05Jan Artificial Intelligence: Robots Rule When It Comes to Holiday Shopping
Scientific American (12/26/08) Greenemeier, Larry
Retailers are using robots to help warehouse workers find fast-selling products more quickly. The robots, built by Kiva Systems, are programmed with maps of the warehouse they operate in, and have artificial intelligence (AI) software that uses logic to help them navigate the warehouse. The robots also have optics to read specially placed markers on the floor. Experts say the robots, which can efficiently move shelves full of heavy inventory or clean up messes automatically, are a more accurate representation of modern AI than the humanoid robots seen in science fiction. Kiva chief scientist Peter Wurman says that retailers’ use of AI robots shows that massive, multi-robot systems are finally being used at the commercial level. Each Kiva robot can communicate wirelessly with a central computer network in a warehouse to obtain the direction to travel when needed, but the robots can mostly operate independently. “After a robot visits a pick station and the worker there takes an item from or deposits an item on the robot’s shelves, the robot will contact the central server to determine where it will go,” Wurman says. “The server will tell the robot where to take the shelves, but it will not tell the robot how to get there.” The robot determines the best route on its own using a map of the warehouse stored in its memory and navigation software to avoid colliding with shelves and other objects. “AI suffers from the fact that it’s so easy to imagine the human-level intelligence in a robot that you could interact with like you interact with people,” Wurman says. “But the AI field has made a lot of progress.”
View Article here: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=artificial-intelligence-robots-rule
05Jan About CPC Computer Consultants, Inc. - www.cpccci.com
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04Jan Cognitive Computing: Building a Machine that can Learn from Experience
University of Wisconsin-Madison (12/17/08) Smith, Susan Lampert
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychiatrist Giulio Tononi is working with scientists from Columbia University and IBM to develop software for a thinking computer, while nanotechnology and supercomputing experts from Cornell University, Stanford University, and the University of California-Merced are developing the hardware. The collaborative effort has been awarded a $4.9 million grant from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency for the first phase of DARPA’s Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics project. The goal is to create a computer capable of sorting multiple streams of changing data to find patterns and make logical decisions. The finished cognitive computer must also be no larger than the size of a small mammal’s brain and use as little power as a 100-watt light bulb. Although the project draws inspiration from the brain’s architecture and function, Tononi says that it not possible or desirable to recreate the entire structure of the brain down to the synapse level. “A lot of the work will be to determine what kinds of neurons are crucial and which ones we can do without,” he says. Value and reward systems are important, and learning is crucial because a cognitive computer must be able to learn from experience. Tononi says the artificial brain will need to be able to change as it learns from experience, and the design will most likely convey information using electrical impulses modeled after the spiking neurons found in mammal brains.
Full article here: http://www.news.wisc.edu/16085
03Jan Robert A. Rossano Miami Florida Personal Injury Lawyer
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03Jan First U.S. Technology Officer Will Have Hands Full
USA Today (12/30/08) P. 4A; Lawrence, Jill
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to appoint a U.S. chief technology officer (CTO), but there appears to be a disparity between the Obama transition team’s view of what the officer’s responsibilities are and what tech enthusiasts would like them to be. As defined on the transition team’s Web site, the U.S. CTO will ensure that federal computer networks are secure and that agencies “use best-in-class technologies and share best practices.” Others want the CTO to be an Internet evangelist who participates in every practical and policy aspect of government, accorded the same authority and influence as the White House national security adviser. Among the priorities suggested for the officer by scores of people on the maCTO.org site is making the Internet widely accessible and guaranteeing net neutrality, ensuring privacy, rethinking copyright law, and repealing the Patriot Act. Yochai Benkler of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and Society says two distinct jobs are being knotted together by the discussion of the CTO’s responsibilities: Bringing the federal technology infrastructure up to speed and developing plans across all sectors to cultivate and sustain American technological preeminence in the 21st century. “A lot of people are projecting the second onto the first because there is so much thirst for something like the second,” he says. The Obama administration has said that it is dedicated to using technology to share federal data and activities with citizens. Among Obama’s campaign promises was the online placement of video and transcripts of agency meetings and the posting of non-emergency legislation on the White House site for five days of public comment prior to signing. Of more immediate concern to the tech community are issues such as the provision of broadband to U.S. citizens and U.S. households without Internet access.
