Can Animals and Robots Be Self-Aware?

Newsweek Can Animals and Robots Be Self-Aware?: "It's called metacognition—the ability to think about your thoughts, to engage in self-reflection, to introspect. It was long thought to be not just something that we have more of or do better than machines or animals, but that we have and they lack. To know what you know is not only the mark of a skilled game-show contestant who is quick (but not too quick) on the buzzer, but also of consciousness, the last stand for human exceptionalism. Now, however, this claim is on the rocks as both animals and machines show signs that they can engage in self-reflection."

Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold

New York Times Computer Science Takes Steps to Bring Women to the Fold: "Like others in the field, Dr. Cuny speaks almost lyrically about the intellectual challenge of applying the study of cognition and the tools of computation to medicine, ecology, law, chemistry — virtually any kind of human endeavor.

“The use of computers in modern life is totally ubiquitous,” said Barbara G. Ryder, a professor of computer science at Rutgers University. “So there are niches all over for people who understand what the technology can do and also for people who want to advance the technology."

"Faulty software" or "human error"?

Note an interesting contrast in reporting. Both stories report on the failure in 2006 of the Mars Global Surveyor, but the first (SPACE.com) says that faulty software doomed Mars spacecraft; while the second (CNN.com) reports that "...human error triggered a cascade of events" leading to its loss.

Center for Computational Thinking

Microsoft Press Release: Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon Establish Center for Computational Thinking: "The Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking... represents a long-term collaboration between Microsoft Research and Carnegie Mellon’s Computer Science Department and will support research in emerging areas of computer science, particularly those that can influence the thinking of other disciplines.

“Increasingly, scientists and researchers rely on computer science to enable them to sift through massive amounts of data and find breakthroughs that could provide new insights into the human body, the earth we live on and even the universe,” said Rick Rashid, senior vice president of Microsoft Research. “We are eager to explore this exciting new area of research with Carnegie Mellon.”

"The Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking will support research in core computer science areas using an approach called problem-oriented explorations, pioneered by Carnegie Mellon’s ALADDIN Center. Researchers from a variety of fields will address specific, real-world problems; initial topics include privacy, e-commerce, multicore computing and embedded medical devices. In addition, the center will develop and disseminate courses and curricula suitable for graduate and undergraduate students, as well as K–12 classes.

“Computer technology has rapidly transformed education, commerce and entertainment, but — more profoundly — computational thinking is transforming how new science is discovered in fields as varied as biology, astronomy, statistics and economics,” said Wing.

Source: Microsoft Press Release on Center for Computational Thinking

Computer Scientists hold keys to future research in every field

Computing center connects CMU and Microsoft: "Jeannette Wing got angry with a friend recently when he advised his child to major in physics in college instead of computer science.

Physics is exciting, he suggested, while computer science is mostly 'clerical' computer programming.

Nothing could be further from the truth, said the impassioned Dr. Wing, head of Carnegie Mellon University's world-class computer science department.

The chance to correct that misimpression is one reason she is happy that Microsoft announced yesterday that it is giving Carnegie Mellon $1.5 million over the next three years to establish the Microsoft Carnegie Mellon Center for Computational Thinking."

IBM to demonstrate high-speed chip

IBM researchers demonstrate world's fastest optical chipset: "At the 2007 Optical Fiber Conference, IBM scientists will reveal a prototype optical transceiver chipset capable of reaching speeds at least eight times faster than optical components available today.
The breakthrough could transform how data is accessed, shared and used across the Web for corporate and consumer networks. The transceiver is fast enough to reduce the download time for a typical high definition feature-length film to a single second compared to 30 minutes or more.

The ability to move information at blazing speeds of 160 Gigabits -- or 160 billion bits of information in a single second -- provides a glimpse of a new era of high-speed connectivity that will transform communications, computing and entertainment. Optical networking offers the potential to dramatically improve data transfer rates by speeding the flow of data using light pulses, instead of sending electrons over wires.
A sign of enabling technologies to come...

23 March 2007 - New Scientist

Autonomous driving systems aim to drive dirty: "Autonomous model cars will race against one another in a contest designed to test different software approaches.

The contest is being organised by researchers at the University of Essex in the UK, who are creating an affordable and standardised autonomous vehicle kit to encourage others to get involved.

The kit will include a high-end commercial model car, a laptop, a GPS receiver, a USB controller and a camera. The aim is to encourage different research teams to develop autonomous racers using the same equipment, which will then race against one another at the 2008 World Congress on Computational Intelligence in Hong Kong."