Dear ACM TechNews Subscriber: Welcome to the January 9, 2004 edition of ACM TechNews, providing timely information for IT professionals three times a week. For instructions on how to unsubscribe from this service, please see below. ACM's MemberNet is now online. For the latest on ACM activities, member benefits, and industry issues, visit http://www.acm.org/membernet Remember to check out our hot new online essay and opinion magazine, Ubiquity, at http://www.acm.org/ubiquity ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ACM TechNews Volume 6, Number 592 Date: January 9, 2004 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Site Sponsored by AutoChoice Advisor ... Looking for a NEW vehicle? Discover which ones are right for you from over 250 different makes and models. Your unbiased list of vehicles is based on your preferences and years of consumer input. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Top Stories for Friday, January 9, 2004: http://www.acm.org/technews/current/homepage.html "U.S. Could Lose Technology Dominance, Executives Say" "MCNC Develops New Protocol, Device for Optical, Grid Networking" "NASA's IT Success" "At Tech Trade Show, Devices Don't Speak Same Language" "New UCI Center Promotes Diversity in Technology Fields" "Let There Be L.E.D.'s" "Internet Cleans Its Own House" "Next Digital Screen Could Fold Like Paper" "Lord of the Nano-Rings May Hold Key to I.T." "A Virtual Cash Register Rings Up Tiny Transactions" "UI 'Sitting on a Breakthrough'" "Instrumenting the Enterprise" "CITRIS Q&A: Interview With Bernd Hamann" "SmartAdvice: IT Generalist Background Gives an Edge" "EMMA: W3C's Extended Multimodal Annotation Markup Language" "Raise You 50..." "IT Agenda 2004" "Software and the City" "It's in the Algorithms" ******************* News Stories *********************** "U.S. Could Lose Technology Dominance, Executives Say" The United States' leadership position in the knowledge economy is threatened by expanding tech efforts in India, Russia, China, and elsewhere; the U.S. technology infrastructure must be shored up with more federal funding for research and development, financial incentives for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item1 "MCNC Develops New Protocol, Device for Optical, Grid Networking" North Carolina State University professors and the nonprofit Microelectronics Center of North Carolina (MCNC) have created a new networking protocol and accompanying appliance enabling on-demand provisioning of bandwidth. The JITPAC project is useful for real-time ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item2 "NASA's IT Success" The successful landing and operation of NASA's robotic exploration rover on Mars is a confidence booster for CIOs struggling with business technology, since the complexity involved in transmitting and receiving massive amounts of data between Earth and Mars has many parallels in the business world. ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item3 "At Tech Trade Show, Devices Don't Speak Same Language" Device incompatibility was a running theme at this week's International Consumer Electronics Show, despite companies flaunting new products that promise a universal interface for computers, home entertainment systems, and the Internet. Yet businesses are forging ahead with the rollout of ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item4 "New UCI Center Promotes Diversity in Technology Fields" The Ada Byron Research Center (ABRC) at UC Irvine's School of Information and Computer Science is dedicated to the study of diversity in technology fields, with an emphasis on boosting the recruitment and retention of women, Latinos, African Americans, and other minorities in IT through ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item5 "Let There Be L.E.D.'s" Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) are being touted as a more power-efficient substitute for incandescent light bulbs, though the technology is not without its disadvantages, cost being one of the biggest. Other pluses of LEDs in addition to efficiency include more longevity and less heat output ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item6 "Internet Cleans Its Own House" Larry Downes of the University of California, Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems thinks it is far more effective to let the Internet community solve spam, privacy infringement, and other problems plaguing the Web than leaving it to government regulation. This is because ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item7 "Next Digital Screen Could Fold Like Paper" Flexible display technology is on the horizon, with "smart" papers and super-thin glass displays expected to debut this year; planned further down the line are wearable display technologies such as clothes that change color, automatic camouflage systems for soldiers, reusable paper, and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item8 "Lord of the Nano-Rings May Hold Key to I.T." Purdue University researchers believe it is theoretically possible to develop nonvolatile memory based on self-assembling cobalt "nano-rings" capable of storing data at room temperature. Purdue chemist Alexander Wei describes the rings as "essentially tiny magnets with a north and south ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item9 "A Virtual Cash Register Rings Up Tiny Transactions" Electronic micropayment systems may get a shot in the arm with the emergence of new technology. MIT researchers Ronald L. Rivest and Silvio Micali founded Peppercoin, a company offering software designed to cut online merchants' transaction costs by employing sophisticated encryption ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item10 "UI 'Sitting on a Breakthrough'" Light-speed computing and electronic communications are some of the potential applications of a new light-emitting transistor suggested by University of Illinois professor Nick Holonyak. The transistor was developed by UI researchers working at laboratories headed by Holonyak and ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item11 "Instrumenting the Enterprise" Dan Farber writes that the instrumentation of IT--in which the behavior of IT infrastructure "instruments" is monitored and managed at multiple levels across the extended enterprise--will be a critical theme in 2004. The goal of instrumentation is to incorporate, or architect, rules of acceptable ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item12 "CITRIS Q&A: Interview With Bernd Hamann" Bernd Hamann, co-director of UC Davis' Center for Image Processing and Integrated Computing (CIPIC), has developed data visualization techniques that have helped researchers obtain new insights about external phenomena and human biology. He says the goal of CIPIC is to pioneer visualization ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item13 "SmartAdvice: IT Generalist Background Gives an Edge" The Advisory Council (TAC) Thought Leader Beth Cohen sympathizes with an IT manager who works at a small company and feels overwhelmed by work and underappreciated by the management; she comments that this feeling is common to many IT generalists, but adds that their wide range of skills ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item14 "EMMA: W3C's Extended Multimodal Annotation Markup Language" The W3C Multimodal Working Group recently released an important first draft of its Extended MultiModal Annotation markup language (EMMA) that will allow different multimodal computer input systems to work synchronously. A standard EMMA language generator included in speech recognition, ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item15 "Raise You 50..." Poker is thought by many to be a game that computer programs cannot possibly win against seasoned opponents, given all the psychological, instinctual, and mathematical factors that come into play. Nevertheless, researchers at the University of Alberta in Edmonton are working on ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item16 "IT Agenda 2004" Premier 100 IT leaders say they will be taking a great interest in how wireless, business intelligence, Web services, and grid computing pan out in the coming year. Wireless technology is a sensible choice for organizations where mobility is a key component: Dominion Resources, for ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item17 "Software and the City" The most advanced city modeling and simulation software currently in existence is UrbanSim, developed by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle. The software's developers created UrbanSim to address some of the uncertainties and complexities that other urban ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item18 "It's in the Algorithms" Research projects to develop more intuitive search algorithms could offer more personalized alternatives to the "group consensus" algorithms supporting Google's search engine. Kaltix's technology apparently aims to recalculate search results on a per-user basis by accelerating the ... http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0109f.html#item19 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ -- To review Wednesday's issue, please visit http://www.acm.org/technews/articles/2004-6/0107w.html -- To visit the TechNews home page, point your browser to: http://www.acm.org/technews/ -- To unsubscribe from the ACM TechNews Early Alert Service: Please send a separate email to listserv@listserv2.acm.org with the line ... signoff technews in the body of your message. -- Please note that replying directly to this message does not automatically unsubscribe you from the TechNews list. -- To submit feedback about ACM TechNews, contact: technews@hq.acm.org -- ACM may have a different email address on file for you, so if you're unable to "unsubscribe" yourself, please direct your request to: technews-request@acm.org ... 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