Association for Computing Machinery Taps 20 Distinguished
Members for Achievements in Computing
AScribe Newswire (12/06/07)
ACM has recognized 20 members as ACM Distinguished Members. ACM created
the program last year to recognize the practical and theoretical
contributions of its members in computing and information technology.
"Their computing innovations address problems in virtually every industry
and make possible advances in communications, health care, finance,
entertainment, environmental control, computer security, and many other
real-life applications," says ACM President Stuart Feldman. "We are proud
to recognize these dedicated men and women and to raise their profile in
the computing community." Andrea L. Ames, IBM; John R. Douceur, Microsoft
Research; Richard Furuta, Texas A&M University; Greg Ganger, Carnegie
Mellon University; Toshio Nakatani, IBM Research Tokyo; Raj Rajkumar,
Carnegie Mellon University; and Stephen M. Trimberger, Xilinx, have been
honored as 2007 ACM Distinguished Engineers. Michael G. Burke, IBM
Research; Siddhartha Chatterjee, IBM Research; Nikil Dutt, University of
California Irvine; Matthew B. Dwyer, University of Nebraska Lincoln;
Kathleen Fisher, AT&T Labs; Jennifer C. Hou, University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign; Lane A. Hemaspaandra, University of Rochester; David J.
Kasik, Boeing; John Riedl, University of Minnesota; Mary Beth Rosson,
Pennsylvania State University; Michael S. Schlansker, Hewlett Packard;
Subhash Suri, University of California, Santa Barbara; and Fei-Yue Wang,
Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Arizona, have been recognized as
2007 Distinguished Scientists.
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IBM Makes Chip-Speed Advance
Wall Street Journal (12/06/07) P. B3; Bulkeley, William M.
IBM scientists have announced a "significant milestone" in computer
processor speed by using optical signals instead of electronic signals on a
chip. The advancement could lead to tiny, energy efficient chips within
five years that are capable of processing far more information than current
chips without overheating. IBM says the breakthrough could lead to laptop
computers capable of the same tasks that currently require supercomputers
the size of a refrigerator. "It's bringing the capabilities of fiber-optic
networks down to the level of a chip," says IBM research team leader Will
Green, who notes that it is possible to put hundreds of times more data on
an optical wire than on a copper wire. Analysts say the device is an
important step in the field of silicon nanophotonics. IBM says the
technology is likely to be particularly useful in chips with nine or more
processor cores. As designers put an increasing number of cores on
individual chips, communication between the cores takes an increasing
amount of energy and generates more heat. The optical technology will
allow the communication at lower temperatures and with less energy.
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Computer and Mathematical Science Occupations Expected to
Grow Quickest Over the Next Decade
Computing Research Association (12/05/07) Harsha, Peter
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projections indicate that despite concerns
over the impact of globalization, computing-related occupations are
expected to grow the most among all "professional and related occupations"
during the 2006-2016 period. The BLS predicts that computer and
mathematical science occupations will grow by about 24 percent over the
next decade, which would add 822,000 new jobs. Although the growth rate
for computer and mathematical science occupations has slowed compared to
the previous decade, largely due to the outsourcing of "routine work" as
the industry matures, strong growth in other aspects of computing will
continue to create opportunities in the field. The report projects that
among the six fastest-growing occupations with the largest numerical
growth, three will be computer-related, including computer software
engineers, computer systems analysts, and network systems and data
communication analysts. "The demand for computer-related occupations will
increase in almost all industries as organizations continue to adopt and
integrate increasingly sophisticated and complex technologies," the labor
projections report says.
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MIT Presidential Fellow Selected as SIGGRAPH 2008
Conference Chair
Business Wire (12/05/07)
SIGGRAPH has chosen MIT researcher and graduate Jacquelyn Martino as the
chair of its 2008 computer graphics and interactive technology conference.
