Technology Policy in the Information Age: Computer
Security Experts Debate Political, Social and Economic Impacts
AScribe Newswire (03/24/08)
ACM is sponsoring the Conference on Computers, Freedom, and Privacy (CFP
2008) as a way to help shape the public debate on information and
communications technologies. CFP 2008 will offer expert keynote speakers,
panels, tutorials, and birds-of-a-feather sessions to help raise the level
of discussion on how the country should approach technology in the years to
come. The conference will feature leading technologists, policymakers,
business leaders, and advocates who are experts on voting technology,
online campaigning, social networks, anonymity online, P2P networks,
cybercrime and cyberterrorism, information policy and free trade, media and
concentration, network neutrality, electronic medical records, and
copyright and fair use. CFP 2008 is scheduled for May 20-23 at the Omni
New Haven Hotel at Yale in New Haven, Conn. For more information, see
http://www.cfp2008.org/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
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Replacing Wire With Laser, Sun Tries to Speed Up
Data
New York Times (03/24/08) Markoff, John
A new generation of faster, more compact computers that boast greater
energy efficiency could one day be realized thanks to a Sun Microsystems
methodology to align silicon chips by substituting laser beams for wires so
the chips can communicate with each other at very high speeds. "It's like
the difference between having someone next door and having to get on an
airplane to fly across the country," says Terabit Corp. optical networking
designer Alan Huang. "This would be a way of breaking Moore's Law." The
shortcomings of connecting chips by wire include limited processing power
and bottlenecks that produce additional heat and electrical current because
data flows between chips at lower speeds. Proving the technical
feasibility and commercial manufacturability of the Sun researchers' idea
would go a long way toward creating more compact machines whose performance
trumps that of current computers 1,000-fold. Sun has received a five-year,
$44 million Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency contract to
investigate this concept. Sun's project partners include Stanford
University and the University of California, San Diego.
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Employment and Salaries of Recent CS Graduates
CRA Bulletin (03/25/08) Vegso, Jay
People who received degrees in computer and information sciences (CS) in
recent years are more likely to be employed in business and industry and to
be working full-time than those who pursued several other majors.
According to a recent NSF InfoBrief, 82 percent of CS majors who received
bachelor's degrees in 2003, 2004, and 2005 were employed in business and
industry, and 91 percent (along with engineering majors) had full-time jobs
in April 2006. Among those with master's degrees, 76 percent were working
in business and industry, and 93 percent were working full-time. The NSF
InfoBrief also shows that CS graduates with bachelor's degrees had a median
salary of $45,000, which was tied for second with health majors. CS
graduates with master's degree made $65,000, tying engineering majors for
first.
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Bringing Light to Computers
Technology Review (03/26/08) Greene, Kate
IBM researchers are working on a method for bringing fiber-optic network
speed and bandwidth to PC chips, and they recently announced a nanoscale
silicon switch capable of routing trillions of bits of data per second
within an optical network. "We're talking about routing a terabit per
second through a single switch," says IBM researcher William Green. The
switch is composed of connected, resonating rings etched into silicon, and
electrons are guided to a specific ring when the switch is activated,
changing the ring's resonance frequency and effectively blocking the
transmission of light; the light bounces off the resonator and is emitted
in another direction. Green says the switch's design is novel because the
device does not filter the light based on its wavelength, and it can endure
a temperature variation of about 30 degrees Celsius to ensure network
reliability. Top-of-the-line computers currently boast two or four general
processing cores, but engineers expect to build devices with tens of cores
within the next 10 years. Efficient communication between cores and
between cores and other computer elements is a pressing challenge. Optical
devices and waveguides built within the same silicon used to fabricate
chips hold promise as alternatives to metal wires and electronic
components, and IBM's switch represents an important step toward realizing
a practical silicon photonics system.
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Industry Worried About State of Research in India
EE Times (03/19/08) Krishnadas, K.C.
