Adapting to the iPad, called education's 'equalizer'

From USATODAY.com

Image source: USA Today

Well-designed interfaces can open the world to people.

"The 18-year-old is a quadriplegic with multiple disabilities that make speech and muscle control extremely difficult. He interacts through eye gaze or by tapping his head against a switch on a communication device to spell out words.

But on a recent afternoon at the Lehmann Center, a special-needs school in Lakewood, N.J., Leuck was able to make music. With some effort, he slid his knuckles lightly over the digital image of a guitar on an iPad screen. The touches produced a series of acoustic-style chords from the iPad — and a big grin from Leuck."

IBM's Doctor Watson?

From USATODAY.com

"IBM's supercomputer system, best known for trouncing the world's best "Jeopardy!" players on TV, is being tapped by one of the largest U.S. health insurers to help diagnose medical problems and authorize treatments.

WellPoint Inc., which has 34.2 million members, will integrate Watson's lightning speed and deep health care database into its existing patient information, helping it choose among treatment options and medicines."

The WellPoint application will combine data from three sources: a patient's chart and electronic records that a doctor or hospital has, the insurance company's history of medicines and treatments, and Watson's huge library of textbooks and medical journals.

IBM says the computer can then sift through it all and answer a question in moments, providing several possible diagnoses or treatments, ranked in order of the computer's confidence, along with the basis for its answer.

Previously IBM developed Deep Blue, "a massively parallel computer, to be applied to the study of biomolecular phenomena such as protein folding."

Robocleaners, tweeting appliances in the home of tomorrow

From USATODAY.com

Image Source: jeffbots.com

"Ever wondered what your home might look like in 10 years' time? Will it be cleaned by robots and run by computers? Will your fridge go online to allow you to discuss dinner plans with your spouse or instruct it to do the shopping?"

"If the technology giants exhibiting their latest wares at the recent IFA trade fair in Berlin are to be believed, this is what life could be like. The technology exists, even if some of the products have so far only been launched in places like Korea, one of the world's leading consumer electronics markets."

Smart credit cards coming

From USATODAY.com

"The United States is the only developed country still hanging on to credit and debit cards with those black magnetic stripes, the kind you swipe through retail terminals. The rest of the industrialized world has switched —or is in the process of switching— to "smart" chip-based cards.

"The problem with that black magnetic stripe on the back of your credit card is that it's about as secure as writing your account information on a postcard: everything is in the clear and can be copied. Card fraud, and the measures taken to prevent it, costs U.S. merchants, banks and consumers billions each year.

The smart cards can't be copied, which greatly reduces the potential for fraud. Smart cards with built-in chips are the equivalent of a safe: they can hide information so it can only be unlocked with the right key. Because the important information is hidden, the cards can't be replicated."

 This seems to be an example where being technologically advanced stands in the way of technological advancement. Countries that adopt technologies early go on to build infrastructure to support that technology. Then when new technologies come along, there is an inertia to stick with the existing technology. Something similar has happened in many developing countries -- land line telephones have been completely bypassed, with a majority of the population going from no phone to a cell phone in a relatively short time.

10 years after 9/11, cyberattacks pose national threat

From Computerworld

"...catastrophic cyberattacks against U.S. critical infrastructure targets are not a mere theoretical threat."

"This is not science fiction," the NSPG said in its report. "It is possible to take down cyber systems and trigger cascading disruptions and damage. Defending the U.S. against such attacks must be an urgent priority."

Self-directed microspider could repair blood vessels

Image Source: imdb.com

From New Scientist

I remember watching Fantastic Voyage as a kid and wondering if I would some day have tiny machines navigating through my bloodstream, repairing damage and keeping me healthy. Researchers at Penn State are working on it...

"A new spider-like micromachine could swim through a person's blood vessels, healing damaged areas and delivering drugs as it goes.

Ayusman Sen of Pennsylvania State University in University Park and his colleagues have created the self-propelling microspiders using spheres less than a micrometre wide. Each sphere is made up of two halves – one hemisphere is gold, the other silica – and looks like a gold-and-silver Christmas bauble."

Google announces Dart programming language

From ExtremeTech

On the programming languages front.

"A few days after Google was caught registering a bunch of Dart-related domain names, and the inevitable storm of speculation, it has now emerged that Dart is a new programming language for “structured web programming."

