Future of Engineering

Tool converts written text to an electronically generated voice.



Visually impaired people surf the net with the help of special screen-reading software which they install in their desktops. But they cannot use the net on the go.

A new software, called WebAnywhere, tackles this problem effectively. The tool developed at the University of Washington turns screen-reading into an Internet service that reads aloud Web text on any computer. It will run on any machine that has a sound card.

Under Richard Ladner's supervision, Jeffrey Bigham, a UW doctoral student in computer science and engineering was able to create this tool that has become the first accessibility tool to be hosted on the Web.

Usually free screen readers have to be downloaded and installed before you can use it. But in some places like public libraries or museums there could be download restrictions. Webanywhere doesn't have to be downloaded. It processes the text on an external server and then sends the audio file to play in the user's Web browser.

Because there is no installation involved, there is no need for technical support. Everytime you visit the site you get the latest version.

You can access WebAnywhere here.

Labels: Computer-Science

Researchers at Purdue have put their minds together to create tiny refrigerators. This tiny little thing isn't going to store your foodstuff. Instead it's getting inside a computer to keep it cool.

Conventional methods:

In most computers, fans circulate air through finned devices called heat sinks attached to computer chips. And they do a pretty good job of keeping electronic components cool. But when a computer generates too much heat, liquid cooling, also known as water cooling has been looked upon as a good solution.

Indian American Suresh Garimella, of Purdue University takes it one step further. He believes that tiny fridges will be placed in future computers to keep it cool.

How it works:
The researchers developed an analytical model for designing tiny compressors that pump refrigerants using penny-size diaphragms and validated the model with experimental data. The elastic membranes are made of ultra-thin sheets of a plastic called polyimide and coated with an electrically conducting metallic layer. The metal layer allows the diaphragm to be moved back and forth to produce a pumping action using electrical charges, or "electrostatic diaphragm compression."

Why miniature refrigeration?
Trends suggest that future computer chips will generate 10 times more heat than today's microprocessors. So it makes sense to find ways to increase the efficiency of the machine.

Refrigeration is doubly efficient because it can cool the chips below the surrounding temperature which is not possible with conventional methods.

Hope this cool computer finds its way to the shelves soon.

Source - Purdue University
Photo Credit - Purdue News Service photo/David Umberger

Labels: Computer-Science, Engineering-USA

“This is an unobtrusive monitoring system that will increase the safety of seniors and improve their ability to live independently,” Tyrer said.

Harry Tyrer, a University of Missouri electrical and computer engineering professor alongwith MU nursing Associate Professor Myra A. Aud is exploring the use of sensor technology in construction.

Image courtesy of Harry Tyrer

This fantastic duo has come up with the creation of the smart carpet that promises to help the elderly people who have trouble while walking.

They have introduced a new type of sensor that can be printed on thin, flexible sheets using organic ink. Organic ink sensors are flexible and inexpensive. This would be placed on the sensor sheet that is layered between the room's carpet and the carpet pad.

Once this is done, it will be easy to spot the movement of the person. This technology would be very helpful in hospitals, care taking institutions and homes of senior citizens. A caregiver can easily track the movement of the patients and can be immediately alerted if someone falls.

It can also provide additional info about the changes in gait or behaviors that can indicate a fall. This is not possible with the current sensor technologies. Because current floor sensor systems depend on vibration readings to monitor a person's activity. But it is not dependable and easily prone to misinterpretation.

Source - University of Missouri

Labels: Computer-Science, Electrical-Engineering

"Some parts of the Web have so much extraneous material that it can be distracting, and for the nonverbal child, there might not be an ability to negotiate that information," adds Stephen Sheinkopf, an autism researcher at Brown University.

ZAC is the first web browser developed specifically for children with autism, and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome, pervasive developmental disorders (PDD), and PDD-NOS. It has a high chance of increasing a child's ability to do things independently.

Zackary, the 6-year-old grandson of John LeSieur was diagnosed with autism in 2005. Being in the software business John LeSieur wanted his grandson to play games and use the computer. Unfortunately Zachary found it hard to navigate inside the world wide web.

That's when Grandpa LeSieur decided to create a special browser for the little kid.He has named it the Zac Browser For Autistic Children and is making it available to anyone for free.

The Zac Browser greatly simplifies the experience of using a computer. It seals off most Web sites from view, to block violent, sexual or otherwise adult-themed material. Instead it presents a hand-picked slate of choices from free, public Web sites, with an emphasis on educational games, music, videos and visually entertaining images, like a virtual aquarium.

Thanks to grandpa's gift, Zachary listens to music and plays puzzles - things he always liked before but hadn't been able to explore online.

The Zac Browser can be downloaded or run directly from: http://www.zacbrowser.com

Labels: Computer-Science

An atomic force microscope image of a simple circuit with 17 memristors lined up in a row.

Researchers at HP Labs have solved a decades-old mystery by proving the existence of a fourth basic element in integrated circuits that could make it possible to develop computers that turn on and off like an electric light.

The memristor — short for memory resistor - could make it possible to develop far more energy-efficient computing systems with memories that retain information even after the power is off, so there's no wait for the system to boot up after turning the computer on. It may even be possible to create systems with some of the pattern-matching abilities of the human brain.

This invention, as is obvious, has huge potential in electronics. Well, simply put, if this works out according to plan, no RAM will be needed in our computers! In addition, this could result in analog computers that process information the way the human brain does.

