alexandria acm sc | technews (iii)

7/30/2019 Alexandria ACM SC | TECHnews (III)

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InterplanetaryINTERNET

THE AMAZING ITW13CONTINUING

Google Glass

Vint Cerf Interview

Alexandria ACM Student Chapter

Picks up earlySignal

US vs CHINATrading Accusations

Over Cyberattacks

AlgorithmsFind Genetic

CANCERNetworksMemory

One DeviceBattery &Quantum

Really !!!InternetQuantum

Really !!!Internet


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CO

PYRIGHTED


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Google GlassPicks up earlySIGNALKeep Out !

US& China

CyberattacksoverAccusationsTrade

AlgorithmsFind Genetic

CancerNetworks

Older/WiserDevelopersskillsimproveover time

Battery &Memory

Are going tobe onedevice

RevolutionizingTORNADOPREDICTION

OnlineCrowds &Teaching

innovation

Robots andVehiclescollaborate

with humans

AnalyzingGenomic

Data

Index | 1/4

7 10 12

14 15 17

18 19 21


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InterplanetaryINTERNET

Vint Cerf

Index | 2/4

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INDEX

ITW13 Project Managers Interview |Mustafa El Oreeby .......... 29

Alexandria ACM Chapter | Chairmanis writing about ITW ............... 28

What do old AlexSBians say about ITW . 34

EXCLUSIVE (II)

AmazingThe

ITW13

New photos of the Castle ofITW13.38

Index | 3/4

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QuantumInternet

FLOWERSon

TWITTER

Get More AlgorithmsFind GeneticCancerNetworks

T O W A R D S

smartphonesGUNFIRE by

Tracking

Index | 4/4

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Google Glass Picks Up

EARLY SIGNALGoogles wearable computer, the most anticipated piece of electronic wizardry since the iPad andiPhone, will not go on sale for many months. But the resistance is already under way. The glasses-like device, which allows users to access the Internet, take photos and film short snippets, has beenpre-emptively banned by a Seattle bar. Large parts of Las Vegas will not welcome wearers. WestVirginia legislators tried to make it illegal to use the gadget, known as Google Glass, while driving.

This is just the beginning, said TimothyToohey, a Los Angeles lawyer specializing inprivacy issues. Google Glass is going to causequite a brawl.As personal technology becomes increasingly

nimble and invisible, Glass is promptingquestions of whether it will distract drivers,upend relationships and strip people of whatlittle privacy they still have in public.A pair of lens-less frames with a tiny computerattached to the right earpiece, Glass ispromoted by Google as seamless andempowering. It will have the ability to captureany chance encounter, from a celebrity sightingto a grumpy salesclerk, and broadcast it to

millions in seconds.

We are all now going to be both the paparazziand the paparazzis target, said Karen L.Stevenson, a lawyer with Buchalter Nemer inLos Angeles.Google stresses that Glass is a work in progress,

with test versions now being released to 2,000developers. Another 8,000 explorers, peoplehandpicked by Google, will soon get a pair.Among the safeguards to make it less intrusive:you have to speak or touch it to activate it, andyou have to look directly at someone to take aphotograph or video of them.We are thinking very carefully about how wedesign Glass because new technology alwaysraises new issues, said Courtney Hohne, a

Google spokeswoman.

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Developers, however, are already cracking thelimits of Glass. One created a small sensation intech circles last week with a program thateliminated the need for gestures or voicecommands. To snap a picture, all the user needsto do is wink.The 5 Point Cafe, a Seattle dive bar, wasapparently the first to explicitly ban Glass. In

part it was a publicity stunt extremelysuccessful, too, as it garnered worldwideattention but the bars owner, Dave Meinert,said there was a serious side. The bar, hesaid, was kind of a private place.The legislators in West Virginia were not jokingat all. The state banned texting while driving lastyear but hands-free devices are permitted. Thatleft a loophole for Google Glass. Thelegislation was introduced too late to gain

traction before the most recent session ended,but its sponsor says he is likely to try again.In Las Vegas, a Caesars Entertainmentspokesman noted that computers and recordingdevices were prohibited in casinos. We will notallow people to wear Glass while gambling orattending our shows, he said.

Louis Brandeis and Samuel Warren famouslynoted in 1890 that numerous mechanicaldevices threaten to make good the predictionthat what is whispered in the closet shall beproclaimed from the house-tops.Glass is arriving just as the courts, politicians,privacy advocates, regulators, law enforcementand tech companies are once again arguing overthe boundaries of technology in every walk oflife.The Senate Judiciary Committee voted lastmonth to require law enforcement to have a

warrant to access e-mail, not just a subpoena.The Federal Bureau of Investigations use ofdevices that mimic cell phone towers to trackdown criminals is being challenged in anArizona case. A California district court recentlyruled that private messages on social media wereprotected without a warrant.

Google Glass will test the right to privacy versusthe First Amendment, said Bradley Shear, asocial media expert at George WashingtonUniversity.Google has often been at the forefront of privacyissues. In 2004, it began a free e-mail service,making money by generating ads against thecontent. Two dozen privacy groups protested.

Regulators were urged to investigate whethereavesdropping laws were being violated.For better or worse, people got used to the idea,and the protests quickly dissipated. Gmail nowhas over 425 million users. In a more recentepisode, the companys unauthorized datacollection during its Street View mapping projectprompted government investigations in a dozencountries.Like many Silicon Valley companies, Google

takes the attitude that people should havenothing to hide from intrusive technology.If you have something that you dont wantanyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing itin the first place, said Eric Schmidt, thenGoogles chief executive, in 2009.

Glass is a major step in Googles efforts to

diversify beyond search, and potentially anextremely lucrative move. Piper Jaffray, ananalyst firm, estimates that wearable technologyand another major initiative, self-driving cars,could ultimately be a $500 billion opportunityfor the company. In the shorter term, IHS, aforecasting firm, estimates that shipments ofsmart glasses, led by Google Glass, could be ashigh as 6.6 million in three years.Thad Starner, a pioneer of wearable computingwho is a technical adviser to the Glass team, sayshe thinks concerns about disruption areoverblown.Asocial people will be able to find a way to doasocial things with this technology, but onaverage people like to maintain the socialcontract, Mr. Starner said.

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He added that he and colleagues had experimented with Glass-type devices for years,and I cant think of a single instance where something bad has happened.An incident at a Silicon Valley event shows, however, the way the increasing ease incapturing a moment can lead to problems even if unintentionally.Adria Richards, who worked for the Colorado e-mail company SendGrid, was

offended by the jokes two men were cracking behind her at the PyCon developersconference. She posted a picture of them on Twitter with the mildly reprovingcomment, Not cool.One of the men, who has not been identified, was immediately fired by his employer,PlayHaven. There is another side to this story, he wrote on a hacking site, saying itwas barely one lame sexual joke. She gave me no warning, she smiled while shesnapped the pic and sealed myfate, he complained.Critics lashed out at Ms. Richards, using language much more offensive than the twomen used. SendGrid was hacked. The company dismissed Ms. Richards, saying therewas such an uproar over her conduct, it put our business in danger.

I dont think anyone who was part of what happened at PyCon that day couldpossibly have imagined how this issue would have exploded into the publicconsciousness, Ms. Richards reflected later. She has not posted on Twitter since.

DAVID STREITFELDhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/technology/personaltech/

google-glass-picks-up-early-signal-keep-out.html?_r=1&

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Trade Accusations OverUS and China

CyberattacksThe Obama administration on Monday explicitly accused Chinas military ofmounting attacks on American government computer systems and defensecontractors, saying one motive could be to map militarycapabilities that could

be exploited during a crisis.

