Nanodots Breakthrough May Lead to 'A Library on One Chip'
NCSU News (04/28/10) Shipman, Matt
North Carolina State University's Jay Narayan led a research effort to create a computer chip that has enough memory to store all the information in a library. The chip uses nanodots, or nanoscale magnets, which are made of single, defect-free crystals and can be as small as six diameters. The nanodots are integrated directly into a silicon chip. Their precise orientation enables programmers to reliably read and write data to the chips. "We have created magnetic nanodots that store one bit of information on each nanodot, allowing us to store over one billion pages of information in a chip that is one square inch," Narayan says. He says the chip can be manufactured at an affordable cost. Narayan wants to develop magnetic packaging that would enable lasers or other technologies to interact with the nanodots.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Blog: Nanodots Breakthrough May Lead to 'A Library on One Chip'
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
Blog: New Research Offers Security for Virtualization, Cloud Computing
New Research Offers Security for Virtualization, Cloud Computing
NCSU News (04/27/10) Shipman, Matt
North Carolina State University (NCSU) researchers have developed HyperSafe, software for resolving security concerns related to data privacy in virtualization and cloud computing. A key threat to virtualization and cloud computing is malicious software that enables computer viruses to spread to the underlying hypervisor, which allows different operating systems to run in isolation from one another, and eventually to the systems of other users. HyperSafe leverages existing hardware features to secure hypervisors against such attacks. "We can guarantee the integrity of the underlying hypervisor by protecting it from being compromised by any malware downloaded by an individual user," says NCSU professor Xuxian Jiang. HyperSafe uses non-bypassable memory lockdown, which blocks the introduction of new code by anyone other than the hypervisor administrator. HyperSafe also uses restricted pointer indexing, which characterizes a hypervisor's normal behavior and prevents any deviation from that profile.
Monday, April 26, 2010
Blog: Attack Makes Chips More Reliable
Attack Makes Chips More Reliable
BBC News (04/26/10) Ward, Mark
University of Michigan (UM) researchers have discovered that by varying the voltage to certain parts of a computer's processor, the ability to keep key data secret is compromised. The researchers also found that a method that helps chips defend against the attack also could make them more reliable. "By putting the voltage just below where it should be means the device makes computational mistakes--it suffers temporary transistor failure," says UM professor Valeria Bertacco. The researchers used that insight to develop an attack method that could extract every part of a 1,024-bit key in about 100 hours. The research will lead to improvements in the way the public key security system works to make it less susceptible to this kind of attack, Bertacco says. The research also could help to produce error correction systems that identify when transistors fail and ensures that the data does not get corrupted.
Blog: Dynamic Nimbus Cloud Deployment Wins Challenge Award at Grid5000 Conference
Dynamic Nimbus Cloud Deployment Wins Challenge Award at Grid5000 Conference
Argonne National Laboratory (04/26/10) Taylor, Eleanor
The Argonne National Laboratory and University of Chicago's Nimbus toolkit, an open source set of software tools for providing cloud computing implementations, was demonstrated at the recent Grid5000 conference in France. Grid5000 is a testbed for studying large-scale systems using thousands of nodes distributed across nine sites in France and Brazil. University of Rennes student Pierre Riteau deployed Nimbus on hundreds of nodes spread across three Grid5000 sites to create a distributed virtual cluster. The deployment won Riteau the Grid5000 Large Scale Deployment Challenge Award. Argonne computer scientist Kate Keahey says the deployment was one of the largest to date and created a distributed environment that opens up computational opportunities for scientists by creating a "sky computing" cluster.