This is what Wikipedia has to say:

"
Memristors ("memory resistors") are a class of passive ideal two-terminal circuit elements that maintain a functional relationship between the time integrals of current and voltage. This results in resistance varying according to the device's memristance function. The definition of the memristor is based solely on fundamental circuit variables, similarly to the resistor, capacitor, and inductor. Unlike those more familiar elements, memristors may be described by any of a variety of time-varying functions. As a result, memristors do not belong to linear circuit models including time. A time-invariant memristor is simply a conventional resistor.

The Hewlett Packard memristor, based on a thin film of titanium dioxide, appears to be practical and ideal in its initial incarnation. However, as of yet, none have been reported outside HP. Being much simpler than currently popular MOSFET transistor switches and also able to implement one bit of memory in a single device, memristors may enable nanoscale computer technology. (Its inventor) Chua also speculates that they may be useful in the construction of artificial neural networks.

Memristors can implement memory on the principle that direct current applied in the component can adjust its apparent resistance. This resistance may then be observed using alternating current.
"

While using memristors, the memory will be a part of the circuitry rather than a separate module; this will save valuable space. It can make possible for computers to power up instantly, cell phones will go much longer without a charge, and no information will ever be lost in case of power failures or battery death.

Scientists can now think about fabricating a new type of non-volatile random access memory (RAM) – or memory chips that don't forget what power state they were in when a computer is shut off. The big problem with DRAM today is that when you turn the power off on your PC, the DRAM forgets what was there. So the next time you turn the power on you've got to sit there and wait while all that you need to run your computer is loaded into the DRAM from the hard disk. With non-volatile RAM which could be possible using memristors, that process would be instantaneous and your PC would be in the same state as when you turned it off.

In addition to a better, non-volatile RAM, its inventors think memristors could also speed up neural computing. While a lot of researchers are currently trying to write a computer code that simulates brain function on a standard machine, they have to use huge machines with enormous processing power to simulate only tiny portions of the brain.

The memristor team feels these folks can now take a different approach: "Instead of writing a computer program to simulate a brain or simulate some brain function, we're actually looking to build some hardware based upon memristors that emulates brain-like functions".

The person originally behind this interesting invention, Leon Chua, had the idea of the memristor almost 37 years back!

Sources & Reference:
HP Labs
HP Labs Blog
Nature Journal

Labels: Computer-Science

Tired of sitting alone in your computer room? Then this MediaCore computer system dubbed as the Sofaside PC will fit perfectly into your living room. This contemporary piece of furniture by Pearing Systems gives everyone the ability to own a media center PC that is a beautifully designed and highly functional.

Adrian Robins, owner of PearingSystems and inventor of the MEdiaCOre computer system has a background in engineering and a degree in architecture. His love of design and electronics prompted him to design and build the MEdiaCOre™. He says, “This is innovation and invention - as many people know the problem with computers in the living room is, they’re ugly, noisy and need cooling – and what’s the obsession with making them look like audio components?

This European, hand built unit features versatile design with media functionality.
The wooden enclosure offers superior noise reduction over other cases and uses a forced air flow system and unique custom chassis to keep components cool and quiet. It features built-in cable boxes and wireless router to keep your living room clutter-free.

The hand crafted cabinet is available in many finishes and colors to suit many styles of décor.

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Keywords: Sofaside PC, computer room, MediaCore, Pearing Systems , MEdiaCOre, media boxes , forced air flow system AV, cable TV boxes, keyboard, décor.

Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering

What if you could just sneak $1 out of the wallet of 50,000 different people? They probably won’t notice. If they discover the $1 missing, they probably won’t care, or may even assume they just lost it or mis-counted.

Now, what if you could sneak $1 from 50,000 different people while sitting at your laptop in the local coffee shop? What if you never have to physically confront a single person, nor risk physical harm in any way? What if you could perpetrate a virtual crime, cyberpickpocketing? How about if your cyberpickpocketing could net $50,000 today? That definitely sounds like a more solid business plan than the “Pickpocketing Across America” approach cited above. That is the allure of cybercrime, says this interesting post

Got me thinking about cybercrime in general, not just micro-commerce cyber crime. How is cybercrime going to evolve in future? What will be its various dimensions? And what are we doing about it? I have provided the various interesting resources I found during my research for answers to the above questions.

This interesting post @ ThinkQuest ( http://library.thinkquest.org/04oct/00460/future.html ) was certainly thought-provoking. It discusses how the rate of malware penetration in wireless and PCs is increasing. It also notes how malware are becoming more intelligent by the day. It concludes that "Trends suggest that criminals will become more insidious. Large-scale and damaging acts such as Dos attacks will become less popular as they are easy to detect and thwart with better security systems. Instead, newer and more indirect methods of crime like phishing and Trojans will become much more popular".

In this report Predicting the future of cybercrime and security, Alan Paller of SANS Institute provides details on predictions by twenty respected leaders in cyber focusing on the top 10 security developments for 2007. They narrowed 40 probable computer security developments down to 10 that have the highest probability of happening and will, if they happen, have substantial impact on large numbers of people. The developments predicted are in the following domains: 1. Laptop encryption, 2. PDA smart phones, 3.Targeted cyber attacks, 4. Cell phone worms, 5. Voice over IP (VoIP) systems, 6. Spyware, 7. Security vulnerabilities, 8. Rootkits, 9. Legislation governing the protection of customer information and 10. Network access control (NAC). In summary, the report says that attacker sophistication seems to be ahead of defensive tools. But by making the attackers' job harder and harder and by increasing the length of gaol sentences for cybercrime and improving international police co-operation and skill levels, we can continue to keep up with the attackers and, over time, begin to turn the tide.

