Computer and Mathematical occupations among fastest growing

Computing Community Consortium: "Focusing in on the “Professional and related” occupations, of the 8 occupational clusters that are included, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are projected to grow by the largest percentage between now and 2018 — by 22.2%. In other words, “Computer and mathematical” occupations are the fastest growing occupational cluster within the fastest growing major occupational group."

Another exoskeleton

Another demo of an exoskeleton.

Reading Your Mind to Tag Images

Reading Your Mind...: "The most valuable machine you own may be between your ears. Work done at Microsoft Research is using electroencephalograph (EEG) measurements to “read” minds in order to help tag images. When someone looks at an image, different areas of their brain have different levels of activity. This activity can be measured and scientists can reasonably determine what the person is looking at. It only takes about half a second to read the brain activity associated with each image, making the EEG process much faster than traditional manual tagging. The “mind-reading” technique may be the first step towards a hybrid system of computer and human analysis for images and many other forms of data."

Development of real-life Avatars

Robots for Surgery, Farming and Valet Parking: "Korea is currently developing robots conceptually similar to the avatar humanoids as demonstrated in the movie 'Avatar,' a science-fiction blockbuster directed by James Cameron.

During its regular assembly held on Friday, the Robot Convergence Forum expected that the avatar robots would hit the market in a few years. The forum involves both the private and public sectors.

"Already, domestic robot makers are working on prototypes of avatar robots and the consensus is that the commercial versions will come to town by late 2013,'' a Ministry of Knowledge Economy (MKE) director said."

Social science meets computer science at Yahoo

Social science meets computer science at Yahoo: "Shortly after Carol Bartz took over as chief executive of Yahoo Inc. early last year, she met with Prabhakar Raghavan for an overview of the Sunnyvale Web giant's research division. As the head of Yahoo Labs ran through the catalog of computer scientists on staff, Bartz turned to him and asked: 'Where are your psychologists?'"

"Raghavan was stunned the newly installed CEO had so quickly gotten to a question he'd been asking for years. His answer was they didn't have enough.
That's changing. In the last year, Yahoo Labs has bolstered its ranks of social scientists, adding highly credentialed cognitive psychologists, economists and ethnographers from top universities around the world. At approximately 25 people, it's still the smallest group within the research division, but one of the fastest growing.

Computer contest hopes to inspire young animators

Computer contest...: "Computer scientists from The University of Manchester have launched an animation competition to inspire the next generation of computer experts."

"Youngsters aged between seven and 19 are being challenged to create an animated film, of one minute or less, using any of the Alice, Scratch Adobe Flash, Greenfoot or Serif software packages.

"Animation10 is supported by Google and Electronic Arts, and is being run in association with BBC 21st Century Classroom. For full details visit www.cs.manchester.ac.uk/Animation10

Aussie quantum experiment challenges computer science

Aussie quantum experiment challenges computer science: "Australian scientists have completed ground-breaking research using quantum computing that will challenge, among scientific principles, the theory of quantum mechanics. UQ physics professor Andrew White, a co-author of the project, said the existence of quantum computing means that either quantum mechanics is wrong, or the Church Turing Thesis, which underpins computer science, is flawed."

“If the Church Turing Thesis is wrong, that’s really big news; or it means that quantum computing will turn out to be impossible for a fundamental reason, or that a fast classical factoring algorithm exists,” White said, referring to a theory by MIT assistant professor Scott Aaronson that the only way to prove the probability of quantum mechanics is to build a quantum computer.

"A quantum computer with hundreds of qubits would be more powerful than every traditional computer on Earth, amounting to billions of bits. “A classical computer with 300 bits of can store 300 bits of information, whereas a 300 qubit register can store more information than the number of particles in the universe,” White said.