26 April 2012

CISE Researchers Discuss 'Security for Cloud Computing'


CCC Blog
(04/20/12) Erwin Gianchandani

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and the U.S. National Science Foundation recently organized a workshop on security for cloud computing. The goal of the workshop was to identify the research challenges for securing cloud computing services and systems and to rally a broader computer science and engineering research community behind the challenges that need to be solved. The researchers developed challenges in adversary models for cloud computing, delegation and authorization in cloud computing, end-to-end security in cloud computing, and new problems in security for cloud computing. The workshop brought forward many new challenges in well-known areas of security as well as new security problems that are emerging in the cloud computing domain. The researchers noted that the effort is needed because clouds are complex systems with hundreds of service dependencies, competing solutions, and multi-tenancy demands, and are being held back by a lack standards and pressures for interoperability, bandwidth, and other resources.

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http://www.cccblog.org/2012/04/20/cise-researchers-discuss-security-for-cloud-computing/

22 April 2012

New Research Could Mean Cellphones That Can See Through Walls

From ACM TechNews:
New Research Could Mean Cellphones That Can See Through Walls
UT Dallas News
(04/18/12) LaKisha Ladson

University of Texas at Dallas (UTD) researchers have developed an imager chip that enables mobile phones to see through walls, wood, plastics, paper, and other objects. One aspect of the technology involves tapping into an unused range in the electromagnetic spectrum, while the other aspect is a new microchip technology. "We’ve created approaches that open a previously untapped portion of the electromagnetic spectrum for consumer use and life-saving medical applications," says UTD professor Kenneth O. The technology enables images to be created with signals operating in the terahertz range without having to use several lenses inside a device. The new UTD microchip is based on complementary metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) technology, which the researchers note is common in many electronic devices. "The combination of CMOS and terahertz means you could put this chip and receiver on the back of a cell phone, turning it into a device carried in your pocket that can see through objects," O says. He notes consumer applications for the technology could include finding studs in walls and authenticating documents. "There are all kinds of things you could be able to do that we just haven’t yet thought about," O says.

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http://www.utdallas.edu/news/2012/4/18-17231_New-Research-Could-Mean-Cellphones-That-Can-See-Th_article-wide.html?WT.mc_id=NewsHomePageCenterColumn

Motorola Xoom
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19 April 2012

Data Centers in Va. and Elsewhere Have Major Carbon Footprint, Report Says

From ACM TechNews:
Data Centers in Va. and Elsewhere Have Major Carbon Footprint, Report Says
Washington Post
(04/17/12) Juliet Eilperin

Data centers and mobile telecommunications networks use more than 623 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually, and a 2008 study found that the information technology (IT) sector represented 2 percent of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions. If the industry were a country, it would rank fifth in the world in terms of electricity demand. In addition, all but one of the U.S.'s major IT companies still rely on fossil fuels to power more than half of their cloud operations, according to a new Greenpeace report. "Data centers and the cloud would be an environmental win if we build them in the right way, and connect them in the right way," says Greenpeace's Gary Cook. “If we just connect them to traditional sources of fossil fuel energy, that becomes a real train wreck.” IT firms continue to grow as important customers for the U.S.'s utility companies. As this growth continues, IT firms are positioning themselves to lobby politicians and company executives to boost renewable energy supplies. Some IT companies are already using this leverage by choosing to have data centers near renewable sources, investing directly in renewable energy, or pushing for legislative changes on the state level.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/data-centers-in-va-and-elsewhere-have-major-carbon-footprint-report-says/2012/04/17/gIQAd4t3NT_story.html

The Intangible Assets of the Internet of Things

From ACM TechNews:
The Intangible Assets of the Internet of Things
EE Times
(04/16/12) R. Colin Johnson