In this brief interview titled Protecting the future from cyber crime, Platypus Magazine spoke with Federal Agent Nigel Phair about his new book and the impact of high-tech crime as he sees it, and the challenges which lay ahead in controlling cyber crime. Some of the questions posed in the interview are: "What are the challenges which lie ahead in policing high tech crime?", "Can policing keep up with the evolution of cyber crime – or is this an unwinnable war?", "Does a cyber criminal fit a typical profile?", & "Who do you see as being the most vulnerable to high tech crime?". Interesting perspectives in the answers.

According to Dan Hubard, a cybercime expert, cybercrime is all about costs and benefits, and criminals are no different from legitimate businesses in this respect. "The old criminals are learning from the new ones how to launder stolen credit cards, and they are learning how little risk they face of being caught," he said. The old criminal gangs have a lot of money that they can plough into cybercrime, which is potentially much more profitable that traditional forms of crime and is less risky.

The U.S. military has hinted that it will expand its cyber crime to cyber warfare in the near future, according to this article. Lt. Gen. Robert J. Elder Jr., who heads the Air Force's cyber operations command told the press that the military was currently developing ways to launch virtual attacks on enemies. The general even reckoned that if cyber squaddies could use the Net to scramble an enemy's communications system, they might even be able to do away with heavy handed conventional weapons like bombs.

First it was SAAS and now it it is CAAS - Crimeware as a Service. Criminals invest in crimeware-as-a-service, says this interesting article from Computerworld UK. 'Crimeware as a service', where criminals use online cybercrime services instead of running their own servers and software, is the latest development in internet crime. Hmmm

The Internet Crime Complaint Center posted their latest statistics on cybercrime recently, based on nearly 207,000 complaints people filed in 2007. Since 2006 losses to cybercrime had jumped over 20%, although complaints fell slightly. Over a third of the complaints were about auction fraud, the center said, and a quarter were about non-delivery of goods. Credit/debit card fraud, check fraud, identity theft and Nigerian letter fraud were also represented.

"Years ago, we saw cybercrime as a speciality," says a Dutch expert. "Now we have added cybercrime in every form of police training, so we are raising the level of the entire Dutch police force. There's no crime anymore where there are no digital components built in."

I guess the last statement kind of sums it up. Cybercrime is not a specialty crime any longer. It is a part of most crimes happening today. Not the most pleasant of news!

Labels: Computer-Science, Safety, Society

So, you either believe that IT is undergoing yet another upheaval, or you don't.
You either buy into Nicholas Carr's core premise (as found in "The Big Switch"), or you don't.

But if you do buy into these ideas, there's another implication to consider.
There will likely be very little medium-sized IT in the future. Just the very big, and the very small.

Over time, IT is done much more efficiently at uber-scale. Much like power generation shifted from small-scale to large-scale at the beginning of the 20th century, we're seeing the same thing applied to IT at the dawn of the 21st century.

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Keywords: IT, Nicholas Carr's, The Big Switch, Nick, outside IT services, generic, specialized, Google, Amazon

Labels: Computer-Science

IBM's rolling out a new assessment service geared to help enterprises get a better grip on storage using a propriety framework that evaluates everything from architecture complexity to future data growth. IBM said it's specifically targeting film production, entertainment and other media companies.

Management Complexity Factor for Media (MCF for Media) includes a six to eight-week evaluation process that results in a customized program that lists out recommendations for two to three years of storage management.

Such niche service offerings are gaining ground as vertical markets, such as healthcare and entertainment, wrestle with demanding storage requirements and want better technology to improve data retrieval and more efficient data processes.

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Labels: Computer-Science

New research commisioned by Visa Europe and unveiled at the World Retail Congress in Barcelona shows that, contrary to suggestions, online channels can complement bricks and mortar stores.

With internet sales expected to account for almost 20% of turnover by 2012-15, and websites becoming increasingly transactional rather than informational, there is also likely to be a rise in the application of technology within the retailer community. As a result there would be a rise in automated self scanning, product tracking for inventory using RFID (Radio-Frequency Identification) and targeted promotions delivered directly to consumers while they shopped. In addition they were likely to have access to PC/web based facilities in store giving immediate access to product and customer reviews

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Labels: Automation, Computer-Science

If you think the touchscreen on Apple's iPhone is cool, imagine a device that actually sees, reflects and responds to your fingers touching the back of the device. A prototype of that capability was among many that Microsoft Research showed off at TechFest , Microsoft's annual display of its research projects. LucidTouch isn't very practical in its current form. It's a large handheld computer with a small video camera attached to an arm about 30cm long on the back of the device. But the technology that enables it could easily change now that the concept is proven, said Patrick Baudisch, a researcher at Microsoft.

