Auditor's Report Inconclusive on Florida Undervote
Mishap
Network World (02/08/08) Gross, Grant
The U.S. Government Accountability Office still does not know what caused
or contributed to 18,000 unmarked ballots in a Florida congressional race
in 2006, the GAO said in a report released Friday. However, the report
says that GAO's tests, along with others done by the state of Florida,
"have significantly reduced the possibility that the iVotronic [machines]
were the cause of the undervote." The GAO says that other factors,
including intentional undervotes or ballot interaction problems, may have
caused the undervote. The Verified Voting Foundation says the GAO report
"leaves most of the major questions unanswered," and does not address
potential problems with touch-screen sensitivity and low batteries, nor
does it address reports of undervotes in other races. "The nature of the
complex voting system in question, and the difficulty in auditing such a
system, may mean such questions will remain indefinitely, but it is clear
that more can and should be done to resolve the outstanding issues," a
Verified Voting Foundation report says. The foundation suggests that
auditors conduct more tests, including testing touch-screen sensitivity and
checking for software bugs beyond the GAO's confirmation that the software
matched Florida certification standards. "As someone who's interested in
what happened in this election, my questions aren't answered," says
foundation founder David Dill. "I don't think we're going to get any idea
about what happened in that election without a lot more investigation."
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Computing Women Meet to Network and Learn
Computerworld New Zealand (02/11/08) Hedquist, Ulrika
The Computing Women Congress (CWC), a summer university for women in
computer science, is being held at the University of Waikato in Hamilton,
New Zealand, the week of February 11. The CWC is a meeting place for
female IT students, academics, and professionals, says Annika Hinze, an
organizer of the event and University of Waikato computing science
lecturer. The three-day event includes daily keynote speeches, social
events, and two three-hour blocks of courses, which include Web
technologies, software development, research skills, career skills, and
gender and IT. Hinze, New Zealand ambassador for ACM's women's chapter,
says the congress is an opportunity to learn new concepts and skills, and a
chance to network and form bonds with other women in the industry. The
goal of the congress is to encourage more women to start a career in IT and
to retain the women who are already invested in their careers. Hinze says
she decided to start the congress after having attended a similar one in
Europe. "Most of the women in computer science I know, I met there," Hinze
says.
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Computer Interaction Gets Some Humanity
ICT Results (02/07/08)
SIMILAR, a European taskforce focused on human-computer interaction (HCI)
hopes to drastically advance how humans interact with computers by creating
new interfaces that utilize speech, gestures, vision, haptics, and even
direct brain connections. The taskforce wants to make using a computer
less like a human-to-computer interaction and more like a human-to-human
experience. SIMILAR project manager Benoit Michel says the main goal is to
create a viable and sustainable community for HCI research. "That covers a
broad range of areas," Michel says, including such research areas as
interface theory, signal processing, and interface prototyping. Michel
says SIMILAR will bring all of these research domains together "into one
pan-European network." The 32 direct partners, and eight associated
partners, involved in the SIMILAR project were responsible for almost 1,000
article publications over the four-year lifespan of the network. The
network also developed OpenInterface, open-source, rapid-prototyping
software for interface design that regroups a core program and plug-in
technology. OpenInterface provides researchers with a standard,
open-source programming tool for various interface functions such as speech
recognition, haptics, video, and others.
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Optical Scientists Add New, Practical Dimension to
Holography
University of Arizona (02/06/08) Stiles, Lori
University of Arizona optical researchers have developed a
three-dimensional holographic display that can be erased and rewritten in a
few minutes. The researchers say their displays are the first updatable 3D
displays with memory, making them ideal for medical, industrial, and
military applications that require situational awareness. Dynamic
holographic displays could be used to help surgeons track their progress
during long and complex surgeries, show airline or fighter pilots nearby
hazards, or give emergency response teams nearly real-time views of
fast-changing situations. Such technology could also have advertising and
entertainment applications. The displays consist of a special plastic
film, called a phtorefractive polymer, that sits between two pieces of
glass, each piece coated with a transparent electrode. The images are
"written" into the light-sensitive plastic using lasers and an externally
applied electric field. The researchers say the materials are highly
efficient, inexpensive, and can be used to make large displays. Complete
scenes of objects can be created within three minutes and stored for three
hours. The researchers are also working to write images even faster by
using pulsed lasers.
