It was Stendahl who defined "Beauty as the Promise of Happiness". And Robinson Jeffers who wrote:
"Or as mathematics, a human invention
That parallels but never touches reality, gives the astronomer
Metaphors through which he may comprehend
That powers and the flow of things: so the human sense
Of beauty is our metaphor of their excellence, their divine
nature:-like dust in a whirlwind, making
The wild wind visible."
So I far as I know there has not been a lot of studies on chimps, dogs, or song birds to determine if they possess, like man, a sense of beauty.
I have in mind experiments in which animals are exposed to human music, either voice or instrumental, and their reaction are measured in some manner. Or ones that make changes to the physical environment of the subjects - using color, size, and shapes as well.
(The research emphasis of neuroscience is always on cognition to the exclusion of other mental capacities.)
There are many studies that indicate that song birds have preferences for complex songs - if one considers that complexity is indicating "beauty". For example:
Catchpole, C. K., and Slater, P. L. B. (1995). Bird song: themes and variations (Cambridge University Press, New York).
And one that is comparing musical perception of humans and monkeys:
McDermott, J., and Hauser, M. D. (2004). "Are consonant intervals music to their ears? Spontaneous acoustic preferences in a nonhuman primate," Cognition 94, B11-B21.
So, I think the question that I posed still remains unanswered.
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
Monday, February 26, 2007
Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation
This is an article by Martin Nowak on the rules needed for evolution to construct new levels of organization via cooperation among agents.
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ped/people/faculty/publications_nowak/Nowak_Science06.pdf
Clearly, the ideas are applicable to Swarm Intelligence and Software Agents as well as to theoretical history; a.k.a. Evolutionary Dynamics, a.k.a. historical simulations (think of the the PC game - Age of Empires).
The article, "Group Competition, Reproductive Leveling, and the Evolution of Human Altruism" (Science magazine, 8 December 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5805, pp. 1569 - 1572) by Samuel Bowles discusses similar ideas within the context of human cultural evolution. There we read:
"Humans behave altruistically in natural settings and experiments. A possible explanation—that groups with more altruists survive when groups compete—has long been judged untenable on empirical grounds for most species. But there have been no empirical tests of this explanation for humans. My empirical estimates show that genetic differences between early human groups are likely to have been great enough so that lethal intergroup competition could account for the evolution of altruism. Crucial to this process were distinctive human practices such as sharing food beyond the immediate family, monogamy, and other forms of reproductive leveling. These culturally transmitted practices presuppose advanced cognitive and linguistic capacities, possibly accounting for the distinctive forms of altruism found in our species."
http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~ped/people/faculty/publications_nowak/Nowak_Science06.pdf
Clearly, the ideas are applicable to Swarm Intelligence and Software Agents as well as to theoretical history; a.k.a. Evolutionary Dynamics, a.k.a. historical simulations (think of the the PC game - Age of Empires).
The article, "Group Competition, Reproductive Leveling, and the Evolution of Human Altruism" (Science magazine, 8 December 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5805, pp. 1569 - 1572) by Samuel Bowles discusses similar ideas within the context of human cultural evolution. There we read:
"Humans behave altruistically in natural settings and experiments. A possible explanation—that groups with more altruists survive when groups compete—has long been judged untenable on empirical grounds for most species. But there have been no empirical tests of this explanation for humans. My empirical estimates show that genetic differences between early human groups are likely to have been great enough so that lethal intergroup competition could account for the evolution of altruism. Crucial to this process were distinctive human practices such as sharing food beyond the immediate family, monogamy, and other forms of reproductive leveling. These culturally transmitted practices presuppose advanced cognitive and linguistic capacities, possibly accounting for the distinctive forms of altruism found in our species."
Friday, February 23, 2007
Motto for Software Development
I think the following motto (from the Russian Constructivists) is a pretty good one when applied to software development:
Not The Old, Not The New, Only The Necessary!
Not The Old, Not The New, Only The Necessary!
Thursday, February 22, 2007
Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Alternative Transportation Fuels: Automotive Technologies
Listen to the discussion on alternative transportation fuels from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (http://www.csis.org/):
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/070220_alt_fuels.m3u
(Automotive and transportation industries are one of the highest consumers of IT, both in the enterprise and embedded markets.)
http://www.csis.org/media/csis/events/070220_alt_fuels.m3u
(Automotive and transportation industries are one of the highest consumers of IT, both in the enterprise and embedded markets.)
