Materials Researchers Say Rebooting Soon May Be Thing Of Past

The ferroelectric materials found in today's "smart cards" used in subway, ATM and fuel cards soon may eliminate the time-consuming booting and rebooting of computer operating systems by providing an "instant-on" capability as well as preventing losses from power outages.

Researchers supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) nanoscale interdisciplinary research team award and three Materials Research Science and Engineering Centers at Cornell University, Penn State University and Northwestern University recently added ferroelectric capability to material used in common computer transistors, a feat scientists tried to achieve for more than half a century. They reported their findings in the April 17 journal Science.

Ferroelectric materials provide low-power, high-efficiency electronic memory. Smart cards use the technology to instantly reveal and update stored information when waved before a reader. A computer with this capability could instantly provide information and other data to the user.

Researchers led by Cornell University materials scientist Darrell Schlom took strontium titanate, a normally non-ferroelectric variant of the ferroelectric material used in smart cards, and deposited it on silicon--the principal component of most semiconductors and integrated circuits--in such a way that the silicon squeezed it into a ferroelectric state.

"It's great to see fundamental research on ordered layering of materials, or epitaxial growth, under strained conditions pay off in such a practical manner, particularly as it relates to ultra-thin ferroelectrics" said Lynnette Madsen, the NSF program director responsible for the Nanoscale Interdisciplinary Research Team award.

The result could pave the way for a next-generation of memory devices that are lower power, higher speed and more convenient to use. For everyday computer users, it could mean no more waiting for the operating system to come online or to access memory slowly from the hard drive.

"Several hybrid transistors have been proposed specifically with ferroelectrics in mind," said Schlom. "By creating a ferroelectric directly on silicon, we are bringing this possibility closer to realization."

More research is needed to achieve a ferroelectric transistor that would make "instant on" computing a reality, but having the materials in direct contact, free of intervening reaction layers, is an important step.

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Help For You To Find Those PC Drivers You Need

You don't see software drivers but they run your printers and other components of your computer.

They come with your PC or laptop but from time to time, you may need new drivers or just reload your drivers after your computer needs some kind of work. If you're like me, at those times you may not be able to lay your hands on the discs that contain those drivers.

You could search the Internet, desperately trying to find the right ones or order new discs. But now there is a website where you can simply download your drivers, whether you need hp drivers, netgear drivers or some other kind or make of drivers.

Click on the site through the links above and the homepage lists links right to the most popular drivers.

The site also includes handy tools to scan your computer for outdated software and look for the latest drivers for your particular hardware.

For computer users who, like me, are not techies, this is a crucial website to bookmark and save for those times when you need it.

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Computer Scientists Develop Solutions For Long-Term Storage of Digital Data

Although the digital age is well under way, one crucial detail remains to be worked out--how to store vast amounts of digital information in a way that allows future generations to recover it.

"The problem is how to build a large-scale data storage system to last 50 to 100 years," says Ethan Miller, associate professor of computer science in the Baskin School of Engineering at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Tape libraries are widely used for data storage, but digital tape has many shortcomings as an archival medium. Miller's group has come up with a new approach, called Pergamum, which uses hard disk drives to provide energy-efficient, cost-effective storage. The declining cost of hard drives has made them more competitive with tape, and they offer numerous advantages for searching and retreiving data. "It's like the difference between a VCR and TiVo," Miller says.

Pergamum, named after the ancient Greek library that made the transition from fragile papyrus to more durable parchment, is a distributed network of intelligent, disk-based storage devices. The team that developed it includes UCSC graduate students Mark Storer and Kevin Greenan, along with researcher Kaladhar Voruganti of NetApp (formerly Network Appliance), a company that focuses on storage and data management solutions.

Archival storage is a big issue for businesses, partly due to legal requirements for the preservation of financial and business records, and also because data mining strategies can turn stored data into a valuable resource. Long-term storage is also a growing issue for individuals who are filling their personal computers with digital photos, movies, and documents.

