Ohio Brings in Experts to Review Troubled E-Voting
Systems
Computerworld (10/16/07) Weiss, Todd R.
The state of Ohio has hired computer security researchers from three
universities--Pennsylvania State University, University of Pennsylvania,
and the University of California, Santa Barbara--as well as e-voting
testing lab SysTest Labs to conduct independent tests on the state's
e-voting machines in an effort to find and fix any potential problems
before the 2008 presidential election. Ohio assistant secretary of state
Chris Nance says the review will test a representative sample of 40,000
e-voting machines from Ohio's 88 counties. Ohio's e-voting hardware is
primarily from Election Systems & Software and Premier Election Solutions,
formerly known as Diebold Election Systems. SysTest Labs President Brian
Phillips says the testing process began on Sept. 24 and will be finished by
Nov. 30. The testing will examine hardware, election management software,
polling place devices, and the central counting applications that tally the
votes. SysTest will also conduct configuration management testing to
ensure that the e-voting system hardware and software match the
specifications of the certified systems allowed in Ohio. Final reports
from the testing will be delivered to Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer
Brunner on Dec. 14.
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OOPSLA 2007 Explores Future Software Applications
AScribe Newswire (10/16/07)
A leading group of software development experts have been lined up for
panels, demonstrations, and research papers for OOPSLA 2007, the
international conference on Object-Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages
and Applications. Steven Fraser of Cisco Systems and Guy L. Steele Jr. and
James Gosling of Sun Microsystems are on the 40 Years of Language Evolution
panel, while CGI's Henry Baleen and James Lapalme will participate on a
panel on Domain Specific Languages and their potential impact on business
and implementation. Meanwhile, ACM Turing Award recipients Frederick
Brooks and John McCarthy are featured speakers who will give presentations
on telecollaboration and the proposed programming language Elephant 2000,
respectively. Other keynote speakers include Jim Purbrick and Mark
Lentczner, who are known as Babbage Linden and Zero Linden in the virtual
world Second Life; and Maps of the Innovation author Peter Turchi, who will
address the obstacles that creative software programmers face. Research
paper topics include growing Java, run time techniques, inheritance and
visibility, language and software design, object ownership, and language
specification. Future applications and advancements over the past year
will be discussed in the Onward! Presentations and Demonstrations Track,
respectively. ACM and ACM SIGPLAN (Special Interest Group on Programming
Languages) sponsor OOPSLA 2007, which takes place Oct. 21-25, at the Palais
des congress de Montreal in Quebec, Canada. For more information on
OOPSLA, or to register, visit
http://www.oopsla.org/oopsla2007/
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$2.2 Million Grant Calls for Designing Computer Software
to Predict the Unpredictable
University of Arizona (10/16/07)
University of Arizona professor of computer engineering Jerzy Rozenblit
has received a $2.2 million grant to design software capable of predicting
the actions of paramilitary groups, ethnic factions, terrorists, and
criminal groups, as well as assisting military commanders in creating
strategies for stabilizing areas before, during, and after conflicts. The
software will also have civilian applications in finance, law enforcement,
epidemiology, and natural disaster response. The Asymmetric Threat
Response and Analysis Project is a massive, complex series of algorithms
that sort through vast amounts of data and analyze numerous factors,
including social, political, cultural military, and media influences,
Rozenblit says. He says that since the end of the Cold War, the United
States' opponents have acted in ways that defy logic and are almost
inconceivable. ATRAP will use computational methods based on game theory,
co-evolution, and genetic development to predict such illogical actions.
"The computer can look at very, very complex data sets that as an
individual or even as a group of individuals, you could never analyze,"
says ATRAP project manager Brian Ten Eyck. "The computer can bring the
patterns and connections to the surface and can predict scenarios that
might never occur to human analysts." Rozenblit says the program will
eventually be able to display data in 3D graphics that are easy to
understand, allowing for quick decisions to be made in rapidly changing
situations.
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New Tricks for Online Photo Editing
Technology Review (10/16/07) Greene, Kate
A new open source photo-editing technique known as seam carving allows
users to shrink and enlarge photos with relatively little distortion by
automatically adding and removing pixels as needed. Based on an algorithm
by Adobe Systems senior research scientist Shai Avidan and Mitsubishi
Electric Research Laboratories visiting researcher Ariel Shamir, seam
carving was displayed at this year's SIGGRAPH and already has several
photo-editing Web sites offering the technique. Avidan says that seam
carving is fairly straightforward. For example, if someone wanted to
compress a picture by a single row of pixels, the software would scan the
image to find the best pixels to remove, usually in a zigzag pattern based
on what pixels are in between pixels with similar colors. The algorithm is
capable of finding and removing pixels very quickly. Avidan says the
process works well for pictures with sky and grass backgrounds but rather
poorly on faces and more diverse landscapes. "Perhaps the best thing about
this technique is its simplicity," says MIT computer science professor
Fredo Durand. "It is a very short algorithm, and it works very well."
