July 8, 2008, 9:04 PM CT

Finer Lines For Microchips

MIT scientists have achieved a significant advance in nanoscale lithographic technology, used in the manufacture of computer chips and other electronic devices, to make finer patterns of lines over larger areas than have been possible with other methods.

Their new technique could pave the way for next-generation computer memory and integrated-circuit chips, as well as advanced solar cells and other devices.

The team has created lines about 25 nanometers (billionths of a meter) wide separated by 25 nm spaces. For comparison, the most advanced commercially available computer chips today have a minimum feature size of 65 nm. Intel recently announced that it will start manufacturing at the 32 nm minimum line-width scale in 2009, and the industry roadmap calls for 25 nm features in the 2013-2015 time frame.

The MIT technique could also be economically attractive because it works without the chemically amplified resists, immersion lithography techniques and expensive lithography tools that are widely considered essential to work at this scale with optical lithography. Periodic patterns at the nanoscale, while having a number of important scientific and commercial applications, are notoriously difficult to produce with low cost and high yield. The new method could make possible the commercialization of a number of new nanotechnology inventions that have languished in laboratories due to the lack of a viable manufacturing method......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 23:07:11 GMT

Free Adobe Photoshop Tutorials

As complex as Adobe's Photoshop is it can always get a bit more complicated with the addition of 3rd party plugins and add-ons.

But that's part of the fun, especially for amateurs who want to experiment with different ways of presenting their digital images.

As a frustrated artist I enjoy manipulating images without the expense, mess, and bother of artist's paints and canvas, which I'll leave to those who have the talent to make something worthwhile.

But, I'm no expert with Photoshop and I rely on other people who have the expertise to figure out how to use the features of this sophisticated program to bring about the effects I want to emulate.

So, I look for tutorials and then pass the best of them on to you.

Here's how to use Photoshop for a haunted, grungy look.

This tutorial shows you how to use Photoshop blending modes and opacities for stand out effects.

Source:www.photoshopsupport.com Posted by: jim      Read more     Source

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 22:20:17 GMT

Pubmedfight

You definitely know Googlefight where you can compare the number of search results returned by Google for two terms or expressions (Wikipedia).

What about a similar tool in health science? Here is Pubmedfight, a French tool, with which you can compare authors by their number of publications in Pubmed.

It’s more than funny… Posted by: Bertalan      Read more     Source

Thu, 03 Jul 2008 02:17:26 GMT

Opera Mobile 9.5 beta available on July 15

Opera has announced that its new mobile browser would soon be available for download. The new Opera 9.5 mobile would be based on the same engine as the Opera 9.5 Desktop browser. It will offer a better user experience and support many latest and popular web standards and technologies.

It is currently in release testing phase and the beta version of would be available for download on Opera's website on July 15. Jump over to Opera's website to check what users have to say about the release. Posted by: Umair Khalid      Read more     Source

June 30, 2008, 6:51 PM CT

Electronic Ear To Judge And Coach Vibrato Technique

the pulsating change of pitch in a singer's voice -- is an important aspect of a singer's expression, used extensively by both classical opera singers and pop stars like Shakira. Usually, the quality of a vibrato can only be judged subjectively by voice experts.

Until now, that is. A research group from Tel Aviv University has successfully managed to train a computer to rate vibrato quality, and has created an application based on biofeedback to help singers improve their technique. Your computer can now be a singing coach.

The invention was recently showcased at an international competition in Istanbul, where it won first prize at the International Cultural and Academic Meeting of Engineering Students. Researcher Noam Amir, a senior lecturer from the Department of Communication Disorders at the Sackler Faculty of Medicine, Tel Aviv University, says the tool might not help record producers find the next great pop music sensation. But it could teach singers how to mimic Shakira's signature vibrato.

Good Singing Is Not Subjective

Vibrato is a musical effect than can be used when a musician sings or plays an instrument. It adds expression to a song and is created by a steady pulsating change of pitch, characterized by the amount of variation and the speed at which the pitch is varied. TAU's application can teach singers how to mimic the vibrato qualities most attractive to the human ear......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:10:05 GMT

Bill Gates Looks Back

Microsoft''s Bill Gates gave Fortune magazine access to some rare photos from the Microsoft archives - and shared his memories about them.

(via Doobybrain) Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:05:28 GMT

Firefox 3 World Record

Last week, the all new Firefox 3 browser was downloaded more than 8 million times in 24 hours. That''s more Firefox downloads than ever had in a single day. At the moment, the people of Guinness review this World Record attempt.

If you downloaded Firefox 3, try this. Type about:robots in the address bar to see this Easter Egg. Posted by: Gerard      Read more     Source

June 23, 2008, 6:58 PM CT

Discovery could enable development of faster computers

Physicists at UC Riverside have made an accidental discovery in the lab that has potential to change how information in computers can be transported or stored. Dependent on the "spin" of electrons, a property electrons possess that makes them behave like tiny magnets, the discovery could help in the development of spin-based semiconductor technology such as ultrahigh-speed computers.

