Drive Advance Fuels Terabyte Era
BBC News (10/15/07)
A nanotechnology breakthrough announced by Hitachi could usher in the
"terabyte era" in computer storage. Hitachi researchers have reduced the
read-write head of a hard drive to a size that is 2,000 times smaller than
the width of a human hair, enabling storage capacities of as much as four
terabytes on a single hard drive in the next few years. Smaller heads are
typically characterized by an increase in electrical resistance and noise
output as well as a reduction in reading ability, but Hitachi's approach
reduces noise and improves signal input when "giant magnetoresistance"
(GRM) heads are used. As a result, the smaller head can read data at
greater densities stored on a disk. Existing hard disks can hold about 200
gigabytes of information per square inch, but Hitachi's new technology is
expected to store up to 1 TB of data per square inch. By 2011, Hitachi
expects to have a hard disk for desktops with 4 TB of storage and a laptop
with a 1 TB drive. And hard drive storage should continue to double every
two years. "Hitachi continues to invest in deep research for the
advancement of hard disk drives as we believe there is no other technology
capable of providing the hard drive's high-capacity, low-cost value for the
foreseeable future," says Hitachi's Hiroaki Odawara.
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Q&A: Dr. Valentina Salapura
HPC Wire (10/12/07)
Dr. Valentina Salapura, a computer architect in the Exploratory Server
Systems group at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, will give a plenary
speech at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference on
Oct. 18. Salapura says the Grace Hopper Conference is important to women
in computing because it creates support networks and contacts that are
vital to women in the male-dominated profession. The conference brings
together professional women in the field and students and colleagues to
create mentoring and professional relationships. "It's important to build
networks for women, to help each other out," Salapura says. "I attended a
recent talk by Prof. Rosser, the Dean of the Georgia Tech, about challenges
women face in science and engineering today, and their unequal position
compared to male colleagues. Prof. Rosser found that a woman needs 2.5
times more achievements compared to her male colleagues to reach the same
level of recognition. That's why it's so important that we support each
other and build our own networks." As an example, Salapura singles out
Fran Allen, an early pioneer of parallel programming and this year's winner
of ACM's A.M. Turing Award. Allen is the first woman to receive the Turing
Award, as well as the first IBM Fellow, and the first female president of
the IBM academy, IBM's internal think tank. "It's been long overdue that a
woman is recognized in this way," says Salapura.
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You Might Wear Computing's Next Wave
Associated Press (10/12/07) Bergstein, Brian
At the recent International Symposium on Wearable Computing in Boston,
Mass., several research teams displayed electronic devices that could soon
be worn by everyday people, including miniaturized displays that attach to
eyepieces. Swiss Federal Institute of Technology researchers displayed a
stretchable, thread-like sensor that can be woven into fabric to monitor
the wearer. University of Bremen researcher Stephane Beauregard displayed
a shoe sensor with tiny accelerometers that can be used to provide
real-time location tracking in places that satellite navigation systems
cannot reach or are inaccurate. Beauregard plans to market the sensor to
firefighters and other emergency responders. MIT graduate students wore
plastic badges that could analyze several behaviors, including motion and
speech patterns, which could be wirelessly sent to a computer or phone and
analyzed. Carsten Mehring of the Colorado School of Mines demonstrated a
prototype glove with sensors that can control portable music devices with
minute finger movements, allowing for eye-free control during activities
such as snow boarding or driving.
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The Great Tech Worker Divide
BusinessWeek (10/10/07) Herbst, Moira
American tech companies are complaining that demand for qualified staff
greatly outstrips supply, while many tech workers argue that good jobs are
scarce. Congress and public policy experts face the daunting challenge of
reconciling these two differing points of view, and both chambers of
Congress are considering a possible revamping of immigration policies for
high-skilled workers. Among the reforms on the table is a measure to
prohibit outsourcing companies from using temporary visas; another to
completely remove temporary visas and permit high-skilled workers to enter
the country only on permanent green cards; and a third proposal to restrict
visas to positions where there is a demonstrated shortage. The Bureau of
Labor Statistics estimates that the unemployment rate for computer- and
mathematics-related work occupations has steadily declined from 5.4 percent
in the second quarter of 2002 to 1.8 percent in the second quarter of 2007,
but increased job specialization is transpiring as more technical jobs are
outsourced. Software engineers, IT managers, and network systems engineers
have experienced the largest gains for IT jobs in the last year. There has
been a decrease in the mean salary for computer- and mathematics-related
jobs, and tech-worker advocates and certain economists blame this
stagnation on market manipulation by U.S. tech companies importing guest
workers. One program being scrutinized for abuse is the H-1B temporary
visa program, amid a Senate probe to investigate suspicions that employers
are using the program to outsource labor or import foreign workers willing
to work for less money instead of hiring domestic workers that would have
to be paid higher salaries. Meanwhile, tech companies are concerned about
worsening labor shortages as interest in tech degrees wanes across the
board.
