The Robots Among Us
San Francisco Chronicle (12/09/07) P. P14; Abate, Tom
Human-level machine intelligence is predicted to emerge within the next
three to five decades by author and technology forecaster Marshall Brain,
while director of the San Francisco State University Robotics Institute
David Calkins notes that robots are already functioning in everyday human
society, although their profile is considerably lower than the walking,
talking machines popularized in movies and television. Consumer robots
such as the Roomba vacuum cleaner have emerged through the convergence of
smart software, miniaturized electronics, and wireless network access.
Furthering the development of robotics is the Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency's "Grand Challenges" to create unmanned ground vehicles for
the military through competitive systems development between corporate and
non-corporate teams. So far such automated vehicles are being used to
limit U.S. casualties or conduct reconnaissance, and DARPA's Jan Walker
says the rules for operational use of autonomous robots will be worked out
"deliberately and cautiously." As robots penetrate the consumer sector,
the issues of safety and product liability are being raised. People such
as Bill Thomasmeyer of The Technology Collaborative speculate that a time
may come when Congress will need to be consulted to determine the level of
accountability for firms whose products malfunction. Challenges that will
have to be met before autonomous machine servants are viable include
refining sensors and software to navigate environments, and one area that
is gaining credibility is telepresence, or the remote control of robots by
human operators over the Internet.
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Project to Build Virtual Learning Platform Within Popular
Online Worlds Wins Financial Support
Chronicle of Higher Education (12/10/07) Foster, Andrea L.
Boston College instructor Aaron E. Walsh is leading a multimillion-dollar
project backed by the Federation of American Scientists and the Kauffman
Foundation to develop virtual-reality software that can be used for
educational purposes. Researchers are working with an international
consortium of colleges, research institutes, and companies to develop
standards and best practices for the virtual-reality platform. The
project, called Immersive Education, will build on Walsh's experience
teaching Boston College students online in virtual spaces. Immersive
Education includes plans to create mini-games and interactive lessons
within virtual spaces, including Second Life, Croquet, and Project
Wonderland. At a conference announcing Immersive Education, Walsh
demonstrated how virtual worlds can be used to teach students about
real-world places, events, and ideas. During the demonstration, the
virtual avatar of a student, standing in front of a digital jackal,
explained that to the ancient Egyptians the jackal helped transport the
dead to the underworld. Three-dimensional models of archaeological sites
and tombs in Egypt, developed by the Theban Mapping Project, provided a
virtual tour of an otherwise inaccessible site. Meanwhile, Gene Koo, a
fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law
School, described how students at Emerson College and Boston residents are
using Second Life to foster civic engagement, and how virtual worlds are
being used to design real-world spaces.
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The Team That Put the Net in Orbit
New York Times (12/09/07) P. BU5; Markoff, John
The scientists and engineers who created the NSFnet--the scientific data
network that would ultimately develop into the commercial
Internet--subscribed to a spirit of cooperation that has become an emblem
of the open source software movement. The key to the success of the NSFnet
project and its Internet successor was the serendipitous nature of
technology design and a public-private partnership that was exceptionally
managed. This rested with the National Science Foundation's decision to
support the relatively unproven TCP/IP software protocols developed at
Stanford University with support from the Pentagon. TCI/IP created a
common language for all computing platforms, according to IBM researcher
Allan H. Weis. "If we learned one thing with the NSFnet experience, I
think it was that the government has the ability to help advance science
and technology in this country by holding out a carrot, and using the stick
as a pointer," he says. Splitting financial risks between government and
industry is important, as it helps drive forward momentum in many diverse
technological areas, Weis argues. Many scientists involved with the NSFnet
project credit former senator Al Gore with playing an important role in the
commercialized Internet's development through his introduction of
legislation to fund a "national data highway" to enhance the productivity
of corporations. The NSF funded Gore's bill to establish a National
Research and Education Network, which vastly helped speed up the academic
and scientific network backbone that would pave the way for the commercial
Internet. About 220 of the original scientists who helped develop the
Internet met at the end of November to celebrate the 20th anniversary of
the NSFnet.