The scientists were experimenting with ferromagnet/semiconductor (FM/SC) structures, which are key building blocks for semiconductor spintronic devices (microelectronic devices that perform logic operations using the spin of electrons). The FM/SC structure is sandwich-like in appearance, with the ferromagnet and semiconductor serving as microscopically thin slices between which lies a thinner still insulator made of a few atomic layers of magnesium oxide (MgO).

The scientists observed that by simply altering the thickness of the MgO interface they were able to control which kinds of electrons, identified by spin, traveled from the semiconductor, through the interface, to the ferromagnet.

Study results appear in the June 13 issue of Physical Review Letters

Experimental results:

The spin of an electron is represented by a vector, pointing up for an Earth-like west-to-east spin; and down for an east-to-west spin......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

June 10, 2008, 9:47 PM CT

Dartmouth launches network security study

A team of Dartmouth scientists is preparing to launch a project that examines the campus wireless computer traffic in an effort to learn how the network is used and how to best maintain its security. The project is called the Dartmouth Internet Security Testbed, or DIST.

"Our campus environment is the perfect place for this project because we can examine live network activity at scale and in real time," says David Kotz, professor of computer science and the principal investigator on the DIST initiative. "We've worked in laboratory settings with controlled parameters; now it's time for a live, real-world test. For organizations that depend on their wireless networks, like we do, this research should prove invaluable." Kotz is working closely with Dartmouth's Peter Kiewit Computing Services Department.

DIST will develop and evaluate current sensing methods for monitoring the multiple wireless networks at Dartmouth to gather real-time data. Scientists hope to learn how to quickly discover patterns that may indicate malicious activity, and determine the best way to resolve those situations. Kotz explains that the scope and scale of this project is unique within the academic research community, and it will improve network security technology and practices for all Internet users. For example, DIST may help detect unauthorized access points, which can be used to steal users' passwords......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

June 4, 2008, 10:45 PM CT

Protecting Computer Networks From Internet Worms

Researchers may have found a new way to combat the most dangerous form of computer virus.

The method automatically detects within minutes when an Internet worm has infected a computer network.

Network administrators can then isolate infected machines and hold them in quarantine for repairs.

Ness Shroff, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Networking and Communications at Ohio State University, and colleagues describe their strategy in the current issue of IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing.

They discovered how to contain the most virulent kind of worm: the kind that scans the Internet randomly, looking for vulnerable hosts to infect.

"These worms spread very quickly," Shroff said. "They flood the Net with junk traffic, and at their most benign, they overload computer networks and shut them down."

Code Red was a random scanning worm, and it caused $2.6 billion in lost productivity to businesses worldwide in 2001. Even worse, Shroff said, the worm blocked network traffic to important physical facilities such as subway stations and 911 call centers.

"Code Red infected more than 350,000 machines in less than 14 hours. We wanted to find a way to catch infections in their earliest stages, before they get that far," Shroff said......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

June 4, 2008, 10:27 PM CT

New wireless sensor network keeps tabs on the environment

Have you ever wondered what happens in the rainforest when no one is looking?.

Research in the University of Alberta's Faculty of Science may soon be able to answer that question. The departments of computing science and earth and atmospheric science have been working together to create a Wireless Sensor Network that allows for the clandestine data collection of environmental factors in remote locations and its monitoring from anywhere in the world where the Internet is available.

The research team, including Pawel Gburzynski, Mario Nascimento, and Arturo Sanchez-Azofeifa, recently launched EcoNet, a functional model of a WSN for environmental monitoring in the display house in the University of Alberta's Agriculture/Forestry Centre. The display house hosts a small but feature-rich environment that mimics that of a tropical forest. Using a WSN, many sensors can continuously monitor factors like temperature and luminosity and will process, store and transmit data co-operatively and wirelessly with other sensors to generate data that can then be collected and made available to users virtually anywhere on the globe. The sensors represent a technology for scientists to monitor diverse phenomena continuously and inconspicuously.

Having the data continuously monitored by scientists substantially increases the chances of uncovering anomalies early enough to investigate them promptly and thoroughly......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

May 27, 2008, 10:22 PM CT

P4P system for efficient Internet usage

New Haven, Conn. A Yale research team has engineered a system with the potential for making the Internet work more efficiently, in which Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Peer-to-Peer (P2P) software providers can work cooperatively to deliver data.

The way people use the Internet has changed significantly over the past 10 years, making computers seem to run less efficiently and putting strain on the available bandwidth for transmitting data.