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Saturday, February 17, 2007
A Book on Innovation in US
"They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine: Two Centuries of Innovators"
by HAROLD EVANS
Published by Little & Brown,
2004.
by HAROLD EVANS
Published by Little & Brown,
2004.
Friday, February 16, 2007
Wiki-based Novel
Penguin Books has created a Wiki-based novel titled "A Million Penguins"
@ www.amillionpenguins.com
It went live on February 1 and is expected to be there until mid March.
The publisher is interested in whether the principles of open-source software can be applied to creative processes such as writing a book.
@ www.amillionpenguins.com
It went live on February 1 and is expected to be there until mid March.
The publisher is interested in whether the principles of open-source software can be applied to creative processes such as writing a book.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007
Spotlight on: the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Introducing the Office Developer How-to Center
Discover task-based samples to help you learn the new features of the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs, servers, services, tools and technologies.
Visual How-to: Building Word 2007 Document Templates Using Content Controls
Content controls are bounded and potentially labeled regions in a document for specific types of content. Watch a short video, read about it, and then learn how to write code.
Visual How-to: Build Word 2007 Documents Using the Office Open XML Formats
If you own a licensed version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office or Visual Studio Professional and above you are eligible to
download a free copy of VSTO 2005 Second Edition.
New: Developer References for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Access 2007 Developer Reference
InfoPath 2007 Developer Reference
InfoPath 2007 XSF Schema Reference
Object Library Reference for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Outlook 2007 Developer Reference
Project 2007 Developer Reference
SharePoint Designer 2007 Developer Reference
Word 2007 Developer Reference
Excel 2007 Developer Reference
Incidentally: I have been using Office 2007 for more than a month now and I really like its new "Ribbon" UI. It is intuitive and easier to use and it is consistent across all the MS Office suite of tools.
Discover task-based samples to help you learn the new features of the 2007 Microsoft Office system programs, servers, services, tools and technologies.
Visual How-to: Building Word 2007 Document Templates Using Content Controls
Content controls are bounded and potentially labeled regions in a document for specific types of content. Watch a short video, read about it, and then learn how to write code.
Visual How-to: Build Word 2007 Documents Using the Office Open XML Formats
If you own a licensed version of Visual Studio 2005 Tools for Office or Visual Studio Professional and above you are eligible to
download a free copy of VSTO 2005 Second Edition.
New: Developer References for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Access 2007 Developer Reference
InfoPath 2007 Developer Reference
InfoPath 2007 XSF Schema Reference
Object Library Reference for the 2007 Microsoft Office System
Outlook 2007 Developer Reference
Project 2007 Developer Reference
SharePoint Designer 2007 Developer Reference
Word 2007 Developer Reference
Excel 2007 Developer Reference
Incidentally: I have been using Office 2007 for more than a month now and I really like its new "Ribbon" UI. It is intuitive and easier to use and it is consistent across all the MS Office suite of tools.
Monday, February 12, 2007
Hosted MS Office-like Productivity Solution
If you haven't already seen this, please take a look at http://www.zoho.com/. Interesting internet-based office and collaboration applications, and mostly free. Limited functionality, but the tools have most of the features we use most of the time. Obviously not a Microsoft solution, but interesting to look at nevertheless.
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Singing Book
Over the years, there have been many attempts at using IT to make books obsolete. They all have failed for the reasons of ergonomic factors (weight, ease of use, aesthetics of the electronic books, etc.) I think that the whole approach is wrong; rather than try to subsume the book into the computer, we should try to subsume the computer into the book. For example, consider the following:
In the science-fiction novel “Aelita” by Alexi Tolstoy (1923), in the chapter titled “the Abandoned House” we read:
“The yellowish aged pages formed a single sheet pleated in zigzags. These pages, blending one into the other, were covered with colored triangles the size of fingernails. They ran from left to right and back again in crooked lines, sometimes falling, sometimes entwining. They changed in shape and color. After a few pages colored rings appeared among the triangles, changing shape and shade. The triangles were formed into figures. The weaving and color gradations of these triangles, circles, squares, and complex figures ran on page after page. …. These played a barely perceptible, subtle, and astonishing music…this was a singing book.”
We can build this book by embedding an RFID chip in each page and connect the pages as Tolstoy describes. Next, we add some circuitry (embedded in the book's covers) to read the signals from RFID chips as the pages are turned. We use that information to play the music for that page and we adjust the tempo to the speed at which the pages are turned. We do not supply speakers with this circuitry – only out-put jacks for headphones.