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Israeli Universities Part of 'Rodent Whiskers' Robotic
Project
Jerusalem Post (02/10/08) Siegel-Itzkovich, Judy
A multinational team is developing touch technologies based on how mice
and rats use their whiskers to find their way in the dark. One of the
technologies is a robot that will be able to quickly locate, identify, and
capture moving objects in space. The BIOTACT nature-imitation project
includes participation from universities, research institutes, and
high-tech companies in Israel, Britain, Switzerland, Italy, France,
Germany, and the United States. Using the principles of active sensing
used by whiskered animals, the researchers plan to develop a "whiskered"
robotic rat. "The use of touch in the design of artificial intelligence
systems has been largely overlooked until now," says Rehovot's Weizmann
Institute of Science neurobiology professor Ehud Ahissar. "If we succeed
in understanding what makes an animal's sense of touch so efficient, we
will be able to develop robots imitating this feature and put them to
effective use." The researchers have found that animals have
closed-feedback loops that constantly monitor the signals they receive from
their whiskers. "We suggest that it is the multiple closed-feedback loops
that are the key features giving biological systems an advantage over
robotic systems," Ahissar says. "Therefore, implementing this biological
knowledge will, we hope, allow robotics researchers to build machines that
are more efficient."
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Honda Demos Robot That Can Run 4 Mph and May One Day Take
Care of You
Computerworld (02/07/08) Gaudin, Sharon
Honda is demonstrating its humanoid Asimo robot at the Japan Culture and
Hyperculture festival in Washington, D.C. "The idea behind Asimo is that
it would someday be a helper to people inside their homes, maybe the
disabled or the elderly," says Honda's Alicia Jones. Asimo, under
development since 1986, made its public debut when it rang the opening bell
at the New York Stock Exchange on Feb. 14, 2002. Now, the robot can walk
forward and backward, climb up and down stairs, and run at nearly 4 mph.
Jones says making the robot able to run is important so it can react and
move quickly, like if a family dog runs into the robot's path or the robot
needs to run to help someone in distress. Jones expects Asimo to initially
cost about the same as a luxury automobile, and that people will
personalize Asimo and think of it as part of their family. Eventually,
people will be able to hold conversations with the robot, though not for
some time. "The artificial intelligence part of it is going to be a
challenge," Jones says. "It has facial recognition and voice recognition,
so you can program in a set of voice commands, and it would respond to
you."
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Researchers, NVIDIA Collaborate on GPU Petascale
Computing
Louisiana State University (02/01/08)
The Institute for Advanced Computing Applications and Technologies (IACAT)
at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign has launched a project
designed to empower science and engineering researchers by allowing their
applications to run 100 times faster at a significantly lower cost than
using traditional parallel processing techniques. Joining this effort are
researchers at Louisiana State University's Center for Computation and
Technology (CCT) and NVIDIA Corp., who will develop models, tools, and
applications communities that will leverage the use of GPUs for petascale
computing. "This partnership not only allows us to develop the tools and
technologies our researchers will need to access these future systems, but
will give us the opportunity to make breakthroughs that will benefit the
global and scientific computing community," says CCT director Ed Seidel.
The research project is led by Wen-mei Hwu, a research professor in
Illinois' Coordinated Science Laboratory. "Each member of the partnership
brings unique, critical ingredients to the table," Hwu says. "Through this
collaboration, we will be able to attack the problem in a way that will
benefit the entire science and engineering community." The project will
focus on four key areas: Developing parallel programming models and
frameworks; creating new performance-tuning tools for automating GPU
applications; implementing laboratory testbeds at IACAT and CCT for
evaluating petascale computer tools and their deployment; and creating
application communities in key areas such as computational biophysics,
astrophysics, and computational fluid dynamics.
