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Issue no. 10, 2004 Published: Mar 19, 2004
EU, Microsoft fail to agree on deal
EU aims to improve net searching
Israel signs up to European satellite project
EU plans safer net for children
Lindows asks court to nix overseas lawsuits
Rocket fuel boosts speed of transistors
NASA develops 'mind-reading' system
New software seeks out chatroom paedophiles
Stretchy wires form bendy circuits
Calm mind creates complex tunes

EU, Microsoft fail to agree on deal
The European Commission and Microsoft failed to reach a settlement to a landmark antitrust case on Thursday and the EU executive will now rule against the company, Competition Commissioner Mario Monti said. Although substantial progress had been made toward solving past problems, the Commission was unable to agree with Microsoft on commitments for future business practices and had decided that a clear legal ruling next Wednesday would be better for consumers and for competition, he said. Monti has backing from EU governments for a draft ruling that finds Microsoft broke antitrust law and requires the software giant to change the way it sells its Media Player software. The commission's order could force Microsoft to offer two versions of its Windows operating system in Europe: one with includes Media Player and one with the software stripped out of the operating system and sold separately. The ruling could also force Microsoft to license more of the underlying application programming interfaces within Windows to allow other companies to build software that runs smoothly on Windows.
ZDNet Mar 18, 2004	back to top

EU aims to improve net searching
A European-funded project aims to revolutionise the way internet search engines work. Some of Europe's leading academic researchers will work to find a way of making search engines behave more like humans. Sorting information among the masses of unstructured text on the net is a growing problem for surfers. The project's aim is to develop a way for search engines to work out the overall subject matter of a web page. It is hoped that eventually the project will develop search engines that can emulate the human ability to assess the context of information presented and sort out irrelevancies before delivering the results. Project SEKT (Semantic Knowledge Technologies) is made up of 12 partners from the world of commerce and academia. It includes BT's research wing BT Exact and the universities of Sheffield, Innsbruck and Barcelona.
BBC News Mar 17, 2004	back to top

Israel signs up to European satellite project
Europe's Galileo satellite navigation system - a planned competitor to the US GPS network - got its latest boost Wednesday with Israel agreeing to back the project, officials said. After Canada, China and India, Israel became the fourth non-European backer. Israel will help finance Galileo - a joint venture between the EU and the European Space Agency ESA - to the tune of 20 to 50 million euro. The agreement with Israel provides for joint work on research, satellite manufacturing, follow-up services and marketing. The European project received a major breakthrough last month after the EU and the United States struck a deal ensuring interoperability between Galileo and the Pentagon's Global Positioning System (GPS).
EU Business / AFP Mar 17, 2004	back to top

EU plans safer net for children
European Union officials are proposing to spend 50m euro to try to make the internet safer for children. The four-year Safer Internet plus programme has been put forward by the European Commission. The commission said that several surveys had shown that European parents were seriously underestimating their children's daily exposure to harmful content and dangerous situations online. A recent study by Cyberspace Research Unit at the University of Central Lancashire found that children were still arranging face-to-face meetings with people they talk to online and that 60 per cent did not know that people they chat to online might not be who they say they are. To counter the problem, the commission urged EU states to raise awareness about harmful content online. It proposed to fund development of effective net filters to prevent pornographic material reaching children. The commission also suggested the EU pay for telephone hotlines so that people could report suspect sites targeted at children.
BBC News Mar 12, 2004	back to top

Lindows asks court to nix overseas lawsuits
Open-source software maker Lindows has asked the US District Court of the state of Washington to block Microsoft from filing additional trademark lawsuits against the company in foreign countries. The filing marks the latest move in Lindows' wide-ranging dispute with Microsoft regarding trademark rights to the Windows name. In February, the US District Court in Seattle told the jury in Microsoft's trademark case to consider whether the Windows moniker was generic before the software maker introduced Windows 1.0 in 1985. The judge in that case also postponed a March 1 trial date, itself a delayed start, to an unspecified time, pending an appeal from Microsoft. As Microsoft continues to wait for a final ruling in its US suit against Lindows, it has embarked on an international legal campaign along the same lines. The company most recently took its gripe to Canada, where it filed a trademark infringement suit in Ottawa.
ZDNet Mar 16, 2004	back to top

