Oregon State University (OSU) researchers say they have made a fundamental advance in robotics that could lead to robots that use little energy to walk and run effectively. “What we’ve done is taken a step back to analyze the fundamental dynamics of the mechanical system, what behavior is really possible for a given robotic system,” says OSU professor Jonathan Hurst. Current walking and running robots tend to be extremely rigid while moving, but this approach uses a lot of energy, which greatly reduces their value and possible real-world applications. To improve upon robot locomotion, the OSU researchers studied the gait of ostriches, which respond well to unexpected disturbances while running. The researchers plan to build the robot equivalent of the ostrich by combining spring-mass models with force-control actuators. “There are machines that can walk with no active controls at all, using barely any energy, but they fall if they run into the smallest bump,” Hurst says. “We need to use as much of that passive ability as possible and only use motors or active controls if it’s really necessary, so we can save energy in the process.”
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University of British Columbia’s (UBC’s) Steve DiPaola has uncovered a technique that he believes is responsible for making Rembrandt’s portraits so popular. DiPaola says Rembrandt may have created a technique that guides the viewer’s gaze around a portrait, creating a special narrative and calmer viewing experience. To isolate and pinpoint factors that contribute to the “magic” of Rembrandt’s portraits, DiPaola used computer-rendering programs to recreate four of the artist’s most famous portraits. DiPaola then tracked the viewer’s eye movements while they examined the original photographs and the Rembrandt-like portraits. “When viewing the Rembrandt-like portraits, viewers fixated on the detailed eye faster and stayed there for longer periods of time, resulting in calmer eye movements,” he says. The study is the first to scientifically verify the impact of these “eye guiding” techniques on viewers and to attribute its origin to Rembrandt.
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Microsoft researchers have developed Sensecam, a system for creating digital archives of a person’s experiences that could help people suffering from memory disorders. Sensecam features a small black box containing a digital camera and an accelerometer to measure movement. Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) researchers had one subject go on three excursions with a Sensecam, a voice recorder, and a global positioning system (GPS) unit. The researchers found that the best way to help the subject remember the experiences was to focus on a few key images that might unlock the memories related to it. For a location-based experience, Sensecam uses data provided by the GPS and the accelerometer to determine which images might be the most salient. “The design is intended to give the patient the ability to engage actively with the experience instead of simply flipping through some pictures,” says CMU’s Matthew Lee. At Dublin City University, Alan Smeaton compares Sensecam images to categorize them by activity. At the University of Toronto, Ronald Baecker is studying the usefulness of complementing Sensecam images with an audio narrative created by a loved one.
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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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Cornell University computer scientists have developed a method for generating the crashing and rumbling noises of objects made from thin harmonic shells such as cymbals and garbage can lids. The method, developed by professor Doug James and graduate students Jeffrey Chadwick and Steven An, will be presented at ACM’s SIGGRAPH Asia conference, which takes Dec. 16-19 in Yokohama, Japan. When a thin-shelled object falls or is struck, the metal or plastic slightly deforms and then snaps back into place, creating a vibration. Previous methods of synthesizing these noises did not account for the coupling effect that occurred when energy transfers from one vibration to another and back again, which resulted in a clean, clear sound that is more appropriate for a bell or chime. The new method accounts for this interaction and maps how the sound waves radiate to determine how the event will sound to a listener in any particular location. The researchers say that although their method is significantly faster than existing systems, the computations for a simple demonstration still take about an hour on a laptop. However, the researchers are hopeful that the simulation process can be accelerated by making some approximations. Their research is part of a larger project to synthesize various sounds, including dripping and splashing fluids, small clattering objects, and shattering glass.

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China’s National University of Defense Technology (NUDT) has unveiled the Tianhe supercomputer, the fastest supercomputer in China. Tianhe runs at 563.1 teraflops on the Linpack benchmark and is theoretically capable of petaflop performance. NUDT president Zhang Yulin says the system is expected to be used to process seismic data for oil exploration, perform bio-medical computing, and help design aerospace vehicles. If Tianhe had been operational for the most recent Top 500 list, it would have ranked as the world’s fourth-most powerful supercomputer. NUDT says that approximately 200 computer scientists worked on Tianhe over two years. The supercomputer was housed at the NUDT campus in Changsha, and is scheduled to be moved to the National Supercomputing Center in Tianjin at the end of this year. Tianhe features 6,144 Intel CPUs and 5,120 AMD GPUs. “As far as I know, a combination of CPU and GPU is something new used to make a petaflop computer,” says NUDT professor Zhou Xingming. “After it’s installed in Tianjin, we plan to add hundreds or thousands of China-made CPUs to the machine, and improve its Linpack performance to over 800 teraflops.” Tianhe also could be ranked as the world’s fifth-greenest supercomputer on the Green500 List, which is compiled by researchers at Virginia Tech to rank the world’s most energy-efficient supercomputers.

