Women in IT Go East, Data Shows
Computerworld (10/02/07) Weiss, Todd R.
The percentage of female IT professionals on the East Coast tops the
percentage on the West Coast, according to the U.S. Census Bureau's
American Community Survey. The Washington, D.C. metro area boasts the
largest concentration, with 55,126 women IT workers comprising about
one-third of the region's total IT workforce. The second biggest
concentration of female IT workers is in Detroit, while the third biggest
concentration is in the Baltimore/Towson, Md., metro area. Women make up
28.2 percent of the 78,132-member IT workforce in the Philadelphia metro
area. In comparison, only 22.3 percent of the IT workforce in California's
San Jose/Sunnyvale/Santa Clara region is female. The industry diversity on
the East Coast could be playing an important role, according to Yoh
Services executive Jim Lanzalatto. Challenger, Gray & Christmas President
John Challenger says the West Coast technology culture, which stresses high
competition and entrepreneurialism, could be a turn-off to women, while the
West Coast IT workforce apparently remains male-dominated. Women in
Technology International President David Leighton registers surprise that
the percentages of IT women in tech-centric West Coast areas are lower, but
notes that these figures could be deceptive. "When you look at some of the
numbers on women-owned businesses, so many women in the technology industry
leave to start their own businesses," he says, adding that about 280
women-owned businesses are launched every day in the United States,
according to Margaret Heffernan's book, "How She Does It." Leighton also
observes that many women are being elevated into executive positions, which
marks a change in their job classifications even if they remain a part of
the IT workforce.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Technology Could Enable Computers to 'Read the Minds' of
Users
Tufts University (10/01/07) Thurler, Kim
Computers capable of responding to users' emotional states could be
facilitated by methods developed by Tufts University researchers through
the novel application of non-invasive and easily portable imaging
technology. "Measuring mental workload, frustration and distraction is
typically limited to qualitatively observing computer users or to
administering surveys after completion of a task, potentially missing
valuable insight into the users' changing experiences," says Tufts computer
science professor Robert Jacob. His human-computer interaction group is
collaborating with biomedical engineering professor Sergio Fantini in an
analysis of functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology that
monitors blood oxygenation levels in the brain as a proxy for workload
stress a user may undergo when executing a task of increasing difficulty.
School of Engineering researcher Erin Solovey says, "fNIRS, like MRI, uses
the idea that blood flow changes to compensate for the increased metabolic
demands of the area of the brain that's being used." Fantini says the
specific area of the brain where the change in blood flow transpires should
yield clues about the brain's metabolic changes and workload, which could
act as a surrogate for frustration and similar emotions. A $445,000
National Science Foundation grant will let the researchers incorporate
real-time biomedical data with machine learning to generate a computer user
experience that is more in tune with users' mental load. The initial
results of the team's experiments to detect the user workload experience
with fNIRS will be presented at the ACM symposium on user interface
software and technology, which takes place Oct. 7-10, in Newport, R.I. For
more information on the ACM UIST Conference, visit
http://www.acm.org/uist/uist2007/
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
TinyOS Creator David Culler Wins SIGMOBILE 'Outstanding
Contributions' Award
Business Wire (10/02/07)
ACM's Special Interest Group on Mobility of Systems, Users, Data, and
Computing will honor Arch Rock co-founder David E. Culler with its 2007
SIGMOBILE Outstanding Contributions award. ACM SIGMOBILE will recognize
Culler for his efforts in developing TinyOS, the open-source operating
system for wireless embedded sensor networks. Culler started working on
TinyOS in the late 1990s while serving as principal investigator for the
Defense Advanced Research Project Agency's Network Embedded Systems
Technology program. Culler has also been a member of the computer science
faculty of the University of California, Berkeley since 1989. "David
Culler is an outstanding thought leader in the field of sensor networks and
systems," says Victor Bahl, chairman of the ACM SIGMOBILE award committee.