Rocket fuel boosts speed of transistors
Rocket fuel can significantly boost the speed of transistors, researchers at IBM have discovered. The fuel, hydrazine, helps to make faster thin-film transistors, a crucial component of LCD that switches pixels on and off. What is more, it does so in a novel 'wet' manufacturing process that should lend itself to cheaper mass production of the components. The researchers created the fast thin-film transistors by dissolving the semiconductor tin disulphide, which is insoluble in most liquids, in hydrazine, together with sulphur added to the mix. By applying the solution to a silicon substrate and spinning it they were able to create a coating that left a layer of tin disulphide just five nanometres thick when heated. When laced with electron-rich and electron-poor 'dopants' to turn the semiconductor into a transistor, the device was 10 times better at carrying electric charge than previous transistors.
New Scientist / Nature Mar 17, 2004	back to top

NASA develops 'mind-reading' system
Software that can read words before they are spoken by analysing nerve signals in our mouths and throats, has been developed by NASA. Test results show that sensors can indeed be used to read minds. The sensors, which attach under the chin and on either side of the Adam's apple can pick up nerve signals from the tongue, throat, and vocal cords. They may one day help space-walking astronauts and people who cannot talk communicate. They could send commands to rovers on other planets, help injured astronauts control machines, aid the handicapped or let people communicate on crowded buses without being overheard. Scientists trained the software program to recognise six words and 10 numbers. Participants thought the words to themselves and the software correctly picked up the signals 92 per cent of the time. Then researchers put all letters into a matrix with each column and row labelled with a single-digit number. In that way, each letter was represented by a unique pair of number co-ordinates. These were used to silently spell 'NASA' into a web search engine using the program.
New Scientist Mar 18, 2004	back to top

New software seeks out chatroom paedophiles
A British computer programmer has created sophisticated new software that detects paedophiles trying to contact children in internet chatrooms. The programme works by giving a convincing impression of a young person taking part in a chatroom conversation, while at the same time analysing the behaviour of the person it is chatting with. The ChatNannies programme was developed by IT consultant Jim Whightman. It creates thousands of sub-programmes, called nanniebots, which log on to different chatrooms and strike up conversations with users and user groups. If the programme detects any suspicious activity, it e-mails a transcript of the conversation to Whightman, who then decides if the police should be contacted. Whightman said he had 100,000 nanniebots circulating around chatrooms.
Yahoo / Reuters / New Scientist Mar 17, 2004	back to top

Stretchy wires form bendy circuits
US researchers at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, have made electronic circuits that can stretch like rubber. The flexible wires might create wearable electronics or artificial nerves that can bend inside the body. The researchers built rubbery circuits out of several squashed but extendable gold wires. These are 20 times thinner than a human hair and wrapped in a springy polymer. The wires can be stretched by over half their initial length without loss of electrical conductivity. Wiring like this could be woven into stretchy sports clothing and used to connect up sensors that monitor athletic performance. Rubbery electrodes made from biocompatible materials might be attached to a beating heart and used to sense impending problems.
Nature Mar 15, 2004	back to top

Calm mind creates complex tunes
Scientists already know that music can affect a person's physiological state, inducing excitement or relaxation. But researchers have turned the idea on its head with a system that composes music based on how relaxed a person is. The application, under development at MIT's Media Lab Europe, uses biometrics to control what the listener hears. The project, called Peace Composed, is based around the idea of drifting deeper into music according to a positive biometric state. The music consists of seven distinct layers, including bass, piano, strings and flutes. As the listener relaxes more, different instruments start to play. The system could be employed as a useful stress-management application in the future. Two biometrics attached to the fingertips detect specific changes in conductivity that happen - a Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) - dependent upon a person's state. The subject must concentrate on relaxing in order to 'unlock' the seven different layers of the music.
BBC News Mar 12, 2004	back to top