architecture, and has participated
in a distinguished women faculty lecture series at the University of
Texas-Austin.
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Engineering a Career at the PC's Creation
CNet (07/05/07) Cooper, Charles
Microsoft researcher Chuck Thacker was awarded the IEEE's distinguished
John von Neumann medal for his pioneering work in the development of the PC
and network connectivity during his tenure at Xerox's Palo Alto Research
Center (PARC). He was also the chief designer of the first PC to be
equipped with a mouse and a bit-mapped display; that machine, the Alto, was
developed because Thacker saw a need for a time-sharing machine and was
unsatisfied with the equipment on hand. The Alto in turn inspired the
invention of Ethernet when Thacker and his collaborators realized that the
system would be even more powerful in combination with a network. Thacker
and many of his fellow inventors eventually left PARC because of Xerox's
inability to see the potential of innovations such as the Alto, he recalls
in an interview. Thacker was a player in the design of Microsoft's Tablet
PC, and though he admits that its market performance as been
"disappointing," he is "heartened by the fact that it is still a growing
market." Citing the heavy fragmentation of the education market, Thacker
says the lower quality of emerging computer scientists can be traced to the
very beginnings of a person's education, which is where a concentration on
math and science must start. "We need a combination of better education
and we need better models for programming," he concludes.
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'Smart' Traffic Boxes Could Help Monitor Roads, Save
Money
Ohio State Research News (07/02/07) Gorder, Pam Frost
Ohio State University engineers have developed software that allows
traffic control boxes to locate road incidents such as traffic back-ups and
accidents and notify transportation authorities. Benjamin Coifman, an Ohio
state associate professor of civil and environmental engineering,
electrical and computer engineering, and geodetic studies, says that over
the last few decades transportation departments around the country have
installed "loop detectors" to monitor traffic at key points in the road
network. The car-sized wire loops buried in the road essentially act as
metal detectors, sending a signal to a computer in a control box every time
a car passes over the loop. The control box containing the computer can
either count cars and calculate average speed, or can actively control
traffic. Ramp meters, for example, limit the number of cars allowed on a
freeway by controlling a traffic signal at the on-ramp. Coifman says the
control boxes could do much more. "The basic technology of these devices
is very reliable, and such detectors are become more widespread as
congestion increases," Coifman says. "But little attention has been paid
to how they are used." Coifman says the control boxes frequently send
information back to the transportation center, as often as every 20
seconds, but the messages were generally unimportant and created high
communication costs. Coifman and former graduate student Ramachandran
Mallika wrote software that allows controller boxes to detect traffic
incidents and send important messages to the traffic control center, using
only a fraction of the bandwidth previously required. Their software
achieved better than 90 percent accuracy in reporting traffic conditions at
a busy interchange between two interstates in Columbus, Ohio, and used up
to 200 times fewer signals than before.
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DePaul Scores Win for Women
Chicago Sun-Times (07/04/07) Guy, Sandra
At DePaul University, Project Her-CTI within the university's School of
Computer Science, Telecommunications and Information Systems connects
female students with mentors and peers. One of the programs is called
Digital Divas, sponsored by ACM's DePaul chapter. The program seeks to
enable students to create relationships by accessing professional networks.
Project Her-CTI's formal mentoring program involves paring juniors and
seniors with freshmen to encourage and sustain new students. CTI students
also undertake "externships" in which they shadow a DePaul alumna for one
day in the workplace. These programs were recently strengthened by a
$500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation for the 2007-2008
school year; the grant will help fund mentoring efforts and provide
scholarships. A $7,000 stipend funded by the grant, for example, will
cover one quarter's tuition for student mentors and allow these
upperclassmen to attend conferences such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of
Women in Computing.
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Coaching Computer Canines in Clambering
USC Viterbi School of Engineering (06/29/07)
University of Southern California roboticist Stefan Schaal has trained
four- and six-legged robots to walk on smooth surfaces, and has now turned
his attention to a more difficult terrain of broken rocks. The mechanical
dogs, about the size of a toy poodle, have an onboard computer chip that is
connected to sensors, and they are always aware of the location of their
center of gravity. In a paper presented at the 2007 IEEE International
Conference on Robotics and Automation, Schaal explained how the robots
walk, as well as where and how they should proceed, which is based on
calculations of current position, velocity, and acceleration of their legs.