"His fundamental contributions have influenced a new generation of
researchers and engineers across the world, and his work stands as a
shining example of what is good in the American academic system." For more
information about SIGMOBILE, visit
http://www.sigmobile.org/
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Unlike U.S., Japan Pushes Fiber Over Profit
New York Times (10/03/07) P. C1; Belson, Ken
Japan boasts the world's cheapest and fastest Internet connections,
although high installation costs, less expensive alternatives, and a
paucity of services that exploit the fast connections has industry analysts
and some companies wondering whether Japan's fiber deployment effort is
ultimately worth the trouble. Accenture consultant Matteo Bortesi says the
fiber push is a long-term strategy that is typical of the Japanese. "If
[the Japanese] think they will benefit in 100 years, they will invest for
their grandkids," he observes. "There's a bit of national pride we don't
see in the West." In contrast, the United States' impulse to think in
terms of fast returns has led to a substandard broadband infrastructure
that has divested the country of as much as 1 percent of its potential
productivity growth, according to Charles H. Ferguson, author of "The
Broadband Problem." Japanese companies say selling fiber lines is a
sensible move because their copper networks must be replaced, and services
must be devised to compensate for the fall-off in revenue from traditional
phone lines. Furthermore, companies are planning to recoup some of their
initial investments by selling additional products. Japanese carriers have
shown hesitancy to sell bundles of services because of the rivalry they
face from cable providers. Analysts are also questioning whether users are
being sold broadband lines whose speed far exceeds necessity.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Freshmen Interest in CS and Degree Production
Trends
CRA Bulletin (10/01/07) Vegso, Jay
There has been a significant decline in the number of incoming freshman
showing interest in computer science as a major since 2000, reveals a new
survey from HERI at UCLA. Although the number of variables involved makes
such surveys suspect, particularly the fact that it takes more than four
years for many students to finish a degree, the survey nonetheless
accurately predicts trends in computer science degree production.
Meanwhile, according to CRA's Taulbee Survey, fewer computer science
degrees were granted from 2004 to 2006, with the number of degrees falling
28 percent. The CRA's survey concentrates on doctoral-granting departments
and is more up-to-date than data from the NSF.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Nanotube Forests Grown on Silicon Chips for Future
Computers, Electronics
Purdue University News (10/01/07) Venere, Emil
Purdue engineers have demonstrated a method for growing forests of tiny
carbon nanotubes onto the surfaces of computer chips to augment heat flow
at a critical juncture where the chips connect to cooling devices or heat
sinks, and these forests perform better than conventional "thermal
interface materials" such as greases, waxes, and indium foil. New classes
of such materials are under development in an effort to boost performance
and help fulfill the cooling requirements of future chips that will
generate higher heat output than current microprocessors. Improved thermal
interface materials are a necessity for either the testing of chips in
manufacturing or maintenance of the chips' coolness during operation in
commercial products. Purdue doctoral student Baratunde A. Cola says the
technique developed by the researchers yields a nanotube interface that
conforms to a heat sink's irregular surface with less resistance than
current industrial interface materials. The researchers produced templates
from branching dendrimer molecules on a silicon surface, and then deposited
metal catalyst particles necessary for cultivating the nanotubes within
cavities between the dendrimer branches; the chip was heated to burn away
the polymer and leave behind only the metal catalyst particles. The
researchers could control the distribution and density of the catalyst
particles because the dendrimers possess a uniform structure and
composition. Exposure to methane gas and the application of microwave
energy triggered the assembly of nanotubes, which grew vertically from the
chip's surface. The research has been sponsored by NASA via the Institute
for Nanoelectronics and Computing.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Robotic Therapy Tiles: Playing Your Way to Health
Wired News (10/02/07) Sandhana, Lakshmi
University of Southern Denmark professor Henrik Hautop Lund is developing
intelligent therapy tiles that use neural networks to guide patients
through exercises to hasten their recovery from injuries or surgery. The
tiles are equipped with processors, rechargeable batteries, force sensors,
colored LEDs, and communications systems. The tiles respond to the
pressure the patients apply with their hands or feet, indicating whether
they are delivering enough pressure or are moving fast enough. "The
equipment creates a playful experience that motivates them to perform the
actions needed for the recovery of their abilities," Lund explains. He
says the tiles spur patients to exercise by providing instant feedback, and
offer an alternative to often boring physical-rehabilitation workouts.
Games for particular therapeutic routines are downloaded into a master
tile, which senses the tiles' arrangement and stimulates the game; the
tiles study patients' motions and gauge their progress. Upon the
conclusion of the game the master tile displays a summary of the patient's
performance. Lund and his team are also exploring how the tiles might be
applied to aid autistic children and patients with cognitive disorders.
