Attention span
August 15, 2008
By Marc Settle
Reporter, BBC iPM
As the age at which children start to get familiar with computers and the net gets ever lower, questions are starting to be asked about what that exposure is doing to our children’s brains and their ability to concentrate.
These questions are ones which eminent neuroscientist Baroness Greenfield says needs to be confronted. The director of the Royal Institution says the “sensory-laden environment” of computers could result in people “staying in the world of the small child”.
Professor Greenfield has spent a lifetime researching the physiology of the brain, and now thinks that there could be a link between the attention span of children and the growing use of computers.
In an interview for Radio 4’s iPM she said: “The last 10 years have seen a three-fold increase in the prescription of the drug Ritalin, a drug used for Attention Deficit Disorder. One asks why
“Why suddenly is there greater demand for a drug for attentional problems” she asked. “This might, and I stress might, be something to do with the increased exposure of young children to unsupervised and lengthy hours in front of a screen.”
"The technology is creating an environment that is answer rich, but we’re question poor"Susan Greenfield
iPM: Listen to the interview with Baroness Greenfield
Baroness Greenfield wondered if the cause was growing computer use.
“Could it be, and this is just a suggestion which I think we should look into, could it be if a small child is sitting in front of a screen pressing buttons and getting reactions quickly for many hours, they get used to and their brains get used to rapid responses” she said.
If children do not have stories read to them and have little practice of concentrating for long periods this could effect how they handle the sedate pace of school life, said Baroness Greenfield.
She asked: “Could it be that they then have to sit still for half an hour and of course they’re not used to that because they’re used to the rapid interaction with the screen, and could it - again a question - be that they are fidgety and hyperactive and then diagnosed as having a disorder”
The brain, says the distinguished neuroscientist, changes all the time - but it is very sensitive to the environment its in, and so it might be affected by the continual use of computers.
“What we need to question is this: are we putting people into the optimum environment How can we create an environment which will pre-dispose the brain to react in ways we consider ideal” she said.
“The technology is creating an environment that is answer rich, but we’re question poor.”
She contrasts the life of modern-day children with the generation which grew up without computers, who had to work to find answers by going to a library to look things up.
Baroness Greenfield also claims that the distinction has been lost between information and knowledge - with the facts provided by easy-accessed information losing the context necessary for knowledge.
Her views are echoed by the writer Nicholas Carr in his recent essay “Is Google making us stupid” that was published in Atlantic Monthly. In the article Mr Carr claims that his mind is changing as a result of greater computer use. “Deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle,” he said.
But a contrasting view comes from the philosopher Julian Baggini, who has written that the fear of change and of children becoming “degenerate aliens” is as old as parenthood, an “age-old anxiety” which he accused Baroness Greenfield of dignifying.
In response, the professor told iPM that she would rather not be complacent and “end up with a world that we don’t want”.
Baroness Greenfield can be heard on BBC Radio 4 at 17.30 on Friday 15 August 2008.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Your questions
August 15, 2008
Have you ever wondered how the Universe started How did we get here And what other secrets are out in space
On September 10, scientists at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) will try to answer these and other questions by re-creating the conditions that existed just billionths of a second after the Big Bang.
The BBC will join scientists as they switch on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a giant subterranean machine that will probe the mysteries of the cosmos.
By smashing together tiny particles, it is hoped that the LHC will reveal the origins of mass, show us what all the invisible matter in the cosmos is made of, and perhaps even create mini black holes.
Professor Brian Cox is one of the LHC scientists and a physicist at CERN. He is on hand to answer you questions about the project and what could be found.
Send in your Big Bang questions using the form below.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Mars robots begin test campaign
August 15, 2008
By Pallab Ghosh
Science correspondent, BBC News
Engineers have unveiled the latest prototypes for a European rover that is due to land on Mars in 2015.
BBC News has had exclusive access to the test vehicles which are being put through their paces by space company UK Astrium at its HQ in Stevenage.
The British team on this European Space Agency (Esa) project has nicknamed the prototypes Bruno and Bradley.
The six-wheeled robots are claimed to be the most robust and manoeuvrable planetary rovers to be built.
According to Chris Draper, Astrium’s ExoMars rover vehicle industrial manager, they can go literally where no rover has gone before.
“Obviously, the American MER rovers (Spirit and Opportunity) that were put up by Nasa enjoyed an extreme amount of success. They were able to travel large distances, well beyond their planned lifetimes. But we’re hoping that with our baby, we’ll be able to go places that are actually much further.”
EXOMARS MISSION CONCEPT- Set to leave Earth in 2013; primary aim is to search for life
- Will launch on a heavy-lift rocket, such as the Ariane 5
- Vented landing bags allow for a larger payload
- Rover will carry a 16.5kg ‘Pasteur’ instrument suite
- 30kg geophysics/environment static station also possible
- This would study the weather and listen for ‘Marsquakes’
- Concept to cost Esa states more than first estimates
Each prototype has six-wheel steering, which means that they can turn all six wheels and crab sideways.
They also have what engineers describe as “wheel walking capability”. This means that when the vehicles come across a particularly steep or slippery slope, they can anchor themselves with five of the wheels and inch each wheel forward one at a time, to crawl over an obstacle.
The prototypes have a unique intelligent navigation system which enables them to plot their own course.
Such is the distance between the planets, it can take 20 minutes for an instruction sent from Earth to arrive at Mars. The delay means instant commands to change direction are not possible and so a rover must have autonomy to make decision if, for example, it is approaching a dangerous precipice.
And because the rover will make its own decisions, it can also cover more ground.
ExoMars’ primary mission is to search for signs of past or present life.
To do that, it will make its way to locations thought most likely to support life and drill up to two metres into the ground. Sub-surface soil samples will be analysed by an onboard laboratory.
