Two young UC Berkeley faculty members receive MacArthur 'genius' award

http://www.berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2009/09/21_genius.shtml

Researchers using parallel processing computing could save thousands by using an Xbox

A new study by a University of Warwick researcher has demonstrated that researchers trying to model a range of processes could use the power and capabilities of a particular XBox chip as a much cheaper alternative to other forms of parallel processing hardware.

Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher in the University of Warwick’s WMG Digital Laboratory, wished to model how electrical excitations in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells in order to investigate or even predict cardiac arrhythmias (abnormal electrical activity in the heart which can lead to a heart attack). To conduct these simulations using traditional CPU based processing one would normally need to book time on a dedicated parallel processing computer or spend thousands on a parallel network of PCs.

Dr Scarle however also had a background in the computer games industry as he had been a Software Engineer at the Warwickshire firm Rare Ltd, part of Microsoft Games Studios. His time there made him very aware of the parallel processing power of Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) of the XBox 360, the popular computer games console played in many homes. He was convinced that this chip could, for a few hundred pounds, be employed to conduct much the same scientific modelling as several thousand pounds of parallel network PCs.

The results of his work have just been published in the journal Computational Biology and Chemistry under the title of “Implications of the Turing completeness of reaction-diffusion models, informed by GPGPU simulations on an XBox 360: Cardiac arrhythmias, re-entry and the Halting problem”. The good news is that his hunch was right and the XBox 360 GPU can indeed be used by researchers in exactly the money saving way he envisaged. Simon Scarle said:

“This is a highly effective way of carrying out high end parallel computing on “domestic” hardware for cardiac simulations. Although major reworking of any previous code framework is required, the Xbox 360 is a very easy platform to develop for and this cost can easily be outweighed by the benefits in gained computational power and speed, as well as the relative ease of visualization of the system.” However his research does have some bad news for a particular set of cardiac researchers in that his study demonstrates that it is impossible to predict the rise of certain dangerous arrhythmias, as he has shown that cardiac cell models are affected by a specific limitation of computational systems known as the Halting problem.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/newsandevents/pressreleases/researchers_using_parallel/

AFOSR Funds Super-Fast, Secure Computing

Air Force Office of Scientific Research(AFOSR)-supported physicists at the University of Michigan are developing innovative components for quantum, or super-fast, computers that will improve security for data storage and transmission on Air Force systems.

According to Professor Duncan Steel, lead researcher from the University of Michigan, the long-term goal of this basic research is to push the frontier of modern electronics and optics into the realm of quantum behavior, where more complex computing problems can be solved at faster speeds.

To accomplish this goal, Steel and his team have started by exploring ways to optically create and maintain quantum coherence using a single electron or hole in a quantum dot structure. Maintaining a constant electrical charge for an extended period of time in a solid-state nanostructure, like a quantum dot, is likely key to long-term success.

http://www.wpafb.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123166736

On the road to secure car-to-car communications

A European research project works out how to keep car-to-car data transmissions private and secure from malicious hackers.
T is driving forward a new era of more efficient and safer road travel for European citizens. Just as ABS brake technology dramatically cut accidents and fatalities in the 1980s, vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communication will make our roads safer still.

But there is a big question to answer before the technology becomes widely adopted: is the communication link secure?

Imagine the chaos that a hacker could cause by sending bogus messages to vehicles. They could tell one car of an accident ahead, make the driver brake hard and actually cause an accident behind. They could invent fake traffic jams, encourage drivers to take alternative routes, then enjoy speeding along clear roads. Insecure communication systems could also let criminals track individual cars (e.g. celebrities, politicians) or harass drivers with unwanted alerts or spam messages.

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&BrowsingType=Features&ID=90862

Researchers track 3,000 pieces of Seattle trash

SEATTLE — Where does that coffee cup, disposable razor or unwanted television end up once it's tossed to the curb?

Using an electronic tracking device about the size of a matchbook, MIT researchers are tagging about 3,000 pieces of Seattle trash to get people thinking about what they throw away and where it ends up.

"Seeing where your trash goes allows you to change your behavior," said Assaf Biderman, associate director of MIT's SENSEable City lab and a project leader. "Will you refill a cup instead of throwing away a disposable one?"

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ioocmv4EKd1jiy1Thwdbzo7-_iCAD9AMIA9G0

This Is Your Lifelog

This reminds me of the movie Total recall with Arnold
Digital lifelog records everything you do, creating a digital memory.
To keep it short, watch the movie and read the article here

Women in IT

Hopefully...more women in IT.

"Out of the 2500-odd IT professionals and developers at this year's Microsoft Tech Ed, only about 200 are women.
Out of the 2500-odd IT professionals and developers at this year's Microsoft Tech Ed on the Gold Coast, only about 200 are women. The attendance of women is up 50 per cent from last year, but it's still a far cry from the number of men pouring through the doors.

Nonetheless, the women got one back today with an interactive workshop — the first meeting of its kind held at Tech Ed. Women in IT is about growing strong female leaders in the IT industry".

http://www.computerworld.com.au/article/317902/tech_ed_women_it

Digital Contacts Will Keep an Eye on Your Vital Signs

Forget about 20/20. “Perfect” vision could be redefined by gadgets that give you the eyes of a cyborg.

The tech industry calls the digital enrichment of the physical world “augmented reality.” Such technology is already appearing in smartphones and toys, and enthusiasts dream of a pair of glasses we could don to enhance our everyday perception. But why stop there?