"With the “structured web programming” moniker, it’s also likely to be some kind of interpreted, in-the-browser language — so more like JavaScript or Python, and less like Java or other compiled languages. One of the biggest hints, though, is that both Bracha and Bak have worked extensively with Smalltalk in the past — and an interpreted Smalltalkesque language would fit right into the “structured web programming” mold, too."

Many U.S. schools adding iPads, trimming textbooks

From USATODAY.com

I got to be Santa Claus this week, handing out 11 iPads, a Kindle and a Sony eReader to students participating in pilot projects here at Messiah. We're exploring the utility of these technologies in the learning environment. At Educause last year I heard about several school districts forgoing textbooks in favor of iPads and digital resources; according to the article there are now at least 600 schools districts that have launched programs which provide at least some of their students with iPads for use in school.

Image Source: getliquid.com

I'd love to see this at my kids school, if for no other reason than to save their backs from the enormous backpacks full of textbooks :)

For incoming freshmen at western Connecticut's suburban Brookfield High School, hefting a backpack weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out notes and flipping electronic pages on a glossy iPad tablet computer.

The iPads generally cost districts between $500 and $600, depending on what accessories and service plans are purchased.

By comparison, Brookfield High in Connecticut estimates it spends at least that much yearly on every student's textbooks, not including graphing calculators, dictionaries and other accessories they can get on the iPads.

IT Hiring Remains Strong Despite Economic Fears

From CIO.com

Good news for CIS folks on the jobs front:

"IT professionals looking for new jobs need not fear that the recent spate of bad economic news will hamper their job searches. IT staffing industry executives agree that IT hiring in the U.S. will remain robust through the end of the year, bucking renewed fears of a double dip recession recently brought on by stock market corrections, the ongoing debt crisis in Europe and the U.S., and Standard & Poor's downgrade of America's credit rating.

"Despite the economic woes we've been hearing about, I haven't on the ground seen any change in demand [for IT workers]," says Shane Bernstein, managing director of IT staffing firm Q. "In fact, demand keeps increasing. Every week I hear [from our clients], 'We have a lot more positions coming down the pipeline that we need to fill.'"

Quantum optical link sets new time records

From physorg.com

Image Source: physorg.com

Advice to young people interested in cutting-edge computing: take lots of physics! So many interesting physics news items... so little time to comprehend.

"Quantum communication could be an option for the absolutely secure transfer of data. The key component in quantum communication over long distances is the special phenomenon called entanglement between two atomic systems. Entanglement between two atomic systems is very fragile and up until now researchers have only been able to maintain the entanglement for a fraction of a second. But in new experiments at the Niels Bohr Institute researchers have succeeded in setting new records and maintaining the entanglement for up to an hour. The results are published in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters."

SignalGuru - a high-tech way to avoid red lights

Image Source: gizmag.com

From gizmag.com

Driving is yet another activity being totally transformed by technology. I always check my iPhone before heading across the Susquehanna to figure out if it's worth it to take the Turnpike (and avoid the 83 traffic). This story describes a system to help drivers avoid red lights.

"One of the most effective hypermiling techniques is maintaining a steady speed while driving instead of constantly stopping and starting. Unfortunately, traffic lights all too often conspire to foil attempts at keeping the vehicle rolling. Researchers at MIT and Princeton have now devised a system that gathers visual data from the cameras of a network of dashboard-mounted smartphones and tells drivers the optimal speed to drive at to avoid waiting at the next set of lights."

"The new system, dubbed SignalGuru, was tested in both Cambridge, Massachusetts, and in Singapore. In Cambridge, where traffic signals are on fixed schedules, the researchers say the system was able to predict when lights would change with an average error of only two-thirds of a second and helped drivers cut fuel consumption by an average of 20 percent. "

Researchers identify first flaws in the Advanced Encryption Standard

From Katholieke Universiteit Leuven

Image Source: edgetechcorp.com

A flaw in the AES sounds pretty scary, given that most of our online banking and other 'secure' network transactions rely on AES. But note the repercussions (esp. those of you who have been in Data Structures and Algorithms):

"To put this into perspective: on a trillion machines, that each could test a billion keys per second, it would take more than two billion years to recover an AES-128 key."

