ACM Groups Urge Actions to Broaden Web
Accessibility
AScribe Newswire (01/16/08)
Several ACM Special Interest Groups, along with ACM's U.S. Public Policy
Committee, have developed a joint statement to encourage equitable and
inclusive Internet access for everyone, including people with disabilities.
The groups say that while the Internet has become more critical for a
variety of commercial and leisure activities, a majority of private and
commercial Web sites have access limitations. The ACM groups have
committed themselves to being leaders in the quest for improved access to
the Internet and the Web, with the goal of increasing Internet access as a
means to attract broader participation of talented people in the global
economy. The ACM groups' statement urges increasing awareness of the value
of accessibility, new federal policies to increase Web accessibility,
continued federal R&D funding for more accessible IT systems, and
additional low-cost Web development tools from the IT community. USACM and
members of ACM's Special Interest Groups on Accessible Computing
(SIGACCESS), Computer-Human Interaction (SIGCHI), and Hypertext, Hypermedia
and the Web (SIGWEB) signed the statement, along with the Computer Science
Teachers Association, launched by ACM in 2005. "The technical community
has the resources to make commercial Web sites accessible without undue
regulatory and monetary burdens," says Harry Hochheiser, a member of the
USACM Executive Committee and an assistant professor of computer and
information sciences at Towson University.
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Survey Shows U.S. Teens Confident in Their
Inventiveness
MIT News (01/16/08)
Although confidence is high among American teenagers that they are
inventive enough to solve some of the world's most pressing problems, 59
percent do not feel high school is sufficiently preparing them for
engineering and technology careers, according to the Lemelson-MIT Invention
Index. The survey also uncovered a need for more project-based learning in
high schools. Seventy-two percent of U.S. teens feel critical
environmental issues could be addressed by technological inventions or
innovations within the next 10 years, while 64 percent think they can
develop some of these solutions, versus 38 percent of adults who feel the
same way. "Today's teens are inheriting our society's environmental
challenges, so their confidence and optimism that the problems are solvable
is promising and exciting," says Josh Schuler, executive director of the
Lemelson-MIT Program. "However, we owe our youth the tools they will need
to solve these challenges." Schuler says the survey's results indicate
recognition by students that high schools are profoundly lacking a
"learning by doing" component. Seventy-nine percent of teens see value in
hands-on, project-based science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM)
education and learning in high school, and also believe such programs
require additional funding. Schuler says that an overwhelming majority of
teens and adults acknowledge the need for greater STEM education
proficiency in the United States, and such an issue should be emphasized
heavily by presidential candidates.
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DOE Awards 265 Million Hours of Supercomputing
Time
HPC Wire (01/17/08)
The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Office of Science announced that 265
million processor-hours have been awarded to 55 scientific projects based
on their potential for breakthroughs in science and engineering research
and the suitability of the project for supercomputers. The awarded hours
will give scientists access to some of the world's most powerful
supercomputers, and will help cut the research time down to weeks or
months, instead of years or decades. The supercomputing and data storage
resources are being allocated under the DOE's Innovative and Novel
Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program, which
supports computationally-intensive, large-scale research projects.
Supercomputer time will be supplied by the DOE's Leadership Computing
Facilities at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, the Argonne
National Laboratory in Illinois, and the National Energy Research
Scientific Computer Center at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in
California. "The Department of Energy's Office of Science has two of the
top 10 most powerful supercomputers, and using them through the INCITE
program is having a transformational effect on America's scientific and
economic competitiveness," says DOE's Raymond L. Orbach. "Once considered
the domain of only small groups of researchers, supercomputers today are
tools for discovery, driving scientific advancement across a wide range of
disciplines."
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USACM Fears Increased Risk to Identity Theft From
Implementation Rules for National ID Plan
AScribe Newswire (01/16/08)
ACM's U.S. Public Policy Committee (USACM) released a statement
highlighting flaws in the final standards issued by the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security restricting how state driver's licenses and ID cards are
provided. The standards were issued as part of the requirements of the
2005 REAL ID Act with the intention of making it more difficult to
fraudulently obtain a driver's license. USACM says the standards will not
meet the stated purpose of providing a "gold standard" for identification.
