Dr. Dobb's Journal May 2001
A University of California at Berkeley computer-science professor and a Missouri sculptor have teamed up to meld the power of computer-generated geometry with artistic creativity. The computer visualization program, designed by Carlo Sequin, generates geometric shapes based on the mathematics of the surface geometry of soap bubbles. Sculptor Brent Collins started using Sequin's program instead of his painstakingly designed prototypes of intertwined arches and saddles using wire mesh and beeswax. Sequin's program uses concepts from the mathematics of topology or minimal surfaces (as found in soap bubbles). To view some of the sculptures generated by Sequin's program and by Collins's original techniques, see http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~sequin/SCULPTS/scherk.html.
The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) has selected Andrew Chi-Chih Yao as the winner of the 2000 Turing Award. Yao received the award "in recognition of his fundamental contributions to the theory of computation, including the complexity-based theory of pseudorandom number generation, cryptography, and communication complexity." His work has contributed substantially to the fields of computer security and distributed computing. Yao is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and previously was a recipient of ACM's Donald E. Knuth prize. He has taught at MIT, Stanford, and the University of California at Berkeley. Yao is currently a Professor of Engineering and Applied Science at Princeton. He has also served as a consultant to IBM, DEC Systems Research Center, and Xerox PARC.
Cobol dates back to 1960 and still lives on, particularly on mainframe computers. A Cutter Consortium (http://www.cutter.com/) survey of 40 large corporations indicates that more than half still run critical applications written in Cobol on mainframe computers. The problem is that it's getting harder and harder to find Cobol programmers to maintain and upgrade these applications. "Nearly everyone who knows anything about mainframes is 50 or older. The people we depend on today are going away," concluded Ken Orr, author of the Cutter report, "and nobody under 30 wants to work with dinosaur technologies."
But all is not lost. Cobol still has a cohort of supporters. The open-source TinyCobol project (http://tiny-cobol.sourceforge.net/) is working to create a free Cobol compiler. "Here in Brazil it is not so difficult to find Cobol programmers," says TinyCobol project leader Rildo Pragana. "Though most of our developers are veteran programmers, many of the interested users are young, excited by the way some strange features of Cobol solve problems." Nevertheless, programmers still complain that Cobol developers are growing scarce, and say that the blame lies with the way computer science is taught. "None of the universities and trade schools are teaching Cobol any longer," says developer Jim Noeth, a participant in the TinyCobol project. "The problem comes from academia not knowing what is going on in the business world."
The University of Washington, University of California at Berkeley, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science have joined forces to establish an "online knowledge-building community" for the purpose of discussing and exploring scientific controversies. Called SCOPE, short for "Science Controversies Online: Partnerships in Education," the site is available at http://scope.educ.washington.edu/. The first "controversies" available for discussion are entitled "Declining Amphibians," "Genetically Modified Foods," and "Malaria." Each topic includes FAQs, links to research information, a glossary of terms, and, if you sign up for free membership to SCOPE, a threaded discussion in which you can participate.
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Artificial Intelligence Lab has developed a robot whose primary function is to be sociable. With red lips, blue eyes, pink ears, and yellow eyebrows, the robotic head called "Kismet" has sensors that respond to close physical proximity and motion, such as something being jiggled close to its face. People can interact with the robot using a microphone and Kismet can vocally respond via an articulatory synthesizer. Kismet has cameras, which cause it to back away if the cameras can't resolve an image (when that image is too close, for example). Inspired by research in child developmental psychology, Kismet is powered by 15 computers with a host of algorithms designed to enable Kismet to learn by trial and error and display emotions such as fear, anger, happiness, and so forth. As well as developmental psychologists, cartoonists have been consulted to give Kismet more human-like responses. You can visit Kismet at http://www.ai.mit.edu/projects/humanoid-robotics-group/kismet/kismet.html.
Daniel Bleichenbacher of Bell Labs' Secure Systems Research Department (http://www.bell-labs.com/) has found a flaw in the Digital Signature Algorithm (DSA) that is part of the Digital Signature Standard (DSS). The flaw has to do with the random number generation technique employed by the algorithm. Although the flaw does not pose an immediate threat due to the computational power required to take advantage of it, Bleichenbacher has recommended a modification to the algorithm. Bleichenbacher also discovered a flaw in RSA's public key encryption standard (PKCS#1) two years ago, which required RSA to make modifications to the encryption protocol.
Claude Elwood Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist considered one of the pioneers of the binary age, has died at the age of 84. Shannon worked on early analog calculating machines as a graduate student at MIT in the early 1940s and wrote his Master's thesis on Boolean logic. His academic adviser was Dr. Vannevar Bush, who became famous for developing the first differential calculating machine and his role in the Manhattan Project. Shannon's thesis, "A Symbolic Analysis of Relay and Switching Circuits," is considered one of the most important contributions to the development of binary logic, which enables the digital computer. He is also noted for his contributions to telecommunication technology during his long tenure at AT&T Bell Laboratories. He is the author of The Mathematical Theory of Communication (University of Illinois Press, 1963), a pioneering book that laid the groundwork for modern telecommunications. He finished his career as a professor at MIT.