The current setup includes a touch sensor layer on the back of the device. That senses when a user's fingers are touching it. The camera attached behind it sends an image of the fingers to the device, where the image is overlaid lightly, like a shadow, on the screen. Moving your fingers on the back of the device, you can choose an item on the map. With LucidTouch, a user could touch an area on the wristband of the watch instead to make choices on the watch face.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering

IBM is working on its latest "racetrack" memory, which it promises will bring a 100 fold increase in density -- by storing data in long magnetised nanowires rather than disks. Don't make computers seek out data, make the data move to where it can be used. That's one way to describe "racetrack" memory, which IBM argues could one day lead to memory that could hold 100 times more data than flash memory does today and cost 100 times less

In racetrack memory, information is stored in the domain walls, or boundaries, between magnetic regions on a wire. The domain walls are then shuttled up or down the wire via electrical pulses toward another component that can interpret whether the domain wall represents a "1" or a "0".

In flash memory and hard drives, data lives in a discrete location and a computer (or hard drive head) finds it. Shuttling the bits on a wire opens up the possibility for making 3D memory, and hence more dense memory, because wires could be stacked on top of each other. The time it takes to record or retrieve data could also be reduced. Racetrack chips, potentially, could additionally last far longer because they have no moving parts, unlike hard drives, and won't get progressively worn out by successive read-erase cycles like flash memory.

In the next two to four years, IBM hopes to create a complete, working prototype of a racetrack chip with an integrated device that can read the data shuttling across the wire

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Labels: Computer-Science

In this executive Q&A with GRIDToday, Tideway Systems Founder and CEO Richard Muirhead discusses how complexity is spiraling out of control in today's datacenters and explains how his company's solutions help to map datacenter interdependencies, automate processes and, generally, reduce the costs of datacenter management.

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Labels: Computer-Science

India often undermines the innovative prowess of the domestic players and have so far been looking for technological innovations from the West, rues Ajai Chowdhry, Chairman & CEO, HCL Infosystems. He is glad, however, that with the launch of innovative products like Tata Nano, the common perception is slowly but surely changing.

To the league of recent innovation closer home, Ajai likes to add the HCL MiLeap range of Leaptops. “With its ultra small form factor, offering mobile computing at an unbeaten price of Rs 13,990, MiLeap is set to create a new product segment in our country,” he mentions confidently, during the course of an e-mail interaction with Business Line.

“Other innovations in the past include our products like the sub-10K PC which broke the price barriers in the market and set the industry trend of affordable computing among the desktop category,” says Ajai. “The computer that runs on a car battery, the four in one computer, the point of sale product and the ‘Data Centre’ in a box were all developed at our R&D centre.” This article contains excerpts from the interview.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Society

On March 20, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a new patent application of Apple’s that reveals they’re working on a next generation 3D Holographic-like display system. In one application, Apple’s display system would automatically authenticate a user, greet them and provide a customized desktop for just that user. Something along the lines of how new computer car systems will adjust the seat and controls for a particular driver. The Holographic-like displays are based on a projection system and in many cases the impression given is that these systems would apply to applications as diverse as video conferencing, scientific modeling, entertainment and perhaps even forensics. Think of the TV show “Bones” and their use of a device called holographic “angelator.” One of the unique aspects of this invention is that users won’t be hassled with 3D glasses or headgear of any kind.

Modern three-dimensional (”3D”) display technologies are increasingly popular and practical not only in computer graphics, but in other diverse environments and technologies as well. Growing examples include medical diagnostics, flight simulation, air traffic control, battlefield simulation, weather diagnostics, entertainment, advertising, education, animation, virtual reality, robotics, biomechanical studies, scientific visualization, and so forth.

Apple’s patent illustrates the nuts and bolts of their proposed 3D display system according to one embodiment of the invention. You’ll note that the system includes a host CPU, an operating system (”OS”), a 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine, a graphics card, and other components (not shown) as will be conventionally understood. The 3D/stereoscopic rendering engine renders 3D images (e.g., stereoscopic or pseudo-holographic) as further described herein below, and may be implemented in firmware, software, or hardware, according to the particular implementation at hand.


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Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering

We've all asked ourselves that irritating question: "Where on earth did I leave my car keys?"

A team of Japanese scientists claims to have come up with the answer, and the secretive artificial intelligence project code-named Smart Goggle does not stop at elusive keys!

With Yasuo Kuniyoshi's invention balanced on your nose, you will lose nothing. Simply tell the glasses what you are looking for and it will play into your eye a video of the last few seconds you saw that item.

Well, it's not magic, right? So how does it work?

Behind the goggles is an advanced object-recognition software and a computer that can learn the identity of new objects within seconds. So this is what you do, as a user: to start with, you wander around your house for about an hour "telling" the goggles the name of everything you see around you, as you fix your eyes on that object. So you essentially pronounce "coat hanger" when you are in front of the coat hanger and the word "kitchen sink" when you are in front of the kitchen sink - you get the idea. Once this process is over, the software using object recognition tech, stores the image of the object against the word you pronounced. Every time after that you move around your house, as and when that product is sighted by the goggles (though perhaps not perceived by you), its location is stored. And when you are at a loss one fine day as to where you left that product, all you need to do is to say the product name, and voila, the goggles tell you where you (rather, the goggles!) last saw it.

Sounds like a very sophisticated solution to a simple problem, but admit it, this simple problem can be at times most vexing, so who knows, the Smart Goggles could be a big hit!

You can read a bit more on this from here

Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering, Textile-Engineering

John Campbell, after a year of experimentation, 10 to 15 old computers and more than $500 in cash, Campbell's best invention, an arcade machine-sized freezer brimming with gooey liquids, ice and techno-pieces, was ready to boot for the first time. After this period of experimentation, Campbell's "liquid computer" came alive, the first of its kind.

