'Slow' Light to Speed Up the Net
BBC News (08/13/08) Palmer, Jason
Researchers believe that it may be possible to increase the speed of the
Internet by slowing down certain parts of it by using metamaterials.
Metamaterials could be used to replace the bulky and slow electronics that
route Internet information, allowing for faster Internet speeds. The
Internet carries different streams of information in different channels,
each with its own light frequency. As data nears its destination, the
frequencies must be separated. The light must then be converted into
electrical signals, which are stored, routed, and converted back into
optical signals. The conversion not only adds significant cost and
complexity to the process, but slows down the transmission as well. "It
limits the speed of the whole process to the speed of your electronics,"
says University of Oxford professor Chris Stevens. "The light and the
fibers can quite cheerfully sustain a couple of terahertz, but your
electronics can't do more than a few gigahertz." However, if the light
signals could be slowed during the switching process, they would not need
to be converted into an electrical signal. Metamaterials could be used in
electronics to store light signals, placing different delays on different
frequencies, and to spread different frequencies, much like a prism splits
white light into colored light. "The ability to slow the light could be a
tremendous force for telecoms that is sure to enhance speed and
efficiency," says University of California professor Xiang Zhang.
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Before the Gunfire, Cyberattacks
New York Times (08/13/08) P. A1; Markoff, John
Weeks before any physical fighting occurred in the country of Georgia, a
security researcher in Massachusetts observed a cyberattack against
Georgia's Internet infrastructure. Arbor Networks' Jose Nazario noticed a
stream of data directed at Georgia's government Web sites that contained
the message "win+love+in+Russia." Other Internet experts say the
cyberattacks against Georgia started as early as July 20, with distributed
denial of service (DDOS) attacks overloading and effectively shutting down
servers in Georgia. Researchers at Shadowserver, a volunteer group that
monitors malicious network activity, reported that Georgia President
Mikheil Saakashvili's Web site was rendered inoperable for 24 hours due to
multiple DDOS attacks, and that the control server that directed the attack
was based in the United States and had come online only a few weeks before
the attack started. It now appears that the July attack may have simply
been a test run for a larger cyberwar between Georgia and Russia. In
addition to DDOS attacks, researchers say there is also evidence that
Internet traffic was redirected through Russian telecommunications firms.
Experts say this is the first time a cyberattack has coincided with a
physical attack. However, it is unlikely to be the last, says Packet
Clearing House research director Bill Woodcock, who notes that cyberattacks
are inexpensive, easy to execute, and leave so few fingerprints that they
will almost certainly be a fixture in modern warfare. "It costs about 4
cents per machine," Woodcock says. "You could fund an entire cyberwarfare
campaign for the cost of replacing a tank tread, so you would be foolish
not to." Georgia experienced few adverse effects from the attack, other
than a lack of access to government Web sites.
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Yale's Spielman Wins Godel Prize for Showing How Computer
Algorithms Solve Problems
Yale University Office of Public Affairs (08/12/08)
The Association for Computing Machinery's (ACM's) Special Interest Group
on Algorithms and Computing Theory (SIGACT) and the European Association
for Theoretical Computer Science (EATCS) presented Daniel A. Spielman and
Shang-Hua Teng with the Godel Prize during the International Colloquium on
Automata, Languages, and Programming in Reykjavik, Iceland. Spielman, a
professor of applied mathematics and computer science at Yale University,
and Teng, a professor of computer science at Boston University, received
the prestigious award for their research involving the Smoothed Analysis
technique. The paper, "Smoothed Analysis of Algorithms: Why the Simplex
Algorithm Usually Takes Polynomial Time," was published in the Journal of
the Association for Computing Machinery in 2004. The mathematical analysis
represents a major development in predicting the performance of
optimization tools for real data, says ACM, because the mathematical
structure needs to be understood to design efficient protocols and
software. Spielman and Teng will share the prize's $5,000 award for their
contribution to theoretical computer science.
