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    University of Arizona researchers are developing hybrid hardware/software systems that could eventually use machine intelligence to allow spacecraft to fix themselves. Arizona professor Ali Akoglu is using field programmable gate arrays (FPGA) to build self-healing systems that can be reconfigured as needed to emulate different types of hardware. Akoglu says general-purpose computers can run a variety of systems but they are extremely slow compared to hard-wired systems designed to perform specific tasks. What is needed, Akoglu says, are systems that combine the speed of hard-wired systems with the flexibility of general-purpose computers, which is what he is trying to accomplish using FPGAs. The researchers are testing five wirelessly-linked hardware units that could represent a combination of five landers and rovers on Mars. Akoglu says the system tries to recover from a malfunction in two ways. First, the unit tries to fix itself at the node level by reprogramming malfunctioning circuits. If that fails, the unit tries to recover by employing redundant circuitry. If the unit's onboard resources cannot fix the problem, the network-level intelligence is alerted and another unit takes over functions that were done by the broken unit. If two units go down, the three remaining units divide the tasks. "Our objective is to go beyond predicting a fault to using a self-healing system to fix the predicted fault before it occurs," he says.
    16 years ago by @gwpl
     
      acm_technews
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      Experts at FutureNet, an annual conference held to address communications services, say the Internet architecture will face severe challenges over the next few years that could significantly strain the Web's effectiveness. One of the most prominent issues facing the Internet is the impending shortage of IP addresses, which some forecasters say could occur within the next few years. IPv4 offers about 4.7 billion possible IP addresses, but it is running out of capacity. Juniper's Ron Bonica says there are three likely solutions to this problem. The first is to sick with IPv4, which would create some immediate problems with the impending shortage of IP addresses but would also lead to the creation of an IP address trading system through which companies and individuals that own an excessive number of addresses could sell them at market value. Another possibility would be a rapid deployment of IPv6, the next generation Internet Protocol that is capable of supporting several billion more addresses than IPv4. Bonica says many companies and organizations are reluctant to make the switch because it will require significant investments on the part of end users and ISPs, and transition mechanisms to help make the switch have not been deployed yet. Bonica says the third option is a compromise between these two solutions that involves a gradual shift from IPv4 to IPv6. Another issue addressed FutureNet addressed was the strain more IP addresses will place on routing tables, which are not scalable and cannot adapt to exponential increases in IP addresses. "The basic, fundamental problems of scaling a network haven't been addressed in any innovative manner," says American Registry of Internet Numbers Chairman John Curran.
      16 years ago by @gwpl
       
        acm_technews
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        Music professors Clifton Callender at Florida State University, Ian Quinn at Yale University, and Dmitri Tymoczko at Princeton University have developed a new way of analyzing and categorizing music using the complex mathematics found in music. The new method, called "geometrical music theory," looks at sequences of notes, chords, rhythms, and scales, and categorizes them so they can be grouped into "families." The families can be given a mathematical structure that can be represented by points in complex geometrical spaces, similar to x-y graphing used in algebra. Different categorizations produce unique geometrical spaces, reflecting the various ways musicians in different times understood music. The researchers say that having tools for conceptualizing music could lead to a variety of applications, such as creating new instruments, new musical toys, and new visualization tools. Tymoczko says the most satisfying part for him is being able to see the logical structure that links many different musical concepts. "To some extent, we can represent the history of music as a long process of exploring different symmetries and different geometries," he says.
        16 years ago by @gwpl
         
          acm_technews
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          Without significant new investment, the Internet's current network architecture will reach the limits of its capacity by 2010, warned AT&T's Jim Cicconi at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 in London. "The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today," Cicconi says. "In three years' time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today." Cicconi says at least $55 billion in investments are needed in new infrastructure over the next three years in the United States alone, and $130 billion worldwide. The "unprecedented new wave of broadband traffic" will increase fifty-fold by 2015, Cicconi predicts, adding that AT&T will invest $19 billion to maintain its network and upgrade the core of its network. Cicconi adds that more demand for high-definition video will put an increasing strain on the Internet's infrastructure, noting that eight hours of video is loaded onto YouTube every minute, and that HD video consumes seven to 10 times more bandwidth than normal video. "Video will be 80 percent of all traffic by 2010, up from 30 percent today," he says.
          16 years ago by @gwpl
           
