UNU-MERIT: I&T Weekly

	Search \| Sitemap \| Intranet \| PhD Intranet

Subscribe to I&T Weekly A free e-zine about Innovation & Technology developments

text html Please type the above code:
	RSS feed

Previous Issues I&T Weekly

>> back to archive

Previous issues of I&T Weekly:

2013: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20]

2012: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37]

2011: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2010: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2009: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42]

2008: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41]

2007: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2006: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44]

2005: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40]

2004: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43]

2003: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2002: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19] [20] [21] [22] [23] [24] [25] [26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31] [32] [33] [34] [35] [36] [37] [38] [39] [40] [41] [42] [43] [44] [45] [46] [47]

2001: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15] [16] [17] [18] [19]

Issue no. 38, 2003 Published: Oct 17, 2003
New internet speed record set
Europe bucks global outsourcing trend
Ad groups put spam in the crosshairs
Citizens strike back in intelligence war
Monkey's brain signals control 'third arm'
Turning a PC into a supercomputer
A storage tank like no other
Technology brings 3D TV closer
Big Mac to storm supercomputer list
Smart software watches the skies
'Groundbreaking' laser-powered plane takes off
Process prints nanoparticles
New mobile phone 'to replace credit cards'

New internet speed record set
Two major scientific research centres said on Wednesday they had set a new world speed record for sending data across the internet, equivalent to transferring a full-length DVD film in seven seconds. The European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, said the feat, doubling the previous top speed, was achieved in a nearly 30-minute transmission over 7,000 kms of network between Geneva and a lab at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in California. CERN said it had sent 1.1 Terabytes of data at 5.44 gigabits a second (Gbps). This is more than 20,000 times faster than a typical home broadband connection, and is also equivalent to transferring a 60-minute compact disc within one second - an operation that takes around eight minutes on standard broadband.
CNN / Reuters Oct 15, 2003	back to top

Europe bucks global outsourcing trend
The number of European outsourcing contracts worth over €200m signed so far this year has leapt 83 per cent on 2002, as deals on the continent overtake those in the rest of the world. To date this year, 22 mega deals have been signed in Europe, compared with 12 contracts in 2002. Globally, 54 major deals have so far been signed, worth a total of €37.2bn, compared with 51 deals, worth €33.8bn, by this time in 2002. Mega deals signed at the back end of last year, all with IBM, included JP Morgan (€5bn), Deutsche Bank (€2.6bn), and retailer Boots (€1.1bn). According to research by Technology Partners International (TPI), which advises on outsourcing deals, European contracts signed so far in 2003 represent almost 41 per cent of all contracts in the €200m-plus band. Big outsourcing deals are becoming more common in Europe than ever before and are now outstripping the rest of the world, added TPI.
VNUnet UK Oct 15, 2003	back to top

Ad groups put spam in the crosshairs
Three top US advertising trade groups this week laid out their rules for proper marketing via electronic mail, marking a new battle against unsolicited e-mail. The American Association of Advertising Agencies, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) said the shared guidelines were meant to distinguish legitimate marketing messages from deceptive or vulgar spam, which consumers often delete in bulk. The nine guidelines call for commercial e-mail to identify its subject matter clearly and to provide a valid address that belongs to the sender. It should include a conspicuous and reliable option for consumers to remove themselves from an e-mail list, except for billing purposes. In addition, marketers should not obtain an e-mail address without the consumer's consent, nor should e-mail lists be sold or provided to third parties without notice to the consumer. All the guidelines are considered self-regulating.
ZDNet / Reuters Oct 14, 2003	back to top

Citizens strike back in intelligence war
With the recent demise of the Bush administration's controversial Terrorist Information Awareness (TIA) programme to monitor everyone in the US, citizens now have a chance to get their own back. A website to be launched later in 2003 will allow people to post information about the activities of government organisations, officials and the judiciary. The MIT researchers behind the project face one serious problem: how to protect themselves against legal action should any of the postings prove false. The answer, they say, is to borrow a technique from the underground music-swapping community. Instead of storing the data in one place, they plan to distribute it around the internet in a similar way to the notorious Napster software that got music file-sharing under way. Just like TIA, the new website, called Government Information Awareness (GIA), is designed to collect snippets of information to build a database that can later be searched to reveal patterns of suspicious behaviour.
New Scientist Oct 13, 2003	back to top

Monkey's brain signals control 'third arm'
Monkeys can control a robot arm as naturally as their own limbs using only brain signals, a pioneering experiment at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina has shown. The macaque monkeys could reach and grasp with the same precision as their own hand. The experiment's success bodes well for future devices for humans that are controlled solely by thought. One such type of device is a neurally-controlled prosthetic - a brain-controlled false limb. The core of the new work is the neuronal model created by the researchers. This translates the brain signals from the monkey into movements of the robot arm. It was developed by monitoring normal brain and muscle activity as the monkey moved its own arms.
New Scientist Oct 13, 2003	back to top

Turning a PC into a supercomputer
A small US chip-design firm has unveiled a new processor it says will transform ordinary desktop PCs and laptops into supercomputers. An ordinary desktop PC outfitted with six PCI cards, each containing four of ClearSpeed Technologies' CS301 chips, would perform at about 600 gigaflops. At this level of performance, the PC would qualify as one of the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world. The souped-up PC would cost about $25,000, ClearSpeed said. By comparison, most of the supercomputers on the Top 500 list are clusters of hundreds of processors and cost millions of dollars. ClearSpeed said the new chip is also very low-power, operating at about 2 watts, which would allow it to run off a laptop battery and would not require special cooling. The company said it will be providing prototypes to computer manufacturers by the end of the year.
Wired News Oct 14, 2003	back to top