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Carnegie Mellon's Adrian Perrig Leads Research Team
Dedicated to Analyzing and Disrupting Internet Attackers' Black
Markets
Carnegie Mellon News (10/15/07) Swaney, Chriss
Carnegie Mellon University professor Adrian Perrig, along with researchers
from the International Computer Science Institute and the University of
California, San Diego, have developed new computer tools to better
understand and possibly stop the growth of Internet black markets for
malware. "These troublesome entrepreneurs even offer tech support and free
updates for their malicious creations that run the gamut from
denial-of-service attacks designed to overwhelm Web sites and servers to
data stealing Trojan viruses," Perrig says. Project researcher Jason
Franklin says the team found more than 80,000 potential credit card numbers
available on illicit underground Web markets. Transactions on the markets
are difficult to track because buyers usually contact the seller through
private email or instant messaging and payments are made through non-bank
payment services. The Carnegie Mellon researchers proposed two technical
approaches to reduce the number of transactions by destabilizing the
market. The first approach is a slander attack that would eliminate the
verified status of a buyer or seller. "By eliminating the verified status
of the honest individuals, an attacker establishes a lemon market where
buyers are unable to distinguish the quality of the goods or services,"
Franklin says. The researchers also developed a technique to establish
fake verified-status identities so buyers cannot tell the difference
between real sellers and fake sellers. "So, when the unwary buyer tries to
collect the goods and services promised, the seller fails to provide the
goods and services. Such behavior is known as 'ripping,'" Franklin says.
"And it is the goal of all black market site's verification systems to
minimize such behavior."
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New Software Advances Photo Search and Management in
Online Systems
Penn State Live (10/15/07) Hopkins, Margaret
Penn State researchers have developed software that is capable of
automatically tagging uploaded images and then improving those tags by
"learning" from users who interact with the system. "Tagging itself is
challenging as it involves converting an image's pixels to descriptive
words," says Penn State associate professor of information science and
technology and lead researcher James Wang. "But what is novel with the
'Tagging over Time' or T/T technology is that the system adapts as people's
preferences for images and words change." Wang says the system can adapt
to changing vocabulary and interpretations, allowing its vocabulary to grow
and replace old tags with newer, more specific tags. During tests, the T/T
system correctly tagged four out of every 10 images, a significant
achievement for a computer and a substantial improvement over earlier
systems. Additionally, as the system learns more, its tagging performance
improves and is eventually capable of reaching an accuracy rate of 60
percent. A paper describing the system, "Tagging Over Time: Real-world
Image Annotation by Lightweight Meta-learning," was presented at the ACM
Multimedia 2007 conference in Augsburg, Germany. The researchers also
presented another system that can automatically select "aesthetically
pleasing" images by analyzing features such as contrast, depth-of-field
indicators, brightness, and region composition.
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What Would Women Invent?
Longmont Daily Times-Call (CO) (10/14/07) Kindelspire, Tony
Lucy Sanders, CEO and co-founder of the National Center for Women &
Information Technology, says the lack of women in IT should be a pressing
concern as technology is fueling the economy. "We need more diversity of
thought in the creation of our technology, and I know that we don't have
that today," Sanders says. "What would women invent if they were inventing
today?" In its second year of operation, the NCWIT, based at the
University of Colorado's ATLAS Institute, is a coalition of more than 100
academic institutions, corporations, and government agencies with the
mission of increasing women's participation in IT. Sanders, who was
recently inducted into the Women in Technology Hall of Fame, says that
nothing short of institutional change will fix the problem. Sanders
believes that more students, both women and men, should be taking computer
courses and that as a society the United States does not have enough
fluency in IT. Greater attention needs to be paid to students before they
reach high school to keep them interested. Alma Rosales, who is currently
serving as an IBM Executive on Loan to Colorado State University, cites a
National Science Foundation study that found that in the fourth grade boys
and girls showed equal levels of interest in science, but by high school
the girls' interest had dropped off. "So what happens between then and
high school? We don't know," says Rosales. "We believe that we lose them
around sixth grade. By middle school, they're already choosing electives,
but they're not pursuing the harder math and science electives."
