The European Union-funded Bilateral Research and Industrial Development enhancing and integrating Grid Enabled technologies (BRIDGE) program links European and Chinese computing grids to enable researchers to carry out joint research. The BRIDGE program already has produced results in drug development, aircraft design, and weather prediction. The project was inspired by China’s rapid growth in research and development. “If Europe does not want to lose ground, the response can only be to synchronize with these developments,” says BRIDGE’s Gilbert Kalb. The BRIDGE researchers say the project has created a foundation for the kind of multinational cooperation that is required to solve global problems.

View Full Article

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

Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) researchers have developed SIMulator for Business Administration (SIMBA), business simulation software that can mimic how a market behaves as companies make different business decisions. “It can be utilized from a competitive point of view since different companies can compete against each other to improve their own results,” says UC3M’s Fernando Fernandez. SIMBA uses different variables, including products, markets, client segments, technology, languages, currency, and socio-economic environments, to create a realistic simulated business environment. SIMBA also can be used as a tool for students who are studying the business world. The companies involved in a simulation can be controlled by humans or by computer programs using artificial intelligence. “This increases the complexity of the simulated market and creates the possibility of carrying out multi-player simulations, where some players are human, but where others are controlled by computer programs built by artificial intelligence techniques,” Fernandez says.

View Full Article

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

A seminar hosted by Science|Business focused on what needs to be done to make information technology (IT) more environmentally friendly. The cross-pollination of various disciplines, including computer science, economics, and psychology, was deemed crucial. Cooperation and dialogue between industry, academia, policymakers, and consumers also is essential. Another need highlighted at the seminar is the provision of more accurate and consistent predictive models, while the European Investment Bank’s Juan Alario stressed the importance of information to make financing an “enabling instrument” for green IT and energy efficiency. The European Union’s plan to solve the economic crisis has recognized three sectors–the auto industry, construction, and manufacturing–deserving of research support to enhance energy efficiency. Meanwhile, the user-friendliness of IT products must be augmented if more energy-efficient technologies are to be widely adopted. The ubiquitous proliferation of computers creates the challenge of harnessing, organizing, and absorbing all the information they collect so that it can be applied productively.

View Full Article

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

Lehigh University professors Stefan Maas and Daniel Lopresti are engaged in a study on RNA editing. Lopresti has devised RNA Editing Dataflow Systems (REDS), a program that identifies the discrepancies that take place when DNA is transcribed into RNA, and then filters out those that are not induced by RNA editing. “We then take the data we obtain from the lab and feed it to our software to improve on our predictions,” Maas says. “The more data we obtain, the more our predictions can be based on machine learning.” Lopresti has created an algorithm designed to simulate RNA folding and correlate folding structures with editing sites. “The algorithm is not perfect, but it does rank all potential editing sites based on predicted folding because of structure,” he says. Maas says that more knowledge about RNA editing could yield insights on the underlying causes for certain diseases and their possible treatments.

View Full Article

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

Studies done at Microsoft Research are using electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements to read users’ minds in order to help tag online images. The researchers say the mind-reading technique is the first step toward a hybrid human-computer data analysis system. The manual process for tagging images is often tedious and repetitive, but with the new method of EEG tagging, workers may be able to perform other tasks during the tagging process. Computers can recognize shapes and movements very well, but they have a harder time with categorizing objects in human terms, says Microsoft Research’s Desney Tan. During testing, researchers could determine if the subject was looking at a face, an animal, or an inanimate object with good results. The researchers found that no improvement was seen if the viewer was given more than half a second to look at each image. This leads researchers to think images could be displayed at that speed with no loss of accuracy.

View Full Article

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

The United States remains the world’s leader in science and technology, based on factors such as gross dollars spent, relative spending on research, research articles published, and patents granted, according to the National Science Board’s biennial report on science and engineering. The report says the U.S. accounted for nearly one third of the $1.1 trillion spent on research and development (R&D) worldwide in 2007. From 1998 to 2007, R&D spending grew between five and six percent annually in the United States, Japan, and the European Union. However, R&D spending in India, South Korea, and Taiwan grew an average of nine to 10 percent per year during that period, and Chinese spending grew by more than 20 percent per year. Out of approximately 760,000 research articles published in 2008, 25 percent were written by U.S. researchers. Chinese scientists published about eight percent of the research articles, up from one percent in 1988. U.S.-based inventors accounted for 49 percent of the patents granted in 2008, down from 55 percent in 1995.

View Full Article

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

European researchers, coordinated by the Autonomous University of Barcelona, have developed a cognitive computational system using video cameras and software, which is able to recognize and predict human behavior. Human Expressive Graphic Representation of Motion and their Evaluation in Sequences (HERMES) analyzes human behavior based on three levels of video recording sequences. The information is processed by computer vision and artificial intelligence algorithms, which allow the system to recognize movement trends. The researchers say that HERMES uses two new ideas in the field of computer vision. First, it can describe the movement captured by the cameras in natural language using simple and precise phrases. Second, the system can analyze and discover potentially unusual behavior and give off warning signals. Researchers anticipate that HERMES can be used in several different fields, especially intelligent surveillance and accident and crime prevention, as well as marketing and psychology.

View Full Article

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

A panel of experts told U.S. senators at a recent hearing of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation that the United States would be defeated in an all-out cyberwar, and reducing this vulnerability will not occur until the government takes a more active interest in safeguarding the nation’s network. Former director of national security and national intelligence Michael McConnell warned that greater government involvement may not happen until after a “catastrophic event” transpires. The focus of the hearing was the Cyber Security Act of 2009, which would oversee organizations and companies that supply critical U.S. infrastructure, mandate licensing and certification for cybersecurity professionals, and sponsor grant and scholarship programs.

View Full Article

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

A consortium of European research institutions is working on a new, photonic computing model under the aegis of the PHOCUS project. The system envisioned by the project uses light to communicate, potentially raising energy efficiency far above that of current supercomputers. The reservoir computer concept is inspired by the rapid information processing architecture of the human brain, in which stimuli or inputs are fed into neural networks or reservoirs. Inputs remain detectable in the reservoir for a certain time, and this input memory, coupled with the emerging response of the reservoir, converts the input into a large number of dynamical states of the reservoir, producing a high-dimensional state space. The researchers say that photonic systems could be employed to comprehend and eventually imitate some of the brain’s functionalities. PHOCUS’ ultimate target is photonic deployment of reservoir computing, running at high data rates, as an alternative to supercomputers for operations that require reduced size and less power consumption.

View Full Article

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

The Eindhoven University of Technology’s (TU/e’s) Knowledgeable Service Robots for Aging (KSERA) project aims to link robots and smart homes to help elderly people live better. The KSERA project is focusing on helping chronic obstructive pulmonary disease patients. Within the next three years, the project aims to complete several demonstration homes, which will be equipped with a robot and the domestic systems of a smart home. The robot will follow patients through the house, learn their habits, and warn a doctor if the patient is not doing well. In addition, the robot will provide entertainment in the form of Internet and videos. “We want to show what is possible in this area,” says KSERA project coordinator Lydia Meesters. KSERA researchers also will collaborate with the TU/e-led RoboEarth project, which aims to build a global central memory for robots that will enable them to learn from each other. Ethical issues will be given special attention. “We need to define clear limits, for the robot will continuously measure and see very private data,” Meesters says.
View Full Article
For More Information Visit: http://www.cpccci.com