Additionally, the new standards call for obtaining personal information and
sensitive documents that will need to be stored in a form that makes it
easier to copy and falsify for fraudulent purposes. "The emphasis placed
on the use of REAL ID will provide greater incentives to obtain fraudulent
IDs that will then be accepted as 'proof' of identity nationwide," says
USACM chair and Purdue University professor of computer science Eugene
Spafford. USACM strongly supports effort to increase security against
criminal activity, but Spafford disputes the idea that standardized
driver's licenses or identity cards would accomplish such a goal.
"Identity should not be confused with intent," he says. "Simply because
people's names are known does not prevent them from engaging in criminal
behavior or terrorist activities." For more information about USACM, visit
http://www.acm.org/usacm.
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Twitter, Facebook Called on for Higher Purpose
CNet (01/16/08) Olsen, Stefanie
The goal of Google.org's nonprofit Innovative Support to Emergencies,
Diseases, and Disaster (InSTEDD) project is to help communities around the
world use Web and communications technology to identify and warn others of
crises such as natural catastrophes or disease epidemics. InSTEDD
President Eric Rasmussen says rescue responses will be coordinated by
technology that includes social software such as Facebook and Twitter.
"We're talking about using ubiquitous, free software that is repurposed
when necessary to fit into a humanitarian need," he says. Google.org
executive director, epidemiologist, and TED prize winner Dr. Larry
Brilliant is the architect behind InSTEDD, and on Jan. 17 the nonprofit
will launch a Web site with early versions of open-source software that is
available for downloading and testing. One InSTEDD application will be the
Twitter bot framework, which spans the Web service and phones with a
location-detection feature that can connect to a layer in Google Earth,
according to Rasmussen. InSTEDD received a $5 million contribution from
Google via Google.org, while the Rockefeller Foundation has donated $1
million, with Rasmussen reporting that a foundation affiliated with venture
capitalist and Google investor John Doerr has invested another six-figure
sum. "My dream for InSTEDD is to fulfill the much-needed role of an
independent agent bringing the technological, medical, and organizational
skills necessary to help the humanitarian aid community accomplish [early
detection of public health threats and disasters], and ultimately help them
to make the world a safer place," Brilliant says.
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Contact Lenses With Circuits, Lights a Possible Platform
for Superhuman Vision
University of Washington News and Information (01/17/08) Hickey, Hannah
University of Washington engineers used microscopic manufacturing
techniques to combine a flexible, biologically safe contact lens with an
imprinted electronic circuit to create a platform for bionic eyes.
"Looking through a completed lens, you would see what the display is
generating superimposed on the world outside," says UW professor Babak
Parviz. "This is a very small step toward that goal, but I think it's
extremely promising." The researchers say the wired contacts could be used
for numerous virtual displays, such as projecting a vehicle's speed onto
the windshield for pilots and drivers, creating video games that completely
immerse the player in a virtual world without restricting movement, and
allowing consumers to surf the Internet on a midair virtual display that
only they could see. "People may find all sorts of applications for it
that we have not thought about," Parviz says. The prototype device
contains an electric circuit and red light-emitting diodes for a display,
but the lights do not light up yet. The lenses were tested on rabbits for
up to 20 minutes with no adverse effects. The researchers constructed the
circuits from layers of metal only a few nanometers think, about one
thousandth the width of a human hair, and built LEDs one third of a
millimeter across. The pieces were then sprinkled onto a sheet of flexible
plastic, where the shape of each component determined which piece it can
attach to. Future advancements will add wireless communications to and
from the lens, and researchers hope to power the system using a combination
of radio-frequency power and solar cells placed on the lens.
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Penn State Researchers Help Identify Weaknesses in Ohio
Voting Machines
Penn State Live (01/15/08) Chan, Curtis
The report on Ohio's electronic voting machines was recently released by
Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner. The report showed exploitable
weaknesses in the state's touch-screen and optical-scan devices. Penn
State researchers led by computer science professor Patrick McDaniel served
as a subcontractor to SysTest during the company's testing of Ohio's
electronic-voting machines. McDaniel says the research teams, which also
included teams from the University of Pennsylvania and the University of
California at Santa Barbara, had access to the voting machines as well as
the source code from the vendors. Penn State researchers conducted
hackability testing and source code analysis, including an examination of
recent software upgrades, on the Hart and Premier Election voting systems.
"Our report is an extensive technical analysis of the security of these
voting machines as they would be used under real-world conditions,"
McDaniel says. "Our review concludes that the vendor systems lack basic
technical protections necessary to guarantee a trustworthy election."