Blog: Mastering Multicore
Mastering Multicore
MIT News (04/26/10) Hardesty, Larry
Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) researchers have developed software that makes computer simulations of physical systems run more efficiently on multicore chips. The system can break a simulation into much smaller chunks, which it loads into a queue. When a core finishes a calculation, it moves onto the next chunk in the queue, which saves the system from having to estimate how long each chunk will take to execute. Additionally, smaller chunks mean that the system can better handle the problem of boundaries. The management system can divide a simulation into chunks that are so small that they can fit in the cache along with information about the adjacent chunks. So a core working with one chunk can rapidly update factors along the boundaries of adjacent chunks. Using existing management systems, the MIT team found that a 24-core machine ran 14 times faster than a single-core machine. However, the new management system ran the same machine 22 times faster. The new system would allow individual machines within clusters to operate more efficiently as well.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Blog: Brains, Worms, and Computer Chips Have Striking Similarities
Brains, Worms, and Computer Chips Have Striking Similarities
University of California, Santa Barbara (04/22/10) Foulsham, George; Gallessich, Gail
The human brain, computer chips, and the nervous system of a worm share many similarities, according to a new report from an international team of researchers. "Brains are often compared to computers, but apart from the trivial fact that both process information using a complex pattern of connections in a physical space, it has been unclear whether this is more than just a metaphor," says University of California, Santa Barbara's Danielle Bassett. The researchers uncovered novel principles that underlie the network organizations of the human brain, computer circuits, and a worm's nervous system. All three share two basic properties--a Russian doll-like architecture, with the same patterns repeating over and over again at different scales, and a principle known as Rent's scaling, a rule used to describe the relationship between the number of elements in a given area and the number of links between them. Given the similar constraints of brains and chips, it appears that both evolution and technological innovation have arrived at the same solutions to optimal mapping patterns, Bassett says.
Blog: Scientists Discover New Genetic Sub-Code
Scientists Discover New Genetic Sub-Code
ETH Life (04/22/10)
ETH Zurich and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics biologists and computer science researchers have identified a genetic sub-code that determines at which rate given products must be made by the cell. The researchers say this information provides new insights into how the cellular decoding machinery works and it makes reading information about gene expression rates easier. "A cell must respond very quickly to injuries such as DNA damage and to potent poisons such as arsenic," says ETH Zurich's Gina Cannarozzi. "The new sub-code enables us to know which genes are turned-on quickly after these insults and which are best expressed slowly." The new sub-code also provides insight into cellular processes at the molecular level and will offer more information about how ribosomes function. This discovery could potentially be exploited to better produce therapeutic agents and research tools.
Monday, April 19, 2010
Blog: Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System
Cyberattack on Google Said to Hit Password System
New York Times (04/19/10) Markoff, John
The cyberattack against Google's computer networks, first disclosed in January, also reportedly breached the company's password system, called Gaia, which controls user access to almost all of its Web services. Although the hackers do not appear to have stolen the passwords of Gmail users, the Gaia breach leaves open the possibility that hackers may find other unknown security weaknesses. The intruders were able to gain control of a software depository used by the Google development team by luring an employee to a poisoned Web site through a link in an instant message. "If you can get to the software repository where the bugs are housed before they are patched, that's the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow," says McAfee's George Kurtz. An attacker looking for weaknesses in the system could benefit from understanding the algorithms on which the software is based, says Neustar's Rodney Joffe. Google still uses the Gaia system, although now it is called Google Sign-On. Soon after the intrusion, Google activated a new layer of encryption for its Gmail service. The company also tightened the security of its data centers and further secured the communications links between its services and the computers of its users.
Friday, April 16, 2010
Blog: Scientists Work to Keep Hackers Out of Implanted Medical Devices
Scientists Work to Keep Hackers Out of Implanted Medical Devices
CNN (04/16/10) Sutter, John D.
Researchers are developing ways to prevent hackers from accessing and remotely controlling medical devices that emit wireless signals. For example, Oak Ridge National Laboratory's Nathanael Paul is designing a more secure insulin pump that cuts some of the wireless connections between parts of the system. Other researchers are looking for security solutions for pacemakers and cardiac defibrillators. Some researchers have suggested protecting the devices with passwords, but doctors and nurses would have to be able to control the devices in the case of an emergency. "If you have a patient that's unconscious on the ground, you really don't want the medical staff to have to figure out what security system they're using," said University of Washington's Tamara Denning at the recent CHI 2010 conference. The passwords could be tattooed in the form of a barcode on the patient's skin, either with visible ink or ink that can only be seen under ultraviolet light, Denning said. Security issues for medical devices will increase when these devices are connected to phones, the Internet, and other computers, notes University of Massachusetts at Amherst professor Kevin Fu.