A storage tank like no other
It is doubtful that even the most voracious downloader of MP3s would ever need a petabyte - a million gigabytes - worth of disk space. But some people do have really serious storage requirements, and a mere petabyte worth of storage does not even begin to meet their needs. IBM's new data storage system, Storage Tank, uses software to link servers in multiple locations over an IP network, creating a sort of mega-server capable of connecting thousands of computers and processing multiple petabytes of data. Storage Tank also makes a distributed storage network look and behave just like a local network. No matter where or on what operating system any piece of stored data might reside, it can be located quickly and used by anyone else on the network. Storage Tank already is at work in beta form at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). IBM expects Storage Tank eventually will be able to handle 10 to 20 terabytes of CERN data.
Wired News Oct 13, 2003	back to top

Technology brings 3D TV closer
A new imaging technique could finally turn the long sought-after dream of 3D television into a reality. Scientists at Digital Dynamic Depth in the US have already used the system to show eye-boggling scenes from films such as Jurassic Park and Shrek, and the effect can be turned up or down using a 3D 'volume control'. The technique is a major leap forward from other systems because it can be applied to any ordinary film footage. Usually to show images in 3D the filming has to be done using two separate cameras. The new system requires no special footage and relies on intelligent computer analysis of scenes to provide the information needed for 3D images. The new system processes conventional scenes which could be from new films or old favourites. First the film is digitised, and then the first and last scene are extracted. Special software 'learns' the in-depth relationships between objects in the frames, and then creates depth maps for all the intermediate frames.
Ananova / New Scientist Oct 16, 2003	back to top

Big Mac to storm supercomputer list
A supercomputer built by a US university from desktop Apple G5 computers could be the second fastest machine on the planet. Virginia Tech's new supercomputer, dubbed 'Big Mac', consists of 1100 G5 dual-processor computers. The entire system covers 280 square metres and uses nearly 3000 cables. It gets so hot that is has to be cooled using water pipes. Initial benchmark tests conducted on five per cent of the machine's processors indicate that Big Mac is delivering about 80 per cent of its theoretical peak. That peak is 17.6 teraflops - more than 17 trillion 'floating point' operations per second. Each of the Power Mac G5 machines used has two processors running with clock speeds of two gigahertz, and four gigabytes of memory. Custom software was developed by researchers at Virginia Tech to enable the machines to perform calculations seamlessly. Big Mac will be used to model complex scientific scenarios such as nanoscale electronics.
New Scientist Oct 15, 2003	back to top

Smart software watches the skies
Intelligent Agents are helping astronomers find out more about the Universe. The software has been developed to monitor the vast amount of information generated by telescopes and help the scientists track rapid and violent events, like massive supernova explosions. The problem facing astronomers is the unpredictability of the Universe. Often many astronomical events happen suddenly and without warning. It could mean that astronomers miss things like a subtle change in the brightness of stars which may indicate planets in orbit around them. To deal with this issue, the Intelligent Agents were created by the eScience Telescopes for Astronomical Research project, a joint venture by the University of Exeter and the Liverpool John Moores University. The Intelligent Agents take advantage of Grid technologies, which allow individual computers to be used as one massive processing resource. In the future, the software could even be sending messages or images to a mobile phone, alerting an astronomer to new and interesting events in the skies.
BBC News Oct 15, 2003	back to top

'Groundbreaking' laser-powered plane takes off
A plane that flies without fuel by riding on a ground-based laser beam has been successfully tested by scientists at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Centre in Huntsville, Alabama. The 5ft wingspan model could lead to the development of pilotless aircraft that can stay aloft indefinitely. Such planes could provide a low-cost alternative to communication and observation satellites. The model has an electric motor driven by electricity generated by panels of light-sensitive cells. During the demonstration flights a laser beam was trained on the panels. The craft continued to fly until the laser was turned off. Beam-powered aircraft batteries are thought to have enormous commercial potential. The planes could carry scientific or communication equipment and stay in flight indefinitely. A telecommunications company could, for example, put transponders on an airplane and fly it over a city to relay cellphone calls, cable television or internet connections.
Ananova Oct 12, 2003	back to top

Process prints nanoparticles
One of the challenges of nanotechnology is finding ways to position the minuscule building blocks that make up microscopic electronics and machines. Researchers from the University of Minnesota have coaxed tiny particles of gold, silver and carbon to assemble into patterns on silicon wafers over areas as large as a square centimetre by using electrical charge patterns to attract and position the nanoparticles. The process, which uses the same principle as photocopying, can eventually be used to form wires, circuits and even nanoscale devices like transistors and lasers. The researchers were able to print 10- to 100-nanometre particles into patterns with features as fine as 200 nanometres using a process that started with the nanoparticles suspended in liquid. They were able to print features as fine as 100 nanometres by directing particles towards the charged surface using gas. The process can handle many types of materials, can print patterns quickly by using parallel print heads, and has the potential to print as narrow as 10 nanometres, according to the researchers.
Technology Review / TRN Oct 14, 2003	back to top

New mobile phone 'to replace credit cards'
Mobile phones could soon replace credit cards for store payments following the launch of a range of handsets. South Korea's three telecom giants, major credit card companies and several banks have been testing new technology that will enable users to pay for everything from food to petrol with a mobile. Instead of handing over credit or debit cards for swiping, users type their passcode on the phone keypad, point the device at a special receiver on a checkout counter and press a key. The phone sends the card data in an infrared beam or radio waves. No signature is necessary. For small payments at vending machines, the passcode is not even required. Transmissions are encrypted and secure, and subscribers who lose their phones can get them disabled within seconds by informing the credit card company. The phone payment schemes are being trialled at Yokohama National University in Japan.
Ananova Oct 15, 2003	back to top