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Issue no. 33, 2005 Published: Nov 04, 2005
Europe approves multi-billion euro IT research program
Microsoft hails 'strategic shift'
Silicon chip works on the speed of light
Smart directions for green ideas
Invention: Video flasher
Supercomputer doubles own record
Finger-vein reader to foil car thieves
Headset to remotely control humans
Live speech-translation technology unveiled
Bird flu virus infects PCs
Building a personalised network of digital devices

Europe approves multi-billion euro IT research program
Europe has outlined and approved a program of collaborative research in IT, with plans to roughly double the budget of a forerunner program, to more than 3bn euro. The new program, known as ITEA-2, follows on from the Information Technology for European Advancement program (ITEA), and is set to run from 2007 for eight years. It is aimed at continuing the work of ITEA to support European companies maintain independence in software-intensive systems for embedded applications. The ITEA-2 program intends to mobilise a total of 20,000 person-years over its full eight-year duration, double that of the existing ITEA program. The first call for projects is set for 2006, to ensure a smooth transition from ITEA, and funding proportions are expected to be the same as in ITEA with governments putting up 35 per cent to 40 per cent of the funding and industry paying the balance. The project is expected to support job creation in automotive and aeronautics, the digital consumerisation of the home, healthcare and medical systems.
Information Week Nov 02, 2005	back to top

Microsoft hails 'strategic shift'
Software giant Microsoft has announced a major push into online software services, in what is seen as a move to counter rivals like Google and Yahoo. Microsoft founder Bill Gates called it a 'revolution' and the firm's biggest strategic shift in five years. Several key products and services - from office software to e-mail and instant messaging services - will be delivered online and on demand. Similar to Google, Microsoft hopes to finance the move through advertising. The new services will be called Windows Live and Office Live. The new service will ultimately replace popular features like MSN Messenger and Hotmail. The planned change is a huge gamble for Microsoft, as it could undermine its two main revenue drivers: the sale of so-called 'shrink-wrapped' software that needs to be installed on users' computers, and the licensing of its software to corporate customers.
BBC News Nov 02, 2005	back to top

Silicon chip works on the speed of light
A silicon chip that can carry light and even slow it down has been unveiled by IBM researchers. The chip demonstrates some of the essential techniques for creating high-speed photonic memory, which might one day make electronic memory obsolete in optical communications networks. It is more efficient to communicate with photons than electrons as photons do not interact easily with stray electronic and magnetic fields nor with each other and so are better for long-distance communications. However, the same property also makes them hard to store. Researchers have already slowed light to the speed of a bicycle by passing it through a cloud of cold atoms, a technique which could be used to buffer optical data. Other scientists have created tiny tunnels -waveguides- that can steer photons through otherwise opaque materials. Now IBM researchers have combined these two techniques. The result is a silicon chip carved with photon waveguides in which the photons can be slowed by a factor of 300 by heating the waveguide to change its optical properties. Such a device could synchronise data streams by slowing some streams, allowing others to catch up.
New Scientist / Nature (vol 483, p 65) Nov 02, 2005	back to top

Smart directions for green ideas
An electro-car public transport has been deemed the smartest idea for using satellite-navigation technology. The application has just triumphed in an international competition seeking novel ways to employ Galileo, Europe's soon-to-launch sat-nav system. The transport application devised by the Vu Log company in Sophia Antipolis, France, envisages a fleet of 'green' vehicles on city roads. Each electrically powered mini-car would be equipped with instant and highly precise positioning equipment. Commuters could use the internet or their mobile phone to find the nearest vehicle, jump in and start it with a smartcard, and then drive it to their destination. The electro-car concept was deemed to be the best in over 200 entries to this year's Galileo Masters competition. The contest pushes small and medium-sized enterprises to start thinking now about how they could get the best out of Europe's satellite-navigation system, due to be operational by the decade's end.
BBC News Nov 02, 2005	back to top

Invention: Video flasher
Shooting video in low light normally means using a floodlight, but this quickly gobbles up batteries in small devices. Now Philips Lab in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, has a new idea - a white-light LED that rapidly switches on and off, working only in the split seconds when its light is really needed. The camera uses a sensor that collects light at about 30 frames per second. The timing circuit also sends control pulses to the white LED, so that it provides light just when the sensor needs it, and does not waste power while the sensor is sending its signal to memory. This, Philips reckons, will let low cost camcorders and even camera phones handle video in dimly lit rooms without flattening batteries before the home movie, or conference call, is finished.
New Scientist Nov 01, 2005	back to top

