September 26, 2006, 6:50 PM CT
Microsoft Research Changing Face of Computing
Mark Emmert (L), president of the University of Washington, Emmert interviews Rick Rashid (R), senior vice president, Microsoft Research
From wide-ranging enhancements for the upcoming Microsoft® Windows Vista- operating system to data-mining innovations in SQL Server- to powerful anti-spam filters in Microsoft Office Outlook®, Microsoft Research teams have delivered hundreds of product innovations to Microsoft Corp. customers since 1991. Today at an event marking the research organization's 15th anniversary of turning ideas into reality, Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates appeared on screen as Microsoft Research Senior Vice President Rick Rashid and leaders from academia and industry gathered at the company's Redmond lab to recognize these successes and preview new areas where Microsoft Research continues to influence the future of computing.
"From the beginning, Microsoft Research has provided an open, collaborative environment where the brightest minds in computer science can work together to tackle the hardest problems in computing and explore new ideas for reinventing the PC," Gates said. "During the past 15 years, Microsoft scientists have contributed amazing breakthroughs and insights that have advanced the state of the art in dozens of technology fields. Their work is a clear reflection of Microsoft's commitment to innovation".
With more than 700 scientists at five laboratories worldwide, Microsoft Research contributes to Microsoft products as well as long-range technology advancements, often in collaboration with the academic community. Microsoft scientists have made a significant global impact on the collective knowledge of the greater software community, openly sharing their research findings and new discoveries by publishing more than 3,700 academic papers across 55 fields.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 26, 2006, 6:45 PM CT
Improving Software Developers' Productivity
European software developers have to stay technologically up-to-date if they are to maintain their competitive edge on world markets. Now an IST-sponsored research project has constructed a platform to help them deliver state-of-the-art software systems to end-users faster.
European software designers, often working in university laboratories, create some of the world's most sophisticated and reliable software systems. However, it commonly falls to industrial software developers to incorporate these technological advances into marketable products. In fact, due to the growing complexity of software systems, developers find it increasingly difficult to keep pace with end-user demand for updated tools.
The IST-sponsored MODELWARE project has developed a platform that employs the scientific and technical advances of Model-Driven Development (MDD) to significantly reduce the complexity of engineering software systems.
"MDD improves developers' productivity by automating production of most software artefacts, such as tests, documentation and code," says project coordinator Philippe Millot of Palaiseau-based Thales Research & Technology in France. MODELWARE, which began in mid-2004 and ends in September 2006, combined innovations in modelling, tool development, methodologies and standardisation into a platform for large-scale deployment of model-driven development.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 26, 2006, 6:41 PM CT
Technology-enhanced Collaboration
While new technologies have made information more accessible, they have yet to live up to their full potential when it comes to knowledge sharing. Two European projects in the field of collaborative learning are looking to change that.
The IST-funded COOPER and TENCompetence initiatives, which began in December 2005 and will run for two and four years respectively, are creating new tools and techniques for technology-enhanced collaborative learning. Part of the Professional Learning Cluster of IST research projects, the two initiatives are complementary in the way they are applying technology to the realm of collaborative learning, in which groups of teachers and pupils cooperate to share expertise and solve complex problems.
"Collaborative learning is already being used with important educational benefits in companies and universities, instead of the more traditional top-down approach of teachers instructing students what to do," explains Xuan Zhou, the COOPER project manager at the L3S Research Center in Hannover, Germany. "Our goal is to create an online environment that allows people to learn through collaboration no matter where they are".
The tools to underpin lifelong learning.
That is necessary if collaborative learning is to be paired with lifelong learning, which allows people to learn throughout their careers, constantly picking up new skills and expertise. Lifelong learning is viewed as essential if the European Union is to meet its goal of becoming a dynamic and competitive knowledge-based economy.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 13, 2006, 4:36 AM CT
Wireless Device Driver Vulnerabilities
The next time you're sipping a latte and surfing the Net at your favorite neighborhood wireless caf, someone just a few seats away could be breaking into your laptop and causing irreparable damage to your computer's operating system by secretly tapping into your network card's unique device driver, scientists at Sandia National Laboratories in have concluded.