I have supplied a list of the electronic components that are needed below with examples of actual chips that could do the job. The heart of the circuitry is the PortalPlayer PP5002, which contains an ARM processor core and all MP3-decoding circuitry. And 64 Mbytes of Samsung SDRAM provide the memory buffer for 40 minutes of "skip protection" and longer battery life since the music data is extracted from the SDRAM buffer. A megabyte of Sharp flash memory stores system operating code. A Texas Instruments chip is dedicated to the IEEE 1394 data interface. This Firewire link serves as both data and battery-charging interface. Audio output is via a Wolfson chip that supports both D/A conversion and the headphone driver amp.
The total cost of the components is less than $ 50.0 and I anticipate the manufacturing cost to be about the same amount. Thus, at a relatively modest cost of $100 one can have a sort of musical score book that is digitally enhanced to play the music as one turns the pages of the score. Future enhancement s could include storing multiple performances into the FLASH memory and thus studying how different conductors have interpreted that score at different times and places or the inclusion of pictures or even videos of these performances by using thin organic translucent conducting films.
In the science-fiction novel “Aelita” by Alexi Tolstoy (1923), in the chapter titled “the Abandoned House” we read:
“The yellowish aged pages formed a single sheet pleated in zigzags. These pages, blending one into the other, were covered with colored triangles the size of fingernails. They ran from left to right and back again in crooked lines, sometimes falling, sometimes entwining. They changed in shape and color. After a few pages colored rings appeared among the triangles, changing shape and shade. The triangles were formed into figures. The weaving and color gradations of these triangles, circles, squares, and complex figures ran on page after page. …. These played a barely perceptible, subtle, and astonishing music…this was a singing book.”
We can build this book by embedding an RFID chip in each page and connect the pages as Tolstoy describes. Next, we add some circuitry (embedded in the book's covers) to read the signals from RFID chips as the pages are turned. We use that information to play the music for that page and we adjust the tempo to the speed at which the pages are turned. We do not supply speakers with this circuitry – only out-put jacks for headphones.
I have supplied a list of the electronic components that are needed below with examples of actual chips that could do the job. The heart of the circuitry is the PortalPlayer PP5002, which contains an ARM processor core and all MP3-decoding circuitry. And 64 Mbytes of Samsung SDRAM provide the memory buffer for 40 minutes of "skip protection" and longer battery life since the music data is extracted from the SDRAM buffer. A megabyte of Sharp flash memory stores system operating code. A Texas Instruments chip is dedicated to the IEEE 1394 data interface. This Firewire link serves as both data and battery-charging interface. Audio output is via a Wolfson chip that supports both D/A conversion and the headphone driver amp.
The total cost of the components is less than $ 50.0 and I anticipate the manufacturing cost to be about the same amount. Thus, at a relatively modest cost of $100 one can have a sort of musical score book that is digitally enhanced to play the music as one turns the pages of the score. Future enhancement s could include storing multiple performances into the FLASH memory and thus studying how different conductors have interpreted that score at different times and places or the inclusion of pictures or even videos of these performances by using thin organic translucent conducting films.
Saturday, February 10, 2007
Tableau Software for Visualization
This is an interactive data visualization tool that purports to significantly improve the ease of displaying quantitative data. It is from the Tableau Software @ http://www.tableausoftware.com/products.htm. It uses a proprietary technology called VizQL™ which is a visual (graphical) query language for databases. It compiles to SQL and MDX and seems to be following the same conceptual approach as WebQL - i.e. replacing procedural programming with a set-based declarative one. The claim is also that the tool embodies some of the best practices that Edward R. Tufte had advocated in the his book The Visual Display of Quantitative Information (as well as his other books).
What bothers me about many of these data mining and data analysis tools is that they cannot be automated - they are largely interactive and cannot run in un-attended mode. They neither expose an API with Java, .Net, or C++ bindings nor supply a scripting environment that could enable a user to automate repetitive tasks - as opposed to MS Office suite of tools that ship with VBA programming environments. Thus, these tools, however innovative, cannot be easily incorporated as part of a system than we may wish to build.
What bothers me about many of these data mining and data analysis tools is that they cannot be automated - they are largely interactive and cannot run in un-attended mode. They neither expose an API with Java, .Net, or C++ bindings nor supply a scripting environment that could enable a user to automate repetitive tasks - as opposed to MS Office suite of tools that ship with VBA programming environments. Thus, these tools, however innovative, cannot be easily incorporated as part of a system than we may wish to build.
Thursday, February 8, 2007
Why Experts Are Often Wrong
I have been perplexed by the fact that so many smart and talented people with high IQs and advanced academic degrees from prestigious universities – have made so many wrong predictions about the future, have offered so much ill-advise for public policy, and generally have been proven wrong almost all of the time.