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Web's Architect Looks to the Next Level
Mercury News (12/07/07) Takahashi, Dean
World Wide Web Consortium director Tim Berners-Lee has been working on
improving the online experience and developing new technologies that will
make using the Web more natural. Berners-Lee has been working on the
semantic Web, often referred to as Web 3.0, following the original Web (Web
1.0) and the social Web (Web 2.0). The purpose of the semantic Web is to
create a system of universal data exchange that allows for more natural and
easier to use search engines and Internet tools. "We're trying to get the
Web to live up to its full potential," says Berners-Lee. "We're trying to
keep it good, keep it useful, and keep it working." Berners-Lee says there
are two basic types of files on the Web--documents and data. Documents are
already easily accessed, but data such as computerized calendars or banking
information are harder to access and use in applications while maintaining
privacy. Berners-Lee believes Web sites should be able to share data
between each other automatically, so changing your schedule on one site,
for example, would automatically update other sites on your plans.
Berners-Lee says the semantic Web should be smart enough to understand all
of the permissions between Web sites without exposing personal information
to security risks or privacy violations. Berners-Lee is also promoting the
idea of Web science, hoping to involve the research community in
deciphering the living, breathing Web.
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Largest Civilian IT Project Seeks More Partners
EE Times (12/07/07) Holland, Colin
Wearable technology has the potential to transform human-computer
interaction, according to researchers participating in the WearIT@work
project. Users would no longer have to sit at a screen, a keyboard, and a
computer unit because a wearable computer would provide support in a
particular environment, similar to the way in which a vehicle navigation
system serves drivers. Forty-two IT companies are participating in the
WearIT@work project, which has developed the Open Wearable Computing
Framework for creating a central, wearable, and hardware-independent
computing unit that serves as an information and communication technology
(ICT) environment. Basic components of the project include wireless
communication, positioning systems, speech recognition, interface devices,
and low-level software platforms or toolboxes for seamless collaboration.
The project is testing applications in aircraft maintenance, emergency
response, car production, and health care environments through mid-2008,
and then will look for ways to transfer and exploit the technology.
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Computers Advancing for Better Voice Recognition
ABC Online (Australia) (12/07/07) McDonald, Timothy
Speech recognition technology is still in its infancy and often easily
confused by accents, difficult words, poor diction, or simply insufficient
tools. However, researchers are working to improve voice recognition
systems and within a few years the technology may be able to communicate in
ways that more closely reflect human interaction, advancing so far as to be
able to read lips or find a song using a few hummed notes. Macquarie
University computer science professor Robert Dale says speech recognition
software is like being in a foreign country and not knowing the language.
"You might be able to pick up little bits here and there, but understanding
the full message is pretty hard. And that's exactly the position that
speech recognition systems are in today," Dale says. "They don't have the
full vocabulary. They have only a noise of the words which are very
specific to the thing that they're trying to do at that point and time."
Dale says researchers are studying how musicians breathe because it could
lead to an understanding of how breathing is related to emotions, which
could help emotionless machines detect human feelings. Humans also
communicate through visual cues, which may someday be picked up by mobile
phones with cameras. "Also the technology that we now have for tracking
faces and working out what's going on in the face is much, much more
advanced," Dale says. "And it turns out that when you can actually see
someone's lips more, you can understand far better what they're saying."
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Engineering Professor Creates Animated Science Education
Program
Vanderbilt University (12/03/07) Beckham, Joanne
Vanderbilt University computer science professor Gautam Biswas has
developed Betty's Brain, an animated computer program that is being used in
public classrooms to teach science to middle school students. Betty's
Brain is being tested on fifth and sixth grade students and so far results
show that the students not only learn science but carry over the learning
process to new subjects, including the ability to monitor themselves and
have fun while learning. Using a simplified visual representation called a
concept map, the students teach a cartoon character named Betty about the
river ecosystem process, including the food chain, photosynthesis, and the
waste cycle. The students test Betty to see if she has learned the lesson,
but unless students periodically check to see if Betty understands the
concepts, Betty will refuse to take the test. By checking Betty's
understanding of the subject, the students are really checking themselves
and discovering that self-monitoring is an important learning strategy for
all subjects. "In order to teach, they first have to learn," Biswas says.
"What we are trying to animate is thought." Biswas says that teachable
agents such as Betty's Brain not only help students learn but make the
process more enjoyable.
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Internet Society CEO Sets Her Sights on Next Billion 'Net
Users
Network World (12/05/07) Marsan, Carolyn Duffy
Internet Society CEO Lynn St. Amour is seeking to add another 1 billion
Internet users through her efforts to increase her nonprofit organization's
staff and broaden its outreach projects, and she says in an interview that
her group is looking for input from network operators and ISPs and similar
communities into standards development. She says the most formidable
challenges to the Internet Society's goal of open development and global
growth of the Internet include government regulation and policies regarding
the transition from IPv4 to IPv6, and Internet governance activities via
the United Nations and other agencies. "Trying to put a level of formality
or structure around the development of the Internet and the management of
the Internet will significantly impact the value of the Internet," St.