Supercomputer doubles own record
The Blue Gene/L supercomputer has broken its own record to achieve more than double the number of calculations it can do a second. It reached 280.6 teraflops - that is 280.6 trillion calculations a second. The IBM machine, at the US Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, has quadrupled its performance in just 12 months. The completed Blue Gene/L joins another supercomputing team-mate, called ASC Purple, to get to work on safeguarding the US's nuclear stockpile. Purple can do 100 teraflops while it carries out simulations of nuclear weapons performance. The machines are part of a decade-long project to develop the fastest computers in the world. Blue Gene will work on materials ageing calculations, molecular dynamics, material modelling as well as turbulence and instability in hydrodynamics. Purple will then use that information to run 3D weapons codes needed to simulate nuclear weapons performance quickly.
BBC News Oct 28, 2005	back to top

Finger-vein reader to foil car thieves
Car thieves could be foiled by a car security system that recognises the unique pattern of veins on a driver's fingers as they pull the door handle. The system would stop a thief even if he had stolen the keys to the car, says Japanese company Hitachi, which has developed the technology. A sensor positioned behind the door handle uses near-infrared light to recognise the pattern of veins across the back of a person's fingers. The handle is designed to guide a driver's hand into the same position each time they open the door, ensuring the finger veins are in the same place for each reading. Testing information produced by Hitachi suggests that the system is as accurate as using finger prints, and requires less data to be stored for each user. Hitachi has developed authentication systems that use finger veins for controlling access to cash machines, security doors and even computers. The company has also developed a portable, matchbox-sized finger vein reader.
New Scientist Nov 02, 2005	back to top

Headset to remotely control humans
Japan is renowned for its hi-tech gadgets but it has crossed a new frontier with the prospect of remotely controlling humans. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp (NTT) has invented a headset that can move people from left to right at the flick of a joystick. The headset delivers a weak electrical current just behind the ear affecting the vestibular system, which controls movement and balance. When an electrical current is fired, the body shifts its balance towards the electrode. If the current is strong enough, the person with a headset will walk in the direction the charge was sent. The technology builds on similar research by the Cyberkinetics company, which helps paralysed patients play video games through the electrical currents created by thoughts, and researchers from State University in New York, who manipulated the movements of rats by threading their brains with electric wires. The NTT researchers say they have no immediate plans for commercial development but are considering the possibilities for video gaming.
The Independent Nov 01, 2005	back to top

Live speech-translation technology unveiled
Technology that provides live translation of speech from one language to another has been revealed by scientists from the International Center for Advanced Communication Technologies (InterACT), a collaboration between Carnegie Mellon and the University of Karlsruhe in Germany. The system almost instantly translates speech from one language to another by giving a talk in English that was converted simultaneously into German and Spanish. The researchers also revealed a directional speaker system that delivers a translated audio feed to just one person in a room, removing the need for them to wear headphones. And another concept device projected translated subtitles along the bottom of one lens of a modified pair of glasses. An even more futuristic technology was also demonstrated. By attaching 11 electrodes to a subject's face and throat, a computer was able to generate speech from mouthed gestures alone. The researchers suggest the system might be used to place cellphone calls in situations where they are normally banned.
New Scientist Oct 31, 2005	back to top

Bird flu virus infects PCs
Attackers are exploiting fears over bird flu by releasing a computer virus attached to an e-mail passing itself off as containing avian flu information, warned computer firm Panda Software. According to Panda, the virus Naiva.A masquerades as a word document with e-mail subject lines such as 'Outbreak in North America' and 'What is avian influenza?' When the file is opened, the virus modifies, creates and delete files. A second part of the virus installs a program that allows hackers to gain remote control of infected computers. The firm said the virus cannot spread on its own but needs to be manually distributed via e-mail, Internet downloads or file transfers.
ZDNet / Reuters Nov 01, 2005	back to top

Building a personalised network of digital devices
Imagine your alarm wakes you up an hour early because it knows you are flying abroad, and there is a traffic jam on the way to the airport. Your coffee maker turns on an hour early too. Your electronic doorkeeper automatically alarms the house as it senses your mobile phone leaving the house, your car provides traffic updates as you travel, suggesting a detour to avoid congestion. These are the types of service that the ePerSpace project of France Telecom wants to enable, and once that functionality is there, inventive companies will be able to design a host of new, currently impossible, services. The soul of the system is the user profile, which defines user preferences in news, TV and music. It will contain information about the users' friends and family, and it will be linked to their calendar to keep it up to date on their work and life schedule. The profile resides on a Home Gateway, the hardware system that will be the heart of your digital life, pumping binary oxygen to all the elements of your extended network. To make the system work each device requires a piece of software that identifies itself as part of the network and details the format it needs to see and display information.
Physorg / IST Results Nov 03, 2005	back to top