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U. Va. Computer Security Video Wins Award
University of Virginia (10/16/07)
The University of Virginia's Office of Information Technology and
Communications won the first-place award from ACM's Special Internet Group
for University and College Computing Services for a video on how excessive,
inappropriate personal information on the Web can be damaging. The
70-second video shows a job applicant trying to explain the contents of his
personal blog and a picture of himself on a photo sharing site to a hiring
committee. The applicant is unable to come up with an appropriate answer
and is embarrassed by the situation. The video ends with the warning,
"What happens on the Web, Stays on the Web," with an emphasis that it will
be there permanently for all to see. The video was one of the university's
contributions to the "Who's Watching Charlottesville?," a cross-sector
community initiative campaign to create greater cyber awareness in the
Charlottesville-Albemarle area and help residents learn to protect
themselves online. "We created this video to get our message across to
students in a humorous to-the-point way," says Scott Crittenden, a systems
analyst in the Information Technology and Communications office and
director of the video. "It's a gratifying culmination of our efforts to be
recognized by SIGUCCS for a national award."
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Warming Up to Robots
Telegram & Gazette (10/17/07) Reis, Jacqueline
Robotics industry experts discussed how robots are currently being used
and the direction robotics is likely to take in the near future during a
symposium on robotics this week at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which
offers the first robotics major in the country. Helen Greiner, co-founder
of iRobot, said soldiers are discovering how useful robots can be in places
such as Afghanistan. She said one Marine had credited the company's
military robots with saving his life and the lives of his friends a number
of times, considering they have been used to remove or explode 17
improvised explosive devices and a vehicle bomb. Greiner also noted that
people are becoming attached to her company's Roomba vacuum robot, adding
that they sometimes name them and get disappointed if they have to be
replaced rather than repaired. "I think people buy them as appliances ...
but they start thinking of it differently," she said. Meanwhile, DEKA
Research & Development's Dean Kamen said his company is developing
8.9-pound wearable, robotic arms for veterans who have lost one or both
arms. Kamen said robotics is likely to merge with other concepts, similar
to the way in which computers have. "I think this melding of people and
prosthetics is going to blur that line pretty quickly," Kamen said.
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In Human Grid, We Are the Cogs
University of California, San Diego (10/15/07) Kane, Daniel
In a position paper presented at Interactive Computer Vision 2007 on Oct.
15 in Rio de Janeiro, University of California, San Diego computer
scientists, led by professor Serge Belongie, presented a grid system to
solve Captchas that also assists people with disabilities. "One of the
application areas for my research is assistive technology for the blind,"
Belongie says. "For example, there is an enormous amount of data that
needs to be labeled for our grocery shopping aid to work. We are
developing a wearable computer with a camera that can lead a visually
impaired user to a desired product in a grocery store by analyzing the
video stream. Our paper describes a way that people who are looking to
prove that they are humans and not computers can help label still shots
from video streams in real time." The grid system is called Soylent Grid,
in reference to the 1973 movie Soylent Green, because the grid, like the
product Soylent Green in the movie, is made of people. "The degree to
which human beings could participate in the system ranges from none at all
to virtually unlimited. If no human user is involved in the loop, only
computer vision algorithms solve the identification problem. But in
principle, if there were an unlimited number of humans in the loop, all the
video frames could be submitted to a Soylent Grid, be solved immediately,
and sent back to the device to guide the user," the authors write.
Belongie says instead of a word or letter Captcha, Internet users might be
asked to click on different objects to identify them for the person wearing
the portable computer and camera.
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Debating the Morality Behind Software Development
CNet (10/15/07) Cooper, Charles
IBM Fellow Grady Booch says in an interview that the time has come for
software developers to stop avoiding the ethical and moral ramifications of
how governments employ their creations. He argues that "at the ultimate
level, the software developer can say, 'Do I want to actually build a
system that potentially could violate human rights?'" Booch is heartened
by the fact that such issues--which have long been common in the fields of
physics, biology, and chemistry--are being raised in the software field.
"The very fact that this dialog is going on [in the computer business] in
some ways is a suggestion to me that our industry is beginning to mature
because at least these things are on the table," he says. Booch cites the
power of individuals, as opposed to institutions, in pushing for moral and
ethical software development. Though he says he would personally prefer to
decide to stop innovating at a point where he feels going further would
open up the danger of rights violations and other abuses, Booch
acknowledges that "I still have the responsibility to educate those who are
in a position in the policy-making realm, so that they understand the
implications of what they're doing." Consideration of software
development's ethical and moral implications lies at the heart of groups
such as Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility, Booch notes.