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SC07 Panels: From Quantum Computing to Exotic
Architectures
HPC Wire (10/11/07)
The computing industry will celebrate the 50th birthday of Fortran during
SC07, which takes place Nov. 10-16, 2007, in Reno, Nev. SC07 will offer
the Fifty Years of Fortran panel, and Frances Allen, IBM Emerita, will
moderate the discussion on the influence of the programming language on
system software, applications, and computer architecture. David Padua from
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Henry M. Tufo of the
National Center for Atmospheric Research, John Levesque of Cray, and
Richard Hanson of Visual Numerics will serve as panelists, and will also
speculate on the future of Fortran. Other topics of the SC07 panels
program include Supercomputing With Exotic Architectures--how to use FPGAs,
GPUs, game processors and other non-conventional approaches to computing;
Quantum computing: What is happening in this revolutionary field?; How to
Get a Better Job in Computing--and Keep It!; and HEC energy crisis: How we
shall cope with a world in which computing is limited by power consumption?
In addition to the panels, the international conference offers technical
and education programs, workshops, tutorials, an exhibit area,
demonstrations, and hands-on learning. SC07 is sponsored by ACM's Special
Interest Group on Computer Architecture (ACM SIGARCH) and the IEEE Computer
Society.
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Forecast: Sex and Marriage With Robots by 2050
LiveScience (10/12/07) Choi, Charles Q.
In David Levy's recently completed Ph.D. thesis at the University of
Maastricht in the Netherlands on human-robot relationships, "Intimate
Relationships with Artificial Partners," he predicts that robots will
become so human-like that by 2050 humans and robots will have intimate
relationships and even marry each other. "There's a trend of robots
becoming more human-like in appearance and coming more in contact with
humans," says Levy. In 2006, founder of the European Robotics Research
Network Henrik Christensen predicted that people would be having intimate
relationships with robots within five years, and Levy thinks that is
likely. As for marriage, Levy believes it will happen with time. "One
hundred years ago, interracial marriage and same-sex marriages were illegal
in the United States," he says. "There has been this trend in marriage
where each partner gets to make their own choice of who they want to be
with." Levy argues that almost all of the reasons that people fall in
love, such as similar personalities, knowledge levels, and interests, are
programmable. "The question is not if this will happen, but when," Levy
says. "I am convinced the answer is much earlier than you think."
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'Dark Web' Project Takes on Cyber-Terrorism
Fox News (10/11/07) Kotler, Steven
Dark Web is an extensive, searchable database on extremists and
terrorist-generated content. Developed by Hsinchun Chen, director of the
University of Arizona's Artificial Intelligence Lab, Dark Web uses advanced
technology to cross-reference, catalog, and analyze terrorist Web sites,
message boards, and any other online information. Chen says the amount of
information is massive, posted in dozens of languages, and is often hidden
behind ordinary-looking pages. "Since the events of 9/11, terrorist
presence online has multiplied tenfold," says Chen. "Around the year 2000,
there were 70 to 80 core terrorist sites online; now there are at least
7,000 to 8,000." Chen says the Internet is arguably the most powerful tool
for spreading extremist violence because Web pages can be used for
activities such as spreading propaganda and offering advice on how to plot
a series of attacks. To process the massive amount of information
gathered, Dark Web uses a variety of analytical tools, including
statistical, cluster, content, link, and sentiment analysis, a new
analytical tool capable of determining the emotional content of a site, so
the system can differentiate between social activists and hateful
extremists. Dark Web also uses social-network analysis to map extremist
networks and determine the importance of each member. Chen's team recently
studied online training manuals and methods on how to build and use
improvised explosive devices, including where such content was downloaded,
which has led to countermeasures that are keeping soldiers and civilians
safer. However, critics see a number of similarities between Dark Web and
the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's controversial Total
Information Awareness initiative, while Electronic Privacy Information
Center executive director Marc Rotenberg notes that "the very same tools
that can be used to track terrorists can also be used to track political
opponents."