As conference chair, Martino will oversee the 35th annual conference and
serve as an advisor to the SIGGRAPH organization. Martino received a Ph.D.
in design and computation from MIT and was selected as a Presidential
Fellow at the institute. She has attended SIGGRAPH since 1990 and
currently holds a position at IBM Research. "It takes an immense amount of
dedication, talent, and education to be selected as a SIGGRAPH conference
chair," says Jackie White, SIGGRAPH Conference Advisory Group chair. "The
experience [Martino] received at MIT was one of several significant factors
in selecting her as the chair for 2008." Martino also received a Master of
Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, creates artwork with digital and
traditional tools, and has displayed and published her work in the United
States and Europe. ACM sponsors the conference, which is scheduled for
Aug. 11-15, 2008, at the Los Angeles Convention Center. For more
information on SIGGRAPH 2008, visit
http://www.siggraph.org/s2008/
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Overseas Electronic Voting Pilot Project Announced
Government Computer News (12/05/07) Jackson, William
Overseas voters registered in Okaloosa County, Fla., will have the option
of using an electronic absentee voting system in the upcoming general
election, say county election officials. The Okaloosa Distance Balloting
Project will deploy several kiosk computers and trained pool workers at
locations near U.S. military facilities in the United Kingdom, Germany, and
Japan to allow as many as 900 voters to cast absentee ballots through a
virtual private network. The pilot program was announce on Dec. 5 and is
the initial project of the Operation Bring Remote Access to Voters Overseas
(BRAVO) Foundation, which wants to establish reliable electronic
alternatives to paper-and-mail absentee voting for Americans oversees by
the 2016 presidential election. Okaloosa County is home to several
military bases and currently has 20,000 registered voters stationed
overseas, but there may be as many as 7 million eligible U.S. voters living
overseas and some estimates indicate that as many as two-thirds of overseas
voters who request ballots, both military and civilian, have not been able
to cast their vote in time to be counted in elections. A system from
Barcelona-based Scytl Secure Electronic Voting will be used in the program.
On-site poll workers will verify the identity of voters, while voting
kiosks will be laptops PCs with no hard drive, so no votes will be stored
locally. The kiosks will boot up from a CD with Scytl software and will
connect through a VPN to a secure server. The software will be reviewed by
the Security and Assurance in Information Technology Laboratory at Florida
State University, which has tested voting systems throughout Florida.
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Web Founder Warns of Short-Termism
Financial Times (12/07/07) P. 18; Waters, Richard; Allison, Kevin
World Wide Web Consortium director Tim Berners-Lee says Internet companies
are taking dangerously short-term approaches and ignoring big, though
potentially risky, opportunities. Berners-Lee also criticizes the industry
for not sufficiently supporting long-term research. Although some Internet
companies such as Yahoo have established their own research labs, they tend
to focus on narrower and more pragmatic studies rather than the tech
industry's ground-breaking labs of the past, such as those created by AT&T,
IBM, and Xerox. Berners-Lee says research into the future of the Web needs
to draw from a variety of experts with different backgrounds, including
technologists, economists, psychologists, and sociologists. People who
could rethink a new form of Web interaction and a new way of organizing
society is what is truly missing, says Berners-Lee, who is also skeptical
about the latest outbreak of Internet euphoria from so-called Web 2.0
companies that focus on networking and online video. "Because it's so easy
to make a Web 2.0 site you can clone a lot of them very easily, and as a
result people are bringing out new sites with a modicum of new polish on
them--but they're not really thinking up the new ideas," Berners-Lee says.
He says to properly support long-term thinking would require "a very large
amount of computing power and a very large amount of mathematics."
Berners-Lee is trying to raise up to $100 million to back a joint research
initiative that was launched a year ago by MIT and the University of
Southampton.
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Free Software Brings Affordability, Transparency to
Mathematics
UW News (12/06/07) Hickey, Hannah
University of Washington mathematics professor William Stein is leading
the development of Sage, an open source software project that could
eliminate the need for expensive computer programs used for advanced math
problems and complex equations. Sage initially faced skepticism from the
mathematics and education communities until it won first prize in the
scientific software division of Les Trophees du Libre, an international
competition for free software. "I've had a surprisingly large number of
people tell me that something like Sage couldn't be done--that it just
wasn't possible," Stein says. "I'm hearing that less now." Over the past
three years more than a hundred mathematicians from around the world have
worked on Sage to build a user-friendly tool that combines powerful
number-crunching with features such as collaborative online worksheets.