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NMU Students Present Paper on Artificial Evolution
Mining Journal (10/14/07) Moeller, Miriam
Northern Michigan University students Brian Krent and Correy Kowall have
been invited to the 2007 Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference
(GECCO) for their work on a cluster computer that simulates the process of
evolution using thinking robots. "It is rare for undergraduate students to
make it into GECCO as co-authors with others, and almost unheard of for a
GECCO paper to be solely authored by undergraduates," says NMU mathematics
and computer science professor Jeff Horn, Krent and Kowall's advisor. Horn
says the robots in the cluster computer were programmed for "autotrophic
reproduction," which means the robots build a copy of themselves. Each
robot's brain was created as an artificial "neural network," simulating a
primitive brain. The neural network was capable of evolving through
mutation and the crossover of simulated genetic material. The cluster
computer was necessary to manage the significant number of robots and their
behaviors, and to speed up the evolution process. "It has an ambitious
goal: to evolve robots that can reproduce by themselves, possibly with
improvements," Horn says. "A research objective on that scale is rare and
daring."
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Web Language and Artificial Intelligence Expert Joins
Tetherless World Research Constellation
Rensselaer News (10/16/07) DeMarco, Gabrielle
Deborah L. McGuinness, a leading expert in Web research and one of the
creators of the OWL Web Ontology Language, will join Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute as an endowed chair of the Tetherless World Research
Constellation. McGuinness will work with senior constellation chair James
A. Hendler. "Rensselaer now has two of the top computer scientists in the
world who study the Web and Web-based technology," says Provost Robert
Palazzo. "Dr. McGuinness brings her skill and knowledge in Web ontology
and reasoning to the research constellation. Together, the researchers
will help direct our research on Web technology and their guidance will
help lead worldwide efforts to develop the next generation of the World
Wide Web." McGuinness is best known for her work on the Semantic Web, a
fusion between the Web and artificial intelligence that allows computers
and other electronics to communicate and interact without human
intervention. McGuinness also is known for putting artificial intelligence
techniques into practice by using semantic technologies to integrate
scientific information, focusing on semantic technologies, trustable
systems, and integration platforms. "Work in these areas will develop a
better and more information-rich World Wide Web, containing intelligent
assistants that can help humans in their daily interactions with computers
and the many other devices that they are increasingly interacting with,
from PDAs to game consoles," McGuinness says.
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Merging the Real and the Virtual in Canterbury
Stuff (NZ) (10/16/07) Cusack, Matine
After helping to establish the Human Interface Technology Laboratory (Hit
Lab) at the University of Washington in 2002, Mark Billinghurst moved to
the University of Canterbury and set up a partner lab in New Zealand (Hit
Lab NZ). At Hit Lab NZ Billinghurst continues to bring the merger of the
virtual and real worlds closer with his efforts to revolutionize how people
interact with computers. "First of all, we are doing some really
interesting research in augmented reality, particularly in the areas of
mobile phones," Billinghurst says. "We are also doing some very
interesting applied-research projects, particularly in how you can use
computer vision to enhance interaction with computers." Billinghurst says
the next-generation interface work is particularly important to
establishing high-bandwidth connections between research institutes and
universities, and how such connections will change natural collaboration
efforts. He says his work in augmented reality involves "overlaying
computer graphics in the real world," while his work with wearable
computing and collaborative interfaces involves "how you can develop
systems that support face-to-face and remote collaboration."
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Watermarks for Mobile Television
Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft (10/07)
The Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT has
developed a strong video watermark that will provide protection for mobile
television programs that offer interactive content. As part of its
porTiVity project, Fraunhofer SIT has created a video watermark that
permanently labels TV material without interfering with the processing of
video footage and incorporating additional information. Viewers' desire to
interact more with TV programs has prompted Fraunhofer SIT to develop a
rich media iTV system for mobile television, which would enable them to
select objects on the screens of their devices. "During a football match,
for example, viewers could click on individual players to view their goal
and assist statistics," says Fraunhofer SIT's Patrick Wolf. Broadcasters
would also be able to use the optional content to offer viewers interactive
prizes or edutainment formats. The porTiVity project also includes an
authoring system for tracking moving objects that can be linked to
additional, interactive content. Broadcasters would receive rich media
content in the form of a special MPEG-4 video that includes the main
program and interactive elements.
