Current Events in DSS

Information Systems

College of Business Administration

University of Missouri - St. Louis

Decision Support Systems Foundations
These bits of wisdom all appeared electronic newsletters. Citations have been provided to their original source.

From ACM TechNews, December 29, 2003.
"This Car Can Talk. What It Says May Cause Concern."
New York Times (12/29/03) P. C1; Schwartz, John

Privacy proponents say the relationship between American motorists and their cars is changing with the emergence of advanced automotive technologies such as the OnStar system, a location tracking service popular for its promise to thwart carjackers, yet which experts such as Cornell University's Curt Dunnam argue could just as easily be used by law enforcement or even hackers to monitor car owners' whereabouts and activities. OnStar's Geri Lama assures that her company cannot release customers' location data to law enforcement officials except under court order, while only the craftiest hackers can crack the code needed to track location-based data or unlock car doors. Nevertheless, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse founder Beth Givens, talking about the erasure of motorists' personal freedom with the advent of monitoring systems, declares, "Now, the car is Big Brother." Other automotive technologies that have privacy advocates worried include electronic toll systems, chips installed within tires, and most notably, "black box" sensors designed to relay critical information in the last few seconds before a collision. Though Sally Greenberg of Consumers Union acknowledges that such technology can save lives, she wants the federal government to exercise caution in making sure the technology is not used to the detriment of personal privacy. The government is currently weighing regulations to standardize black box data as well as how that data is collected, while the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is working out a global black box standard. However, cases of privacy infringement involving vehicle tracking systems have already cropped up: Data recorded by an OnStar system was employed to convict a man of a fatal hit-and-run accident in 2001, while last year a woman was stalked by a man who installed a tracking device in her car. Click Here to View Full Article

From Edupage, December 22, 2003.
EU Feud Over Sharing Traveler Info With U.S.

Some members of the European Parliament have raised objections to a ruling by the European Commission that allows member countries to share personal information about international travelers with the United States. The European Commission said it was able to negotiate sufficient compromises with officials in the United States that the transfer of sensitive information would be permitted, despite EU laws that explicitly prohibit such actions. Included in the compromised proposal are provisions that reduce the amount of information transferred about each traveler, reduce the amount of time the information will be kept, and prevent using the information for domestic law enforcement. Those in the European Parliament objecting to the agreement noted "that the transfer is without the consent of the passengers, that the transfer in itself is illegal according to EU data-protection laws, and that the U.S. has no proper data-protection laws nor a fully independent data-protection officer." Wired News, 22 December 2003 http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,61680,00.html

From ACM Tech News, December 19, 2003.
"AI Think, Therefore I Am"
APC (12/03); Braue, David

Virtual agents--autonomous, self-directing computer programs that are social and reactive--are being developed for numerous tasks ranging from the simple to the highly sophisticated, but making them effective requires a delicate balance between psychology and technology. A virtual agent is ineffective if it is incapable of building trust within the user with whom it is interacting, and one of the biggest hindrances to establishing trust is an unrealistic appearance, such as jerky motions, unnatural expressions, and poor speech-to-lip synchronization. A U.S. study found that smiling, blinking, and other facial cues make a dramatic difference in users' perceptions of agents; in addition, even visually appealing agents can be less effective if they are too attentive or inaccurate. The results of the study indicate that the best virtual agents are bodiless, and such agents are being employed to collect new data rather than retrieve old data. The behavior of disembodied agents is not directed by their personalities, but by set parameters such as how far and how deep their search for data should extend, and many researchers believe these programs will be well-suited as personal assistants tasked with categorizing, indexing, and presenting information meaningfully. Cutting-edge virtual agents can be found in a joint venture between the U.S. Army and the University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, in which peacekeepers are trained to deal with angry or hostile people in war-torn regions by interacting with simulated characters--each imbued with its own personality and emotional expressions--in a virtual setting. Robotic vehicles driven by tireless agents that use cooperation and negotiation tactics to interact with one another are being used at Australian mining sites, notes Hugh Durrant-Whyte of Sydney University's ARC Center of Excellence in Autonomous Systems. Click Here to View Full Article
"Web Tools Don't Always Mesh With How People Work"
Newswise (12/17/03)

There are numerous techniques Web users employ to recall the Web pages they visit (sending emails to themselves or writing sticky notes, for example), but most people do not avail themselves of such methods when they decide to revisit pages, say University of Washington's William Jones and Harry Bruce and Microsoft Research's Susan Dumais. Bruce says, "People should have fast, easy access to the right information, at the right time, in the right place, in the right quantity to complete the task at hand." The researchers have studied this phenomenon, with funding from the National Science Foundation, in the hopes that more useful tools for keeping track of information can be developed. Their work implies that "keeping" methods stem from the different ways people plan to use the data, but bookmarks, which are the chief "keeping" instrument of most Web browsers, lack many of the advantages users desire. Furthermore, Dumais, Jones, and Bruce have learned that no matter what "keeping" technique a user prefers, most users often attempt to return to a Web site using three other methods: Directly entering a URL in the Web browser, conducting search engine queries, or using another Web site or portal to access the page. Jones and Bruce, along with their students, enhanced a Web browser with an "Add to Favorites" dialog, which allowed people to add comments about a link, send it through email, or save the page to their hard drive from a single dialog; however, most testers did not adopt this option, since they had fallen out of the habit of using bookmarks. Now the researchers are devising a conceptual architecture for how people decide to retain information to use later, which Bruce terms PAIN (personal anticipation of information need). The team is also seeking a patent for tools and techniques to address the problem of "information fragmentation" by meshing all the data scattered across different documents and media into a single "My Life" taxonomy. Click Here to View Full Article

From K@E Newsletter, December 17, 2003.
Privacy vs. Security: Who Draws the Line?

Derek Smith wants to know more about you. Why? He wants to protect you. As the Chairman and CEO of ChoicePoint, an Alpharetta, Georgia based company that specializes in providing identification and credential verification to business and government clients, Smith hopes to create a safer and more secure society through the responsible use of information. In the second in a series of articles, Smith and faculty at Emory University's Goizueta Business School debate the issue: where should we draw the line between an individual's right to privacy and creating a more safe and secure society? Read the article
It's All in the Numbers. Or Is It?

Quantitative analysis is widely believed to enhance the persuasiveness of business cases and proposals. But just how does quantification influence managerial decision-making? In their paper, "The Persuasive Effects of Quantification in Managerial Judgment," Kathryn Kadous and Kristy Towry of Emory University's Goizueta Business School join a coauthor in testing exactly how quantification influences persuasion. Read the article

From ACM Tech News, December 17, 2003.
"Web Services Put GIS on the Map"
Computerworld (12/15/03) Vol. 31, No. 56, P. 30; Mitchell, Robert L.

Web services technology is popularizing third-party geographic information system (GIS) information, even at companies that maintain their own internal GIS databases and systems. Commercial developer Edens & Avant uses GIS Web services to create quick overlay maps of prospective shopping center sites, integrating relevant Census Bureau, Environmental Protection Agency, local government, and commercial data. Edens & Avant systems manager David Beitz says the Web services model is for prospecting, but in-depth analysis involves in-house data. As Web services support for GIS continues to grow, analysts expect more industries to use GIS in greater capacity. Previously, specialists acted as gatekeepers to GIS systems, but now decision-makers and other GIS users have direct access to GIS data. Developers are also taking advantage of Web services to integrate GIS into their applications, using offerings such as Microsoft's MapPoint Web Services, for example. The Open GIS Consortium (OGC) is behind standards to support these Web services, including Web Map Service, Web Feature Service, and Geography Markup Language, which is based on XML. The payoff for Florida Farm Bureau Insurance is up-to-date information used to approve homeowner policy applications, says senior strategic planner Steve Wallace. Still, GIS over Web Services is hampered by differing standards at the base level, and OGC specification program director Carl Reed says the OGC is in discussions with states and counties to iron out simple definitions such as road width. Click Here to View Full Article

From New York Times, December 14, 2003.
Over-Reliance On Powerpoint Leads To Simplistic Thinking

NASA's Columbia Accident Investigation Board has fingered the agency's over-reliance on Microsoft PowerPoint presentations as one of the elements leading to last February's shuttle disaster. The Board's report notes that NASA engineers tasked with assessing possible wing damage during the mission presented their findings in a confusing PowerPoint slide so crammed with bulleted items that it was almost impossible to analyze. "It is easy to understand how a senior manager might read this PowerPoint slide and not realize that it addresses a life-threatening situation," says the report. NASA's findings are echoed in a pamphlet titled "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint," authored by information presentation theorist Edward Tufte, who says the software forces users to contort data beyond reasonable comprehension. Because only about 40 words fit on each slide, a viewer can zip through a series of slides quickly, spending barely 8 seconds on each one. And the format encourages bulleted lists -- a "faux analytical" technique that sidesteps the presenter's responsibility to link the information together in a cohesive argument, according to Tufte, who concludes that ultimately, PowerPoint software oozes "an attitude of commercialism that turns everything into a sales pitch." (New York Times 14 Dec 2003)

Perception Is Reality by Peter Coffee in eWeek, December 1, 2003.

From the ACM TechNews, October 3, 2003.
"Researchers Create Super-Fast Quantum Computer Simulator"
NewsFactor Network (10/02/03); Martin, Mike

Japanese researchers have devised a tool designed to boost the speed at which classical computers can run quantum algorithms, which engineers hope will aid the design of quantum-computer hardware and software. The researchers used a "quantum index processor" to manipulate an algorithm formulated by AT&T researcher Peter Shor in which the time it takes to factor a number increases only as a polynomial function of the number's size. With traditional factoring algorithms, the time required to factor a number rises exponentially with the number's size. Running quantum algorithms on classical computers is problematic: For instance, because Shor's algorithm only generates a "highly probable" correct result, it must be run continuously to boost the outcome's likelihood. The amount of simulated quantum bits needed to process these repetitions becomes unwieldy after a short time. Running Shor's algorithm with the quantum index processor sidesteps the complexity needed to run the algo! rithm on a classical system employing complementary metal oxide semiconductor technology, according to Texas A&M electrical engineering professor Laszlo Kish. He estimates that the quantum index processor is 100 trillion trillion times speedier than A&M's workstations, and overtakes any other quantum simulator currently in existence. "The proposed system will be a powerful tool for the development of quantum algorithms," declare Minoru Fujishima, Kento Inai, Tetsuro Kitasho and Koichiro Hoh of the University of Tokyo. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/22407.html
"Machines Learn to Mimic Speech"
Wired News (10/03/03); Delio, Michelle