"The next natural step is to use artificial neural networks to do
classification of the patient's behavior and adapt the game [in real
time]," Lund says.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Its Creators Call Internet Outdated, Offer
Remedies
Wall Street Journal (10/02/07) P. B1; White, Bobby
Men who helped shape the Internet such as Anagran founder Larry Roberts
and XKL founder Len Bosack say the Net's underlying technology
infrastructure desperately needs updating. Cisco estimated in a recent
report that monthly North American Internet traffic will grow 264 percent
to more than 7.8 million terabytes by 2011. Analysts such as ABI
Research's Stan Schatt fear that rising bandwidth demand could slow
Internet traffic to a crawl, if not stop it altogether. "We can no longer
rely on last-generation technology, which has essentially remained
unchanged for 40 years, to power Internet performance," says Roberts. The
equipment managing Internet traffic is being strained by the increasing
size of files, but startups and others are developing equipment and
software to speed up traffic or boost network capacity to cope with the
problem. Roberts' company offers a product that analyzes Web traffic to
determine its specific content and then allocate the necessary bandwidth.
Bosack's firm recently debuted a system that lets businesses link to
subterranean cables with almost 100 times the capacity of current
telecommunications pipes. "[Roberts and I] are pushing for the same
thing," says Bosack. "The public needs something better than what's
currently available."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Study Finds Human-Robot Attachment
Associated Press (10/01/07) Bluestein, Greg
Georgia Tech researchers conducted a study indicating that certain owners
of Roomba robotic vacuum cleaners become emotionally invested in the
machines, suggesting that the public is ready to a certain degree to
welcome more household robots, even if they are not 100 percent reliable.
Over 2 million Roomba units have been sold, although some early versions
began to break down after heavy use. Georgia Tech College of Computing
professor Beki Grinter's decision to study people's emotional attachment to
the devices was inspired by pictures of owners dressing up the Roombas, and
her research was aided by Ja Young Sung, a student of the theory of
"emotional design," which posits that certain kinds of design can influence
emotional attachment among consumers. Among the behaviors documented by
the researchers were owners naming their Roombas, traveling with them,
introducing them to their parents, and renovating their homes so that the
robots' jobs were easier. "They're more willing to work with a robot that
does have issues because they really, really like it," Grinter says. "It
sort of begins to address more concerns: If we can design things that are
somewhat emotionally engaging, it doesn't have to be as reliable." Part of
the Georgia Tech study was detailed last week at the Ubiquitous Computing
Conference in Austria.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
New Technology Identifies Warped Finger Prints at Warp
Speed
University of Warwick (10/02/07)
Computer science professors at the University of Warwick have developed a
new system that is capable of "unwarping" distorted, scratched, smudged, or
partial fingerprints and generating a clear digital representation. The
system even compares the position of individual sweat pores on
fingerprints. New prints scanned into the system are overlaid onto a
virtual "image space" that includes all other fingerprints in its database,
and the technology is able to identify warped fingerprints in seconds. Dr.
Li Wang, Dr. Abhir Bhalerao, and professor Roland Wilson tested the
technology at an exhibit at the London Science Museum this summer. "We
tested our system on nearly 500 visitors from all over the world and
achieved 100 percent accuracy," says Wang. "Our technology also provides
high speed and more importantly, our system's accuracy and speed doesn't
degrade when the size of the database increases." The researchers believe
the technology could be used in commercial access control systems,
financial transaction authorization systems, and ID cards and border
control systems.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Three Cheers for the 'Sufficient' Internet
InternetNews.com (09/28/07) Needle, David
The Internet is "sufficient" in delivering to most people the
functionality they expect, said Ethernet inventor Bob Metcalfe during a
panel discussion with other tech leaders hosted by research institute SRI.
Despite its popularity, however, Metcalfe contended that the Internet is
crippled by the ideology of its creators, who generally cherish anonymity
and will not permit a system that allows ready confirmation of online
identity. Spam, which most filtering services cannot manage, is on the
cusp of rendering email unusable, and Metcalfe hinted that the addition of
a small email postage fee would be a significant move toward destroying
business for spammers. The panel lamented the lack of access to high-speed
Internet in the United States in comparison to other countries, while
Stanford engineering professor John Cioffi warned that new technologies and
the influx of video are wearing the Internet thin. A more positive
perspective of the state of the Internet was offered by VeriSign founder
Jim Bidzos, who claimed that his firm has sustained 100 percent uptime for
its domain holders for nearly a decade in spite of the fact that the
Internet is "constantly under attack." He also talked about VeriSign's
$100 million Project Titan, whose goal is to enhance the security of the
Internet against new and more refined assaults. Yet Bidzos conceded that
digital certificates, which his company uses to confirm the legitimacy of
Web sites, are not always effective, while co-inventor of the
Diffie-Hellman public key encryption Martin Hellman said the current
iteration of the digital certificate architecture is "unreliable."