Since 1998, the percentage of Internet traffic devoted to the download and upload of large blocks of information using P2P software has increased from less than 10 percent to greater than 70 percent in a number of networks. By contrast, Web browsing now accounts for 20 percent and e-mail less than 5 percent of total Internet traffic, down from 60 and 10 percent respectively, in 1998.

Professors Avi Silberschatz, Y. Richard Yang, and Ph.D. candidate Haiyong Xie in Yales Department of Computer Science are part of a research team that is proposing an architecture called P4P which stands for provider portal for P2P applications to allow explicit and seamless communications between ISPs and P2P applications.

The P4P will both reduce the cost to ISPs and improve the performance of P2P applications as per a paper to be presented at ACM SIGCOMM 2008, a premier computer networking conference in August 2008 in Seattle......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

May 26, 2008, 8:43 PM CT

Interactive Web sites draw minds

The interactive look and feel of a corporate website could help shape positive perceptions about the organization if the site includes a likeable design and features that engage the target audience, particularly job seekers, as per media researchers.

S. Shyam Sundar, professor of film, video and media studies at Penn State, and Jamie Guillory, formerly an undergraduate student at Penn State, are trying to understand how interactivity in websites influences the public perception of an organization. In prior studies of websites of political candidates, Sundar had observed that the candidates were rated more positively if their site had some interactive features, even though the sites had no new content, and the candidates held the same policy positions. But too much interactivity tends to turn off people.

"Websites with low to medium levels of interactivity create positive perceptions but for medium to high interactivity, it actually falls down," said Sundar. "In general, too much interactivity is not desirable, and may lead to information overload".

Whatever effects, positive or negative, on a site, interactivity acts as a volume knob that boosts the effect, he explained, noting, "Just through the presence of such features, people attribute meaning to the content or the nature of the site"......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

May 19, 2008, 8:15 PM CT

Broadband access opens doors to networking

Proactive policies are needed to facilitate broadband Internet access and adoption in rural areas so that rural hospitals, schools and businesses can drive social and economic development and better position themselves to compete, say Penn State scientists in a recently released report from the Center for Rural Pennsylvania.

The report, "Broadband Internet Use in Rural Pennsylvania," examines broadband availability and adoption in four sectors -- health care, local government, education and business -- through case studies, interviews with key information-technology personnel and analysis of organizations' Web sites. While the report focuses on Pennsylvania, their recommendations hold true for any state with a large rural population, as per the researchers.

"Broadband services offer a huge opportunity for rural areas with significant payback in terms of economic development and community revitalization," said Amy Glasmeier, professor of geography and co-author of the report. "The Internet makes possible a whole range of processes which involve more than rapid access to information and which range from joint projects by municipalities and collaborations between schools to development of new business processes".

As per the researchers, while the number of rural users of broadband Internet services has been steadily increasing, access to broadband is not universal in rural areas, and in some places, dial-up remains the only affordable option. While dial-up allows for electronic access to information, its slower speed and lower bandwidth capacity limit organizations from developing Internet-enabled processes and collaborations -- what the scientists distinguish as "transformative" uses......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

May 18, 2008, 9:54 PM CT

NIST tool helps Internet master top-level domains

At the request of a worldwide Internet organization, a computer scientist at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) developed an algorithm that may guide applicants in proposing new top-level domains the last part of an Internet address, such as.com, that people type in navigating the Web. As new top-level domains are added to the familiar.com,.info and.net, the algorithm* checks whether the newly proposed name is confusingly similar to existing ones by looking for visual likenesses in its appearance. Having visually distinct top-level domain names may help avoid confusion in navigating the ever-expanding Internet and combat fraud, by reducing the potential to create malicious look-alikes:.C0M with a zero instead of.COM, for instance.

Later this year, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) plans to launch the process for proposing a new round of generic top-level domains (gTLDs), strings such as.net,.gov and.org meant to indicate organizations or interests. In preparing for newly proposed gTLDs, ICANN reached out to various algorithm developers, including NISTs Paul E. Black, as among those engaged to provide an open, objective, and predictable mechanism for assessing the degree of visual confusion in gTLDs.

Blacks algorithm compares a proposed gTLD with other TLDs and generates a score based on their visual similarities. For example, the domain.C0M scores an 88 percent visual similarity with the familiar.COM. The resulting scores may help indicate whether the newly proposed domain name looks too much like existing ones......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 30, 2008, 6:39 PM CT

A CluE in the Search for Data-Intensive Computing

The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a solicitation for proposals for the new Cluster Exploratory (CluE) initiative. The CluE program was announced in February as a part of a relationship between Google, IBM and NSF. NSF hopes this initiative will help lead to innovations in the field of data-intensive computing, as well as serve as an example for future collaborations between the private sector and the academic computing research community.