Chip design is dominating research in Indian technical institutes,
although industry executives say there should be greater concentration in
embedded systems. About two-thirds of all research is in chip design, and
embedded systems comprise about half of this share; the India Semiconductor
Association estimates that overall, chip design and testing make up 43
percent of all research conducted by Indian institutes, with analog
accounting for 50 percent of this. There is a paucity of people with
doctorates and people earning doctorates in chip design-related fields, and
companies are deemed to be complicit because they are not making a bigger
commitment to institutes in the pursuit of research. Interest in research
is undeniable, but observers cite insufficient numbers of experienced
faculty, the absence of a local market, and disinterest among venture
capitalists as impediments to research activity. "More research needs to
be done in embedded systems, as the market is five time larger than chip
design," insists Cosmic Circuits CEO Ganapathy Subramaniam. "In any case,
the more there is research in embedded systems, research into chip design
will also rise." ISA projects that embedded software will account for
$11.8 billion of total Indian semiconductor design revenues in 2010, while
chip design will only account for approximately $2 billion. Magma Design
Automation India executive Anand Anandkumar predicts that up to
three-quarters of engineers will be involved in embedded systems in the
next seven to eight years, so India's competitiveness will depend on
additional embedded systems research efforts.
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Avatar Mimics You in Real Time
PhysOrg.com (03/25/08) Zyga, Lisa
A digital avatar capable of mirroring a person's movements in real time
has been developed by researchers at Deutsche Telekom Laboratories,
Germany's Fraunhofer Heinrich-Hertz-Institut, and Israel's Ben Gurion
University. The researchers say the technology opens up new possibilities
for touch-free, intuitive human-computer interaction. The prototype system
features real-time performance of audio-visual analysis so that the avatar
can move immediately. The system's hardware ingredients are an inexpensive
Webcam and a pair of standard headphones, and the system interoperates with
a standard PC. Users must wave their hands around at first so the system
can identify their skin color, as it depends on recognizing skin color to
follow hand and head movements. The system is capable of recognizing a
series of 66 parameters that classify facial expression, and there are also
high-level facial expressions that users can manually activate with
buttons. The system can recognize many basic gestures, including those
from the American Sign Language alphabet, by finger position analysis.
Future applications include its employment in virtual chat rooms and online
call centers, where users are represented by avatars to maintain privacy.
In mobile devices the avatar system could function as an interface that
promotes user-friendliness.
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Printing Displays Screen Promise
BBC News (03/25/08) Fildes, Jonathan
Japanese scientists at the University of Tokyo have demonstrated unique
ink-jet printing gear that could be used to cheaply and rapidly manufacture
flat-panel computer displays through the employment of a new inkjet head
capable of producing drops 1,000 times smaller than standard printers.
This was achieved through the application of a high voltage to the print
head, and the researchers were able to print continuous lines two microns
wide and components just one micron across using ink composed of silver
nanoparticles. "The present work demonstrates the feasibility of employing
ink-jet technology ... for electronic device applications," write the
researchers in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. A
methodology for printing electronics especially holds potential for organic
or plastic electronics, the manufacture of which would be much cheaper and
easier than conventional silicon fabrication. Because their current
prototype is too sluggish for commercial applications, the researchers
recommend that it should only be utilized to pattern precise and critical
features of circuitry.
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New Breed of Cognitive Robot...a Puppy?
ICT Results (03/21/08)
The European Union-funded COSPAL project has discovered that the
shortcomings of classical rule-based artificial intelligence and artificial
neural networks (ANNs) can be overcome by combining the two approaches, and
this strategy forms the basis of the project's artificial cognitive
systems. A team led by Linkoping University researcher Michael Felsberg
has devised a new type of cognitive, learning robot that employs ANNs to
manage the low-level functions based on the visual input it receives and
classical AI to serve as a supervisory mechanism. "In this way, we found
it was possible for the robots to explore the world around them through
direct interaction, create ways to act in it, and then control their
actions in accordance," says Felsberg. "This combines the advantages of
classical AI, which is superior when it comes to functions akin to human
rationality, and the advantages of ANN, which is superior at performing
tasks for which humans would use their subconscious, things like basic
motor skills and low-level cognitive tasks." The COSPAL robot learned to
complete a shape-sorting puzzle without being provided with specific
directions, other than being told by a human operator when it had performed
a correct action or when it had committed an error. The scalability of the
COSPAL researchers' approach is what distinguishes it the most from what
had been the state of the art.