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Teen Tech Camp Targets Next-Gen IT Workers
Computerworld (10/10/07) Hoffman, Thomas
In an effort to bolster dwindling enrollment in university computer
science and IT programs, the Society for Information Management (SIM) has
partnered with public libraries, public schools, and other organizations to
create technology camps for teenagers. The Teen Tech Camps at the Memphis
Public Library are intended for teenagers between 12 and 15 years old and
highlight the use of "big shinny objects" such as iPhones, digital cameras,
and other gadgets to get kids interested in technology while simultaneously
teaching them how such technology can be used in the work environment. The
gadget sessions are also beneficial to library staff who may need to be
educated on how to use new and emerging technologies. The camps require
students to obtain a letter of recommendation from a teacher and to write a
short essay on why they are interested in the program. The programs are so
popular that many of the sessions have kids who try to sneak into the camp.
SIM has created a set of software templates from the Memphis project that
other SIM chapters can use to develop their own Teen Tech Camps. The
software includes a budget template, marketing timelines, and permission
forms.
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'Transparent' Gadget Could Trump iPhone Interface
New Scientist (10/11/07) Barras, Colin
The two-sided, multi-touch LucidTouch device being developed by Microsoft
and Mitsubishi aims to solve several of the problems consumers have with
the iPhone, specifically blocking the screen during operation and "fat
fingers," when the device detects the entirety of the touch area. The
device has a large touch-sensitive LCD screen on the front, similar to the
iPhone, but also has a touch-sensitive interface on the back. When using
the back of the device, shadow images of the user's fingers appear on the
front, giving the illusion of transparency and allowing users to control
the device without blocking the screen. To eliminate "fat fingers,"
LucidTouch isolates the active point of each finger with a small green dot.
Alistair Edwards at the University of York says he likes the idea, and
LucidTouch solves the problems efficiently, though he would like to see the
technology pushed further, such as including orientation detectors to
manipulate objects by tilting the device. Daniel Wigdor of Mitsubishi
Electric Research Labs and the University of Toronto says his team is
exploring new ideas on how to improve user interaction. The biggest
concern right now is how to slim down LucidTouch's design. The shadow
finger transparency is achieved using a "boom camera" that sticks out from
the back of the device. One possible solution is the use of LEDs to record
movement. "You would have the back of the device covered with them, half
turned on and half turned off," Wigdor says. "Then the light from the LEDs
that are on would be reflected from the hands and back onto the LEDs that
are off," which would generate a charge to detect where the hands are.
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Video Conferencing Could Help Resolve Conflicts at Work
and at Home, Researchers Say
University of Bath (10/11/07)
University of Bath researchers believe that videoconferencing could be
used to resolve many disagreements that currently need to be solved by
conciliators. Leon Watts and Matt Billings, from the university's
Department of Computer Science, believe that videoconferencing has a
greater potential for social and emotional communications than the
telephone. They also believe it eliminates imbalances caused by
face-to-face meetings, such as if someone has a physically intimidating
presence. "Most of the conciliation to sort out disputes between employees
is done by phone because for the conciliator, who may have as many as 70 or
80 cases to deal with at once, it can be difficult, costly, and slow to
arrange to see people in person," Watts says. "In situations of high
conflict, it can be hard to get to the real issues, to judge what people
really care about, on the phone. So using a video link, in which the
conciliator can in addition see each of the disputing parties, is a step
forward." Watts says the newest technology allows for better quality
images than the first, jerky Web cameras, and it would be possible to send
each party a video camera and whatever else is needed to help them set up
the video link. During mock disputes, an experienced conciliator found
using a videoconferencing system was remarkably similar to normal
conciliation. "The conciliator was much more relaxed about using video
after the trial," says Billings. "We think that the conciliation
profession will be interested in the potential of this technology."