There is, however, some cheerful news. By role-playing the position of an adversary (also known as red teaming), Sandia scientists have demonstrated a unique "fingerprinting" technique that allows hackers with ill intent to identify a wireless driver without modification to or cooperation from a wireless device. Revealing this technique publicly, Sandia scientists hope, can aid in improving the security of wireless communications for devices that employ 802.11 networking.
Sandia is a National Nuclear Security Administration laboratory.
Wireless device drivers fraught with vulnerabilities.
Device drivers, as per Sandia security researcher Jamie Van Randwyk, are becoming a primary source of security holes in modern operating systems. Through a laboratory-directed research grant, Van Randwyk and a team of college interns set out last year to design, implement, and evaluate a technique that has proved capable of passively identifying a wireless driver used by 802.11 wireless devices without specialized equipment and in realistic network conditions. Van Randwyk presented his team's findings last month at the USENIX Security Symposium in Vancouver, B.C.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 6, 2006, 5:12 AM CT
Tiny Ion Pump for Chip Cooling
University of Washington
How a new UW micro-pump cools a heated surface: (Top) The air pump is off. (Bottom) The air pump is on.
University of Washington researchers have succeeded in building a cooling device tiny enough to fit on a computer chip that could work reliably and efficiently with the smallest microelectronic components.
The device, which uses an electrical charge to create a cooling air jet right at the surface of the chip, could be critical to advancing computer technology because future chips will be smaller, more tightly packed and are likely to run hotter than today's chips. As a result, tomorrow's computers will need cooling systems far more efficient than the fans and heat sinks that are used today.
"With this pump, we are able to integrate the entire cooling system right onto a chip," said Alexander Mamishev, associate professor of electrical engineering and principal investigator on the project. "That allows for cooling in applications and spaces where it just wasn't realistic to do before".
The micro-pump also represents the first time that anyone has built a working device at this scale that uses this method, Mamishev added.
"The idea has been around for several years," he said. "But until now it hasn't been physically demonstrated in terms of a working prototype".
Mamishev and doctoral students Nels Jewell-Larsen and Chi-Peng Hsu presented a paper on the device at the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics/American Society of Mechanical Engineers Joint Thermophysics and Heat Transfer Conference earlier this summer and are scheduled to give an additional presentation this fall. In addition, the UW researchers and collaborators with Kronos Advanced Technologies and Intel Corp. have been awarded a $100,000 grant from the Seattle-based Washington Technology Center for the second phase of the project.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 5, 2006, 7:29 PM CT
Removing Data from Storage Media
Before ditching or donating that used computer, CD or other data-storage media, sensitive or personal information should be properly "sanitized," as per a new guide from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Information systems store information using a wide variety of media, including "hard" copy, such as paper printouts and facsimile ribbons, and electronic media, including cell phones, CDs or DVDs, and hard drives. Even if stored data supposedly has been deleted, in a number of cases residual data can be retrieved and reconstructed.
The NIST guide, Guidelines for Media Sanitization (NIST Special Publication 800-88), provides information on techniques to remove data from a wide variety of media types and a decision matrix to determine which technique is best. The guide recommends that organizations first determine the confidentiality of the information and then decide how to dispose of the media.
The guide describes the three most common methods of sanitizing media:- Clearing using software or hardware products to overwrite storage space on the media with non-sensitive data.
- Purging magnetic media through degaussing, exposure to a strong magnetic field to disrupt the magnetically encoded information.
- Destroying the media through a variety of methods ranging from shredding to melting and incineration.
........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
September 5, 2006, 6:51 PM CT
Secrets of the Atomic Switch
Scientists at the Commerce Department's National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used a beam of electrons to move a single atom in a small molecule back and forth between two positions on a crystal surface, a significant step toward learning how to build an "atomic switch" that turns electrical signals on and off in nanoscale devices.
