Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) researchers recently performed a multi-part analysis of Twitter and concluded that it is a surprisingly interconnected network and an effective way to filter information. On the MSN messenger network, the median degree of separation is six. However, on Twitter, the average path length is 4.12. Because 94 percent of Twitter users are fewer than five degrees of separation from one another, it is likely that the distance between any random user and a celebrity is even shorter on Twitter than in real life. “No matter how many followers a user has, the tweet is likely to reach [an audience of a certain size] once the user’s tweet starts spreading via retweets,” write the KAIST researchers. Earlier Twitter studies suggested that the best way to get noticed was to tweet at certain times of day. “Half of retweeting occurs within an hour, and 75 percent under a day,” according to the researchers. “What is interesting is from the second hop and on is that the retweets two hops or more away from the source are much more responsive and basically occur back to back up to five hops away.”
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U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) programs that assist specific racial and ethnic groups would be consolidated under a new proposal from the agency. According to the Obama administration’s budget recommendations for the 2011 fiscal year, the Historically Black Colleges and Universities Undergraduate Program, the Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation, and the Tribal Colleges and Universities Program would be replaced by the $103 million Comprehensive Broadening Participation of Undergraduates in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) program, which would be allotted 14 percent more in funding than the three programs currently receive. NSF director Arden L. Bement Jr. says the number of minority students majoring in the sciences was not increasing fast enough under the old approach. “Linear growth is no longer acceptable, so we have to go into geometric growth,” Bement says.
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Fraunhofer Institute for Telecommunications researchers have experimented with using visible light from commercial light-emitting diodes (LEDs) to transmit data wirelessly at speeds of up to 230 Mbit per sec. One advantage to using light to carry data over Wi-Fi or another system is that the lights are already in the room, says Fraunhofer researcher Jelena Vucic. A signal from a LED is generated by slightly flickering all the lights in unison at a rate millions of times faster than the human eye can detect. Although the bandwidth for commercial LEDs is limited to a few megahertz, Vucic’s team increased the amount tenfold by filtering out all the light except for the blue part of the spectrum. The researchers say the data rate could be doubled with some modulation adjustments.
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Malicious Systems of a Feather Flock Together

Advanced computer modeling has enabled British Petroleum (BP) to determine the best design and operating conditions for its oil refinery in Kwinana. BP teamed up with the Curtin University of Technology and the University of Newcastle to develop a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model for the refinery’s catalyst strippers, which use steam to separate hydrocarbons from the process that breaks up heavy crude oil into smaller molecular parts. A team led by Curtin’s Center of Process Systems Computations (CPSC) used the CFD model to evaluate the internal structure that impacts the interactions between gases and solids, and to determine the optimal mix of steam, catalyst, and hydrocarbons inside the stripper. CPSC director Vishnu Pareek says simulating a few seconds of real-time interaction in the catalyst stripper used to take weeks. “This project used innovative techniques to achieve realistic flow predictions with the least amount of computational effort required,” he says. BP says the CFD model will help save hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on steam usage.
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The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that few students are enrolling in computer science courses, particularly women and minorities. The BLS ranks computer application software engineering as the fourth most in-demand occupation in its Occupational Handbook for 2006-2016, largely because of the growing number of applications for emerging technologies and the increasing complexity of businesses. However, the National Science Foundation’s (NSF’s) Jan Cuny says there has been a major drop-off in the number of computer scientists entering the workforce since 2000. Since 2000, 70 percent fewer students have majored in computer science, with 80 percent fewer women entering the field, according to Computing Research Association data. Cuny says the Higher Education Research Institute reports that only 1 percent of students are majoring in computer science, and just 0.3 percent are women. University of North Carolina (UNC) at Greensboro professor Anthony Chow says that over the past eight years there has been a slight increase in women’s enrollment in computer science at the undergraduate level, but on the graduate level minority enrollment plunges to extremely small percentages. Retaining minority employees is another major problem, with nearly half of all minorities leaving technology jobs to enter other occupations, according to the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Isolation is a major factor in the drop-out rates for women and minorities, says Teresa Dahlberg, director of the Diversity in Information Technology Institute at UNC Charlotte. She also says that women are often judged more harshly than men. Cuny says NSF is focusing on information education programs intended to spark student interest in computing by demonstrating how computers can solve programs through creativity, and also is working to infuse computer science into middle school and high school curricula.

