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One way to keep laptops from getting as hot as the sun's surface

Texas A&M researcher and cohorts from other schools resort to spintronics
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Thu, 10/29/09 - 3:56pm.

Researchers are in a race against increasingly dense and powerful laptops that will melt themselves if they get much hotter. One possible solution involves putting spin on electrons to record and process information, says Jairo Sinova, a Texas A&M University physics professor, who has joined forces with researchers from Hitachi Cambridge Laboratory, the Institute of Physics ASCR, University of Cambridge and University of Nottingham.

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iPhone app translates between English and Spanish, and vice-versa

Carnegie Mellon celebrates Jibbigo, startup launched by computer science professor
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 10/27/09 - 4:42pm.

A new iPhone 3GS app that turns the mobile device into an English-Spanish/Spanish-English speech translator is the brainchild of Carnegie Mellon University Computer Science Professor Alex Waibel. The application is being sold via Jibbigo, a company launched by Waibel.

CMU says the app has a vocabulary of about 40,000 words and is ideal for world travelers and medical doctors. Speak a couple of sentences intothe phone and it spits back an audible translation.

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Scientists unite: Millions awarded to build "Facebook for researchers"

Stimulus bill funds project led by University of Florida, Cornell
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 10/20/09 - 2:43pm.

The University of Florida, Cornell University and a handful of other schools have been awarded $12.2 million to build a social/collaborative network for scientists and researchers. The idea is to make it easier to find research and like-minded researchers in an effort to speed new discoveries.

The project, funded via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will initially take of the form of networks within each of the 7 founding schools but within two years could expand across the country. Eventually, the network will go worldwide, grant recipients hope.

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Intel, CMU bulk up wimpy nodes in energy-efficient clustering project

Flash storage, netbook processors put to work by researchers
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 10/14/09 - 3:26pm.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Intel Labs Pittsburgh have built an experimental energy-efficient computing cluster that combines flash memory and the sort of processors used in netbooks. Their name for it? Fast Array of Wimpy Nodes (FAWN)

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Google celebrates anniversary of bar code patent

57th anniversary of ubiquitous identification/data collection method coincides with Nobel Prize news
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 10/07/09 - 10:21am.

Google's "doodle" Wednesday on its search home page is a bar code that presumably translates into the word "Google".

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Father of fiber-optic communications wins share of Nobel Physics Prize

Charles Kao's work from 1966 recognized for extending fiber-optic networks
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 10/06/09 - 8:22am.

Charles Kao, whose work in the 1960s laid the foundation for today's long-distance fiber-optic networks, has won a share of this year's Nobel Prize in Physics.

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Princeton's Wayback Machine helps break Vanish security system for self-destructing data

But researchers at University of Washington work to strengthen Vanish in light of findings
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Thu, 10/01/09 - 10:20am.

Researchers this week published a paper describing how they broke Vanish, a secure communications system prototype out of the University of Washington that generated lots of buzz when introduced over the summer for its ability to make data self-destruct.

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Move over Ashley and Mary-Kate: Twins Lars and Jens Rasmussen invented Google Wave

Came to Google in buyout that led to Google Maps' creation
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 09/30/09 - 4:43pm.

Google Wave has gotten a ton of attention this week in the

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Good and bad of $1 million Netflix prize

AT&T Labs, Yahoo Research celebrate win, but one industry watcher says Netflix should cancel its follow-up contest due to privacy concerns
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 09/22/09 - 10:53am.

AT&T Labs-Research, Yahoo Research and other members of the Bellkor's Pragmatic Chaos team are celebrating their win in the 3-year-long Netflix Prize contest.

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Rebuilding Rome in less than a day via a computer algorithm

University of Washington advances digital photography with new algorithm funded by NSF, Google
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 09/16/09 - 9:29am.

A computer algorithm developed at the University of Washington has been used to create a digital reconstruction of Rome, including landmarks like the Colosseum. Eventually, the technology could find applications in everything from architecture to building video games.