"There is a risk that an entire generation's cultural history could be lost if people aren't able to retrieve that data," Storer says. "Everyone is switching to digital cameras, but we've never demonstrated that digital data can be reliably preserved for a long time."

Pergamum has attracted a lot of attention from industry since Storer presented it at a leading conference in the field, the USENIX Conference on File and Storage Technologies (FAST '08), held in San Jose in February. Robin Harris, an industry consultant who writes an influential blog called StorageMojo, called the Pergamum paper his "favorite FAST '08 paper)."

The researchers designed the system to provide reliable, energy-efficient data storage using off-the-shelf components. It also has the ability to evolve over time as storage technologies change. "You want to avoid 'forklift upgrades,' where you have to get rid of the old system and transfer all your data to a whole new system," Miller says.

According to Storer, businesses are beginning to recognize that archival storage is very different from simply backing up their data. "A backup is a safety net--you hope you won't need it. Archival data you do want to use--it's a valuable resource and you want to be able to mine it for information," he says.

Tapes work well for backups, in which data are written once, rarely read, and not kept indefinitely. But archival data should be easy to read, query, browse, and search, and tape has inherent weaknesses in these areas. Existing disk-based systems offer excellent performance, but rely on power-hungry central controllers.

"Energy usage is a big issue, so a lot of our effort in designing Pergamum focused on dramatically reducing power use," Miller says.

Pergamum uses individual building blocks consisting of a hard drive; a small, low-power processor (like the chip in an iPhone); a flash memory card; and an ethernet port. These units, called "tomes," are connected using relatively inexpensive ethernet switches.

"Each tome is like a minicomputer, but with very low power demands," Miller says. "When not in use, it can shut down almost completely."

Even when active, the devices use very little power (less than 13 watts), which can be delivered over the network using Power over Ethernet technology. As a result, each unit is essentially a self-contained box with a network connection. The flash memory provides low-power, persistent storage so that many operations can be performed without activating the hard drive.

For reliability, Pergamum uses two levels of redundancy--within and between disks--to protect from both disk failures and errors in writing data to a disk (so-called "latent sector errors"). Tomes can be easily added to expand the system or to replace failed disks. And if hard disk drives become obsolete in 10 years, Pergamum won't suffer the same fate. The system doesn't care what the actual storage medium is, as long as the device can implement the simple protocol that will allow it to function as part of the network.

"In 50 years, the devices might use holographic storage," Storer says. "As long as you can wrap the new storage medium in this intelligent layer that speaks the protocol, it can participate in the network."

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Computer System Consistently Makes Most Accurate NCAA Picks

Sports professionals and fans get pretty emotional about their picks for the NCAA basketball tournament each year, and that emotion often clouds their judgment.

But three engineering professors at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created a computer ranking system, called LRMC, that consistently predicts NCAA basketball rankings more accurately than the AP poll of sportswriters and the ESPN/USA Today poll of coaches, formulas (the Ratings Percentage Index), other computer models (the Massey ratings and the Sagarin ratings), and even the tournament seeds themselves.

After correctly picking all four of this year's finalists, the LRMC method has now identified 30 of the last 36 Final Four participants (83 percent accuracy over the past nine years of NCAA tournaments) as one of the top two teams in their region. Over the same nine-year stretch, the seedings and polls have correctly identified only 23, and the RPI identified 21.

LRMC (Logistic Regression Markov Chain) is a college basketball rankings system designed to use only basic scoreboard data, including which teams played, which team had home court advantage and the margin of victory. It was originally designed by Joel Sokol and Paul Kvam and has been maintained and improved by Sokol and George Nemhauser, all three optimization and statistics professors in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.

"As fans, we only get to see most tournament teams two or three times at most during the season, so our gut feelings about a team are really colored by how well or poorly they played the few times we've been watching," says Sokol. "On the other hand, our system objectively measures each team's performance in every game it plays, and mathematically balances
all of those outcomes to determine an overall ranking."