Attendees at this week's SpeechTek tradeshow said speech technology companies have started to take a more realistic view in realizing that voice technology has not yet reached the point where computers can actually understand human speech. "Now that the magic is gone, we don't believe in using speech technology unless it serves a viable purpose--making it easier for people to work with a computer system, making systems more secure or even making computers more fun," remarked speech application programmer Frank Vertram. Still, SpeechTek showcased some impressive products: One ATM product was designed to aid visually handicapped or technology-evasive users by allowing them to hear descriptions of onscreen options through headphones. Nuance displayed a "say anything" natural language application that employs a database to interpret users' intent from "freestyle conversations." Cepstral unveiled two sets of computer voices, one geared for the American market and the other for th! e Canadian market--the American voices are imbued with a casual tone, while the Canadian voices speak with a French-Canadian accent. IBM highlighted WebSphere speech offerings upgraded with VoiceXML 2.0 support, which allows speech technology to be embedded within Web sites. SpeechTek's Speech Solutions challenge, which was set up to prove that programming speech applications does not necessarily have to be a frustrating experience, tasked seven teams with developing a workable application capable of identifying car trouble and scheduling a session at a repair shop by the end of the day; all seven teams met the challenge by 5:00 p.m. "Once we get past the mistaken idea that computers should be able to really understand us or that we can engage in meaningful conversations with machines, the new voice and speech technology is absolutely amazing," declared SpeechTek organizer James Larson. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60677,00.html

From the ACM TechNews, September 24, 2003.
"Putting Your Calls Into Context"
Wired News (09/23/03); Gardiner, Debbi

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University's Institute of Technology (CIT) have devised SenSay, a context-aware cell-phone technology that keeps track of sent emails, phone calls, and the user's location while employing sensors to analyze the environment so that users can be alerted to calls appropriately and non-intrusively. "Because people can see when you are available, the time it takes to hand off or receive information is greatly reduced," explains Dr. Asim Smailagic of Carnegie Mellon's Institute for Complex Engineered Systems. SenSay features an armband containing motion sensors, a microphone, galvanic skin-response sensors, and a heat-flux sensor to measure body temperature, while a global positioning system device relays the user's position; based on these readings, the phone can automatically adjust ringer volume, vibration, and phone alerts, and assign variable levels of urgency to calls. Intel helped finance SenSay's development and is interested in being the CIT! lab's manufacturing partner, while the military has also expressed an interest. SenSay will not be able to expand its usability until storage and computational capacity is added and one-piece integration is achieved, while privacy experts are concerned that the technology could be abused. "Something that is a tracking device can, for social reasons, become something that tracks you," notes Lee Tien of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Smailagic says all of these issues have been considered by CIT researchers, who are working on ways to address them. Carter Driscoll of the Independent Research Group thinks SenSay may only have limited market appeal among travelers or high-tech executives who need to be contacted at any time. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,60428,00.html

From the Wharton, September 8, 2003.
The Input Bias: How Managers Misuse Information When Making Decisions Fans of the hit TV comedy �The Jerry Seinfeld Show� may remember an episode in which Jerry�s friend George leaves his car parked at work so that the boss will think George is putting in long hours, even when he�s not. The idea, of course, is that George�s apparent productivity will net him a better performance review and a higher raise or bonus. Wharton professor Maurice Schweitzer would call George�s behavior �an attempt to invoke the input bias � the use of input information (in this case the false impression of long hours) to judge outcomes. 09/10/03 http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/articles.cfm?catid=13&articleid=840

From the ACM TechNews, July 30, 2003.
"Computer Helps Translate Gap Between 'He Said, She Said'"
Toledo Blade (09/08/03); Woods, Michael

The Winnow computer program developed by researchers at the Illinois Institute of Technology can determine whether anonymous messages are written by men or women with over 80 percent accuracy, and such technology could be used to increase the effectiveness of textbooks, improve crime-solving techniques, or enhance commercial and workplace communications, among other things. Project leader Dr. Shlomo Argamon says the effort differs from other research initiatives into gender-specific communications in that it focuses on textual rather than oral exchanges. Winnow studied more than 600 documents in the British National Corpus, scanning for specific linguistic patterns, or "determiners," culled from analysis of documents known to be written by male or female authors. Determiners that Winnow relies on to categorize author gender include women's preference for pronouns, such as "I," "you," "she," "her," "their," "myself," "herself," and "yourself" and men's tendency to use pronoun! s like "it," "this," "that," "these," "those," and "they." The program was able to correctly identify author gender in 73 percent of the scientific documents it analyzed, indicating that sex-related differences are apparent even in highly technical texts. Argamon thinks that revelations about distinctive writing styles between men and women uncovered by Winnow could have a profound effect on education, paving the way for gender-specific textbooks, for example. His team is attempting to refine the method to establish the age, educational level, and ethnicity of anonymous authors, as well as their gender, a breakthrough that could help police identify writers of ransom notes. Meanwhile, Georgetown University linguistics professor Dr. Deborah Tannen believes Argamon's research could help bridge a sexual communications gap in the workplace. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20030908/NEWS08/109080101
"BA Predicts the Future"
InfoWorld (09/01/03) Vol. 25, No. 34, P. 46; Angus, Jeff

Business analytics (BA) software focuses on future trends, not on summarizing and reporting historical data, as does business intelligence (BI) software. Both systems are linked to databases and allow analysis, and so have been confused in the marketplace; companies employing BA, however, should have been able to foresee the economic downturn three years ago. Data Warehouse Institute founder Herb Edelstein warns business managers from becoming too distracted by BI software that they ignore the special, predictive attributes of BA. SAS Institute analytical intelligence director Anne Milley explains that BI is more about canned information, while BA is about exploration and finding answers to new questions; BA tools allow analytical professionals to quickly investigate and follow up on highlighted trends, automatically generating new views based on user queries. The ability to generate many reports and bring the most relevant ones to the fore is what makes BA unique, says Kxen! 's Joerg Rathenberg. BA applications work best when operating in data-rich environments, such as CRM and ERP systems, and can help telecom marketing groups identify at-risk customers or pharmaceutical firms narrow drug discovery testing, for example. Because BA today is mainly for professionals with statistics experience, IT personnel do not need to be involved as heavily as with BI, where IT staff work with business executives to define report models; International Data's Henry Morris, who first coined the term "business analytics," says the next wave of such systems will be "policy hubs" uniting relevant BI and BA systems for more intelligent analysis. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.infoworld.com/article/03/08/29/34FEbusan_1.html

From the ACM TechNews, September 5, 2003.
"It's Tricky, Grafting Brando's Sneer to Bogart's Shrug"
New York Times (09/04/03) P. E8; Taub, Eric A.

Researchers at the University of Southern California are attempting to dissect human movement and speech in order to produce software that can generate virtual humans that are utterly authentic both in appearance and action. Such a breakthrough would be especially attractive to Hollywood, allowing filmmakers to create realistic yet inexpensive artificial characters whose physical and personality traits can be patched together from existing actors. This is not an easy challenge--Dr. Ulrich Neumann of USC's Integrated Media Systems Center explains, "There is such intricacy and detail and proper timing involved in the science of human expressiveness that when something is not right we know it, but we can't explain it." One project at the center involves researchers employing photos to measure the distance between points on a face; they have programmed a computer to build caricatures of one person that incorporate the features of another by overlaying the distances of the first ! face onto the second. Another part of the research involves filming people to get a sense of how emotions are physically expressed: Their faces are divided into nine areas, and the movements of three muscles in each area are plotted out by distance and timing. From these measurements is derived a formula that expresses the movement of interacting muscles over time to form specific emotional expressions. This formula can be used to manipulate the muscles on a virtual actor to re-create those same expressions. The next step is to add mouth and eye movements that look unpredictable, and the final step is to make the mouth and face move synchronously with the words being spoken while including reflection of what has been said and what is about to be said. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Does IM Have Business Value?"
Business Communications Review (08/03) Vol. 33, No. 8, P. 40; Bellman, Bob

Instant messaging is valued among enterprises for its presence, which allows users to know ahead of time who is available and unavailable to chat; near-real-time message delivery, which offers a higher level of interaction than email; and multiple correspondence, which enables users to be more efficient and productive. "IM lets you work more effectively in an information-rich, time-critical world," declares Jon Sakoda of IMLogic. Other benefits of IM include significant savings in international phone calls and other forms of communication--a February report from Osterman Research estimates that almost 81% of responding companies lowered phone use and 67% reduced email use through IM. In addition, IM does not cause network congestion, nor does IM inhibit network operations. Though some IM services are free, the companies that offer them expect to realize new revenue by bundling IM with other products and value-added services, or via IM "bot" applications. However, IM's availa! bility to anyone worries managers concerned with upholding network security; viruses and hacks can piggyback on IM-enabled file transfers, and IM easily allows business transactions to be carried out and proprietary data to be disseminated without an audit trail. Other drawbacks to IM include incompatible IM applications, the intense difficulty in deactivating IM once it is activated, and IM's potential to interrupt important tasks. A number of years will pass before IM standards are mature enough to facilitate interoperability, and before companies understand the best ways to leverage IM. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html

From the ACM TechNews, September 3, 2003.
"'Conversational'" Isn't Always What You Think It Is"
Speech Technology (08/03) Vol. 8, No. 4, P. 16; Byrne, Dr. Bill

Dr. Bill Byrne of Stanford University argues that, while "conversational" speech interfaces should boost usability overall, their true range of applications is limited by designers' tendency to have "conversational" refer to the type of exchange a person expects to have with a customer-based call center agent who has no previous relationship with the caller. This hurdle will have to be overcome if the technology is to penetrate the enterprise; the interface must support a conversational style aligned to both the task at hand and the expected relationship between the caller and the virtual agent. Byrne observes that the most efficient conversational speech interfaces may seem brusque and even rude when taken out of context. Imbuing conversational interfaces with "personality" can be another barrier to usability: Byrne cites Stanford University's Byron Reeves, who recently stated that "Personality [at least on the street] usually means 'a lot' of personality. That often result! s in over-the-top interfaces that can overdo what real people [even those with great personality] would do in similar face-to-face encounters." Byrne reports that designers often make the mistake of adding bells and whistles--witty turns of phrase, for example--that may impress first-time callers, but become irritating with frequent use. The challenge lies in achieving a balance between the maintenance of the conversational interface's dynamic quality and its usability. Byrne suggests that history trackers be embedded into the code or application design tool so prompts can be changed to suit the level of user familiarity, and adds that designers must realize that not all call situations apply to certain basic design credos. http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/8_4/cover/2183-1.html

From the ACM TechNews, August 29, 2003.
"Software Self-Defense"
ABCNews.com (08/27/03); Eng, Paul

Computer security experts say that users are the weakest link in the defense against computer viruses and worms, and that automated security updates and PC scanning are needed to fill the gap. The SoBig virus, which has infected over 100,000 PCs since Aug. 18, is only activated when users open an email attachment. Central Command COO Keith Peer says the software security industry's continual drumming about not opening suspicious email attachments is not working because users are "glazing over." Furthermore, the MSBlaster virus could have been stopped if many users had updated their Windows systems with a new software patch. Microsoft is considering shipping Windows XP with Auto Update on by default, so that non-technical users would not have to figure out what software patches do and how to install them. Network Associates' McAfee VirusScan and Symantec's Norton AntiVirus already use automatic updates and might even scan users' computers for suspicious activity signaling an ! unidentified infection; any program collecting email addresses from the hard drive or changing Web browser settings would be flagged and possibly disabled remotely by the software firm. Electronic Frontier Foundation technologist Seth Schoen says taking control away from the user is dangerous, and suggests security companies might introduce code that would discourage use of competitors' products. In addition, license agreements often waive manufacturers' responsibilities in case of defects. Schoen would approve of intrusive security measures if vendors give users a clear understanding and choice to reverse updates. However, Network Associates' Bryson Gordon warns that even with stringent software protections, viruses will continue to proliferate by way of social engineering tricks rather than technical prowess. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Upgrade and Archive: The Ongoing Threat of Data Extinction"
TechNewsWorld (08/28/03); Hook, Brian R.

