Scientific American (12/26/08) Greenemeier, Larry
Retailers are using robots to help warehouse workers find fast-selling products more quickly. The robots, built by Kiva Systems, are programmed with maps of the warehouse they operate in, and have artificial intelligence (AI) software that uses logic to help them navigate the warehouse. The robots also have optics to read [...]

University of Wisconsin-Madison (12/17/08) Smith, Susan Lampert
University of Wisconsin-Madison psychiatrist Giulio Tononi is working with scientists from Columbia University and IBM to develop software for a thinking computer, while nanotechnology and supercomputing experts from Cornell University, Stanford University, and the University of California-Merced are developing the hardware. The collaborative effort has been awarded a $4.9 [...]

USA Today (12/30/08) P. 4A; Lawrence, Jill
U.S. President-elect Barack Obama has promised to appoint a U.S. chief technology officer (CTO), but there appears to be a disparity between the Obama transition team’s view of what the officer’s responsibilities are and what tech enthusiasts would like them to be. As defined on the transition team’s Web [...]

Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (12/30/08) Luy, Florence
Security researchers in Europe and California have discovered a vulnerability in the Internet digital certificate infrastructure that could allow attackers to forge certificates that are trusted by all common Web browsers. The weakness makes it possible to impersonate secure Web sites and email servers to perform undetectable phishing [...]

The 6th International Conference on Autonomic Computing and Communications
Barcelona, Spain, June 15–19, 2009
Sponsored by IEEE CS (Pending) and in cooperation with ACM (Pending)
http://icac2009.acis.ufl.edu/
Call for papers
SCOPE
To deal with the increasing complexity of large-scale computing systems,
computers and applications must learn to manage themselves in accordance
with high-level guidance from humans – a vision that has been referred to
as [...]

ICT Results (12/19/08)
Scientists from 15 European academic and industrial research institutions are working on the European Union-funded Pico-Inside project, which was established to develop a molecular replacement for transistors. The researchers, led by Christian Joachim of the Centre for Material Elaboration & Structural Studies at the French National Scientific Research Centre, say the use of [...]

U.S. Risks Its Standard of Living Without Boost to Research, House Science Chairman Says
Computerworld (12/18/08) Thibodeau, Patrick
U.S. Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn.), chair of the House Committee on Science and Technology, says the United States must increase basic research and development (R&D) funding or risk a decline in its standard of living. Gordon says that other [...]

ACM Urges Obama to Include Computer Science as a Core Component of Science and Math Education
AScribe Newswire (12/16/08)
ACM has released a set of recommendations supporting U.S. President-elect Barack Obama’s goal of making science and mathematics education a national priority, and urged the new administration to make computer science a critical part of the nation’s education [...]

Computerworld (12/08/08) Thibodeau, Patrick
Making supercomputing resources available to more companies could stimulate the U.S. economy by creating new jobs and products or services. The untapped economic benefits of high-performance computing (HPC) has led some U.S. universities and state governments to launch programs that provide companies with access to supercomputing systems and technical help. For example, [...]

Thieves Winning Online War, Maybe Even in Your Computer
New York Times (12/06/08) P. A1; Markoff, John
Malware continues to overcome security professionals’ efforts to defend against it. “Right now the bad guys are improving more quickly than the good guys,” says SRI International’s Patrick Lincoln. As businesses and individuals become increasingly involved in online communities, cybercriminals [...]