Amour explains, adding that this is "a bad thing." She says the Internet
Society is promoting the implementation of IPv6 because it sustains the
Internet's open, end-to-end nature, and she notes that market demand for
IPv6 is currently nil. The challenge lies in stimulating such demand, St.
Amour points out. Her organization also attributes enormous importance to
the development of standards for internationalized domain names and
internationalized email addresses, and St. Amour reports that her group is
more focused on making content available in local languages. The Internet
currently boasts 1.3 billion users, and St. Amour believes it will take
less than 10 years for another 1 billion users to enter the picture if the
Internet continues to expand organically. She reports that Internet
deployment is lagging in very poor nations as well as countries with
aggressive filtering regimes.
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Planning Made Easier: MU Engineers Develop Software
Solution for Complex Space Missions
University of Missouri-Columbia (12/03/07)
Engineers at the University of Missouri have developed a mathematical
algorithm that may make it easier to plan the mission of an unmanned
spacecraft to Mars. Craig Kluever, professor of mechanical and aerospace
engineering in the College of Engineering, and Aaron D. Olds, a former MU
graduate student who collaborated on the project, have implemented the
algorithm as mission-design software based on optimization methods
patterned from genetic evolution. The researchers used the complex 1997
Cassini Mission to test the software, and the generated trajectory matched
the route developed by scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. More
complicated software is needed for missions to a comet, asteroid, moon of
Saturn, or beyond, which require adventurous maneuvers and orbital tricks.
For future robotic missions, "it will need software like this to solve
those types of problems," says Kluever. Their research, "Interplanetary
Mission Design Using Differential Evolution," appears in the Journal of
Spacecraft and Rockets.
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Toyota Aims to Put Robots to Use Early Next Decade
Reuters (12/06/07) Kin, Chang-Ran
Toyota Motor recently announced that it plans to deploy humanoid and other
advanced robots for practical use in factories, hospitals, homes, and
public areas soon after 2010. Along with the unveiling of two new robots,
one called the "mobility robot" and the other the "violin-playing robot,"
Toyota announced that it would increase its research and development effort
in robotics, including doubling the number of engineers to about 200 in
about three years and building a robot technology research facility next
year. "Over the next two to three years, we will put the robots to the
test through trial applications and see what kind of business possibilities
they present," says Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe. The violin robot
currently has 17 joints in both of its hands and arms, but Toyota plans on
further advancing the robot's dexterity and flexibility to make it better
able to assist with household chores. The mobility robot, which looks like
a bulky high-chair on wheels, is designed to help people with
short-distance transport, and is essentially an intelligent wheelchair that
can travel on uneven ground and around obstacles. Toyota envisions a
"Partner Robot" that could help with domestic duties, nursing and medical
care, manufacturing, and short-distance personal transport.
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Biologists Develop Data Handling System
Newcastle University (12/05/07)
U.K. researchers are developing a new system that will allow a wide range
of biological datasets to be linked, integrated, and visualized through
graph analysis techniques. The sophisticated system for handling data
could be used for transcription analysis, protein interaction analysis,
data and text mining, and other applications. Researchers at Newcastle
University's Systems Biology Resource Center (SBRC) and Rothamsted
Research, Manchester and Edinburgh are behind the ONDEX framework. The
Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council is providing funding
to the researchers to develop the ONDEX system. "Bringing data together
coherently is a huge undertaking in any systems biology project," says SBRC
director Dr. Anil Wipat. "ONDEX will play a very important role in making
this possible." At SBRC, computer scientists team up with biologists,
mathematicians, and engineers to provide computational resources, tools,
and research expertise that help address key scientific issues.
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Troy University Gets $180,000 Grant for Computer
Science
Troy Messenger (ALA) (12/06/07) Bell, Misty
Troy University is collaborating with two other universities in the United
States and three universities abroad in a computer science education
project. The project will bring together experts on computer science
issues, especially the teaching of computer science, and give them an
opportunity to work in diverse groups and network. Troy has received a
$180,000 grant for the initiative, which will have study abroad and faculty
exchange components for students and teachers. The University of Arkansas,
San Diego State University, Fern University in Germany, the University of
Sunderland in the United Kingdom, and the University of Algarve in Portugal
are also participating in the program. "We're doing a lot of things
collaboratively online ... but this is an international knowledge-building
community for computer science education," says Hal Fulmer, associate
provost and dean of undergraduate studies at Troy. "If you have a network
of people worldwide and ... give them the opportunity to interact with each
other, then good ideas happen."