Unlike printed documents and microfilm records, electronic records cannot be preserved without the maintenance of all the distributed data and metadata, explains Andrew Lawrence of Eastman Kodak's commercial imaging group. Paper and microfilm are self-contained, but digital files cannot be continuously accessed without their associated operating systems and applications; archived digital documents must be regularly updated to newer formats because nearly all software developers ultimately cease support for their older formats. "Over time, the problem is that media decays and hardware and software platforms evolve, placing the electronically stored information at risk," Lawrence observes. His advice is to keep electronic records available in native formats for the short term, and preserve those same documents in analog-based form as a long-term reference archive. Artesia products director Dan Schonfeld stresses the importance of archiving the viewers, players, and readers tha! t are needed to access digital files along with the files themselves, and notes that his company's software performs that function. He also advises companies to keep tabs on the applications required to view or read media files, which can be a difficult task. Meanwhile, Glenn Widener of SwiftView thinks the use of easily convertible print formats--Hewlett-Packard's Printer Control Language (PCL) in particular--is the best archival solution. There are PCL viewers available that can view documents 15 to 20 years old, and Widener is confident that "There will always be commercial tools readily available to read it." Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Gap Analysis"
Government Enterprise (08/03); Chabrow, Eric

Approximately 50 percent of the federal government's IT workforce, as well as a significant portion of state government IT professionals, will reach retirement age in a few years, which has sparked both negative and positive outlooks on how this development will affect IT project management and legacy system maintenance; the optimists are confident that there will not be a mass exodus of IT personnel because of the current economy, while most IT professionals recently polled by the Office of Personnel Management report a deep personal satisfaction in their work and its importance to their agencies' goals. Additionally, optimists believe that the departure of retirees with legacy skills will be offset by the recruitment of younger workers skilled in security, networking, and the Internet. However, officials such as Interior Department CIO Hord Tipton and former NASA CIO Paul Strassmann note that many soon-to-retire federal IT workers are either ready to leave or are tired of ! bureaucracy as well as continuous fighting between departments and agency directors, congressional appropriators, and the Office of Management and Budget. U.S. comptroller general David Walker argues that the government must expand its effort to lure new IT workers and retain veterans by becoming more user-friendly, while Congress is debating a salary raise for federal employees. Meanwhile, Steven Kelman of Harvard University says the government should ease midcareer hiring and recruit talent to supervise outsourced IT projects. Although Texas CIO Carolyn Purcell admits that seasoned workers make ideal project managers, she does not rule out the possibility that younger pros could also handle the job. Some CIOs are concerned that younger IT workers will balk at the prospect of learning legacy technologies, but Strassmann and Treasury Department CIO Drew Ladner say there is no reason to think such a thing will happen, as long as managers are able to keep workers motivated an! d excited. Agency-wide IT consolidation is one of the unanticipated pl uses of the focus on a possible IT worker shortage. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html

From the ACM TechNews, August 25, 2003.
"Tool Blazes Virtual Trails"
Technology Research News (08/20/03); Patch, Kimberley

A new virtual prototyping tool helps users keep their bearings when navigating the computer aided design (CAD) representation of ships, airplanes, or buildings. Developed at the University of North Carolina, the system uses algorithms and a graph map to keep users' avatars from floating through the free space of the virtual design. Instead, avatars walk along the floor and cannot pass through walls, allowing users to understand the virtual model better. The system is based on polygon models and requires preprocessing to link mapped graph nodes. After the global navigation mode is built, a local navigation mode lets users literally plot their own course in the virtual design, specifying where they want to go and how they want to get there. University of North Carolina researcher Brian Salomon says preprocessing the graph map for a 12-million polygon power plant model took over 12 hours, but that the actual graph takes surprisingly little storage. Salomon notes that industry p! artners include Boeing, Newport News Shipbuilding, and large architectural firms. The system can be used with current CAD products. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"State of Speech Standards"
Speech Technology (08/03) Vol. 8, No. 4, P. 20; Larson, James A.

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), and the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) are developing standards for speech systems, which consist of a cell phone, telephone, or other user device; a document server where scripts and files are stored; an application server housing a voice browser to download and interpret documents; a speech server with technology modules tasked with the recognition and generation of speech; and a telephone connection device with a call control manager. The VoiceXML Forum submitted version 1.0 of the Voice Extensible Markup Language (VoiceXML), a dialog language for writing speech applications to the W3C, in March 2000, which was refined into VoiceXML 2.0 by the Voice Browser Working Group, which also distilled and polished the Speech Recognition Grammar Specification and Speech Synthesis Markup Language as distinct specifications. Most Voice Browser Working Group members have agreed to ! a royalty-free licensing scheme, though there currently are only a small number of non-royalty-free patents which may be key to VoiceXML 2.0. Last February, W3C founded a multimodal interaction working group which will soon post working drafts of Ink Markup Language, Extended MultiModal Annotation, and Multimodal Framework Note. Meanwhile, the IETF's Speech Services Control Working Group is developing protocols for managing remote speech recognition, speaker identification and confirmation, and speech synthesis; proposed standards thus far submitted by the working group include requirements for distributed control of ASR, SI/SV, and TTS Resources, and Protocol Evaluation. The American National Standards Institute's InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards, in conjunction with the BioAPI Consortium, has proposed the Biometrics Application Programming Interface (BioAPI), which supports the enrollment, verification, and identification of users. ETSI's Auror! a project has yielded a distributed speech recognition standard that b oosts feature extraction on a client and enlists the server to handle the remainder of speech recognition; ETSI has also built a list of vocal commands in English, Spanish, Italian, German, and French. http://www.speechtechmag.com/issues/8_4/cover/2182-1.html

From the ACM TechNews, August 22, 2003.
"Technology Key to Anticipating Outages"
Associated Press (08/22/03); Jesdanun, Anick

It is hoped that the antiquated national grid will be upgraded to anticipate power failures such as those that caused the recent cascading blackout with the deployment of sophisticated monitoring technology, although such a vision is 10 years away and could cost tens of billions of dollars. Luther Dow of the Electric Power Research Institute explains that the goal is to develop an intelligent, self-repairing grid capable of monitoring and evaluating its performance, as well as taking steps to eliminate reliability problems. PJM Interconnection uses computers that abstract thousands of power-flow measurements into a graphic representation and run simulations of outages. PJM general manager Robert Hinkel thinks a cascading power failure triggered by local problems could be prevented by implementing automated sharing between neighboring utilities, while advanced artificial intelligence that can project sudden power load changes would also be beneficial. SmartSignal, IBM, and ot! hers are also developing improved methods for data analysis using wireless sensors. Meanwhile, Tom Glock of Arizona Public Service reports that his company has been testing computer systems that can help operators gain a wider perspective of grid operations rather than keeping track of myriad lines and substations by simultaneously monitoring separate displays. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,1228542,00.asp
"Total Information Overload"
Technology Review (08/03) Vol. 106, No. 6, P. 68; Jonietz, Erika

Privacy advocates allege that the Defense Department's Terrorism Information Awareness (TIA) project would merge public and private databases into a vast "metabase" that would be mined to gather data on innocent American citizens, but Robert L. Popp of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Information Awareness Office denies these allegations, insisting that TIA's purpose "is developing a variety of information technologies into a prototype system/network to detect and preempt foreign terrorist attacks." He explains that DARPA is supplying operational agencies within the Defense Department and the intelligence community with analytical counterterrorism tools, adding that these agencies are using only the data and databases that existing legislation, policies, and regulations give them access to. Popp says TIA is not devising data-mining technologies to sift through transactional data such as the purchase of plane tickets to potential sites of terrorist atta! cks, emails, phone conversations, and newswire stories; instead, TIA is focused on the development and integration of tools that facilitate collaboration, analytics, and decision support, as well as biometrics, security, pattern recognition and predictive modeling, and foreign-language translation. He discusses the two threads that make up TIA activity--an operational thread and a pure R&D thread. The operational thread is built upon the premise that government-owned databases already contain the data needed for an effective counterterrorism strategy, while the R&D thread seeks to determine whether that strategy could be improved if the government had wider access to the information space, as well as address any related privacy issues. Popp attributes the privacy community's backlash against TIA to a misinterpretation of the project's purpose picked up by many news outlets and Web sites last November, yet admits that DARPA ought to have been more straightforward with Congre! ss and the public. To read more about TIA, visit http://www.acm.org/usacm.
"Helping the Group to Think Straight"
Darwin (08/03); Chapman, Rod

Group decision support systems (GDSS)--software tools designed to enhance collaboration and boost productivity in face-to-face meetings--are growing more popular and rewriting the rules of decision-making on the executive level. GDSS encourages equal participation in conferences by allowing participants to remain anonymous and by imposing a turn-taking scheme, with the result being more sensible and unbiased decisions. A GDSS architecture usually consists of a meeting facilitator and a bunch of local area network-connected computers running software that streamlines collaborative jobs such as brainstorming, the classification and appraisal of ideas, voting, and designating importance to alternative concepts. Electronic brainstorming via GDSS enables participants to concurrently contribute ideas, allowing more ideas to be offered in less time than in traditional conferences. A typical GDSS package displays the results of such collaborative sessions on a large screen and at pa! rticipants' individual workstations so that group input can be viewed as a whole. Items are prioritized with the help of consensus building tools, while an agenda-setting element can narrow the group's focus. Thoughts and ideas are collected, organized, and edited through a multi-window setup, and the results can be published immediately after the meeting wraps up. The drawbacks of GDSS include low participation rates by people who type slowly or who do not like technology, a loss of body language and other nonverbal cues that are important communicative signposts, and confusion sowed by the lack of a skilled facilitator. http://www.darwinmag.com/read/080103/group.html

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From the ACM TechNews, August 20, 2003.
"AI Depends on Your Point of View"
Wired News (07/29/03); Shachtman, Noah

The Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched an effort to develop computers that can think for themselves, and the Real-World Reasoning project is part of this effort. The project seeks to give computers the ability to study situations from multiple angles and learn from experience, possibly through the integration of straight-up logic, probabilistic reasoning, game theory, and strategic thinking. Human beings do not merely feed new information into a database, notes IPTO chief Ron Brachman. He says that "[the data's] got to jive with what we know already. Or we've got [to] adjust our previous understanding." One technique people use to facilitate that adjustment is to look at the situation from a different context. It is doubtful that the Real-World Reasoning project will yield computers that exhibit the same mental flexibility as people, although it is hoped that the program will improve their mode of reasoning. Click Here to View Full Article