While some recent estimates have more than 90

percent of cyberespionage in the United Statesoriginating in China, the accusations relayed inthe Pentagons annual report to Congress onChinese military capabilities were remarkable intheir directness. Until now the administrationavoided directly accusing both the Chinesegovernment and the Peoples Liberation Army ofusing cyberweapons against the United States in adeliberate, government-developed strategy tosteal intellectual property and gain strategic

advantage.In 2012, numerous computer systems around theworld, including those owned by the U.S.government, continued to be targeted forintrusions, some of which appear to beattributable directly to the Chinese governmentand military, the nearly 100-page report said.The report, released Monday, described Chinasprimary goal as stealing industrial technology, butsaid many intrusions also seemed aimed atobtaining insights into American policy makersthinking. It warned that the same information-gathering could easily be used for building apicture of U.S. network defence networks,logistics, and related military capabilities thatcould be exploited during a crisis.It was unclear why the administration chose thePentagon report to make assertions that it haslong declined to make at the White House. AWhite House official declined to say at what levelthe report was cleared. A senior defensce official

said this was a thoroughly coordinated report,but did not elaborate.On Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the ChineseMinistry of Foreign Affairs, Hua Chunying,criticized the report. China has repeatedly saidthat we resolutely oppose all forms of hackerattacks, she said.

Were willing to carry out an even-tempered and

constructive dialogue with the U.S. on the issue ofInternet security. But we are firmly opposed toany groundless accusations and speculations,since they will only damage the cooperationefforts and atmosphere between the two sides tostrengthen dialogue and cooperation.Missing from the Pentagon report was anyacknowledgment of the similar abilities beingdeveloped in the United States, where billions ofdollars are spent each year on cyberdefense and

constructing increasingly sophisticatedcyberweapons. Recently the director of theNational Security Agency, Gen. Keith Alexander,who is also commander of the militarys fast-growing Cyber Command, told Congress that hewas creating more than a dozen offensivecyberunits, designed to mount attacks, whennecessary, at foreign computer networks.When the United States mounted its cyberattackson Irans nuclear facilities early in PresidentObamas first term, Mr Obama expressed concernto aides that China and other states might use theAmerican operations to justify their ownintrusions.But the Pentagon report describes something farmore sophisticated: a China that has now leaptinto the first ranks of offensive cybertechnologies.It is investing in electronic warfare capabilities inan effort to blind American satellites and otherspace assets, and hopes to use electronic andtraditional weapons systems to gradually push the

United States military presence into the mid-Pacific nearly 2,000 miles from Chinas coast.The report argues that Chinas first aircraftcarrier, the Liaoning, commissioned lastSeptember, is the first of several carriers thecountry plans to deploy over the next 15 years

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It said the carrier would not reach operationaleffectiveness for three or four years, but isalready set to operate in the East and South ChinaSeas, the site of Chinas territorial disputes withseveral neighbors, including Japan, Indonesia,the Philippines and Vietnam. The report notes anew carrier base under construction in Yuchi.

The report also detailed Chinas progress indeveloping its stealth aircraft, first tested inJanuary 2011.Three months ago the Obama administrationwould not officially confirm reports in The NewYork Times, based in large part on a detailedstudy by the computer security firm Mandiant,that identified P.L.A. Unit 61398 near Shanghaias the likely source of many of the biggest thefts ofdata from American companies and some

government institutions.Until Monday, the strongest critique of China hadcome from Thomas E. Donilon, the presidentsnational security adviser, who said in a speech atthe Asia Society in March that Americancompanies were increasingly concerned aboutcyberintrusions emanating from China on anunprecedented scale, and that the internationalcommunity cannot tolerate such activity from anycountry. He stopped short of blaming the

Chinese government for the espionage.But government officials said the overall issue ofcyberintrusions would move to the center of theUnited States-China relationship, and it wasraised on recent trips to Beijing by TreasurySecretary Jacob J. Lew and the chairman of theJoint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin E. Dempsey.To bolster its case, the report argues thatcyberweapons have become integral to Chinesemilitary strategy. It cites two major public worksof military doctrine, Science of Strategy andScience of Campaigns, saying they identifyinformation warfare (I.W.) as integral toachieving information superiority and an effectivemeans for countering a stronger foe. But it notesthat neither document identifies the specificcriteria for employing a computer network attackagainst an adversary, though they advocatedeveloping capabilities to compete in thismedium.It is a critique the Chinese could easily level at the

United States, where the Pentagon has declined todescribe the conditions under which it would useoffensive cyberweapons. The Iran operation wasconsidered a covert action, run by intelligenceagencies, though many techniques used tomanipulate Irans computer controllers would becommon to a military program.

The Pentagon report also explicitly states thatChinas investments in the United States aim tobolster its own military technology. Chinacontinues to leverage foreign investments,commercial joint ventures, academic exchanges,the experience of repatriated Chinese studentsand researchers, and state-sponsored industrial

and technical espionage to increase the level oftechnologies and expertise available to supportmilitary research, development and acquisition.But the report does not address how the Obamaadministration should deal with that problem inan economically interconnected world where theUnited States encourages those investments, andits own in China, to create jobs and deepen therelationship between the worlds No. 1 and No. 2economies. Some experts have argued that the

threat from China has been exaggerated. Theypoint out that the Chinese government unlike,say, Iran or North Korea has such deepinvestments in the United States that it cannotafford to mount a crippling cyberstrike on thecountry.The report estimates that Chinas defense budgetis $135 billion to $215 billion, a large rangeattributable in part to the opaqueness of Chinesebudgeting. While the figure is huge in Asia, the

top estimate would still be less than a third ofwhat the United States spends every year.Some of the reports most interesting elementsexamine the debate inside China over whetherthis is a moment for the country to bide its time,focusing on internal challenges, or to directlychallenge the United States and other powers inthe Pacific.But it said that proponents of a more active andassertive Chinese role on the world stage agroup whose members it did not name havesuggested that China would be better served by afirm stance in the face of U.S. or other regionalpressure.

DAVID E. SANGERhttp://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/07/world/asi

a/us-accuses-chinas-military-in-cyberattacks.html?pagewanted=1&_r=3

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Find Genetic Cancer Networks

ALGORITHMS

Powerful data-sifting algorithms developed bycomputer scientists at Brown University arehelping to untangle the profoundly complexgenetics of cancer.In a study reported today in the New EnglandJournal of Medicine, researchers fromWashington University in St. Louis used twoalgorithms developed at Brown to assemble themost complete genetic profile yet of acute myeloidleukaemia (AML), an aggressive form of bloodcancer. The researchers hope the work will lead tonew AML treatments based on the genetics ofeach patients disease.The algorithms, developed by Ben Raphael, Eli

Upfal, and Fabio Vandin from the Department ofComputer Science and the Centre forComputational Molecular Biology (CCMB),played a key role in making sense of the giantdatasets required for the study. The work was partof The Cancer Genome Atlas project, which aimsto catalogue the genetic mutations that cause cellsto become cancerous. Doing that requiressequencing the entire genome of cancer cells andcomparing it to the genome of healthy cells.

Without computational tools like the ones theBrown team has developed, analysing those datawould be impossible.The AML study used two algorithms developed bythe Brown team: HotNet and Dendrix. Both aimto find networks of genes that are important increating cancerous cells. To understand how theywork and why they are important, it helps to knowa little about the genetics of cancer.Genesdont usually act on their own, but instead

act together in pathways or networks, saidRaphael, associate professor computer science.Cancer-causing mutations often target thesenetworks and pathways. This presents a problemfor researchers trying to find importantmutations, because these mutations are oftenspread across the network and hidden in thegenetic data.

imagine a cellular pathway containing five genes.If any one of those genes acquires a mutation, thepathway fails and the cell becomes cancerous.That means five patients with the same cancer canhave any one of five different mutations. Thatmakes life difficult for researchers trying to findthe mutations that cancer cells have in common.The algorithms developed by Raphael and histeam are designed to connect those dots andidentify the important pathways, rather thanlooking only at individual genes.The HotNet algorithm works by plotting mutationdata from patients onto a map of known geneinteractions and looking for connected networks

that are mutated more often than would beexpected by chance. The program representsfrequently mutated genes as heat sources. Bylooking at the way heat is distributed andclustered across the map, the program finds thehot networks involved in cancer.HotNet picked out several networks that seem tobe active in the AML genome. In a studypublished in 2011, HotNet identified networksimportant to ovarian cancer as well.