LRMC seems to have a particular knack for predicting good bubble teams and identifying the top teams. In addition to correctly picking the Final Four, LRMC also correctly identified several over-rated and under-rated teams as potential upsets. First-round losers Drake (5-seed, LRMC #30), Vanderbilt (4-seed, LRMC #38), and Connecticut (4-seed, LRMC #26), as well
as second-round loser Georgetown (2-seed, LRMC #12), were all picked by LRMC as significantly over-rated teams.

On the other hand, teams like West Virginia (7-seed, LRMC #17), which defeated second-seeded Duke, and Kansas State (11-seed, LRMC #19), which defeated sixth-seeded USC, were correctly identified by LRMC as under-rated teams that could pull off one or more upsets.

But LRMC isn't perfect -- it picked Clemson as under-rated (upset in the first round) and Davidson wasn't identified as under-rated by any major ranking method, including LRMC.

LRMC differs from other computer rankings systems in two important ways. When determining the value of home court advantage, LRMC considers how much playing at home helps a team win rather than how many points playing on a home court is worth.

Georgia Tech researchers have also been able to show that very close games are often "toss-ups," meaning the better team barely wins more than half the time. So, they determined that winning a close game shouldn't be worth as much as winning easily, and losing a close game shouldn't hurt a team's ranking as much as losing badly. LRMC's ranking methodology takes
this into account.

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Video: The Geek Always Rings Twice

Andy tags along as one of Best Buy's Geek Squad "agents" makes house calls for ailing home computers.

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Video: How To Buy a Laptop

You have a lot of offers today on purchases of new laptop computers. Many makes, models and specifications. Laptops have become nearly as popular as desktop machines for PC purchases.

But just what should you be considering when you look to buy a new laptop? Find out now in this informative video from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Report: Cybercrime Costs $67.2 Billion A Year

Cybercrime has significant economic impacts and threatens U.S. national security interests. Various studies and experts estimate the direct economic impact from cybercrime to be in the billions of dollars annually. The annual loss due to computer crime was estimated to be $67.2 billion for U.S. organizations, according to a 2005 FBI survey, cited by a recent federal report.

In addition, there is continued concern about the threat that U.S. adversaries, including nation-states and terrorists, pose to our national security, says the report, prepared by the Government Accountability Office (GAO). GAO is the nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress.

"For example, intelligence officials have stated that nation-states and terrorists could conduct a coordinated cyber attack to seriously disrupt electric power distribution, air traffic control, and financial sectors. Also, according to FBI testimony, terrorist organizations have used cybercrime to raise money to fund their activities," the GAO says.

Despite the estimated loss of money and information and known threats from adversaries, the precise impact of cybercrime is unknown because it is not always detected and reported, GAO finds.

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HP Through The Years

From humble beginnings in a garage in Palo Alto, Calif., to today as the largest IT provider, HP has provided people and companies worldwide with top-quality technology products and services since it was incorporated in 1939. HP applies new thinking and ideas to improve the way its customers live and work.

Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard's first successful product was a precision audio oscillator. Today, HP's known for personal computers, digital photography, printers and more.

Explore HP's online Learning Center. These resources include information on wireless networking, home computer security, PC maintenance, detailed “accessory checklists” for college students, and more.

One of the most valuable resources is the online classes. There are multiple interactive classes available on a number of interesting and fun topics that range from digital photography techniques to protecting yourself from spyware and spam. All of these classes are free from HP.

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Should Computers Decide Who Gets a Transplant?

The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) announces evaluation of a new mathematical modeling system for lung allocation in the United States and the ethical issues surrounding organ allocation facing patients awaiting transplants.

Worldwide, patients in need of transplant are placed on a waiting list for donor lungs, using a wide variety of systems. In the United States, patients are currently assessed for organ allocation based on a new mathematical modeling system, in which patient information is entered into a computer database and donors are then matched with recipients based on specific characteristics. Two of the most important criteria are the chance of survival without the transplant and the projected condition of the patient post-transplant. The computer program then generates a list of patients that are ranked according to preset organ allocation policies.

