The Web Scene

Inducing Innovation With Prizes

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:01:56 +0000

The successful completion of the Netflix Prize competition demonstrates that prizes are a viable mechanism for encouraging research in the computing fields, writes Harvey Mudd College professor Ran Libeskind-Hadas. In the broader computing community, the Clay Mathematics Institute now offers Millennium Prizes, which are awards of $1 million for solutions to each of seven famous open problems, such as whether P=NP. Researchers might not gear their work toward prizes, but one determined that a specific small (2 states and 3 symbols) Turing Machine is universal in 2007 to win a $25,000 prize sponsored by Wolfram Research. The history of prizes for technical innovation goes back to the early 18th century, when the British Parliament offered the Longitude Prize to encourage researchers to come with a practical method for determining a ship’s longitude. Libeskind-Hadas says the industry should consider whether certain issues could be incentivized by prizes, but also address the potential risks of such an approach to research.

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Ants Versus Worms: Computer Security Mimics Nature

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:01:19 +0000

Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) researcher Glenn Fink is working with Wake Forest University professor Errin Fulp to develop a computer security program that models itself after the defensive techniques of ants. The new anti-malware system uses itinerant digital ants to find problems in a large network. When an ant comes across something suspicious, it leaves behind a “scent trail” that draws an army of ants to the problem. The large group attracts the attention of computer users to a possible invasion. “Our idea is to deploy 3,000 different types of digital ants, each looking for evidence of a threat,” Fulp says. Rather than equipping all digital ants with the same memory-heavy defenses, the program apportions certain threats to specific digital ants. The digital ants report to a “sentinel” located at each computer, which in turn is supervised by a “sergeant” of the network. All sergeants are monitored and controlled by human users. To test the program, the researchers sent a computer worm into the system and the digital ants were able to corner the worm. PNNL has given the researchers more time to study the program. If successful, the researchers say the program would be ideal for universities, government agencies, and corporations that rely on large networks.

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Google Opens Voting on Ideas to Change the World

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 03:00:45 +0000

Google’s Project 10 to the 100th–a contest celebrating the company’s 10th anniversary–asked participants in September 2008 to submit ideas that could help change the world. Google is giving the five winners a collective $10 million to fund their projects. However, because there were more than 150,000 submissions, Google is still deliberating between 16 newly-released finalists. Google says there were many similar ideas, so the 16 finalists are idea themes rather than specific submissions. Google has posted the finalists and is asking users to vote on their favorites over the next two weeks. Their input will be considered when the five winners are selected two weeks from now. Once the winners are picked, Google will ask the individuals and teams to put together project proposals. Ideas include new public transportation technology, a news service updated by regular computer users, a genocide tracking system, and a natural crisis monitoring system. “We hoped to capture the imagination of people around the world and offer a way to bring their best ideas to fruition,” the Google Project 10^100 Team wrote in a blog post. “We were overwhelmed by the response. It took more than 3,000 Googlers in offices around the world to review the submissions.”

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Rethinking the Long Tail Theory: How to Define ‘Hits’ and ‘Niches

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:56:44 +0000

The Long Tail theory suggests that the Internet drives demand away from popular products with mass appeal and directs it to more obscure niche offerings as it eases distribution and uses cutting-edge recommendation systems, but this theory is being challenged by new Wharton School research. A paper by Wharton professor Serguei Netessine and doctoral student Tom F. Tan details their use of data from the Netflix movie rental company to investigate consumer demand for blockbusters and lesser-known films. The researchers have determined that, contrary to the Long Tail effect, mass appeal products retain their high rankings when expanding product variety and consumer demand is factored in. “There are entire companies based on the premise of the Long Tail effect that argue they will make money focusing on niche markets,” Netessine says. “Our findings show it’s very rare in business that everything is so black and white. In most situations, the answer is, ‘It depends.’ The presence of the Long Tail effect might be less universal than one may be led to believe.” The number of rated film titles at Netflix climbed from 4,470 to 17,768 between 2000 and 2005, and if this diversity is factored in so that product popularity is estimated relative to the total product variety, Wharton researchers do not uncover any proof of the Long Tail effect. Netessine says a relative analysis yields more meaning when applying the Long Tail theory to companies because it accounts for costs involved in maintaining a supply chain to meet demand for many niche products.

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Minority Students Needed in Math and Science to Combat ‘Brain Drain,’ Professors Say

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:55:08 +0000

Three mathematics and science professors called on the U.S. government to support institutional programs that have succeeded in attracting and retaining minority students during a recent Congressional briefing session. Arizona State University professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez said that most of the Hispanic and American-Indian students who participate in the university’s math and science honors program, a high school summer residential program, pursue science majors. Spelman College professor Sylvia T. Bozeman said her school’s summer programs, in addition to the recruitment, advising, and mentoring efforts of the math and science faculty, have helped to get more young black females interested in mathematics. Castillo-Chavez said the talents of U.S. citizens will need to be developed if the country is to make up for the brain drain of Chinese and Indian scientists and mathematicians who have begun to return to their home countries. He noted that institutions such as Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will not be able to produce all the math and science graduates that the U.S. needs. “We have to produce large numbers of extremely well-qualified scientists and mathematicians,” he said. “It’s not going to take place at the elite universities, but at schools with limited resources.” The mathematics-education experts also said Congress should increase spending on undergraduate scholarships and for the National Science Foundation.