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NSF Awards Carnegie Mellon's Jacobo Bielak $1.6 Million
for Earthquake Research
Carnegie Mellon News (01/15/08) Swaney, Chriss
The National Science Foundation PetaApps program has awarded a $1.6
million grant over the next four years to Carnegie Mellon University
professor Jacobo Bielak to develop earthquake computer simulations that
would lower the risk for large urban coastal cities. "These simulations
will provide unprecedented detailed knowledge of how an urban system
performs in a large earthquake and what is needed for improving disaster
planning and preparation," Bielak says. "This new grant will give us the
resources to create three-dimensional models that can simulate how
earthquakes impact buildings, bridges, and other critical urban
infrastructures." Bielak has worked with CMU professor David O'Hallaron
and researchers at the Southern California Earthquake Center over the past
10 years to develop more sophisticated computer models of earthquake
behavior. The new research will demand more of current hardware and
software programs. Bielak plans to integrate the ground motion of large
sedimentary basins with a number of large databases in an attempt to study
how large scale earthquakes impact buildings, transportation systems, and
other key underground infrastructure.
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Cameraphone Used to Control Computers in 3D
New Scientist (01/15/08) Simonite, Tom
U.K. researchers have developed prototype software that allows a
camera-equipped cell phone to control a computer as if the phone was a
three-dimensional mouse. The software makes it possible to move and
manipulate onscreen items by moving the phone around in front of the
screen. "It feels like a much more natural way to interact and exchange
data," says York University's Nick Pears, who developed the system with
colleagues from Newcastle University. To control a screen, users aim their
cell phone's camera at the screen. The cell phone then connects to the
computer through Bluetooth. The computer knows where the phone is pointing
by placing a reference target on top of the normal video feed. The
distance between the cell phone and the screen is determined by how the
screen's size changes due to perspective, and the computer is able to
translate the phone's movement and rotation in three dimensions into the
action of an onscreen cursor. In testing, volunteers were asked to resize
an image by moving the phone closer to the screen to enlarge it and farther
away from the screen to shrink the image. Pears says the desktop
controlling prototype is just the first step. "The invention really comes
into its own when you realize that modern large public displays are really
just computers with big screens," Pears says.
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Stanford Computer Scientist Gets Academy Award for Fluid
Simulation
Dr. Dobb's Journal (01/15/08)
The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences will honor Stanford
University computer scientist Ron Fedkiw and partners Nick Rasmussen and
Frank Losasso Petterson from the special effects firm Industrial Light and
Magic (ILM) with a Scientific and Engineering Award plaque for their work
on computer-generated fluids. Their work has produced the life-like
rushing floodwaters in "Evan Almighty," the surging seas of the two
"Pirates of the Caribbean" movies, and the flaming breath of the dragon in
"Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire." In using a technique called the
"particle level set method," the team mixed the use of particles and level
sets so that smooth surfaces could be maintained wherever possible and all
the fluid could be kept via the particle representation. The integration
of particle level sets, parallel computation, and tools for large-scale
water effects worked well within ILM's Zeno framework, and is a sign of the
future direction of Fedkiw's computer graphics research. "This year we
built a system that allows two-way coupling between rigid and deformable
bodies, so we can fully physically simulate bones moving around under
flesh--interacting with the environment," Fedkiw says. "Another main
result is a two-way, solid-fluid coupling method that can be used with it,
so the environment can be water; that is, we're going to be simulating
people swimming."
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Computer Learns Dogspeak
Science Daily (01/16/08)
Machine learning can be used to learn more about the behavior of animals
in natural environments, says Csaba Molnar of Eotvos Lorand University in
Hungary. Molnar headed a team of researchers that used new software to
classify dog barks in reference to encountering a stranger, fighting,
loneliness, seeing a ball, and playing. Once classified they were able to
identify the barks of individual dogs in these various situations. The
researchers had the algorithm analyze more than 6,000 dog barks from 14
Hungarian sheepdogs, which were recorded with a tape recorder then
transferred to a computer, where they were digitized, coded, classified,
and evaluated. The algorithm correctly classified 43 percent of dog barks
in the six situations, which suggests that the motivational state of a dog
could result in acoustically different barks. Also, the software correctly
classified 52 percent of the barks of individual dogs, which suggests there
are differences in the way dogs bark. "The use of advanced machine
learning algorithms to classify and analyze animal sounds opens new
perspectives for the understanding of animal communication," Molnar says.
