Behaviour of Building Block of Nature Could Lead to Computer Revolution
University of Cambridge (07/31/09)
Physicists from the Universities of Cambridge and Birmingham have demonstrated that electrons in narrow wires can split into two new particles called spinons and holons. Like-charged electrons repel each other and must adjust their movements to avoid getting too close to each other, and this effect is exacerbated in extremely narrow wires. It was theorized in 1981 that under these conditions and at the lowest temperatures the electrons would be permanently divided into spinons and holons. Accomplishing this required confining electrons in a quantum wire that is brought in close enough proximity to an ordinary metal so that the electrons in the metal could "jump" into the wire by quantum tunneling. The Cambridge and Birmingham physicists observed how the electron, on penetrating the quantum wire, split into spinons and holons by watching how the rate of jumping varied with an applied magnetic field. "Quantum wires are widely used to connect up quantum 'dots,' which may in the future form the basis of ... a quantum computer," notes Chris Ford with the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory. "Thus understanding their properties may be important for such quantum technologies, as well as helping to develop more complete theories of superconductivity and conduction in solids in general. This could lead to a new computer revolution."
Friday, July 31, 2009
Blog: Behaviour of Building Block of Nature Could Lead to Computer Revolution
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Blog: How Wolfram Alpha Could Change Software
How Wolfram Alpha Could Change Software
InfoWorld (07/30/09) McAllister, Neil
Wolfram Research's Wolfram Alpha software is described as a computational knowledge engine that employs mathematical methods to cross-reference various specialized databases and generate unique results for each query. Furthermore, Wolfram alleges that each page of results returned by the Wolfram Alpha engine is a unique, copyrightable work because its terms of use state that "in many cases the data you are shown never existed before in exactly that way until you asked for it." Works produced by machines are copyrightable, at least in theory. But for Wolfram Alpha to claim copyright protection for its query results, its pages must be such original presentations of information that they are eligible as novel works of authorship. Although Wolfram says its knowledge engine is driven by exclusive, proprietary sources of curated data, many of the data points it works with are actually commonplace facts. If copyright applies to Wolfram Alpha's output in certain instances, then by extension the same rules are relevant to every other information service in similar cases. Assuming that unique presentations based on software-based manipulation of mundane data can be copyrighted, the question remains as to who retains what rights to the resulting works.
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Blog: A Better Way to Shoot Down Spam
A Better Way to Shoot Down Spam
Technology Review (07/29/09) Kremen, Rachel
The Spatio-temporal Network-level Automatic Reputation Engine (SNARE) is an automated system developed at the Georgia Institute for Technology that can spot spam before it hits the mail server. SNARE scores each incoming email according to new criteria that can be gathered from a single data packet. The researchers say the system puts less pressure on the network and keeps the need for human intervention to a minimum while maintaining the same accuracy as conventional spam filters. Analysis of 25 million emails enabled the Georgia Tech team to compile characteristics that could be culled from a single packet of data and used to efficiently identify spam. They also learned that they could identify junk email by mapping out the geodesic distance between the Internet Protocol (IP) addresses of the sender and receiver, as spam tends to travel farther than legitimate email. The researchers also studied the autonomous server number affiliated with an email. SNARE can spot spam in seven out of 10 instances, with a false positive rate of 0.3 percent. If SNARE is deployed in a corporate environment, the network administrator could establish rules about the disposition of email according to its SNARE score. Northwestern University Ph.D. candidate Dean Malmgren questions the effectiveness of SNARE once its methodology is widely known, as spammers could use a bogus IP address close to the recipient's to fool the system. Likewise, John Levine of the Coalition Against Unsolicited Commercial Email warns that "spammers are not dumb; any time you have a popular scheme [for identifying spam], they'll circumvent it."
Friday, July 24, 2009
Blog: Scale-Free Networks: A Decade and Beyond
Scale-Free Networks: A Decade and Beyond
Science (07/24/09) Vol. 325, No. 5939, P. 412; Barabasi, Albert-Laszlo
Early network models were predicated on the notion that complex systems were randomly interconnected, but research has shown that networks exhibit perceptibly nonrandom features through what is termed the scale-free property. Moreover, this network architecture has demonstrated universality through its manifestation in all kinds of real networks, regardless of their age, scope, and function. All systems seen as complex are comprised of an incredibly large number of elements that interact through intricate networks. The scale-free nature of networks has been proven thanks to improved maps and data sets as well as correspondence between empirical data and analytical models that predict network structure. The existence of the scale-free property validates the indivisibility of the structure and evolution of networks, and has forced researchers to accept the concept that networks are in a constant state of flux due to the arrival of nodes and links. The universality of diverse topological traits, such as motifs, degree distributions, degree correlations, and communities, function as a platform to analyze variegated phenomena and make predictions. By understanding the behavior of systems perceived as complex, researchers can plot out such things as the Internet's response to attacks and cells' reactions to environmental changes. This requires achieving a comprehension of networks' dynamical phenomena.