From the ACM TechNews, August 18, 2003.
"Smart Chips Making Daily Life Easier"
BBC News (08/13/03)

European researchers with the Smart-Its Project continue to make progress on "ubiquitous computing." During the recent computer graphics Siggraph exhibition in the United States, Smart-Its Project researcher Martin Strohbach explained that his colleagues at Lancaster University and other institutions in Zurich, Germany, Sweden, and Finland envision embedding all kinds of everyday household items with programmable microchip sensors, which would give them smarts. "For example, we have used a table as a mouse pointing interface so you can control the TV or computer," says Strohbach. Bookshelves that warn people when they are overloaded and water bottles that tell users when their contents need to be cooled are additional fun ideas for such technology, but ubiquitous computing could have more serious applications, and may even help save lives. Sensors placed in floors would be able to determine that an elderly person has fallen and is unable to stand up. And a medicine cabinet c! ould be transformed into a unit that tracks its contents and guides people through taking medicine. DIY flatpack chips have been developed that sense movement and use a voice to warn people when they are making a mistake in assembling products. http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/technology/3144405.stm
"CMU Professor Wins Award for Program That Aids Decision-Making Process"
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (08/11/03); Spice, Byron

Artificial intelligence can be used to find the best overall solution in a competitive decision-making environment, according to work done by Carnegie Mellon University computer scientist Tuomas Sandholm; those decisions include real-life political ones, such as where to build a bridge or whether or not to award a gambling license. But Sandholm's startup company, CombineNet, has so far focused only on business solutions, saving companies such as Bayer, H.J. Heinz, and Procter & Gamble a total of $300 million through electronic auctions worth between $3 billion and $4 billion. For his so-called "combinatorial optimization technology," Sandholm will be given the Computers and Thought Award at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Mexico this month. Carnegie Mellon Center for Automated Learning and Discovery director Tom Mitchell says mechanisms such as combinatorial optimization technology are important for artificial intelligence because they harnes! s group dynamics, similar to how the brain's nerve cells work together to make decisions. "Even though you feel like you're one person, you're actually 10 billion neurons," Mitchell says. Sandholm's work can be applied to any problem where a number of competing interests demand representation in a decision. By calculating each interest's need with others, the decision-making rules find the best solution for all parties involved. Sandholm says, "Clearing the market--deciding who should win--is a very hard optimization problem." Sandholm has won a patent for his method, which he says is the world's fastest for these NP-complete problems--a class of problem that is best illustrated by the Traveling Salesman question, where the fastest route through a large set of cities is needed. http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/03223/210920.stm

From the ACM TechNews, August 11, 2003.
"Robot Challenge: Putting Artificial Intelligence to Work"
Voice of America News (08/04/03); Skirble, Rosanne

Grace, the robot built in response to a general challenge by the American Society for Artificial Intelligence, is now preparing for more ambitious missions. Formally named the Graduate Robot Attending Conference in Edmonton, Grace successfully registered at the 18th annual National Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Canada, found her way to the meeting room, and then proceeded to deliver a prepared speech. She is a barrel-chested robot with no arms or legs, and moves on wheels guided by sensors near the ground. The robot features a flat panel computer screen that displays Grace's animated face, as well as a camera, speech synthesizer, and a microphone. The five research teams that contributed to Grace aim to improve her performance at the upcoming International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Acapulco, Mexico, from Aug. 9-15. Reid Simmons of the Carnegie Mellon University Robotics Institute, leads the team that designed Grace's software and hardware stru! cture. He says Grace previously did in one hour what a person would take 10 minutes to do. The goal this time is to improve her performance by allowing her to do multiple tasks at once--finding the end of the registration line while en route, for example. In Canada, Grace embarrassed her creators when she cut in line at the registration table. In addition to improved speed and movement, the Grace team also intends to bolster her conversational skills so that she can engage in more natural exchanges with human attendees. Grace will be accompanied in Mexico by George, her male counterpart who is identical except for voice and display; in the future, the researchers plan to make the two robots collaborate to finish tasks faster. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Glove Won't Speak for the Deaf"
Wired News (08/07/03); Batista, Elisa

Some hearing-impaired people have conflicting feelings about technology designed to translate American Sign Language into spoken and written speech, the latest example being Jose Hernandez-Rebollar's AcceleGlove, a sensor-laden glove that converts hand and arm movements into vocalizations or text messages. Previous glove technologies take a long time to spell out words and have a small vocabulary. The AcceleGlove can translate almost 200 words and a few simple phrases, and can understand both the alphabet and dynamic gestures. George Washington University doctoral student Hernandez-Rebollar notes that a two-glove system will be needed to allow the wearer to communicate the entire ASL vocabulary, while a preinstalled dictionary would expand the range of gestures the glove can translate. However, fellow glove translator inventor Ryan Patterson of the University of Colorado observes that the technology is limited because it cannot take facial expressions into account. American ! Sign Language Institute director Paul Mitchell says that deaf people may be resentful of such technology, not just because of its limited vocabulary, but because it goes against their own cultural view that deafness is a unique trait rather than a disability. Certain organizations believe that imposing such technology on deaf people as a "cure" for their condition would force the hearing-impaired to radically alter their lives at the behest of the hearing world, rather than let the hearing community accommodate them. http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,59912,00.html

From the ACM TechNews, August 8, 2003.
"Reasonable Computers"
ABCNews.com (08/05/03); Eng, Paul

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Perceptive Assistant that Learns (PAL) program is an initiative to develop cognitive computer systems that can automatically perform many of the routine tasks that decision-makers are currently burdened with--chores such as answering email, scheduling meetings, and furnishing reports. Decision-makers' efficiency would be enhanced through the deployment of such digital assistants, which would be programmed to adapt to their users' needs via software that mimics the way people think and learn. DARPA has invested $22 million in SRI International's Cognitive Agent that Learns and Observes (CALO) program, a PAL-related project that seeks to mesh various expert software and technology developed by the military into a cognitive system that manages the many tasks and data typical of military decision-making. DARPA has thus far earmarked $7 million for Carnegie Mellon University's Reflective Agents with Distributed Adaptive Reas! oning (RADAR) project. The idea behind RADAR, like CALO, is the consolidation of expert systems into a whole whose components can interact with each other. CMU researcher Scott Fuhlman illustrates this concept by projecting that RADAR's email element would be trained to notify the scheduling component when it recognizes key phrases and associated times; the scheduler may then communicate with the email sender's agent to set up the most convenient meeting time. Both SRI and CMU researchers believe that smarter, more adaptive systems will be the inevitable result of increasing computing power.http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Smart Rooms"
Computerworld (08/04/03) Vol. 31, No. 37, P. 29; Anthes, Gary H.

Carnegie Mellon University's "Barn" is a prototype conference room capable of recording everything that happens during a meeting through an array of microphones, cameras, projectors, and other equipment. Faculty advisor Asim Smailagic says the Barn was designed for meetings that aim to flesh out designs. "It's for brainstorming, idea generation, knowledge generation and knowledge transfer," he notes. Conference participants register their presence by donning radio-frequency identification tags, while wearable sensors allow the Barn to confirm their identity and constantly track their location; "social geometry" is used to adjust lighting and microphones according to attendees' physical position. A key component of the meeting area is a digital whiteboard outfitted with an intelligent interactive display, or "Thinking Surface," where concepts can be projected and updated via PC connections. Major decisions or brainstorms are flagged in meeting logs when someone pushes a "that! was important" (TWI) button on his computer. TWI markers are useful for people who miss meetings and need to be brought up to speed quickly. Director of CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute Dan Siewiorek says future Barn research will focus on avoiding contradictory decisions among semi-independent subgroups within large project teams--and the headache of resolving those problems later on--by allowing liaisons in each subgroup to remotely audit the other groups' meetings quickly through the deployment of keyword recognition systems throughout the conference room. Siewiorek boasts that one of the standout characteristics of CMU researchers is their dedication to building technology around human issues, rather than vice-versa.http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"Is the Pen Mightier?"
CIO Insight (07/03) Vol. 1, No. 28, P. 67; Bolles, Gary A.

Tablet PCs promise to boost worker productivity and support more flexible collaboration by capturing data and graphic information more efficiently, but there have been few major white-collar tablet PC implementations thus far, and many companies lack an efficient strategy for managing data once it is captured and stored. Tablet PCs are optimal for enterprises that already employ mobile computers that follow a similar design paradigm, such as pharmaceutical companies, retail stock management services, and warehouse inventory management; tablets may also be favored by companies that find personal digital assistants inadequate in terms of screen size or data storage capacity. In the end, however, "it really comes down to what the workflow is," observes John Keane of ArcStream Solutions. Experts such as Gartner VP Ken Dulaney consider the current crop of tablet PC products to be first-generation, which leaves plenty of room for improvement. The latest models owe a lot to progres! s in flat-panel display, microprocessor, disk storage, and wireless networking technologies. There are no solid forecasts as to where further tablet PC growth will occur: Acer America's Sumit Agnihotry says his company expects tablet PCs to further penetrate the mainstream in the last six months of 2003, but he acknowledges that most current tablet buyers are existing tablet customers. Additional barriers to adoption include the high cost of tablet PCs and their potential support costs, if off-the-shelf products do not fulfill corporate needs. The best approach is to test commercial tablet PC hardware and software by selecting the IT staff most likely to benefit from the technology as a test group; the incorporation of Wi-Fi into the networking infrastructure is also a plus. http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,1193351,00.asp

From the ACM TechNews, August 4, 2003.
"VR Accommodates Reality"
Technology Research News (08/06/03); Smalley, Eric

Flight simulators and other virtual reality systems incorporate concrete elements to give artificial environments a ring of authenticity, and University of North Carolina and Disney Corporation researchers have developed a system that mixes real and virtual objects in an artificial reality. In such a hybrid virtual environment, people can, for instance, interact with real window drapes while viewing a virtual representation of their hands parting simulated drapes to reveal a simulated view out a simulated window. Benjamin Lok, currently at the University of Florida, says the system's core component is a technique for ascertaining when actual and artificial objects collide and supplying a realistic response. The shapes and positions of real objects in the virtual space are determined by a quartet of cameras and object recognition software; the data gathered by the cameras is used to flesh out 3D shells that conform to the objects' shapes. When real and virtual objects collide! , only the virtual objects deform or move so as to prevent overlap between objects and shells. The researchers used the environment to simulate a space shuttle payload assembly task that NASA engineers interacted with; Lok says the test results concluded that the system is an improvement over fully virtual environments when it comes to assessing hardware designs and planning assembly tasks. He adds that hybrid environments not only have a greater sense of authenticity, but their ease of installation allows them to be employed earlier in the design process. Lok says the researchers are currently working to improve the virtual representation of real objects, and believes that hybrid systems will not be ready for general applications for two decades. The researchers presented their work at ACM's Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics in April. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.trnmag.com/Stories/2003/073003/VR_accommodates_reality_073003.html
"Inventor Designs Sign Language Glove"
Associated Press ; (08/03/03); Hartman, Carl

