msnbc.com’s Cosmic Log is out with its list of the top 11 scientific twists from 2011 this morning: The past year brought us the supercomputer that trounced flesh-and-blood champions on the “Jeopardy” TV show … genetic discoveries that showed us the tangles in humanity’s family tree … a tsunami that shouldn’t have been as catastrophic as it was … and neutrinos that shouldn’t be going as fast as they seem to. Which scientific twist of 2011 do you find most intriguing? Now’s the time to cast your vote for the top science story of 2011…   In this list, I’m stressing the twists in science and technology that go against expectations […]

The New York Times published a two items last Friday about computer security research efforts to supplement, and perhaps one day eliminate, passwords. From the print edition: Passwords are a pain to remember. What if a quick wiggle of five fingers on a screen could log you in instead? Or speaking a simple phrase?   Neither idea is far-fetched. Computer scientists in Brooklyn are training their iPads to recognize their owners by the touch of their fingers as they make a caressing gesture. Banks are already using software that recognizes your voice, supplementing the standard PIN.   And after years of predicting its demise, security researchers are renewing their efforts to supplement and perhaps one day obliterate […]

An excellent example of how novel data-driven methods can advance science and society: In February 2012, the journal Nature Climate Change will publish a paper on rainfall extremes in India by principal investigator Vipin Kumar of the University of Minnesota’s computer science and engineering department and co-principal investigator Auroop Ganguly of the civil and environmental engineering department at Northeastern University in Boston, members of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) [Expeditions in Computing] project team…   “This Expeditions in Computing project brings together interdisciplinary researchers from multiple institutions to pursue a bold, ambitious, research agenda by building reliable predictive models from climate data that could potentially transform how we understand and respond to climate change,” explains Vasant Honavar … program manager in NSF’s Division of Information and Intelligent […]

In the New York Times’ Sunday Review, technology writer Steve Lohr pens a story all about the “Internet of Things,” noting how “low-cost sensors, clever software, and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care, and food distribution.” From the article: The concept has been around for years, sometimes called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Yet it takes time for the economics and engineering to catch up with the predictions. And that moment is upon us.   “We’re going to put the digital ‘smarts’ into everything,” said Edward D. Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington [and CCC Council chair]. These abundant smart […]

A series of computing research advances making the news in the past week: A New Forecasting Algorithm to Predict Hurricane Intensity and Wind Speed Scientists at Southern Methodist University’s (SMU) Intelligent Data Analysis Lab (IDA) [have] developed a new forecasting algorithm called the Prediction Intensity Interval model for Hurricanes (PIIH) to help better predict hurricane intensity.   PIIH also predicts the potential ranges, from high to low, of maximum hurricane wind speeds, specifying the likelihood of wind speeds in varying ranges.   “Accurately predicting intensity means vastly improving hurricane readiness and reducing the risk to property and human life,” said Michael Hahsler, visiting assistant professor for Computer Science and Engineering at SMU. “With […]

Last Friday, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced the end of its Shredder Challenge — a competition for computer scientists and puzzle enthusiasts alike to piece together a series of shredded documents — when a small team of just three San Francisco-based computer programmers correctly reconstructed each of the five challenge documents and solved their associated puzzles 33 days after the Challenge began. “All Your Shreds Are Belong to U.S.,” they called themselves — and they took home the $50,000 prize for using custom-coded, computer vision algorithms to suggest fragment pairings to human assemblers for verification. In total, the winning team spent nearly 600 man-hours developing algorithms and piecing together documents that […]