Once selected, there are a number of tests that must be performed in order to evaluate whether the recipient may in fact receive the organ. Taking into consideration the novelty of the system, an international representation of ISHLT membership will convene to evaluate this new modeling system to determine its effectiveness.

"Many patients, families and those within the medical community have considered a first-come, first-served allocation system to be unfair, given that it did not take into account factors such as severity of a particular disease or how likely a patient would be to survive the transplant. This new system is an effort to give every patient an equal chance at transplant based on a number of varying factors," says Tom Waddell, M.D., Division of Thoracic Surgery, Toronto General Hospital, Canada and ISHLT Program Committee member.

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Research Shed Light on Computer Frustrations That Plague Older Adults

A number of evolving social changes highlight the importance of making computer technology accessible and usable for older adults. For instance, older adults are using email increasingly to keep up their social contact with others and are using the Internet to look up health information.

An innovative research study was conducted at the University of Alberta which analyzed the performance outcomes of older adults when being tested on the computer and Internet.

What researchers found can be applied as a ‘best practice’ when teaching older adults how to use computer technology. Research found that older adults feel less confident about their computer knowledge than younger adults. Older adults are also concerned about how memory issues may impact their performance.

"This lack of confidence is a major factor in older adults’ ability to become proficient with computer technology, which unfortunately results in less computer use," says Patricia Boechler from the University of Alberta.

The study also highlights the obstacles older adults experience such as a significant decrease in sensory keenness, particularly with vision and hearing, as well as a decrease in motor skills due to health problems, such as arthritis and tremors.

Boechler notes, "Often a large challenge for older adults when using the computer is navigating the mouse and keyboard, which is commonly due to a health problem like arthritis."

Boechler, Foth, and Watchorn studied approximately 40 older adults by having them complete computer exercises and measured their results to undergraduates who previously completed the exercises. The study gives a list of recommendations to help even the playing field for older adults such as increasing font sizes to accommodate vision problems, ensuring that verbal instructions are delivered at an appropriate volume with minimal noise distractions and giving demonstrations of the tasks ahead of time to reduce anxiety.

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Researchers Create Cell-Sized Memory Device

Researchers say they have created a memory device the size of a white blood cell in an advance of nanotechnology that should help manufacturer's keep up the pace of Moore's Law.

The tiny ultra-dense memory device has enough capacity to store the Declaration of Independence and still have room to spare, they say. It is called a major advance over current silicon computing technology.

"Using molecular components for memory or computation or to replace other electronic components holds tremendous promise," says J. Fraser Stoddart, director of the California NanoSystems Institute.

The cell-sized device was created by arranging 160,000 memory bits like a large tic-tac-toe board: 400 silicon wires crossed by 400 titanium wires, each 16 nanometers wide, with a layer of dumbbell-shaped molecular switches sandwiched between the crossing wires. A nanometer is one-billionth of a meter and is a common measurement in nanotechnology, which is engineering at the atomic scale.

"This research is one of the only examples of building large molecular memory in a chip at an extremely high density, testing it, and working in an architecture that is practical, where it is obvious how information can be written and read," Stoddart says.

Moore's law has long been a basic tenet of computing technology that says the complexity of an integrated circuit, or computer chip, will double every year based on increased miniaturization. Manufacturers, however, see no way to extend the miniaturization beyond the year 2013. Nanotechnology, such as the cell-sized memory device, respresents one potential solution.

"Our goal was not to demonstrate a robust technology; the memory circuit we have reported on is hardly that," says James Heath of the California Institute of Technology and a collaborator on the project. "Instead, our goal was to demonstrate that large-scale, working electronic circuits could be constructed at a density that is well-beyond (10-15 years) where many of the most optimistic projections say is possible."


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