31Dec Experts Uncover Weakness in Internet Security
Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (12/30/08) Luy, Florence
Security researchers in Europe and California have discovered a vulnerability in the Internet digital certificate infrastructure that could allow attackers to forge certificates that are trusted by all common Web browsers. The weakness makes it possible to impersonate secure Web sites and email servers to perform undetectable phishing attacks. Whenever a small padlock appears in a browser window, the Web site being visited is secured using a digital certificate from a Certification Authority (CA). To ensure the certificate is authentic, the browser verifies the signature using cryptographic algorithms. The researchers discovered that one of these algorithms, known as MD5, can be misused. The first known flaw in the MD5 algorithm was presented in 2004 at the annual Crypto cryptography conference by Chinese researchers, who performed a collision attack and created two different messages with the same digital signature. The initial attack was severely limited, but a much stronger collision attack has been found by the European and California researchers. The new method proves it is possible to create a rogue CA that is trusted by all major Web browsers. A rogue CA, combined with a known vulnerability in the Domain Name System protocol, could allow attackers to launch virtually undetectable phishing attacks. The researchers say MD5 can no longer be trusted as a secure cryptographic algorithm for use in digital signatures and certificates. Arjen Lenstra, head of EPFL’s Laboratory for Cryptologic Algorithms, says the developers of the major Internet browsers have been informed of the vulnerability.
29Dec The 6th International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communications
The 6th International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communications
Barcelona, Spain, June 15–19, 2009
Sponsored by IEEE CS (Pending) and in cooperation with ACM (Pending)
Call for papers
SCOPE
To deal with the increasing complexity of large-scale computing systems,
computers and applications must learn to manage themselves in accordance
with high-level guidance from humans – a vision that has been referred to
as autonomic computing. Meeting the grand challenges of autonomic computing
requires scientific and technological advances in a wide variety of fields,
as well as new software and system architectures that support the effective
integration of the constituent technologies. The purpose of the 6th
International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communications (ICAC-09)
is to bring together researchers and practitioners addressing all aspects of
self-management in computing systems and applications. In doing so, we hope
to further build and nurture a community that can work together to realize
the vision of large-scale self-managing systems. The conference builds on
previous highly influential meetings in New York, Seattle, Dublin,
Jacksonville and Chicago.
Papers are solicited on a broad array of topics of relevance to autonomic
computing, particularly those that bear on connections and relationships
among different areas of research or report on prototype systems or
experiences. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
* Autonomic computing systems or prototype systems that exhibit
self-monitoring, self-configuration, self-optimization, self-healing,
and/or self-protection.
* Fundamental science of self-managing systems: understanding,
controlling, or exploiting emergent behavior, fault-tolerance, machine
learning, control theory, predictive methods and their use to automate
manual operations and enforce behavior.
* Software engineering principles and architectures for self-managing
systems, based on interoperable Grid Services, agent-based systems,
Web Services, model-based systems or novel paradigms such as biological,
economic or social.
* System-level technologies, middleware or services that entail
interactions among two or more components of self-managing systems in
standalone, distributed, cluster, and Grid computing environments (e.g.,
health monitoring, dependency analysis, problem localization or
remediation, workload management, and provisioning).
* Toolkits, environments, models, languages, runtime and compiler
technologies for building self-managing components, systems or
applications.
* Specific self-managing components, such as server, storage, network,
data center or specific application elements. Emphasis should be placed
on techniques or lessons that may generalize to other components.
* Management topics, such as specification and modeling of service-level
agreements, negotiation/conversation support, behavior enforcement,
etc., tie in with IT governance, and interaction with legacy systems.
* Interfaces to autonomic systems, including user interfaces, interfaces
for monitoring and controlling behavior, techniques for defining,
distributing, and understanding policies.
* Experiences with autonomic system or component prototypes: measurements,
evaluations, or analyses of system behavior, user studies, experiences
with large-scale deployments of self-managing systems or applications.
* Applications of autonomics to real and complex problems in science,
engineering, business and society.
PAPER/POSTER SUBMISSIONS AND PUBLICATION
Full papers (a maximum of 10 pages in length) and posters (2 pages) are invited
on a wide variety of topics relating to autonomic computing as indicated above.
All manuscripts will be reviewed and judged on merits including correctness,
originality, technical strength, quality of presentation, and relevance to the
conference themes. Submitted papers must include original work, and may not be
under consideration for another conference or journal. They should also not be
under review or be submitted to another forum during the ICAC-09 review process.
Authors should submit full papers or posters electronically (PDF or postscript)
via EDAS using the link on the ICAC-09 conference web site. Formatting
instructions will also be posted at the web site. Accepted papers and posters
will appear in proceedings published by ACM (to be confirmed), which will be
distributed at the conference. Authors of accepted papers/poster are expected
to present their work at the conference.
WORKSHOPS, DEMONSTRATIONS AND EXHIBITION
ICAC-09 welcomes proposals for co-located workshops on specific topics of
general interest to the autonomic computing community. Workshops are expected
to publish proceedings, and should cover areas that may not be properly
addressed in the main scientific program. ICAC-09 will also feature a
demonstration and exhibition session consisting of prototypes and technology
artifacts such as demonstrating autonomic software or autonomic computing
principles. Entries will be judged by a separate subcommittee led by the
demo/exhibit chair.