For an answer, consider a study by Philip Tetlock, a political scientist and psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who in Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton University Press, 2005) contends that there is no direct correlation between the intelligence and knowledge of the political expert and the quality of his or her forecasts.
Mr. Tetlock is very skeptical of our ability to predict future developments, as the odd assortment of path-dependency theorists, complexity-chaos theorists (recall the Butterfly Effect?), game theorists, and probability theorists demonstrate that the fundamental complex properties of the world make it impossible to achieve forecasting accuracy beyond crude extrapolation.
At the same time, the fundamental properties of the human mind – preference for simplicity, aversion of ambiguity and dissonance, belief in controllable world, misunderstandings of probabilistic processes – make it inevitable that experts will miss whatever predictability has not been precluded "in principle."
Mr. Tetlock has tried to prove, by gathering and analyzing more than 80,000 forecasts by academics, journalists, consultants and professional "futurists" about a variety of global issues, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the apartheid system in South Africa, and the outcome of the first Persian Gulf War (he explains the methodology he used in a long appendix to the study; which is rather complex itself) that the experts were wrong more often than blind chance.
What Mr. Tetlock considers to be an asset is the style of thinking, as there seems to be a direct link between how people think and what they get right and wrong. He applies in his study the prototypes of the "hedgehog" and the "fox" that the late British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin had proposed as a way of classifying political thinking and behavior.
Mr. Tetlock demonstrates the usefulness of classifying experts along a rough cognitive-style continuum anchored at one hand by Berlin's prototypical hedgehog and at the other by his prototypical fox.
The intellectually aggressive hedgehog knew one Big Thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that Big Thing to "cover" new cases. He or she toils devotedly within one tradition and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems.
The more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were contend to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Drawing from a variety and sometimes contradictory array of ideas and traditions, he or she is better able to improvise in response to changing events and is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog.
For an answer, consider a study by Philip Tetlock, a political scientist and psychologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who in Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know? (Princeton University Press, 2005) contends that there is no direct correlation between the intelligence and knowledge of the political expert and the quality of his or her forecasts.
Mr. Tetlock is very skeptical of our ability to predict future developments, as the odd assortment of path-dependency theorists, complexity-chaos theorists (recall the Butterfly Effect?), game theorists, and probability theorists demonstrate that the fundamental complex properties of the world make it impossible to achieve forecasting accuracy beyond crude extrapolation.
At the same time, the fundamental properties of the human mind – preference for simplicity, aversion of ambiguity and dissonance, belief in controllable world, misunderstandings of probabilistic processes – make it inevitable that experts will miss whatever predictability has not been precluded "in principle."
Mr. Tetlock has tried to prove, by gathering and analyzing more than 80,000 forecasts by academics, journalists, consultants and professional "futurists" about a variety of global issues, including the collapse of the Soviet Union, the end of the apartheid system in South Africa, and the outcome of the first Persian Gulf War (he explains the methodology he used in a long appendix to the study; which is rather complex itself) that the experts were wrong more often than blind chance.
What Mr. Tetlock considers to be an asset is the style of thinking, as there seems to be a direct link between how people think and what they get right and wrong. He applies in his study the prototypes of the "hedgehog" and the "fox" that the late British political philosopher Isaiah Berlin had proposed as a way of classifying political thinking and behavior.
Mr. Tetlock demonstrates the usefulness of classifying experts along a rough cognitive-style continuum anchored at one hand by Berlin's prototypical hedgehog and at the other by his prototypical fox.
The intellectually aggressive hedgehog knew one Big Thing and sought, under the banner of parsimony, to expand the explanatory power of that Big Thing to "cover" new cases. He or she toils devotedly within one tradition and imposes formulaic solutions on ill-defined problems.
The more eclectic foxes knew many little things and were contend to improvise ad hoc solutions to keep pace with a rapidly changing world. Drawing from a variety and sometimes contradictory array of ideas and traditions, he or she is better able to improvise in response to changing events and is more successful in predicting the future than the hedgehog.
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Free PLM-related Software
Aras Innovator (requires .Net) is available as a free download @ http://www.aras.com/
Aras Innovator is designed to help manufacturers with processes such as new product introduction, quality compliance, and enterprise PLM. It provides phase-gate project management of milestones and deliverables; failure mode and effects analysis as well as closed-loop actions for mitigating risks and achieving compliance; and bill of materials, document management, and engineering change workflows for product development control and project cost tracking.