Schaal trained the dogs over 15 months, which included having them learn
from their mistakes and take a different route the next time, and they can
now move at 1.6 centimeters a second, which is faster than the pace of the
old Mars Sojourner robot. DARPA renewed its $1.5 million contract, and
Schaal will now work to triple their speed and have them maneuver along
rocky ground, as well as climb a sharp slope. From here, the next step
would be to work with larger mechanical dogs.
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Are Top Linux Developers Losing the Will to Code?
Computerworld UK (07/02/07) Marti, Don
Greg Kroah-Hartman, the maintainer of USB and PCI support for Linux and
co-author of the online book Linux Device Drivers, says core Linux
developers are doing less of the coding and more managing and checking as
the number of kernel contributors increases and the contributor network
becomes more complex. Kroah-Hartman notes that in the most recent kernel
release, the 30 most active developers wrote only 30 percent of the
changes, while two years ago the top 20 developers wrote 80 percent of the
changes. Kroah-Hartman says he now does more code reviewing than code
writing. Theoretically, the kernel development process involves changes
going from the original author, through a file driver maintainer, to the
maintainer of a major subsystem such as PCI or SCSI, to Andrew Morton for
testing, and finally to Linus Tovalds for a kernel release. The actual
process, however, is far more complicated. "I tried graphing that, and
that's not what happens," says Kroah-Hartman. "It's a mess. There's
routing all over the place." The upcoming 2.6.22 release involved 920
developers, compared to 475 developers for the 2.6.11 release in March
2005. The "mess" is largely due to faster incorporation of new features,
such as the power-saving tickless functionality, the increasing number of
kernel changes, and more rapid changes. Over the past two years, 3,200
developers have contributed at least one patch, with half that number
contributing two or more, and one quarter contributing three or more.
Every patch has at least one author and one reviewer.
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Data Storage Advances to Enable More Robots in the Home,
Says MIT Expert
Computer Weekly (06/29/07) Richards, Justin
Rodney Brooks, the director of the Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory at MIT, says the demand for household robots is
being driven by aging populations in technologically advanced countries.
Currently there are 2.5 million robots being used in U.S. homes, but in
2002 there were no ground robots in any U.S. homes or the U.S. military.
Brooks says modern home robots rely on supervision through teleoperation or
direct human intervention, and if robots are going to become more popular
in homes, they will have to become more autonomous. Brooks says the main
obstacle to developing more autonomous robots is limited data and
information storage capacity. However, he notes that storage capacity
growth trends indicate storage capacity will not be a problem in the
future. Using the iPod as an example, Brooks says that if 10 gigabytes of
memory was available in 2003, then 40,000 gigabytes will be available in
2015, which means that by 2009 a person could store a million books on
their iPod and that every robot would be able to store a highly detailed
map of the Earth on a solid state disk. Brooks does not believe that
robots will ever take over for humans, but that as robots become more
similar to humans, humans will become more robotic through medical
developments and implants such as artificial tissue.
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Where Has All the Talent Gone?
Electronic Design (06/29/07) Schneiderman, Ron
There are thousands of listings for electrical engineering and other
technical positions on popular online job sites, but companies are having a
difficult time filling them. Dice is listing nearly 6,000 EE positions,
with opportunities ranging from government agencies to toy manufacturers,
and IEEE says postings are up about 4 percent in the first quarter, with
software programming, design engineering, and research being the most
frequent openings. Filling 3,000 technical jobs in the United States has
not been easy for Microsoft, Bill Gates told the U.S. Senate committees on
labor and education in March. If the U.S. economy is to continue to thrive
off of innovation, then the country needs to improve the way math, science,
and engineering are taught, he added. "Companies of all sizes continue to
have problems recruiting highly qualified and educated individuals to work
for them, whether those individuals are foreign or domestic," says AeA
President William T. Archey. "This was reflected in the 2.5 percent
unemployment rate for computer scientists and the below 2 percent
unemployment rate for engineers in 2006." The problem could become even
worse in the near future as baby boomers with technical talent leave the
workforce, thinning the ranks of skilled IT workers.
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Wooing Interns to Silicon Valley
CNet (07/03/07) Olsen, Stephanie
Hundreds of college students are interning at Google this summer, and will
enjoy such perks as free clothes, complementary food, and the freedom to
immerse themselves into Google's code. Google and other companies hope
such perks will help them attract individuals from a shrinking pool of
skilled candidates. "There's a lot of demand for top CS undergrads and
grads, both from startups and big companies, because there's growing
recognition of the limited supply of the really talented students," says
Stephen Hsu, a professor at the University of Oregon. At Microsoft,
students also get ample perks, such as flying students in for interviews
and offering subsidized housing or a housing stipend. The Computer
Research Association (CRA) estimates that overall enrollment in U.S.
bachelor's programs in computer science (CS) fell 14 percent from 2005 to
2006, and more than 40 percent since 2002. On a positive note, however,
there has been a 10 percent increase in pre-major enrollment in CS. In
addition, the number of students graduating with a doctorate in CS was up
by more than 25 percent in June 2006, according to the CRA, and nearly 50
percent of doctoral students went to work in industry instead of academia
from 2005 to 2005.