CluE will provide NSF-funded scientists access to software and services running on a Google-IBM cluster to explore innovative research ideas in data-intensive computing. NSF will allocate cluster computing resources for a broad range of proposals which will explore the potential of this technology to contribute to science and engineering research and produce applications which promise to benefit society as a whole.

"The software and services that run on these data clusters provide a brand new paradigm for highly parallel, highly reliable distributed computing, particularly for processing massive amounts of data," said Jeannette Wing, assistant director for CISE at NSF. Academic scientists have expressed a need for access to similar computing resources that will allow them to engage and explore this emerging and pervasive model of computing......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 30, 2008, 6:15 PM CT

Hackers learn to threaten computer hardware

AS IF computer viruses and worms arent enough of a nuisance, malicious hardware, which will be much more difficult to detect, could soon become a threat too.

Today, computer viruses, which are programs downloaded either as an email attachment or when someone visits a website, are responsible for most computer attacks. Hackers use them to gain control of a computer so that they can press-gang it into sending spam or downloading more malicious software, such as a keystroke logger, which can record credit card details and passwords typed in by the user.

Anti-virus (AV) software monitors a computer for signs of a virus, such as chunks of telltale code. To fight back, hackers write new viruses that use different code, or bury the code deeper in the operating system where the AV software isnt programmed to look. So AV firms and hackers are locked in an arms race, continually trying to outdo each other.

Soon hackers could up the ante even further. Samuel King and his colleagues at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have shown that they could also gain control of a computer by adding malicious circuits to its processor. Because these circuits interfere with the computer at a deeper level than a virus, they effectively operate below the radar of AV software......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 17, 2008, 7:37 PM CT

Wanted: Forty-thousand More Health IT Professionals

Study by OHSU expert says a 40 percent hike in IT workforce will be needed to move U.S. healthcare toward a paperless system that controls costs and reduces medical errors.

If the U.S. healthcare system moves toward wider adoption of advanced information technology systems to control health care costs, reduce medical errors and improve patient care, it will need at least 40,000 additional health IT professionals - or almost 40 percent more than U.S. hospitals now are estimated to employ.

That is the finding of an analytical report presented today, at a meeting on Capitol Hill of the Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics, by William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University.

The meeting was moderated by U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., author of a bill, H.R. 1467, addressing the need to train more health IT professionals, which the House passed recently and that is awaiting consideration in the Senate.

"I commend Dr. Hersh for his research on healthcare IT workforce issues," said Rep. Wu. "His findings further justify the need for my 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act, which provides funds for healthcare IT education. A workforce trained in healthcare IT is essential to bringing greater quality and efficiency to the healthcare industry"......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 10, 2008, 8:13 PM CT

TeraGrid Computing Capacity

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $65 million grant to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) to develop Kraken, a state of the art supercomputer. Kraken will enhance the computational power of the TeraGrid, the world's largest, most powerful and comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

"Like the gargantuan sea monsters Kraken, which inspired the naming of this supercomputer, the possibilities in scientific and engineering advances it enables are enormous, limited only by the confines of human imagination and vision beyond the frontiers of science," said NSF Director Arden L. Bement in a taped message that was played today at a luncheon in Knoxville.

Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen, UTK President John Petersen, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Director Thom Mason, and NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure Director Daniel Atkins attended the announcement ceremony.

"This $65 million NSF grant is not only the largest ever received by University of Tennessee, Knoxville; it is the largest research grant ever received by any university in the entire state of Tennessee," Bement said. "It enables an exciting new partnership between the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy through its Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the University of Tennessee and various partnering universities."......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 8, 2008, 10:19 PM CT

Step Toward Creating Quantum Computers

For now, full-fledged quantum computers are the stuff of science fiction - in last summer's blockbuster movie Transformers, the bad guys use quantum computing to break into the U.S. Army's secure files in just 10 seconds flat.

But Prem Kumar, the AT&T Professor of Information Technology in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the director of the Center for Photonic Communication and Computing, and his research group are one step closer to realizing that technology - though for far better purposes. The group recently demonstrated one of the basic building blocks for distributed quantum computing using entangled photons generated in optical fibers, and their research was reported in the April 4 edition of Physical Review Letters.

"Because it is done with fiber and the technology that is already globally deployed, we believe that it is a significant step in harnessing the power of quantum computers," Kumar says.

Quantum computing differs from classical computing in that a classical computer works by processing "bits" that exist in two states, either one or zero. Quantum computing uses quantum bits, or qubits, which, in addition to being one or zero can also be in a "superposition," which is both one and zero simultaneously. This is possible because qubits are quantum units like atoms, ions, or photons that operate under the rules of quantum mechanics instead of classical mechanics......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 7, 2008, 10:33 PM CT

Not-So-Digital Future of Digital Signal

It's possible, and in some cases, it's already happened. In any event, performing digital signal processing using organic and chemical materials without electrical currents could be the wave of the future - or so argue Sotirios Tsaftaris, research professor of electrical engineering and computer science, and Aggelos Katsaggelos, Ameritech Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, in their recently published "point of view" piece in the March 2008 edition of Proceedings of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.)