"The promising results obtained strongly suggest that advanced machine
learning approaches deserve to be considered as a new relevant tool for
ethology."
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SU iSchool Associate Professor Lee McKnight Debuts
Wireless Grids Software at 2008 International Consumer Electronics
Show
Syracuse University (01/14/08) Spillett, Margaret Costello
Innovaticus, wireless software developed by Syracuse University's School
of Information Studies professor Lee McKnight, is designed to allow users
to collaborate and share files and hardware with themselves or other people
over different devices across a number of different networks. All
available resources are coordinated by Innovaticus, which also makes them
accessible from a single device. McKnight partnered with the school's
Wireless Grids Lab and Nokia on the software's research and development.
Innovaticus will initially be tested at Syracuse and the University of West
Indies in Trinidad. "One device will never be smart enough to do
everything all by itself, but it can be smart enough to work with stuff
that is already out there," McKnight says. "It's going to be a major
change in the way we communicate, the way our devices interact, and the way
we interact with the digital world around us."
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Grant for Workflow Software
University of California, Davis (01/16/08) Fell, Andy
University of California Davis, UC Santa Barbara, and UC San Diego have
received a $1.7 million, three-year grant from the National Science
Foundation to develop tools to help scientists automate scientific data
management and analysis workflows. The project will develop the
Kepler/CORE (Comprehensive, Open, Reliable, and Extensible Scientific
Workflow Infrastructure), which will allow scientists in all fields to
perform desktop data analysis, remote execution monitoring, and massive
data management. UC Davis computer science professor Bertram Ludaescher
says Kepler grew out of a grassroots collaboration between NSF and the U.S.
Energy Department research projects based on a UC Berkeley project and
system called PTOLEMY II. "In the last few years, Kepler has been used and
extended in various ways, but different projects tend to pull the system in
different directions," says Ludaescher, the principal investigator on the
grant. The new project will develop a software core that facilitates
independent extensions to support wider adoption of the system, Ludaescher
says. He says Kepler uses a simple, intuitive graphical interface that
enables users to quickly create a workflow that suits their needs, without
having to understand all of the computer code.
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Weak Control System Security Threatens U.S.
Government Computer News (01/16/08) Jackson, Joab
The weak security measures in place on infrastructure control systems may
someday put U.S. utilities at risk of a coordinated attack, says Jerry
Dixon, the former acting director of the Homeland Security Department's
National Cyber Security Division. Of particular concern to Dixon are the
control systems to utility company substations. These systems are
typically controlled by dial-in modems and often have outdated or
nonexistent security and authentication technologies. Meanwhile, some of
the control systems of utility company substations that are on a network
are vulnerable to a crossover attack because they may be sharing their
equipment with other, less-sensitive systems. In addition, relatively
little logging goes on with control systems, which makes it difficult to
determine whether a failure is the result of an attack or misconfiguration.
Meanwhile, in research work conducted last fall, the Energy Department's
Idaho National Laboratory demonstrated how a megawatt generator could be
broken into from a remote location by calling into the substation system
and executing a number of malicious commands to change the workflow logic
of the generator. In addition to the right phone number to dial into, such
an attack would require expertise in electrical engineering and network
security. Dixon says the U.S. has been lucky so far, but warns that if the
bad guys get organized "we'd have some serious challenges."
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Web 3.0: User-Generated Networks?
ICT Results (01/16/08)
European researchers are applying Web 2.0 concepts such as user-generated
content and social networking to the real world in an effort to enable
anyone at anytime to create user-generated Internet networks. The concept
has been dubbed Web 3.0. The WIP project may lead to the development of a
new Internet in which users can spontaneously create networks in a matter
of minutes with any kind of device, which would require redesigning the
Internet's underlying technology, creating new operating principles, and
defining new communication protocols. "When the Internet first emerged, it
assumed devices would be fixed in place and linked by wires," says WIP
project researcher Marcelo Dias de Amorium. "But that's no longer true. A
large number of devices are mobile and equipped with wireless communication
capabilities." Dias de Amorium says the project is not looking to replace
the Internet, but is simply proposing a robust, flexible, optimized, and
user-friendly set of technologies and standards that would allow any user
to identify and network with nearby devices. Over the next year Dias de
Amorium plans to finalize some elements and integrate them together and
eventually he wants to plant the technology in promising communities to
jump-start its adoption.