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IU Research Labs Receive $1.69 Million to Develop
Scientific Research Gateway
Indiana University (10/10/07)
Indiana University researchers in the Pervasive Technology Labs and School
of Informatics are working on "Open Grid Computing Environments (OGCE)
Software for Science Gateways," a project designed to create better access
to advanced supercomputers and large scientific data storage facilities for
researchers. "Scientists studying climate change or searching for new
drugs to treat illness benefit greatly from grid computing resources such
as the TeraGrid ... but they are not usually experts in the complex
software that powers these resources and binds them together," says the
project's principal investigator Marlon Pierce. "They need tools that will
make this technology easy to use, so they can remain focused on their
science." OGCE project researchers will work to develop software that
could easily be used by other groups to create Web gateways, which would
provide logical interfaces to essential online resources. Research
gateways provide collaborative search tools and mechanisms for conducting
and archiving online experiments. Science gateways would be particularly
valuable because many scientists are not experts in high-performance and
grid computing but would still benefit from powerful supercomputing and
data storage resources. Such Web portals would also allow scientists and
students at small and minority-serving institutions access to the nation's
advanced, high-performance computer resources.
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Making Sure Linux Doesn't Get Lost in Translation
Linux Insider (10/09/07) Germain, Jack M.
Culture and language differences are a significant barrier to getting
developers from around the world to participate in open source projects.
To improve the process, the Linux Foundation is seeking more international
cooperation to make it easier for governments and vendors to work with
Linux kernel developers. Linux Foundation officials recently announced an
agreement with the Information Technology Promotion Agency, an organization
funded by the Japanese government, to support the use of open source
technology. The agreement establishes the terms of joint collaboration
with Linux developers and product engineers in Japan, currently the only
country that the Linux Foundation has an office in, though it is trying to
establish a presence in multiple European and Asian countries as well.
Through the foundation, Linux kernel developers travel to Japan to discuss
some of the cultural differences that hinder more open source development.
For example, Japanese software developers often disagree with the practice
of posting criticism and corrections to items involving installation
difficulties and kernel patches. The Linux Foundation has an advantage in
Japan when compared to other countries it is trying to develop more open
source cooperation because Japan already has an established Linux following
and a large economy that supports numerous vendors.
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Virtual Human Has a Roving Eye
New Scientist (10/10/07) Dume, Belle
Speech and cognition scientists in the GIPSA Lab at the Institut National
Polytechnique de Grenoble, France, have developed virtual characters that
meet a person's gaze and have eye movements like humans. Human's eyes do
not steadily scan across a scene, but constantly dart around in rapid,
unconscious movements known as "saccades" that allow people to quickly
focus on interesting parts of the scene while the brain builds a "mental
map." Robots and virtual characters tend to hold gazes too long and have
unnatural eye movements, making interaction with them feel uncomfortable.
The software developed to create more natural eye movement is based on a
model to mimic human eye vision by Laurent Itti and others at the
University of Southern California. Itti's model manages scenes based on
three elements--the most visually outstanding parts of a scene, or
saliency; the most important parts, or "pertinence;" and "attention," which
temporarily inhibits areas that are uninteresting. The GIPSA researchers
added additional elements, including an "attention stack" that tries to
better simulate how humans rank interesting areas, and a module that
recognizes familiar objects such as faces. Christopher Peters of the
University of Paris VIII says the research is important because it focuses
on adding a more social aspect to virtual characters, and more subtle
behaviors such as eye movements are important to creating more realistic
artificial beings.
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Xerox's Software Categorizes Text and Images at the Same
Time
Computing News (10/09/07)
Xerox smart document researchers recently demonstrated software that can
link images and text, significantly improving document management tasks
such as retrieving information from a database or automatically routing
documents. Xerox computer scientist and lead researcher Marco Bressan says
that current tools are capable of tagging either text or images for
processing, but the Xerox system is the first to efficiently combine the
two tools. The system allows for more complete searches and business
procedures by allowing users to retrieve document images by describing the
image instead of requiring the user to match words in the text. The
program could be used to automatically create annotated photo journals with
links to informative sites, or to streamline the process of scanning,
labeling, and indexing documents. "Xerox's hybrid categorizer creates a
shared knowledge space between text and images," Bressan says. "The
textual information enriches the visual, and the visual information
enriches the textual. The whole is ultimately greater than the sum of the
parts."