The results, described in the Aug. 18, 2006, issue of Science,* are the first to be published about work at NIST's new Center for Nanoscale Science and Technology (www.nist.gov/public_affairs/releases/cnst.htm).
"It's still futuristic to talk about a real atomic switch but we're getting closer," says physicist Joseph Stroscio, lead author of the paper. In addition, by applying the findings to nanoscale fabrication on semiconductors and insulating thin films, it may be possible to develop new classes of electronic and magnetic devices constructed atom by atom.
In the work described in Science, NIST physicists used a custom-built, cryogenic scanning tunneling microscope (STM)-which provides a voltage and beam of electrons at its needle-like tip-to perform several different types of atomic scale measurements and manipulations. NIST theorists performed calculations of the atoms' electronic structure, which confirmed the experimental results.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
August 31, 2006, 4:12 PM CT
eMachines Model T6536
eMachines have rolled out a new model called T6536 that seems good when comparing quality and price, it's not the great beast better than any computer but it does have some kind of attraction style. Features an AMD Athlon 64 3800+ processor with 1GB of RAM memory, an EIDE hard-drive with a capacity of 250GB, dual-layer DVD burner and on the graphics card there is a nVidia GeForce 6100. It already comes with Microsoft Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 installed which might not be the best solution, so one of the positive aspects is being compatible with Vista requirements, and the other is the price: $590*.
Full review is available at PCMag site.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
August 28, 2006, 9:47 PM CT
Video Game For Stroke Rehabilitation
A patient attempts to wipe clean four vertical bars that obscure an image on a computer display
Credit: Rutgers University
Engineers at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, have modified a popular home video game system to assist stroke patients with hand exercises, producing a technology costing less than $600 that may one day rival systems 10 times as expensive.
The Rutgers hand rehabilitation system is an example of virtual rehabilitation, which combines virtual reality computer-generated interactive visual environments in which users control actions in a lifelike way with traditional therapy techniques. Virtual rehabilitation gives therapists new tools to do their jobs more effectively and engages patients who may otherwise lack interest or motivation to complete normal exercise regimens.
The Rutgers engineers are describing their work at the fifth International Workshop on Virtual Rehabilitation taking place Aug. 29 and Aug. 30 in New York City.
"Virtual reality is showing significant promise for promoting faster and more complete rehabilitation, but the cost of many systems is still prohibitive for widespread deployment in outpatient clinics or patients' homes," said Grigore Burdea, professor of electrical and computer engineering and a noted inventor of virtual rehabilitation technology. "While it's essential to keep pursuing breakthrough technologies that will initially be costly, it's just as important that we find ways to make innovative treatments accessible to the many patients who need them".........
Posted by: Ryan Permalink Source
August 27, 2006, 8:51 PM CT
Forecast Accuracy With New Computer Model
An advanced forecasting model that predicts several types of extreme weather with substantially improved accuracy has been adopted for day-to-day operational use by civilian and military weather forecasters. The new computer model was created through a partnership that includes the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and more than 150 other organizations and universities in the United States and abroad.
The high-resolution Weather Research and Forecasting model (WRF) is the first model to serve as both the backbone of the nation's public weather forecasts and a tool for cutting-edge weather research. Because the model fulfills both functions, it is easier for research findings to be translated into improved operational models, leading to better forecasts.
The model was adopted for use by NOAA's National Weather Service (NWS) as the primary model for its one-to-three-day U.S. forecasts and as a key part of the NWS's ensemble modeling system for short-range forecasts. The U.S. Air Force Weather Agency (AFWA) also has used WRF for several areas of operations around the world.
"The Weather Research and Forecasting model development project is the first time scientists and operational researchers have come together to collaborate on a weather modeling project of this magnitude," says Louis Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction.........
Posted by: Ethan Permalink Source