Dendrix, the newest algorithm developed atBrown, takes the power of HotNet one stepfurther. HotNet works by looking for mutations innetworks that are already known to researchers.However, there are countless gene networks thatresearchers have not yet identified. Dendrix isdesigned to look for mutations in those previouslyunknown networks.To find new networks, Dendrix takes advantage ofthe fact that cancer-causing mutations are

relatively rare. A patient with a mutation in onegene in a network is unlikely to have a concurrentmutation in another gene in that network.Dendrix looks for combinations of mutations thathappen frequently across patients but rarelyhappen together in a single patient. Put anotherway: Imagine that a substantial number patientswith a given cancer have a mutation in gene X.

Researchers at Washington University in St., Louis, using powerful algorithms developed bycomputer scientists at Brown University, have assembled the most complete genetic profile yetof acute myeloid leukaemia, an aggressive form of blood cancer. Findings are reported inthe New England Journal of Medicine.

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Another large group of patients has a mutation ingene Y. But very few patients have mutations inboth X and Y at the same time. Dendrix looks forthese patterns of exclusivity and predicts thatgroups of genes with high exclusivity are probablyworking together.Where we see those patterns of exclusivity,Raphael said, it suggests a possible pathway.The group has tested Dendrix on cancers in whichthe pathways were already known, just to see ifthe program would find them. Indeed, thepathways just fall right out of the data, Raphaelsaid.For the AML paper, Raphaels group developed animproved algorithm Dendrix++ which betterhandles extremely rare mutations. Dendrix++picked out three potential new pathways in AMLfor doctors to investigate.

Raphael and Vandin, along with computationalbiology graduate students Max Leiserson andHsin-Ta Wu, are continuing to improve theiralgorithms and to apply them to new datasets.The group recently started putting the algorithmsto work on whats called the Pan-Cancer project,which looks for commonalities in mutations

across cancer types.For us as computational people, its fun to pushthese algorithms and apply them to newdatasets,Raphael said. At the same time, in analyzingcancer data we hope that the algorithms produceactionable information that is clinicallyimportant.

An interactive catalog of genetic mutationsThe genetic profile of a given cancer can involve mutations of different genes in different patients.Dendrix, a powerful algorithm, can search enormous datasets for associations of genetic mutations, any one of might cause

disease.Credit: Department of Computer Science | Brown University | US | Prof. Ban Rafael.

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http://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/dendrixhttp://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/dendrixhttp://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/dendrixhttp://news.brown.edu/pressreleases/2013/05/dendrix


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Study shows SW developers

Older is Wiserskills improve over time

We wanted to explore these perceptions ofveteran programmers as being out of step withemerging technologies and see if we coulddetermine whether older programmers areactually keeping up with changes in the field,says Dr. Emerson Murphy-Hill, an assistantprofessor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper on the research. And we foundthat, in some cases, veteran programmers evenhave a slight edge.The researchers looked at the profiles of morethan 80,000 programmers on a site calledStackOverflow, which is an online communitythat allows users to ask and answer programmingquestions. The site also allows users to rate theusefulness of other users questions and answers.Users who are rated as asking good questions andproviding good answers receive points that arereflected in their reputation score. The higheran individuals reputation score, the more likely itis that the user has a robust understanding of

programming issues.For the first part of the study, the researcherscompared the age of users with their reputationscores. They found that an individuals reputationincreases with age, at least into a users 40s.There wasnt enough data to draw meaningfulconclusions for older programmers.

The researchers then looked at the number ofdifferent subjects that users asked and answeredquestions about, which reflects the breadth oftheir programming interests. The researchersfound that there is a sharp decline in the numberof subjects users weighed in on between the agesof 15 and 30 but that the range of subjectsincreased steadily through the programmers 30sand into their early 50s.Finally, the researchers evaluated the knowledgeof older programmers (ages 37 and older)compared to younger programmers (younger than37) in regard to relatively recent technologies meaning technologies that have been around forless than 10 years.For two smartphone operating systems, iOS andWindows Phone 7, the veteran programmers hada significant edge in knowledge over theiryounger counterparts. For every other technology,from Django to Silverlight, there was nostatistically significant difference between older

and younger programmers.The data doesnt support the bias against olderprogrammers if anything, just the opposite,Murphy-Hill says.The paper, Is Programming Knowledge RelatedTo Age?, will be presented May 18 at the 10thWorking Conference on Mining SoftwareRepositories, sponsored by IEEE and ACM in SanFrancisco, Calif. Lead author of the paper isPatrick Morrison, a Ph.D. student at NC State.

There is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers arent able to keep pace withrapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. Buta new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills ofprogrammers actually improve over time and that older programmers know as much (ormore) than their younger peers when it comes to recent software platforms.

Dr. Emerson Murphy-Hillhttp://news.ncsu.edu/releases/wms-murphyhill-

age-2013/

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Battery& MemoryARE ONE

Configuration of a resistive storage cell (ReRAM): An electric voltage is built up between the twoelectrodes so that the storage cells can be regarded as tiny batteries. Filaments formed by

deposits during operation may modify the battery's properties.Source: Jlich Aachen Research Alliance (JARA)

Resistive memory cells (ReRAM) are regarded asa promising solution for future generations ofcomputer memories. They will dramaticallyreduce the energy consumption of modern ITsystems while significantly increasing theirperformance. Unlike the building blocks ofconventional hard disk drives and memories,these novel memory cells are not purely passivecomponents but must be regarded as tiny

batteries. This has been demonstrated byresearchers of Jlich Aachen Research Alliance(JARA), whose findings have now been publishedin the prestigious journal NatureCommunications. The new finding radicallyrevises the current theory and opens uppossibilities for further applications. The researchgroup has already filed a patent application fortheir first idea on how to improve data readoutwith the aid of battery voltage.

Conventional data memory works on the basis ofelectrons that are moved around and stored.However, even by atomic standards, electrons areextremely small. It is very difficult to controlthem,

for example by means of relatively thick insulatorwalls, so that information will not be lost overtime. This does not only limit storage density, italso costs a great deal of energy. For this reason,researchers are working feverishly all over theworld on nanoelectronic components that makeuse of ions, i.e. charged atoms, for storing data.Ions are some thousands of times heavier thatelectrons and are therefore much easier to 'hold

down'. In this way, the individual storageelements can almost be reduced to atomicdimensions, which enormously improves thestorage density.In resistive switching memory cells (ReRAMs),ions behave on the nanometre scale in a similarmanner to a battery. The cells have twoelectrodes, for example made of silver andplatinum, at which the ions dissolve and thenprecipitate again. This changes the electrical

resistance, which can be exploited for datastorage. Furthermore, the reduction andoxidation processes also have another effect.

Future nanoelectronic information storage devices are also tiny batteries astounding

finding opens up new possibilities

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This also places the development of all micro- andnanoelectronic chips on a completely new footing."The new findings will help to solve a centralpuzzle of international ReRAM research," saysProf. Rainer Waser, deputy spokesman of thecollaborative research centre SFB 917'Nanoswitches' established in 2011. In recent

years, these puzzling aspects include unexplainedlong-term drift phenomena or systematicparameter deviations, which had been attributedto fabrication methods. "In the light of this newknowledge, it is possible to specifically optimizethe design of the ReRAM cells, and it may bepossible to discover new ways of exploiting thecells battery voltage for completely newapplications, which were previously beyond thereach of technical possibilities," adds Waser,whose group has been collaborating for years withcompanies such as Intel and Samsung Electronicsin the field of ReRAM elements.

They generate electric voltage. ReRAM cells aretherefore not purely passive systems they arealso active electrochemical components.Consequently, they can be regarded as tinybatteries whose properties provide the key to thecorrect modelling and development of future datastorage.

