posted Jan 7, 2010 12:19 AM by Aaron VonderHaar
ICT Results (01/06/10)
Scientists are using a grid network managed by EGEE-III to carry out advanced number crunching and extensive simulations. EGEE-III is the third phase of a European Union-funded project to create an infrastructure supporting European researchers using grid computing resources. "We take computing and storage resources owned by individual institutions and provide a middleware layer of software that allows these resources to be shared securely over the international research networks," says project director Steven Newhouse. Grid computing started in the physics community, but since has spread to many other disciplines, including computational chemistry, materials sciences, life sciences, environmental sciences, and the humanities. Many of the experiments would take years or decades to perform in a laboratory without grid computing. One common theme is to study how complex molecules interact with each other, with many studies searching for new vaccines or drugs. Meanwhile, a Taiwan research team hopes to minimize the damage from seismic activity by using EGEE to model the effects of earthquakes on urban areas. Another project, called AquaMaps, uses the grid to model the distribution of different fish species worldwide. EGEE also helps doctors treat rare diseases through a project to create a worldwide image library. An Italian research team recently used the grid to construct a digital model of an ancient Greek musical instrument called an epigonian, which was played in a concert in Naples last December. "The grid is actually changing the way scientists think about doing their research and the questions they can pose," Newhouse says.
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posted Dec 11, 2009 5:28 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
National Science Foundation (12/08/09) Cruikshank, Dana W.
The U.S. House of Representatives has designated Dec. 6-12 Computer Science Education Week to help raise awareness of the dearth of computer science in grades K-12 and the need to remedy the situation. A 2002 Computer Science Teachers Association (CSTA) survey determined that only 17 percent of teachers mentioned having a state-mandated computer science curriculum at the high school level, while just 1 percent said the course was obligatory. That is in contrast to a 2006 CSTA report estimating that computer science departments produced more than 45,000 baccalaureate and 850 Ph.D. degrees that year. Countries such as Canada, New Zealand, and Israel, unlike the United States, have put in place a comprehensive computer science curriculum. The United States has to do the same for grades K-12 if it wishes to keep up with the changing global economy. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that 854,000 professional information technology (IT) jobs will be added between 2006 and 2016, and all of these jobs will demand a solid computer science background. Furthermore, many professions outside of the IT industry--including marketing, journalism, and the creative arts--now require proficiency in computer science and computer programming. The National Science Foundation has set up new research grant programs to improve computer science education, one of which is the Broadening Participation in Computing program designed to fund research into increasing computer science education.
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posted Dec 2, 2009 9:47 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
Plataforma SINC (Spain) (12/01/09)
University of Salamanca researchers have developed a procedure
that enables forensic investigators to extract metric data from a crime
scene using only a single photograph and reconstruct it in three
dimensions. "We have studied an unprecedented and original line of
research in the field of criminology and forensic engineering, which
makes it possible to derive metric data from a single image," says
Salamanca researcher Diego Gonzalez-Aguilera. The process starts by
capturing an image that includes easily identifiable details, at least
three vanishing points, and at least one distance in the scene. Data
from these features are used to automatically extract the structural
components and the most important objects in the image. As the
structural features are geometrically related to the features of the
scene and the camera, it is possible to take measurements and analyze
the dimensions of the scene based on distances, surfaces, and angles.
The system is based on photogrammetry technology, which makes it
possible to create a three-dimensional (3D) reconstruction of a crime
scene using a single image by allowing "restrictions" to be introduced
into the scene, such as the presence of parallel or perpendicular
lanes. A tool written in Virtual Reality Modeling Language is used to
visualize a crime scene from any viewpoint to create an interactive 3D
simulation.
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posted Nov 30, 2009 11:02 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
ICT Results (11/24/09)
The European Union-funded ReDSeeDS project has created a set
of tools designed to simplify the development and writing of new
software programs by enabling developers to reuse pieces of previously
written code. ReDSeeDS has developed a system that enables developers
to search a central software repository to extract software "artifacts"
from existing systems for use in new systems. ReDSeeDS project
coordinator Michal Smialek says previous efforts to build software
repositories did not feature the automation of the new system, so there
was still a great deal of work involved for software designers. "The
big difference with our platform is that it allows you to simply sketch
out the requirements of your proposed new system and then these are
automatically compared with the requirements and capabilities of
existing systems," Smialek says. "The results are displayed to you with
the differences and similarities between the old and new systems
highlighted." The automation allows a developer to pick and choose what
software artifacts he wants to take from existing systems and insert
into the new system. Although some adaptation work may be needed to
make the older pieces work in the new system, Smialek says it is still
much faster and more efficient than starting from scratch for each
project.
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posted Nov 26, 2009 7:57 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
Wired News (09/22/09) Van Buskirk, Eliot
The secret to the success of BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos and The Ensemble, first- and second-place winners of the Netflix Prize, was teamwork. The Netflix Prize offered $1 million to the team that could improve its movie recommendation algorithm by 10 percent. Both of the winning teams combined the strengths of several smaller teams that had worked independently before being absorbed by a larger group. "In combination, these teams could get better and better and better," says Netflix's Neil Hunt. BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos and The Ensemble independently combined their members' algorithms to design more complex ones that represented everyone's input. Rather than appointing a few team leaders that did most of the designing, the teams say they worked communally and thus increased their strength--even if some of the ideas seemed unrelated to the initial problem. One of the algorithms BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos used tracked the number of movies a Netflix viewer rated in one day. People who rate a large number of movies at once have most likely seen them a while ago, which affects their judgment. Although this data would not have contributed to the team's success alone, when combined with other algorithms it increased the group's performance. The Big Chaos team, which was incorporated into BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, found that users rate movies more negatively or positively depending on the day. By providing an algorithm that took this seemingly irrelevant data into account, Big Chaos helped the winning team succeed. "One of the big lessons was developing diverse models that captured distinct effects, even if they're very small effects," says The Ensemble's Joe Sill.