            acm_technews
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            Projekt europejski 6PR o tematyce zbliżonej do mTeam, bez uwzględniania urządzeń mobilnych, za to dużo o zarządzaniu wiedzą (knowledge management) dla współpracy.
            16 years ago by @adamw
             
              management"collaboration"semantic"knowledgeweb"
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              The Replicating Rapid-prototyper printer (RepRap) is an open source, self-copying 3D printer that works by building objects in layers of plastic, primarily polylactic acid, a bio-degradable polymer made from lactic acid. Unlike existing prototyping printers, RepRap can replicate and update itself, including printing its own parts, says RepRap software developer Vik Olliver. The RepRap development team, is spread throughout New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. By making the project open source, the team hopes to be able to continue to improve the machine until it can do what people want it to do. Improvements received by the team are then sent back to users, allowing RepRap to evolve as a whole. A recent feature added to RepRap are heads that can be changed for different kinds of plastic. Olliver says a head that deposits low melting-point metal is in development, which means low melting-point metal could be put inside higher melting-point plastic, allowing for the production of structures such as motors. RepRap could also allow people to build circuits in 3D and in various shapes. Having the machine be able to copy itself is the most useful feature the team can give it and is the primary goal of the project, Olliver says.
              16 years ago by @gwpl
               
                hardwareacm_technewsopensource
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                16 years ago by @krz
                 
                  recommender_systemmteam
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                  Robots could fill 3.5 million jobs in Japan by 2025, concludes a new Machine Industry Memorial Foundation report. The report says robots have the potential to save $21 billion on health care costs for the elderly by 2025. Robots could help caregivers with children or older people by reading books out loud or helping bathe the elderly, and they also could do some housework. People would be able to focus on more important things, including caregivers, who could gain more than an extra hour a day as a result of such assistance. The robots could range from micro-sized capsules that detect lesions to high-tech vacuum cleaners, but it could take more time before they have a big impact in Japan. "There's the expensive price tag, the functions of the robots still need to improve, and then there are the mindsets of people," says Takao Kobayashi, who worked on the study. "People need to have the will to use the robots."
                  16 years ago by @gwpl
                   
                    acm_technewsrobots
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                    The MoGo artificial intelligence engine defeated professional 5th DAN Catalin Taranu in a 9x9 game of Go during the Go Tournament in Paris in late March. The victory, the first officially sanctioned "non blitz" victory for a machine over a Go Master, is considered a significant achievement because the game is patterned more after human thought than chess and its possible combinations exceed the number of particles in the universe. Taranu says the system was close to reaching the level of DAN in performance. The computer did lose to Taranu in a 19x19 configuration with a nine-stone handicap. The French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) developed the artificial intelligence engine. "The software used in this victory--the result of a collaboration between INRIA, the CNRS(1), LRI(2) and CMAP(3)--is based on innovative technologies that can be used in numerous different areas, particularly in the conservation of resources which is such a vital issue when it comes to tackling environmental problems," says INRIA researcher Olivier Teytaud, who led the MoGo team.
                    16 years ago by @gwpl
                     
                      acm_technewsartificial_intelligence
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                      The use of organic and chemical materials to perform digital signal processing without electrical currents could be the next major technological revolution, say Northwestern professors Sotirios Tsaftaris and Aggelos Katsaggelos. Their research includes studying the use of DNA for digital signal processing, as DNA strands can be used to input and process elements, and DNA is an excellent medium for data storage. Digital samples can be recorded in DNA, which can be kept in a liquid form in test tubes to save space. DNA can also be easily replicated using common laboratory techniques, creating a database that could be easily searched, no matter how large. Over the past 10 years scientists and engineers have experimented with different materials for performing signal processing, possibly leading to a "not-so-electric future" of digital signal processing, according to Tsaftaris and Katsaggelos. For example, artist and scientist Cameron Jones discovered that fungi grown on CDs causes the optically recorded sound to be distorted by the fungi, and that the fungi growth patterns were dependent on the optical grooves recorded on the CD. Meanwhile, in 2005, a group of E. coli cells were modified to react to light and were able to perform edge detection of an image, a basic processing task.
                      16 years ago by @gwpl
                       
                        bioinformaticsDNAacm_technews
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                      publications  229