Microsoft Live Labs researchers have developed Pivot, a tool designed to visually organize large data sets. Pivot presents data in the form of several images accompanied by textual data. Users can zoom into the images to study individual pieces of data, or zoom out to see items grouped according to certain criteria. Data collections can contain a few images with static data attached, or they can be large and connected to a feed of changing data. Pivot is based on Microsoft’s Seadragon, software designed for manipulating large amounts of visual information. Users can make their own collections of data by converting images to the Deep Zoom format used by Seadragon, and annotate them using a format based on extensible markup language. Pivot also could provide a better way to sort through Internet search results, because users could sort through thousands of results visually, instead of just looking a list of the top 10 search results.
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Flying pixels have the potential to offer a more immersive three-dimensional (3D) viewing experience than 3D television sets, according to engineers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The engineers describe their unique 3D display, called Flyfire, as a flock of tiny aircraft carrying multicolored light-emitting diodes (LEDs). The pixels can hover in front of a viewer and form an image, but they also can change their position to add greater depth to the image. “It’s a 3D display with a dual aspect–it can show an image like a traditional display, but then those pixels can move and transform into another shape,” says MIT’s E. Roon Kang. The initial proof-of-principle experiments used quad-rotor helicopters more than 10 centimeters across, and the precise control of their altitude was within three centimeters. Kang says it could take at least five years to make a display with 1,000 or more of the small flying pixels. MIT’s Emilio Frazzoli says onboard controls and a central control system also will be needed to coordinate pixel movement.
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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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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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The number of doctorates awarded in science and engineering (S&E) fields has risen for the fourth consecutive year, according to the National Science Foundation. Last year the United States produced 29,854 doctorate degrees in S&E fields, an increase of nearly 7 percent from the previous year. Computer science doctorates led the way with a 28 percent increase to 1,452 degrees, following a double-digit increase in CS doctorates from the previous year. CS doctorates are up 79 percent since 2002 and now represent a considerable share of not only S&E doctorates but all doctorate degrees. Non-U.S. citizens have been key to the growth in CS doctorate degree production. In the mid-to-late 1990s permanent or temporary visa holders received about half of CS doctorates, but last year they accounted for 61 percent. CS doctorates to U.S. citizens rose 42 percent from 2002 to 2006, but jumped 115 percent for non-U.S. citizens over the same period.
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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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Academics and software engineers from the universities of Edinburgh, Manchester, and Southampton have established the Software Sustainability Institute (SSI), which will partner with about 30 to 40 research communities across the United Kingdom to develop ways to keep their software current and to help them develop it to meet new requirements. SSI will optimize strategies for sustaining software and provide communities with best practices for improving it for future users. “The issue at the moment is that there are no coordinated ways of sustaining important research software once it comes to the end of its funding,” says SSI director Neil Chue Hong. “The creation of the SSI will ensure that important software is sustained so that it can continue to contribute towards high quality research.”
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ETH Zurich scientists working on the FuturIcT project plan to use the world’s largest supercomputers to simulate life on Earth, including the financial system, economies, and whole societies. The ETH researchers, working under the Competence Center for Coping with Crises in Complex Socio-Economic Systems, are analyzing huge amounts of financial data to detect dangerous bubbles in stock and housing markets, potential bankruptcy cascades in networks of companies, or similar vulnerabilities in other complex networks such as communication networks or the Internet. The FutureIcT project aims to bring different kinds of research together to simulate the entire globe, including the diverse interactions of social systems and of the economy with the environment. The FutureIcT project also aims to analyze data on social, economic, and environmental processes by augmenting the results of field studies and laboratory experiments. “Such observatories would detect advance warning signs of many different kinds of emerging problems, including large-scale congestion, financial instabilities, the spreading of diseases, environmental change, resource shortages, and social conflicts,” says ETH’s Dirk Helbing.
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The fusion of high-performance computing (HPC) and high-performance data (HPD) could potentially result in the generation of robust systems that are at least one order of magnitude faster than anything the HPC community currently uses for certain applications, says San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) interim director Michael Norman. Last November, SDSC announced plans to construct Gordon, a data-intensive supercomputer that is expected to read latency-bound files at 10 times the speed and efficiency of current HPC systems with the help of flash memory solid state drives. Ultimately, Gordon will possess 245 teraflops of total compute power, 64 TB of digital random access memory, and 256 TB of flash memory. Gordon also will assist in the integration of HPC and HPD because it is designed for data-intensive predictive science as well as data-mining applications.
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University of Bath scientists have developed a biometric system for identifying people based on their nose shape. The researchers used a photographic system called PhotoFace to scan the three-dimensional shape of volunteers’ noses and used software to analyze them according to six main nose shapes. The researchers focused on the ridge profile, the nose tip, and the section between the eyes at the top of the nose. The researchers say their system offers a good recognition rate and a faster rate of image processing than whole face recognition techniques. “The technique is able to achieve a level of detail that is beyond current competing technologies and can be extended to a myriad of other applications, ranging from industrial surface inspection to cosmetics,” says University of West England professor Melvyn Smith. The researchers plan to build a larger database of noses to test the software to see if it can identify individuals from a bigger group of people or from blood relatives.
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