Digital signal processing uses mathematics and other techniques to manipulate signals like images (natural medical, and others) and sound waves after those signals have been converted to a digital form. This processing can enhance images and compress data for storage and transmission, and such processing chips are found in cell phones, iPods, and HD TVs.

But over the past 10 years, researchers and engineers around the world have experimented with performing signal processing using different materials. In their piece, Tsaftaris and Katsaggelos describe these experiments while stirring the engineering community towards "a possible not-so-electronic future" of digital signal processing.

For example, researchers and engineers have shown that certain chemicals, when mixed in a solution, don't react until light is projected through them. So if you project light through a transparency image, these chemicals can record the image. When the chemicals are stimulated by light and controlled by the acidity of the mixture, basic image transformations like contour enhancement can happen......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:55:10 GMT

Copy to 20 USB drives at once

What would you do if you had to copy a couple of hundred megs of data to 20 USB drives in under 5 minutes? That''s easy, right? But look at the constraint - you have only one PC. Now, that''s a toughie.

The Nexcopy USB duplicator allows you to copy as much as 250MB of data to 20 USB drives in one shot. In under 4 minutes. Now, who can beat that? For companies, this device can save much time and effort, for example, when duplicating official data on USB drives for distribution among employees. Or for a company marketing a new product during a promotional campaign.

This giant USB duplicator with equally giant possibilities sells at a pricey $1299.

Via OhGizmo. Posted by: Sarah      Read more     Source

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 00:38:34 GMT

Backscatter

Backscatter is a problem that arises when an email server receives bounced messages that come from remote site to a non-local recipient. In simple terms non-delivery reports or delivery status notifications are sent to a mail server that never originated the emails. Backscatter can be a big IT administrative headache, if it's not fixed it can bring down a server and spammers can use this to create a DoS style attack. Best way to prevent Backscatter to prevent bounces generated to non-local recipients, the bounces should be rejected during SMTP session. Mike at Message Partners emailed me about his recent experience with Backscatter and read his recent post at his blog. For more information please visit Backscatter FAQ at Spamlinks. If you've got ideas, suggestions, questions or other ways to control spam please let me know, by leaving a comment here. Posted by: Jayaprakash Kannoth      Read more     Source

April 3, 2008, 8:29 PM CT

Faster, cheaper technology for computers

A modern computer contains two different types of components: magnetic components, which perform memory functions, and semiconductor components, which perform logic operations. A University of Missouri researcher, as part of a multi-university research team, is working to combine these two functions in a single hybrid material. This new material would allow seamless integration of memory and logical functions and is expected to permit the design of devices that operate at much higher speeds and use considerably less power than current electronic devices.

Giovanni Vignale, MU physics professor in the College of Arts and Science and expert in condensed matter physics, says the primary goal of the research team, funded by a $6.5 million grant from the Department of Defense, is to explore new ways to integrate magnetism and magnetic materials with emerging electronic materials such as organic semiconductors. The research may lead to considerably more compact and energy-efficient devices. The processing costs for these hybrid materials are projected to be much less than those of traditional semiconductor chips, resulting in devices that should be less expensive to produce.

In this approach, the coupling between magnetic and non-magnetic components would occur via a magnetic field or flow of electron spin, which is the fundamental property of an electron and is responsible for most magnetic phenomena, Vignale said. The hybrid devices that we target would allow seamless integration of memory and logical function, high-speed optical communication and switching, and new sensor capabilities......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 10:14 PM CT

Soccer robots compete for the title

Robot soccer is an ambitious high-tech competition for universities, research institutes and industry. Several major tournaments are planned for 2008, the biggest of which is the 'RoboCup German Open'. From April 21-25, over 80 teams of scientists from more than 15 countries are expected to face off in Hall 25 at the Hannover Messe. In a series of soccer matches in several leagues, they will be putting the latest technologies on display. The tournament is being organized and carried out by the Fraunhofer Institute for Intelligent Analysis and Information Systems IAIS in Sankt Augustin.

For a machine, a soccer match is a highly complex endeavor. Robots must be able to reliably recognize the ball, the sidelines and the goalposts in addition to distinguishing between their teammates and opponents. To this end, they are outfitted with all sorts of high-tech equipment: cameras and sensors scan the robots' surroundings, internal processors convert data to define game tactics and defense strategies, and innovative engines allow the automated players to sprint across the field and unexpectedly fake out their opponents.