Aras Innovator is designed to help manufacturers with processes such as new product introduction, quality compliance, and enterprise PLM. It provides phase-gate project management of milestones and deliverables; failure mode and effects analysis as well as closed-loop actions for mitigating risks and achieving compliance; and bill of materials, document management, and engineering change workflows for product development control and project cost tracking.
Beware of IT as Metaphor
This is purported to be a conversation, in the run up to the 2003 US-Iraq War, of Douglas Feith and a US State Department official.
I am including it here because I am struck by the power of metaphors to seduce otherwise intelligent people. In this case the metaphor is from IT arena.
State Dept. Official: "Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?"
Feith: "Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one--Chalabi."
State Dept. Official: "Put in a new processor?"
Feith: "Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks."
State Dept. Official: "You mean six months."
Feith: "No, six weeks. You'll see."
State Dept. Official: "Doug."
Feith: "Yes?"
State Dept. Official: "You're smoking crack, Doug."
Feith: "Oh, so you're disloyal to the President, are you?"
I am including it here because I am struck by the power of metaphors to seduce otherwise intelligent people. In this case the metaphor is from IT arena.
State Dept. Official: "Doug, after the smoke clears, what is the plan?"
Feith: "Think of Iraq as being like a computer. And think of Saddam as like a processor. We just take out the old processor, and put in a new one--Chalabi."
State Dept. Official: "Put in a new processor?"
Feith: "Yes! It will all be over in 6 weeks."
State Dept. Official: "You mean six months."
Feith: "No, six weeks. You'll see."
State Dept. Official: "Doug."
Feith: "Yes?"
State Dept. Official: "You're smoking crack, Doug."
Feith: "Oh, so you're disloyal to the President, are you?"
Tuesday, February 6, 2007
Monday, February 5, 2007
Free IBM-Yahoo Search Software
Please find the free download of the IBM & Yahoo search engine, OmniFind Yahoo Edition, @ omnifind.ibm.yahoo.com.
It has a small footprint and can run on a laptop, has incremental indexing, support for 200+ document types, support for 30 languages and linguistic features such as synonym detection, spelling correction, lemmatization, stemming and a "did you mean" feature that suggests alternative queries. The relevance ranking is adjustable. It does not rely on link analysis, instead it uses OmniFind relevance ranking algorithms.
It is based on the Lucenet open source search engine and is meant to be an entry point to IBM's suite of OmniFind search software which includes security, authentication and a larger document capacity. The expanded OmniFind information access platform includes additional capabilities such as security, analytics, semantic search (OmniFind Enterprise Edition); customer service features such as navigation, natural language queries, more reporting tools (Discovery Edition); better data plus content integration with metadata management and information as a service (Information Server); or a variety of problem- targeting custom applications that include more advanced features (Master Information Solutions).
It has a small footprint and can run on a laptop, has incremental indexing, support for 200+ document types, support for 30 languages and linguistic features such as synonym detection, spelling correction, lemmatization, stemming and a "did you mean" feature that suggests alternative queries. The relevance ranking is adjustable. It does not rely on link analysis, instead it uses OmniFind relevance ranking algorithms.
It is based on the Lucenet open source search engine and is meant to be an entry point to IBM's suite of OmniFind search software which includes security, authentication and a larger document capacity. The expanded OmniFind information access platform includes additional capabilities such as security, analytics, semantic search (OmniFind Enterprise Edition); customer service features such as navigation, natural language queries, more reporting tools (Discovery Edition); better data plus content integration with metadata management and information as a service (Information Server); or a variety of problem- targeting custom applications that include more advanced features (Master Information Solutions).
Sunday, February 4, 2007
On Various Measures of Complexity
Please find below a link to a document on the measurement of network complexity @ www.vcu.edu/csbc/pdfs/quantitative_measures.pdf It is a mathematical discussion of network complexity as applied to biological systems - however, its ideas can be adapted to IT systems - computer networks, workflows, etc. It is from Virginia Commonwealth University's Center of the Study of Biological Complexity (www.vcu.edu/csbc/)
Another study from the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/index.html) which you can find @ www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/publications/papers/Butts.AxiomaticApproach.pdf is an axiomatic approach to the question "What is an appropriate or correct complexity metric?". The conclusion is that those metrics that satisfy a set of reasonable axioms are not useful and one has to relax some axioms to get a useful complexity metric.