In complex experiments, the scientists fromForschungszentrum Jlich and RWTH AachenUniversity determined the battery voltage oftypical representatives of ReRAM cells andcompared them with theoretical values. Thiscomparison revealed other properties (such asionic resistance) that were previously neitherknown nor accessible. "Looking back, thepresence of a battery voltage in ReRAMs is self-evident. But during the nine-month reviewprocess of the paper now published we had to do alot of persuading, since the battery voltage inReRAM cells can have three different basiccauses, and the assignment of the correct cause isanything but trivial," says Dr. Ilia Valov, theelectrochemist in Prof. Rainer Waser's researchgroup.The new finding is of central significance, inparticular, for the theoretical description of thememory components. To date, ReRAM cells havebeen described with the aid of the concept of

memristors a portmanteau word composed of"memory" and "resistor". The theoretical conceptof memristors can be traced back to Leon Chua inthe 1970s. It was first applied to ReRAM cells bythe IT company Hewlett-Packard in 2008. It aimsat the permanent storage of information bychanging the electrical resistance. The memristortheory leads to an important restriction. It islimited to passive components. "Thedemonstrated internal battery voltage of ReRAM

elements clearly violates the mathematicalconstruct of the memristor theory. This theorymust be expanded to a whole new theory toproperly describe the ReRAM elements," says Dr.Eike Linn, the specialist for circuit concepts in thegroup of authors.

http://www.fz-juelich.de/SharedDocs/Pressemitteilungen/UK/EN

/2013/13-04-23batterie.html

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REVOLUTIONIZINGTORNADO PREDICTION

McGovern's work was recently detailed in anarticle by Scott Gibson, science writer for theNational Institute for Computational Sciences atthe University of Tennessee, Knoxville.This latest round of updates adds to an earlierreport that was released in May 2011. That NICS

article was published after a severe weather eventspawned nearly 200 tornadoes, devastating largeswaths of the southern United States. The disasterleft 315 dead and caused billions of dollars worthof damage.McGovern says she and the other researchers"hope that with a more accurate prediction andimproved lead time on warnings, more people willheed the warnings, and thus loss of life andproperty will be reduced."

Part of the challenge has been devising a realisticand reliable model and coming up with usableinput data. A numerical model known as CM1 hasproven valuable to researchers allowing them tofocus more on the science and less on theworkflow.The team has also made strides with regard tostorm simulations. Rather than model storms thatactually happened, they base their models on theconditions that are required for a tornado to take

form.They start with a bubble of warm air, which setsoff the storm-building process. Then theyintroduce equations and parameters that factorinto the storm's development. Getting the frictionright is especially challenging as even the grass onthe ground can affect this variable.

The research team is working with the NationalWeather Service to implement an early stormwarning system, called Warn-on-Forecast. Thegoal of the project is to inform the public ofimpending storms with 30-60 minutes of leadtime. Getting this level of accuracy requires a

high-resolution model, and that takes a lot ofcomputing power.The researchers want to figure out "what actuallygenerates the tornado, and the only way you canconfirm that is to make the high-resolutionsimulations," McGovern explains. "Those are notfeasible to do all across the U.S. right now on aWarn-on-Forecast basis. We are running on 112by 112 kilometer domain; now scale that up to theU.S. and ask it to run in real time. We're not quite

there yet."They're using the University of Tennessee'sKraken supercomputer to run the simulations andand the UT's Nautilus supercomputer to analyzethem."The biggest thing that Nautilus does for us rightnow is process the data so that we can mine it,because we're trying to cut these terabytes of datadown to something that's usable metadata,"McGovern reports. "I am able to reduce one week

of computations down to 30 minutes on Nautilus,and post-processing time is reduced from severalweeks to several hours."The researchers expect to have a more precisestorm prediction system in place by December.

University of Oklahoma associate professor Amy McGovern is working to revolutionize

tornado and storm prediction. McGovern's ambitious tornado modeling and simulationproject seeks to explain why some storms generate tornadoes while others don't. The researchis giving birth to new techniques for identifying the likely path of twisters through both spaceand time.

Tiffany Traderhttp://www.hpcwire.com/hpcwire/2013-04-23/revolutionizing_tornado_prediction.html

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Engaging online crowds could be a tool for

TEACHING INNOVATION

In a pilot study that invited the crowd into theirclassrooms, Carnegie Mellon and Northwesterninstructors found that input from social mediaand other crowdsourcing sites helped thestudents identify human needs for products orservices, generate large quantities of ideas, andease some aspects of testing those ideas.Finding ways to incorporate online crowds into

coursework is critical for teaching the process ofinnovation, said Steven Dow, assistant professorin Carnegie Mellon's Human-ComputerInteraction Institute. He and his co-investigator,Elizabeth Gerber, the Breed Junior Professor ofDesign at Northwestern University, will presenttheir findings April 29 at CHI 2013, theConference on Human Factors in ComputingSystems, in Paris."Educating students about innovation practices

can be difficult in the classroom, where studentstypically lack authentic interaction with the realworld," Dow explained. "Social networks andother online crowds can provide input thatstudents can't get otherwise. Even in projectcourses, feedback is limited to a handful ofindividuals, at most."At the same time, tapping the power of onlinecommunities has itself become part of theinnovation process, Gerber said, with many

entrepreneurs turning to sites such as Kickstarterand IndieGoGo to get initial support."The Internet affords access to onlinecommunities to which we might not ever haveaccess," she said. "Future innovators need toknow how to find and respectively engage withthese communities to get the resources theyneed."Dow and Gerber have received a National ScienceFoundation grant to study the use of crowdtechnologies in the classroom. They have createda website, http://crowddriveninnovation.com/, toshare ideas and resources regarding the use ofcrowd-based resources in innovation education.

In the pilot study, they explored the use of crowdswith 50 students enrolled in three innovationclasses offered by Carnegie Mellon andNorthwestern. Students worked in groups of 3-4on projects.Students found online forums, such as Reddit,were very helpful in discovering unmet needs. Agroup working on public transit, for instance,

found lots of people talk about transit on socialmedia, Dow said. "It also helps them figure outwhat questions to ask users in more traditionalinterviews," he added.An attempt to generate ideas through AmazonMechanical Turk, which pays workers small feesfor performing micro-tasks, produced little of use."Understanding context is critical for ideation andthis is difficult to do in a micro-task workenvironment," Gerber said. What did work

effectively, she said, was asking people from theuser research site Mindswarms to reflect onstudents' storyboard concepts.In the final class assignment, to help studentslearn how to pitch ideas, the teams created acrowd funding campaign through Kick starter orIndieGoGo. But that made many studentsuncomfortable."The main problem with the crowd funding pieceof the class was that few students, as far as I could

tell, actually wanted to raise the money," onestudent explained. "Most students in the classhave other plans and weren't planning to continueworking on their idea."In a strange way, this discomfort validated ourhypothesis that engaging external crowds wouldbring the reality of innovation practices into theclassroom," Dow said. "It was almost too real."One solution, Dow and Gerber said, may be tohave students prepare a crowdfunding campaign,but not launch it.

Online crowds can be an important tool for teaching the ins and outs of innovation, educators at

Carnegie Mellon University and Northwestern University say, even when the quality of the feedbackprovided by online sources doesn't always match the quantity.