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Tuesday, July 21, 2009
Blog: Moore's Law Hits Economic Limits
Moore's Law Hits Economic Limits
Financial Times (07/21/09) P. 15; Nuttall, Chris
Much attention has been given to the approaching scientific limit to chip miniaturization and the continuation of Moore's Law, but an economic limit is nearing faster than the predicted scientific limit, according to some experts. "The high cost of semiconductor manufacturing equipment is making continued chipmaking advancements too expensive to use for volume production, relegating Moore's Law to the laboratory and altering the fundamental economics of the industry," says iSuppli's Len Jelinek. He predicts that Moore's Law will no longer drive volume chip production after 2014 because circuitry widths will dip to 20 nanometers or below by that date, and the tools to make those circuits will be too expensive for companies to recover their costs over the lifetime of production. The costs and risks associated with building new fabrication systems have already forced many producers of logic chips toward a fabless chip model, in which they outsource much of their production to chip foundries in Asia. At the 90nm level there were 14 chipmakers involved in fabrication, but at the 45nm level that number has been reduced to nine, and only two of them, Intel and Samsung, have plans to create 22nm factories. However, Intel's Andy Bryant says that as long as demand is maintained by consumers and businesses looking for the most advanced technology, Moore's Law, and the major investments it requires, will continue to make economic sense.
Blog: Yale Researchers Create Database-Hadoop Hybrid
Yale Researchers Create Database-Hadoop Hybrid
Computerworld (07/21/09) Lai, Eric
Yale University professor Daniel J. Abadi has led the development of HadoopDB, an open source parallel database management system (DBMS) that combines the data-processing capabilities of a relational database with the scalability of new technologies such as Hadoop and MapReduce. HadoopDB was developed using components from PostgreSQL, the Apache Hadoop data-sorting technology, and Hive, the international Hadoop project launched by Facebook. HadoopDB queries can be submitted as either MapReduce or in SQL language. Abadi says data processing is partially done in Hadoop and partially in "different PostgreSQL instances" spread out over several nodes in a shared-nothing cluster of machines. He says that unlike previously developed DBMS projects, HadoopDB is not a hybrid only at the language/interface level, but also at the systems implementation level. Abadi says HadoopDB combines the best of both approaches to achieve the fault tolerance of massively parallel data infrastructures, such as MapReduce, in which a single server failure has little effect on the overall grid, and is capable of performing complex analyses almost as quickly as existing commercial parallel databases. He says that as databases continue to grow, systems such as HadoopDB will "scale much better than parallel databases."
Monday, July 20, 2009
Blog: How Networking Is Transforming Healthcare
How Networking Is Transforming Healthcare
Network World (07/20/09) Marsan, Carolyn Duffy
High-speed computer networks have the potential to transform the healthcare industry, according to Mike McGill, program director for Internet2's Health Sciences Initiative. Internet2's Health Network Initiative is a project to help medical researchers, educators, and clinicians see the possibilities of network applications in a medical setting. McGill notes, for instance, that Internet2 has demonstrated the ability to put a patient up on a telepresence environment with a remote psychiatrist, which would go a long way toward fulfilling the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs' mandate to provide care for wounded soldiers, who often reside in rural areas but are assigned psychiatrists based in urban areas. McGill points out that 120 of the 125 medical schools in the United States are Internet2 members, and he says that Internet2 is the designated national backbone for the Federal Communications Commission's Rural Health Care Pilot Program. Groups that the Health Network Initiative has spawned include those focusing on security, the technical aspects, network resources, and education. McGill says the Obama administration is currently pushing "for electronic health records with very limited capability," and notes that the Health Sciences Initiative is "working on electronic health records that are backed up by lab tests and images, and that's a whole lot richer of an environment than just the textual record." Another project the initiative is focused on is the creation of a cancer biomedical informatics grid that is linking all U.S. cancer centers so that the research environment can be unified to exchange data. McGill describes the last mile and cultural challenges as the key networking challenges in terms of electronic health information sharing.