The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance has awarded a Sustainable Vision Grant to a Georgia Institute of Technology research team to migrate its ad hoc, infrastructure-free wireless communications network to the marketplace. The network, called LifeNet, lets one person share network connectivity with others through their computer and is particularly critical for supplying instant communications connectivity in post-disaster scenarios or in rural and developing areas. LifeNet consists of consumer electronic devices, such as laptops or smartphones, with each device serving as a host and a router at the same time. LifeNet can support incremental expansion or shrinkage by enabling any user to connect and disconnect from the network at will, and it covers areas ranging from a few hundred meters to a few kilometers in diameter. In addition, all devices throughout a LifeNet network can access the Internet if just a single device is connected. LifeNet will next undergo rigorous testing and implementation.
View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Australia recently unveiled the Sun Constellation, a 140 teraflop machine that will be the country’s most powerful supercomputer. The $15 million Sun Constellation, which ranks among the world’s top 40 supercomputers, has 180 Sun Blade x6275 Server Modules implemented in two computer racks, but there are plans to expand to 14 racks by the end of 2009. The total system leverages the Sun Lustre Storage System and the Sun Datacenter InfiniBand Switch 648. The Sun Constellation also has an energy consumption rate of 604 kilowatts. The National Computational Infrastructure (NCI) will operate the supercomputer, which will be housed at the Australian National University (ANU). The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, ANU, the Australian government, and other partners will use the supercomputer for research projects, such as computational chemistry, nanotechnology, astronomy, photonics, medicine, and environmental science. Australia also has plans to introduce a 1 petaflop or 2 petaflops next-generation machine in 2011. “Australia’s now back in business in the high-performance computing league,” says NCI director Lindsay Botten.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Web experts are developing technologies capable of tracking online conversations in real time, even when those conversations are distributed across the Web. For example, popular videos and articles often get re-posted and discussed on hundreds of sites, and the creators of that content may want to be able to follow those discussions. In response, new Web protocols have been developed that provide notifications when new content is available. One protocol, pubsubhubbub, can push content out to feed readers as it is updated. Another, Salmon, enables comments to “swim upstream” to connect to the original post. In a keynote address at the recent Defrag 2009 technology conference, speaker Kevin Marks said that these types of technologies are needed for today’s Web, where content rapidly flows from one site to another. Gathering this distributed content and related discussions could be critical for people who want to participate in the conversation that surrounds the content they post online, particularly because people are increasingly likely to discuss and interact with content away from the site it was originally posted, according to PostRank chief technology officer Ilya Grigorik. For protocols like Salmon to work, they would have to be adopted by both content publishers and services that may subscribe, distribute, or discuss that content. When new content appears, the publisher could use pubsubhubbub to notify subscribers, who would use Salmon to send back any information or discussions to the publisher.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Researchers from IBM’s Almaden Research Center and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have performed a computer simulation that matches the scale and complexity of a cat’s brain, while researchers from IBM and Stanford University say they have developed an algorithm for mapping the human brain in unprecedented detail. The researchers say these efforts could help build a computer that replicates the complexity of the human brain. In the first project, an IBM supercomputer at the Lawrence Livermore Lab was used to model the movement of data through a structure with 1 billion neurons and 10 trillion synapses, enabling researchers to observe how information “percolates” through a system similar to a feline cerebral cortex. The research is part of IBM project manager Dharmendra Modha’s efforts to design a new computer by first better understanding how the brain works. “The brain has awe-inspiring capabilities,” Modha says. “It can react or interact with complex, real-world environments, in a context-dependent way. And yet it consumes less power than a light bulb and it occupies less space than a two-liter bottle of soda.” Modha says a major difference between the brain and traditional computers is that current computer are designed on a model that differentiates between processing and storing data, which can lead to a lag in updating information. However, the brain can integrate and react to a constant stream of sights, sounds, and sensory information. Modha imagines a cognitive computer capable of analyzing a constant stream of information from global trading floors, banking institutions, and real estate markets to identify key trends and their consequences; or a computer capable of evaluating pollution using real-time sensors from around the world.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

Researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) have developed a facial biometrics system based on individual models. UC3M study author David Delgado Gomez says the objective is to create a model for each person that highlights the most distinguishing features on each face. Delgado says one way to describe a person is through traits that other people do not have, and their new system aims to apply that approach to an algorithm. The researchers say the most complicated part is combining facial geometry and facial texture. “With only the geometric information, very low classifications are obtained, which is why we combine this information with that of facial texture to obtain a more robust model, and a statistical way of combining them occurred to us, which offered very good results,” Delgado says. The researchers have shown that when their system is used in a controlled environment it can achieve 95 percent accuracy. The biggest challenge to facial-recognition systems is lighting, which can change the color of a person’s face. Aging also is a challenge as people’s faces can become heavier, thinner, or more wrinkled.

View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

China has rocketed back into the top ranks of scientific research by being free from the social and legal hindrances common in the West and due to its investment of billions of dollars. Nearly every Chinese ministry boasts a program to gain a technological lead of some sort, and in May a Chinese supercomputer was named the second fastest machine in the world at an international conference in Germany. China also is only second to the United States in the number of research articles published in scientific and technical journals worldwide. Many top Chinese scientific institutes appear to be insulating themselves from bureaucratic interference, which has raised ethical concerns about the research they are conducting. Among the challenges China faces is a weak innovation framework and unrealistic bureaucrat-driven mandates to produce discoveries. Another troubling fact is China’s status as the leading source of “junk” patents, while plagiarism and doctored results abound. China’s growing competitiveness is causing U.S. experts to question the practice of opening research institutions to Chinese students. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation officials also claim that China is running a large U.S.-based espionage operation to steal the country’s industrial, military, technological, and scientific secrets.
View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

A new system developed by researchers at Australian National University (ANU) uses quantum memory for light more efficiently than similar storage devices. The researchers used a technique they pioneered to stop and control light from a laser, which enabled them to manipulate electrons in a crystal cooled to -270 degrees Celsius. The level of efficiency and accuracy allows the quantum nature of light to be stored, manipulated, and recalled. “Light entering the crystal is slowed all the way to a stop, where it remains until we let it go again,” says lead researcher Morgan Hedges. “When we do let it go, we get out essentially everything that went in as a three-dimensional hologram, accurate right down to the last photon.” The inherent uncertainty in quantum mechanics means some of the information in this light will be lost the moment it is measured. The system is perfect for secure communication because the information could only be read once. The team plans to focus on improving storage times by experimenting with a technique that halted light in a crystal for over a second, which is more than 1,000 times longer than was previously possible.
View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

The emerging field of magnonics is attracting researchers because of its possible role in the development of transistorless logic circuits, and researchers are investigating how to use spin wave phenomena to make logic circuits. Unlike CMOS logic circuits, which use electric current to store and transfer data, magnonic logic circuits use spin waves propagating in magnetic waveguides. By avoiding electric currents, magnonic logic circuits have the potential to enable more efficient data transfer and enhanced logic functionality, including parallel data processing. Magnonic logic circuits can encode a bit of information through either the amplitude or the phase of the spin wave. Although the amplitude-encoding approach has benefits, including low power consumption due to the low energy of the spin wave signal, the phase-encoding approach is more promising, according to University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) researchers. “The greatest potential advantage of magnonic logic circuits is the ability to process information in parallel on different frequencies, which is not possible for CMOS-based logic,” says UCLA researcher Alexander Khitun.
View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com

U.S. President Barack Obama today will sign a memorandum that makes 500 megahertz of wireless spectrum, currently controlled by the federal government and private companies, available for auction. The memorandum is part of an administration effort to nearly double the wireless communications spectrum available for commercial use over the next 10 years. Most of the spectrum would be designated for commercial use in mobile broadband and similar applications, and proceeds from the auction would help finance better communications systems for public safety agencies. About 45 percent of the spectrum to be auctioned will come from federal agencies that will be asked to give up allocations that they are not using or could share. The remaining spectrum will come from unused spectrum already scheduled for auction or from broadcasters who would be offered incentives to relinquish part of their airwaves. “The administration’s strong actions on wireless broadband will move us significantly toward sustainable economic success, robust investment, and global leadership in innovation,” says Federal Communications Commission chairman Julius Genachowski.
View Full Article

For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com