The Web Scene » Data

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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Making Sense of Mountains of Data

sparky3887 — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 16:12:40 +0000

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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Professors Find Ways to Keep Heads Above ‘Exaflood’ of Data

sparky3887 — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 01:17:39 +0000

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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New Magnetic Tuning Method Enhances Data Storage

sparky3887 — Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:36:24 +0000

University of Chicago’s (UC’s) Daniel Silevitch and Thomas Rosenbaum and the London Centre for Nanotechnology’s Gabriel Aeppli have developed a method for controlling the properties of magnets that could be used to improve the storage capacity of computer hard drives. Magnets’ polarity has to easily switch when writing data to memory, but becomes more difficult to switch when storing or reading data. Magnets are normally heated and softened to save data and then cooled and hardened to store and read the data. The researchers’ method can tune the softness of data storing magnets with a small external magnetic field, which enables the writing, storage, and readout of data at an even temperature.

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K-State Computer Scientists Developing Techniques to Strengthen the Security of Information Systems for Health Care, Military Data

sparky3887 — Thu, 07 Jan 2010 00:39:36 +0000

Kansas State University (KSU) researchers, in collaboration with Princeton University (PU) computer scientists, are developing tools to secure information systems spanning large distances. The research team, led by KSU’s John Hatcliff and PU’s Andrew Appel, received a five-year, $3 million grant from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research. The new tools involve creating mathematical and logical models that can be used by special auditing programs to make sure that information systems are secure. “We’re doing foundational research on novel forms of mathematical models and logics that enable designers and analysts to precisely state what information is allowed to flow from one point to another and under what conditions,” Hatcliff says. The researchers also are working with Rockwell Collins, a company that creates communications and aviation electronics. Rockwell Collins wants to apply the KSU research to several systems currently in development at the U.S. Department of Defense. The new tools also have the potential to be integrated into the health care system for use with patients’ medical records, Hatcliff says. The researchers say the tools already have been used by several academic research groups and various industries from around the world.

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A Deluge of Data Shapes a New Era in Computing

sparky3887 — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 23:36:24 +0000

Some weeks before his disappearance at sea almost three years ago, Microsoft researcher Jim Gray delivered a speech in which he argued that computing was transforming scientific practice into a “fourth paradigm” era incarnated as a vast flood of observational data that threatens to inundate researchers. Gray contended that the only way to deal with this deluge is to build a new generation of scientific computing tools for the purpose of managing, visualizing, and analyzing the data surge. In the wake of this revelation, Gray’s colleagues at Microsoft Research have published a collection of essays written by researchers at Microsoft and elsewhere that, among other things, document a new generation of scientific tools that increasingly meld sensor and computer technology and are able to capture vast volumes of data. “The advent of inexpensive high-bandwidth sensors is transforming every field from data-poor to data-rich,” says University of Washington eScience Institute director Edward Lazowska. Meanwhile, Jeannette M. Wing with the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Computer and Information Science and Engineering Directorate, says the fourth paradigm shift is supporting a growing perspective of computer science known as computational thinking, in which scientists are being pressured to share all scientific data as a result of the data boom and the plunging cost of computing and communications. This concept dovetails with the emergent trend of cloud computing, which is espoused by companies convinced that the Internet-driven shift is toward centralized computing facilities. Science Commons director John Wilbanks writes in his chapter that “data is not sweeping away the old reality. Data is simply placing a set of burdens on the methods and the social habits we use to deal with and communicate our empiricism and our theory.”

