08Feb Research Reveals How Brain Arranges Nouns
Insights into how human brains categorize objects–and their potential for human-computer interfaces as well as neuropsychiatry–have been drawn by members of Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU’s) Center for Cognitive Brain Imaging using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology. Research from CMU neuroscientists Marcel Just and Vladimir Cherkassky and computer scientists Tom Mitchell and Sandesh Aryal signals that people represent all non-human objects in terms of three dimensions, defined by Just as relating to eating, shelter, and the way the object is employed. With fMRI, the scientists discovered that objects belonging to a specific dimension induced activity in a specific region of the brain. The researchers also learned that they could anticipate which parts of the brain would be triggered by new words and that they could determine how many objects were being thought about. Just says that scientists can “identify the quantity a person is thinking about, as long as [they] instantiate it as an object.” He says the research clears a path for further enhancements in direct communications between the human brain and computers. Additional augmentations to the technology could enable people to communicate with computers by thought.
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08Feb FlashFind–Lightning-Fast Search on Mobile Devices
Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Computer Architecture and Software Technology (FIRST) have developed FlashFind, a collection of search technologies optimized for use on mobile devices. FlashFind’s tools enable full-text searching on locally stored digital data and support a variety of mobile clients, including e-readers, mobile phones, navigation systems, smartphones, and media players. The researchers say FlashFind enables users to search very large datasets and does not require network access. Beyond search, FlashFind also features tools for indoor routing, navigation, map compression, and TPEG services. FIRST developed FlashFind as part of the Future Mobile Navigation Toolkit, but it also can be used separately.
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08Feb White House Seeks Public Input on Innovation Goals
The White House has issued a request for public input on new technologies the U.S. government might pursue with research and development funds. The White House wants to offer a variety of “grand challenges” for inventors and scientists to tackle in the coming years. “The focus of this [Request for Information] is on hard, unsolved scientific or engineering challenges that will have significant economic or societal impact and address an important national priority,” the White House says. It also is asking the public how the progress of these projects should be monitored and what the appropriate roles are for the government and other stakeholders. The effort follows the administration’s open government strategy to increase citizen participation in government. The White House says it is working with Anil Dash’s nonprofit Expert Labs to “explore new ways of tapping the expertise of the American people on these grand challenges.”
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08Feb New German-Japanese Research Consortium–Quantum Computing in Isotopically Engineered Diamond
The German Research Foundation and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) are launching Quantum Computing in Isotopically Engineered Diamond, a research project designed to develop new logic devices for faster computing and secure communications. The project is coordinated by University of Stuttgart professor Fedor Jelezko and Tsukuba University professor Junichi Isoya, with contributing research from the University of Dortmund, the Technical University of Munich, the National Institute of Material Science, and the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency. The research project will combine Stuttgart’s expertise in the detection and manipulation of internal quantum states of single atoms in diamond with JST’s knowledge of synthetic diamonds and single atom doping technologies. The technology will be used for testing novel data-processing protocols.
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08Feb Chinese and Russian Universities Claim Nine of Top Ten Spots in ACM International Programming Competition for Top Tech
The top 10 rankings of the 2010 ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ACM ICPC) were dominated by five Russian teams and four Chinese teams. In first, second, third, and fourth place were Shanghai Jiaotong University, Moscow State University, National Taiwan University, and Taras Shevchenko Kiev National University, respectively. The University of Warsaw claimed eighth place, making it the only non-Russian or non-Chinese team to make the top 10. ACM President Dame Wendy Hall described the ICPC’s global nature as an exceptional instance of the association’s recent efforts to extend its technical activities, conferences, and services for the computing profession, and to acknowledge computing achievement in international areas. “By strengthening ACM’s ties in multiple regions throughout the world and raising awareness of its many benefits and resources with the public and in-country decision-makers, we can play an active role in the critical technical, educational, and social issues that surround the computing community,” she said. Hall also stressed the importance of computer science education in the international economy, citing ACM’s initiatives to help high school students, teachers, and parents better comprehend the kinds of careers that studying computer science facilitates.