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Wireless Whiz Weighs in on Pervasive Computing, Muni
Wi-Fi, RFID and 802.11n
Network World (02/04/08) Brown, Bob
Dipankar Raychaudhuri, who heads Rutgers University's Wireless Information
Network Laboratory, stresses the growing heterogeneity of wireless
technology as evidenced by the coexistence of numerous standards, and
predicts that multi-radios will soon be the benchmark. "Broadly, our
thinking is that we need to deal with a much more complex wireless world
where you have different, physical-layer wireless-radio standards and a
variety of networking modes including multi-hop and ad hoc types of
intelligence that aren't used very much today," he says. Raychaudhuri
observes a rapid maturation of pervasive computing in supply chain
management and RFID, with the latter technology making significant progress
in the areas of automobile safety and car-to-car convenience. He says
municipal Wi-Fi still lacks a business case in the United States, with
speed issues being one of the principal impediments. Raychaudhuri says
wireless security issues remain unresolved, and WINLAB is concentrating on
problems in which intrusions can be blocked or attackers spotted by
applying knowledge of radio-level properties. He admits that the funding
apportioned to basic wireless research in the United States is not large in
comparison to Europe, but adds that it is doing well. "In terms of growth
areas, there are initiatives called GENI [Global Environment for Network
Innovations] and FIND [Future Internet Design] at the NSF right now on the
future Internet, and there's been some money put into this area, and
wireless is a big part of the future Internet," Raychaudhuri points out.
He describes the work being done on cognitive radios as very exciting, and
cites the hyping of specific wireless standards as confusing.
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Coleman: The Cyber Arms Race Has Begun
CSO Online (02/05/08) Coleman, Kevin
The wave of international online attacks that took place between Estonia
and Russia in April and May of 2007 can easily be seen as the first cyber
war, writes Kevin Coleman of Technolytics Institute. At the peak of the
attacks, over 4 million malicious attacks were launched and found their
targets. The race to be able to protect the nation's infrastructure from
cyberattack has been ongoing, and technology experts, military strategists,
and city and urban planners are collaborating on cyber-warfare strategies
designed to disrupt and defend against critical offensive and defensive
operations. The Naval Postgraduate School has defined three levels of
offensive cyber capabilities. The first is simple-unstructured, which
includes the capability to conduct basic hacks against individual systems
using tools created by another party. The second is advanced-structured,
which involves basic hacks against multiple systems and possibly the
ability to modify or create basic tools. The final level is
complex-coordinated, which includes the ability to launch coordinated
attacks capable of causing mass-disruption against multiple defense
systems. Cyberattacks occur far more frequently than the public is aware,
Coleman says. On average, there are over 6,500 serious computer attacks
reported per minute, and in July 2007 there were nearly three times the
number of cyber breaches than in any other month. A June 2007 report to
the U.S. Congress warned that China is developing cyber network attacks
that could cause "disruption and chaos" with the "magnitude of a weapon of
mass destruction." The nation's reliance on networks, technology, and
computers makes the country vulnerable to cyberattacks, Coleman says, and
the 13 agencies and offices of the U.S. intelligence community have not
reached a consensus on how severe a cyberattack could be.
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Love Tech Goes Long Distance
Forbes (02/06/08)
Robert Metcalfe says the Internet is a perfect example of the "networking
effect," when numerous devices are added to a network, making each one more
useful than they would be separately. Cornell University computer science
graduate student Joseph Kaye took a simpler approach and stopped with just
two endpoints. In a 2004 experiment, Kaye developed software called
virtual intimate object (VIO) that was distributed to 10 couples involved
in long-distance relationships. VIO displayed only a single red dot that
gradually faded out over time, and would strengthen when one person in the
couple clicked on the dot. Some couples reported that clicking the dot
filled an emotional need and made them feel closer, and some clicked on the
dot more than 800 times a day. "There was something very intimate about
the fact that this connected only you and your partner," Kaye says. "They
still used email and cell phones, but this seemed to provide a whole
different channel of communication." Experts say that Kaye's experiment
highlights the juxtaposition of the digital world. As the world gets
smaller and more tightly connected, couples seem to be apart more
frequently. Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships director
Gregory Guldner says that one reason there are more long distance
relationships is that people feel that technology reduces the emotional
separation of distance. "Information technology has definitely led people
to believe that long-distance relationships will work more than in the
past," Guldner says. "Whether that's true is the big question we're
dealing with right now."