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Super-Dense Data Stores Cool Down

sparky3887 — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 01:57:22 +0000

Super-dense “millipede”-style data storage systems could be enabled to function at room temperature with the development of a material that becomes soft when placed under pressure–a baroplastic–by engineers at Korea’s Pohang University of Science and Technology. Millipede storage systems employ a sharp needle to etch data as a series of nanoscale pits in a tough polymer surface, and they read the data back by using the same needle to feel for what has been written. Punching a hole in the polymer requires a lot of heat, which consumes so much power that probe data storage is unaffordable, says Pohang University’s Jin Kon Kim. His team designed a baroplastic that becomes soft at much lower pressure than earlier baroplastics, and they have demonstrated that the end of an atomic force microscope can etch the kind of tiny pits that store data in millipede-like systems by pressing on the new material. The probe tip also can read out the pits without altering them, through the application of lighter pressure. “The forces needed are relatively high, and this is likely to lead to tip wear issues,” says University of Exeter’s David Wright. He coordinates the pan-European Protem project, and says that the initiative has made progress with the development of new bilayer materials. “These combine a hard polymer skin just a few nanometers thick with a softer layer–for example, polystyrene–beneath,” Wright says. “It combines the softness you want [to avoid damaging the probe tip and for fast writing speeds] with the thermal stability necessary for long data lifetimes.”

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Second Life Data Offers Window Into How Trends Spread

sparky3887 — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:53:19 +0000

University of Michigan researchers are using information available through Second Life to study how “gestures,” or pieces of code that users must acquire to make their avatar perform certain motions, make their way through the online community. About half of the hand gestures the researchers studied spread through the virtual world from friend to friend, instead of everyone going to the store and obtaining gestures from the source, potentially reflecting how trends spread in the real world. “There’s been a high correspondence between the real world and virtual worlds,” says Michigan assistant professor Lada Adamic. “We’re not saying this is exactly how people share in the real world, but we believe it does have some relevance.” The researchers found that the gestures that spread from friend to friend were not as widely distributed as gestures that were distributed outside of social networks, like those sold in stores or offered as give-aways. The researchers also found that users who adopt gestures early, among the first 5 percent to 10 percent, are not necessarily influencers, or users who tend to distribute gestures most broadly. “In our study, we sought to develop a more rigorous understanding of social processes that underlies many cultural and economic phenomena,” says graduate student Eytan Bakshy, the author of a paper on the study. “While some of our findings may seem quite intuitive, what I find most exciting is that we were actually able to test some rather controversial and competing hypotheses about the role of social networks in influence.” Bakshy will present the research at the 10th ACM Conference on Electronic Commerce, which takes place July 6-10 at Stanford University in Stanford, California.

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New Memory Material May Hold Data for One Billion Years

sparky3887 — Fri, 29 May 2009 02:11:48 +0000

Alex Zettl and colleagues say enclosing an iron nanoparticle in a hollow carbon nanotube could serve as the foundation for a memory material for the next generation of iPods, smartphones, and other mobile devices. The scientists used electricity to control the nanoparticle, moving it back and forth to act as a programmable memory system, in that digital information could be recorded and played back with conventional computer hardware. The experimental memory device offers a storage capacity of 1 trillion bits of information and a lifetime of more than 1 billion years. An increasing amount of digital images, music, and other data is being packed onto silicon chips, but the 10 to 100 gigabits of data per square inch on current memory cards only have a lifetime of 10 to 30 years.

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CSIRO Telescope Gets Bandwidth Boost, Turns Data Stream Into Torrent

sparky3887 — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:17:13 +0000

Australia’s Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) has almost completed an upgrade of its radio telescope. The $12 million project will significantly increase the bandwidth of the Australia Telescope Compact Array from 128 MHz to 2 GHz. “It’s like going from dial-up access to the universe to having broadband,” says CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF) assistant director Graeme Carrad. He says that 80 times more data will flow from the antennas to the rest of the system. CSIRO chief executive Megan Clark says the Compact Array Broadband Backend project, which makes use of 32 special processing boards, each with 26 layers and 4,000 components, will lead the way in next-generation signal processing. Almost every piece of equipment the signals pass through has been changed except the set of six radio dishes and receivers that perform the initial amplification of cosmic radio signals. The telescope will be four times more sensitive to faint signals, and will more quickly detect cosmic objects traveling at a wider range of velocities, says ATNF’s Lewis Ball. “They’ll also be able to pick up new features in objects that have never been studied before,” Ball says.

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