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Web-Security Inventor Charts a Squigglier Course
Wall Street Journal (08/13/08) P. B5; Smith, Ethan
Carnegie Mellon University professor Luis von Ahn, the primary inventor of
the Captcha online security test, has updated the system to make the test
more secure. The new ReCaptcha system would also have users assist in the
digitalization of old books and newspapers. The new system presents users
with two words containing distorted characters. Both words are taken from
an old book or newspaper article that has been scanned into an online
library. One of the words was recognized by the scanning software, while
the other was unrecognizable to the computer, possibly because of a smudge
or some other imperfection on the original document. The user tries to
decipher the distorted characters of both words, and if the user matches
the first word correctly, which the computer already knows, then the user's
reading of the unknown word is recorded. Multiple Web users will be shown
the same unknown word as part of different tests, and when three people
have submitted the same answer for the unknown word, it is considered
solved and added to the library database to be inserted into the digital
version of the document. Deciphering these unknown words is one of the
greatest challenges for the Internet Archive library digitalization effort,
since scanning software generally has an accuracy rating of only about 80
percent for books published before 1900. About 40,000 Web sites now use
the free ReCaptcha system, and when fully operational, von Ahn expects it
to process about 160 books a day for the Internet Archive. "It's a really
mind-blowing application," says Internet Archive founder Brewster Kahle.
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Technique Developed to Capture Human Movement in
3D
AlphaGalileo (08/12/08)
A technique has been developed that will enable interactive video games to
recognize gestures made with human hands and feet. The approach makes use
of algorithms for capturing body movements, and does not involve the
wearing of a special suit or receiver. A team from the Polytechnic
University of Catalonia (UPC) and the University of Lovaina (UCL) in
Belgium use two video cameras to capture human movement, as part of a
system that is designed to display gestures in three dimensions on a
computer. The system captures images of a person's outline, calculates the
extremities, creates "morphological skeletons" for visual analysis, then
repeats the process with the second camera to obtain the points in a
three-dimensional space. The system can be used in real time on a personal
computer, and has a margin of error of between 4 percent and 9 percent.
Potential applications include "all those that require motion interaction
with the computer; that is, from browsing through applications in an
operating system [like moving windows and text with hand movements] to
interactive aerobic video games, and much more," says Pedro Correa, an
engineer with the UCL Telecommunications and Teledetection Laboratory.
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Images for 3-D Video Games Without High Price Tags or
Stretch Marks From UC San Diego
University of California, San Diego (08/12/08) Kane, Daniel
University of California, San Diego (UCSD) computer science undergraduate
student Alex Goldberg has developed a new tool that will allow developers
to create high-quality images for three-dimensional (3D) video games that
are generated "on the fly" and are free of stretch marks, flickering, and
other graphical glitches. UCSD professor Matthias Zwicker and
Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Fredo Durand also
contributed to the project. The new technology is being presented at ACM
SIGGRAPH. "People are looking for ways to get rid of these distortions,
preferably without having to pay artists to generate background and detail
images by hand," Goldberg says. "We have come up with a way to do this,
and we are planning to provide code for download soon." The 2008 SIGGRAPH
paper highlights a significant improvement over the established technique
known as Perlin noise, in which small computer programs create multiple
layers that are piled on top of each other and manipulated like layers of
paint on a canvas to create detailed and realistic textures. Goldberg says
that previous methods for using computer-generated noise to make
backgrounds and details for 3D video games were fast, but the quality of
the images was poor. The new method provides the computational benefits of
noise without the distortion or flickering and also eliminates the need to
store the textures as huge images that consume valuable memory. Instead,
the textures are generated by computer programs every time an image is
rendered, Zwicker says. The new technique maps elliptical areas of
background images back to circular pixels, which yields higher quality
background images with less stretching and other distortions than
traditional methods.