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Digital Photos Linked to Mementoes and Example of Making
Computers Easier to Use
Canadian Press (02/06/08)
University of Calgary researchers have developed a system for calling up
digital photographs on a computer based on their relationship to objects
and an associated electronic tag. University of Calgary graduate student
Michael Nunes says that people take lots of pictures and store them, but it
can be difficult to share them with people face to face. In his study,
small RFID tags were attached to mementos that corresponded to different
sets of photographs in the computer. Nunes says the advantage of the
system is that it works in a setting where someone would want to show
photos to a guest naturally. The study is part of a trend in computer
science to make technology and computers easier to use. "And as long as we
just keep thinking about computers as screens and mice and keyboards,
that's not going to happen--because that kind of technology essentially
says there is a digital world, and it's totally separate from the
day-to-day, everyday world of people," says Calgary computer science
professor Paul Greenberg, who worked on the research with Nunes.
"Currently, I'm quite concerned that people either do stuff in the digital
world or the physical world, but there's very little crossover."
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Tags Lead the Way for Blind in EU-Funded Pilot
RFID Journal (02/04/08) Wessel, Rhea
Secure and Safe Mobility Network is an EU-funded research project to make
visually-impaired citizens more independent through efforts such as the
deployment of RFID tags along three walkways in Italy so blind people can
navigate in unfamiliar surroundings. The system is being tested by both
blind and sighted participants with PDAs and custom-designed canes that
link to tags buried in the paths, while a text-to-speech program produces
directions or audio signals that the user hears through an earpiece. The
three paths were equipped with a total of 2,500 tags, while the system was
constructed for less than $148,280, according to head of the European
Commission's Joint Research Center Marco Sironi. "We had to adjust the
antenna in such a way so that it could read the transponder but ignore
whatever else was in the ground, such as steel and cables," he says. The
first 10 cane readers were developed at a cost of about $37,060 by project
partners in collaboration with a French company, while the second set of 10
cost roughly $890 each. Eventually, Sironi expects the cost of each cane
to plummet to just a few hundred euros, while the PDAs and earpieces each
cost between $297 and $593. Finally, the development of the database that
maps the path and stores other location-based information cost $29,650 for
the first kilometer and around $2,965 for each additional kilometer.
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UT Arlington Project Aims to Make American Sign Language
Learning Easier
Pegasus News Wire (02/04/08)
Computer science researchers at the University of Texas at Arlington and
Boston University are working to make it easier for people to learn
American Sign Language (ASL). Users of ASL can complete sentences quickly
because the language does not require a literal representation for each
word, but this also makes picking up the rapidly changing hand positions
and gestures difficult. UT Arlington's Vassilis Athitsos and BU's Drs.
Stan Sclaroff and Carol Neidle are developing new technology that will
bring sign-based searching to sign/meaning dictionaries. Current
dictionaries list signs in alphabetical order. The researchers will use
computer-vision, data-mining, and machine-learning applications to enable
non-ALA users to look up some 4,000 commonly-used signs, and the tool will
make it easier for them to match gestures with meanings and study visual
patterns. The researchers hope to deploy the dictionary within three
years. They also plan to create a visual equivalent of Google that would
allow users to search databases for occurrences of thousands of signs. The
research is funded by a three-year, $900,000 grant from the National
Science Foundation.