Campbell fully intends to spark a computer-technology revolution with the items in his freezer. Since the first time the liquid computer worked, Campbell, along with his team of five specialists in areas such as materials, programming, chemistry and engineering, have reduced the size of the original liquid computer to that of a modern desktop. The technology, which Campbell says is 70 to 90 percent unpatented, achieves a mild form of super fluidity, a frictionless flow of liquid at extremely low temperatures, to increase the resistance of computer wires, which allows for a greater flow of electricity and higher efficiency.

"There hasn't been a fundamental change in computer technology since 1982, and since then, it has just been putting more things in smaller places," Campbell said. "I think it's about time for something completely new that is so practical you can't ignore it."

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Labels: Computer-Science

The new dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) at Harvard University—an institution with a deep commitment to freedom of expression—is the inventor of a software technique designed to keep unauthorized people from reading electronic documents.

Liquid Machines, a Waltham, MA, startup founded in 2001 by Harvard’s Michael Smith is founded on a clever idea pioneered by Smith that the company calls “application injection.” The technology takes over word-processing programs, e-mail software, and the like, automatically encrypting digital documents and then decrypting them for authorized users without requiring users to exchange passwords or cryptographic keys or attend to other special chores.

“Tens of billions of e-mails are sent each day,” says Ruffolo. “Just ask yourself, how many of those have proprietary information, and how many of those are sent erroneously? You look at that, and you start to say, ‘I need something to control the flow of information that’s leaving my company.’ The most dangerous breach is the one that you’re not aware of.”

Application injection is essentially the process by which Liquid Machines’ main product, called Liquid Machines Document Control, fuses itself into and takes control of virtually any other program that can play or display digital content—such as Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat. The “injection” happens at the moment the display program is loaded


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Labels: Computer-Science

The most powerful computer known is the brain, and now scientists have designed a machine just a few molecules large that mimics how the brain works.

So far the device can simultaneously carry out 16 times more operations than a normal computer transistor. Researchers suggest the invention might eventually prove able to perform roughly 1,000 times more operations than a transistor.

This machine could not only serve as the foundation of a powerful computer, but also serve as the controlling element of complex gadgets such as microscopic doctors or factories, scientists added.

The device is made of a compound known as duroquinone. This molecule resembles a hexagonal plate with four cones linked to it, "like a small car," explained researcher Anirban Bandyopadhyay, an artificial intelligence and molecular electronics scientist at the National Institute for Materials Science at Tsukuba in Japan.

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Labels: Computer-Science

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 Mellon’s 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.

The system eliminates the bulky links, cables and general mechanical complexity of other haptic devices on the market today in favor of a single lightweight moving part that floats on magnetic fields.

A user moves the handle much like a computer mouse, but in three dimensions with six degrees of freedom — up/down, side to side, back/forth, yaw, pitch and roll. Optical sensors measure the position and orientation of the flotor, and this information is used to control the position and orientation of a virtual object on the computer display

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Labels: Bio-engineering, Computer-Science, Design-Engineering

The reign of the silicon chip is over, according to physicists who predict that the conventional silicon chip has no longer than four years left to run. Meeting at the Institute of Physics’ Condensed Matter and Material Physics conference this week, researchers speculate that the silicon chip will be unable to sustain the same pace of increase in computing power and speed as it has in previous years

Just as Gordon Moore predicted in 2005, physical limitations of the miniaturised electronic devices of today will eventually lead to silicon chips that are saturated with transistors and incapable of holding any more digital information. Scientists are now investigating alternative components that may pave the way to faster, more powerful computers of the future and potentially extend Moore’s Law of technological advancement

One team of researchers at the Leeds University in the UK have proposed to replace silicon chips with carbon nanotubes. In a development that is expected to bring carbon nanotubes one step closer to commercial use, the Leeds University researchers have developed a technique of growing nanotubes on a perforated ceramic grid. The technique allows the research team to determine the electrical properties of individual nanotubes, after which the tubes are accurately positioned on a surface using a tweezer-like device

By linking the electric current in a loop to a quantum superposition state, superconductors may act as quantum bits, or qubits, in quantum computing. Qubits are able to exist in multiple states at any one time, which massively increases the amount of information that can be encoded in a quantum computer’s memory.

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Labels: Computer-Science

T.J. Rodgers, an outspoken free markets advocate and founder of Cypress Semiconductor says many have tried, but none have succeeded in creating other Silicon Valleys around the world. The region's unique combination of talent, money and unconventional thinkers, he says, simply can't be replicated. Rogers has been a major force in the Valley for nearly 40 years and has lived through every tech trend.

About 20 years ago, Rodgers took a page from his venture capital friends and started an incubator for semiconductor start-ups at Cypress. All told, the San Jose, Calif.-based company has invested $600 million in nine start-ups that have a market cap of $3.6 billion today - most of which is from solar cell maker SunPower, which went public in 2005. Rodgers talked with Forbes.com about the history of innovation in the Valley and innovation in silicon chips - the technology that started it all and gave the region its name.

To the question "Will China or any other place ever rival the Valley?", he answers, "Not in my lifetime. You have to have multiple technologies interacting with each other, free market capital that's willing to take large risks, business acumen to start a company and, most of all, a culture that supports and respects those values." You can find more on the interview here.