Internet Protocol addresses assigned to all electronic appliances will prompt the challenge of extracting value from the big data of the Internet of Things (IoT). IBM researchers envision a worldwide electronic nervous system with trillions of sensors monitoring the status of everything of interest to humans and streaming the resulting exabytes of data to cloud-based cluster supercomputers that use analytics software modeled on the human mind to extract the ultimate value from the data. “It’s not about making individual widgets, but rather about constructing a complete sensory system--a vertical solution that includes the sensors, networking, storage, servers, software, and analytics,” says Hewlett-Packard's Stan Williams. Engineering challenges for the IoT center on addressing difficult problems in security, standardization, network integration, ultralow-power devices, energy harvesting, and perceived network reliability. Data overload prevention is the prime engineering challenge for networking the IoT, notes Freescale Semiconductor's Ian Davidson. Gartner's Mark Hung says the unifying theme in consumer IoT applications will be control, monitoring, and diagnosis to facilitate a seamless user experience. "The Internet of Things will use a set-and-forget model that makes people more efficient, makes their lives safer, and just generally makes everything more convenient," says Ember Corp. CEO Bob LeFort.

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http://www.eetonline.com/electronics-news/4371064/The-intangible-assets-of-the-Internet-of-Things

16 April 2012

Designing the Interplanetary Web


European Space Agency
(04/13/12)

The European Space Agency (ESA) is pursuing projects such as providing reliable Internet access on the Moon, and controlling a planetary rover from a spacecraft in deep space. Observation or navigation satellites orbiting Earth and astronauts transmitting images in real time from the International Space Station need to send data back to Earth. The complexity of sharing information across space is set to grow, and such activities will need to be interconnected, networked, and managed. "We are researching how today's technical standards for devices like mobile phones, laptops, and portable computers can be applied to a new generation of networked space hardware," says ESA's Nestor Peccia. "But our future focus goes well beyond just networking; we're looking at how agencies like ESA and [the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration] cooperate in orbit and how to interchange data in real time between different organizations' spacecraft and ground stations, as well as reliable technical standards for spacecraft navigation and flight control." In October, ESA will simulate orbiter-rover communication links at a planet like Mars.

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http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMFQJHWP0H_index_0.html

EU Investigates Internet's Spread to More Devices

From ACM TechNews:
EU Investigates Internet's Spread to More Devices
BBC News
(04/12/12)

The European Commission (EC) expects rapid growth in the number of household appliances and other devices that are connected to the Internet by 2020, and as a result is launching a consultation over controls for the way information is gathered, stored, and processed. The typical person currently has at least two devices connected to the Internet. However, by 2015 that number is expected to grow to seven Web-connected devices per person, for a total of 25 billion worldwide, and more than 50 billion by 2020. The EC notes that previous technological advances have led to new legislation, such as the European Union's (EU's) Privacy and Data Communications Directive, which requires users to give permission for Web sites to install tracking cookies into their browsers. "Technologies like these need to be carefully designed if they are to enhance our private lives, not endanger them," says EU representative Emma Draper. "Sharing highly sensitive personal data--like medical information--to a network of wireless devices automatically creates certain risks and vulnerabilities, so security and privacy need to be built in at the earliest stages of the development process."

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http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-17687373

13 April 2012

PHP: Download documentation

http://www.php.net/download-docs.php

The Not-Too-Distant Future of Driving: When Cars Can Talk, Crashes May Be Avoided

From ACM TechNews:
The Not-Too-Distant Future of Driving: When Cars Can Talk, Crashes May Be Avoided
Washington Post
(04/10/12) Ashley Halsey

All cars in future will be equipped with short-range transmitters that use dedicated bandwidth to send information 10 times per second about where they are and what they are doing. The transmitters also will receive and make sense of the same information from every other vehicle within range. "The technology is solid, but you have to prove that the right type of data can be moved from one vehicle to another vehicle and that vehicle could take action on that data," says the Texas Transportation Institute's Christopher Poe. By governing the flow of traffic with real-time information, the technology can reroute drivers to avoid congestion and reduce time and fuel wasted while stuck in traffic. In addition, "this connected-vehicle technology could address about 80 percent, or four out of five, of all the unimpaired driving crashes in America," says the U.S. National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA's) Ron Medford. NHTSA recently launched a pilot program with 3,000 cars in Ann Arbor, Michigan, to prove the reliability of the technology. Vehicle-to-vehicle communication is just part of the pilot program. NHTSA also has developed a vehicle-to-infrastructure system, which can communicate with several tools, including global positioning systems and traffic lights.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/the-not-too-distant-future-of-driving-when-cars-can-talk-crashes-may-be-avoided/2012/04/10/gIQAGCbA9S_story.html