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Researchers: Vehicles That Talk With Each Other Can Save
Lives
Automotive News (10/08/07)No. 6276, P. 34; Allen, Leslie J.
The recent dedication of the Connected Vehicle Proving Ground in Michigan
was a major step toward developing vehicles that are capable of
communicating with one another. Planners of the $50 million center, funded
by the federal government, hope it will eventually become an incubator for
automakers, suppliers, researchers, transportation agencies, and other
organizations developing the technology. Chrysler's David Henry says the
first step is for vehicles to use the same language. Test roads at the
center contain wireless devices that will communicate with the vehicles.
Michigan Department of Transportation project manager for intelligent
transportation systems Greg Krueger says the federal government has
reserved the 5.9 gigahertz radio frequency for connected vehicle
communication. General Motors executive director of vehicle structure and
safety integration Robert Lange says the ultimate goal is that vehicles
will not only talk to each other but potentially take over braking or even
steering control in order to prevent a collision. Lange says GM
researchers are working on developing vehicles that send a 360-degree
wireless signal to surrounding traffic to detect and warn others about
dangerous situations. Wireless communications would also allow emergency
vehicles to notify divers ahead to get out of the way. Lange says
integrating wireless technology into the roads would be the most
challenging aspect, as society is often unwilling to spend money on road
improvements.
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Where the Robot Meets the Road
Popular Mechanics (10/07) Vol. 184, No. 10, P. 82; Sofge, Erik
Researchers are building unmanned vehicles designed to navigate the
streets of a mock city using a mix of GPS, CPUs, and sensors for the
Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's upcoming Urban Challenge. The
vehicles will be in a race to complete the urban course within six hours,
merging, passing, parking, and avoiding collisions all the while. Two
earlier autonomous vehicle races sponsored by DARPA took place in a desert
environment, and none of the participating teams' vehicles even managed to
complete the first race. The second race was more successful, but the
completion rate was still low. "Success is not assured," says Carnegie
Mellon University professor William Whittaker, who is leading the team
developing CMU's Urban Challenge entry, a robotic Chevy Tahoe SUV. "The
challenges of daily driving exceed the capacities of 2007 technology. But
the DARPA race doesn't involve all those challenges." The CMU vehicle will
use rear-facing radar, LIDAR, and inertial measurements to execute
three-point turns. Other challenges the participants will face include
safe and legal navigation of a four-way intersection with human drivers in
perpendicular and opposing lanes; avoidance of tailgating by maintaining
safe distance of at least one car length per 10 miles per hour, and no
closer than two meters at an intersection; and circumvention of stopped
vehicles by remaining at least one car length away from the car's rear and
front bumpers, and re-insertion into the lane within four car lengths.
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The High-k Solution
IEEE Spectrum (10/07) Vol. 44, No. 10, P. 29; Bohr, Mark T.; Chau, Robert
S.; Ghani, Tahir
This fall will see the release of commercial Intel microprocessors
stemming from the first major redesign of CMOS transistors in about four
decades, report Intel's Mark T. Bohr, Robert S. Chau, Tahir Ghani, and
Kaizad Mistry. The Penryn chips will have a greater number of transistors
that boast faster performance and less heat output than chips manufactured
with 65-nm CMOS process technology because they will be fabricated with
Intel's latest 45-nm process technology, and this will offer a sizable
performance boost for compute-intensive music, gaming, and video
applications. Key to the creation of the new microprocessors was a gate
stack construction breakthrough in which the insulator was thickened with
additional atoms of a different type to improve electrical properties,
while the silicon gate had to be replaced with a metal gate. The challenge
for Intel researchers was identifying a gate dielectric material that could
be substituted for silicon dioxide, and showing that transistor prototypes
impel a large amount of current across the transistor channel while
suffering less current leakage. The transistors ultimately featured a
high-k hafnium-based oxide and metal gate electrodes, and atomic layer
deposition and gate-last process flow were employed in their manufacture.
The Penryn dual-core microprocessor features 410 million transistors, while
the quad-core version will feature 820 million transistors. "We're
confident this new transistor can be scaled further, and development is
already well under way on our next-generation 32-nm transistors using an
improved version of high-k plus metal gate technology," conclude Bohr, et
al. "Whether this type of transistor structure will continue to scale to
the next two generations--22 nm and 16 nm--is a question for the
future."
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