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Record Number of US Voters May Cast Paper Ballots
Associated Press (08/06/08) Hoffman, Allison
More Americans may vote in November using paper ballots than in any other
election in U.S. history, despite the federal government's $3 billion
investment in new voting technology. Thousands of touch-screen devices are
being stored in warehouses instead of being used for elections because
election officials are worried about machine security and reliability,
replacing the glitch-prone electronic-voting machines with scanners that
will read paper ballots. An Associated Press Election Research survey
found that 57 percent of the nation's registered voters live in counties
that will use paper ballots this fall. The number of registered voters who
live in jurisdictions that will rely primarily on e-voting machines has
dropped from a high of 44 percent during the 2006 midterm elections to 36
percent. Growth in the electorate over the past decade, the expansion of
absentee voting rules, and expectations for high voter turnout has led some
experts to predict that a record number of Americans will cast their votes
on paper ballots this year. "More people will be using computer-read paper
ballots than at any other time in the nation's history," says Election Data
Services' Kimball Brace. In 2000, about 97 million registered voters lived
in counties that used some form of paper ballot, Brace says. That figure
is expected to reach 100 million this fall, according to data from the
Associated press. Counties will have to spend millions of dollars printing
and processing ballots, and some first-time voters may be confused by
them.
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UK Leads in 'Readiness for E-Voting'
Heise Online (UK) (08/08/08) Sietmann, Richard
The United Kingdom is the most prepared to introduce electronic-voting
systems for political elections, according to an analysis of 31 countries.
Robert Krimmer and Ronald Schuster of the Austrian Competence Center for
Electronic Voting and Participation presented their findings, the "E-Voting
Readiness Index," at the recent 3rd International Conference on E-Voting
(EVOTE08) in Bregenz, Austria. The benchmark project assessed the e-voting
environment of all 27 members of the European Union, in addition to the
United States, Russia, Switzerland, and Venezuela. Krimmer and Schuster
rated the countries on their political, legal, information society, and
e-voting environments, and each category included about 100 indicators.
For example, the researchers noted the number of e-voting trials for the
special e-voting category, and the cost of Internet access and use for the
information society category. The United Kingdom, with its score of 70.60,
has an "excellent" legal environment and has tested different e-voting
options from voting machines and kiosk voting to Internet voting. The
United States was second at 66.68, followed by Estonia with 66.60 and the
Netherlands at 62.90.
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A Bridge Between Virtual Worlds
Technology Review (08/11/08) White, Brian
The launch of Linden Lab's Open Grid Beta has given developers the
opportunity to build and test software bridges that would link Second Life
to other virtual worlds. The Open Grid Beta will allow users to move
between a Second Life test grid and non-Linden Lab grids running the
OpenSim software. OpenSim is an independent open source project for
creating a virtual-world server. The Open Grid Beta is the first effort to
run Second Life interoperable code that demonstrates previously
hypothetical approaches. "We are still early in the game," says Linden
Lab's Joe Miller. "The point of the beta is to give the rest of the
development community the chance to try the protocols themselves." So far,
more than 200 users have signed up for the beta program and 15 virtual
worlds have been connected. Terry Ford, the owner and operator of an
OpenSim-based world, says interoperability is the future of the Web.
Interoperability will allow users to create a single avatar and identity
and to move between virtual worlds, instead of having to sign up for
accounts with each world that users want to use. IBM's David Levine, who
is working with Linden Lab on the interoperability protocols, says this
effort has a better chance of success than previous interoperability
efforts because it is less ambitious and is focusing on the Linden main
grid and a set of broadly similar grids instead of trying to create virtual
world interoperability across the entire Web.
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Large Area Transistors Get Helping Hand From Quantum
Effects
University of Surrey (08/08/08)
Quantum-size effects offer a significant advantage for nano-designed
transistors in the large-area display and sensor application field. The
boost to switching performance shows that there are other routes for
improving transistors based on disordered silicon films. A team from the
Hitachi Central Research Laboratory in Japan and the Advanced Technology
Institute of the University of Surrey has made disordered transistors with
a very thin conduction channel. The approach supports the design of
low-power memory for large-area electronics based on a low-cost industry
standard material processing route. Researchers are optimistic about
low-power electronics because of nano-structure silicon thin-film
transistors, says lead investigator Xiaojun Guo. "However, carrier
transport in such devices is very complicated, and results in electrical
characteristics that may not be described by conventional field effect
transistor [FET] models," Guo says. "This work reveals the key physical
properties of the devices, which will help to further optimize and model
the devices for circuit design."