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Intel CTO Presses Software Developers to Keep Pace
EE Times (01/17/08) Krishnadas, K.C.
Intel chief technology officer Justin Rattner says software development
and delivery has failed to keep pace with advances in computer hardware,
that software delivery has reached an inflection point, and developers of
packaged applications are becoming an endangered species. Rattner says
Intel believes traditional software delivery methods are being replaced by
global Internet connectivity, and as a result software delivery service
relies more on secure transmission over global networks. Rattner says that
packaged software is unable to keep pace with the continuous progress in
computing technology, and as hardware technology approaches the terascale
level from desktop computers, software has fallen further behind.
Consequently, there is a lack of parallel programming applications that
utilize dual- and multi-core technology. Rattner says Intel is looking for
"new languages for programming in parallel," and that the company will
focus more on features and capabilities that add value, rather than
performance. "Our enterprise advisory group has told us that [IT]
management and security are top priorities for enterprises, and it is
significant how performance has dropped in importance," Rattner says.
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Future Technology for Jewel Design and Elderly
Care
Massey News (01/17/08)
A key figure in the movement to combine technology with social, health,
creative, and leisure needs in the home will give the keynote address at an
international information technology conference at Massey University Jan.
28-29, 2008. Professor Andrew Monk, a human-computer interaction
specialist at the University of York, plans to discuss the latest
developments involving the Intergenerational Project. One development is a
digital necklace that was designed to enable an adult daughter to
communicate, care for, and program for the dementia of her 75-year-old
mother. "Designing for the home is very different from designing for the
office or school," Monk says. "These differences arise because we choose
the technologies that go into our homes for ourselves, on the basis of what
they do for us and what they say about us." Monk helped develop the
high-profile Net Neighbors services, which allow volunteers to form
friendship and shopping networks for disabled and elderly people. The
Institute of Information and Mathematical Sciences is hosting the
conference, which will offer paper presentations by some 200 researchers
and scientists.
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RFID Tags Guide the Blind
IEEE Spectrum (01/08) Peck, Morgen E.
The European Union's Institute for the Protection and Security of the
Citizen (IPSC) continues to expand an electronic navigational system for
blind residents and tourists in the small town of Laveno Mombello in
northern Italy. After embedding 1,260 RFID transponders in sidewalks and
linking them together in a network last fall, IPSC has moved access indoors
to commercial buildings. Blind people have a cane with an antenna on the
tip that activates each RFID chip as it passes over, and the chips radio
their unique tag number to their smart phones, which feature a database of
navigational information that maps tag numbers to locations throughout the
town. Users also have a Bluetooth headset linked to the phones for
receiving information about their location. The network is still limited
to about a 2-kilometer stretch in one direction, and is unable to
accommodate blind people who have to take a different route. In the
future, the network will alert users to optional turns and could direct
them to a programmed destination. Other issues will have to be addressed
such as what information distracts users, and whether public or commercial
entities should control the central database.
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Large Screen or Small, It's 'One Web' for All
Software Development Times (01/01/08)No. 188, P. 1; DeJong, Jennifer
World Wide Web Consortium director Tim Berners-Lee observed at November's
Mobile Internet World conference that increasing small screen/big screen
coexistence will make the small screen's shortcomings less prominent, while
emphasis will shift from Web sites or Web services to content as the Web
becomes widely available on mobile devices. "Whether content is delivered
on a mobile device with a two-inch screen or a desktop computer with a
30-inch screen, there is one Web," he maintained. Berners-Lee added that
the Web is universal and is supposed to encompass anything and anyone by
design. "People want to choose their hardware, their software, their
content," he said. Berners-Lee stressed that the mobile Web cannot grow
without support of the open standards underlying the wired Web, such as
HTML, HTTP, and Cascading Style Sheets. He noted at the conference that
the Web is en route toward a time when users are becoming increasingly
cognizant of public and private content, which will lead to the advent of
better privacy management strategies. Berners-Lee's address coincided with
the W3C's announcement of the mobileOK checker, a tool enabling developers
and designers to test a Web page and ascertain its suitability for delivery
on mobile devices using W3C best practices as the basis for the test.
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