Byron Spicehttp://www.cmu.edu/news/stories/archives/201

3/april/april29_onlinecrowds.html

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NEW RESEARCH COULD LET

VEHICLES & ROBOTSCOLLABORATE WITH HUMANS

Vehicles, robots and other autonomous devicescould soon collaborate with humans in this way,thanks to researchers at MIT who are developingsystems capable of negotiating with people todetermine the best way to achieve their goals.Everything around us is getting smarterIn general, everything around us is gettingsmarter, says Brian Williams, a professor ofaeronautics and astronautics and leader of theModel-Based Embedded and Robotic Systemsgroup within MITs Computer Science andArtificial Intelligence Laboratory. Sowere tryingto allow people to interact with these increasingly

autonomous systems in the same way that theywould interact with another human.Ultimately such systems could be used to controlautonomous vehicles, such as personal aircraftand driverless cars. But in the short term,Williams and graduate student Peng Yu aredeveloping systems to allow conventional vehiclesto work with their drivers to plan routes andschedules.In a paper to be presented at the International

Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence inBeijing in August, Williams and Yu describe theuse of their algorithm in car-sharing networkssuch as Zipcar. The dilemma for Zipcar users isthat theydont want to pay a lot of money, so theyonly want to reserve the car for as long as they

need it, Williams says. But they then run therisk of not reserving it for long enough and sohaving to pay a penalty.Users must therefore decide how best to fiteverything they need to do into the time they haveavailable. And this is where the algorithm comesin. We want to design a car thats smart andreally works with the user, Yu says.Diagnosis through collaborationThe system, which is equipped with speech-recognition technology, first asks the user whatshe wants to achieve in the given amount of time.It then uses digital maps to come up with the

most time- and energy-efficient plan of action.However, if it determines that the user simplycannot achieve all of her goals within the timeavailable, it analyses the plan to detect whichitems on the schedule are problematic, such as arestaurant or grocery store that is too far from theZipcar pickup point. Our technology views theprocess of collaboration as a diagnostic problem,Williams says. So the algorithm figures out whythe travel plan failed, what were the important

things that caused it to fail, and explains this backto the user. "The system suggests a set of possibleoptions to eliminate the problem, and the usercan either choose one of these or give thealgorithm more information about herpreferences. Then there is a back-and-forthdialogue until the algorithm finds something thatmeets the customers needs and that the carknows it can actuallydo, Williams says.

You get into your car and ask it to get you home in time for the start of the biggame, stopping off at your favourite Chinese restaurant on the way to grab sometakeout. But the car informs you that the road past the Chinese restaurant isclosed for repairs, so you will not make it home in 30 minutes unless you choosea different food outlet. You select a nearby Korean restaurant from the optionsthe car suggests, and set off on the chosen route.

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Allaying rangeanxietyThe researchers are also investigating the use oftheir algorithm in plug-in hybrid electric vehicles.Despite the greater energy efficiency of plug-inhybrids, some drivers are deterred from buyingthe cars by concerns about running out ofelectricity miles from home or the nearest

charging point a fear known as range anxiety.Installing the algorithm on these vehicles wouldallow people to plan their route, and evendetermine how fast to drive in order to use thebatteries as efficiently as possible, while arrivingat their destination safely and on time, Williamssays.Then, if the driver were to get stuck in traffic onthe journey, the algorithm could suggestalternative plans, such as driving faster and using

up more energy if time is of the essence, ordiverting to a nearby fast charging point if thebatteries are running too low.The algorithm could also be used in robots, toallow them to collaborate with people moreeffectively. To this end, the researchers areworking on a project with aircraft manufacturerBoeing to develop systems to improve howindustrial robots and human workers cooperatewith each other.

Richard Camilli, an associate scientist in the DeepSubmergence Laboratory at Woods HoleOceanographic Institution, is interested inapplying the technology to the organizations fleetof autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). Thealgorithm could allow operators to communicatewith the robotic vehicles and instantly altermission plans if the AUVs happen to meet withinteresting science or difficult weather conditionson the way.There are a lot of analogies between the Zipcarexample and autonomousvehicles, Camilli says.

For example, when there is a lot of science to bedone, and a lot of people counting on the qualityof the data, and the AUVs cant quite make it to arendezvous point in time, you need to come upwith the optimum solution for all those thingssimultaneously.

Helen Knighthttp://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2013/vehicle-

robot-human-collaboration-0503.html

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SUPERCOMPU TERS TO ANALYZE

GENOMIC DATA

Intel engineers and OHSU biomedical experts areworking on creating a diagram of the humangenome to identify the genetic mutations thatlead to cancer.The map would provide a better understanding ofan individual's genetic makeup, allowing

biomedical engineers to develop personalizedcancer treatment that kills only the mutating cellsthat cause cancer rather than also attacking thehealthy cellswhich occurs during chemotherapy,OHSU reported.Announced April 22, the agreement calls for thetwo organizations to develop hardware, softwareand workflow algorithms to accelerate analysis ofgenetic abnormalities that cause cancer and othercomplex diseases. Through the use of

supercomputing, Intel and OHSU are looking toanalyse patients' genetic profiles with increasedspeed, precision and cost-effectiveness. OHSU'simaging techniques could act as a Google map forcancer, according to the university.Learning how a disease functions over timewithin the body is essential for helping cancerpatients, noted Joe Gray, associate director fortranslational research at the OHSU Knight CancerInstitute and chair of OHSU's Department of

Biomedical Engineering."By combining Intel's computing expertise withwhat we know about how to analyse genomes andto create images of how cells change over time, webelieve we have the capability to develop the righttools to make significant progress in making thepromise of personalized cancer medicine a realityfor more patients," Gray said in a statement.This process of analyzing genetic abnormalitiescould take decades, but by studying cancer,

researchers can gain insight into other complexdiseases, Gray said.Researchers will use Intel's Xeon E5 HPC CPU,which offers Intel Trusted Execution Technology(TXT) and Intel Node Manager Server power-management technology. "This collaborationcombines Intel's strengths in developing energy-

efficient, extreme-scale computing solutions withOHSU's lead invisualizing and understandingcomplex biological information," StephenPawlowski, Intel's senior fellow and chieftechnology officer for the Datacentre andConnected Systems, said in a statement.

Intel and OHSU aim to develop systems that canreduce the time it takes to analyse a patient'scancer profile from weeks to hours, while atreduced cost and with lower power consumption.Analysing genomic abnormalities and lead todrug development and new diagnostic tests forcancer.Combining computing power with genomicanalysis and imaging can show how billions ofgenetic mutations act in the body over time to

create tumours, OHSU reported.During the multiyear effort, Intel and OHSU willcreate new educational programs in quantitativebioscience. The genomic research expands on pastcollaboration in areas such as tele-health andremote patient monitoring."Together, Intel's engineers and OHSU'sbiomedical experts are optimizingsupercomputing clusters and software to isolatethe genetic variations that contribute to the root

causes of illness," Eric Dishman, general managerfor health care at Intel, wrote in ablog post.If scientists succeed in using supercomputing todevelop an individual road map of the genome,diagnostic tests for cancer patients could be moreprecise, Dishman noted. The research couldeventually allow biomedical engineers oroncologists to stop cancer cells from spreading, hesaid.Dishman, who's recovering from a kidney

transplant, had his own genome sequenced."It, too, took weeks of computing and thenmonths upon months of analysis to make sense ofmy own unique case," he said. "Today, these toolsare too slow, too expensive and too rareI wantto make sure everyone has access to the kind ofcustomized care that I lucked into."

Intel and Oregon Health & Science University are collaborating on a supercomputingproject to speed up analysis of human genetic profiles, which could help withpersonalized treatment for cancer.

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VINTON CERFGoogle Internet Evangelist

InterplanetaryInternetT H E F AT H E R O F T H E I N T E R N E T

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Googles Chief Internet Evangelist

Interplanetary Internet

When some future Mars colonist is able to open his browser andwatch a cat in a shark suit chasing a duck while riding a Roomba,

they will have Vint Cerf to thank.

In his role as Googles chief internet evangelist, Cerf has spent much of his time thinking about thefuture of the computer networks that connect us all. And he should know. Along with Bob Kahn, hewas responsible for developing the internet protocol suite, commonly known as TCP/IP, that

underlies the workings of the net. Not content with just being a founding father of the internet onthis planet, Cerf has spent years taking the world wide web out of this world.

Working with NASA and JPL, Cerf has helpeddevelop a new set of protocols that can stand upto the unique environment of space, whereorbital mechanics and the speed of light maketraditional networking extremely difficult.Though this space-based network is still in itsearly stages and has few nodes, he said that weare now at the front end of what could be an

evolving and expanding interplanetarybackbone.Q: Though its been around a while, theconcept of an interplanetary internet isprobably new to a lot of people. Howexactly do you build a space network?Cerf: Right, its actually not new at all thisproject started in 1998. And it got startedbecause 1997 was very nearly the 25thanniversary of the design of the internet. Bob

Kahn and I did that work in 1973. So back in1997, I asked myself what should I be doing thatwill be needed 25 years from then. And, afterconsultation with colleagues at the JetPropulsion Laboratory, we concluded that weneeded much richer networking than was thenavailable to NASA and other space faringagencies.