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Computation Institute to Bulk Up Data Analysis Capability
With $1.5 Million Grant
University of Chicago (08/05/08)
The Computation Institute, a joint effort by the University of Chicago and
the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory, has received a
$1.5 million National Science Foundation grant for a computer system that
will allow researchers to store, access, and analyze large sets of data.
The new system is called the Petascale Active Data Store (PADS) and has
been optimized for quick data transactions, both on campus and worldwide.
The PADS design is the result of a study on the storage and analysis
requirements of groups in astronomy and astrophysics, computer science,
economics, evolutionary and organismal biology, geosciences, high-energy
physics, linguistics, materials science, neuroscience, psychology, and
sociology. The PADS teams say the new system will give these groups the
opportunity to look at their data in new ways, resulting in innovative
scientific insights and collaborations across disciplines. PADS will also
help computer science researchers examine active data storage systems and
provide rich data to investigate new techniques. PADS will contain several
nVidia Tesla graphics processing units (GPUs) that will be integrated with
traditional CPUs. The GPUs are capable of computing certain operations
many times faster than general-purpose hardware. PADS will be a hybrid
system with multiple layers that range from a large, tape-based system at
Argonne to individual computers on campus and in other locations.
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Military Use of Robots Increases
Washington University in St. Louis (08/04/08) Fults, Erin
Washington University in St. Louis researchers Doug Few and Bill Smart
report that the military's goal is to have about 30 percent of the Army
comprised of robotic forces by approximately 2020. Currently, all of the
Army's robotic force is teleoperated, meaning someone controls the robot
from a remote location, and while this may seem like a caveat in the effort
to add robots to the military, keeping humans involved in robotic
operations is very important. "You want to have a human hit the button,"
says Smart. "You don't want the robot to make the wrong decision. You
want to have a human to make all of the important decisions." Smart and
Few are not necessarily working to create intelligent, decision-making
robots, but rather they are working on improving the "intelligent"
functioning of the robot. Few is working to develop a system in which the
robot executes tasks while constantly sending updates to a human, giving
the human the ability to create new goals for the robot. One advancement
Few and Smart have made is adapting a Wii controller to create more natural
controls, which would allow users, particularly in a military setting, to
keep more attention on their surroundings while controlling a robot, rather
than being hunched over a laptop.
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Technological Crystal Ball Boost AIDS Survival
ICT Results (08/08/08)
European researchers have developed a predictive software system for HIV
that could help extend the lives of AIDS patients. The European
Union-funded EuResist project has created new mathematical prediction
models for HIV by focusing on the genotype of the virus. EuResist's key
achievement was combining data from HIV databases in Italy, Sweden, and
Germany, says EuResist coordinator Francesca Incardona. The new database
could help find treatments for patients with a particularly resistant
strain of the virus, or reduce the cost of therapy for non-crucial cases by
choosing the right combination of drugs that will work for the longest
time. All of the information from the three national HIV databases is now
located in what EU researchers say is the world's biggest database of AIDS
resistance-related information, with more than 18,000 patients, 64,000
therapies, and 240,000 viral mode measurements on file. This data will
allow medical researchers and doctors to predict what would happen if a
patient with a certain strain of the virus was given a certain combination
of drugs.
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Indiana University Hosts National Computing
Workshop
Converge (08/04/08)
Members of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation (CASC) and
the EDUCAUSE Committee on Campus Cyberinfrastructure gathered last week at
Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) to discuss ways
in which universities can work together to support their research
initiatives. The IT leaders will draft recommendations for using IT
resources more collaboratively, and IU CIO Brad Wheeler said in his opening
address at the workshop that the strategy should encourage economic growth
at the state level and advance national competitiveness. Individual
universities have powerful computing systems, but a geographically
distributed cyberinfrastructure would be a better way to support
innovation. "The computer scientist Alan Kay once wrote that the best way
to predict the future is to invent it," said Craig Stewart, IU associate
dean for research technologies and CASC chairperson. "We are bringing some
of the best computer scientists in the nation together in Indianapolis to
do just that."
