Information Policy

€ 200 Million for industrial research in Embedded Computing Systems

Only 3 months after its launch the ARTEMIS Joint Undertaking (JU) published its first Call for proposals. With € 100 million public funding from the European Commission and the participating Member States and at least a € 100 million contribution from industry and research organisations the Call should generate an activity of more than € 200 million. The ARTEMIS JU, a Europe-wide public-private research partnership, addresses embedded computer systems that – while running almost unnoticed by users – improve the performance of all kinds of machines: from cars, planes and phones, to factories, washing machines and televisions.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/itemdetail.cfm?item_id=4097

4G Backhaul: A Problem for All?

We already know that the challenge of providing back-end capacity for faster base-stations helped delay the launch of Sprint Nextel Corp.'s Xohm WiMax, so could 4G backhaul be a problem for all carriers moving to faster broadband networks?

The issue with 4G backhaul is a simple one: T1-line backhaul, which many carriers -- particularly in the U.S. -- use extensively, cannot cope with base stations that pump out data at hundreds of megabits a second to provide a few megabits-a-second data downloads to each individual user. Yet faster data downloads are supposed to be what sells so-called 4G services -- be they WiMax or Long-Term Evolution -- to consumers. Carriers, meanwhile, want 4G to further bump up data revenues, which are supposed to supplant declining voice revenue over time.

http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/140/30430?7649

Using GPS to Accelerate Highway Traffic

Researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, and Nokia have developed a communications technology that could soon transform the way drivers navigate through congested highways and obtain information about road conditions. The new system uses GPS-enabled mobile phones to monitor real-time traffic flow while preserving the privacy of phone users.

Using GPS data to estimate prevailing speeds and travel times, researchers have been able to obtain a picture of real-time traffic conditions. Current traffic monitoring systems mostly rely upon pavement-embedded sensors, roadside radar or cameras. The high cost of installing and maintaining such systems has restricted their coverage to only limited stretches of highway.

GPS systems, on the other hand, are becoming ubiquitous and are relatively cheap. The technology can pinpoint a car's location to within just a few feet and calculate its speed to within three miles per hour. Enlisting GPS-equipped mobile phones into traffic monitoring systems could help provide information on everything from multiple side-street routes in urban areas to hazardous driving conditions or accidents on vast stretches of rural roads, the researchers say.

"Even though the phones are capable of sending their position and speed every three seconds, an efficient traffic monitoring system should not need to transfer such a large amount of data, which would require enormous bandwidth," says Alexandre Bayen, a University of California, Berkeley, assistant professor of systems engineering and civil and environmental engineering. "Our challenge is to find the optimum subset of this data for effective traffic monitoring," Bayen observes. "The quantity and quality of data provided by GPS-equipped cell phones present an unprecedented enhancement to mobility tracking technology and traffic flow reconstruction mechanisms."

Yet such a system also raises questions about phone users' privacy. That's why the researchers, with the help of Rutgers University's Winlab, have built privacy protection into the system. "Mobile device users control the service--if an individual does not want his or her device to transmit position data, he or she can turn off the GPS feed," says Quinn Jacobson, a researcher with the Nokia Research Center. The system's data is immediately disassociated from individual phones and is combined with the general stream of traffic data. "Only anonymous aggregated data is ever created, transported or stored in this 'privacy-by-design' system," Jacobson notes. All data is further protected by encryption.

A commercial launch date hasn't yet been announced for the system. But when it does become available, its benefits could be substantial. In the U.S. alone, traffic congestion leads to 4.2 billion hours in extra travel time and an extra 2.9 billion gallons of fuel burned, for a total cost of $78 billion, according to a 2007 report from the Texas Transportation Institute. With the number of vehicles on the road increasing rapidly worldwide, a cost-effective method of travel planning could help drivers make smarter decisions about which routes to take.

http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/150/30397?7649

Science and Engineering Indicators 2008

The U.S. National Science Foundation publishes a compendium of science and engineering data every other year. The 2008 edition includes information on international expenditures on research and development, the flow of foreign born scientists and engineers to the United States and a chapter titled "Industry, Technology, and the Global Marketplace" in addition to information on the STI situation in the United States itself. The report shows the continuing gap in science and technology between developed and developing nations, and the continuing global leadership of the United States in these fields, but also indicates the growing global importance of R&D in countries such as China, India, South Korea, and Brazil.

http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind08/

Radio Frequency Identification Devices (RFID) : Frequently Asked Questions

RFID tags are far cleverer than traditional bar codes. They have the potential to link everyday objects into an 'Internet of Things' that will greatly enhance economic prosperity and the quality of life. But as with any breakthrough, there is a possible downside - in this case, the implications of RFID for privacy. This is why we need to build a society-wide consensus on the future of RFID, and the need for credible safeguards. Privacy is at the heart of our European model of society. RFID will therefore only become successful if they do not call into question the capability of every consumer to control the use of his or her personal data. I expect the industry to assume its responsibilities." Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/08/145&type=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID): A Focus On Information Security And Privacy

The deployment of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) in a large number of application areas is promising. This paper introduces the main characteristics of RFID technologies and focuses on the information security and privacy aspects of RFID in the short term. It will be complemented by an overview of RFID applications and an analysis of economic aspects of RFID carried out by the OECD Working Party on the Information Economy (WPIE). Later on, and based on both sets of work, a common set of policy principles related to RFID will be developed. This report represents the first step of OECD work related to sensor-based environments. Follow-up work will address security and privacy issues raised by a number of possible longer-term trends such as the generalisation of object tagging (pervasive RFID), of open loop RFID and of other sensors and sensor networks that can monitor the environment.

http://www.olis.oecd.org/olis/2007doc.nsf/LinkTo/NT00005A7A/$FILE/JT03238682.PDF

What are the 14 greatest engineering challenges for the 21st century?

