The European Union-funded EURACE project has developed simulation software capable of predicting interactions between large populations of different economic actors. The software uses the Flexible Large-scale Agent Modeling Environment simulation technology, which was developed for computer-generated images in movies. Each simulated agent is given individual and realistic behaviors and interactions to demonstrate how markets will evolve, which the researchers say makes the large-scale simulations better at testing new policies and potential changes in society. “The results of this research project will complement traditional economic statistics and assumptions about how economic actors react by enabling better testing of a policy’s effects on people while still on the drawing board,” says the EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media Viviane Reding. The simulations use computer-based experiments to focus on the relationships between large populations of different economic actors throughout numerous interconnected markets. This is the first time that this type of simulation technology has been applied on such a large scale using high-powered computing. By connecting hundreds of thousands of small simulated actions and reactions throughout the economy, the software can provide policy-makers with more accurate predictions of how people and the economy will react to policy changes.

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University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) researchers have developed a technique for examining networks to help identify patterns and see how connections evolve. They say the approach offers the ability to examine networks that vary over time and have multiple kinds of connections. “This method offers new potential for handling a fire hose of information, whether you’re looking at an online social network or a real-world web of people or things,” says UNC professor Peter J. Mucha. The researchers derived the new method from mathematical principles and applied it to a few example datasets, including the complete historical roll call voting record in the U.S. Senate through 2008, and a set of Facebook profiles from nearly 1,700 students at an anonymous U.S. university. The method divides a network into multiple “slices,” with each slice representing the network at one snapshot in time, or a different set of connections between the individuals within it. These slices are then combined and analyzed to identify communities.
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Oak Ridge National Laboratory researchers have developed the Knowledge Acquisition Ubiquitous Agent Infrastructure (KAUAI), a framework for gathering and analyzing data from mobile devices in the field without the need for central repositories or back-end systems, which could enable users to quickly send information directly to colleagues in control centers or bases. The researchers say KAUAI takes advantage of the increased power and functionality of the latest mobile devices, which enables them to perform computational tasks. KAUAI is a Java-based mobile agent framework that makes each mobile device a part of a distributed database that can be queried centrally or by other mobile devices. The infrastructure runs on both the standard J2SE Java Virtual Machine and a mobile JVM for Windows Mobile called CrE-ME. “Distributed solutions outperform the centralized solution in terms of speed for each query, and the speed of the distributed search depends on the amount of query-related data in the system,” the researchers write.
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An Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) study examined how appearance, motion quality, and other characteristics of computer-generated characters impact the moral and ethical decisions of their viewers. The research found that the decisions of men were strongly affected by presentational aspects of the simulated woman, while women’s decisions were not. In the study, a simulated female character, whose photorealism and motion quality were varied in four ways, presented participants with an ethical problem related to sexual conduct and marital infidelity. The changes had no significant effect on female viewers, while male viewers were much more likely to rule against the character when her visual appearance was obviously computer generated. “Although it is difficult to generalize, I think the general trend is that both men and women are more sympathetic to real human characters than to simulated human characters,” says IUPUI professor Karl F. MacDorman. The findings could impact the design of future systems created to facilitate medical decision-making and crime reenactments.
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Companies are increasingly interested in using social networking data to automatically determine users’ behavior patterns, but researchers say more work is needed to define what it takes for two people to be connected. “You don’t get to directly observe relationships, you get to observe communication events,” says Yahoo!’s Jake Hofman. Algorithms can infer different social network patterns based on the interpretation of communications events, making these certain networks more suitable for different circumstances. For example, a network based on relatively infrequent communications might work well for sharing tagged news items, while more frequent communications might work better for networks designed for sharing more intimate information. Incomplete information can throw off attempts to characterize social networks automatically, says Georgia Tech professor Eric Gilbert. Studying the structure of a network in greater detail can compensate for the problem of incomplete information, Gilbert says. Meanwhile, Microsoft’s Munmun De Choudhury says more research is needed to make algorithms able to better understand the nature of social connections.
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The European Union-funded Palette project has developed online tools that have led to new approaches to the science of education. “There are many online collaboration tools, but most of them are oriented towards enterprises, not communities,” says Palette coordinator Christine Vanoirbeek. She says the semantic Web plays a key role in the project, as it is more about intelligent Web-searching, which is based on interlinked concepts. One of the objectives of Palette was to get communities of practice to develop their own ontologies. Many of the Palette tools also exploit the advantages of Web 2.0 social networking technologies or the document-searching capabilities of the semantic Web, such as ways to east document sharing across the Internet by eliminating the need to exchange emails or open a series of applications during a collaboration. “The big challenge in the Palette project was to make these tools interoperable, so that the tools could be combined and information reused,” Vanoirbeek says.
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Louisiana State University (LSU) professors Supratik Mukhopadhyay and S.S. Iyengar have developed software that can monitor systems and use the data it collects to make decisions on what to do next. The software can sift through massive amounts of data to detect a complex event or pattern. Iyengar says a complex event might involve multiple events that take place over time, with the software comparing the current circumstances to events in the past. Each time the network takes an action, it reevaluates the situation to make the next decision. Iyengar says the software learns quickly, which makes the system as efficient as possible. The researchers’ goal is to embed the software in a computer chip so that customers can take the chip and develop their own interface. They say the system could be adapted for use in many applications, such as military procedures, golf course sprinkler systems, and the electrical power grid.
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Clear and simple visualizations of biomechanical data could improve rehabilitation after a stroke, accelerate the recovery from joint replacements, and prevent older people from falling, according to United Kingdom researchers. University of Strathclyde professor Philip Rowe is leading an initiative to develop bespoke software for capturing biomechanical data and presenting it in a way that would assist health care professionals in their effort to communicate movement information to patients. Currently, movement information is only available in graphical, tabular, or numerical form. The software would work with Strathclyde’s specialist motion analysis system and portable motion sensors. “By using animation, we can enable patients to visualize a movement, and how it affects their body,” Rowe says.
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The European Union 3Plast research consortium plans to develop sensors that can be printed onto plastic film and attached to everyday objects. The sensors are being designed to respond to changes in temperature and pressure, which would enable them to detect the movement of a finger. “The sensor is combined with an organic transistor, which strengthens the sensor signal,” says project leader Gerhard Domann. Researchers have already printed sensors onto film, and are now optimizing transistors that can amplify changes in temperature and pressure. “By providing everyday objects with information about their environment–for example, whether a person is approaching–by means of pressure and temperature sensors, we can create and market new devices that can be controlled just by pointing a finger,” Domann says. It will likely take several years to print sensors on large surfaces, he says.
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Researchers at Harvard University and Australia’s University of Queensland have designed and constructed a quantum computer capable of simulating and calculating the behavior of a molecular quantum system. The two photons that function as qubits in a quantum device are entangled, meaning that their states are linked and consistent over distance, thus augmenting the quantum computer’s ability to explore all possible solutions to a complex problem at once. The researchers tasked the computer with calculating the energy levels of the hydrogen molecule. Through simulation of the quantum forces inherent in the electrons of atomic bonds themselves, the computer’s photons accurately nailed the energy levels to within 6 parts per million. This milestone is “great, a proof of principle, more evidence that [a quantum computer] is not pie in the sky or cannot be built,” says University of California, Berkeley professor Birgitta Whaley.
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