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Future Avatars Will Be Adept at Manipulating Human
Response
Ars Technica (07/05/07) Timmer, John
Avatars cannot mimic human behavior, yet; but some programmers could help
these computerized representations do just that as demand for realistic
human behaviors increases among users. Judith Donath of MIT's Media Lab
notes that programmers easily can incorporate the complex body language and
expressions humans use into a single command for avatars to express a given
behavior, such as showing interest in starting a conversation with a
stranger. However, these single commands could raise serious ethical
concerns, particularly in virtual conversations, because avatars could
express honesty, while their users are being dishonest. Research indicates
other jarring possibilities, including the use of avatars with similar
faces to consumers to advertise brands, products, or political causes to
garner greater attention for online users. Although Donath worries about
"a world in which you are bombarded with oddly compelling ad campaigns
presented by people just like you," she also foresees the use less complex
avatars to interact with others in the virtual world to avoid the potential
for manipulation.
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How Safe Are Wireless Networks?
Dalhousie University (07/04/07) Morrison, Dawn
Wireless security is the focus of research that is being pursued by a team
at Dalhousie University. Over the next five years, Dr. Srini Sampalli and
graduate students from Dalhousie's Faculty of Computer Science will receive
$32,000 annually from the National Sciences and Research Council of Canada
(NSERC) to study security and resource management in heterogeneous wireless
networks. The project will complement another collaborative initiative
that seeks to improve the security of wireless networks, which is sponsored
by Industry Canada. The researchers hope to learn what makes wireless
networks susceptible to exploitation, the different ways the networks can
be attacked, and the strengths of applying common security measures.
Sampalli also wants to establish guidelines for security best practices for
detecting and preventing intrusions. They will study vulnerabilities and
prototypes for detecting and preventing intrusions using a test bed. The
use of wireless data devices continues to grow, and deployment of the
devices could reach 226 million next year. "Unfortunately, the tremendous
rapid growth has brought with it a large number of security issues and has
exposed numerous vulnerabilities in wireless networks," says Sampalli.
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Is Securing Your Network Worth the Money?
Network World (07/03/07) Brown, Bob
Security researchers discussed IT security at a conference hosted by
Carnegie Mellon. Two Dartmouth College Center for Digital Strategies
researchers studied the involuntary disclosure of data through peer-to-peer
sharing networks at a group of major financial institutions, and determined
that lazy or badly organized end users are often responsible for the
leakage of sensitive information, while P2P networks are aggressively
searched by criminals seeking data to exploit. The researchers recommended
the introduction of "file naming conventions and policies to reduce the
metadata footprint of their documents." Researchers from Tel Aviv
University and the Michigan State University Department of Economics
presented a paper detailing the interdependent relationship between
software vendors' "profit-maximizing behavior" and vulnerability disclosure
policy, while USC researchers discussed a technique for quantifying
security threats so that organizations can ascertain how much they must
budget for commercially available security products to fulfill their
security requirements. UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, and HEC
Montreal researchers presented a paper focusing on the advantages to
vendors of strengthening their software's security and reliability, noting
that usually users fail to perceive any difference between a failure's
occurrence due to a security or reliability problem and typically consider
software bugs to be the source of both kinds of failures. A
multi-divisional enterprise's implementation of security countermeasures in
the context of variegated information systems controlled by its divisions
and in response to various types of damage that the enterprise's
information systems and assets can suffer from threats was an issue probed
by three Carnegie Mellon researchers. They reached the conclusion that
"there are strategic issues in information security decision making and
that the distortion due to incomplete knowledge of information systems by
the CIO has to be weighed against incentive problems when division managers
make decisions."