Up until that time and generally speaking, upuntil now, the entire communicationscapabilities for space exploration had beenpoint-to-point radio links. So we began lookingat the possibilities of TCIP/IP as a protocol forinterplanetary communication. We figure itworked on Earth and it ought to work on Mars.The real question was, Would it work between

the planets? And the answer turned out to be,No.The reason for this is two-fold: First of all, thespeed of light is slow relative to distances in thesolar system. A one-way radio signal from Earthto Mars takes between three and half and 20minutes. So round trip time is of course doublethat. And then theres the other problem:planetary rotation. Ifyoure communicating withsomething on the surface of the planet, it goes

out of communication as the planet rotates. Itbreaks the available communications and youhave to wait until the planet rotates back aroundagain. So what we have is variable delay anddisruption, and TCP does not do terribly well inthose kinds of situations.

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One of the things that the TCP/IP protocolsassume is that there isnt enough memory ineach of the routers to hold anything. So if apacket shows up and its destined for a place forwhich you have an available path, but there isntenough room, then typically the packet isdiscarded.

We developed a new suite of protocols that wecalled the Bundle protocols, which are kind oflike internet packets in the sense that theyrechunks of information. They can be quite big andthey basically get sent like bundles ofinformation. We do whats called store andforward, which is the way all packet switchingworks. Its just in this case the interplanetaryprotocol has the capacity to store quite a bit, andusually for quite a long time before we can get

rid of it based on connectivity to the next hop.Q: What are the challenges with workingand making a communications networkin space as opposed to a ground-basedinternet?Cerf: Among the hard things, first of all, is thatwe couldnt use the domain name system in itscurrent form. I can give you a quick illustrationwhy thats the case: Imagine for a momentyoure on Mars, and somebody is trying to open

up an HTTP web connection to Earth. Theyvegiven you a URL that contains a domain name init, but before you can open up a TCP connectionyou need to have an IP address.

So you will have to do a domain name lookup,which can translate the domain name youretrying to lookup into an IP address. Nowrememberyoure on Mars and the domain nameyoure trying to look up is on Earth. So you sendout a DNS lookup. But it may take anywherefrom 40 minutes to an unknown amount of time

depending on what kind of packet loss youhave, whether theres a period of disruptionbased on planetary rotation, all that kind of stuff before you get an answer back. And then itmay be the wrong answer, because by the time itgets back maybe the node has moved and now ithas a different IP address. And from there it justgets worse and worse. Ifyoure sitting aroundJupiter, and trying to do a lookup, many hoursgo by and then its just impossible.

So we had to break it into a two-phase lookupand usewhats called delayed binding. First youfigure out which planetyoure going to, then youroute the traffic to that planet, and only then youdo a local lookup, possibly using the domainname.The other thing is when you are trying tomanage a network with this physical scope andall the uncertainty delays, the things we typicallydo for network management dont work very

well.

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Theres a protocol called SNMP, the simplenetwork management protocol, and it is basedon the idea that you can send a packet out andget an answer back in a few milliseconds, or afew hundreds of milliseconds. Ifyoure familiarwith the word ping, youll know what I mean,because you ping something and expect to get an

answer back fairly quickly. If you dont get itback in a minute or two, you begin to concludethat there is something wrong and the thing isntavailable. But in space, it takes a long time forthe signal to even get to the destination let aloneget an answer back. So network managementturns out to be a lot harder in this environment.Then the other thing we had to worry about wassecurity. The reason for that should be obvious one of the things we wanted to avoid was the

possibility of a headline that says: 15-Year-OldTakes Over Mars Net. Against that possibilitywe put quite a bit of security into the system,including strong authentication, three wayhandshakes, cryptographic keys, and things ofthat sort in order to reduce the likelihood thatsomeone would abuse access to the spacenetwork.Q: Because it has to communicate acrosssuch vast distances, it seems like the

interplanetary internet must be huge.Cerf: Well, in purely physical terms that is, interms of distance its a pretty large network.But the number of nodes is pretty modest. At themoment, the elements participating in it aredevices in planet Earth, including the DeepSpace Network, which is operated at JPL. Thatconsists of three 70-meter dishes plus asmattering of 35-meter dishes that can reach outinto the solar system with point-to-point radiolinks. Those are part of the TDRSS [tee-driss]system, which is used for a lot of near-Earthcommunications by NASA. The ISS also hasseveral nodes on board capable ofusing this particular set ofprotocols.

Two orbiters around Mars are running theprototype versions of this software, and virtuallyall the information thats coming back fromMars is coming back via these store-forwardrelays. The Spirit and Opportunity rovers on theplanet and the Curiosity rover are using theseprotocols. And then theres the Phoenix lander,

which descended to the north pole of Mars in2008. It also was using these protocols until theMartian winter shut it down.And finally, theres a spacecraft in orbit aroundthe sun, which is actually quite far away,called EPOXI[the spacecraft was 32 millionkilometres from Earth when it tested theinterplanetary protocols]. It has been used torendezvous with two comets in the last decade todetermine their mineral makeup.

But what we hope will happen over time assuming these protocols are adopted bythe Consultative Committee on Space DataSystems, which standardizes spacecommunication protocols then everyspacefaring nation launching either robotic ormanned missions has the option of using theseprotocols. And that means that all the spacecraftthat have been outfitted with those protocolscould be used during the primary mission, and

could then be repurposed to become relays in astored forward network. I fully expect to seethese protocols used for both manned androbotic exploration in the future.Q:What are the next steps to expand this?Cerf: We want to complete the standardizationwith the rest of the spacefaring community. Also,not all pieces are fully validated yet, includingour strong authentication system. Then second,we need to know how well we can do flowcontrol in this very, very peculiar and potentiallydisrupted environment.

Third, we need to verify that we can do seriousreal-time things including chat,

video and voice.We will need to learn

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how to gofrom what

Appears to bean interactivereal-time chat, likeone over the phone, toprobably an email-like exchange,

where you might have voice and videoattached but its not immediately interactive.Delivering the bundle is very much likedelivering a piece of email. If theres a problemwith email it usually gets retransmitted, andafter a while you time out. The bundle protocolhas similar characteristics, so you anticipate thatyou have variable delay that could be very long.Sometimes ifyouve tried many times and dontget a response, you have to assume the

destination is not available.Q: We often talk about how the things weinvent for space are being used here onEarth. Are there things about theinterplanetary internet that couldpotentially be used on the ground?Cerf: Absolutely. The Defence AdvancedResearch Projects Agency (DARPA) funded testswith the U.S. Marine Corps on tactical militarycommunication using these highly resilient and

disruption-tolerant protocols. We had successfultests that showed in a typical hostilecommunication environment that we were ableto put three to five times more data through thisdisrupted system than we could with traditionalTCP/IP.Part of the reason is that we assume we can storetraffic in the network. When theres high activity,we dont have to retransmit from end to end, wecan just retransmit from one of the intermediate

points in the system. This use of memory in thenetwork turns out to be quite effective. And ofcourse we can afford to do that because memoryhas gotten so inexpensive.The European Commission has also sponsored areally interesting project using the DTNprotocols in northern Sweden. In an area calledLapland, theres a group called the Saami

reindeerherders.

Theyvebeenherding reindeer

for 8,000 years upthere. And the EuropeanCommission sponsored a

research project managed by theLulea University of Technology in northernSweden to put these protocols on board all-terrain vehicles in laptops. This way, you couldrun a Wi-Fi service in villages in NorthernSweden and drop messages off and pick them upaccording to the protocols. As you move around,you were basically a data mule carryinginformation from one village to another.Q: There was also an experiment called

Mocup that involved remote controlling arobot on Earth from the space station.These protocols were used, right?Cerf: Yes, we used the DTN protocols for that.We were all really excited for that because,although the protocols were originally designedto deal with very long and uncertain delay, whenthere is high quality connectivity, we can use itfor real-time communication. And thats exactlywhat they did with the little German rover.

