Our Microtech Future
Software Disasters Are Often People Problems
Computer system failures--some of them with dire consequences--are usually rooted in human error rather than technology, especially as the systems grow more sophisticated. For example, data overload due to infrequent maintenance caused the shutdown of an air traffic control communications ...
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Senate Wants Database Dragnet
The Senate is expected to hold a final vote on a bill Wednesday night to create a network of interconnected government and commercial databases containing a huge volume of records on American citizens that could be instantly queried by federal counter-terrorist investigators. The draft of ...
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Bye-Bye Blueprint: 3D Modeling Catches On
Building information modeling (BIM), in which 3D computer models replace traditional 2D documents such as blueprints, is gaining ground in the field of architecture and building design. One of BIM's strongest points is to incorporate real-world data to enhance the accuracy, quality, and speed of ...
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Uneven Equation
Engineering schools have fewer female students compared to other fields of study for a variety of reasons, but rolls of female engineers have slowly grown over the last few decades. UCLA has maintained an approximately 20 percent statistic for female engineering students over the last five years, ...
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IT Industry Lags Behind Talent
Despite Russia's enviable tradition of producing greater numbers of workers with exceptional science and engineering skills than many nations, its domestic IT market is a fledgling compared to countries such as India. Forrester Research estimates that Russia has as many as 40 percent more ...
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Hacking 101: It's For Your Own Good
UNC Charlotte (UNCC) professors such as Bill Chu believe the best way to cultivate network security professionals is to "expose our students to dark side techniques so they gain insight on how bad guys can penetrate systems and how to effectively protect them." Chu teaches Vulnerability Assessment ...
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Ubiquitous Network Society 'Around the Corner'
Matsushita Electric Industrial President Kunio Nakamura opened Ceteac 2004 on Oct. 5 with the declaration that the ubiquitous network society is "just around the corner," and he predicted that much of the networked world will be Web-accessible to anyone anywhere and at any time by the end of the ...
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Live-in Lab
MIT and independent research firm TIAX are running PlaceLab, a first-of-its-kind experiment to monitor how people could use technology in their homes: The collaboration has equipped a 950-square-foot condominium in Cambridge, Mass., with hundreds of hidden sensors linked with miles of ...
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A Cyberspace Odyssey
Momentum toward an "Intelligent Internet" is accelerating with the convergence of two trends: Commercial exploitation of the Internet and increasingly sophisticated human-computer interaction. The TechCast project believes a revolutionary communications interface is on the ...
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Cyber Center Targets Internet Plagues
Much like the Centers for Disease Control study how to prevent and contain human sicknesses, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is funding a new Center for Internet Epidemiology and Defenses (CIED) that will study computer viruses and worms. The Internet's openness and efficiency may ...
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Pitt, CMU Get Grant to Study Learning
Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University will use a $25 million federal grant over five years to study how students learn. After testing a number of theories in real classrooms, the researchers will use part of the award from the National Science Foundation ...
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Navigating PCs With Pictures, Not Words
Operating on the principle that people can recall pictures better than words, the experimental VisualID software automatically tags word processing files or spreadsheets with random graphical icons. A joint venture between the University of Southern California (USC) and MIT, ...
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Super-Connected Users Could Aid IM Worms
A study of instant messaging (IM) worms by former Hewlett-Packard researcher Matthew Williamson finds that such worms, which are propagated by "highly connected" users, move too swiftly to be effectively impeded by traditional antivirus measures; one possible method to slow down or halt an ...
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The Search for Computer Security
Greg Morrisett, a professor at Harvard University's Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences (DEAS), believes the burden of trusting an incoming program to be free of bugs or malware should be transferred from the computer user to the program itself. "What we're aiming for is a day when ...
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Facing Up to the Future
Though the technology for digitally simulating the human face is advancing dramatically, the artifice is still relatively evident in even the most sophisticated programs. Modeling the face's muscle movements accurately is the key challenge, one that requires software based on an anatomical model ...
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Records Management Takes a Few Lessons From Supercomputing
Similarities between the management of massive volumes of scientific data by supercomputing programs and records management by government agencies has led to a partnership between the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and the National Center for Supercomputing ...
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Just Keep Rolling a Lawn
Ohio University, Miami University, and Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) student teams were ranked first, second, and third, respectively, in the Institute of Navigation's (ION) First Annual Autonomous Lawnmower Competition in early June. The goal set forth by ION to contest entrants ...
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Our Microtech Future
Breakthrough technologies that could benefit fields ranging from health care to neurology to industry to resource conservation are expected from the convergence of microtechnology and biology. Microtech devices would mimic the functions of human cells and in some cases interact with them due ...
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