Aug
8

Automated Software Development – A New Revolution in Software Engineering

sciencegeek on August 8th, 2009

Software development is undoubtedly a complex and laborious process. Software engineers really work hard to carry out a particular software. But now a European experiment is going on which will automate the building and testing phase of programming, thus reducing the time and efforts used in this process.

Software Development Cycle

Software Development

First Ever Computer Program:

Computer programming has came a long way since days when Ada Lovelace wrote the first ever computer program in 1842. It was a small program written to calculate Bernoulli numbers. These days programming was not as complex and was not more than an individual effort.

Present day Scenario:

These days’ computer programs are getting more and more complex. A team of software developers works for years to develop a program, building the concept, coding, testing, debugging and then finally releasing and maintenance of programs.

Now if we need to reduce the time and effort in software development process, the only thing we can do is to “Automate the Process.”

The ETICS project:

ETICS project is a giant leap in the field of software development. It will automate the most of the software programming tasks thus helping software developers, managers and testers and will also help to obtain high quality. This will also help in reducing the cost of software and time taken in development.

The new system:

This new system will help software developers and users to automate the most of the process in development and testing execution. This amazing platform will use latest in “Grid” software and it can operate in multiple platforms. It can also be customized and developed further as it is an open source project.

Developers can install the client interface of system and then they can use results from round-the-clock builds. Tests can also be monitored via web and configuration metadata of software can also be browed and edited via a secure web application.

Mr. Alberto Di Meglio: Man behind this project

Mr. Alberto Di Meglio of CERN, the European organization for nuclear research is leading the research. In his words:

“By automating many of their day-to-day tasks, the ETICS system supports software managers, developers and testers in obtaining higher quality software.”

Development:

The ETICS platform has been developed in two phases over 3 years and has been continuously refined in collaboration with users. Some more new functions are being developed for ETICS 2 which will help software developers to run complex tests over distributed networks.

We must hope that this new system will surely bring a new revolution in the field of software development and testing.

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Aug
7

Scientist Found Hyperactive Galaxies while Looking 11 Billion Years in Past

sciencegeek on August 7th, 2009

Scientist have found hyperactive galaxies while looking 11 billion year in past. They have measured the speed of stars in a distant galaxy that is around 11 billion light year far from us and found that stars are rotating at a speed of 1 million mile per hour. This speed is twice the speed of our sun in Milky Way Galaxy.

Comparison of Milky Way and Compact Galaxy

Comparison of Milky Way and Compact Galaxy

Scientists used combined power of Hubble Space Telescope of NASA and 8-meter Gemini South Telescope in Chile. While Hubble found that size of these distant galaxies are a fraction of the galaxies we see today, Gemini telescope is used to clock their speed using Spectroscopy.

According to Pieter van Dokkum, professor of astronomy and physics at Yale University and head of this project, the galaxy they have seen is very small as compared to all modern galaxies like our own Milky Way. But the motion of stars is as if they were in a giant galaxy. Now it is matter of discussion that how it is possible for these galaxies containing so much mass in such a small volume can form in early universe and then evolve into galaxies like we see in near universe.

The team behind this research combined data from NASA,s Hubble Telescope and Gemini South Telescope in Chile. While data collected by Hubble Space Telescope confirmed that the galaxy under observation is very small than the galaxies we see today, 8-meter Gemini telescope measured the motion of stars.

In words of Mariska Kriek of Princeton University, New Jersy, a team member in this research:

“By looking at this galaxy we are able to look back in time and see what galaxies looked like in the distant past when the universe was very young.”

What conclusion they got from this:

Right now it’s hard to say for any of astronomers that how such compact and massive galaxies form and why they are not seen in current universe. But one possibility says that it may be the dense central region of a very large galaxy that is going to form eventually. So it may be concluded that centers of big galaxies formed first in the beginning of universe.

What next?

Astronomers are planning to study the formation of these galaxies by observing galaxies in farther back in time. They will use Wide Field Camera 3, recently installed on Hubble Space Telescope.

According to van Dokkum:

“The ancestors of these extreme galaxies should have quite spectacular properties as they probably formed a huge amount of stars, in addition to a massive black hole, in a relatively short amount of time.”

Most important questions to be answered:

There are 2 most strange questions about this research:

1)      How it is possible for those galaxies to contain so much mass in such a small size?

2)      If it was the starting of formation of galaxies then how galaxies grew so much in past 10 billion years that we see in today  universe?

To solve these problems scientist have to understand the dynamics of these young compact galaxies. We should hope that this study of past will help us to solve many more puzzles regarding the evolution of universe.

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Aug
5

Samsung S9110 Watch phone – A New Wave in Mobile Industry

sciencegeek on August 5th, 2009

Samsung has created a new wave in mobile industry with the launch of its first watch phone Samsung S9110, giving completion to LG GD910. Samsung S9110 is the thinnest phone measuring 11.98mm while its competitor LG GD910 has a thickness of 13.9mm.

With sporty looks it looks like a dream come true for those gadget freaks who always wanted to feel such James Bond gadgets in real life.

Samsung S9110 Wrist Phone

Samsung S9110 Wrist Phone

Features:

The considerable features of Samsung S9110 wrist phone are 1.76 inch glass, scratch proof touchscreen, stainless steel body with many other facilities such as Bluetooth 2.1, Outlook Email sync, MP3 Player, 2.1 speakerphone and voice recognition system. Some other features are 176 x 220 pixel, 262k color TFT TSP display, 40 MB memory, Li-Ion 630 mAh battery and 57.5 x 41.1 x 11.98mm / 91g footprint.