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05Feb Hybrid Video Could Lighten the Search and Rescue Load
Integrating visible and infrared video could lead to more successful rescue and search missions, according to Brigham Young University’s Nathan Rasmussen, who has created a hybrid system that makes it easier to interpret video images. To calibrate feeds from visible and infrared cameras, Rasmussen filmed a grid of black wires on a white blackboard. Sending a current down the wires to heat them up enabled the infrared camera to “see” the wires. He also developed an algorithm to align the vertices of the grids and make up the differences in viewing angles. Warmer areas in natural environments picked up by the infrared camera appear magenta on the hybrid video stream. During tests, volunteers were asked to watch either the hybrid feed or the two separate visible and infrared video streams while a series of beeps was played. Both groups were able to identify objects in the footage, but the viewers of the hybrid video were more accurate in noting the number of beeps they had heard, which suggests the hybrid feed was easier to interpret.
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05Feb Interactive Board Games Will Come to Life
Queen’s University researchers have built the prototype of an interactive board game that enables users to touch tiles together or “pour” the contents of a tile onto another to make virtual villages rise up from the ground or soldiers swarm off a ship to do battle. Queen’s computer scientist Roel Vertegaal says the developers drew inspiration from the popular board game “Settlers of Catan,” in which players try to build settlements, cities, and roads that control certain resources. The researchers used blank hexagonal tiles that could serve as backgrounds for a digital projection. A computer then renders virtual board game action onto the tiles. Eventually, board games could use organic light-emitting diodes or E-Ink technologies, similar to those in ebook readers, which could turn each tile into a visual display. Such interactive board games could come to life in the next five to 10 years, Vertegaal says. Queen’s Human Media Lab also has experimented with projecting interfaces from smartphones onto three-dimensional objects such as Styrofoam.
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05Feb The Dozens of Computers That Make Modern Cars Go (and Stop)
The electronics within today’s cars are under increasing scrutiny in the wake of the recent problems reported with some Toyota vehicles. Modern cars and trucks contain as many 100 million lines of computer code, more than in some jet fighters. “It would be easy to say the modern car is a computer on wheels, but it’s more like 30 or more computers on wheels,” says SAE International’s Bruce Emaus. The on-board computers control several functions, including the brakes, cruise control, and entertainment systems. Built-in electronics, as a percentage of total vehicle costs, rose to 15 percent in 2005 from five percent in the late 1970s, and likely is higher today, reports IEEE Spectrum. Throttle-by-wire technology has replaced cables or mechanical connections. These systems are designed to protect against the kind of false signals or electronic interference that could cause sudden acceleration. Emaus says the software controlling a car’s electronics is engineered with defensive programming to prevent problems, but he acknowledges it is nearly impossible to test for every eventuality.
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05Feb Brewing Up Java Skills for the Knowledge Economy
University College Dublin’s (UCD’s) School of Computer Science and Informatics will offer a second round of Java courses to companies that do not have the time and money to train their own employees. A year ago, UCD drew approximately 500 people for its Java training program. This year, UCD will offer a week of classes in foundation and advanced Java. UCD professor John Murphy says that more than 10 participants from last year are now pursuing a master’s degree in Computer Science by Negotiated Learning, which is a pioneering concept in Ireland and allows students to choose a module from wide range of subjects, such as courses in the School of Business, for developing entrepreneurial skills. “It has brought people back into the academic fold,” Murphy says. “UCD is looking to make a contribution to the economy and this is a good way of building relationships with both individuals and organizations in the technology sector.” UCD also is considering offering training in other key technology skills.
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05Feb Madly Mapping the Universe
Researchers at Berkeley Lab’s National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center (NERSC) are designing computational tools to create maps of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). NERSC’s Julian Borrill, Radek Stompor, and Andrew Jaffe developed the Microwave Anisotropy Dataset Computational Analysis Package (MADCAP) with an emphasis on mapmaking. Mapping the CMB requires accurately accounting for the noise in the data. “To make a map it takes a special code to weigh and account for the noise in each pixel at each point in time,” Borrill says. The special code is called MADmap. Although MADmap was designed with CMB data in mind, “it was always intended to be independent of the specifics of any one experiment,” Borrill says. MADmap has been used in several different experiments, including MAXIMA, which mapped a portion of the northern sky in 1998, BOOMERANG, which circled the South Pole in 1999, and the European Space Agency’s Planck satellite. Another satellite, Herschel, carries a powerful infrared telescope, and two highly sensitive bolometers as part of the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer.
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