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Software: Serious Games in Virtual Worlds
ICT Results (12/05/07)
European researchers are attempting to improve the accessibility of
serious games to businessmen through the PRIME project to make action
learning more affordable, available, powerful, and flexible via the
development of a software platform that employs serious game methods to let
users perceive the effects of their decisions in a virtual environment.
The uniqueness of the platform resides in its applicability to any business
and its accommodation of multiple players. "It is not tailored to a
specific business, because that gets into simulation, and that's difficult
and needs to be customized," says PRIME project coordinator Bjorn Andersen.
"Instead, it is modeled on principles and how the business model works."
The platform is comprised of a Virtual Business Environment (VBE) and a
workplace integration module called PRIME-Time. The VBE is a serious game
featuring a "micro world" where users can engage with the software and each
other, and that approximates the real world using a simulation model that
controls the micro world's macro-economic and micro-economic aspects. The
environment boasts real-time tracking of business decisions' impact, and
the experience users gain through participation in the game can be applied
to reality. PRIME-Time integrates PRIME employment within current work
environments, which can cultivate new ways of working.
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Experts Advocate Joint Partnership for Software
Development
Business Day (Nigeria) (12/03/07) Nwankwo, Chidiebere
Nigeria should embrace public-private partnerships if it wants to see an
improvement in the pace of ICT deployment and enhance software development
in its public and private sectors, according to the nation's information
technology exports. "Private public partnerships are popular as a means of
building infrastructure all over the world," says Emmanuel Onibere, of the
University of Benin's computer science department. "Private software
development organizations need to engage in cooperative software
development activities in the public sector to enhance productivity and
increase IT usage for a broader audience that include government employees,
students, and the general public." Onibere recommends
Build-Operate-Maintain and Build-Train-Maintain for public organizations
without ICT staff specializing in software development, and
Build-Train-Transfer for public organizations that have ICT staff with
experts in software development. The growth of a local software industry
will depend on the support and patronage of the public sector, says Connect
Technologies' Chris Uwaje.
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New Software to Aid Early Detection of Infectious Disease
Outbreaks
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (12/06/07) Carlson, Emily
A team of epidemiologists and computer scientists from the Models of
Infectious Disease Agent Study (MIDAS) has developed TranStat, software
that will help health authorities at the site of an infectious disease
outbreak quickly analyze data, improve the detection of new cases, and
deploy effective interventions. MIDAS is an international program
dedicated to building computational models for studying the spread of
diseases and supported by the National Institutes of Health through the
National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS). "A main goal of
MIDAS is to make the models developed by the researchers available to the
public health community and policymakers," says NIGMS director Jeremy M.
Berg. TranStat is available for free online and can be used by public
health officials to systematically enter and store infectious disease data.
TranStat also prompts field personnel to enter information on exposed but
uninfected individuals. TranStat does not collect names or other
personally identifying information. The program uses the information to
statistically determine the probability that people contracted the disease
from each other. It also estimates in real time the average number of
people an individual could infect and the rate at which that infection
occurs in a particular setting, which can help health officials develop and
execute strategies to prevent further spreading of a disease.
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Computers Spot Drug's Deadly Side Effects
New Scientist (12/10/07)No. 2633, P. 15; Giles, Jim
Computing experts believe they have developed a technique that can spot
potentially dangerous and deadly side effects in pharmaceuticals. While
the technique is not foolproof, it can provide a relatively quick and easy
method for finding side effects that current tests may miss. University of
California researcher Philip Bourne and his colleagues have adapted the
process pharmaceutical companies use to develop drugs to find side effects.
As a proof of concept they studied a class of drug that was previously
approved. The drug, selective oestrogen receptor modulators, are used to
treat breast cancer and other diseases. The researchers looked at about
800 human proteins to find sites that the drug might bind to and found that
the drug binds to a protein that helps control the movement of calcium in
and out of cells. The results suggest that the technique works as problems
with the drug can best be explained by a disruption in calcium levels.
Laszlo Urban, head of safety profiling at Novartis Institutes for
BioMedical Research, says his firm uses a similar technique, but notes that
the technique has its limitations. About 25,000 proteins have been
identified from the sequence of the human genome, but not all proteins have
been studied in detail, and a significant amount of detail on a particular
protein's binding site needs to be understood before computer simulations
can be used to check for side effects.
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