Some Disadvantage:

Although it is not supporting 3G features and thus you may lack features like Video calls and high rate data transfer but still it looks like a hard competitor to LG. Also memory is no expandable so you have to be satisfied with 40 MB. You will also lack data transfer tools such as HSCSD, EDGE, 3G, WLAN Infrared and USB. But this phone is made basically for handy use so must compromise on these.

Cost:

Cost of Samsung S9110 is €450 that is approximately $639, seems little higher but looking at the features and look, it’s reasonable.

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Aug
4

Will Computer Unlock the Mystery of 4000 Year Old Indus Valley Script?

sciencegeek on August 4th, 2009

Indus valley is one of the most important urban civilizations under research till date for its mysterious scripts. Archaeologists believe that Indus Valley was the beginning of Indian civilization that flourished around 2600 to 1900 B.C. in the area that is border of modern Pakistan and India. It was discovered in 1922 and since then a lot of work has been done on analyzing the language, but still that mysterious language of one of the earliest civilizations is an unbroken code.

The Mysterious Script

The Mysterious Script of Indus Valley

The Mysterious Language:

The records of their language have been found on seals, small pieces of soft stones and on copper tablets. It is also proved that Harappans (that age was called Harappan Age) sailed to far countries for trading purposes as their seals have been recovered in Mesopotamia civilization that is Modern Iraq.

Around 400 different signs have been used in the language with the average length of text to 5 signs, while the longest text is of 14 signs.

According to some experts this language belongs to Dravidian family and it is logo-syllabic, but some think that these signs are just pictogram of political or religious icons instead of a language.

Latest Research on this Mystery:

A team of Indian and American scientist and archeologists are now using mathematics and computer science to break the mysterious code. The project is being funded by Packard Foundation, Sir Jamsedji Tata Trust, University of Washington and the Indus Research Center.

The study shows distinct patterns in the symbols’ placement in sequences and creates a statistical model for the unknown language.

According to Rajesh Rao, Associate professor of computer science at University of Washington:

“The statistical model provides insights into the underlying grammatical structure of the Indus script. Such a model can be valuable for decipherment, because any meaning ascribed to a symbol must make sense in the context of other symbols that precede or follow it.”

They are actually working on recognizing the mathematical patterns in the sequence of symbols. Calculations show that the order of symbols is meaningful; taking one symbol from a sequence found on an artifact and changing its position produces a new sequence that has a much lower probability of belonging to the hypothetical language.

Till now they are sure that this script is a language and there is a clear underlying logic in Indus Script.

As it is previously discussed that their seals have been recovered in Mesopotamia civilization in Modern Iraq it is sure that they used to trade with these civilizations and hence it is a firm belief that the language is not just a religious or political symbol, but a mode of representing different information in West Asia by Indus traders.

Rao says:

“The finding that the Indus script may have been versatile enough to represent different subject matter in West Asia is provocative. This finding is hard to reconcile with the claim that the script merely represents religious or political symbols.”

Markov Model of Research:

The researchers have used Markov statistical model that estimates the likelihood of a future event based on patterns seen in the past. It was developed a century ago by Andrey Markov, a Russian mathematician and is used in economics, genetics, speech-recognition and many other fields.

Researcher have used statistical model to fill missing symbols on damaged archeological artifacts. This will increase the pool of data available for encoding the scripts of that ancient civilization.

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Aug
2

NEXI – The Next Generation Robot with Facial Expressions

sciencegeek on August 2nd, 2009

MIT media lab has achieved a new milestone in the field of robotics with the development of a new robot that is able to show various facial expressions such as “slanting its eyebrow in anger” or “raise them in surprise.” It shows wide variety of facial expressions while communicating with people.

Nexi - The Next Generation Robots

Nexi - The Next Generation Robots

Scientist has named this advanced robot “NEXI”. The name has been derived from the fact that it is the next generation robot which will be used in a range of applications in personal use especially where a human-robot team work is to be carried.

Designing Features of NEXI

Xitome Design, an innovative designing and development company has designed head and face of NEXI. They are specialized in designing cutting edge robotic design and development.

Neck Mechanism:

The expressive robotics started with a neck mechanism sporting 4 degrees of freedom (DoF) at the base, plus pan-tilt-yaw of the head itself. This mechanism has been made to time the movements so they imitate human speed.

Face:

The face of NEXI is also specially designed to use gaze, eyebrows, eyelids and an articulate mandible which helps in expressing a wide range of different emotions.

Chassis:

Chassis of NEXI has been designed and developed by Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics UMASS
 (University of Massachusetts), Amherst. It is based on uBot5 mobile manipulator. It can balance dynamically on two wheels. Arms of NEXI are able to pick a weight upto 10 pounds.

Head of the Project:

Cynthia Breazeal, a famous robotics expert and associate professor of Media Arts and Sciences at MIT is heading the project NEXI. She has worked successfully on projects like Kismet in the past. She named her new product as an MDS (mobile, dextrous, social) robot.

Features of NEXI:

NEXI has many other features except a wide range of facial expressions. It has self-balancing wheels like the Segway transporter, to ultimately ride on. Currently it uses an additional set of supportive wheels to operate as a statically stable platform in its early stage of development. It has hands which can be used to manipulate objects, eyes (video cameras), ears (an array of microphones), and a 3-D infrared camera and laser rangefinder which support real-time tracking of objects, people and voices as well as indoor navigation.

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