This certainly got me thinking. Rogers is not the first to spell out the unique advantages present in the silicon valley ecosystem, but the innovation coming out of that environment is so huge that it is worth revisiting the concept.

For sure, there are other regions in the world where a lot of high-tech is happening. Well, within the US, there are other regions that do a lot of tech innovation stuff as well. Illinois, Washington...some of the brightest tech concepts have come from these regions. Israel is one country that has produced exceptional tech innovation per capita. Parts of Europe, Finland for instance

I wouldn't include China in this list, I doubt they have ever been known for innovative tech. Perhaps India, but even that country has had few breakthrough innovations coming out, most of what it has produced is a large "software factory", certainly not an innovation factory.

So well, there is competition - at least some - for Silicon Valley, but how strong is the competition? Let's analyze.

The other regions in the US - These probably have similar market situations to that of Silicon Valley, but what could be missing from these is the culture that supports companies that take risks in unknown technologies - some of which require a willing suspension of disbelief. At the end of the day, even the smartest bunch of bankers do not make a single visionary tech investor.

Parts of Europe - these have potential in terms of potential and talent, but I again doubt if they have the culture that supports such groundbreaking innovation. Finland and a couple of other Scandinavian countries appear to be one some of the few countries that has produced such genius (Linux, Nokia, Skype, Jaiku. These are markets that are close to London ( and hence money), and they are also part of the European Union - these two aspects give them some distinct market advantages. On balance, there appears to be potential in this region.

Israel - it has the genius and they have certainly proven themselves many times over when it comes to tech innovation, but their being so far away from any other tech cluster and their small size make it difficult for them to be a serious threat to silicon valley.

Japan - Japan has not done well when it comes to disruptive , especially software and Internet related (which was the last great Internet product / concept that came out of Japan? Hmm...I am really scratching my head!). Plus, anyway their corporate culture is miles away from the type of culture that can nurture groundbreaking innovation. I wouldn't even consider them to be in the contention.

China and India - have more been technology factories, not laboratories by any stretch of imagination. Their sizes certainly makes one thing a bit longer before dismissing them, but they are way, way behind in the race. There is really no chance of them catching up with Silicon Valley in the next decade or two.

So where does that leave the scorecard? This is my ranking, based on all the above aspects:

Silicon Valley - 10 / 10
Scandinavia - 4 / 10
Israel - 3 / 10
Japan - 0 / 10
India / China - Let me not bother ranking these

That's some competition for Silicon Valley, wouldn't you agree.

Labels: Computer-Science

Pirated microchips 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.

This month, Koushanfar and colleagues at the University of Michigan, Igor Markov and Jarrod Roy, unveiled a new form of the technology called “EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits" at the IEEE Design Automation and Test Conference in Europe.

Hardware makers have tried a number of approaches to safeguard designers' IP. But safeguarding individual ICs – and not IPs – is the unique aspect and contribution of Koushanfar’s work.

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Keywords: Microchip Fingerprints, Out Chip Pirates, Koushanfar, Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), watermarks, DSP, EPIC: Ending Piracy of Integrated Circuits

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Labels: Computer-Science

Computers may soon provide people with a way to sense the texture of objects or feel how they fit together, thanks to a haptic, or touch-based, interface developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The device developed by Ralph Hollis, research professor in Carnegie Mellon's 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.

The field of haptic research and development is expanding rapidly. Carnegie Mellon's research opens new possibilities by joining the world of haptic feedback with a comfortable magnetic levitation interface.

The system eliminates the bulky links, cables and general mechanical complexity of other haptic devices on the market today in favor of a single lightweight moving part that floats on magnetic fields.

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Keywords: Magnetic Levitation, Sense of Touch, orientation, flotor's electrical coils, haptic feedback, bowl-shaped device, Carnegie Mellon University, Hong Tan, Ralph Hollis.

Labels: Bio-engineering, Computer-Science

In the future your face, and not hands, will do the work. Breakthroughs in computerized facial expression and voice recognition technology are heralding a new era in communications that requires virtually no physical exertion whatsoever – not the click of a mouse or the tap-tap-tap of a keyboard. It'll save space on your desk and could put an end the ache of carpal tunnel syndrome. It will be a godsend for people with severe arthritis in their hands and arms. Like the voice command technology used in cars to keep drivers' hands on the steering wheel, much of this computerized communication is coming down the pipe in bits and pieces.

Technology for computerized facial recognition is ten times more accurate now than it was four years ago, and the best of the systems outperform humans, the National Institute of Standards said almost a year back.

Its facial-recognition test has compared vendor systems on in their ability to recognize high-resolution still images and three-dimensional facial images, under both controlled and uncontrolled illumination. According to the NIST report issued in late March 2007, the facial recognition systems it tested in the trials showed an “order of magnitude,” or tenfold, improvement over comparable tests conducted four years ago.

A new facial-recognition algorithm created by researchers at the University of California at Berkeley and University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is able to recognize faces with 90-95 percent accuracy, even if the eyes, nose and mouth are obscured

Reaffirming these trends, a number of consumer products today are coming out with visual recognition capabilities. Some of the new Toshiba laptops such as Portege M800, Satellite M300 and A300 recognize your face. A bunch of researchers from Tel Aviv University have even managed to successfully 'teach' a computer how to spot an attractive woman. Wow!