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MIT Researchers Fight Gridlock With Linux
LinuxDevices.com (02/02/08) Brown, Eric
MIT's CarTel project is a Linux-based automotive telematics system
designed to lower traffic congestion through the development of
route-selection algorithms. CarTel consists of a distributed, GPS-enabled
mobile sensor network that employs Wi-Fi "opportunistically" to leverage
intermittent coverage to update a central traffic analysis program.
Creating a flexible and affordable platform for various automotive-related
research initiatives is the objective of CarTel, according to MIT professor
Sam Madden, who is overseeing the project with professor Hari Balakrishnan.
To exploit intermittent encounters with Wi-Fi access points, the MIT team
devised the EasyWiFi communications protocol that establishes mobile
wireless links very fast, while variable and sporadic connectivity is
addressed with other protocols. A portal application constructed around
the ICEDB stream-processing query application handles the processing of
distributed sensor data, and the ICEDB database is the modification of a
TinyDB database that Madden created for the TinyOS operating system. "We
made a conscious decision to move to Linux because TinyOS was not as easy
to work with," Madden says. "With Linux, there are also a huge number of
people developing device drivers, and our graduate students already know
how to develop with it." The CarTel portal offers a Google Maps-based
geospatial data visualization system capable of storing and tagging sensor
data using GPS coordinates. The project is currently focused on the
development of algorithms that run atop the portal application to help
motorists work the optimal route at a given time.
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Creating Preservation-Ready Web Resources
D-Lib Magazine (02/08) Vol. 14, No. 2, Smith, Joan A.; Nelson, Michael L.
Many Web sites--personal, community, and departmental--are worth
preserving, but there are not enough digital archivists to prepare and
process these sites, write Joan A. Smith and Michael L. Nelson of Old
Dominion University. They suggest a simple model for preparing the
resources of everyday sites for preservation by exploiting the Web server,
through analysis at the time of dissemination by metadata utilities. In
response to the archiving repository crawler, the Web server relays the
resource as well as the just-in-time produced metadata as a straightforward
response formatted in XML. This strategy is supported by mod_oai, an
Apache Web server module Smith and Nelson developed. The information
generated via this approach is unverified, undifferentiated, and
extemporaneous. "From the archiving crawler's perspective, it is clearly
more efficient to have the servers at 100 sites each pre-analyze its own
resources than it is for the archiving server to analyze the resources of
100 sites," Smith and Nelson write. They add that they are collating
metrics on the approach's effects on the server, specifically the impact of
metadata utility performance on server responsiveness to regular clients.
"However, sites can make an agreement with an archiving site to (a) arrange
a specific crawling timeframe and/or (b) only allow selected crawlers to
perform this kind of enhanced crawl, either by user/password agreement
between the parties or by other common access restrictions (crawler's host
IP, for example)," the authors note.
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Is Semantic Web Technology Taking the Wrong Turn?
Internet Computing (02/08) Vol. 12, No. 1, P. 75; Bussler, Christoph
Author Christoph Bussler sees a disaster in the making for Semantic Web
technology (SWT) unless a change of course is implemented. "SWT doesn't
propose a different application architecture," he writes. "Instead, it
proposes languages and technologies that are intended to make the
application development process and integration efforts a lot simpler,
faster, and more reliable, especially in the areas of data and process
mediation to achieve uniform semantic interpretation." But Bussler notes
that the impact of SWT requires a certain degree of integration with
current core computing technologies. He points out that the deployment of
SWT as a wrapping technology to facilitate semantic interfaces for layers
causes the number of data models requiring additional mediation to sharply
increase due to problems with heterogeneity. SWT would like to tackle the
heterogeneity challenge, but researchers generally attempt to bypass it by
making assumptions or establishing restrictions to produce homogeneous
environments, Bussler says. He considers the research community and
industry's decision to split up the SWT space along classical lines of
distinction between layers and components in software architectures, and
along classical academic research fields, to be one possible reason for the
derailment of the original SWT vision. "One possible turn would be to
start addressing the problem of data and process heterogeneity, not only
among systems but also along the layers within them to reduce or eliminate
the number of mediations necessary," Bussler writes.
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