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posted Nov 25, 2009 9:35 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
New York Times (09/29/09) P. D3; Markoff, John
The EvoGrid is a project that seeks to harness a network of small computers to analyze data using pattern recognition software as part of a research effort looking for indications of artificial life generated by a cluster of high-performance computing systems. The purpose of EvoGrid is to recognize evidence of self-organizing behavior in computerized simulations that have been built to model the first emergence of life on Earth. EvoGrid was conceived by computer scientist Bruce Damer, who believes the coupling of powerful computers to potentially tens or even hundreds of thousands of PC-based data analyzers could facilitate the detection of emergent behavior. "The main challenge is not the generation of some kind of novel molecular interaction," he says. "Rather, it's the analysis and trying to see what's going on." EvoGrid relies on a pair of open source software projects, one of which is Gromacs, which simulates digital evolution through modeling of molecular interactions. The other software project is the U.S. National Science Foundation-funded Boinc, which uses the Internet to allow scientists to leverage free computing cycles available on network-connected computers.
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posted Nov 22, 2009 7:31 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
U.K. Independent (09/27/09) Hodgkinson, Mike
Inventor and visionary Ray Kurzweil has drawn admiration and scorn in equal measure for his prediction of imminent revolutionary innovations such as the overtaking of human intelligence by artificial intelligence, three-dimensional printers that can fabricate physical objects from a data file and cheap input materials, and an indefinite lifespan free of senescence. He anticipates that it will be possible to upload the human brain from a computer by the end of the 2030s, while human intelligence will evolve through technological enhancement to the point where it will start to expand outward to the universe in the 2040s. Kurzweil is the author of a book, The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, in which he envisions a singularity, or what he calls "a future period during which the pace of technological change will be so rapid, its impact so deep, that human life will be irreversibly transformed." The singularity hinges on the exponential rate at which technology is advancing, according to Kurzweil. He is a director of the nonprofit Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which is touted as "the only organization that exists for the expressed purpose of achieving the potential of smarter-than-human intelligence safer and sooner."
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posted Nov 21, 2009 1:27 AM by Aaron VonderHaar
New York Times (10/12/09) Lohr, Steve
Governments around the world have put more of their data on the Web this year than previous years, and the United States and Britain have led the way, said Sir Tim Berners-Lee in an interview at a recent symposium on the future of technology in Washington, D.C. Berners-Lee, who is currently a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and director of the World Wide Web Consortium, is enthusiastic about having traffic, local weather, public safety, health, and other data in raw form online. People will create exciting applications once the data and online tools are available, he said. For example, a simple mash-up that combines roadway maps with bicycle accident reports could help bikers determine the most dangerous roads. "Innovation is serendipity, so you don't know what people will make," he said. "But the openness, transparency, and new uses of the data will make government run better, and that will make business run better as well." With regard to any regrets about the Web, Berners-Lee said that using the double slash "//" after the "http:" in Web addresses turned out to be unnecessary.
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posted Nov 20, 2009 12:13 AM by Aaron VonderHaar
UA News (AZ) (10/28/09) Everett-Haynes, La Monica
University of Arizona professor Richard T. Snodgrass has received a U.S. National Science Foundation grant to promote computation as a true science. Snodgrass, an ACM Fellow, says the process of computational thinking is universal and highly valued in subjects such as physics, biology, and chemistry. "The problem with computer science is that a few people think it equals programming," he says. "But that doesn't emphasize the great ideas behind computer science, and that's what we want to bring out in this grant." Snodgrass and Peter Denning, director of the Cebrowski Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in California, will use the three-year, $800,000 grant to elevate the status of computing and encourage students, particularly girls and women, at the K-12 level to enter the field. The grant will enable them to develop and organize the "Field Guide to the Science of Computation." The guide will feature various levels, from beginner to graduate students and professionals, and provide an organized body of information on computing, including theoretical frameworks and models related to automation, communication, evaluation, design, and other topics.ACM's education board and the Computer Science Teachers Association also will collaborate on the three-year project. Snodgrass said the grant came just before the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution endorsing the need to support computer science education at the K-12 level. The resolution designated the week of Dec. 7 as National Computer Science Education Week.
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posted Nov 18, 2009 8:19 PM by Aaron VonderHaar
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updated Nov 24, 2009 9:11 PM
]
Technology Review (10/29/09) Naone, Erica
Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers led by professor Martin Rinard have developed ClearView, software capable of finding and fixing certain types of software bugs within a few minutes. Rinard, who presented the software at ACM's recent Symposium on Operating System Principles, says the goal is to create an "immortal, invulnerable program." ClearView can operate without assistance from humans and without access to a program's underlying source code. By observing a program's normal behavior and creating a set of rules, ClearView can detect certain errors, including those caused by malicious programs. ClearView detects any anomalies that violate the rules and provides several potential patches that would force the software to follow the rules. The patches are applied directly to the binary, bypassing the source code. ClearView analyzes the possible solutions to decide which ones are the most likely to work and installs the top candidates and tests their effectiveness. If additional rules are violated or the patch crashes the system, ClearView rejects those solutions and finds another. The researchers say the system is particularly effective on a group of machines running the same software. They tested ClearView by installing it on a group of computers running Firefox and using an independent team to attack the Web browser using 10 different approaches. ClearView successfully blocked all of the attacks by detecting the anomalies and terminating the application before the attack could take effect.
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