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Carnegie Mellon Researchers Fight Phishing Attacks With
Phishing Tactics
Carnegie Mellon News (10/02/07) Spice, Byron
People who fall for phishing attacks and are conned into visiting a
counterfeit Web site by spoof email are often vulnerable to such
victimization because they ignore helpful educational material, but
Carnegie Mellon University researchers have learned to use phishing
techniques to expose would-be victims to such material. They sent their
own spoof emails to lure people onto educational sites, and discovered that
their targets were more likely to learn and retain more knowledge about
recognizing bogus sites. The study involved three groups of 14 volunteers
participating in role-playing exercises in which they processed a blend of
phishing, spam, and genuine email. One group was given anti-phishing
educational materials after they had been tricked by a phishing email, the
second group was given the materials without first falling for the phishing
email, and the third group received no anti-phishing educational materials.
The first group spent over twice as much time studying the materials than
the second group, while the second and third group's inability to identify
phishing emails was about the same. The exercise was repeated a week
later, and the members of the first group had substantially more success at
identifying phishing emails than those in the other two groups. The
results of the study will be presented Oct. 5 at the Anti-Phishing Working
Group's (APWG) eCrime Researchers Summit in Pittsburgh. APWG said the
number of unique phishing reports rose by over 5,000 between May and June,
with an overwhelming number of attacks focused on the financial services
domain.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Proving That Seeing Shouldn't Always Be Believing
New York Times (10/02/07) P. D2; Dreifus, Claudia
The field of digital forensics--the study of how digital media is
manipulated--is the world of Hany Farid, director of Dartmouth College's
Image Science Laboratory. He has consulted with scientific journals,
intelligence agencies, and news organizations to rate the authenticity of
digital images, and he notes in an interview that we now live in a world
where "anyone with a digital camera, a PC, Photoshop, and an hour's worth
of time can make fairly compelling digital forgeries." Farid explains that
he reverse-engineers digital forging techniques so manipulation can be more
easily spotted. One method of detecting a forgery is to analyze pixel
values, which change when the image is doctored. Farid points out that
digital fraud is becoming more common in scientific publications, citing an
infamous case in which South Korean researchers had to retract papers
published in the journal Science when it was determined that the photos
used as evidence of successful human stem cell cloning were in fact
manipulated. As a result, Farid says journal editors should view
unretouched images to make a fair judgment of their validity. He also
thinks the scientific community should craft a comprehensive policy for
rating the level of acceptability of photographic manipulation--one that is
revised and updated to keep pace with technological advancements.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Common AJAX Platform Seen for Devices, Desktops
InfoWorld (10/01/07) Krill, Paul
A common Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) platform is likely to
emerge for both mobile and desktop access, according to industry experts
attending a mobile AJAX workshop on Sept. 28. "That's what appears is
happening," says Jon Ferraiolo, a Web architect at IBM who serves as the
manager of operations for the OpenAjax Alliance, which sponsored the
gathering along with the World Wide Web Consortium. The common AJAX
platform would provide a universal content and application platform, and
would be the Web on mobile rather than a separate mobile Web. The
open-source browser projects WebKit and Mozillo, in addition to the Opera
browser, would serve as the foundation of the platform, and the Windows
Mobile technology is also likely to have a role. "With WebKit, both Apple
and Nokia ship WebKit browsers on their mobile phones," says Ferraiolo,
adding that Motorola is next. Industry experts say they expect to see more
fragmentation on mobile devices for the short term, which will give
server-side content a role to play. They see GPS, camera, and messaging as
offering opportunities, but add that issues such as JavaScript access to
device APIs, offline and disconnected operation, and security have to be
addressed.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Visions: Google VP Says Today's Search Technology Will
Look Primitive in 10 Years
Wisconsin Technology Network (09/29/07) Vanden Plas, Joe
Google VP Udi Manber reports in an interview that search technology is in
a constant state of improvement, and that his company is focusing on "all
the different aspects of it, whether it's understanding more languages,
understanding more concepts, understanding more users, and understanding
better queries." He says Google is perpetually upgrading search tools'
level of refinement while at the same time making them easier to use, and
he characterizes the future of search as allowing people "to find more of
what they want." Manber expects people will be making much more
sophisticated queries in the next decade, so the search technology must
advance in order to manage these queries effectively. "Ten years from now,
today's [search] technology will look primitive," he predicts. Among
Google's major draws Manber cites is its policy of allowing engineers to
dedicate 20 percent of their time to their own projects, which he says is a
way to nurture innovation that might not be facilitated through
conventional channels. Manber says he is the kind of person who believes
that high-paying opportunities in software engineering and computer science
are abundant, so the time could not be more ripe to pursue an IT career.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
'Dead Time' Limits Quantum Cryptography Speeds
NIST Tech Beat (09/27/07)
A new paper by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and
Technology (NIST) and the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) published in the
New Journal of Physics posits that quantum cryptography speed will be
restricted by technological and security issues unless a way is found to
reduce "dead time" in the single-photon detectors receiving
quantum-encrypted messages. This dead time is described as the period of
time during which the detector has to recover after detecting a photon.