I found a very interesting and useful research report at Helsinki University of Technology by Antti M Latva-Koivisto titled "Finding a complexity measure for business process models" @ users.tkk.fi/~alatvako/Kompleksisuus-erikoistyo_2001-02-13.PDF in which the author states the results of his evaluation of several complexity measures applied to process flows. This author has used Excel and VBA and his conclusions (in a table at the end of his report) are that thes most robust complexity metrics applied to process flows are cyclomatic complexity and the "Tree" complexity metrics.
Another study from the Center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems (www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/index.html) which you can find @ www.casos.cs.cmu.edu/publications/papers/Butts.AxiomaticApproach.pdf is an axiomatic approach to the question "What is an appropriate or correct complexity metric?". The conclusion is that those metrics that satisfy a set of reasonable axioms are not useful and one has to relax some axioms to get a useful complexity metric.
I found a very interesting and useful research report at Helsinki University of Technology by Antti M Latva-Koivisto titled "Finding a complexity measure for business process models" @ users.tkk.fi/~alatvako/Kompleksisuus-erikoistyo_2001-02-13.PDF in which the author states the results of his evaluation of several complexity measures applied to process flows. This author has used Excel and VBA and his conclusions (in a table at the end of his report) are that thes most robust complexity metrics applied to process flows are cyclomatic complexity and the "Tree" complexity metrics.
Wasps and RFID
The Zoological Society of London has published a study in Current Biology on the nest drifting (individual insects moving between different nests) of social wasps. To track the wasps, the team fitted the insects with RFID tags and placed sensors at the entrance of each nest to record their movements, in real time, in and out of the nests. The idea came from the Oyster card "touch in, touch out" system used on the London Underground.
The researchers, working in the tropics of Panama, looked at an extended colony of 33 nests belonging to a species of paper wasp called Polistes canadensis. In each nest, they tagged every female worker, fitting a total of 422 with the RFID tags. The researchers found 56% of the population were drifting from nest to nest and found the wasps were helping to raise their relatives' young in other nests.
Saturday, February 3, 2007
ACME: A Software Architecture Description Language
Acme (@ http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~acme/) is a software architecture description language that can be used as a common interchange format for architecture design tools and/or as a foundation for developing new architectural design and analysis tools. This site provides an introduction to Acme along with a collection of useful Acme software and technical information.
These resources are built on top of Eclipse as plug-ins.
These resources are built on top of Eclipse as plug-ins.
Friday, February 2, 2007
MS Mobile Platform Devices
The Advanced User Research Annotation System (AURA) from Microsoft Research (still in beta) is a dispatch loop manager for mobile devices that can work with a variety of sensors to collect data.
Accelerometers, Bluetooth beacons, cell towers, GPS devices and RFID tags are all examples of sensors that can provide data to a mobile device for consumption by a central application. The AURA project’s goal is to give developers an application framework that can forward the collected data and metadata to a central server, for monitoring or archival purposes.
The prototype is a Web application that allows users to scan product bar codes on a Windows Mobile Phone, which then contacts the Web services that identify the product. The Web service collects the available metadata and launches a browser window on the device that provides the user with more information about the product. They can then provide their own feedback on the item through the AURA community Web site, or view the comments of others.
Potentially AURA extends far beyond supply-chain management. Oil exploration is one example of an industry that had particularly acute requirements for interactive mobile data collection. Discrete manufacturing, processes industries, environmental sampling, mobile testing of any kind, insurance adjustment, and security & defense could be other arenas for this platform.
The AURA client is available at the project Web site, at aura.research.microsoft.com/Aura; registration is required to use the prototype application.
But I could not register - I am apparently unable to type in the code on the registration page correctly. But I could download the client. However, since I do not have access to a smart phone or WIN-CE device I could not get much out of it.
There is a PDF file available @: AURA Demo Application
Accelerometers, Bluetooth beacons, cell towers, GPS devices and RFID tags are all examples of sensors that can provide data to a mobile device for consumption by a central application. The AURA project’s goal is to give developers an application framework that can forward the collected data and metadata to a central server, for monitoring or archival purposes.
The prototype is a Web application that allows users to scan product bar codes on a Windows Mobile Phone, which then contacts the Web services that identify the product. The Web service collects the available metadata and launches a browser window on the device that provides the user with more information about the product. They can then provide their own feedback on the item through the AURA community Web site, or view the comments of others.
Potentially AURA extends far beyond supply-chain management. Oil exploration is one example of an industry that had particularly acute requirements for interactive mobile data collection. Discrete manufacturing, processes industries, environmental sampling, mobile testing of any kind, insurance adjustment, and security & defense could be other arenas for this platform.