George Washington University researcher Jose Hernandez-Rebollar's AcceleGlove is a system in which a glove outfitted with sensors and a wearable computer can convert American Sign Language (ASL) gestures into spoken words or text as an aid to the hearing-disabled. Hernandez-Rebollar notes that his invention is more advanced than others because it is also capable of translating some of ASL's more complicated arm and body movements into words and simple phrases. The glove can produce signs that correspond to all 26 alphabetical characters, allowing any word to be spelled out, although the process is slow. The device can thus far generate less than 200 words that can be signed with one hand, and a limited number of simple sentences. Institute for Disabilities, Research, and Training director Corinne K. Vinopol thinks the AcceleGlove could be especially useful for deaf parents with hearing children as well as normal parents whose children are hearing-disabled; of particular ! interest to Vinopol is Hernandez-Rebollar's work to enhance the AcceleGlove so that it can translate ASL into Spanish as well as English. The AcceleGlove's inventor believes a one-handed version could hit the market as early as 2004, while a more sophisticated two-handed model could debut the following year. Hernandez-Rebollar adds that the glove could be integrated with existing wireless gear and be used as a vibration- or text-based communications device for squad commanders to relay orders to concealed soldiers. http://www.siliconvalley.com/mld/siliconvalley/6454646.htm
"Virtual Reality Conquers Sense of Taste"
New Scientist (07/30/03); Ananthaswamy, Anil

Researchers at the University of Tsukuba in Japan have developed a virtual reality device that is able to simulate the taste of food and the way food feels in the mouth. Researchers already have been able to simulate vision, hearing, touch, and smell, but not the sense of taste, which uses chemical and auditory cues in feeling food in the mouth. The device makes use of a thin-film force sensor placed in the mouth to measure and record the force needed to bite through a piece of food, biological sensors made up of lipid and polymer members to record the chemical makeup of the food's taste, and a microphone that records the vibrations of the jawbone while chewing. Cloth and rubber covers the mechanical part of the simulator, which resists the bite in a manner that is similar to what occurs with real food. The device also uses a thin tube that shoots a mixture of flavorings onto the tongue to stimulate basic taste sensations, and a tiny speaker plays back the sound of chewing i! n the ear. Cheese, crackers, confectionary, and Japanese snacks have been among the foods simulated with the device, but the team still must find a way to use a vaporizer to deliver smells to the nose. Hiroo Iwata and colleagues at the university presented their research at the recent SIGGRAPH 03 computer graphics and interactivity conference in San Diego. http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994006
"The End of Handicaps"
eSchool News (07/03) Vol. 6, No. 7, P. 40; Kurzweil, Ray

In an address to the CSUN 18th Annual Conference on "Technology and Persons with Disabilities," futurist and National Medal of Technology recipient Ray Kurzweil presented his vision of the sweeping technological changes he expects to take place over the next few decades--in fact, he argued that some of these changes have already begun. Kurzweil estimates that the rate of progress doubles every decade--by that reckoning, 21st century progress will be roughly 1,000 times greater than 20th century progress. Kurzweil envisions ubiquitous computers with always-on Internet connections, systems that allow people to fully immerse themselves in virtual environments, and artificial intelligence embedded into Web sites by 2010. The futurist also projects that 3D molecular computing will be a reality by the time Moore's Law reaches its limits, while nanotechnology will emerge by the 2020s. Kurzweil predicts that the human brain will have been fully reverse-engineered by 2020, which will! result in computers with enough power to equal human intelligence. He forecasts the emergence of systems that provide subtitles for deaf people around the world, as well as listening systems also geared toward hearing-impaired users, while blind people should be able to take advantage of pocket-sized reading devices in a few years. Kurzweil believes that people with spinal cord injuries will be able to resume fully functional lives by 2020, either through the development of exoskeletal robotic systems or a technique to mend severed nerve pathways, possibly by wirelessly transmitting nerve impulses to muscles. All of these developments are expected to reach maturity and culminate in enhanced human intelligence by 2029. Click Here to View Full Article http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html

From the ACM TechNews, July 30, 2003.
"AI Depends on Your Point of View"
Wired News (07/29/03); Shachtman, Noah

The Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO) of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has launched an effort to develop computers that can think for themselves, and the Real-World Reasoning project is part of this effort. The project seeks to give computers the ability to study situations from multiple angles and learn from experience, possibly through the integration of straight-up logic, probabilistic reasoning, game theory, and strategic thinking. Human beings do not merely feed new information into a database, notes IPTO chief Ron Brachman. He says that "[the data's] got to jive with what we know already. Or we've got [to] adjust our previous understanding." One technique people use to facilitate that adjustment is to look at the situation from a different context. It is doubtful that the Real-World Reasoning project will yield computers that exhibit the same mental flexibility as people, although it is hoped that the program will improve their! mode of reasoning. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31172.html
"Helping Machines Think Different"
Wired News (07/29/03); Shachtman, Noah

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) says it has embarked on a series of projects in recent months that on the surface may seem isolated, but are in fact part of an overarching push to make computers capable of thinking for themselves. LifeLog, the most well-known of these projects, seeks to track all aspects of a person's life and feed this information into a database; a program is supposed to extract narrative threads from this data to deduce that person's relationships, experiences, and traits. "Our ultimate goal is to build a new generation of computer systems that are substantially more robust, secure, helpful, long-lasting and adaptive to their users and tasks," explains American Association for Artificial Intelligence President Ron Brachman, who was recently appointed head of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office (IPTO). "These systems will need to reason, learn and respond intelligently to things they've never encountered before." Brac! hman insists that LifeLog is not a profiling or terrorist-tracking tool, but an episodic-memory system forming the basis of a sophisticated electronic assistant that intuits the habits and preferences of its boss. IPTO's $29 million Perceptive System that Learns (PAL) program is an effort to build self-improving software that references episodic memory to automate the scheduling of meetings and other tasks. Brachman observed in a recent presentation that the growing complexity of computer systems increases their fragility and vulnerability to attack. So that a computer can learn and adapt to such factors, it must build a catalog of existence the same way people do. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59787,00.html
"The Future of Human Knowledge: The Semantic Web"
TechNewsWorld (07/28/03); Koprowski, Gene J.

An international team of scientists is defining and devising standards, protocols, and technologies that will form the foundation of the Semantic Web, a more context-aware version of the Internet envisioned as an online source for the collective scientific, business, and artistic knowledge of the human race. The Semantic Web, which optimistic forecasters believe is just a few years away, will be able to conduct searches based on ordinary language rather than keywords. The project is being spearheaded by the World Wide Web Consortium; participants include researchers at computer companies and major academic institutions such as Kyoto University, Stanford University, and MIT, while the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is a Semantic Web underwriter. Maturing technologies thought to be the strongest candidates for implementing the Semantic Web include DARPA agent markup language, resource description framework (RDF), and Web ontology language (OWL! ). Many businesses are too impatient to wait for the Semantic Web to emerge and are investigating other stop-gap solutions, such as the automation of routine e-commerce tasks by software agents. Meanwhile, niche search engines that seek out data based on user preferences are being fleshed out by Penn State researchers and others. Extreme Logic strategic consultant Steve Woods notes that analysts expect the Semantic Web to supplant the current Web within two years, although his firm considers 2010 to be a more realistic projection for such a development. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31199.html
"And Now, Here Comes 'Spray-On Electronics'"
International Herald Tribune ; (07/25/03); Schenker, Jennifer L.

IBM, Philips, and Bell Labs are developing organic transistors as a basis for plastic electronics, but Plastic Logic of Cambridge, England, claims to have a competitive advantage with a patented technique for printing "spray-on" polymer-based circuits. Although Plastic Logic chips do not boast the speed of crystalline silicon chips, Plastic Logic co-founder Richard Friend says they are sufficiently cheap and fast enough to supplant silicon in updateable active matrix displays incorporated into electronic signs and electronic newspapers. Plastic electronics promise to eliminate the need for manufacturing chips in sterile "clean rooms" and the associated costs, and make ubiquitous electronics an achievable goal. Plastic electronics could be the keystone of a range of new products and applications, including flexible e-paper and e-textiles, disposable electronics, advanced biosensors, electronic labels, intelligent packaging, and roll-up displays for mobile phones. One of P! lastic Logic's partners, Cambridge Display Technologies, is developing organic light-emitting displays as a complementary technology for plastic electronics. "The flexibility that plastic electronics offers allows us to enter new markets and enter new product lines," declares Jim Welch of Gyricon. Plastic electronics' initial applications are expected to be in retail stores, probably as price displays that can be remotely updated via computer. More advanced products such as changeable e-books will not emerge until wireless technologies proliferate and the cost of display materials significantly declines. http://www.wired.com/news/privacy/0,1848,59799,00.html

From the ACM TechNews, July 25, 2003.
"Touch Technology: Internet May Let Us 'Feel' the Stars"
Christian Science Monitor (07/24/03) P. 1; Valigra, Lori

Researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the State University of New York at Buffalo are developing and experimenting with network and sensor technologies designed to allow people to experience virtual tactile sensations. Adriane Hooke of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory is spearheading an initiative to build networking protocols that could form the basis of an outer-space Internet linking satellites, robots, and other types of interplanetary equipment. The effort is part of NASA's Deep Space Network, a project involving a trio of Earth-based antenna arrays designed to communicate with spacecraft and carry out scientific probes. Hooke forecasts that the next 15 years will witness the emergence of interplanetary telepresence, and says that one day, "You can have data sent back from a robotic sensor in space and recreate the information in a virtual reality-like environment on Earth, so you could feel like you were roaming around on Mars." A key element of such a d! evice is haptics technology, and University of Buffalo researchers led by Virtual Reality Lab director Thenkurussi Kesavadas have made a significant breakthrough with a sensor glove that allows its wearer to feel the sensations experienced by another person through an Internet connection. So far glove users can only feel hard or soft objects and the contour of specific shapes, though Kesavadas expects the next-generation Internet will help refine the glove's haptics ability so that users can feel fabrics or skin, for example. He explains that interacting with the glove is similar to showing how a child to write by guiding his or her hand, adding that "With our technology, you can do and feel, which leads to learning." Kesavadas predicts that simple Internet touch applications will find their way into the game industry within a few years. http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/0724/p14s01-stin.html
"Socially Intelligent Software: Agents Go Mainstream"
TechNewsWorld (07/23/03); Koprowski, Gene J.