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Blog: Networked Networks Are Prone to Epic Failure
Networked Networks Are Prone to Epic Failure
Wired News (04/15/10) Keim, Brandon
Boston University (BU) researchers have found that networks that are resilient on their own become fragile and prone to catastrophic failure when they are connected to other networks. The researchers say this vulnerability extends to networks of all types, including electrical grids, water supplies, computer networks, roads, hospitals, and financial systems. The researchers modeled the behavior of two networks, each possessing broad degree distribution. During testing, these networks needed only a few nodes to fail before the networks completely crashed. "Networks with broad distributions are robust against random attacks," says Boston University physicist Gerald Paul. "But we found that broad interconnected networks are very fragile." The interconnections fueled a cascading effect, with the failures coursing back and forth. Indiana University's Alessandro Vespignani says the fact that the networks crashed so quickly is even more important. Research into linked systems could help create more resilient networks, or identify existing weaknesses. "We must recognize the possibility of big disasters, and take steps to prepare," says BU physicist Eugene Stanley.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Blog: Cat Brain: A Step Toward the Electronic Equivalent
Cat Brain: A Step Toward the Electronic Equivalent
University of Michigan News Service (04/14/10) Moore, Nicole Casal
University of Michigan (UM) computer engineer Wei Lu has developed a memristor that can connect to conventional circuits and support a process that is the basis for memory and learning in biological systems. "We are building a computer in the same way that nature builds a brain," Lu says. Today's most advanced supercomputer can accomplish certain tasks with the brain functionality of a cat, but it is 83 times slower than a cat's brain, according to Lu. So far, Lu has connected two electronic circuits with one memristor, demonstrating that the system is capable of a memory and learning process called spike timing dependent plasticity, which refers to the ability of connections between neurons to become stronger based on when they are stimulated in relation to each other. Spike timing dependent plasticity is thought to be the basis for memory and learning in mammalian brains. The next step is to build a larger system, Lu says. The goal is to achieve the sophistication of a supercomputer in a machine the size of a two-liter soda bottle.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Blog: Keeping Medical Data Private
Keeping Medical Data Private
Technology Review (04/13/10) Gammon, Katharine
Vanderbilt University (VU) researchers have developed an algorithm designed to protect the privacy of medical patients while maintaining researchers' ability to analyze large amounts of genetic and clinical data. Although patient records are anonymized, they still contain the numerical codes, known as ICD codes, which represent every condition a doctor has detected. As a result, VU professor Bradley Malin says it is possible to follow a specific set of codes backward and identify a person. Malin and his colleagues found that they could identify more than 96 percent of a group of patients based only on their particular set of ICD codes. To make patients more private, the researchers designed an algorithm that searches a database for combinations of ICD codes that distinguish a patient and then substitutes a more general version of the codes to ensure each patient's altered record is indistinguishable from a certain number of other patients. The researchers tested the algorithm on 2,762 patients and could not identify any of them based on their new ICD codes.
Blog: High-Performance Computing Reveals Missing Genes
High-Performance Computing Reveals Missing Genes
Virginia Bioinformatics Institute (04/13/10) Whyte, Barry
Researchers at Virginia Tech's (VT's) Department of Computer Science and the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute used a supercomputer to locate small genes that have been overlooked by scientists in their search for the microbial DNA sequences of life. The researchers used the mpiBLAST computational tool, which enabled them to conduct the study in 12 hours, instead of the 90 years it would have taken using a standard personal computer. The researchers say the study is the first large-scale attempt to identify undetected genes of microbes in the GenBank DNA sequence repository, which currently contains more than 100 billion bases of DNA sequences. "This is a perfect storm, where an overwhelming amount of data is analyzed by state-of-the-art computational approaches, yielding important new information about genes," says VT professor Skip Garner. There are currently more than 1,200 genome sequences of microbes stored in the GenBank database. "To facilitate the rapid discovery of missing genes in genomes, we used our mpiBLAST sequence-search tool to perform an all-to-all sequence search of the 780 microbial genomes that we investigated," says VT professor Wu Feng.