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Germany’s Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft has partnered with Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University (NTU) to establish the first interactive digital media research institute in Asia. Fraunhofer Singapore, which will be located at NTU, will focus on promoting applied research and commercial opportunities for areas such as computer graphics, computer vision, virtual reality, and augmented reality. Researchers will work directly with Fraunhofer’s Institute for Computer Graphics Research on new technologies, as well as with industry partners. NTU, Fraunhofer, and Singapore funding agencies will provide Fraunhofer Singapore with about $10 million over five years. NTU and Fraunhofer hope to have the institute up and running in the first half of 2010 with 20 scientists and researchers, and have a staff of about 50 international researchers within the next two to three years. “That they have chosen NTU as their research partner in the area of computer graphics, interactive digital media, virtual reality, and augmented reality, speaks volumes for NTU’s research and innovation culture and the strength of our engineers and scientists at NTU,” says NTU president Su Guaning. “We are delighted to partner with one of the most highly regarded computer graphics powerhouses of Europe.”

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The World Wide Web Consortium has published File API, an interface draft that Web browsers can use to better manipulate files and is part of a larger effort to provide a better foundation for interactive applications. File API defines ways browsers and Web sites can improve how they handle files, including selecting multiple files for upload, such as on photo-sharing sites or Web-based email. Other improvements govern the use of “blobs,” or packages of raw binary data such as video files. Google has supported blobs for its Gears browser plug-in as a way to separate large videos into smaller pieces so uploads can be more easily resumed if a network problem interrupts the process. A major benefit is that files are handled asynchronously, meaning the browser will not freeze while a file is being uploaded or managed, and the browser reports back on the progress of file transfers. The interface is compatible with several standards, including the drag-and-drop support in HTML5, currently in development, and the Web Workers technology that improves the way browsers perform numerous operations simultaneously. The interface also can help Web applications process and understand the contents of files. For example, the interface could allow for Web applications that automatically search through a music playlist and find the lyrics to the songs on that playlist.

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Recent advancements in supercomputer design coupled with falling prices are breaking down the barriers that have traditionally surrounded computing-intensive research, which could give ordinary users with a novel idea the opportunity to explore its potential using powerful computers. Ninety percent of the world’s 500 fastest computers use standard microprocessors, which enable supercomputers to be built much more inexpensively. “I think this says that supercomputing technology is affordable,” says Advanced Micro Devices director Margaret Lewis. “We are kind of getting away from this ivory tower.” This possibility has inspired some of the world’s top computing experts to make valuable sources of information available, with the goal of filling supercomputers with scientific data and allowing anyone in the world with a PC to access these systems. “It’s a good call to arms,” says Silicon Graphics’ Mark Barrenechea. “The technology is there. The need is there. This could exponentially increase the amount of science done across the globe.” Sharing data and supercomputing resources could allow labs to accomplish far more than was previously possible. Argonne Leadership Computing Facility director Pete Beckman says shifting science research into the cloud democratizes science. Argonne, with funding from the U.S. Department of Energy, is working on Magellan, a project to explore the creation of a cloud-computing infrastructure that scientists around the world could use. Beckman says such a system would reduce the need for smaller universities and labs to spend money on their own computing infrastructure.

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University of Arkansas researchers have developed a new method for preventing the cloning of passive radio frequency identification (RFID) tags. The method prevents the production of counterfeit tags by focusing on one or more unique physical attributes of individual tags, instead of the information stored on the tags. “It is easy to clone an RFID tag by copying the contents of its memory and applying them to a new, counterfeit tag, which can then be attached to a counterfeit product–or person, in the case of these new e-passports,” says Arkansas professor Dale R. Thompson. “What we’ve developed is an electronic fingerprinting system to prevent this from happening.” The researchers determined that all RFID tags have a unique fingerprint due to variances in radio frequency and manufacturing. By using an algorithm that repeatedly sent reader-to-tag signals, the researchers found that radio frequencies in RFID tags ranged from 903 MHz to 927 MHz, and increased in increments of 2.4 megahertz. The measurements showed that each tag had a unique minimum power response at multiple radio frequencies, and that power responses were significantly different even in same-model tags. Thompson says the different minimal responses are just one of several unique physical characteristics that enabled them to create an electronic fingerprint to identify tags with a high probability of detecting counterfeit tags.

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