The AURA client is available at the project Web site, at aura.research.microsoft.com/Aura; registration is required to use the prototype application.
But I could not register - I am apparently unable to type in the code on the registration page correctly. But I could download the client. However, since I do not have access to a smart phone or WIN-CE device I could not get much out of it.
There is a PDF file available @: AURA Demo Application
Thursday, February 1, 2007
AI @ Ford Motor Company
From IEEE Intelligent Systems:
www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_intelligent/intelligent/content/promo3.pdf
www.computer.org/portal/cms_docs_intelligent/intelligent/content/promo3.pdf
CogMap - A Visual Wiki
Please take a look at the CogMap experimental software at www.cogmap.com. CogMap has been described as an organizational chart Wiki, as it allows anyone to create and edit an organizational chart.
It is the brain-child of Brent Halliburton, who, coming from a background in sales, frequently had to go into sales meetings with no idea of the relationships and the resulting dynamics involved.
His idea was that any given person involved with an organization, while he or she would be unlikely to know its full structure, would likely know the relationship between at least two or three people in the organization. By building on the Wiki concept, people could come together on the Web site to put all of their pieces of the puzzle together to come up with a coherent picture of what an organization looks like that they, and others, could use as a resource.
It is built using AJAX for the front end of the application with the back end relying primarily on PHP. The organizational information is stored in a MySQL database. When a chart is retrieved, the organizational information is forwarded as XML to the front end, where its JavaScript rendering engine generates the org chart display.
For those interested, Brent encourages them to e-mail the company at CogMap@CogMap.com regarding licensing the code for use on their internal servers.
Personally, I think we should get this sort of visual Wiki built into the applications that we build for our customers – even if they do not ask for it. It could be a defining characteristic of any EDS-built application that it comes with a (visual) Wiki.
It is the brain-child of Brent Halliburton, who, coming from a background in sales, frequently had to go into sales meetings with no idea of the relationships and the resulting dynamics involved.
His idea was that any given person involved with an organization, while he or she would be unlikely to know its full structure, would likely know the relationship between at least two or three people in the organization. By building on the Wiki concept, people could come together on the Web site to put all of their pieces of the puzzle together to come up with a coherent picture of what an organization looks like that they, and others, could use as a resource.
It is built using AJAX for the front end of the application with the back end relying primarily on PHP. The organizational information is stored in a MySQL database. When a chart is retrieved, the organizational information is forwarded as XML to the front end, where its JavaScript rendering engine generates the org chart display.
For those interested, Brent encourages them to e-mail the company at CogMap@CogMap.com regarding licensing the code for use on their internal servers.
Personally, I think we should get this sort of visual Wiki built into the applications that we build for our customers – even if they do not ask for it. It could be a defining characteristic of any EDS-built application that it comes with a (visual) Wiki.
Roadrunner from IBM
Take a look at the Top500 Supercomputer Sites List (http://www.top500.org/) which shows that a large portion of the technical computing has moved to Linux clusters: commodity servers, commodity networks and commodity storage. At the same time, novel multi-core processor architectures, such as the Cell Broadband Engine (Cell BE), show the potential for substantial computing power (hundreds of gigaflops) to reside in entry-level servers, with, say, two to four processors.
On the other hand, IDC's Earl Joseph concluded in a study on technical computing software that "many ISV codes today scale only to 32 processors, and some of the most important ones for industry don't scale beyond four processors" (http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/430360.html).
His study also found that even when a vendor has a strategy to parallelize or scale its code, the cost of re-architecting and recoding is too high relative to the perceived market benefits.
To address this, IBM is creating a supercomputer, called Roadrunner, designed to be the based on the Cell BE. It is projected to be completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008, and will be capable of peak performance of more than 1.6 peta-flops, or 1.6 thousand trillion calculations/s.
Roadrunner is using a hybrid computing architecture: multiple heterogeneous cores with a multi-tier memory hierarchy. It's built entirely out of commodity parts: AMD Opteron-based servers, Cell BE-based accelerators and Infiniband interconnect. Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) will be handled by Opteron processors, while more mathematically and CPU-intensive elements will be directed to the Cell BE processors.
The software philosophy is a "division of labor" approach. There will continue to be a set of computational kernel developers maximizing performance out of the microprocessor ISA; in fact, many such kernels already exist (matrix multiply is a good example). Library developers will use frameworks such as the one developed for Roadrunner to synthesize the kernels into multi-core, memory hierarchy libraries. Application developers will then link in those libraries using standard compiler and linker technology. Consistent APIs and methodology across a number of mutli-core architectures without the introduction of new languages will limit the cost of code maintenance. Thus, library developers get improved ease of use not just for accelerator systems but also for general-purpose multi-core approaches and clusters.