Companies that wish to make customer service more efficient and effective are using software agents that interact with clients in order to identify and solve their problems faster, but the technology's applications are not restricted to consumer interfaces--the U.S. military is also using virtual agents to enhance combat tactics. Furthermore, researchers are trying to embed social intelligence into the agents, providing users with a more dynamic computer interface that can intuit their emotional states and take appropriate measures. LiveWire Logic's RealDialog Agents, a product that combines computational linguistics and artificial intelligence, is programmed to respond to customer inquiries accurately, consistently, and immediately via interactive text-based conversations that obviate the need for human intervention. LiveWire reports that the software can defuse the stress on all customer support touch points and reduce customer support and call center costs. RealDialog! 's utilization of drag-and-drop and automated-authoring technology makes design and management easy, even for nonprogrammers. Meanwhile, Vanderbilt University and the University of Southern California recently won a major contract with the Office of Naval Research to supply computer software that can assist battlefield tactics by lowering risk, raising the odds for mission success, and supporting the objectives of mission commanders, according to Robert Neches of USC's Information Sciences Unit. The Vanderbilt-USC technology, Autonomous Negotiating Teamware, helps coordinate combat air squadrons through the communication of individual software modules that exchange information and make balanced decisions. University of Southampton researchers have devised a software agent with learning algorithms so it can adjust to user requirements and manage users' schedules like a virtual butler. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31172.html
"MIT's Tablet Tech Gets a Look-See From Microsoft"
Mass High Tech (07/21/03); Miller, Jeff

MIT researchers are exploring ways to radically change the computer interface. The person who integrated typewriter functions with the computer made one of the worst mistakes in computer engineering, according to MIT computer science professor Randall Davis. His graduate students are working on a number of innovations that will allow users to sketch and audibly describe concepts for the computer. Davis says the inspiration for this work is a short Disney film he saw as a boy, where the animations came to life after being drawn on paper. Microsoft is interested in the work of Ph.D. candidate Christine Alvarado, whose sketch application lets engineers describe basic objects and concepts, such as wheels, axles, slopes, and springs, by drawing them. Alvarado's work is unique because the application recognizes drawn objects in the context of others, unlike other writing applications such as Palm's graffiti, which requires users to draw in specific ways and cannot evaluate cha! racters in context. Ph.D. candidate Tracy Hammond is working on a similar tool, but meant for universal modeling language programmers. Users can create their own "shape vocabulary" defining pieces of information that is then turned into code by IBM's Rational Rose system. Davis wants to combine voice and gesture with the sketch applications, allowing someone to draw a recognized object and then manipulate it with vocal commands. Eventually, the work will contribute to a computer that is not just a desktop system, but is the desktop itself that users write on.

From the ACM TechNews, July 16, 2003.
"Computer Simulations: Modeling the Future"
TechNewsWorld (07/15/03); Koprowski, Gene J.

State-of-the-art computer simulation technologies are being developed and employed for commercial, medical, and military projects. The University of Southern California's Information Sciences Institute, in conjunction with Options Technology, incorporated artificial intelligence, cluster computing, and high-speed networks to perform a simulation for the Joint Forces Command involving 1 million computer-generated vehicles capable of autonomous movement and environmental response, whereas previous simulations could only support about 100,000 vehicles. "We are within sight of being able to create a large-scale, high-resolution battlefield environment detailed enough to let us experiment and see how a given system might perform," declared USC's Robert Lucas. This summer will witness a real-word military exercise at the same scale to give analysts the ability to track vehicle and troop movements by controlling sensors in the field. Companies such as Insight and Clockwork Solu! tions are building modeling and simulation technology that can be applied to supply chain management: Insight's solution simulates the impact of a natural disaster or terrorist attack on an individual organization's supply chain, while Clockwork Solutions is working on software that can model industrial systems to anticipate the effects of wear and tear on factory operations over time. Meanwhile, researchers at the Case Western Reserve University School of Engineering have devised the Model Integrated Metabolic system as a tool that can simulate how the heart, liver, and brain react to physical exertion. Bayer, Organon, and other pharmaceutical companies are employing Entelos' PhysioLabs software, which can model different disease states to see how afflicted systems will respond to drugs. http://www.technewsworld.com/perl/story/31116.html

From the ACM TechNews, July 14, 2003.

"New Software Allows You to Log on By Laughing"
New Scientist (07/09/03); Nowak, Rachel

Computer scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, have developed a program that will automatically log someone onto the nearest computer at the sound of their voice or laughter. In an effort to make it easier for their staff to log onto networked computers, the researchers have created SoundHunters, software that makes use of sound recognition and intelligent agent technology. With the aid of microphones on computers, SoundHunters is designed to recognize a voice, and then use strategically placed intelligent agents to determine the location of the individual in relation to the nearest computer. Intelligent agents can listen to the footsteps of a person moving throughout an office. "Once the agents have worked out the direction the person is going, they would even be able to stay one or two steps ahead," says researcher Arkady Zaslavsky. Although the researchers have more work to do to improve SoundHunters' ability to distinguish voices, marrying sound re! cognition and intelligent agent technology has become a reality. Click Here to View Full Article

From NY Times, July 11, 2003
Data in Conflict: Why Economists Tend to Weep
By DANIEL ALTMAN

Is the economy pulling itself out of a slump, or is it sinking deeper? The answer could be either, based on the data from government agencies these days. Because they measure the same things � employment, incomes and prices � in different ways, it can be hard to tell what is really happening. Read the whole article

From DSS News, July 6, 2003
Ask Dan: How can simulation be used for decision support?

Questions about using simulation for building a DSS are reasonably frequent in my Ask Dan! email. So this column has been in the works for some time, but my summer research project on advanced decision and planning support motivated me to move this column to the "front burner". Coincidentally, I received an email on Friday, July 4, 2003 from John Walker ( http://jbwalker.com ). John wrote "I appreciate your newsletter. Keep 'em coming!" Thanks for the positive feedback. Also, John thought I might be interested in a June 16, 2003 interview with Eric Bonabeau at CIOInsight.com. Eric is the founder of Icosystem Corp., Cambridge, MA ( http://Icosystem.com ). Icosystem develops agent-based models and simulations. Agent-based or multi-agent simulations are the "latest and greatest" technology or approach in the simulation toolkit. Before I discuss agent-based simulations, let's review the basics of simulation. According to a number of sources, simulation is the most frequently used quantitative approach for solving business problems and supporting business decision making. That generalization may be true, but simulation is still the province of management science "specialists". Simulation has not been made "manager friendly".
Simulation is a broad term that refers to an approach for imitating the behavior of an actual or anticipated human or physical system. The terms simulation and model, especially quantitative and behavioral models, are closely linked. From my perspective, a model shows the relationships and attributes of interest in the system under study. A quantitative or behavioral model is by design a simplified view of some of the objects in a system. A model used in a simulation can capture much detail about a specific system, but how complex the model is or should be depends upon the purpose of the simulation that will be "run" using the model. With a simulation study and when simulation provides the functionality for a DSS, multiple tests, experiments or "runs" of the simulation are conducted, the results of each test are recorded and then the aggregate results of the tests are analyzed to try to answer specific questions. In a simulation, the decision variables in the model are the inputs that are manipulated in the tests.
In my DSS book (Power, 2002), Chapter 10 on Building Model-Driven Decision Support Systems notes "In a DSS context, simulation generally refers to a technique for conducting experiments with a computer-based model. One method of simulating a system involves identifying the various states of a system and then modifying those states by executing specific events. A wide variety of problems can be evaluated using simulation including inventory control and stock-out, manpower planning and assignment, queuing and congestion, reliability and replacement policy, and sequencing and scheduling (p. 172)."
There are several types of simulation and a variety of terms are used to identify them. When you read about simulation you will find references to Monte Carlo simulation, traditional mathematical simulation, activity-scanning simulation, event-driven simulation, process-based model simulation, real-time simulation, data-driven simulation, agent-based and multi-agent simulation, time dependent simulation, andvisual simulation.
In a Monte Carlo or probabilistic simulation one or more of the independent variables is specified as a probability distribution of values. A probabilistic simulation helps take risk and uncertainty in a system into account in the results. Time dependent or discrete simulation refers to a situation where it is important to know exactly when an event occurs. For example, in waiting line or queuing problems, it is important to know the precise time of arrival to determine if a customer will have to wait or not. According to Evan and Olson (2002) and others, activity-scanning simulation models involve describing activities that occur during a fixed interval of time and then simulating for multiple future periods the consequences of the activities while process-driven simulation focuses on modeling a logical sequence of events rather than activities. An event-driven simulation also identifies "events" that occur in a system, but the focus is on a time ordering of the events rather than a causal or logical ordering.
Simulation can assist in either a static or a dynamic analysis of a system. A dynamic analysis is enhanced with software that shows the time sequenced operation of the system that is being predicted or analyzed. Simulation is a descriptive tool that can be used for both prediction and exploration of the behavior of a specific system. A complex simulation can help a decision maker plan activities, anticipate the effects of specific resource allocations and assess the consequences of actions and events. In a business simulation course, text materials usually focus on static, Monte-Carlo simulations and dynamic, system simulations (cf., Evan and Olson, 2002).
In many situations simulation specialists build a simulation and then conduct the special study and report their results to management. Evans and Olson (2002) discuss examples of how simulation has been used to support business and engineering decision making. They report a number of special decision support studies including one that evaluated the number of Hotel reservations to accept to effectively utilize capacity to create an overbooking policy (p. 161-163), a Call Center staffing capacity analysis (p. 163-165), a study comparing new incinerating system options for a municipal garbage recycling center (p. 176-179), a study evaluating government policy options, and various studies for designing facilities.Examples of model-driven DSS built with a simulation as the dominant component include: a Monte Carlo simulation to manage foreign-exchange risks; a spreadsheet-based DSS for assessing the risk of commercial loans (cf., Decisioneering Staff, 2001), a DSS for developing a weekly production schedule for hundreds of products at multiple plants; a program for estimating returns for fixed-income securities; and a simulation program for setting bids for competitive lease sales (cf., Evan and Olson, p. 190).
Sometimes in an effort to provide decision support an actual small-scale model or ecosystem is built and then it is "used in a simulated environment". For example, a physical model of an airplane may be built so that it can be tested in a wind tunnel to examine its design properties. Today a computer simulation might be used in place of a "physical model" for much of the design testing. The case "Product development decision support at Lockheed Martin" by Silicon Graphics Staff posted at DSSResources.COM October 16, 2002 is an example of this use of simulation.
Agent-based or multi-agent simulation does not replace any of the traditional simulation techniques. But in the last 5 years, agent-based visual simulations have become an alternative approach for analyzing some business systems. According to Bonabeau, "People have been thinking in terms of agent-based modeling for many years but just didn't have the computing power to actually make it useful until recently. With agent-based modeling, you describe a system from the bottom up, from the point of view of its constituent units, as opposed to a top-down description, where you look at properties at the aggregate level without worrying about the system's constituent elements."
Multi-agent simulations can be used to simulate some natural and man-created systems that traditional simulation techniques can not. Bonabeau asserts agent-based modeling works best in situations where a system is "comprised of many constituent units that interact and where the behavior of the units can be described in simple terms. So it's a situation where the complexity of the whole system emerges out of relatively simple behavior at the lowest level." Examples of such systems include shoppers in a grocery store, passengers, visitors and employees at an airport or production workers and supervisors at a factory. What is the objective of an agent-based simulation? According to Bonabeau, "the objective is to find a robust solution" -- one that will work fine no matter what happens in the "real world".
A simulation study can answer questions like how many teller stations will provide 90% confidence that no one will need to wait in line for more than 5 minutes or how likely is it that a specific project will be completed on time and under budget? With a visual simulation decision makers or analyst can observe an airplane in a wind tunnel, a proposed factory in operation or customers entering a new bank or a construction project as "it will occur".
Based on my observations over the past 25 years, simulation has been used much more for one-time, special decision support studies than it has been used as the model-component in building a model-driven DSS. This is and can change with increased ease in creating visual simulations. Visuals imulation means managers can see a graphic display of simulation activities, events and results. Will Wright's games "The Sims", "SimCoaster" and "SimCity" (cf., http://thesims.ea.com/ ) are the precursors for advanced, agent-based, model-driven DSS. I am continuing my research on boids, sims, swarms, ants and other such agent technologies. So perhaps in another Ask Dan! I can discuss in more detail complex, realistic visual simulations based upon behavioral models. My sense is that current technologies can support development of complex, "faster than real-time", dynamic, agent-based, model-driven DSS for a wide variety of specific decision situations. References
Decisioneering Staff, "SunTrust 'Banks' on Crystal Ball for assessing the risk of commercial loans", Decisioneering, Inc., November 1998, posted at DSSResources.COM March 16, 2001.
Eppen, G.D., F.J. Gould, and C.P. Schmidt. Introductory Management Science (Fourth Edition), Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1993.
Evan, J. R. and D. L. Olson, Introduction to Simulation and Risk Analysis (2nd Edition), Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2002.
Rothfeder, J. "Expert Voices: Icosystem's Eric Bonabeau," CIOInsight.com, June 16, 2003, http://www.cioinsight.com/article2/0,3959,1124316,00.asp.
Silicon Graphics Staff, "Product development decision support at Lockheed Martin", sgi, Inc., 2002, posted at DSSResources.COM October 16, 2002.

