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ACM TechNews - Monday, February 28, 2005



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ACM TechNews
February 28, 2005

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HEADLINES AT A GLANCE:

  • Virtual-Reality Movies Put a New Face on 'User-Friendly'
  • The GIMP at a Crossroads
  • Eclipse Lights Up Java Crowd
  • Poll: U.S. Has Conservative Tack on Innovation
  • A Visit to the InfoGraphics Lab
  • Grand Ambitions
  • No More Crash-Test Surgery
  • Women Making Strides in IT Sector
  • Software Learns to Translate by Reading Up
  • Mobile Networks Seek Turbo Boost
  • Microsoft Researchers Use Machine Learning Techniques to Help Advance HIV Vaccine Research
  • Thwarting 'Evil Geniuses'
  • VoIP Without Wires
  • Meet Me in Cyberspace
  • More Bits in Pits
  • Advances in Voice Recognition
  • The Super Bowl of Smart
  • Too Darned Big to Test

     

    Virtual-Reality Movies Put a New Face on 'User-Friendly'

    University at Buffalo researchers are developing increasingly "self-aware" computational agents that can ad-lib responses to human users' spontaneous actions in order to make movies and other forms of entertainment more interactive and user friendly, a breakthrough that is also expected to ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The GIMP at a Crossroads

    Jozsef Mak contends that the GIMP open-source bitmap editor will have limited usability unless its graphical user interface becomes more supportive of fundamental human-computer interaction standards, and notes that senior open source proponents are urging for unified user interface ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Eclipse Lights Up Java Crowd

    The Eclipse software development project has signed on BEA Systems, Sybase, and Borland International as board members, solidifying the open source platform's role as the leading source of innovation for Java tools. Less than one year ago, IBM rivals painted Eclipse as a Trojan horse meant to ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Poll: U.S. Has Conservative Tack on Innovation

    An A.T. Kearney survey of over 300 technology executives finds a prevailing conservative attitude toward innovation that chiefly emphasizes existing services and products, even though executives consider innovation to be critical to sustaining competitiveness. A.T. Kearney's John Ciachella ...

    [read more]      to the top


    A Visit to the InfoGraphics Lab

    The University of Oregon's InfoGraphics Lab focuses on the integration of GIS and graphic design tools with cartographic design. The lab has three areas of concentration: Public service, such as research and mapping initiatives for state agencies; support for faculty research; and campus ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Grand Ambitions

    Institutions and organizations throughout Australia are identifying and working on grand challenges, which are complex scientific and engineering problems with wide-ranging societal effects that can only be solved via high-performance computing. Quantum computing, nanotechnology, "swarm" ...

    [read more]      to the top


    No More Crash-Test Surgery

    Surgery could enter a new era with patient computer modeling techniques being developed by Stanford engineer Charles Taylor and collaborators. An accurate simulation of patients would allow surgeons to predict how their systems would react to surgical procedures and determine which surgical ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Women Making Strides in IT Sector

    Canada's association of information technology professionals plans to address the under-representation of women in the IT industry during its fifth annual "Women in IT: Looking Towards the Future" program. The series of nine Canadian Information Processing Society (CIPS) events across the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Software Learns to Translate by Reading Up

    Kevin Knight of the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute said his new translation software is in line with the new direction of machine learning. Speaking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting in Washington, D.C., Knight said the ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Mobile Networks Seek Turbo Boost

    Third-generation (3G) mobile networks will need to be dramatically faster if they are to appeal to users of broadband Internet connectivity that offers 0.5 Mbps of throughput, which overtakes current 3G networks significantly. A commercial 1 Gbps system could be up to seven years away, ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Microsoft Researchers Use Machine Learning Techniques to Help Advance HIV Vaccine Research

    Microsoft Research is applying computer science algorithms to HIV vaccine development at the University of Perth in Australia and the University of Washington. The two universities are pursuing related approaches to developing an HIV vaccine based on specific identifying proteins called ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Thwarting 'Evil Geniuses'

    Blue Water Technologies CEO John Shovic teaches computer-science majors at Eastern Washington University about cyberthreats and their perpetrators so that they can shield themselves against such dangers. He teaches four courses: The first two detail computer network operations, the deployment ...

    [read more]      to the top


    VoIP Without Wires

    Office phones are gradually becoming mobile thanks to the convergence of VoIP telephony and 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs), although widespread adoption is currently impeded by high costs and connectivity issues. The challenges of wireless VoIP deployment include substantial ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Meet Me in Cyberspace

    Online collaboration has taken off with new Web applications that allow geographically dispersed teams to share information quickly without leaving their normal work routines. Whereas e-meetings were seen as solutions for tightened travel budgets a few years ago, they are now preferred methods ...

    [read more]      to the top


    More Bits in Pits

    Whereas conventional DVDs that use red lasers to encode data as pits in the disk's surface have a maximum storage capacity of 4.7 GB per layer, forthcoming blue-laser DVDs that use smaller pits will be able to store up to 15 GB or 25 GB per layer, depending on the format. However, researchers ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Advances in Voice Recognition

    Voice recognition technology is imperfect, but an essential tool for people with disabilities that prevent them from using a keyboard and mouse, writes Hi-Tech Inventions senior partner Janine Lodato, who has multiple sclerosis and uses IBM's ViaVoice software. As the technology improves and is ...

    [read more]      to the top


    The Super Bowl of Smart

    Junior high and high school students from around the world participate in the annual First (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology) Robotics Competition, in which hundreds of teams assemble machines out of a standard kit of 300-plus components in six weeks and pit ...

    [read more]      to the top


    Too Darned Big to Test

    As software grows bigger and more complicated and concurrency and distributed systems become commonplace, handcrafted tests become a less reliable means of spotting bugs, writes Keith Stobie, a test architect in Microsoft's XML Web Services group. Keeping test methods economical ...

    [read more]      to the top


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