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Communities and the Networks That Define Them
Dr. Dobb's Journal (03/17/08) Erickson, Jon
An algorithm that is capable of automatically identifying communities and
their structures in different networks is the focus of a new paper by
Weixiong Zhang of Washington University and Jianhua Ruan of the University
of Texas at San Antonio. All disparate communities have networks that
define their structure, Zhang says. As part of the natural division in the
community structure of networks, the vertices in each subnetwork are highly
interconnected but not as strongly with the rest of the network.
Researchers tend to believe that each community may correspond to a
fundamental functional unit. Zhang teamed up with Ruan to develop the
algorithm, which exceeds similar algorithms in scalability and is capable
of detecting communities at a finer scale and with higher accuracy. The
algorithm has also been used to conduct genomics-related research.
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Terahertz Video Transfer Is Foretaste of Future
Wireless
New Scientist (03/19/08) McKenna, Phil
Video footage has been sent utilizing a terahertz wireless signal.
Although the connection was only 22 meters long, it signified an
advancement toward employing much faster wireless spectrum. The faster
wireless technologies operate in the gigahertz and megahertz spectrum. The
utilization of terahertz bandwidth, which ranges between 300 GHz and 3 THz,
could offer transmission speeds that are 1,000 times faster and create new
communication frequencies. Christian Jastrow of Germany's Terahertz
Communications Lab and his colleagues have merged several
commercially-accessible frequency multipliers to make a 10 GHz microwave
sensor yield the lowest terahertz frequency--a 300 GHz wave. Jastrow and
his research team used a specially devised high-frequency transmitter and
polyethylene lens to concentrate waves into a fairly low-power beam that
sent a video signal 22 meters before it faded. University of Utah's Ajay
Nahata, however, cautions that Jastrow's research has some drawbacks,
including the fact that it cannot be scaled beyond 1 THz.
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TAU Student Develops Software That Ranks Facial
Attractiveness
Ha'aretz (Israel) (03/21/08) Ilani, Ofri
A software program designed to make aesthetic judgments has been created
by Tel Aviv University student Amit Kagian for his master's thesis in
computer science. Kagian says his program "constitutes a substantial
advance in the development of artificial intelligence." In the first stage
of the project, 30 participants rated the attractiveness of several dozen
images on a scale of one to seven, after which the images were processed
and mathematically mapped. Kagian says this yielded nearly 100 numbers
that represent the face's geometric shape, along with features such as skin
smoothness, hair color, and facial symmetry. In the next step, new facial
images were fed into the computer for grading, and comparisons between the
computer's ratings and subsequent ratings by human subjects showed a
remarkable consistency, Kagian says. The computer functioned according to
certain impressions of beauty that had not been inputted into it, he says,
yet learned by processing the information it was given. A conclusion of
the experiment was that faces considered beautiful are average in terms of
the level of facial trait extremity. "The computer learned a mathematical
function, however it implicitly learned to prefer average faces," says
Kagian. He adds that while people have differing opinions of
attractiveness, a sufficiently large sample group will recognize a high
level of agreement even when multicultural subjects are involved.