'via Blog this'

New Computer Chip Modeled on a Living Brain

From Popular Science

Note the reference to the von Neumann bottleneck (esp. students in Organization of Programming Languages). See more about von Neumann architecture.

“This new architecture represents a critical shift away form today’s traditional von Neumann computers, to extremely power-efficient architecture,” Dharmendra Modha, project leader for IBM Research, said in an interview. “It integrates memory with processors, and it is fundamentally massively parallel and distributed as well as event-driven, so it begins to rival the brain’s function, power and space.”

Computational method predicts new uses for existing medicines

From National Institutes of Health (NIH)

Image Source: nccs.gov

An example of computation as a "fourth leg" of scientific research.

"For the first time ever, scientists are using computers and genomic information to predict new uses for existing medicines.

A National Institutes of Health-funded computational study analyzed genomic and drug data to predict new uses for medicines that are already on the market. A team led by Atul J. Butte, M.D., Ph.D., of Stanford University, Palo Alto, Calif., reports its results in two articles in the Aug. 17 online issue of Science Translational Medicine.

“Bringing a new drug to market typically takes about $1 billion, and many years of research and development,” said Rochelle M. Long, Ph.D., who directs the NIH Pharmacogenomics Research Network. “If we can find ways to repurpose drugs that are already approved, we could improve treatments and save both time and money.”

'via Blog this'

C++ upgrade wins unanimous approval

From InfoWorld

News on the Programming Languages front (pay attention, COSC382 students!)

"C++11 is the first major new version of ISO C++, said Herb Sutter, chair of the ISO C++ standards committee. Featured in C++11 are lambda functions, which serve as a key enabler of emerging parallel algorithms and revolutionize the use of the existing Standard Template Library, said Sutter, also a principal architect for native languages at Microsoft. "What's already there in the C++98 standard library will immediately become even easier to use," he said. Move semantics in C++11, meanwhile, lead to higher performance. Concurrency features include types for portable, lock-free programming.

'via Blog this'

Internet Use Affects Memory, Study Finds (Yawn)

Image Source: masternewmedia.org

From NYTimes.com

"The widespread use of search engines and online databases has affected the way people remember information, researchers are reporting."

Some would likely interpret this with alarm -- "Internet use impairs memory!" But is it really cause for concern? Does use of tools make us rely on the use of tools? Almost certainly! (How many of us could live an independent hunter-gatherer lifestyle?) But so what? The march of technological progress moves us away from low level menial tasks to higher level work. If we didn't have calculators, ability to do mental arithmetic would be much more important. But since we do have them, mathematicians can focus on much more interesting problems!

Nearby supernova found within 24 hours, thanks to computing

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

From Wired.com

Where would modern astronomy be without computers to search through the torrent of data?

"The team from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and University of California, Berkeley, credit the early detection to a specialized survey telescope at the Palomar Observatory in Southern California and advanced computing."

"Uncanny valley” explained?

From Digital Trends

Were you creeped out by the characters in Polar Express? Do you find clowns, human puppets, and overly-realistic robots to be unsettling? How about the too-close-to-human robotic Hiroshi Ishiguro (see image on left)? The term "Uncanny Valley" has been used to describe the unease people feel as inanimate objects become closer and closer to human in appearance. On the one side of the valley, Kermit the Frog and R2D2 are fine. At the opposite side we have the sexy Cylons in the remade Battlestar Galactica. No problem with any of them. But somewhere in the middle we hit the almost-but-not-quite-human animations and robots that seem to make us squirm. Now scientists may have uncovered the mechanism behind this dissonance.

Image Source: Wikimedia Commons

"Researchers from the university of California, San Diego, have discovered that a mismatch between movement and humanoid traits could be causing the uncanny valley effect, or the uneasiness we feel when we look at humanoid robots or CGI creations."

"Unfortunately, we still don’t entirely know why our brain hates this inconsistency, but if movies and video games are any indication, our brains may be able to get used to the oddness of our human-like creations in time. Games like L.A. Noire have found success by somewhat reducing the uncanny valley effect by drastically improving the facial and body animation of its characters. Faster animation in motion-capture CGI films like the upcoming Spielberg film The Adventures of Tintin are also working around this odd phenomenon. Unfortunately, we don’t quite know if our brains will ever truly accept fake humanoids until they are completely indistinguishable from ourselves."