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Drivers Unwanted: MIT 'Robocar' Passes Key Test
Drive
MIT News (06/28/07) Mansur, Karla
Massachusetts Institute of Technology's autonomous robotic car passed a
site visit by personnel from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
(DARPA). MIT is one of 11 "Track A," or funded, teams that will be
competing at the DARPA Urban Challenge. The objective of the challenge is
to create a driverless vehicle that can execute simulated military supply
missions in an urban environment, while completing tasks such as merging,
passing other vehicles, navigating safely through intersections and traffic
circles, and adhering to speed limits and other traffic laws. Vehicles
must complete the course within a six-hour time limit. MIT is the only
Track A team that has not previously competed in a DARPA challenge, but
team leader and MIT associate professor of mechanical and ocean engineering
John Leonard believes that his team may have an advantage because they
started from scratch. "We have a fresh perspective and novel ways of
thinking that could set us apart, and lead us to new ways of attacking the
problem," Leonard says. "They have made amazing advances in such a short
time. I would be surprised if other teams have individually discovered all
the things we have come up with on our own, in the half year or so that we
have been focusing on this effort." The MIT car uses multiple laser-range
scanners, high-rate video cameras, and automotive radar units. The sensors
collect data to create a "local map" of the vehicle's immediate
surroundings, including elements such as lane markings, stop lines,
potholes, and other vehicles. A cluster of up to 40 central processing
units processes the sensor data and performs autonomous planning and motion
control.
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Tangible Display Makes 3D Images Touchable
New Scientist (06/29/07) Knight, Will
Japan's NTT has developed a system that allows users to "touch" 3D images
using a 3D display and a haptic glove. The display creates life-like
images that appear just in front of a flat screen, while inside the glove
the user is touched by numerous force-feedback components to create the
sensation of touching something solid. The illusion of depth is created by
displaying slightly different images to each eye, eliminating the need for
special glasses. The system can also create virtual representations of
real-world objects. Two cameras create 3D images of items so the items can
be displayed on the screen. A computer then processes the 3D image to
generate a tactile representation of the object in the haptic glove. The
system could be used to enable businesspeople to shake hands, relatives
could hold each other from across the country, or museum visitors could
experience holding and touching precious exhibits and items that are too
valuable to let visitors really touch.
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ICANN Faces Major Transition With Cerf's Departure
IDG News Service (06/29/07) Perez, Juan Carlos
ICANN will face one of the greatest challenges in its history when
Chairman Vint Cerf's term expires in October. Cerf has been chairman of
ICANN since 2000, and much of the group's success in meeting its chief
mandates can be attributed to him. Observers acknowledge that Cerf has his
flaws, but overall they say he has done a great job in leading the nascent
ICANN through a series of early challenges. Cerf's success can be
attributed to his leadership, political skills, and consensus-approach,
observers say. One detractor, Syracuse University professor Milton
Mueller, criticizes Cerf for taking "a very conservative and limiting
approach to ICANN policies" and not advocating enough for the
internationalization of ICANN. Internet Mark 2 Project founder Ian Peter
finds fault with Cerf's corporate management skills, claiming that Cerf
allowed bureaucracy to flourish within ICANN. The general manager of
Mexico's Internet NIC, Oscar Robles-Garay, even finds fault with Cerf's
chief attribute, strong leadership. "His strong leadership is his best
quality, but it has also backfired on him, as some board members have at
times felt strongly influenced to vote the same way as Vint, even when he
was wrong," Robles-Garay says. Observers say the next ICANN chairman will
need to have several skills: Exceptional technical knowledge of Internet
architecture issues; a willingness to listen to diverse ideas; and the
ability to build consensus.
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The Reinvention of Software
Optimize (06/07)No. 68, P. 48; Chou, Timothy
The consumer Internet is an excellent resource for determining the next
wave of business software, because that is where next-generation business
applications are coming from, writes author and former Oracle On Demand
President Timothy Chou. The ease of use of Google is key to its adoption,
and this example provides an object lesson on the tremendous value of
simplification. Chou says this trend implies that "we should view the
future not as horizontal, fully integrated suites of business software, but
as hundreds, if not thousands, of services unique to a particular user or
industry." These immense software engines are being driven by massive
volumes of information, and this is fueling a desire among organizations to
make the construction of data warehouses unnecessary through the use of a
Google-like crawler to retrieve desired data. Also of significance is the
global economy's rapid transition from agriculture and manufacturing to
services, and Chou notes that the majority of service requests are for
known information, particularly in the software industry. He cites Amazon
for defragmenting information and people and personalizing the service
experience. Globe-spanning teamwork and cooperation--a concept that
enterprises greatly value--is a core component of massively multiplayer
online role-playing games such as World of Warcraft, while games such as
Second Life are popular enough to encourage real-world businesses such as
Toyota and IBM to participate.
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