Off-the-shelf single-photon detectors require about 50 nanoseconds to 100
nanoseconds to recover before they can detect another photon, which is far
slower than the 1 nanosecond between photons in a 1-GHz transmission. NIST
physicist Joshua Bienfang reasons that the speed would increase if the dead
time in single-photon detectors is lowered, and several groups are engaged
in accomplishing this milestone. He also contends that faster speeds would
be helpful in wireless cryptography between a ground station and a
low-orbiting satellite.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
Using Model-Based Design to Test Auto Embedded
Software
EE Times (09/24/07) Tung, Jim
It is speculated that electronics will account for 40 percent of
automotive material costs by 2010, but problems with the electronics have
led to an increase in quality issues and recalls. The favored approach for
developing automotive embedded software is Model-Based Design, due to the
technique's ability to improve the specification, design, and deployment
steps. Model-Based Design produces models that are employed to deliver
executable specifications, analyze the system's dynamic behavior, simulate
system components and environmental conditions that reduce or eliminate the
need for expensive physical prototypes, and design the algorithms. In
addition, automatic code generation via these models has become an accepted
method for implementing production electronic control unit software that is
expected to become the preferred method in the coming years. Model-Based
Design tools can verify that the design fulfills certain parameters and
link requirements to the design, and engineers working with Model-Based
Design set up model style guidelines to guarantee that the model can be
deployed and to enable comprehension and testing of the model. There are
two strategies to follow, depending on the desired workflow and whether a
design represents a new feature or the tweaking of an existing feature.
One approach is to restrict the options available to the designer from the
outset, while the other is to apply checks to the design later on as it is
undergoing transformation. The assurance that overflow conditions will not
crop up can be helped by stress testing the model by running simulations
using minimum and maximum numerical values, while the cumulative results of
a test suite can be evaluated to ascertain which blocks or states were and
were not executed during a simulation via model coverage analysis.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
The Lesson of Estonia
Information Security (09/07) Vol. 10, No. 8, P. 12; Denning, Dorothy E.
It seems unlikely that the cyberattack against Estonia in the spring of
2007 was an act of government-sponsored cyberterrorism, but the assault
still deserves consideration, as it drove online activism to an
unprecedented and troubling level, writes Dorothy E. Denning of the Naval
Postgraduate School. Internet-based protests have existed for over a
decade, and automated software has been developed for bombarding targeted
Web sites with page requests. More recently, the bonnet, which hijacks
computers into a network that can send spam or launch DDoS attacks, has
emerged as a powerful cyberattack tool. Allegedly, Estonian attackers used
botnets in their DDoS assaults. That the hijacked computers came from
around the world makes it less probable that the Russian government was
behind the cyberattack, as some have speculated. According to Denning, the
salient aspect of the cyberattack on Estonia is that the siege was able to
persist for weeks and inflict costly and disruptive damage without the
resources of a government sponsor. This implies that a few unaffiliated
individuals can wreak substantial damage on a national scale. Al-Qaida and
other terrorists already employ cyberattacks to cause financial damage and
interrupt Web sites. Although current cyberterror lingo has been inflated
to hype proportions, the United States must acknowledge the actual risk and
grow more serious about defending against new cyberattack tools, Denning
says.
Click Here to View Full Article
to the top