I think in general communication will benefitfrom this. Putting these protocols in mobilephones, for instance, would create a morepowerful and resilient communications platformthan what we typically have todayQ: So if I have poor reception on my cellphone at my house, I could still call myparents?Cerf: Well, actually what might happen is thatyou could store what you said and they wouldeventually get it. But it wouldnt be real time. Ifthe disruption lasts for an appreciable length oftime, it would arrive later. But at least theinformation would eventually get there.

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THE AMAZING

E X C L U S I V E ( I I )

C O V E R A G E

ITW13

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Why Is It Amazing?You may have set there one day Impressed by how fascinatinglyit is always. You must have been there once and heard something

contributed to your life. You may had a moment of change there.However what you may never know is the story behind whatchanged your life.Some people had been brought up together and decided simply totake you out in a tour that will change the course of yourknowledge, thought and actually your life. They know that noteveryone is capable of circling the world and see whats new and if

they can, it is once not yearly. So they decided simply; if you cantreach the world, which is hard naturally, we will just fetch for you.Now if to circle the world is hard, what may anyone says aboutfetching it. Yes; IEEE AlexSB made what seems impossible. Itbrought us the world as it is year by year through ITW.There in this branch, there are people who give value toeverything. You see them work for limitless hours day by night andgrow in unnaturally way. They make everything meaningful andconsequently they know the meaning of everything and thatswhat they deliver to you inspirationally in ITW annually and once

youre that motivated you start your tour to harvest whatever hasbeen planted across the world.If youre never believer in profound faith, ultimate synergy,pungent integrity and consistent pure illimitable voluntary thenperhaps you didnt pass by this blue marble, not earth, but IEEEAlexSB booth. If you havent been to ITW there even once youhave never seen anything amazing through your life. No one livesalone in the world, go there and interact with it and be amazedwith Interact with Todays World, IEEE AlexSB ITW.

Sherif E. SalehAlexandria ACM Chapter | Chairman

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CreatingWonders

interviews

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If you have the force to let peopleexpect things, what would like them toexpect about ITW13?I want everyone to expect differently from allaspects even in the abstract description, no

one is going to sit as iftheyre in a lecture halland getting out, but it is not just lecturingevent. The technical value this year isextremely different, we are creating wondersthis year and I wish them to keep wonderingabout our wonders.

Nothing great hasnt actually been facedby many challenges, what challengesyoure actually facing or expecting to

face ?First of all, the grandest challenge is to form aconference of purely new technologies. Whatwe hope is that everyone can sit there andlisten for something very extraordinary newand very crucially important.Second, we would like to omit the feeling somepeople have that they are coming to a scholarevent Its not a series of lectures as much as

it is ITW a life event, that is centered onscience but it is still serving its main purposeas a life changing conference.Third, and most important which is achievingthe vision.Sometimes the different beginning times forsome universities might be a challengingmatter due to our attendees from internationalstudents.Technical content might be more powerful

than whats necessary which we fear it to behard to comprehend roughly.

People always have to wonder about theposter of ITW, It is always trying to saysomething what tale is itencountering this year?Something we live within every day. Last year

ITW was encountering the civilizing changefrom discovering the parchments and nowusing the tablets and pads.This Year is aging a new trend in technologythat we are living within and witnessing everyday too you may give it an address, World isnot enough.Q: keeping it as a surprise too?A: Normally Yes For Now.

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I know the beginnings have its impactalways, what did you feel the impact onthe audience after launching ?I touched a great impression especially whenthey noticed the Hilton and these fans and

audience proved maximum loyalty in theearly campaign.Q: What is the most impressive thing

you heard or read from them aboutITW13 once launched?A: Regardless to those who were fascinated bythe Open Buffet, one of the really impressivethings I have seen is the Protons School kids,boys and girls coming to register. Some of the

moving things I heard are from those who areplanning their summer and justifying theirplans so as they can get to ITW in time.

As a project manager, Lets have an eyeon how you prepare for the amazingITW every yearAs naturally as everything begins; withgathering then working together andbrainstorming for the topics in order to be thewindow of the newest technology in every fieldfor our audience and to keep them alsoupdated of all other fields being encounterednext to theirs.Then we begin by lets say UMMM, pickingup the fruits. This time we kept our audienceaware that their endeared three days arecoming sooner than expected which was thekick off by the early campaign.

Q: What would the roles of such person.A: Part of them just exists to give the attendeesa notion that they can be there together withpeople of their dreams. Others are coming toextend this role to inspirational and mind-

blowing speeches and contributions and I giveyou my word for that.

Among many things extraordinary

about ITW is the VIPs Who shall weexpect this year?One of the people you may expect is someonewith a credit in all some of our fields whethernationally or internationally people whochanged the course of history from field toanother people who made our life easier.

Can we actually say the same about thespeakers of ITW13?Still everyone with a profound credit, our everyplanned speaker is someone achieves andwilling to achieve more and more through acertain field, someone can enrich, inspire, andkeep it a memorial moments that shall last for

long time afterwards.Q: Are there any certain names, sir?A: Names are our gift that is still in thewraping.

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Some audience, most likely youvenoticed too, are wondering about theGreat Hall, why not this time ?Regardless to reasons, as I told you we wouldlike everyone to feel the way too much

difference will be adding in this version. Theplace is among these changes. ITW will add itsflavor now to the Hilton Green Plaza as muchas it did several times to the Great Hall. ITW isITW everywhere and every time.

Every year ITW carries something to thenext one, what powers youre trying torecover from the previous ones?Every year has its points, the year before the

last one was about the publicity that wasextremely powerful point that somenewspapers spread our news. The last one keptthe huge publicity nationally and started toattract insights internationally by the speakersand the conferences. This ITW is going topreserve both privileges along with adding itsown values.The comparing theme was applied three yearsago too, the contrast it was achieved incomparison between the iOs and Android. Thatwas extremely useful to whom attended. Suchcontrast we would like to keep it once more.

Q: Its not an easy thing to keep them infocus for 9 hours, How would you dothat?A: Keeping the audience involved andinterested in so many different things across

time shall keep them firstly motivated, curiousand secondly and most importantly renewed.

The most vital thing for any conferenceis the interaction and vitality of theaudience all along it how are yougoing to maintain a solid interaction ?International speakers know how to deriveinteractions with audience, The difference inlanguage is not a dilemma. Actually peopleconcentrate more when there is a differentlanguage on the stage and we experienced thisa lot. Also the choice of the speakers withravishing presentation skills also plays a majorrole and we aim for the giants always.

After changing the hosting place whatabout the privileges of the ITW that wasrelated to the Great Hall?Lets agree on one term here, ITWis alwaysgrowing. Its privileges never shrunk and willnever shrink. You shall hold this question in

your mind and have the answer onsite anddont forget to lean and whisper to me thatyoure fascinated by what you would see.

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It is commonly known that everythingan organization does, reflects on it andit actually adds to whatever it is doing,how do you see this between IEEE andITW?

ITW reveals the spirit we are working topresent for the entire year. It plantsinspiration deep in everyone that serves usproviding the best closure of the year, the epicclosure we went through everything for. AlsoITW serves many scopes of science that isgrowing yearly and thats widening the reachof the branch too to get deeper and deeperactually everywhere. Here also it is good for

you to notice that every ITW is a ground ofconfidence for the sky of success of the nextITW.

How do you imagine yourself at the lastmoments or what would you like to seeat the end?The best thing I wish to see is people at thefront door flocking out saying I have achieved

something through this ITW that wasnt beingachieved and may not be else where.