Voice recognition is making rapid strides too

Yahoo has released a new application that allows users to search the web with voice commands. The feature is part of oneSearch version 2, due to be released during the summer. However, the company is offering BlackBerry users an early peek of the voice recognition technology at m.yahoo.com/voice.

Mac users now have the option to use voice recognition tech too, thanks to MacSpeech Dictate.

Products such as Nuance voicemail to text make the transformation of voice and text messages easy and at the same time lets one access, sort, forward and archive their messages. The voicemail transformed texts are compatible with all standard message media. So that's voice recognition transforming the way you read email!

It's early days yet for facial and voice recognition systems. Sure, there are still lots of promises that face recognition and voice recognition systems are yet to deliver on, but the current status is, some elements of these technologies are poised for greatness even when still in the prototype stage, and some are already available to consumers and work just fine.

You can look forward to a future that involves a lot less using your fingers to type and a lot more using your face to talk and communicate.

Here are some more interesting resources for computerized facial & voice recognition, for those whose curiosity is never satisfied easily!
The Mathematics of Face Recognition
The Year Consumer Voice Recognition Gains Momentum

Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering, Industrial-Engineering

In an ultrahigh-vacuum chamber at Swinburne University of Technology, a million ultracold rubidium-87 atoms hover just beneath the surface of a silicon chip coated with a thin magneto-optical film.

Tailored to create a shaped, perpendicular magnetic field, the magnetic film confines and shepherds the rubidium atoms on the chip, in much the same way as electrons are guided along conducting wires on an electronic microchip.

Cooled to a temperature of a few billionths of a degree Kelvin, just above absolute zero (minus 273˚C), and confined by a magnetic microtrap on the chip, the ultracold atoms fall into the lowest energy state of the trap and no longer jostle for room – they exhibit almost no random thermal motion.

The atoms condense to a state where they behave as a single super-atom of rubidium-87 and exhibit coherent, wave-like properties – rather like the coherent light from a laser. For several seconds, the chip holds the atoms in an exotic, fifth state of matter called a Bose–Einstein condensate.

If all this sounds ‘sci-fi’ it’s because in many ways it is. Bose–Einstein condensate is a new frontier whose boundaries have yet to be measured, but are more than likely to take humankind to new realms of technological and industrial capability.

Just as the first lasers mystified scientists as to their possible applications, so too now with Bose–Einstein condensate. In theory, they could at the very least be the basis for quantum computing – that is, computers able to use atoms to store data and complete in seconds computations that would take today’s most powerful supercomputers years.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

Accenture exec says eight trends will change the data center – storage and all. Every five years, Kishore Swaminathan, chief scientist at global services outfit Accenture, confers with colleagues on the key factors driving IT for the next three to five years. These are the trends the firm will use to guide product and service investments, marketing, training, and other activities.
This year's findings have a number of implications for storage managers -- and the higher up you are, the more you'll be affected.

"Broadly, the conclusions are that the role of the CIO is about to change fairly dramatically," says Swaminathan.

Indeed, Accenture predicts a shakeup in IT that could profoundly change the nature of jobs in and around the data center. To understand what's predicted requires a look at the eight top trends Accenture has defined. Following, in no particular order, are the factors Swaminathan says will shape IT for the next five years, along with the impact they'll have on the CIO's job and the implications for storage networking:

Trend No. 1: Cloud computing
Trend No. 2: Shadow IT. The capabilities of open-source software, along with widgets and mashup solutions, are allowing corporate employees to set up applications without IT at an unprecedented rate.
Trend No. 3: Enterprise Intelligence
Trend No. 4: Continuous user connectivity
Trend No. 5: Social computing
Trend No. 6: User-generated content
Trend No. 7: Software development revised
Trend No. 8: Green computing

A lot of these trends point to futures that may not happen for many companies. But in larger enterprises, Swaminathan thinks they will have an impact on CIOs in a number of ways

Where is storage in all this? "Hardware is going more and more toward scale, to the point where it won't be economical for anyone to run a small data center," Swaminathan says. Ecosystem cloud suppliers will buy storage in bulk and squeeze storage manufacturers for better deals.

It makes sense for big storage suppliers to start their own ecosystem clouds, compete with applications like document management.

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Labels: Computer-Science

“Security experts warn that as supply chains become more global and more opaque, no one can be sure what parts are going into the computers that run, well, everything from air traffic control towers to banks to weapon systems,” Popular Mechanics says. In an article, “The Manchurian Chip,” Glenn Derene and Joe Pappalardo outline in detail the possible dangers.

“Individuals, companies and federal agencies could all be at risk from foreign governments or criminal enterprises,” they write. “A computer chip built with a subtle error might allow an identity-theft ring to hack past the encryption used to connect customers with their banks.”
In addition, they say, flash memory hidden in a corporation’s printers could capture an image of every document produced and send it on to people who should not have it.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Safety, Society

A European consortium has drafted a roadmap for the future of sound and music computing (SMC), which provides the core technologies for the burgeoning electronic music industry

Drawing on inspiration from hard sciences like physics and engineering, social sciences like psychology and musicology, and the creative arts, digital musical instruments, CDs, MP3s and other innovative ICTs owe a great debt to SMC.

According to Nicola Bernardini, who coordinated the two-year IST-funded project, SMC research is behind the music industry as we know it today. With the appropriate guidance - the ambition of the S2S² roadmap - Europe could be in a position to secure leadership in this field.