Blog: Random, But Not By Accident: Quantum Mechanics and Data Encryption
Random, But Not By Accident: Quantum Mechanics and Data Encryption
UM Newsdesk (04/13/10) Tune, Lee
Researchers at the University of Maryland's Joint Quantum Institute (JQI), working with European quantum information scientists, have demonstrated a method of producing certifiably random strings of numbers based on the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics. The technique is based on the work of physicist John Bell, who studied a condition called entanglement, in which matter particles become so interdependent that if a measurement is performed to determine a property of one, which will be a random value, the corresponding property of the other is instantly determined as well. Bell showed mathematically that if the objects were not entangled, their correlations would have to be smaller than a certain value, expressed as an "inequality." However, if they were entangled, their correlations could be higher, violating the inequality. The JQI test was the first to violate a Bell inequality between systems separated over a distance without missing any of the events. "If we verify a Bell inequality violation between isolated systems while not missing events, we can ensure that our device produces private randomness," says JQI's Dzmitry Matsukevich.
Friday, April 9, 2010
Blog: Steganography Discovery Could Help Data Thieves, But Also Improve Radar, Sonograms
Steganography Discovery Could Help Data Thieves, But Also Improve Radar, Sonograms
Network World (04/09/10) Greene, Tim
The technology for instruments used to see through fog also could be used for optical steganography, according to a team of researchers at Princeton University. Radar instruments rely on the refractive properties of crystals, which combine the energy of light noise with the weak energy of the signal, to make a clear image of an object. Jason Fleischer and colleague Dmitry Dylov used a ground-glass filter to simulate fog so they could control the statistical properties of the noise, but they say the same principles could be used in natural environments. Thieves might try to store stolen data on CDs in a way that prevents it from being detected by corporate security professionals. A coating on the surface could diffuse the signal from the data so conventional CD players would interpret just noise. However, a device with a tunable crystal could be adjusted to read the signal behind the noise. "There could be a signal there, but unless you know it's there you wouldn't even know to look," Fleischer says. The technology also could improve sonograms and night vision goggles.
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Blog: 'Big Data' Can Create Big Issues
'Big Data' Can Create Big Issues
Investor's Business Daily (04/08/10) P. A4; Bonasia, J.
Tech firms are approaching the challenge of mining "big data"--immense repositories of information generated by industry and government--by using predictive analytics software to detect trends and anticipate coming events. Applications of predictive analytics include sifting credit card transactions to spot fraud, targeted marketing through the combination of data from past transactions and predictive models for pricing and special offers, and customer retention by studying profits from the patterns across a consumer's lifetime. Statistical modeling and machine learning form the two central predictive analytics technologies. PricewaterhouseCoopers' Steve Cranford says the use of predictive analysis is forcing companies to devise customer data management protocols, with implications for privacy and security. The explosive expansion of big data has led to a boom in identity theft and a widespread erosion of consumer privacy via hacking or inattention. IBM Research's Chid Apte argues that personal data should be granted more anonymity in certain cases.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Blog: H.P. Sees a Revolution in Memory Chip
H.P. Sees a Revolution in Memory Chip
New York Times (04/07/10) Markoff, John
Hewlett-Packard (HP) researchers have developed a new class of small switches called memristors designed to replace transistors as computer chips get smaller. Memristors are simpler than existing semiconducting transistors and can be used for both data processing and storage applications. The new design could allow engineers to stack thousands of switches in a high-rise fashion, leading to a new class of ultra-dense computing devices. Memristor-based systems could also lead to the development of analog computing systems that function more like biological brains. "The memristor technology really has the capacity to continue scaling for a very long time, and that's really a big deal," says HP's Stan Williams. The technology is based on the ability to use an electrical current to move atoms within an ultrathin film of titanium dioxide. IBM, Intel, and other companies are pursuing a different approach, called phase-change memory. Phase-change memory uses heat to shift a glassy material from an amorphous to a crystalline state and back.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Blog: Picking Our Brains: Can We Make a Conscious Machine?
