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TechNews Alert for Friday, Feb. 13, 2004 (fwd)
---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2004 15:40:23 -0500
From: TechNews <technews@xxxxxxxxxx>
To: TECHNEWS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: TechNews Alert for Friday, Feb. 13, 2004
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
ACM TechNews
Volume 6, Number 606
Date: February 13, 2004
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Top Stories for Friday, February 13, 2004:
http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html
"Is Cyberspace Getting Safer?"
"Software Bug Blamed for Blackout Alarm Failure"
"W3C Wraps Up Semantic Web Standards"
"Intel Reports a Research Leap to a Faster Chip"
"Airline Passenger Screening System Faces Delays"
"No More Scrambled Internet Video or Garbled Audio"
"Scientists: The Latest Mac Converts"
"Smart Software Gives Surveillance Eyes a 'Brain'"
"Makers Scramble to Put Some Bend in 'Electric Paper'"
"Web Users Re-Visit in Steps"
"Could National Security Concerns Slow VoIP?"
"Acxiom Is Watching You"
"Benign Viruses Shine on the Silicon Assembly Line"
"UC San Diego Scientists Unveil Pilot Project for Automated Monitoring of
Animal Behavior"
"The Attractions of Technology"
"Grids in the Enterprise"
"Coming Soon to Your IM Client: Spim"
"Virtual Nanotech"
"AI in Computer Games"
******************* News Stories ***********************
"Is Cyberspace Getting Safer?"
The Homeland Security Department's National Cyber Security Division
(NCSD) is evaluating the progress of cybersecurity over the past year and
outlining future security projects. Among the 2003 milestones the NCSD
notes is the government's creation of a critical infrastructure information ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item1
"Software Bug Blamed for Blackout Alarm Failure"
A Feb. 12 statement from industry officials attributes alarm failures that
may have exacerbated last summer's Northeast power outage to a software
glitch in the FirstEnergy infrastructure. A joint U.S.-Canadian task force
probing the blackout reported in November 2003 that FirstEnergy staffers ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item2
"W3C Wraps Up Semantic Web Standards"
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) declared the Resource Definition
Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL) standards for the
Semantic Web on Feb. 10. The Semantic Web was envisioned by W3C director
Tim Berners-Lee as a tool that uses metadata to embed more meaning in data ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item3
"Intel Reports a Research Leap to a Faster Chip"
Intel has developed a prototype of a high-speed transistor-like device that
is able to exploit laser communications, signaling a transformation in the
delivery of digital information and entertainment. The silicon-based chip
is cheaper and easier to manufacture, and achieves much higher data rates ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item4
"Airline Passenger Screening System Faces Delays"
A Feb. 12 report from the General Accounting Office (GAO) indicates that
the testing and deployment of the Transportation Security Administration's
(TSA) Computer-Assisted Passenger PreScreening System (CAPPS II) is being
held up, which could seriously impact the program's effectiveness. The GAO ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item5
"No More Scrambled Internet Video or Garbled Audio"
Using a three-year, $350,000 Information Technology Research grant from the
National Science Foundation, Marwan Krunz of the University of Arizona's
Electrical and Computer Engineering department is developing Internet
routing software that could allow ISPs to ensure quality of service by ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item6
"Scientists: The Latest Mac Converts"
The Apple Macintosh has become a favorite of the scientific community, and
is proving essential to projects ranging from the current NASA Mars mission
to bioinformatics to the life sciences. Matt Golombek of NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory reports that 90 percent of his colleagues employ ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item7
"Smart Software Gives Surveillance Eyes a 'Brain'"
Computer science laboratory researchers at the University of Rochester have
been able to outfit surveillance cameras with a rudimentary software
"brain" developed by associate professor of computer science Randal Nelson.
The software enables the cameras to look for specific objects, such as a ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item8
"Makers Scramble to Put Some Bend in 'Electric Paper'"
Royal Philips Electronics, Gyricon, and the U.S. Army are just a few of the
competitors in a race to build flexible electronic-paper displays, which
could finally turn a corner with recent breakthroughs in organic
electronics and polymer transistors. Many commercial e-paper products, ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item9
"Web Users Re-Visit in Steps"
In a project funded by IBM and the National Science Foundation, scientists
at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University are studying how
people re-find information on the Web in the hopes of developing tools for
retrieving Web pages faster on a variety of devices, including desktops and ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item10
"Could National Security Concerns Slow VoIP?"
The FCC is expected to soon release proposed regulations to ascertain
whether telecom rules should apply to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP),
a critical issue for both the FBI and VoIP providers. The FBI is concerned
that, without regulation, VoIP will give criminals a tool to circumvent ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item11
"Acxiom Is Watching You"
Privacy advocates are aroused with suspicion and anger that the
government's CAPPS II airline passenger pre-screening system may have been
spawned by retired Army General Wesley Clark's lobbying efforts on behalf
of Acxiom, a data management company that conceived of a system for ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item12
"Benign Viruses Shine on the Silicon Assembly Line"
MIT associate professor of materials science Angela M. Belcher is using a
benign virus as a scaffolding on which is grown uniform inorganic crystals
that organize into semiconducting nanowires. Belcher says the virus, whose
DNA has been reprogrammed to attract specific materials, forms wires of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item13
"UC San Diego Scientists Unveil Pilot Project for Automated Monitoring of
Animal Behavior"
The goal of UC San Diego's Smart Vivarium Project, which brings together
computer vision, artificial intelligence, cameras, sensors, and information
technology, is to augment the quality of animal research as well as
facilitate better animal health care. Pilot project leader Serge Belongie ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item14
"The Attractions of Technology"
Engineers and technology professionals like what they are doing, according
to a survey of IEEE members conducted by IEEE Spectrum and IEEE-USA; more
than 75 percent of respondents said the desire to "invent, build, or design
things," as well as to "solve real-world problems," were their main reasons ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item15
"Grids in the Enterprise"
The enterprise case for grid computing is stronger than ever with the
convergence of commodity components, open-source system software, and
germinating bandwidth, combined with approximately 40 years of development
culminating in the January announcement of the WS-Resource framework. The ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item16
"Coming Soon to Your IM Client: Spim"
Instant-messaging spam (spim) may not be as widespread as email spam, but
experts believe spim could become just as problematic as junk email as IM
proliferates throughout the corporate sector: Analyst Sara Radicati
estimates that IM is used as a corporate service by 26 percent of ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item17
"Virtual Nanotech"
Nanotechnology researchers are taking advantage of increasing computer
power to simulate nanoscale materials, structures, and devices to test
their properties, optimal configurations, and practical uses before they
are fabricated, thus saving a lot of physical trial and error. For ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item18
"AI in Computer Games"
Artificial intelligence (AI) technology used in computer games is distinct
from AI used in academic projects, since the academic AI approach consumes
too many resources for game development, refinement, and testing; in
addition, most AI research carries few practical benefits for gaming, but ...
http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0213f.html#item19
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