Commercial music today is largely produced using computing and technology as a 'surrogate' for the real thing because using real instruments, learning to play them – or paying someone else to play them – can be expensive and time-consuming.

But this is a rather narrow view of the sector, said Bernardini. "With our roadmap, we wanted to show what SMC can be (and has already been) in research terms. [Music is] not only an economic lever but good for social cohesion."

Five key challenges have been identified:

1. Design better sound objects and environments (improving the sounds produced by objects present in our environment to enhance their emotional character).
2. Understand, model and improve human interaction with sound and music.
3. Train multidisciplinary researchers in a multicultural society.
4. Improve knowledge transfer.
5. Address social concerns.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Design-Engineering

A team of physicists and engineers has demonstrated exquisite control of single particles of light -- photons -- on a silicon chip to make a major advance towards the long sought after goal of a super-powerful quantum computer.

Dr Jeremy O'Brien, his PhD student Alberto Politi, and their colleagues at Bristol University have demonstrated the world's smallest optical controlled-NOT gate -- the building block of a quantum computer.

The team were able to fabricate their controlled-NOT gate from silica wave-guides on a silicon chip, resulting in a miniaturised device and high-performance operation.

"This is a crucial step towards a future optical quantum computer, as well as other quantum technologies based on photons," said Dr O'Brien

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

The silicon chip, which has supplied several decades’ worth of remarkable increases in computing power and speed, looks unlikely to be capable of sustaining this pace for more than another decade – in fact, in a plenary talk at the conference, Suman Datta of Pennsylvania State University, USA, gives the conventional silicon chip no longer than four years left to run.

As silicon computer circuitry gets ever smaller in the quest to pack more components into smaller areas on a chip, eventually the miniaturized electronic devices are undermined by fundamental physical limits. They start to become leaky, making them incapable of holding onto digital information. So if the steady increases in computing capability that we have come to take for granted are to continue, some new technology will have to take over from silicon.

Replacing the chip with carbon nanotubes

Carbon nanotubes, discovered in 1991, are tubes of pure carbon just a few nanometres wide – about the width of a typical protein molecule, and tens of thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Because they conduct electricity, they have been proposed as ready-made molecular-scale wires for making electronic circuitry.

Some nanotubes behave as semiconductors, like silicon; others carry electric currents like metal wires. Already, fundamental elements of computer circuits such as transistors have been made from individual carbon nanotubes.


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Labels: Computer-Science

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Labels: Computer-Science, Physics

In the scientific campaign to build intelligent machines, soccer is the new chess. Just as Carnegie Mellon University produced the prototype computer that eventually checkmated World Champion Garry Kasparov in 1997, it now leads efforts to create robots that will defeat the world's best 11-man squad on grass by 2050.

There's serious science behind this. If robots are going to fight forest fires or build skyscrapers, they first have to learn how to work as a team -- on their own, under pressure, when every second counts.

CMU's small robot squad, four-time world champions, astounds Eric Horvitz, president of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence.

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Labels: Computer-Science

It's the worst nightmare of the remote-control age - German scientists claim to have cracked the code of the electronic blipper that locks and unlocks cars and garage doors. The team from Ruhr University says it is now relatively straightforward to clone the remote control devices that act as the electronic keys.

The scientists say they have overcome the KeeLoq security system, which is made by US-based Microchip Technology and is used by Honda, Toyota, Volvo, Volkswagen and other manufacturers to transmit access codes using radio frequency identification technology.
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The revelation caused consternation among the car makers. If the claims are correct, it could pose a major headache for the car companies, whose keyless entry systems are becoming increasingly more common in their high-end marques.

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Labels: Computer-Science, Safety

Scientists claim to have developed a music storage format that uses the absolute least amount of data needed to reproduce a piece of music.

By virtually modelling the interactions between a clarinet and clarinet player, researchers have digitally reproduced a 20-second instrumental solo in a file nearly 1,000 times smaller than a regular MP3 file.

"This is essentially a human-scale system of reproducing music," said Mark Bocko, professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Rochester and co-creator of the technology.

In developing the format, researchers built a computer model of the clarinet based on measurements of every aspect of the instrument that affects its sound: from the back-pressure in the mouthpiece for every different fingering, to the way sound radiates from the instrument.

The team then created a virtual clarinet player by modeling the interactions between the musician and instrument, including the fingerings, the force of breath, and the pressure of the player's lips to determine how they would affect the response of the virtual clarinet.

Then it was a matter of letting the computer "listen" to a real clarinet performance to infer and record the various actions required to create a specific sound. The original sound is then reproduced by feeding the record of the player's actions back into the computer model.

While they have not yet achieved a flawless reproduction of an original performance on the clarinet, the researchers expect their finish line to be not far away.

"Maybe the future of music recording lies in reproducing performers and not recording them," Bocko said.

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Labels: Computer-Science

Remote hi-tech outposts where computers are housed in 'server farms' and powered by wind and solar energy could slash the carbon footprint of business-related IT, a Cambridge computer guru believes.

Professor Andy Hopper, who heads up the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, said it was the belief "that we can help save the planet and provide a sustainable future for generations to come" that was driving exciting new research at the Computer Laboratory. He said: "Computing power can be moved around the world and can be done anywhere in the world where the energy is available."

Professor Hopper said that the energy needed to power computers was extre