There are now nine leagues, each of which has its own technological focus. In the middle-size league, robots get around on wheels. Four players and a goalkeeper compete for each team on a 20 x 14-meter pitch with standard soccer goals. They must be able to function completely independently and are equipped with internal camera systems that process information in real time. What's more, the robots can move up to two meters per second......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

April 1, 2008, 8:52 PM CT

Music File Compressed 1,000 Times Smaller than MP3

Scientists at the University of Rochester have digitally reproduced music in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file.

The music, a 20-second clarinet solo, is encoded in less than a single kilobyte, and is made possible by two innovations: recreating in a computer both the real-world physics of a clarinet and the physics of a clarinet player.

The achievement, announced recently at the International Conference on Acoustics Speech and Signal Processing held in Las Vegas, is still not a flawless reproduction of an original performance, but the scientists say it's getting close.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," says Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering and co-creator of the technology. "Humans can manipulate their tongue, breath, and fingers only so fast, so in theory we shouldn't really have to measure the music a number of thousands of times a second like we do on a CD. As a result, I think we may have found the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music."

In replaying the music, a computer literally reproduces the original performance based on everything it knows about clarinets and clarinet playing. Two of Bocko's doctoral students, Xiaoxiao Dong and Mark Sterling, worked with Bocko to measure every aspect of a clarinet that affects its sound-from the backpressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument. They then built a computer model of the clarinet, and the result is a virtual instrument built entirely from the real-world acoustical measurements......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:40:30 GMT

Microsoft Open to Spammers?

That's what some folks are saying about Microsoft's new partnerships with LinkedIn, Tagged, Hi5, Bebo and Facebook. Calling it a new commitment to openness and data portability, the partnerships allow users of those sites to import their Windows Live contacts and vice versa. While this will make it easier for users to invited their contacts to the social networking service of their choice, it may also give spammers a new tool. I wouldn't be surprised to see a wave of fake invites from spammers. Microsoft claims this new tool is much safer than the old "screen scraping" technique. What do you think? Posted by: Sue Walsh      Read more     Source

March 27, 2008, 9:16 PM CT

Is Graphene the New Silicon?

Research results from University of Maryland physicists show that graphene, a new material that combines aspects of semiconductors and metals, could be a leading candidate to replace silicon in applications ranging from high-speed computer chips to biochemical sensors.

The research, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published online in the journal Nature Nanotechnolgy, reveals that graphene conducts electricity at room temperature with less intrinsic resistance than any other known material.

"Graphene is one of the materials being considered as a potential replacement of silicon for future computing," said NSF Program Manager Charles Ying. "The recent results obtained by the University of Maryland researchers provide directions to achieve high-electron speed in graphene near room temperature, which is critically important for practical applications".

Intrinsic resistance results from the unavoidable lattice vibrations in a material when the temperature is greater than absolute zero. The intrinsic resistance determines a material's mobility, or the speed at which an electrons move when an electric field is applied to the material. The very high mobility of graphene makes it promising for applications in which transistors must switch extremely fast, such as in the processing of extremely high frequency signals. If other extrinsic factors that limit mobility in graphene, such as impurities and lattice vibrations in the substrate on which graphene sits, could be eliminated, the intrinsic mobility in graphene would be higher than any other known material, and more than 100 times higher than silicon......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Wed, 19 Mar 2008 01:54:33 GMT

Platform As A Service: Cloudo

Platform As A Service, or PaaS is the latest development in virtualization. Where companies started to offer applications online (Saas, Software As A Service) and the use of virtual servers is becoming mainstream, more and more companies now offer a complete operating system as a service online.
Cloudo is the latest addition to platform providers. There are several others that have existed for a while now in the consumer market, but to be honest I have no idea if there is a consumer market for this technology. Virtualization is huge in the business market - after offering servers with virtual servers on top even SUN Microsystems now considers offering online platforms for businesses.

So what is so interesting about Cloudo? Why would we want a webbased operating system? Well, something that makes a huge difference is the option to sync your files to the operating system. Until now, nobody else offers this.

There currently is a private beta for developers only, so there's nothing for me there right now. But I will keep an eye on it.

Cloudo is here. Posted by: S.M. Schrama      Read more     Source

March 11, 2008, 9:50 PM CT

Microchip fingerprints used to lock out chip pirates

Pirated microchips -- chips stolen from legitimate factories or made from stolen blueprints -- account for billions of dollars in annual losses to chipmakers.

But a series of novel techniques developed at Rice University over the past year could stop pirates by allowing chip designers to lock and remotely activate chips with a unique ID tag. When a chip is locked with the new technology, only the patent-holder can decipher the key and activate the chip -- meaning knockoffs and stolen chips are worthless.

"Ours is the first remote-activation scheme that protects integrated circuits against piracy by exploiting their inherent, unclonable variability," said the technology's original inventor, Farinaz Koushanfar, assistant professor in electrical and computer engineering at Rice. "We use slight variations that arise in modern manufacturing to create a unique, digital identification that acts like a fingerprint for each chip, and we integrate that into the chip's functionality".