From the ACM TechNews, June 16, 2003.

"Your Blink Is My Command"
ABCNews.com (06/13/03)

Ted Selker of MIT and Roel Vertegaal of Ontario's Queen's University are focused on the development of context-aware computers that can pick up on "implicit communication" relayed through eye or body movements to carry out commands. Much of the technology the two colleagues are working on incorporates eye-recognition systems. For example, a toy dog has been modified to bark when it receives infrared signals as a person wearing special eyeglasses stares at it; it is also programmed to stop barking if the person is blinking a lot, or is not looking in its direction. The dog can tell when two people wearing the glasses are looking at each other because lights on both pairs blink when eye contact is made. Selker and Vertegaal are also developing Attentive TV, in which the eyes of a person viewing a program on a computer are monitored with a camera; Vertegaal explains that the program starts or stops depending on where the eyes are focused. Another technology being worked on ! is "Eyepliances" that allow users to activate or deactivate appliances by staring at them and issuing voice commands. Meanwhile, users can more efficiently deal with interruptive phone calls through Eyeproxy, a device with quivering eyeballs that takes messages or patches calls through depending on whether the user decides to look at them. The technology Selker and Vertegaal are developing is five to 15 years away from commercialization. Click Here to View Full Article
"Poker Playing Computer Will Take on the Best"
Edmonton Journal (06/12/03); Cormier, Ryan

A team of artificial intelligence researchers at the University of Alberta has spent the last 10 years developing a computer program that can play poker, and they believe the program could conceivably outclass all human players within a year. The pseudo-optimal poker program (PsOpti) is unique in that it is capable of bluffing, and working with imperfect information. "If you do not bluff, you're predictable," notes Jonathan Schaeffer of the university's Games Research Group. "If you're predictable, you can be exploited." PsOpti is based on the game theory formula developed by Nobel Prize-winning mathematician John Nash. Ph.D. student and project researcher Darse Billings says the formula attempts to outline an outcome for the game that is fair to everyone. Schaeffer says that most original game research was based on games with perfect information, and adds that poker and other games with imperfect information have much more critical real-world applications. Reasoning wit! h imperfect information, as a poker player does, could be useful in areas ranging from international negotiations to purchasing an automobile.

From the New York Times, June 10, 2003.

A Passion to Build a Better Robot, One With Social Skills and a Smile
June 10, 2003
By CLAUDIA DREIFUS

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. - Dr. Cynthia L. Breazeal of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is famous for her robots, not just because they they are programmed to perform specific tasks, but because they seem to have emotional as well as physical reactions to the world around them. They are "embodied," she says, even "sociable" robots - experimental machines that act like living creatures.
As part of its design triennial, the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York is exhibiting a "cyberfloral installation," by Dr. Breazeal, which features robotic flowers that sway when a human hand is near and glow in beautiful bright colors.
"The installation," said Dr. Breazeal, 35, "communicates my future vision of robot design that is intellectually intriguing and remains true to its technological heritage, but is able to touch us emotionally in the quality of interaction and their responsiveness to us - more like a dance, rather than pushing buttons."
Dr. Breazeal (pronounced bruh-ZILL) wrote about her adventures as a modern-day Mary Shelley in her book "Designing Sociable Robots," released this year by M.I.T. Press. She was also a consultant on the Steven Spielberg movie "A.I.: Artificial Intelligence."
Q. What is the root of your passion for robots?
A. For me, as for many of us who do robotics, I think it is science fiction. My most memorable science fiction experience was "Star Wars" and seeing R2D2 and C3PO. I fell in love with those robots.
Q. R2D2 and C3PO were good robots, friendly. But so many of the robots of science fiction are either hostile, or at least misunderstood, like Frankenstein's monster and HAL of "2001: A Space Odyssey." Why have fictional robots been so menacing?
A. We have a lot of suspicion of robots in the West. But if you look cross-culturally, that isn't true. In Japan, in their science fiction, robots are seen as good. They have Astro Boy, this character they've fallen in love with and he's fundamentally good, always there to help people.
In a lot of Western science fiction, you need some form of conflict, whether it's aliens or robots. I think in Western culture, being more suspicious of science, and hubris, you'll see a lot of fear of creating something that goes out of control.
Also a lot of Western sci-fi books and movies are about the basic notion of taking responsibility for what you create. If you're talking about creating any new technology, this is always an issue.
Q. How did you get into robot building?
A. I was raised on technology. I grew up in Livermore, Calif., a town of physicists and cowboys. My parents worked at the government laboratories there. So technology was very normal for me.
Before college, I wanted to be a doctor or an engineer. At college, U.C. Santa Barbara, I considered NASA and becoming an astronaut. At college, they had just started up a center on robotics and it was this cool new thing. I remember sitting with one of my friends who was talking about building planetary rovers for NASA, and that seemed so wonderful.
So when it came to applying to graduate school, I was naturally drawn to Prof. Rod Brooks's robotics lab at M.I.T., where they were doing pioneering work developing micro-rovers, those robotic vehicles that might do experiments on other planets for NASA.
Q. The first robots you worked on were made for use in space?
A. Yes. A lot of my early work was actually a precursor to these micro-rovers that are in use today at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Rod Brooks, my adviser, had been developing these rough-terrain robots that were insectlike in the way they looked and how their computerized brains functioned.
Rod went on a sabbatical and when he came back, he said, "I've got one big project left in me and we're going to do a humanoid robot now." The common wisdom was first you do robot insects, then reptiles, dogs and eventually humans.
The thing that really intrigued me about a humanoid project was the chance to work on the robots' ability to interact with people. This would no longer be the robotics that others had done: robots in space, in minefields, as substitutes for humans in dangerous environments. This was about bringing robots into human environments so that they could help people in ways that hadn't been possible before.
I was curious to see if benevolent interactions with people could accelerate and enrich the learning process of machines. In short, I wanted to see if I could build a robot that could learn from people and actually could learn how to be more socially sophisticated. It was that thinking that led to Kismet; my work on it was my doctoral thesis.
Q. Does your robot Kismet look like a human?
A. No. It is more a robotic cartoon. It doesn't have arms and legs; its mechanical parts are uncovered. In fact, it is mostly a face. It has eye-brows, surgical tubing for lips so that it can smile and frown, pink ears used for expression and showing arousal and things like that. The engineering on Kismet was inspired by the social development of human infants.
In Japan in the 1980's, they were already starting on humanoid robots. But Kismet was the first developed to specialize in face-to-face social interactions with humans.
Kismet was started in 1997, and I intentionally created it to provoke the kind of interactions a human adult and a baby might have. My insight for Kismet was that human babies learn because adults treat them as social creatures who can learn; also babies are raised in a friendly environment with people.
I hoped that if I built an expressive robot that responded to people, they might treat it in a similar way to babies and the robot would learn from that. So, if you spoke to Kismet in a praising tone, it would smile and perk up. If you spoke to it in a scolding tone, it was designed to frown. There were models of emotion conveyed through its face.
Q. Did your robot Kismet ever learn much from people?
A. From an engineering standpoint, Kismet got more sophisticated. As we continued to add more abilities to the robot, it could interact with people in richer ways. And so, we learned a lot about how you could design a robot that communicated and responded to nonlinguistic cues; we learned how critical it got for more than language in an interaction - body language, gaze, physical responses, facial expressions.
But I think we learned mostly about people from Kismet. Until it, and another robot built here at M.I.T., Cog, most robotics had little to do with people. Kismet's big triumph was that he was able to communicate a kind of emotion and sociability that humans did indeed respond to, in kind. The robot and the humans were in a kind of partnership for learning.
Our newest robot, Leonardo, is even more expressive. It has arms, a torso, legs and skin, which is very important in terms of raising the bar on robotic sophistication. Leonardo's facial expressions are characteristic of human facial expressions. The gestures it can make are characteristic of human gestures.
Q. What is the purpose of building sophisticated robots? Some might say that you're just building very expensive Furbys.
A. We want to see if we can build robots that are more than tools. I'd like to push robotics to the point where we are creating machines that cooperate with people as partners. For instance, right now, I'm working with NASA on developing Robonaut, which is envisioned as an astronaut's assistant.
Q. Why did you feel you needed to give your newest robot, Leonardo, limbs and a skinlike covering?
A. We wanted to make a robot with more of a body to push our experiments to the next level. Leonardo has the ability to shrug its shoulders and sway its hips. It has 32 motors in the face, so it can do near-human facial expression and near-human lip synchronization. It's just an incredibly rich platform for social interaction, and that's what it's designed for. It can manipulate objects, which is very different from the armless Kismet.
Q. Do you miss your robots when you're not with them?
A. I miss Kismet - I do! What people might not understand is that when I talk about robots, it's not just a physical robot in the lab, it's the vision of what I see them becoming.
It's almost embarrassing for me to talk about Kismet, because people think it's so odd that I could have this attachment to this robot. At scientific conferences, I find it hard to quantify what you have when you interact with Kismet and what is so special about it. But the essence of that is what I am now trying to distill into Leonardo. Kismet has been retired to the M.I.T. Museum. I would rather have him stay up at the Media Lab, with me. But he's done his job. Kismet isn't gone; it's just now taking the next step in its own evolution through Leonardo.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/10/science/10CONV.html?ex=1056273406&ei=1&en=56817643701b6679