The final choices fall into four themes that are essential for humanity to flourish, - sustainability, health, reducing vulnerability and joy of living, the group said. The committee did not attempt to include every important challenge, nor did it endorse particular approaches to meeting those selected. Rather than focusing on predictions or gee-whiz gadgets, the goal was to identify what needs to be done to help people and the planet thrive, the group said.

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/25219

Setting the European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT) in motion: first steps towards the nomination of the members of the EIT Governing Board

The European Commissioner for Education and Culture, Ján Figeľ, announced to the European Parliament and the Council on 5 February the composition of the ad-hoc Identification Committee that will recommend members of the future EIT Governing Board. This Identification Committee will guarantee the independence, legitimacy and credibility of the identification process. Starting in February 2008, the work of the identification Committee is expected to take around four months.

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/08/188&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=nl

Bandwidth Management for the Masses

Believing that individuals will take to bandwidth management as eagerly as major enterprises have, software vendor Propel has developed Propel PBM. The company's personal bandwidth management tool is designed to let users optimize the performance of PC-based Internet telecom applications by automatically prioritizing both inbound and outbound traffic.

The software-service combo enables users to see the bandwidth usage of applications in real time. The tool also gives bandwidth utilization precedence to time-sensitive applications, including VoIP and video calls. Lower-priority applications, such as file transfers, run in background.

A Propel PBM subscription provides updated traffic shaping policies, protecting high-priority network applications, such as Skype, against current and new software applications. Propel PBM also includes a network traffic monitor that displays bandwidth utilization in real-time, enabling users to monitor their bandwidth usage, as well as to detect potential malware.

For example, a Skype call taken during a file upload can result in outgoing voice traffic suffering significant time delays or blockages as the two tasks compete for outgoing network bandwidth. The Skype traffic is higher priority because interfering with its packets can degrade the call quality. In contrast, the file upload is lower priority, since the file transfer will not break if preference is given to the Skype traffic. While an individual can attempt to protect high-priority networking applications, such as Skype, from low-priority traffic by turning them off manually, this is often inconvenient and time wasting.

A typical PC has dozens of programs that access the network. Propel PBM aims to prioritize all of this traffic automatically so that time-sensitive packets get higher priority than other traffic. The company states that Propel PBM's automatic behavior is based on policy definitions that are updated automatically, much in the way a virus protection program periodically downloads new virus definitions.

Propel PBM is targeted at the rapidly growing market of individuals who use network-intensive, time-sensitive applications, says David Murray, president and CEO of Propel, which is based in San Jose, Calif. "We've developed an easy-to-use, powerful application for helping individual PC users get the most from their network connection," he notes. "By using Propel PBM, PC users for the first time can be assured their high-priority, time-sensitive applications will run simultaneously with low-priority applications and maintain optimal performance in any given network condition."

Propel is privately funded and claims to be profitable. The company has raised three rounds of financing since its 1999 founding by a team led by Murray and Steve Kirsch, the company's chairman.

http://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/120/28878?7649

Web 3.0: user-generated networks?

European researchers took the concepts of Web 2.0, like user-generated content and social networking, into the real world. They hope to create user-generated physical networks so internets could be set up, by anyone, anytime. It’s radical and, surprisingly, fairly realistic. Welcome to Web 3.0.

The internet, Web 1.0, is so incredibly powerful that even now, almost 20 years later, we have only begun to explore its potential. Web 2.0, with its YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and blogs galore is even younger and shows even more potential.

Now, thanks to the work of the WIP project, we may be on the brink of a new internet, a new world wide web. One where users can spontaneously create their own networks, in minutes, and with any kind of data device – mobile or fixed, handheld or deskbound. It means completely reinventing the internet, retooling its underlying technology, creating new operating principles and defining wholly new communications protocols so that it all works with any technology.

“When the internet first emerged, it assumed devices would be fixed in place and linked by wires,” remarks Marcelo Dias de Amorim, a researcher with the WIP project. “But that’s no longer true. A large number of devices are mobile and equipped with wireless communication capabilities.”

Many of the fundamental assumptions of the original internet have been superseded and many other pillars of the web are simply ad hoc (even bootstrap) solutions to discrete problems. It all appears rather accidental.

WIP wants to change all that, reinventing the internet and its underlying methods in what they cheerfully describe as disruptive technology. It is revolutionary, radical, but is it realistic?

http://cordis.europa.eu/ictresults/index.cfm?section=news&tpl=article&ID=89453