Scientists, eye surgeons, professors and students at the University of Washington have been developing a contact lens containing one built-in LED, powered wirelessly with radio frequency waves.

More here...

Virtual Maps for the Blind

The blind and visually impaired often rely on others to provide cues and information on navigating through their environments. The problem with this method is that it doesn't give them the tools to venture out on their own, says Dr. Orly Lahav of Tel Aviv University's School of Education and Porter School for Environmental Studies. To give navigational "sight" to the blind, Dr. Lahav has invented a new software tool to help the blind navigate through unfamiliar places. It is connected to an existing joystick, a 3-D haptic device, that interfaces with the user through the sense of touch. People can feel tension beneath their fingertips as a physical sensation through the joystick as they navigate around a virtual environment which they cannot see, only feel: the joystick stiffens when the user meets a virtual wall or barrier. The software can also be programmed to emit sounds — a cappuccino machine firing up in a virtual café, or phones ringing when the explorer walks by a reception desk

Capsules for Self-Healing Circuits

Nanotube-filled capsules could restore conductivity to damaged electronics.

Dropping a cell phone or laptop can, of course, cause irreparable damage. Now researchers are developing a material that could let a circuit self-repair small but critical damage caused by such an impact.

Electrical band-aid: Polymer capsules filled with carbon nanotubes can restore conductivity to electrical circuits when ripped open. The nanotube suspension inside the capsules is visible in the light microscope image above; the image below, from a scanning-electron microscope, shows the surface of the polymer capsules. Credit: J. Mat. Chem./RSC Publishing

Capsules, filled with conductive nanotubes, that rip open under mechanical stress could be placed on circuit boards in failure-prone areas. When stress causes a crack in the circuit, some of the capsules would also rupture and release nanotubes to bridge the break. The researchers, from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, are also working on capsule additives designed to heal failures in lithium-ion battery electrodes, to prevent the short-circuiting that can sometimes cause a fire.

http://www.technologyreview.com/computing/23413/page2/

Still trying to crack Nazi Enigma messages

Can you believe that?:)
Blogger: Technology, news, and others - Creaţi o postare
"
You can donate your spare PC processing power to dozens of cool volunteer computing projects simply by downloading some software. Enigma@home is the one that called me.

Enigma@home is based on the M4 Project, an effort spearheaded by German-born violinist and encryption enthusiast Stefan Krah. The M4 Project was designed to break three original messages generated by a famed electro-mechanical Enigma machine and intercepted in the North Atlantic in 1942. (The project gets its name from the four-rotor Enigma M4 machine presumed to be used by the Germans for enciphering the signals during wartime.) The project's method for cracking the ciphers is described as "a mixture of brute force and a hill climbing algorithm."

"

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2009/083109-nazi-enigma-messages.html?t51hb

New computer system to classify music on its beat and tempo

This is a nice artifficial intelligence application

"Taiwanese computer scientists have developed a neural network program that can classify music on its beat and tempo.

They hope that the new system could be boon for music archivists with large numbers of untagged recordings and for users searching through mislabeled mp3 libraries"

http://www.newspostonline.com/science/new-computer-system-to-classify-music-on-its-beat-and-tempo-2009083067778

Iphone app locates H1N1

This is not a spam blogpot ...

Ok let's me what 's new


Boston, Mass. - A new iPhone application, created by researchers at Children's Hospital Boston in collaboration with the MIT Media Lab, enables users to track and report outbreaks of infectious diseases, such as H1N1 (swine flu), on the ground in real time. The application, "Outbreaks Near Me," builds upon the mission and proven capability of HealthMap, an online resource that collects, filters, maps and disseminates information about emerging infectious diseases, and provides a new, contextualized view of a user's specific location - pinpointing outbreaks that have been reported in the vicinity of the user and offering the opportunity to search for additional outbreak information by location or disease.

http://www.childrenshospital.org/newsroom/Site1339/mainpageS1339P1sublevel559.html

Good news

Seems that after economic crisis, some good news

Here....

Quantum computer slips onto chips

Researchers have devised a penny-sized silicon chip that uses photons to run Shor's algorithm - a well-known quantum approach - to solve a maths problem.

The algorithm computes the two numbers that multiply together to form a given figure, and has until now required laboratory-sized optical computers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/8236943.stm

After the Transistor, a Leap Into the Microcosm

Dr. Ross, an I.B.M. researcher, is growing a crop of mushroom-shaped silicon nanowires that may one day become a basic building block for a new kind of electronics. Nanowires are just one example, although one of the most promising, of a transformation now taking place in the material sciences as researchers push to create the next generation of switching devices smaller, faster and more powerful than today’s transistors.

The reason that many computer scientists are pursuing this goal is that the shrinking of the transistor has approached fundamental physical limits. Increasingly, transistor manufacturers grapple with subatomic effects, like the tendency for electrons to “leak” across material boundaries. The leaking electrons make it more difficult to know when a transistor is in an on or off state, the information that makes electronic computing possible. They have also led to excess heat, the bane of the fastest computer chips.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/01/science/01trans.html

IBM 'X-Rays' A Molecule

The imaging breakthrough could lead to the development of smaller and faster processors and memory devices.
IBM scientists claim to be the first to image the inner structure of a molecule, opening up new possibilities in building smaller, faster, and more energy-efficient computing components.

The achievement, reported in the August 28 issue of Science magazine, is described as a milestone in surface microscopy, which pushes the exploration of using molecules and atoms in the field of nanotechnology.

Click here for more...