Research Streamlines Data Processing To Solve Problems More Efficiently
Dr. Joel Trussell
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a new analytical method that opens the door to faster processing of large amounts of information, with applications in fields as diverse as the military, medical diagnostics and homeland security.
“The problem we address here is this: When faced with a large amount of data, how do you determine which pieces of that information are relevant for solving a specific problem,” says Dr. Joel Trussell, a professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research. “For example, how would you select the smallest number of features that would allow a robot to differentiate between water and solid ground, based on visual data collected by video?”
This is important, because the more data you need to solve a problem, the more expensive it is to collect the data and the longer it will take to process the data. “The work we’ve done here allows for a more efficient collection of data by targeting exactly what information is most important to the decision-making process,” Trussell says. “Basically, we’ve created a new algorithm that can be used to determine how much data is needed to make a decision with a minimal rate of error.”
One application for the new algorithm, discussed in the paper, is for the development of programs that can analyze hyperspectral data from military cameras in order to identify potential targets. Hyperspectral technology allows for finer resolution of the wavelengths of light that are visible to the human eye, though it can also collect information from the infrared spectrum – which can be used to identify specific materials, among other things. The algorithm could be used to ensure that such a program would operate efficiently, minimizing data storage needs and allowing the data to be processed more quickly. (more…)
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3D Microchips for More Powerful and Environmentally-Friendly Computers
The world of IT pursues its race for performance. CMOSAIC could boost the computing performance of central processors by a factor 10 while consuming less energy. The IBM Research Laboratory has joined EPFL and ETH Zurich - the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology – in this project of national scope supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) via its Nano-Tera programme.
3D microprocessors cooled from the inside through channels as thin as a human hair filled with a liquid coolant. Such is the solution currently being developed by researchers from the EPFL (Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland) and its sister organisation ETH Zurich to boost the performance of future computers. The CMOSAIC project, under the leadership of John R. Thome in Lausanne, aims to develop processors 10 times more powerful with as many transistors per cubic centimetre as there are neurons in the same volume of a human brain – a functional density greater than ever before. IBM has just signed a partnership to join the adventure. Its Zurich-based lab will work together with the researchers from the Lausanne and Zurich Federal Institutes of Technology. (more…)
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Researchers Demonstrate a Better Way for Computers to ‘See’
Finding a better way for computers to “see” from Cox Lab @ Rowland Institute.
Taking inspiration from genetic screening techniques, researchers from Harvard and MIT have demonstrated a way to build better artificial visual systems with the help of low-cost, high-performance gaming hardware.
The neural processing involved in visually recognizing even the simplest object in a natural environment is profound—and profoundly difficult to mimic. Neuroscientists have made broad advances in understanding the visual system, but much of the inner workings of biologically-based systems remain a mystery.
Using Graphics Processing Units (GPUs), the same technology video game designers use to render life-like graphics, researchers are now making progress faster than ever before. A new study, co-led by David Cox, Principal Investigator of the Visual Neuroscience Group at the Rowland Institute at Harvard, and Nicolas Pinto, a Ph.D. Candidate in James DiCarlo’s laboratory at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research and the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT, was published in the November 26th issue of PLoS Computational Biology. (more…)
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Nanotechnology: Developing Material That Could Boost Data Storage, Save Energy
Dr. Jagdish “Jay” Narayan
North Carolina State University engineers have created a new material that would allow a fingernail-size computer chip to store the equivalent of 20 high-definition DVDs or 250 million pages of text, far exceeding the storage capacities of today’s computer memory systems.
Led by Dr. Jagdish “Jay” Narayan, John C.C. Fan Family Distinguished Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and director of the National Science Foundation Center for Advanced Materials and Smart Structures at NC State, the engineers made their breakthrough using the process of selective doping, in which an impurity is added to a material that changes its properties. The process also shows promise for boosting vehicles’ fuel economy and reducing heat produced by semiconductors, a potentially important development for more efficient energy production.
Working at the nanometer level — a pinhead has a diameter of 1 million nanometers — the engineers added metal nickel to magnesium oxide, a ceramic. The resulting material contained clusters of nickel atoms no bigger than 10 square nanometers, a 90 percent size reduction compared to today’s techniques and an advancement that could boost computer storage capacity. (more…)
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Researchers Create Molecular Diode
by Richard Harth
This is a schematic for molecular diode. The symmetric molecule (top) allows for two-way current. The asymmetrical molecule (bottom) permits current in one direction only and acts as a single-molecule diode. (Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University)
Recently, at Arizona State University’s Biodesign Institute, N.J. Tao and collaborators have found a way to make a key electrical component on a phenomenally tiny scale. Their single-molecule diode is described in this week’s online edition of Nature Chemistry.