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New Computing Tool Could Lead to Better Crops and Pesticides, Say Researchers

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 01:54:27 +0000

Researchers from Imperial College London (ICL) and Syngenta have developed a computational tool that uses machine learning to find complex patterns in data about the behavior of plants. The use of machine learning means agricultural researchers will be able to analyze plant biology in minutes, even if they lack certain information about the inner workings of plants. With previous mathematical modeling tools, finding nuggets of information could take months or even years. “We believe our computing tool will revolutionize agricultural research by making the process much faster than is currently possible using conventional techniques,” says ICL professor Stephen Muggleton. “We hope that our new technology will ultimately help farmers to produce hardier, longer lasting, and more nutritious crops.” The researchers are currently testing a prototype of the tool, which will help agricultural scientists predict how genes inside plants will react to different chemicals or environmental conditions. For one project, the tool will be used to analyze how different genes affect the way a tomato’s flesh hardens and tastes, and the findings could lead to new tomato strains that are tastier, or redden earlier and soften later to prevent them from spoiling when they are transported to market.

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FBI’s Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records

sparky3887 — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 00:43:22 +0000

Recently declassified documents show that the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC), a data-mining system that was proposed as a tool to track down terrorists, is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations. NSAC’s database now contains more than 1.5 billion government and private-sector records on U.S. citizens and foreigners, including tens of thousands of records from private databases, according to the declassified documents. Critics say the database is increasingly close to the Total Information Awareness system first proposed by the Pentagon following the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. The FBI is currently looking to quadruple the staff of the NSAC program. However, the proposal has been heavily criticized by privacy groups as being both invasive and ineffective, and critics say the declassified documents show that the plan is being continued in private and without sufficient oversight. NSAC contains more than 55,000 entries on customers of the Cendant Hotel chain, with entries for hotel customers whose names match those on a list the FBI provided to the company. An additional 730 records are from the Avis rental car company, which were collected through a one-time search of Avis’ database matched against the State Department’s terrorist watch list, and 165 entries are from credit card transaction histories from the Sears department store chain. An analysis of the documents shows that the FBI has continuously expanded the NSAC system since 2004, and by 2008, NSAC had 103 full-time employees and contractors. The FBI wants to add 71 additional employees and is seeking $8 million for outside contractors to help analyze the data.

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Supercomputers Often Run Outdated Software

sparky3887 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:27:45 +0000

Supercomputing experts discussed the issue of supercomputing software during a recent conference in Washington, D.C., celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Coalition for Academic Scientific Computation. Old software continues to be used to run supercomputers, and will become a problem as researchers pursue better weather models, medical simulations, and other applications on the latest supercomputers. Fortran remains a popular language for creating programs for supercomputers, and some college researchers are even patching up their old, homemade software to run their supercomputer projects. With the National Science Foundation focusing its grants more on assisting colleges with the purchase of supercomputers, some attendees said there is a lack of money to support the development of supercomputing software. Representatives from supercomputing manufacturers suggested that the market for software is too small. “It’s so hard of a problem that no one wants to touch it,” said Georgetown University’s Jess Cannata.

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UK’s Centre for Cyber-Security Opens at Queen’s

sparky3887 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:27:14 +0000

The Centre for Secure Information Technologies (CSIT) recently opened at Queen’s University Belfast. CSIT will create 80 new positions and serve as the United Kingdom’s primary center for the development of technology to fight malicious cyberattacks. The research conducted at CSIT will help prevent Internet crime and protect the security and trustworthiness of electronically stored information. CSIT is one of the first Innovation and Knowledge Centers established in the U.K. The center is backed by funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council and the Technology Strategy Board, and more than 20 organizations have committed to supporting CSIT’s work over the next five years. CSIT will unite research specialists from fields including data encryption, network security systems, wireless-enabled security systems, and intelligent video analysis. CSIT principal investigator professor John McCanny believes the new center will become globally recognized thanks to the breadth and depth of its technological capabilities, and because it represents a new international paradigm for innovation.

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Study Shows Improvements in Quality of Open Source Code

sparky3887 — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:26:30 +0000

Coverity reports that the number of defects in open source projects is on the decline. Coverity has created a Web site for analyzing the programming code of open source projects. Among the code submitted by open source projects and developers over the past three years, “defect density” has declined 16 percent and some 11,200 defects have been eliminated. Coverity assigns projects to a series of Rungs depending on how many defects they resolve. Defects in Samba, tor, OpenPAM, and Ruby discovered during Rung 1 and 2 have been resolved, and the projects have been granted top-level Rung 3 status. The Web site, which uses static analysis tools, has analyzed more than 60 million unique lines of code from 280 projects. Static analysis is often most helpful for finding “structural ‘anti-patterns’ in code, poor programming practices that can result in performance and security issues like memory leaks and buffer overflows as well as more exotic conditions like errors due to parallel execution of code in a multicore CPU environment,” says Forrester Research analyst Jeffrey Hammond.

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