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UC Berkeley profs say Google Books copyright case is No. 1

Tops list to 10 most important pending U.S. legal cases involving the Internet, bloggers say
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Tue, 09/15/09 - 10:10am.

Two University of California, Berkeley professors have come up with a good idea for a blog: It focuses on the top 10 pending cyberlaw cases, including those involving Google Books, net neutrality, warrentless wiretapping and Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The copyright case vs. Google over Google Books is No. 1 on their list.

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Bill Gates to dedicate Carnegie Mellon computer science center

Microsoft Chairman to deliver keynote address later this month
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 09/09/09 - 1:57pm.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates will share words of wisdom on Sept. 22 at the opening ceremony for a computer science center bearing his name at Carnegie Mellon University, the home of the nation's first such department in 1965.

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What to do about all those mobile applications

NSF funding research by Williams College
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 09/09/09 - 9:50am.

The National Science Foundation has pledged $400,000 over five years to fund research into mobile application management at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass. The Mobile Application Management project is led by Jeannie Albrecht, an assistant professor of computer science who has background working on the GENI research network, and will involve creation of a software toolkit that could help mobile apps developers better deal with everything from device configuration to tracking errors.

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Life beyond 10G Ethernet

Event will focus on 40G and 100G Ethernet applications
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 09/02/09 - 9:06am.

The Ethernet Alliance has extended an open invite to those interested in attending its all-day Technology Exploration Forum on 40G and 100G Ethernet taking place in Santa Clara on Sept. 15.

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100,000-port Ethernet switch anyone?

UC San Diego says it is well on its way to building the equivalent for data centers
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Mon, 08/17/09 - 9:18pm.

 

University of California at San Diego researchers Tuesday are presenting a paper describing software they say they say could make data center networks much more scalable.

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The pogo stick meets robotics

Carnegie Mellon's BowGo could bounce competition at Pogopalooza event
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Thu, 08/13/09 - 10:46am.

We've written about Carnegie Mellon researchers raising Charles Darwin from the dead, building a robo-tank and developing a gigapixel camera for the masses.

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NSF funds effort to protect computers from natural and manmade disasters

Colorado State University researchers specialize in disaster recovery/avoidance
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Wed, 08/12/09 - 12:17pm.

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded more than $1 million to Colorado State University professors tasked with making computer systems and networks robust enough to handle everything from lightning strikes to terrorist attacks.

The engineering professors, whose grant comes via the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, will devise models and algorithms focused on resource management and gauging system failure probability.

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Gazelle, Nozzle, Nemesis, SNARE, Vanish: Yep, must be a security conference

Anti-spam, secure e-mail and browsers among target areas for researchers at Usenix event
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Fri, 08/07/09 - 11:24am.

I'm a sucker for research projects with catchy names and a slew of them will be discussed at next week's Usenix Security Symposium in Montreal. Here's a sampler:

Gazelle

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Google Android goes to school

Google Research joining forces with universities to spread word of mobile apps
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Mon, 08/03/09 - 4:01pm.

Google Research is joining forces with Harvard, Georgia Tech, MIT and a handful of other schools this fall in an attempt to bring mobile application development into basic computing courses. Google wants to show off just how easy it is to build applications, from social networking programs to location-based systems, using platforms such as Android, even for those not concentrating in computer science.

Twitter hack, Red Hat, Linux skewered with Pwnie Awards at Black Hat

Security pros also honored for discovering key software bugs
Submitted by Alpha Doggs on Fri, 07/31/09 - 10:40am.

Think of the annual Pwnie Awards delivered at the Black Hat conference as a geek version of athe  Oscars -  if they were combined with the tongue-in-cheek Razzies that celebrate the worst of Hollywood. 

10 networkiest movies of all time

Twitter, Linux and Red Hat were among honorees that didn't go unscathed this time around.

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About Alpha Doggs
The future of networking as seen through the works of university and other labs.

Our mission is to give you a peek into the future of networking by tracking "alpha" research at university and other labs and at companies based on this work. Your Alpha Doggs editor is Bob Brown, Network World Online Executive Editor, News.