The original work was presented last August at the USENIX Security Symposium in Boston. Since the invention of the method, Koushanfar has collaborated with many scientists to build upon her original scheme. Last October, at the International Conference in Computer Aided Designs, Koushanfar and Rice graduate student Yousra Alkabani, in collaboration with Miodrag Potkonjak from UCLA, showed the first method that could continuously check, control, enable and disable a chip's operation online by integrating the chip's fingerprints into its functionality and actively checking them during operation......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

March 5, 2008, 8:42 PM CT

Locks On Microchips Could Reduce Hardware Piracy

Hardware piracy, or making knock-off microchips based on stolen blueprints, is a burgeoning problem in the electronics industry.

Computer engineers at the University of Michigan and Rice University have devised a comprehensive way to head off this costly infringement: Each chip would have its own unique lock and key. The patent holder would hold the keys. The chip would securely communicate with the patent-holder to unlock itself, and it could operate only after being unlocked.

The technique is called EPIC, short for Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits. It relies on established cryptography methods and introduces subtle changes into the chip design process. But it does not affect the chips' performance or power consumption.

Michigan computer engineering doctoral student Jarrod Roy will present a paper on EPIC at the Design Automation and Test in Europe conference in Gera number of on March 13.

Integrated circuit piracy has risen in recent years as U.S. companies started outsourcing production of newer chips with ultra-fine features. Transferring chip blueprints to overseas locations opened new doors for bootleggers who have used the chips to make counterfeit MP3 players, cell phones and computers, among other devices.

This is a very new problem, said Igor Markov, associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at U-M and a co-author of the paper......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

March 4, 2008, 6:01 PM CT

Magnetic levitation gives computer users sense of touch

Computers, long used as tools to design and manipulate three-dimensional objects, may soon provide people with a way to sense the texture of those objects or feel how they fit together, thanks to a haptic, or touch-based, interface developed at Carnegie Mellon University.

Unlike most other haptic interfaces that rely on motors and mechanical linkages to provide some sense of touch or force feedback, the device developed by Ralph Hollis, research professor in Carnegie Mellons Robotics Institute, uses magnetic levitation and a single moving part to give users a highly realistic experience. Users can perceive textures, feel hard contacts and notice even slight changes in position while using an interface that responds rapidly to movements.

We believe this device provides the most realistic sense of touch of any haptic interface in the world today, said Hollis, whose research group built a working version of the device in 1997. With the help of a $300,000 National Science Foundation grant, however, he and colleagues have improved its performance, enhanced its ergonomics and lowered its cost. The grant also enabled them to build 10 copies, six of which are being distributed to haptic scientists across the U.S. and Canada.

We have gone from the prototype to a much more advanced system that other scientists can use, Hollis said. Putting the instrument in the hands of other scientists is critical in a young, developing field such as haptic technology, he emphasized. Though haptic interfaces have uses in engineering design, entertainment, assembly, remote operation of robots, and in medical and dental training, their full potential has yet to be explored. Thats especially the case for magnetic levitation haptic interfaces because so few have been available for use by researchers, he added......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

February 26, 2008, 4:52 PM CT

Ranger Supercomputer For Texas Computing Center

Ranger, the most powerful supercomputing system in the world for open science research, entered full production on Feb. 4. Open science research makes clear accounts of methodology, along with data and results extracted therefrom, freely available. Ranger, which will enable the leading scientists in the country to advance and accelerate computational research in all scientific disciplines, was dedicated by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) on Feb. 22 at the University of Texas at Austin. NSF's Office of Cyberinfrastructure Director Daniel E. Atkins represented NSF at the ceremony and delivered remarks on this historic occasion.

"Ranger is the first leadership computational resource provided under the National Science Foundation 'Track 2 initiative' and the first machine funded through the newly formed Office of Cyberinfrastructure," he said. The Track 2 initiative is NSF's four-year activity designed to fund the deployment and operation of up to four leading-edge computing systems that will greatly increase the availability of computing resources to U.S. researchers. The Ranger award, the largest NSF grant to the University of Texas at Austin, was made after the evaluation of selection criteria that were "multi-faceted, including not only raw performance of the machine, but also effective education and outreach commitments, institutional competency and commitment for service to the national research community," noted Atkins......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

February 24, 2008, 10:23 PM CT

Attack on computer memory reveals vulnerability

A team of academic, industry and independent scientists has demonstrated a new class of computer attacks that compromise the contents of secure memory systems, especially in laptops.

The attacks overcome a broad set of security measures called disk encryption, which are meant to secure information stored in a computers permanent memory. The scientists cracked several widely used technologies, including Microsofts BitLocker, Apples FileVault and Linuxs dm-crypt, and described the attacks in a paper and video published on the Web Feb. 21.