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Bryn Mawr Computer Scientist Is a P.I. in $2.5 Million
Humanoid-Robot Project
Bryn Mawr College (10/04/07) Ginanni, Claudia
The National Science Foundation has awarded a $2.5 million Partnerships
for International Research and Education grant to five U.S. universities
and colleges and three Korean universities to support their development of
humanoid robots. The U.S. schools include Bryn Mawr College, Drexel
University, the University of Pennsylvania, Virginia Tech, and Swarthmore
College. The goal of the project is to develop a three-tier set of tools
for exploring a virtual humanoid, a humanoid about two feet tall, and one
about four feet tall called HUBO. The tools will provide researchers with
opportunities to advance humanoid-robot capabilities, as well as insight on
issues such as balance disorders, cognition, and perception. "By creating
a virtual HUBO, we'll get to construct our own universe where we define the
laws of physics--gravity, friction, everything," says Bryn Mawr computer
science chair Doug Blank. "We'll also try to make a simple interface for
researchers, students, and student-researchers to explore the issues in
humanoid robotics." Bryn Mawr was awarded the grant shortly after forming
the Institute for Personal Robots in Education (IPRE) with Georgia Tech and
Microsoft. Blank, who is co-principal investigator and co-director of
IPRE, says the NSF grant is a logical extension of the robotics research
the school is already conducting with wheeled and four-legged robots.
"Walking robots, either four-legged or two-legged, are quite interesting
because it is so much about balance," Blank says. "Humans walk so
naturally that we don't even think about it. We'll be doing a lot of
thinking about it."
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Nanowires Hold Promise for Future CMOS
Semiconductor International (10/07) Lammers, David
The semiconductor industry will be able to add more transistors to a
single chip in the years to come by reducing the supply voltage, according
to Hiroshi Iwai, a professor at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. During
a keynote address for the Fourth International Symposium on Advanced Gate
Stack Technology, Iwai said researchers are coming up with new ways to
lower operating voltages without downsizing the gate length of CMOS-based
devices. Power demands are preventing the industry from increasing the
number of transistors on chips. Though the industry will be able to turn
to lower supply voltages after CMOS gate scaling reaches its physical
limit, they also will be able to use nanowires or nanotube-based FET (field
effect transistors) nanowires after devices based on quantum spin,
molecular, or other advanced forms of logic appear, Iwai added. Such
devices, which are likely to emerge after 2020, would offer high conduction
at low voltages with an approach that increases the number of quantum
channels as well as the number of nanowires or nanotubes in the channels.
"By adjusting the wire width, the energy band minimums become closer and we
can increase the number of the conduction channels," he said.
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Q&A: Desperately Seeking Business Skills
Computerworld (10/09/07) Hoffman, Thomas
Incoming president of the Society for Information Management Robert Keefe
says developing business skills and IT alignment are probably the biggest
challenges that companies are currently facing, and that IT workers need to
invest the time and effort in themselves to develop the business skills
needed in the industry. "Working with the business is part of our
profession, it's not just technology anymore," says Keefe. He also notes
that the recruitment process has changed, including a new popularity in
incentive packages and retention bonuses, but that many recent graduates
consider more than money and look for interesting and challenging work as
well as an inviting work environment. Universities that place an emphasis
on soft skills, particularly communication and business skills, are the
focus of Keefe's recruitment efforts, and he is working with several
universities on incorporating soft skills into their academic program.
Business relationship manager positions are currently the most difficult to
fill, Keefe says, but fortunately companies only need a few employees in
those positions. Looking forward, Keefe says many organizations will be
looking for strong leadership, and CIOs will have opportunities to
capitalize on the business, technology, and process experience that they
have built up over their careers.
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Data Sharing Threatens Privacy
Nature (10/11/07) Vol. 449, No. 7163, P. 644
The field of computational social science relies heavily on access to
electronic datasets such as email records, Web-search histories, and
mobile-phone call logs, and such data sharing offers "enormous potential
... for lines of research that shed new light on basic social-science
questions," says Cornell University network analysis specialist Jon
Kleinberg. But concerns about how such data sharing might threaten privacy
could create a major public backlash, says Consortium for Political and
Social Research director Myron Gutmann. Kleinberg agrees that "as the
number of these types of study increases, the community is clearly going to
need to engage in deeper discussions about the right way to safeguard
privacy in working with these kinds of data." Software tools for
protecting privacy while sharing data are often developed by social
scientists with heavy computer science backgrounds, but as these tools are
mainstreamed they are adopted by less experienced academics. The need for
an institutional and systematic strategy for strengthening the privacy
rights of those whose data is used thus becomes obvious, says Boston
University researcher Marshall Van Alstyne. A recent study by the U.S.
National Academies reached a similar conclusion, in that individual
researchers cannot be given sole responsibility for protecting privacy.
However, social scientists are quick to point out that private firms,
unlike academics, operate with few restrictions on retaining and exploiting
personal data.
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