IBM is inviting industry partners to define the components (APIs, tools, etc.) of the programming methodology so that the multi-core systems are accessible to those partners as well. Potential uses include:
• Financial services. By calculating cause and effect in capital markets in real-time, supercomputers can instantly predict the ripple effect of a stock market change throughout the markets.
• Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies.
• Information-based medicine. Complex 3-D renderings of tissues and bone structures will happen in real-time, with in-line analytics used for tumor detection as well as comparison with historical data and real-time patient data. Synthesis of real-time patient data can be used to generate predictive alerts.
• Oil and gas production. Supercomputers are used to map out underground geographies, simulate reservoirs and analyze the data acquired visually by scientists in the field.
• Nanotechnology. Supercomputing is expected to advance the science of building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms and molecules.
• Protein folding. Supercomputers can be used to provide an understanding of how diseases come about, how to test for them and how therapies and cures might be developed.
More information @ www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20210.wss
On the other hand, IDC's Earl Joseph concluded in a study on technical computing software that "many ISV codes today scale only to 32 processors, and some of the most important ones for industry don't scale beyond four processors" (http://www.hpcwire.com/hpc/430360.html).
His study also found that even when a vendor has a strategy to parallelize or scale its code, the cost of re-architecting and recoding is too high relative to the perceived market benefits.
To address this, IBM is creating a supercomputer, called Roadrunner, designed to be the based on the Cell BE. It is projected to be completed at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008, and will be capable of peak performance of more than 1.6 peta-flops, or 1.6 thousand trillion calculations/s.
Roadrunner is using a hybrid computing architecture: multiple heterogeneous cores with a multi-tier memory hierarchy. It's built entirely out of commodity parts: AMD Opteron-based servers, Cell BE-based accelerators and Infiniband interconnect. Standard processing (e.g., file system I/O) will be handled by Opteron processors, while more mathematically and CPU-intensive elements will be directed to the Cell BE processors.
The software philosophy is a "division of labor" approach. There will continue to be a set of computational kernel developers maximizing performance out of the microprocessor ISA; in fact, many such kernels already exist (matrix multiply is a good example). Library developers will use frameworks such as the one developed for Roadrunner to synthesize the kernels into multi-core, memory hierarchy libraries. Application developers will then link in those libraries using standard compiler and linker technology. Consistent APIs and methodology across a number of mutli-core architectures without the introduction of new languages will limit the cost of code maintenance. Thus, library developers get improved ease of use not just for accelerator systems but also for general-purpose multi-core approaches and clusters.
IBM is inviting industry partners to define the components (APIs, tools, etc.) of the programming methodology so that the multi-core systems are accessible to those partners as well. Potential uses include:
• Financial services. By calculating cause and effect in capital markets in real-time, supercomputers can instantly predict the ripple effect of a stock market change throughout the markets.
• Digital animation. Massive supercomputing power will let movie makers create characters and scenarios so realistic that the line will be blurred between animated and live-action movies.
• Information-based medicine. Complex 3-D renderings of tissues and bone structures will happen in real-time, with in-line analytics used for tumor detection as well as comparison with historical data and real-time patient data. Synthesis of real-time patient data can be used to generate predictive alerts.
• Oil and gas production. Supercomputers are used to map out underground geographies, simulate reservoirs and analyze the data acquired visually by scientists in the field.
• Nanotechnology. Supercomputing is expected to advance the science of building devices, such as electronic circuits, from single atoms and molecules.
• Protein folding. Supercomputers can be used to provide an understanding of how diseases come about, how to test for them and how therapies and cures might be developed.
More information @ www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/20210.wss
DeviceSQL Software
Encirq Corp. is offerring a free downloadable version of its DeviceSQL software development framework, along with tutorial materials.
DeviceSQL is a software development framework for designing and implementing the data management portions of device software applications. It can build a database, a local search engine or any other functions for manipulating, processing and managing data. Its components include the DeviceSQL programming language, development and prototyping tools, starter applications and service libraries.
The DeviceSQL Quick Start Suite is available at http://www.encirq.com/.
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About Me
- Babak Makkinejad
- I had been a senior software developer working for HP and GM. I am interested in intelligent and scientific computing. I am passionate about computers as enablers for human imagination. The contents of this site are not in any way, shape, or form endorsed, approved, or otherwise authorized by HP, its subsidiaries, or its officers and shareholders.