Sage can do numerous mathematical tasks, from mapping a 12-dimensional
object to calculating rainfall pattern changes due to global warming, and
can replace the commercial software commonly used in mathematics education.
Stein says his frustration with commercial products was more than
economical, as many do not reveal how calculations are performed, which
means other mathematicians cannot examine the code to see how a
computer-based calculation provided the answer.
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IU Computer Scientist's Toolkit for Digital Data
Collection Receives NSF Funding
Indiana University (12/06/07) Moore, Neal G.
University computer scientist Beth Plale has received a $432,954 National
Science Foundation grant to develop a digital toolkit that will make it
easier for life and physical sciences researchers to capture data. Plale
will work with IU professors David Leake and Dennis Gannon, and Yogesh
Simmhan of Microsoft Research on the project. The project, "SDCI Data: New
Toolkit for Provenance Collection, Publishing, and Experience Reuse," will
lead to new tools for the "digital tagging" of research as it moves between
scientists. Researchers need to move beyond a handwritten script for
computational and database analysis and mining tasks and annotation as the
amount of digital data continues to soar. The new tools will have the
potential to improve monitoring of interactions with data, storage, and
reuse of data, as well as productivity. "As the volume of scientific data
from computational analysis grows into the petabyte range, it is
increasingly important that provenance information like ownership and
validity travel with the scientific data, wherever it eventually resides,"
says Plale, who also serves as the director of the Center for Data and
Search Informatics.
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Technology Becoming Humanlike
Washington Times (12/06/07) P. B1; Geracimos, Ann
Northwestern University professor and author Don Norman warns that people
are becoming "tools for the machines" as technology advances to the point
where it becomes capable of making its own decisions. He illustrates this
trend with intelligent automotive systems, which are beginning to make
steering and braking decisions. Norman feels the best course is to
facilitate a realistic interchange between the motorist and the machine so
that the driver is at least cognizant of surrounding environmental
conditions. "I think [technology] makes our lives easier, but it is very
important to take stock," he argues. Norman cites voice menus on telephone
systems as an example of the wrong path technology can follow, in which
human control is taken out of the equation, often to the detriment of
users. Norman is pushing for a science of design that emphasizes
"human-centered technology." He writes in "The Design of Future Things"
that technology design must be informed by a comprehension of social
interactions and "the aesthetics of the arts." This is a tough challenge,
because "the social aspects of the interaction, including the need for
common ground, are far more complex than the technical ones, something
technology-driven enthusiasts typically fail to recognize," Norman
concludes.
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Forget Sticky Notes, Microsoft Using Inkblots as Password
Reminders
Network World (12/04/07) Fontana, John
Microsoft Research's Jeremy Elson and Jon Howell are re-examining a
project that uses inkblots as visual aids to help computer users remember
complicated and difficult to crack passwords. Using a public Web-based
project at InkblotPassword.com, the researchers let users create a password
using a series of random inkblots and a formula that selects letters. A
series of inkblots are shown to the user, who associates a word with each
inkblot. For each inkblot, the user enters the first and last letter of
the word the user associates with that inkblot. A series of 10 inkblots
creates a password 20 characters long of seemingly random letters that is
easily remembered by the user but difficult to steal. After a period of
time, users were even able to remember the password without having to refer
back to the inkblot, according to research first conducted in 2004.
Typically, passwords as complex and secure as the inkblot passwords need to
be written down or users will create weaker passwords that are easier to
remember. The researchers found that different users almost always
describe the same inkblot in different ways, making the system is even more
secure and difficult to guess, as users create mental images they associate
with the inkblots. Eventually, the users develop "muscle memory" and can
log in without referring to the inkblot images.