In the electronics world, diodes are a versatile and ubiquitous component. Appearing in many shapes and sizes, they are used in an endless array of devices and are essential ingredients for the semiconductor industry. Making components including diodes smaller, cheaper, faster and more efficient has been the holy grail of an exploding electronics field, now probing the nanoscale realm.
Smaller size means cheaper cost and better performance for electronic devices. The first generation computer CPU used a few thousand transistors, Tao says noting the steep advance of silicon technology. “Now even simple, cheap computers use millions of transistors on a single chip.” (more…)
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The Light and the Dark Side of the Digital Revolution
Editor’s Note: With so many challenges facing us this century, it’s probably important that we don’t lose sight of the effects of the digital revolution itself. The trappings of the digital age are becoming so ubiquitous that what was once wondrous is now routine. Computers are everywhere, even embedded in machinery and appliances such that sometimes we don’t even know they are there. This short film segment reminds me of a piece of wisdom originally from another media philosopher and investigator, Marshall McLuhan: “We shape our tools, and thereafter they shape us.” If I’ve not gotten the quote exactly right (it’s from memory), it certainly covers the basic idea. - Blake Harris
The Digital Revolution Is Upon Us
Hosted by: Craig Conoley
Hervé Fischer – philosopher, sociologist, and painter of the digital age – has played a major role in shaping much of the critical discourse surrounding digital culture in a global context. One of his most recent works, “Digital Shock: Confronting the New Reality”, presents to the public his own cyber philosophy: a new approach Fischer believes essential in societies hyper dependant on technology. In this video, http://WatchMojo.com sits down to discuss the role of technology with Hervé Fischer, in hopes of unveiling a new awareness surrounding digital-dependent societies and the implications of technology on our lives. Fischer’s web site can be found at http://www.hervefischer.net/
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Moving Toward a New Vision of Education
The goals of the study have been to draw up theoretical proposals to help to improve educational practices. (SINC)
Successfully introducing Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) into classrooms is one of the biggest challenges proposed by new educational plans. A research group from the University of the Basque Country (UPV-EHU) has studied substituting the current way in which education is structured for a new one that takes full advantage of the potential of new technologies.
Little by little, Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) have started to penetrate the educational sphere. A few years ago, the experts thought that the arrival of computers and the Internet in classrooms would have a drastic effect on the way that classes were given and received. However, “the studies carried out at compulsory education level were not able to show the transformation and improvement of learning in schools that had been promised as a result of incorporating technology into the classroom”, Asun Martínez, one of the authors involved in the UPV-EHU study, tells SINC. (more…)
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Fighting Fire With Innovative Engineering
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute seniors Erik Kauntz, Jake Pyzza, and Ryan Clapp designed and built an early prototype of a new "smart" fire suppression system that pinpoints the location of a fire in a building and douses the blaze with flame suppressants. (Rensselaer/Mark McCarty)
Conventional smoke detection and sprinkler systems are important safety tools and help to save lives, but indiscriminately soaking an office building, home, or workplace with water can cause tens of thousands of dollars worth of damage.
A group of graduating engineers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute set their sights on this problem, and have developed a promising solution. Seniors Jake Pyzza, Erik Kauntz, and Ryan Clapp researched, designed, and built an early prototype of a new “smart” fire suppression system that pinpoints the location of a fire in a building and douses the blaze with flame suppressants.
“Our sensors sweep a room, sense where the fire is, and then deliver a suppressant to just that area, while the sensor is still sweeping the rest of the room to see if the fire spread,” said Pyzza, a mechanical engineering major who hails from Campbell Hall, N.Y. “If it continues to scan and doesn’t see any more sources of fire, it turns the suppression system off to help minimize any damage to the room’s contents.” (more…)
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Green ‘Sleep Talking’ PCs Could Signifcantly Reduce Energy Use
Yuvraj Agarwal who came with the idea of a new "sleep talking" state prototype that provides much of the energy savings of sleep mode and some of the network-and-Internet-connected convenience of awake mode. (Credit: Yuvraj Agarwal)
Personal computers may soon save large amounts of energy by “sleep talking.” Computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research have created a plug-and-play hardware prototype for personal computers that induces a new energy saving state known as “sleep talking.” Normally PCs can be in either awake mode—where they consume power even if they are not being used, or in a low power sleep mode—where they save substantial power but are essentially inactive and unresponsive to network traffic. The new sleep talking state provides much of the energy savings of sleep mode and some of the network-and-Internet-connected convenience of awake mode.