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28 Colleges and High Schools to Use Personal Robots in
Class
Chronicle of Higher Education (08/06/08) Vinas, Maria Jose
The Institute for Personal Robots in Education hopes to improve the basic
computing skills of students by helping to fund the use of personal robots
in 28 colleges and high schools across the country. They will share
$250,000 and will receive their own book-sized, wheeled blue robot.
Students will be able to program the robot, called Scribbler, to perform
simple tasks. The institute also has developed the curricula, software and
text for Scribbler. The Georgia Institute of Technology, Bryn Mawr College
and Microsoft Research support the institute, which sees robotics as a way
to boost interest in computer science and enrollment in programs at the
undergraduate level, especially among women. Bryn Mawr says enrollment in
upper-level computer science courses has more than quadrupled since the
women's liberal-arts college started using Scribbler in the introductory
course. Georgia Tech says students in robotics courses have a higher pass
rate and express more interest in computers after taking the classes.
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Whom Do We Fear or Trust? Faces Instantly Guide Us,
Scientists Say
Princeton University (08/05/08) MacPherson, Kitta
Princeton University psychology researchers have developed a computer
program that allows scientists to analyze what aspects of the human face
make them look either trustworthy or frightening. The program allows the
researchers to construct computer-generated faces that display the most
trustworthy or dangerous looking traits, and the research could have
implications for people who are concerned about what their faces portray to
other people. Princeton professor Alexander Todorov and research
specialist Nikolaas Oosterhof decided to find a way to quantify exactly
what it is about each person's face that influences other people's gut
instincts. To conduct the study, the researchers show unfamiliar faces to
test subjects and asked them to describe traits they could detect from the
faces. The trait options were limited to a given list that included
aggressiveness, unkemptness, and various emotional states. The researchers
showed the faces to another group and asked them to rate each face for the
degree to which it possessed one of the dozen listed traits. Using this
research, the scientists discovered that humans make spilt-second judgments
on two major factors, whether the person should be approached or avoided
and whether the person is weak or strong. Then the researchers used a
commercial software program that generates composites of human faces, based
on laser scans of real subjects. The scientists asked another group of
test subjects to look at 300 faces and rate them for trustworthiness,
dominance, and threat. Common features emerged, with trustworthy faces
having a slightly surprised and happy look, and threatening faces looking
angry with a frown and eyebrows that point down at the center.
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Computers Can Spot Criminals' Bad Habits
New Scientist (08/09/08) Vol. 199, No. 2668, P. 24; Geddes, Linda
Linkage analysis attempts to draw connections between serial crimes using
similarities in the criminals' behavior, but its validation as a reliable
tool--reliable enough to be used in court testimony--has proved elusive.
"The assumption is that a given offender will exhibit similar behaviors
across their crimes, and that these will be relatively distinct from those
of other offenders committing similar types of crimes," says Craig Bennell
of Ottawa's Carleton University. However, police officers must be able to
recognize these similarities in order for this method to be successful, and
individual officers will have their own subjective impressions of crimes.
Several groups have developed linkage analysis software and are currently
conducting research to demonstrate the method as being more rigorous and
reliable. Bennell has been working on a program capable of reading a
database of crimes in which the police have detailed behavioral domains,
and then producing a set of behavioral similarity scores for any two
crimes, with one rating in each domain. "If the crimes have been committed
by the same person you'll often find higher levels of similarity in certain
behavioral domains," Bennell says. He imagines a program that provides
officers with a technique for uploading data about particular crime-scene
behaviors, and then blends and weights the behaviors and offers suggestions
on whether the crime should be treated as a linked one or not.
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