Aberystwyth University researcher Stephen Pugh has developed a picture-taking robot designed to look for signs of life on Mars. Pugh is fine-tuning the robot’s onboard panoramic cameras and teaching it to point and shoot at features on the planet’s surface. “I have been looking in particular at how the robotic rover can point its camera at specific targets, such as rocks, without human intervention,” he says. The research’s long-term goal is to increase scientific data for all future planetary missions. “NASA has already found evidence of ice on Mars, but I don’t think rover will find evidence of anything more than water because if it was there I think we would have found it by now,” Pugh says. The researcher is developing software that will enable the robot to discover locations of interest more quickly and to choose targets for pictures by itself, without communicating with scientists on Earth.
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Researchers remain optimistic about the prospect of keeping track of the exaflood of data, from gene sequences and distant pulsar signals to YouTube videos and email. During the recent annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, one session gave scientists and other academics an opportunity to learn more about some current strategies for storing data and using it productively. University of California at San Diego professor Larry Smarr demonstrated how genetic sequences from ocean bacteria can be coupled with environmental information about the organisms. Smarr said researchers were able to target specific gene sequences, annotated with helpful information. Meanwhile, Google researcher Hal Varian said the company’s Google Insights for Search analytical tools used information on individual searches for Toyota automobiles to accurately predict its sales volume.
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Queensland University of Technology (QUT) Ph.D. researcher Suriadi is investigating using an anonymous credential system, an Internet authentication system from the 1980s, to enable Web users to securely log in only once per Internet session. Suriadi says future single sign-on systems could give users access to multiple accounts–including email, bank, and shopping–but would need to provide extreme privacy to avoid hackers. He says the anonymous credential system could enhance the security and privacy of a single sign-on system. “The system works by revealing as little information about who you are as necessary for logging into an account, therefore allowing you to remain anonymous,” Suriadi says. A single sign-on system backed by the anonymous credential system requires the cooperation of business and organizations to enable it, Suriadi notes.
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The flagging attraction of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) professions to young women is partly attributed to the geek factor, or the perception of such careers as uncool, socially isolating, and primarily geared toward males. The National Center for Women & Information Technology estimates that about 17 percent of high school girls take advanced computer science placement exams, which represents the lowest percentage of females among all such tests. Meanwhile, the number of women earning computer science degrees fell from 37 percent in 1985 to 18 percent in 2008. AT&T Labs researcher Amanda Stent says that “a movement to reclaim the notion of ‘geek’ ” is underway to reverse this trend, and she is a member of a group dedicated to encourage more young women to become passionate about science and technology. Stent stresses that engineers, technologists, and scientists often work in groups and invent community-building, societally beneficial products.
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European researchers working on the Remote EnTrusting by RUn-time Software authentication (RE-TRUST) project have proposed a solution to trusted computing that they say offers better security and authentication. RE-TRUST uses logic components on an untrusted machine to allow for remote entrusting authentication. “RE-TRUST will have a major impact on all commercial applications and solutions where security or trust is a concern, independently of whether they are based on a client-server or a peer-to-peer paradigm,” says RE-TRUST coordinator Yoram Ofek. RE-TRUST solutions could work with peer-to-peer networks to enable them to become a new trusted distribution channel. The RE-TRUST team also developed trust solutions for code mobility, reconfigurable computing for software protection, and orthogonal replacement. “All applications and solutions running over a network, such as the Internet, can benefit from the RE-TRUST approach,” Ofek says.
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Researchers at the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland have studied the characteristics of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an attempt to gain a better understanding of ordinary traffic. Security remains an issue for VoIP calls, which can be hijacked and used to send confidential information over the Internet. Wojciech Mazurczyk and colleagues decided to study ordinary VoIP calls so experts would have a way to compare and contrast regular calls with those that have been embedded with stolen data. VoIP calls can be compromised by changing the order in which the digital packets are sent, or by deliberately delaying certain packets that have embedded data, a technique known as Lost Audio Packet Steganography (LACK). The team’s research shows that packets are not normally re-ordered in a way for hiding data, so attacks that re-order data are not a real threat. However, LACK attacks would be difficult to spot because of the routine loss of data packets.
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Researchers at IBM’s laboratories in Zurich have developed a new algorithm that can sort, correlate, and analyze millions of random data sets in minutes. Without the algorithm, the analysis would have taken days for supercomputers to process, says IBM researcher Costas Bekas. He says the algorithm could be used to analyze data measuring electricity usage and air or water pollution levels. The algorithm also could be used to break down data from global financial markets. The algorithm combines models of data calibration and statistical analysis that can assess measurement models and relationships between data sets. Bekas says the algorithm, which can analyze nine terabytes of data in less than 20 minutes, makes data analysis more cost and energy efficient because it reduces the load on supercomputers.
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The Partnership for Advanced Computing in Europe’s work package for future petaflop computer technologies beyond 2010 recently assessed 12 prototypes for next-generation computer architectures. The evaluation included full systems, system components, software prototypes, and several research activities. For example, CINES and LRZ jointly evaluated a hybrid system containing both thin and fat nodes and compute accelerators within a shared file system. NCF assessed a system of ClearSpeed/PetaPath accelerator boards together with the ClearSpeed programming language. CEA looked at the performance of graphics processing units (GPUs) using CAPS hybrid multicore parallel programming. The CSC studied the maturity of OpenCL and performance improvements for multi-GPU programming on NVIDIA Tesla and AMD Firestream cards. CSCS evaluated the PGAS programming model using the Cray Compiler Environment for UPC and CAF. And EPCC evaluated the HARWEST Compiling Environment for developing programs on the FPGA-based Maxwell supercomputer.
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Researchers at the Warsaw University of Technology in Poland have studied the characteristics of voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) calls in an attempt to gain a better understanding of ordinary traffic. Security remains an issue for VoIP calls, which can be hijacked and used to send confidential information over the Internet. Wojciech Mazurczyk and colleagues decided to study ordinary VoIP calls so experts would have a way to compare and contrast regular calls with those that have been embedded with stolen data. VoIP calls can be compromised by changing the order in which the digital packets are sent, or by deliberately delaying certain packets that have embedded data, a technique known as Lost Audio Packet Steganography (LACK). The team’s research shows that packets are not normally re-ordered in a way for hiding data, so attacks that re-order data are not a real threat. However, LACK attacks would be difficult to spot because of the routine loss of data packets.

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Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) researchers have developed a system that detects the name of drugs in biomedical texts and integrates them into medical databases as well as into a prototype system that recognizes and classifies drug interactions that could be potentially dangerous to patients. Currently, there are databases to check possible interactions between drugs administered to patients, but many of these databases are not updated often enough, according to the researchers. “The biomedical literature is the best system for staying up-to-date with respect to new interactions, but each year 300,000 articles are published just within the pharmacology domain, which is an avalanche of information overwhelming medical personnel,” says UC3M professor Isabel Sequra. The researchers have developed a system capable of automatically detecting the names of drugs in biomedical texts with 90 percent accuracy. “The system we describe permits identification of drug names and their classification within drug families in scientific texts,” Sequra says. The researchers also are developing a system for extracting interactions. “We have already developed two different prototypes, one based on the use of linguistic patterns and information and a second based on techniques of automatic learning,” says UC3M’s Paloma Martinez.

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