UC San Diego computer science Ph.D. student Yuvraj Agarwal presented this work on April 23, 2009 at the USENIX Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI 2009). Computer scientists at UC San Diego and Microsoft Research in Redmond, Washington and Cambridge, UK collaborated on this project and the NSDI 2009 paper, “Somniloquy: Augmenting Network Interfaces to Reduce PC Energy Usage.” (more…)
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Programming Contest Still Offering $1 Million Prize
Team BellKor is made up of Bob Bell and Chris Volinsky, from the Statistics Research group in AT&T Labs, and Yehuda Koren, who recently left AT&T Labs for Yahoo! Research in Israel. The team has won the first two $50,000 Progress Prizes awarded by Netflix as part of their $1 Million competition to improve their recommendation algorithm.
In 1715 the British Admiralty set up a contest offering a cash prize for determining the longitude of a ship at sea. For a long time this was the only really big incentive prize competition, but nowadays the idea is commonly used to speed the achievement of some technological tour de force–creating a world-class chess computer, say, or running a car on solar power.
Now Netflix, the online movie-rental company, is using prize contests to improve the way it does business. It has offered US $1 million to whoever devises an algorithm that is at least 10 percent more accurate in judging a customer’s taste in movies than the company’s own algorithm is. (more…)
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Computer Rebooting Soon May be a Thing of the Past
Ferroelectric materials provide low-power, high-efficiency electronic memory for devices such as "smart cards" that can instantly reveal and update stored information when waved before a reader. When applied to computer transistors, these materials could allow "instant-on" capability, eliminating the time-consuming booting and rebooting of computer operating systems. (Credit: Jeremy Levy, University of Pittsburgh)
The ferroelectric materials found in today’s “smart cards” used in subway, ATM and fuel cards soon may eliminate the time-consuming booting and rebooting of computer operating systems by providing an “instant-on” capability as well as preventing losses from power outages.
Researchers supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) nanoscale interdisciplinary research team award and three Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers at Cornell University, Penn State University and Northwestern University recently added ferroelectric capability to material used in common computer transistors, a feat scientists tried to achieve for more than half a century. They reported their findings in the April 17 journal Science. (more…)
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Researchers Wanted: Humans Need Not Apply?
Cornell University doctoral student Michael Schmidt makes adjustments to an automated research system. Using the digital mind that guides a self-repairing robot, Hod Lipson, a researcher at Cornell, and Schmidt have created a computer program that uses raw observational data to tease out fundamental physical laws. The breakthrough may aid the discovery of new scientific truths, particularly for biological systems that have, until now, eluded detection. Such automation in scientific research is becoming more common, raising questions about its impact on science. (Credit: Jonathan Hiller, Cornell University)
As science fiction plot lines go, the unintended consequences of yielding tasks too complicated or dangerous for human hands to computers and robots is a popular one. Yet real life scientists are increasingly doing just that, creating automated systems and devices that can not only help collect, organize and analyze scientific data, but that are also able to intelligently and independently draw up new hypotheses and approaches to research based on the data they receive.
In a perspectives piece in tomorrow’s edition of the journal Science, David Waltz of the Center for Computational Learning Systems at Columbia University and Bruce G. Buchanan of the computer science department at the University of Pittsburgh discuss this brave new world of scientific research and its implications for the way science is conducted. They see this all as a promising trend, but caution that researchers need to consider what tasks are best suited for automation and which should be left to the human mind. (more…)
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Device Controls Electron Spin at Room Temperature
Dr. Salah M. Bedair (left) and Dr. Nadia El-Masry (center) are leading an NC State research team. (Photo: Roger Winstead)
In a breakthrough for applied physics, North Carolina State University researchers have developed a magnetic semiconductor memory device, using GaMnN thin films, which utilizes both the charge and spin of electrons at room temperature. This is a major breakthrough, as previous devices that used magnetic semiconductors (GaMnAs) and controlled electron spin were only functional at 100 K (or -173 Celsius). By controlling the spin of electrons, the new device represents a significant advance in semiconductor efficiency and speed.
The new device is also an advance on earlier experimental models because it uses only 5-6 volts to switch the bias of the electrons. Previous cold-temperature devices used much higher voltage. The research was published April 2 in Applied Physics Letters. (more…)
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Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis?
As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor and director of the Children’s Digital Media Center, Los Angeles.
Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet and video games. Her research was published this month in the journal Science. (more…)
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“Spintronics” Could Replace Electronics
Many hopes are pinned on spintronics. In the future it could replace electronics, which in the race to produce increasingly rapid computer components, must at sometime reach its limits. Different from electronics, where whole electrons are moved (the digital “one” means “an electron is present on the component”, zero means “no electron present”), here it is a matter of manipulating a certain property of the electron, its spin. For this reason, components are needed in which electrons can be injected successively into the electron, and one must be able to manipulate the spin of the single electrons, e.g. with the aid of magnetic fields. Both are possible with a single electron pump, as scientists of the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) have, together with colleagues from Latvia, now shown. They will present their results in the current issue of Applied Physics Letters. (more…)
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