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Grant Links Animation and Psychology
Bournemouth University (03/20/08)
Researchers at the United Kingdom's Bournemouth University are launching a
three-year project incorporating animation and psychology backed by a grant
from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Professor
Jian Zhang from the university's National Centre for Computer Animation
(NCCA) will lead the project, which includes psychology experts from the
University of Lancaster, the University College London, and the
Metropolitan Police. The experiment will examine how individuals respond
to emergency situations, especially the "bystander effect." It is thought
that the greater the number of witnesses there are during an incident, the
less probable it is that a person will get involved. The animated "people"
in the virtual arena that Zhang and his colleges will establish will
provide researchers with greater insight into the behavior. "Other studies
have already shown that real people tend to respond realistically in
virtual social situations," Zhang says. "As our real participants take
part in the study within the virtual environments we'll be creating, we
will measure their physiological, behavioral, cognitive, and emotional
responses to that environment."
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Robot Meet at UCF Hopes to Spark Future Engineers,
Scientists
Orlando Sentinel (FL) (03/16/08) Jacobson, Susan
The Florida FIRST Robotics area competition took place on March 15 at the
University of Central Florida arena in Orlando. It was designed to
persuade high-school students to enter careers as scientists and engineers.
Over 2,000 students from 61 schools constructed robots as teams and
competed with other students who are proficient in computer science and
engineering. Each team had six weeks to create their entries. The
majority of teams employed a dolly-type platform, a metal frame, and a
pneumatic system to fuel big metal claws or arms that could grab a large
ball and throw it over a barrier. Computers programmed the automatic
movements of the robots as they moved around a rink-style enclosure. Team
members then maneuvered the robots, utilizing joysticks to make movements.
Points were given for crossing particular lines and dunking a pair of large
balls. The Florida contest was one of 41 regional contests sponsored by
FIRST this year and will lead to the championship event next month in
Atlanta.
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Cutting Edge Computing Helps Discover the Origin of
Life
National Grid Service (03/19/08)
The United Kingdom's nationwide computing grid has teamed with TeraGrid of
the United States and European peers to help researchers at the University
College London determine how life on Earth began. Peter Coveney and fellow
scientists at the college's Centre for Computational Science employed
computer simulations to obtain insight into the infrastructure and
stability of DNA while incorporated in layered minerals. The simulations
recreated the hot temperatures and pressures that happen around
hydrothermal vents. It was found that the strand of DNA implemented into
the layered materials becomes stabilized in these circumstances and
therefore shielded from catalytic and thermal disintegration. "Grids of
supercomputers are essential for this kind of study," Coveney says. "The
time taken to run these simulations is reduced from the years that a
desktop computer would take, to hours by using the many thousands of
processors made available across continents."
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Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Professor Gives Talks
on Autonomous Driving
AME Info (UAE) (03/18/08) Hassan, Eman
Carnegie Mellon University robotics professor Chris Urmson recently
discussed his work with autonomous vehicles in Qatar. Urmson is the
director of technology for CMU's Tartan Racing team and coordinated the
development of an unmanned car that successfully navigated an urban
setting. Urmson feels that CMU's technological expertise and experience
and Qatar's interest in racing could be combined to improve vehicle safety,
and one goal of his visit to Qatar is to collaborate with computer science
faculty members at Carnegie Mellon Qatar on a plan to make autonomous car
racing a reality in Doha. Carnegie Mellon Qatar's Brett Browning says many
modern-day vehicle technologies were developed from racing, which is "an
excellent testing ground for developers because they can spend the time and
money on creating and fine-tuning new technology." Browning notes that car
manufacturers' concentration is moving from surviving accidents to
preventing accidents, and says that "Qatar is in a prime position to lead
this movement."
