I’ve been interacting with the international press quite a bit with the spate of disasters in Japan and here in the US. I’m thrilled with the “where are the robots?” questions for a couple of reasons. First, there’s the Sally Fields effect- they like robots! Finally, I was getting tired of hearing about the Terminator and robot uprisings. Second, I get to point that out that there is a set of land, sea, and marine vehicles sufficiently hardened to be of use- while putting in a pitch for the government to fund acquisition. (But no worries, these robots are the first generation and need lots of improvements and fundamental research […]

From this week’s IEEE Spectrum: According to doctors at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center… intensive care units backed up by off-site doctors and nurses, who could remotely monitor critically ill patients and direct the ICU’s on-site staff, had fewer patient deaths and shorter ICU stays. Their trial of a so-called tele-ICU system, which allows intensive care specialists outside the hospital to see and hear patients, monitor vital signs, and access medical records, proves that such a system actually benefits patients.   Over the two-and-a-half-year study, off-site doctors and nurses manned multimonitor computer stations from a nearby building, where they received real-time information on patients. The UMass tele-ICU system is based on Philips’ Visicu […]

The U.S. Department of Energy — together with the Government of India — recently established a Joint Clean Energy Research and Development Center (JCERDC) “designed to promote clean energy innovation by teams of scientists and engineers from India and the United States.” DoE is committing $25 million to the Center over the next five years. The first JCERDC solicitation was issued earlier this month, with a focus on three priority areas. At least one of these — building energy efficiency — specifically aligns with computing research: The objective is to contribute to dramatic improvements in the energy efficiency of buildings (commercial or residential) in the United States and India. Recommended topics include: building […]

It’s unusual for computing research to be featured in an editorial in the New York Times, but it happened today:   An editorial in today’s New York Times follows up on an article ten days ago describing an end-to-end analysis of the spam value chain which determined that 95% of spam-advertised pharmaceutical, replica and software products are monetized using merchant services from just a handful of banks. The New York Times editorial states:  “The Times’s John Markoff reported that computer scientists at two University of California campuses have found another vulnerability:  spammers’ banks.  To track the flow of information, the researchers made hundreds of purchases.  Buying Viagra from the Pharmacy Express […]

In light of the tornadoes that have devastated parts of the Midwest and South over the past several weeks, Robin Murphy — the Raytheon Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Texas A&M University (and a member of the CCC Council) — was asked by The Washington Post to participate in a live web chat on Wednesday to describe how robots can assist in search and rescue missions. Murphy noted that robots can help detect signs of life in otherwise inaccessible or dangerous disaster environments — ranging from deep, dark crevasses created by piles of debris to site that are submerged under water: We try to match the best robots for the responders’ […]

As part of ScienceLives — an occasional NSF/LiveScience series that “puts scientists under the microscope to figure out what makes them tick” — CCC Council member Frans Kaashoek recently described what motivated him to pursue software systems research as well as the experiences he’s had as a professor at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It makes for great viewing — especially for students interested in pursuing computing research. Among the questions Frans was asked, “What’s the best piece of advice you ever received?” Do something that you really care about because you’re going to spend a lot of time on it… If you’re not excited about it, it’s not going […]