Picking Our Brains: Can We Make a Conscious Machine?
New Scientist (04/06/10) Biever, Celeste
The effort to create artificial consciousness is gaining momentum. "We have to consider machine consciousness as a grand challenge, like putting a man on the moon," says the University of Palermo's Antonio Chella, editor of the International Journal of Machine Consciousness, which launched last year. The closest a software bot has come to attaining artificial consciousness may be the Intelligent Distribution Agent (IDA), which was created by the University of Memphis' Stan Franklin. IDA assigns sailors from the U.S. Navy to new jobs and must coordinate naval policies, job requirements, changing costs, and sailor's needs. IDA has both conscious and unconscious levels of processing. The updated Learning IDA was recently completed, and it can learn from past experiences as well as feel emotions in the form of high-level goals that guide the decision-making process. The University of Vermont's Josh Bongard has designed a walking robot that can maintain its function after being damaged. The robot has a continuously updated internal model of itself, which is considered a key part of human sentience and takes the robot closer to self-awareness. Meanwhile, the Carlos III University of Madrid's Raul Arrabales recently developed Conscale, a program that compares the intelligence of various software agents.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Blog: Researchers Trace Data Theft to Intruders in China
Researchers Trace Data Theft to Intruders in China
New York Times (04/05/10) Markoff, John; Barboza, David; Bajaj, Vikas
Over the past eight months a team of U.S. and Canadian researchers have spied on a gang of intruders that stole sensitive information from the Indian Defense Ministry and traced them to China. A report from the researchers indicates that the ring extensively employed Internet services such as Twitter, Yahoo! Mail, and Google Groups to automate the control of computers once they had been commandeered. The investigators gained access to the control servers used by the gang to monitor the theft of a broad spectrum of material, and traced the attacks to intruders that appeared to be based in Chengdu. Among the stolen material were documents related to the travel of NATO forces in Afghanistan, which demonstrated that many nations can be put at risk of exposure by a single computer security hole. "An important question to be entertained is whether the [People's Republic of China (PRC)] will take action to shut the Shadow Network down," the report says. "Doing so will help to address long-standing concerns that malware ecosystems are actively cultivated, or at the very least tolerated, by governments like the PRC who stand to benefit from their exploits though the black and gray markets for information and data."
Friday, April 2, 2010
Blog: Invisibility Cloak That Generates Virtual Images Gets Closer to Realization
Invisibility Cloak That Generates Virtual Images Gets Closer to Realization
PhysOrg.com (04/02/10) Zyga, Lisa
Engineers from Southeast University in Nanjing, China, have developed a material that can serve as more than an invisibility cloak. The optical transformation media, or illusion media, makes an object invisible as well as generates images in its place. Enclosing an object in an illusion medium layer will result in the appearance of another object or multiple virtual objects. "Hence it can be applied to confuse the detectors or the viewers, and the detectors or the viewers can't perceive the real object," says Southeast University engineer Tie Jun Cui. The main difference between illusion media and an invisibility cloak is that the new approach uses scattered electrical field patterns to generate virtual images. The proposed optical device would operate at microwave frequencies. Moreover, illusion media would be easier to fabricate with artificial metamaterials. "All permitivity and permeability components of our illusion media are finite and positive," Cui says.
Blog: NIST Workshop Takes First Steps Toward Standards for Preserving Digital Data
NIST Workshop Takes First Steps Toward Standards for Preserving Digital Data
Government Computer News (04/02/10) Jackson, William
A recent U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) workshop discussed the requirements for creating an international digital data preservation standard. "Everybody is doing their own thing to preserve data, but they are not doing it in a common way," says NIST computer scientist Wo Chang. "This is a huge problem." Chang says an approved standard is still at least two years away and then it will only address a preliminary set of needs. Any new standard will have to work within existing technology and infrastructure because there is so much data already in existence. Chang envisions adding new metadata about the formatting and metadata contained within the data envelope, which would enable users to identify the data and determine what is usable. "One thing that could help adapt data to a common standard for preservation would be to adopt a common workflow for capturing metadata in a systematic way," Chang says.