November 14, 2007, 8:39 PM CT

Lecture Search Engine To Aid Students

Imagine you are taking an introductory biology course. You're studying for an exam and realize it would be helpful to revisit the professor's explanation of RNA interference. Fortunately for you, a digital recording of the lecture is online, but the 10-minute explanation you want is buried in a 90-minute lecture you don't have time to watch.

A new lecture search engine developed at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) could help with this dilemma. Created by a team of scientists and students led by MIT associate professor Regina Barzilay and principal research scientist James Glass, the web-based technology allows users to search hundreds of MIT lectures for key topics.

"Our goal is to develop a speech and language technology that will help educators provide structure to these video recordings, so it's easier for students to access the material," said Glass, who is head of CSAIL's Spoken Language Systems Group.

More than 200 MIT lectures are currently available on the site (web.sls.csail.mit.edu/lectures/). So far, most of the users are international students who access the lectures through MIT's OpenCourseWare (OCW) initiative, which makes curriculum materials for most MIT courses available to anyone with Internet access. Eventhough the lecture-browsing system is still in the early development stages, a recent announcement in OCW's newsletter has drawn increased traffic to the site......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 12, 2007, 9:48 PM CT

Security loophole in Windows operating system

A group of scientists headed by Dr. Benny Pinkas from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Haifa succeeded in finding a security vulnerability in Microsoft's "Windows 2000" operating system. The significance of the loophole: emails, passwords, credit card numbers, if they were typed into the computer, and actually all correspondence that emanated from a computer using "Windows 2000" is susceptible to tracking. "This is not a theoretical discovery. Anyone who exploits this security loophole can definitely access this information on other computers," remarked Dr. Pinkas.

Various security vulnerabilities in different computer operating systems have been discovered over the years. Prior security breaches have enabled hackers to follow correspondence from a computer from the time of the breach onwards. This newly discovered loophole, exposed by a team of scientists which included, along with Dr. Pinkas, Hebrew University graduate students Zvi Gutterman and Leo Dorrendorf, enables hackers to access information that was sent from the computer previous to the security breach and even information that is no longer stored on the computer.

The scientists found the security loophole in the random number generator of Windows. This is a program which is, among other things, a critical building block for file and email encryption, and for the SSL encryption protocol which is used by all Internet browsers. For example: in correspondence with a bank or any other website that requires typing in a password, or a credit card number, the random number generator creates a random encryption key, which is used to encrypt the communication so that only the relevant website can read the correspondence. The research team found a way to decipher how the random number generator works and thereby compute prior and future encryption keys used by the computer, and eavesdrop on private communication......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 7, 2007, 8:11 PM CT

Dealing with the data deluge

Most people have a few gigabytes of files on their PC. In the next decade, astronomers expect to be processing 10 million gigabytes of data every hour from the Square Kilometre Array telescope.

And with DNA sequencing getting cheaper, researchers will be data mining possibly hundreds of thousands of personal human genome databases, each of 50 gigabytes.

CSIRO has a new research program aimed at helping science and business cope with masses of data from areas like astronomy, gene sequencing, surveillance, image analysis and climate modelling.

The research program, which began this year, is called Terabyte Science and is named for the data sets that start at terabytes (thousands of gigabytes) in size, which are now commonplace.

CSIRO recognises that, for its science to be internationally competitive, the organisation needs to be able to analyse large volumes of complex, even intermittently available, data from a broad range of scientific fields, says program leader, Dr John Taylor, from CSIRO Mathematical and Information Sciences.

One aspect of the problem is that methods that work with small data sets dont necessarily work with large ones.

An aim of the program is to develop completely new mathematical approaches and processes for researchers in a range of disciplines to further their research and boost Australias position as a world science leader......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 7, 2007, 5:12 AM CT

Benefits of online interaction for teens outweigh danger

Is there such a thing as being too safe on the Internet? One University of Illinois education researcher believes there is, at least when teenagers are concerned.

Media reports warn of online predators, hate groups and other "digital dangers" lurking in online social spaces, and those dangers are not to be taken lightly, says Brendesha Tynes, a professor of educational psychology and of African American studies at Illinois.

"But we may do adolescents a disservice when we curtail their participation in these spaces, because the educational and psychosocial benefits of this type of communication can far outweigh the potential dangers," Tynes wrote in an essay titled "Internet Safety Gone Wild?" appearing in this month's issue of the Journal of Adolescent Research.

In online discussions, teenagers have the opportunity to develop critical thinking and argumentation skills, Tynes said. They can find support from online peer groups, explore questions of identity, get help with homework, and ask questions about sensitive issues they might be afraid to ask face to face, she said. They can develop their skills in understanding issues from the perspective of others.