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QUT Researcher Eyes Off a Biometric Future
Queensland University of Technology (12/04/07) Hutchinson, Sandra
Queensland University of Technology researcher Sammy Phang is developing
iris-scanning technology that can be used for such everyday tasks as
unlocking homes or accessing bank accounts. "By using iris recognition it
is possible to confirm the identity of a person based on who the person is
rather than what the person possesses, such as an ID card or password,"
Phang says. "It is already being used around the world and it is possible
that within the next 10 to 20 years it will be part of our everyday lives."
However, today's Iris-scanning technology is limited by such factors as
changing lighting conditions. Phang is developing technology that
estimates the change in the iris pattern as a result of changes in
surrounding light conditions. Using a high-speed camera that can capture
up to 1200 images per second, it is possible to track the iris surface's
movements to examine how the iris pattern changes depending on the
variation of pupil sizes caused by light. Phang says that her study found
that everyone has unique iris surface movement, and that it is possible to
estimate the change on the surface of the iris and account for how iris
features change in different lighting.
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Flexible-Jointed Robot Is No Pushover
New Scientist (12/06/07) Simonite, Tom
Researchers in Japan have developed software that allows a life-sized
humanoid robot to stay balanced on its feet no matter where on its body it
may be shoved, pushed, or even deliberately kicked, creating the first
full-sized humanoid capable of such steadiness. A robot capable of
balancing should allow humans to interact more naturally with robots. The
robot, developed by researchers at the Advanced Telecommunications Research
Institute International in Japan, relies on its joints for its balance.
The joints are never kept rigid, so even when standing still the joints
yield slightly when the robot is pushed. Force sensors within each joint
determine the position and velocity of the robot's center mass as it moves,
while control software rapidly calculates what forces the robot's feet need
to exert on the ground to bring it back to balance. If the robot's joints
are unable to swing its center of mass back into place, the robot staggers
a little, much like a boxer after a heavy punch, which is followed by
several rounds of rebalancing that bring its center of mass gradually back
to its original balance point. "You just don't see the real good humanoids
out there get pushed," says Institute for Human and Machine Cognition
roboticist Jerry Pratt. "This team is currently ahead of the pack in terms
of having it work on a full robot."
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Getting Agile in the Workplace
eWeek (12/03/07) Taft, Darryl K.
Agile development can minimize the risk involved in developing software by
approaching the project in short iterations. Each section of the process
becomes its own project, including planning, requirements analysis, design,
coding, testing, and documentation. Microsoft's S. "Soma" Somasegar says
his team used agile development to "get clean and stay clean" while
building Visual Studio 2008. Microsoft's "patterns & practices" group has
designed a workspace around the concept of agile development that contains
team rooms where developers can work together at various workstations, with
glass walls that can be used as whiteboards or moved to the side to create
more space. The workspace also has a customer room where teams can bring
in customers to demonstrate what they are working on. "We are agile about
agile," says Dragos Manolescu, a former patterns & practices architect who
is now a senior program manager in Microsoft's Live Labs group. "We do
peer programming and we do short iterations, usually of one to two weeks."
IBM's Software Group has also launched several internal efforts to advance
agile development, including an internal wiki on agile, internal metrics
programs, and an internal conference on agile development, says IBM
Rational's Scott Ambler. "We're interested in being as effective as
possible in what we do," says Ambler, who was hired by IBM to help the
company get more agile. "The goal isn't to become more agile, it's to
become more effective."
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Cooler, Faster, Cheaper: Clemson Researchers Advance
Process to Manufacture Silicon Chips
Clemson University (12/03/07) Polowczuk, Susan
Clemson University researchers have discovered a new way of producing
silicon chips that could lead to faster and more cost-effective laptops,
desktops, cell phones, and other electronic devices. "We've developed a new
process and equipment that will lead to a significant reduction in heat
generated by silicon chips or microprocessors while speeding up the rate at
which information is sent," says professor Rajendra Singh, director of
Clemson's Center for Silicon Nanoelectronics. "In the future it will be
possible to use a smaller number of microprocessors in a single chip since
we've increased the speed of the individual microprocessors. At the same
time, we've reduced power loss six-fold to a level never seen before." The
researchers say their patented technique could improve performance and
lower the cost of next-generation computer chips and semiconductor devices,
including energy devices such as solar cells. "The potential of this new
process and equipment is the low cost of manufacturing, along with better
performance, reliability, and yield," Singh says.