INDUSTRY SESSION
A singular value of ICAC is the confluence of top researchers and practitioners
from both academia and industry. ICAC-09 will provide a readout of various
technologies currently in play from product perspectives. Among the areas to be
addressed are core enablers for autonomic capabilities to be realized, such as
frameworks, protocols and autonomic engines in production systems. The industry
session also will address current areas of difficulty that present direct
opportunities for both academic and corporate research. Topics will be relevant
to entrepreneurs, product developers, architects, managers, marketers and end
users. Papers and posters reflecting such industry perspectives are especially
encouraged and can be submitted as described above.
STUDENT AWARDS
A student best paper award will be presented, consisting of a commemorative
plaque, complimentary student registration to the conference and an honorarium
that will partially cover travel & hotel costs. (A student paper is defined as
one in which the principal (not sole) author is a student.) The student will be
required to present the paper to receive the award.
IMPORTANT DATES
Workshop proposals: September 25, 2008
Full paper submission: 11:59 EST, January 19, 2009
Author notification: March 9, 2009
Hot Topics submission: 11:59 EST, March 20, 2009
Demo/Exhibit proposals: March 20, 2009
Final manuscripts due: April 06, 2009
ORGANISATION
GENERAL CO-CHAIRS
Simon Dobson, UCD Dublin, IE
John Strassner, Waterford Inst. Of Tech., IE
STEERING COMMITTEE
Simon Dobson, UCD Dublin, IE
José Fortes Univ. of Florida, US
Salim Hariri, Univ. of Arizona, US
Jeffrey Kephart, IBM Research, US
Manish Parashar, Rutgers Univ., US
Brent Miller, IBM, US
Karsten Schwan, Georgia Tech, US
John Strassner, Waterford Inst. Of Tech., IE
John Wilkes, Google, US
Mazin Yousif, Avirtec, US
PROGRAMME CO-CHAIRS
Manish Parashar, Rutgers Univ., US
Onn Shehory, IBM Research Haifa, IL
PROGRAMME COMMITTEE
The ICAC 2009 programming committee is an internationally recognized group
of leading researchers covering a broad range of topics related to the
conference themes.
DEMO/EXHIBIT CHAIR
Simon Dobson, UCD Dublin, IE
John Strassner, Waterford Inst. Of Tech., IE
WORKSHOP CHAIR
Omer Rana, Cardiff Univ., UK
PUBLICITY CO-CHAIRS
Masoud Sadjadi, Florida International University, US
James Won-Ki Hong, POSTECH, South Korea
Dave Lewis, Trinity, IE
LOCAL ARRANGEMENTS CHAIR
Joan Serrat, UPC, Barcelona, ES
FINANCE/INDUSTRY CO-CHAIRS
Brent Miller, IBM Corporation, US
Michael Nunez, Sun Microsystems, US
Jose A. Lozano, Telefónica, ES
HOT TOPICS CHAIR
Fabián E. Bustamante, Northwestern Univ., US
DOCTORAL SYMPOSIUM CHAIR
Jian Zhang, Microsoft, US
Andres Quiroz Hernandes, Rutgers Univ., US
CYBER CHAIR
Ming Zhao, FL Intl. Univ., US
SPONSORS (PENDING)
IEEE Computer Society and ACM
INFORMATION
WWW: www.autonomic-conference.org
E-mail: icac@autonomic-conference.org
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20Dec Computing in a Molecule
ICT Results (12/19/08)
Scientists from 15 European academic and industrial research institutions are working on the European Union-funded Pico-Inside project, which was established to develop a molecular replacement for transistors. The researchers, led by Christian Joachim of the Centre for Material Elaboration & Structural Studies at the French National Scientific Research Centre, say the use of molecular-sized computer components could lead to atomic-scale computing. Joachim notes that nanotechnology focuses on shrinking parts down to the smallest size possible, while the Pico-Inside team is working from the opposite end by starting with the atom and determining if such a small bit of matter can be used to create a logic gate, memory source, or other component. “The question we have asked ourselves is how many atoms does it take to build a computer?” he says. “That is something we cannot answer at present, but we are getting a better idea about it.” So far, the researchers have designed a logic gate with 30 atoms that performs the same task as 14 transistors. The researchers also have explored the architecture, technology, and chemistry needed to achieve computing at the molecular scale and to interconnect molecules. Project researchers have focused on two architectures, one that mimics the classical design of a logic gate, and another, more complex process that relies on changes to the molecule’s conformation to execute logic-gate inputs and quantum mechanics to perform the computation.
For more information, please visit:
http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm/section/news/tpl/article/BrowsingType/Features/ID/90295