In a number of circumstances, the same anonymity that parents and educators often find so threatening about certain online sites and spaces is actually a benefit, she said......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 6, 2007, 10:23 PM CT

Decades of cancer research into 2 years

Canadian scientists expect to accelerate the war on cancer by tapping into a global network of hundreds of thousands of people who volunteer their idle computer time to tackle some of the worlds most complex problems.

The research team, led by Dr. Igor Jurisica at the Ontario Cancer Institute (OCI), and researchers at Princess Margaret Hospital and University Health Network, are the first from Canada to use the World Community Grid, a network of PCs and laptops with the power equivalent to one of the globes top five fastest supercomputers.

The team will use World Community Grid to analyze the results of experiments on proteins using data collected by researchers at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute in Buffalo, New York. This analysis would take conventional computer systems 162 years to complete. However, using World Community Grid, Dr. Jurisica anticipates the analysis could be finished in one to two years, and will provide scientists with a better way to study how proteins function, insight that could lead to the development of more effective cancer-fighting drugs.

We know that most cancers are caused by defective proteins in our bodies, but we need to better understand the specific function of those proteins and how they interact in the body, said Dr. Jurisica. We also have to find proteins that will enable us to diagnose cancer earlier, before symptoms appear, to have the best chance of treating the disease -- or potentially stopping it completely......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

November 5, 2007, 10:20 PM CT

New computer program automates chip debugging

Fixing design bugs and wrong wire connections in computer chips after they've been fabricated in silicon is a tedious, trial-and-error process that often costs companies millions of dollars and months of time-to-market.

Engineering scientists at the University of Michigan say it doesn't have to be that way. They've developed a new technology to automate "post-silicon debugging."

"Today's silicon technology has reached such levels of small-scale fabrication and of sheer complexity that it is almost impossible to produce computer chips that work correctly under all scenarios," said Valeria Bertacco, assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science and co-investigator in the new technology. "Almost all manufacturers must produce several prototypes of a given design before they attain a working chip".

FogClear, as the new method is called, uses puzzle-solving search algorithms to diagnose problems early on and automatically adjust the blueprint for the chip. It reduces parts of the process from days to hours.

"Practically all complicated chips have bugs and finding all bugs is intractable," said Igor Markov, associate professor of computer science and electrical engineering and another of FogClear's developers. "It's a paradox. Today, manufacturers are producing chips that must work for almost all applications, from e-mail to chess, but they cannot be validated for every possible condition. It's physically impossible"......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Fri, 02 Nov 2007 00:53:15 GMT

WikiMapia

WikiMapia is a Web 2.0 project to describe the whole planet Earth. It was created by Alexandre Koriakine and Evgeniy Saveliev, inspired by Google maps and Wikipedia.

To avoid ''online vandalism'' you have to register to add places. The further you zoom in on the map, the more details will be revealed. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

Sun, 28 Oct 2007 17:39:07 GMT

Windows to Linux

Via Chris Pirillo - Quoted - " We get questions every day from people wondering about how to switch to Linux. What do they need to know? What should they get? One of our Lockergnome bloggers came up with an excellent starting point." Posted by: Zinzi      Read more     Source

Tue, 23 Oct 2007 01:14:45 GMT

Kodak releases new software version

I don't have a very high opinion of the software bundled with most digital cameras, but there are a few standouts. One of them is Kodak's Easyshare application. The program is fun, easy to use and can meet the organizational and editing needs of many shutterbugs. Kodak announced today a new Windows XP version of the software, release 6.4. According to the company, new features in the program allow you to

• Access photos stored in collections faster.
• Transfer large files from cameras quicker.
• Enhance batches of photos in seconds.
• Receive automatic notices of software updates.

The new version of Easyshare is available for free from the Kodak web site. Posted by: John Mello      Read more     Source

Mon, 22 Oct 2007 01:19:34 GMT

Spread some color around with the Rainbow USB hub

Just check out this Rainbow USB hub and you'll realize what wonders color can do to an otherwise dreary device such as a USB hub. The device is not only distinctive but also well designed. Each USB port is a colorful plastic box wide enough for you to plug in big devices. But what hooked me is that it gives the functionality of a 4-port hub (plug-n-play, 2.0 compatible) in addition to being really flexible. How so? Well, each port is connected to the adjacent port in such a way that the ports can be arranged in a stack, tower, pyramid etc., depending on your liking. Definitely another one of those must-have USB gadgets on my list.

Available from USBGeek for $12.

Via The Gadgeteer. Posted by: Sarah      Read more     Source