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How to Make Smarter Software
Forbes (03/19/08) Hardy, Quentin
Numenta founder Jeffrey Hawkins says artificial intelligence has come up
short because it has concentrated too heavily on the results of the brain's
operations without focusing on the general way those outcomes occur, and he
is devoted to the development of unique software modeled after neocortical
architecture and functionality in the hope that such an advancement will
eventually lead to software and hardware that can truly emulate human
intelligence. In 2007 Numenta released to developers an open-source
version of software oriented around "hierarchical temporal memory," a
theory formulated by Hawkins about how the human brain deals with incoming
data. Hawkins says the brain is structured into a hierarchy of neuronal
columns that absorb basic sensory input and sort it into patterns organized
around time and space. The initial patterns are passed to more neurons
that aggregate the information and feed it to more aggregators until the
patterns become generalizations that lead to future projections. The
Numenta software is designed to mimic this arrangement by forming a
hierarchy of software nodes that seek to recognize patterns. Unlike neural
network software, the Numenta software has no fixed number of levels
because general topology and the use of time is altered with the desired
outcome. It is Hawkins' hope that users will learn how to apply the
software to the construction of smarter devices.
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Sophie Vandebroek
Computerworld (03/17/08) Vol. 42, No. 12, P. 19; Anthes, Gary
Xerox innovation chief and IEEE fellow Sophie Vandebroek says in an
interview that paper has a much more ephemeral existence today thanks to
the growing prevalence and availability of digital information, and cites a
study finding that more than two-fifths of what is printed in a typical
enterprise is recycled within a day. Vandebroek says universal
connectivity and the communication and collaboration advantages it entails
could render the concept of working in an office obsolete, and adds that
"the future of the Internet" resides in 3D virtual environments such as
Second Life. "In the future, you don't need to be in the same room to look
each other in the eye and understand the issues and collaborate on
projects," she says. Vandebroek notes that 40 percent of the new engineers
Xerox hires are female, which is about twice the number that graduate from
colleges with engineering degrees; a substantial portion of Xerox engineers
also come from minority groups. Vanderbroek says the United States'
innovation superiority is slipping because a declining numbers of students
are interested in science and technology and fewer foreign students are
encouraged to study in the United States due to difficulties in securing
visas concurrent coupled with increasing opportunities in their native
lands. She perceives fewer female as well as male students entering the
technology sector, and says many high school girls need to be made aware of
how science and engineering can help address critical societal problems.
Vandebroek says women seeking a technology career need to quickly establish
credibility and respect among their managers and peers as well as cultivate
strong relationships.
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Urban Sensing: Out of the Woods
Communications of the ACM (03/08) Vol. 51, No. 3, P. 24; Cuff, Dana;
Hansen, Mark; Kang, Jerry
Embedded networked sensing has successfully migrated from the lab to the
natural environment, and is ready for a more difficult shift to
metropolitan areas where citizens will likely be the target of data
collection, write UCLA professors Dana Cuff, Mark Hansen, and Jerry Kang.
The full centralization model cannot scale to the city because of the
massive amount of funding it would entail, researchers' lack of property
rights, and issues of personal privacy. Cuff and colleagues predict that
the cell phone will be the primary tool of urban sensing, since the device
can already sense sights, sounds, and locations, and could one day be
upgraded to sense other kinds of environmental data via plug-ins. "We are
confident that ... in most urban areas around the world, processing,
visualizing, and uploading sensor data--even large amounts of it--will be
accessible to a large percentage of their populations," the researchers
say. This will be enabled through a distributed citizen-sensing model in
which basic terms and conditions of data collection and a centralized data
repository will be maintained by a central authority that utilizes local
data collectors recording data on a voluntary basis. The researchers cite
bad data processing and the "observer effect"--the phenomenon in which
human behavior changes as a result of observation--as some of the
potentially negative consequences of a distributed-sensing scheme, but they
say these concerns can be addressed through distributed accountability.
Urban sensing should also be applied to fields outside of science in order
to create a "data commons" that Cuff et al describe as "a data repository
generated through decentralized collection, shared freely, and amenable to
distributed sense-making not only for the pursuit of science but also
advocacy, art, play, and politics." The researchers conclude that
deliberative effort and political engagement by citizens is essential if
the data commons is to avoid pitfalls such as irrational decision-making
fueled by a flood of information and the inability to facilitate political,
social, and economic change notwithstanding foreknowledge.
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