You know at the glorious momentsthere is always tense and fear, what doyou fear in your way to ITW13?I fear missing the 0.01% under the runningexpectations or below the level of our planning.We aim for 100% Perfection 99.9% is not a

satisfactory and thats what I fear. We wouldlike to hit the 100% of what we hope to reach,once were there I have nothing to fear.

Whats the reason you will be standingup there at the end of the event and

whisper to yourself that ITW13Succeeded ?Theoretically, the positive feedback andpractically seeing the values we hoped todeliver are being applied in action through

everyones life around me. When I see livesshaped and changed by ITW13 then I can restdown and say It worked !

Count to us or describe the map thatdistributes the audience of ITW13Mainly the statistics show that the division ofcommunications is the highest tripe aiming forITW. Next, there are interests from computerand power all at the same level. Then

mechanics and then generally you can addeveryone else. I think the right question was tobe who is not interested in ITW, that is easierto count as it is only one tripe no one.

Archii

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OLDAlexSBiansspeak aboutTHE AMAZING

ITW13

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OLD IEEE AlexSBians

JoyfulAdorable

I have begun the life of a volunteer in IEEE AlexSB since 2009. At 2012, I wasthe vice-chairman. This experience got the best out of me, make me realize that

I have many strengths, acquired me more confidence than ever before andhelped me to carefully my weakness points and recover them.IEEE AlexSB is a my home. The only thing drove and still drive happinessthrough me. I cant stop being proud to belong to one of its biggest events, ITW,in many versions and in many positions. It is more like as if you look at yourmost joyful and adorable moments of your life from different ways. As ifyourecolouring your life in many colours.ITW is a three days conference, but we work on it more than 9 months. It takesa lot of time, effort and preparation to be the same image we want. But inreturn it gives us joy we may never have in all our life. Every single volunteer

has a role in this big event and every small thing anyone of these heroicvolunteers does, has a great and indescribable impact on the event.I really would like to thank everyone in IEEE AlexSB for their efforts, time andfor trying to make a better future for everyone and for being everythingmeaningful and happy for me.

Ola Khaled| Vice-chairman IEEE AlexSB 2012

OLA KHALED

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OLD IEEE AlexSBians

WAY ofLIVING

Let me quote something was said by an IEEE volunteer; "IEEEAlexSB is not just a branch, it's a way of living".Once you are there, you are a newer one, responsible, helpful, active,leader and all the things you never knew about yourself.ITW has always been a remakable evidence of that great spirit within

AlexSB volunteers. You see them doing their best to serve thestudents, trying to achieve a dream we always think of ; "To have a

better Egypt".

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this organisation. Whateveryou do for it, you will see its reflection on your life and career.

Amr Kosba | IEEE AlexSb Chairman 2010

Amr Kosba

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OLD IEEE AlexSBians

NEW

WORLD

October, 2008 ... that was when I wasintroduced to IEEE by chance. I waspassing by and found my friendspreparing for their first IEEE meeting,then I decided to join to see what these

guys up to. Everything changed in thismoment.I didn't know that i was actuallyredefining myself and my way of living.Here I learnt to dream, plan and makemistakes. Actually, I was introduced toreal business life and knowledge of

what it takes to dream, rise after failingand success. I even learnt that failing is

very important to make a greatersuccess Greater than what youdidn't think that it could happen, but itturns by the time to be the nature oflife and how life goes ... Ups anddowns. The secret of ups lies in yourdowns, just do your best to rise again.

Mostafa MabroukAnother Great thing ... Its ITW. Anannual conference for challengingeveryone including yourself. Because

you will be more successful thananyone else ever worked in ITW or any

relevant events. That one seems to betrue either, every year the volunteersprove this theory to be true. On thepersonal level, ITW taught me how toplan and have good eye on details andhow to represent a brand, this helpedme a lot starting my own business aftergraduation and here I am nowplanning my own dreams from myoffice. Last words... Being an IEEE

Volunteer opened a new world in frontof my eyes and encouraged extraenergy I have to dominate to be mylife style.

Mostafa Mabrouk | IEEE AlexSBChairman 2011

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The Castle of

ITW13

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TOWARDSQUANTUM INTERNET

A UNSW-led team of researchers has achieved abreakthrough that brings the prospect of anetwork of ultra-powerful quantum computers

connected via a quantum internet closer toreality. The team is the first in the world to havedetected the spin, or quantum state, of a singleatom using a combined optical and electricalapproach.The study is a collaboration between researchersfrom the ARC Centre of Excellence for QuantumComputation and Communication Technologybased at UNSW, the Australian NationalUniversity and the University of Melbourne. It ispublished in the journal Nature. UNSWsProfessor Sven Rogge said the technical feat wasachieved with a single atom of erbium a rareearth element commonly used incommunications embedded in silicon.We have the best of both worlds with ourcombination of an electrical and optical system.This is a revolutionary new technique, and people

had doubts it was possible. It is the first steptowards a global quantum internet, ProfessorRogge said. Quantum computers promise todeliver an exponential increase in processingpower over conventional computers by using asingle electron or nucleus of an atom as the basicprocessing unit a quantum bit, or qubit.Professor Rogge said researchers had previouslyused either an electrical or an optical method toread the spin of a single atom - where the

information would be stored - but not bothmethods together. Lead author of the study,UNSWs Dr Chunming Yin, said the newapproach opens up the possibility of using light tocouple the atoms, or qubits, together to form aquantum computer.

Using light to transfer information in thequantum state is easier than doing it electrically.Ultimately this will lead to quantumcommunications over long distances, Dr Yinsaid.Associate Professor Matthew Sellars, of theAustralian National University, said it was a steptowards connecting a solid state quantumcomputer to what will be the quantum internet.The quantum internet will allow separate

quantum computers to be integrated and it willenable encrypted communications.Quantum communication systems will becomecritical for providing secure communications forgovernment, military, defence, finance businessand health industries.To make the new quantum device, AssociateProfessor Jeffrey McCallum at the University ofMelbourne used an ion implanter to shoot erbiumatoms into a standard industrial silicon transistor.When the atom was in a particular quantum stateand laser light was shone on it, an electron wasknocked off the atom. This was detectedelectrically, by the silicon transistor switching on.Professor Rogge said the breakthrough was madepossible by combining the expertise of the threegroups. The next step would be to control the spinof the erbium atom, which should be relativelystraightforward, and also to replicate their resultsusing a phosphorus atom embedded in silicon.The researchers said it will be at least another

decade before the potential of quantumcomputation is fully realised.

http://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/science/towards-quantum-internet

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How to Get MoreFLOWERS ON TWITTER

The research was performed by Eric Gilbert,assistant professor in Georgia Techs School ofInteractive Computing. Gilbert found that Twitterusers can grow their followers by such tactics as: Don't talk about yourself: Informational

content attracts followers at a rate 30times higher than content focused onthe tweeter. The study found userstalked about themselves in 41 percent oftheir tweets on average.

Be happy: Twitter is mainly based onweak social ties (most followers do notknow each other offline), which makes itmore important to stay away fromnegative posts such as death,unemployment and poor health.

Cool it on the hashtags: While hashtagsare definitely useful tools for expressingemotional commentary or tying tweetsto larger events or issues, they can beabused. Researchers found that thehigher a Twitter users' "hashtag ratio,"the less likely they were to attract newfollowers.

To our knowledge, this is the first longitudinalstudy of follow predictors on Twitter, Gilbert

said. For the first time, we were able to explorethe relative effects of social behavior, messagecontent and network structure and show which ofthese factors has more influence on the number ofTwitter followers.

Working with Ph.D. student C.J. Hutto and SaritaYardi, now an assistant professor in theUniversity of Michigans School of Information,Gilbert examined the tweets of more than 500Twitter users. After identifying 2,800 terms that

convey positive and negative emotions, the teamscored each term based on a sliding scale ofpositivity. They were then able to determinewhether Twitter users who used each term gainedor lost followers.The team discovered that certain identifiablestrategies in message content and interaction withother Twitter users, as well as the structure ofone's Twitter network, have a predictable effecton the number of followers. For example, Twitter"informers" (users who share informationalcontent) co

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