11 April 2012

A New Framework for Innovation in Journalism: How a Computer Scientist Would Do It

From ACM TechNews:
A New Framework for Innovation in Journalism: How a Computer Scientist Would Do It
Nieman Journalism Lab
(04/05/12) Andrew Phelps

City University of New York (CUNY) researcher Nick Diakopoulos is developing a new framework for innovation in journalism. The research is examining a different way to devise questions for journalists. Diakopoulos identified 27 computing concepts that could apply to journalism, such as natural language processing, machine learning, game engines, virtual reality, and information virtualization. He then sifted through thousands of research papers to determine which topics garner the most and least interest. "The goal is really about making innovation in journalism more technologically literate and aware," Diakopoulos says. He reasons that the impediments to progress in news organizations are likely cultural, "not having come from a user-centered design culture, where design thinking is important or ... you really think about people's needs or values." The most practical result came from a real-life series of brainstorms conducted with CUNY students and practitioners. Diakopoulos produced a card-based game designed to encourage fast, frictionless ideation, which resulted in 54 ideas. Part of Diakopoulos' motivation behind the research is to unite journalists and technologists to advance both fields.

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http://www.niemanlab.org/2012/04/a-new-framework-for-innovation-in-journalism-how-a-computer-scientist-would-do-it/

08 April 2012

How Smart Is Your Home?

From ACM TechNews:
How Smart Is Your Home?
Science
(03/30/12) Diane J. Cook

Within reach is a smart home that is responsive to residents' wishes and needs due to technological advances that support ambient intelligence, including sensors, computer networks, databases, and intelligent agents, writes Washington State University professor Diane J. Cook. Embedding sensors in the home generates large volumes of raw data that require analysis to extract pertinent information, and Cook says cloud computing could be used to process data too large to be managed by a single computer. Meanwhile, Cook says enabling devices to interact with their peers and the networking infrastructure without explicit human control is the purpose of much current ambient intelligence research, while imbuing the residence with contextual awareness supports the design of intelligent environments. Among the hindrances to realizing ambient intelligent homes is the need to weigh possible privacy and security implications, while another challenge is the provision of seamless, intelligent support both inside and outside the residence. The introduction of wearable sensors and smartphones expands ambient intelligence beyond the home environment. Smart homes currently offer resident-guided monitoring and automation, and Cook says future advances should support the use of these services in a more independent fashion.

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http://www.sciencemag.org/content/335/6076/1579

02 April 2012

Engineers Rebuild HTTP as a Faster Web Foundation

From ACM TechNews:
Engineers Rebuild HTTP as a Faster Web Foundation
CNet
(03/30/12) Stephen Shankland

At the recent meeting of the Internet Engineering Task Force, the working group overseeing the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) formally opened a discussion about how to make the technology faster. The discussion included Google's SPDY technology and Microsoft's HTTP Speed+Mobility technology. Google's system prefers a required encryption, while Microsoft's preference is for it to be optional. Despite this and other subtle differences, there are many similarities between the two systems. "There's a lot of overlap [because] there's a lot of agreement about what needs to be fixed," says Greenbytes' Julian Reschke. SPDY already is built into Google Chrome and Amazon Silk, and Firefox is planning on adopting it soon. In addition, Google, Amazon, and Twitter are using SPDY on their servers. "If we do choose SPDY as a starting point, that doesn't mean it won't change," says HTTP Working Group chairman Mark Nottingham. SPDY's technology is based on sending multiple streams of data over a single network connection. SPDY also can assign high or low priorities to Web page resources being requested from a server. One difference between the Google and Microsoft proposals is in syntax, but SPDY developers are flexible on the choice of compression technology, says SPDY co-creator Mike Belshe.

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http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-57406904-264/engineers-rebuild-http-as-a-faster-web-foundation/