From ACM News, June 9, 2003
"Artful Displays Track Data"
Technology Research News (06/11/03); Sachdev, Chhavi

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed an aesthetically pleasing data display designed to minimize distraction. The InfoCanvas system displays data as moveable, abstract components within an electronic painting of a desert, a beach, a mountain camp, an aquarium, or a window view. The data elements change as the information changes, while the software is designed to run on an always-on Internet connection. "We're exploring ways of helping people stay aware of secondary information in a peripheral manner, one that does not distract, interrupt, or annoy them," explains Georgia Tech's John Stasko, who uses InfoCanvas on a dedicated screen in his office. Stasko's display consists of a beach scene where a moving sailboat keeps time, clouds in the sky represent weather conditions where his parents live, and a seagull's position symbolizes the Dow Jones performance. An email from Stasko's wife is represented by the appearance of a towel on a beach chair, and ! moving the mouse over the picture causes text balloons to pop up; important images or news headlines can also appear in the picture as text on billboards or signs towed by a plane. The abstract elements are customizable, so users can keep track of sensitive data without worrying that everyone who enters the office will also be privy to the information. Georgia Tech researcher Todd Miller says the InfoCanvas prototypes were designed with the input of potential users, and adds that the researchers are building pictorial customization into the system through interactive software. Click Here to View Full Article
"Computers That Speak Your Language"
Technology Review (06/03) Vol. 106, No. 5, P. 32; Roush, Wade

Firms such as Nuance Communications and SpeechWorks are making a splash with interactive voice response software that allows automated call centers to more smoothly interact with customers, but this is only the first step in the rollout of language-processing systems. Projects are underway at IBM, the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC), and elsewhere to develop computers that can understand natural speech; International Data's Steve McClure speculates that, "Whereas the GUI [graphical user interface] was the interface for the 1990s, the NUI, or 'natural' user interface, will be the interface for this decade." A truly interactive language processing system must be able to precisely convert human speech into text the computer can read, deduce meaning by studying vocabulary and sentence structure, and supply human-sounding responses that make sense. Breakthroughs in the area of language understanding stem from awareness that people value machines more for their helpfuln! ess and efficiency than for their conversational abilities, and that the best language-processing model combines grammatical structure analysis with statistical analysis. However, though this model has yielded very helpful interactive voice response systems for United Airlines, the U.S. Post Office, and others, it does not represent true language understanding. PARC research fellow Ron Kaplan believes that a natural-language interface would be more effective if it were stripped of the need for system customization, but the chief barriers to this achievement are the smallness of language sample databases and statistical algorithms that eliminate ambiguity, which can rob a sentence of its true meaning. His solution is the development of the Xerox Linguistic Environment, grammar-driven software designed to retain ambiguity. Meanwhile, IBM is trying to enhance the management of unindexed, unstructured data on computer networks via natural-language processing software called the! Unstructured Information Management Architecture. http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/roush0603.asp

From DSS News, June 8, 2003
Ask Dan: Is tax preparation software an example of a DSS?

"Is X a DSS?" is a common question in the Ask Dan! email. Let's try to figure out the answer to this question together.
First, what is the purpose of the software and system? If the purpose of the specific software package is only to help a user fill in fields and print out a tax return, then it is not a DSS. If, however, the purpose is to help a user minimize the taxes paid and make intelligent decisions about what deductions to claim, then it is a DSS. If the software also helps with tax planning and "what if?" analysis, that's also an indication it's a DSS. The Ask Dan! column of March 30, 2003 identified seven characteristics of a Decision Support System. The tax preparation software I'm most familiar with, TurboTax Deluxe, meets all seven. For example, it's intended for interactive use, it's intended for repeated use and it's intended to improve decision effectiveness.
Here in the United States "Tax Day" is April 15 so many U.S. readers have probably recently used a tax preparation software package. Tax preparation software is used by professional accountants and by individual tax payers. My wife Carol uses Turbo Tax Deluxe from Intuit to prepare our taxes. The program improves her efficiency by performing calculations and by creating "the forms" that need to be filed, but it does much more. It guides the user step-by-step through the process of preparing the return using an "interview technology", it reduces tax preparation time by importing a person's tax information from the prior year and it uses that information to prompt for current information, it has a tax law advisor and it has tax strategy tools. Intuit sells TurboTax products and provides a web-based DSS called TurboTax for the Web. In 2002 approximately 15 million returns were filed with TurboTax. You can find out more at http://www.turbotax.com.
According to Porter (1994), in 1982 Taxadvisor was developed to solve problems dealing with income and transfer tax planning for individuals. In 1985, a program called Financial Advisor was the first commercially successful system to be used by tax consultants. Porter notes the most successful and best known tax expert system, ExperTAX, was developed by Coopers & Lybrand in approximately 1986. It was built using a rule-based expert system technology. The system started with 2000 rules and the number of rules increased to more than 3000 by 1994. The program used an "intelligent questionnaire" for data gathering. It replaced long questionnaires that tax preparers had to complete. Also, ExperTAX guides the user through a tax planning analysis to identify decisions that will affect the client's tax liability for the year. ExperTAX helps identify issues that need clarification but it leaves the final decisions to human experts. Research (Shpilberg and Graham, 1986) indicated the productivity of staff accountants using the system increased.
So what category of DSS is tax preparation software? The tax preparation software that I am most familiar with is best categorized as knowledge-driven DSS. I have not seen the code nor read how specific packages are programmed, but it seems most likely that "rules" are used to provide decision support. If rules and a rule engine provide the functionality and are the dominant component of the DSS, then it should be categorized as a knowledge-driven DSS. A tax "expert system" or tax preparation knowledge-driven DSS provides widespread distribution of tax expertise. References
Brown, Carol E. and Daniel E. O'Leary, Introduction to Artificial Intelligence and Expert Systems, 1994 at URL: http://www2.bus.orst.edu/faculty/brownc/es_tutor/acc_es.htm.
Kneale, Dennis. "How Coopers & Lybrand Put Expertise into its Computers." Wall Street Journal, Nov. 14, 1986.
Porter, Eugene P., "Tax expert systems and future development," The CPA Journal Online, January 1994, URL: http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/old/14979937.htm.
Shpilberg, David and Lynford E. Graham, (1986) "Developing ExperTAX: An Expert System for Corporate Tax Accrual and Planning," Auditing. 6(1), pp. 75-94.
Smith, L. Murphy, "Accounting expert systems," The CPA Journal Online, November 1994, URL: http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/old/16458936.htm.

From ACM News, June 4, 2003
"Are You Ready for Social Software?"
Darwin (05/03); Boyd, Stowe

A Working Model managing director Stowe Boyd predicts that social software will effect dramatic changes in businesses' marketing strategies and customer interplay, and transform internal and external communication and collaboration. Boyd assumes that the purpose of social software will be the reverse of that of conventional groupware and other project- or organization-centered collaborative tools. Social software will support individuals' desire to combine into groups to pursue personal interests. Groupware and traditional software follows a top-down model that imposes a larger system (an organization or project) on individuals, while social software follows a bottom-up approach oriented around individuals, who establish relationships with others based on their personal goals, preferences, and connections; this intercommunication sets the foundation for a network of groups. Boyd defines social software as that which supports conversation between individuals or groups, so! cial feedback, and social networks. The second capability enables a digital reputation to be built through group ratings of individual contributions, while the third allows people to digitally express their personal relationships and lay the groundwork for new relationships. Boyd reasons that social software is now poised to take off because low-cost, high-bandwidth tools such as blogs and network systems like Ryze and LinkIn are available. Boyd writes that this availability, "when coupled with the critical mass of millions of self-motivated, gregarious and eager users of the Internet, means social software is certain to make it onto 'the next big thing' list." http://www.darwinmag.com/read/050103/social.html

From ACM News, June 4, 2003
"New Software Helps Teams Deal With Information Overload"
EurekAlert (06/04/03)

Collaborative Agents for Simulating Teamwork (CAST), a software program co-developed by John Yen of Penn State University's School of Information Sciences and Technology, is designed to improve teams' decision-making process and augment cooperation between members by focusing on relevant data. "CAST provides support for teams by anticipating what information team members will need, finding commonalities in the available information, and determining how that information should be processed," explains Yen. He believes the customizable software could help military officers handle the hundreds of thousands of ground-sensor and satellite readings they receive every hour, and more rapidly adjust to changing battlefield situations. Yen adds that disease epidemics and potential terrorist threats could also be monitored with CAST. The software incorporates what Yen calls "shared mental models" about team goals, team process and structure knowledge, and postulations about problems! . "A computer program that acts as a team member may be more efficient in processing information than a human teammate," he notes. The software's development has been financed under the Department of Defense's Multidisciplinary Research Program of the University Research Initiative, which splits the grant between Penn State, Texas A&M, and Wright State University. Yen, who started working on CAST when he was at Texas A&M, continues to refine the software with Texas A&M collaborators Michael Miller and John Volz. http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/ps-nsh053003.php
"In Future, Foot Soldier Will Be Plugged Into a Massive Network"
Associated Press (06/02/03); Regan, Michael P.

The "Scorpion ensemble" under development at the U.S. Army Soldier Systems Center is intended to increase mobility by reducing the amount of equipment troops must carry while boosting both safety and effectiveness in the field through numerous technological enhancements wired directly into the uniform. The ensemble will connect the wearer to the Future Combat System, a planned network of satellites, unmanned planes, and robot vehicles that provides soldiers with reconnaissance data in order to determine their location and coordinate military operations. Dennis Birch of the Army center's Objective Force Warrior technical program reports that developers are trying to enable soldiers to interact with the system through voice command, although a control panel integrated into the sleeve is also under consideration. The Scorpion ensemble will incorporate a sensor-studded undershirt to monitor the wearer's vital signs; built-in tourniquets that could expand or contract via remo! te control; an armored load carriage that stores circuitry, batteries, water, and ammunition; and a helmet equipped with cameras to capture concealed enemies, screen attachments to display camera images as well as Future Combat System telemetry, and a laser-engagement system that can distinguish between friends and enemies. Birch notes that new devices can be added to the ensemble as they are developed, and future enhancements in the planning stages include advanced camouflage. Meanwhile, Paula Hammond of MIT's Institute for Soldier Technologies notes that projects are underway to develop exoskeletons that boost soldiers' speed and strength, and apparel that can protect wearers from chemical agents or treat injuries. Click Here to View Full Article

From ACM News, June 2, 2003
"Mimicry Makes Computers the User's Friend"
New Scientist (05/28/03); Ananthaswamy, Anil

Noriko Suzuki, a researcher at ATR Media Information Science Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, believes computers and robots can become more user friendly if they imitate how people speak. He tested this theory by asking volunteers to help a computerized character build toys from blocks and to help it name the toys. The volunteers were told that the character had the spe

Information Systems College of Business Administration University of Missouri - St. Louis

Information Systems

College of Business Administration

University of Missouri - St. Louis

Information Systems

College of Business Administration

University of Missouri - St. Louis