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Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) are developing the Affective Intelligent Driving Agent (AIDA), a robot that would act as a helpful companion for drivers. The robot would be capable of picking up a driver’s usual routes and regular destinations, monitoring facial expressions for signs of fatigue or agitation, using visual clues such as winking and smiling, and communicating verbally to make suggestions about alternate routes, fuel level, energy efficiency, safe behavior, and gas stations with the lowest prices. AIDA would be embedded in the dashboard and use the Internet to provide real-time information about traffic, businesses, and gas stations along the driver’s route. “With the ubiquity of sensors and mobile computers, information about our surroundings is ever abundant,” says professor Carlo Ratti, director of MIT’s SENSEable City Lab. “AIDA embodies a new effort to make sense of these great amounts of data, harnessing our personal electronic devices as tools for behavioral support.” The MIT team is working with Audi and the Volkswagen Group of America’s Electronics Research Lab on the project.

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A consortium of network researchers has received a three-year grant from the U.S. Global Environment for Network Innovations (GENI) program to develop iGENI, an international version of GENI. The GENI research initiative was launched by the U.S. National Science Foundation to create a virtual laboratory for researching and exploring future Internets at scale. Led by Northwestern University’s International Center for Advanced Research (iCAIR), the consortium includes the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at the University of Illinois at Chicago; the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology (Calit2) at the University of California, San Diego; Cisco Systems; and BBN Technologies. “The iGENI initiative will enable our consortium to extend and build on these partnerships in order to develop and implement a large-scale distributed environment for GENI researchers, and to make that environment available to many more research communities,” says iCAIR’s Joe Mambretti. IGENI will integrate multiple network resources, segments of national research and education network infrastructures, a national wide-area private network run by Cisco called C-Wave, and components of the international optical-networking Global Lambda Integrated Facility. “One of the consortium’s major strengths has been its ability to develop teams, tools, and infrastructure on an accelerated schedule,” EVL’s Maxine Brown. “Each consortium member has over a decade of experience of active involvement in international networking infrastructure, projects, and community development.”

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Intel and Numonyx recently announced a breakthrough in computer memory research that they say could eventually result in a less expensive and better-performing alternative to existing memory technologies. The two companies have been collaborating on a type of non-volatile memory called phase-change memory (PCM), and report that they have successfully stacked multiple layers of PCM arrays within a single 64 Mb die. By creating a vertically integrated memory cell composed of PCM and an ovonic threshold switch, the researchers demonstrated that it is possible to use the technologies to create chips that cost less and offer better performance and memory densities than traditional NAND flash memory. PCM could provide a better alternative to NAND because it uses significantly less voltage. While NAND uses an electrical charge to store and read memory, PCM uses heat on chalcogenide glass, the same material used in re-writable optical media. Lower voltage use enables PCM to store more memory in a single die while using less power, and at a smaller scale than is possible with NAND. However, switching to PCM may require significant changes to production processes.

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The current state of women in academia was addressed during the annual meeting of the grant recipients of the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Advance program. Advance grants have helped fund initiatives for increasing the number of female scientists and engineers, as well as creating family-friendly university policies, networking groups, and mentor programs to help schools retain them. University of Maryland-Baltimore County (UMBC) president Freeman A. Hrabowski III says it is time to focus more on the attitudes of department chairs, professors, and top administrators rather than the numbers. At UMBC, which received a $3.2 million Advance grant in 2003, 54 percent of assistant professors in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics are women. “You can’t change attitudes unless you know what people really think,” says Hrabowski. He says colleges must continue to work toward institutionalizing the effects of the Advance grants in the current economic climate. “Even when we’re cutting the budget, we have to say we really believe in this, and we’re going to keep doing it,” he says.

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