The team reports that these attacks are likely to be effective at cracking a number of other disk encryption systems because these technologies have architectural features in common.

Weve broken disk encryption products in exactly the case when they seem to be most important these days: laptops that contain sensitive corporate data or personal information about business customers, said Alex Halderman, a Ph.D. candidate in Princetons computer science department. Unlike a number of security problems, this isnt a minor flaw; it is a fundamental limitation in the way these systems were designed.

The attack is especially effective against computers that are turned on but are locked, such as laptops that are in a sleep or hibernation mode. One effective countermeasure is to turn a computer off entirely, though in some cases even this does not provide protection......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

February 11, 2008, 10:33 PM CT

Copper connections for high-speed computing

As computers become more complex, the demand increases for more connections between computer chips and external circuitry such as a motherboard or wireless card. And as the integrated circuits become more advanced, maximizing their performance requires better connections that operate at higher frequencies with less loss.

Improving these two types of connections will increase the amount and speed of information that can be sent throughout a computer, as per Paul Kohl, Thomas L. Gossage chair and Regents professor in Georgia Techs School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Kohl presented his work in these areas at the Materials Research Society fall meeting.

The vertical connections between chips and boards are currently formed by melting tin solder between the two pieces and adding glue to hold everything together. Kohls research shows that replacing the solder ball connections with copper pillars creates stronger connections and the ability to create more connections.

Circuitry and computer chips are made with copper lines on them, so we thought we should make the correlation between the two with copper also, said Kohl.

Solder and copper can both tolerate misalignment between two pieces being connected, as per Kohl, but copper is more conductive and creates a stronger bond......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

February 4, 2008, 9:28 PM CT

Mind the (online) gap

Instant messaging, blogs, Facebook, MySpace there are limitless ways your child communicates online with the offline world. And the risks and opportunities are only increasing.

A new Tel Aviv University research study has observed that, despite what parents might believe, there is an enormous gap between what they think their children are doing online and what is really happening.

In her study, Prof. Dafna Lemish from the Department of Communication at Tel Aviv University surveyed parents and their children about the childrens activities on the Internet. The data tell us that parents dont know what their kids are doing, says Prof. Lemish.

Her study was unique in that parents and children from the same family were surveyed.



Strange Encounters

In one part of the study, Prof. Lemish surveyed over 500 Jewish and Arab children from a variety of ages and socio-economic backgrounds, asking them if they gave out personal information online. Seventy-three percent said that they do. The parents of the same children believed that only 4 percent of their children did so.

The same children were also asked if they had been exposed to pornography while surfing, or if they had made face-to-face contact with strangers that they had met online. Thirty-six percent from the high school group admitted to meeting with a stranger they had met online. Nearly 40% of these children admitted to speaking with strangers regularly (within the past week)......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 01:08:32 GMT

How about a 40-hour laptop battery?

Unbelievable isn''t it? A laptop battery that can keep your laptop going for 40 hours! Yes, research is underway at Stanford Tech to develop a hi-tech lithium ion battery that can juice up your laptop for 40 hours, keeping those charging woes at bay for a longer period.

Apparently, the new battery uses a discarded technology that has been been revamped by Professor Yi Cui and team - silicon anodes in the form of nanowires for charging. This technology was earlier abandoned as the silicon expands up to 400 times when charged, exploding the battery in the process. Using silicon in the form of nanowires eliminates this danger.

So when can you start rejoicing? In a "few years time" is all the information we have at this moment.

Via Newlaunches. Posted by: Sarah      Read more     Source

January 7, 2008, 11:05 PM CT

Fraudsters beware

Yong Guan had scribbled 12 arrows across his office whiteboard, each black line going from one little box he had drawn to another little box. He had written five long formulas up there, too.

And that was bad news for cyber criminals.

Guan, the Litton Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University, and his students are developing technologies to fight cyber crime and make online activities such as shopping more secure for everyone.

Guan and the Iowa State University Research Foundation have filed a patent on one technology that detects "click fraud" -- falsely driving up hits to ads posted on Web sites. Those false hits result in higher costs for pay-per-click advertising. Guan said the invention will help online advertising companies such as Google and Yahoo reduce click fraud.

He said his research could also help millions of computer users who don't have the time or expertise to protect their machines with the latest security patches and safeguards.

"There are a lot of security issues and researchers have worked on them from the early 1980s," Guan said. "And 30 years later we're still working on them. These are hard problems".

In that time the nature of cyber crime has changed considerably, Guan said. It used to be hackers attacked systems for the thrill of it. Since the late 1990s, as more and more commerce happens online, he said money has become the major motivation for cyber crime......... Posted by: Ethan      Read more         Source