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Sandia Research Team Studies Best Way to Solve Wicked
Problems
Sandia National Laboratories (11/29/07) Burroughs, Chris
Sandia National Laboratories researcher George S. Davidson recently led a
team investigating whether the best way to solve a wicked problem was in a
large group sharing ideas or as an individual. "Our expectations were that
computer-mediated group brainstorming ... was going to have the best
results," says Davidson. "What we found, however, was that people working
as individuals were at least as effective and possibly more so than those
brainstorming in a group over the Web when trying to solve 'wicked' tangled
problems, both in terms of quality and quantity." Wicked problems are
problems that, by definition, are so tangled that there is no agreement on
their definitions, much less a solution. Davidson's team consisted of
three psychologists and two cognition researchers to investigate the tools
and methods used to unite large groups of people to solve problems over the
Internet. The researchers recruited 120 Sandia employees and contractors
and 26 students to participate in the four-day experiment. The
participants were divided into two groups--those who work alone and those
who would be allowed to see other people's ideas on the Internet. The
quality of the ideas coming from the isolated individuals was significantly
better in all three quality ratings, indicating that individuals are more
successful than groups and that individuals working alone take less time,
and consequently less expense, than electronic group brainstorming.
Davidson says that although individuals performed better in this study,
online group brainstorming can be effective when ideas are needed from
large groups of people.
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Unsung Innovators: Ted Nelson
Computerworld (12/03/07) Smith, Gina
In 1960, Ted Nelson came up with the concepts and terms for "hypertext,"
"hypermedia," "virtuality," and "micropayment," essentially creating the
"nonsequential" document years before anything similar existed. As a
sociology graduate student at Harvard, Nelson imagined a global, networked
computer system and a world where personal computers were ubiquitous and
people could access the world's art and literature through "hypertext"
links. Despite such accurate foresight, Nelson is disdainful of the
"commercial garbage" and awkward interfaces used online today, particularly
how the Web simply duplicates paper and that hypertext linking only works
in one direction. Nelson has pursued his hypertext vision through a
project called Xanadu, which has tried several times to build a more
complete literary network. Xanadu is different in many ways from what the
Web has become. Xanadu is a literary system for artists and consumers to
exchange, or possibly buy, ideas through a significantly different
interface. "Take a look at Xanadu Space," Nelson says. "It's a different
kind of document that is cross-connected in as many ways as you can."
Nelson also has a negative view of modern graphical user interfaces. "A
user interface should be so simple that a beginner in an emergency can
understand it within 10 seconds," he says. Although Xanadu has failed
several times, Nelson has not given up hope and will continue to work on
his pet project, which he believes is still growing and evolving some 47
years after he first envisioned it.
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EU Focuses R&D on Counterterrorism
Federal Computer Week (12/03/07) Vol. 21, No. 39, P. 42; Robinson, Brian
The European Union's 7th Framework Program for Research and Development
features a homeland security component, giving the EU a larger security
technology development agenda than it had previously. The program is an
attempt to calibrate EU's security research initiative with separate EU
member states' own security R&D efforts. "We do not want the incredible
duplication of effort in other research sectors, and we do not want the low
level of effectiveness we see in defense spending brought into this field,"
said European commissioner for enterprise and industry Gunter Verheugen at
the EU Security Research Conference. "We want value for money." More than
$2 billion in annual security R&D would be allocated each year under the
program, which represents a 15-fold increase in the amount apportioned in
the previous budget. Security research will concentrate on a quartet of
objectives, including securing utilities and infrastructures, offering
protection from crime and terrorism, border security, and border
restoration in the event of a crisis. Tjien-Khoen Liem with the European
Commission's Directorate-General for Enterprise said the EU security
program has two goals--guaranteeing Europe's safety, security, and freedom;
and making European industry more competitive via collaboration. "The
security research program will be one of a number of mutually reinforcing
initiatives aimed at reducing the fragmented internal security market for
equipment products and services," Liem said.
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