The rover will have the largest array of scientific instruments to be taken to Mars. So if it gets strong indications that organisms might be present, it will be able to subject samples to a wide range of tests to confirm initial readings.
But the executives at Astrium are concerned that after having done the groundwork in developing the vehicle systems (the chassis, locomotion and navigation systems), the company might actually lose the opportunity to build the final flight vehicle.
"It’s quite a tense period for us in Astrium and for the other companies involved in building ExoMars"Dr Ralph Cordey, UK Astrium
The concern stems from the recent funding difficulties faced by the Science and Technologies Facilities Council (STFC), the agency which supports astronomy and space science in the UK.
The company won its role on the mission as leader of vehicle development partly because of the funding the STFC put through Esa. But Astrium’s science business development manager, Dr Ralph Cordey, said that given the recent squeeze on British astronomy and space resources, he was now unsure if that same level of funding would continue.
“It’s quite a tense period for us in Astrium and for the other companies involved in building ExoMars; and for all the many, many scientists who will depend on this mission,” he told BBC News.
“On the one hand, we are moving ahead with a great momentum, as you’ve seen. This is not a paper project - there is real engineering going on and we are on the verge of building the real hardware that will go on to the planet Mars. 
“But on the other hand, we do have a real problem. In order to complete the project, further funding needs to be made available and it won’t be until November that we are sure that that is in place.”
The cost of ExoMars has risen dramatically since European space ministers first approved the venture in 2005. Revised estimates to be agreed next month with industrial partners mean the price for ExoMars will nearly double from its original 650m-euro price tag.
If the UK wants to maintain its position on mission, it will have to boost its financial commitment to ExoMars or come to some other compensatory arrangement with Esa.
If the UK plays the wrong hand at the next space ministers’ meeting in November, UK Astrium warns, the contract to build the flight vehicle could go to a space company sited in another Esa member state.
The STFC said: “The UK will be working with its international partners to try to bring about a mission that has high impact and is affordable, in a process of negotiation that will culminate in decisions at the ministerial in November 2008.
“Meanwhile, it remains a high strategic priority for the UK as emphasised previously.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Game store
August 15, 2008
Next time you cut down a monster in an online game or punch a supervillain into the next county remember that your actions are helping to write the history of a new world.
To ensure that the big and small events in these fledgling worlds are not forgotten, erased or overlooked, the University of Texas, Austin has kicked off a project to study the best way to preserve their history.
“It’s a huge challenge for archivists to deal with digital information,” said project co-ordinator Professor Megan Winget from the School of Information at the university.
Prof Winget’s interest in preserving massively multi-player games grew from her involvement in digital artworks that do not hang on a wall but invite interaction, and change as a result.
“One of the most interesting problems for digital preservation is interactivity and how difficult that is to preserve,” she said.
“Video games offer all of the same problems as digital art,” she said. “They are interactive, very complex and a lot of people get involved in making them happen.”
Oral history
The game preservation project aims to interview game makers to tease out the process of creating a game and the materials, such as sketches, doodles and early code, involved in bringing one to life. The experiences of people who play the beta, or trial, versions would be useful as their feedback often shapes the final game.
The insights from the interviews will help the project define how to go about preserving such malleable media, said ProfWinget.
"“You cannot just throw everything into a box and put it in the attic so in 50 years your kids can look at it"Prof Megan Winget
“When you are trying to preserve anything you are trying to preserve the most important things about that artefact,” she said. “With video games we do not yet know what is important.”
The project will establish a repository that, Prof Winget hopes, game makers will come to use as an archive for games.
She also hopes that the project gets game makers thinking about the steps they need to take during game creation to preserve materials.
“We want to raise the consciousness in the industry about how important these records are,” said Prof Winget. “I do not think they save anything or it’s saved in such a way that they would not be able to recognise the significance of what they are holding.”
As well as talking to game makers the project will conduct interviews with players who took part in or witnessed the significant world events seen in some online games.
Examples of this, said Prof Winget, were the assassination of Lord British in Ultima Online, the death of Morpheus in The Matrix Online and the “Corrupted Blood” plague that killed hundreds of characters in some parts of World of Warcraft.
Prof Winget wants to get hold of oral histories of these events plus any media that people collected while they were unfolding.
During preliminary work many people mentioned the importance of the murder of Lord British - actually the avatar of Richard Garriott, co-creator of Ultima Online.
“A lot of people have mentioned that to me as a pivotal moment in their lives,” she said. “I would like to talk to people who experienced that, saw it happen or where they were when they heard about it.”
“Maybe we can talk to the people who did it and whether they knew Lord British was Richard Garriott,” she said.
Future proof
But, said Prof Winget, it was not just game makers and games that faced a problem when it came to preserving important documents, images or videos memories held on a computer.
“You cannot just throw everything into a box and put it in the attic so in 50 years your kids can look at it,” she said. “That’s not going to happen, because digital media degrades so fast.”
Rory McLeod, digital preservation manager at the British Library, said some webmail providers were starting to put archiving and backup systems in place to help people preserve records. However, other technologies were proving more troublesome.
“Old digital cameras do pose a problem,” he said. “The RAW formats that cameras capture images in are proprietary in nature so this raises issues around accessibility if the information about that RAW format is lost.
More broadly, he said, librarians and archivists often bumped up against copyright and legal deposit legislation.
“Those are two areas that we need to address to do our jobs successfully not just for today but for the next generation,” said Mr McLeod.
“As more and more information is published in e-only formats, the legislation must keep pace so that we as digital librarians can keep this information safe without the threat of legal issues hanging over us,” he said.
“We are far from drowning in digital data as our skills have come a long way,” he added. “It’s more a case of not drowning but waving.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Windows 7 details to be released
August 15, 2008
A first glimpse at the technology inside the next version of Windows will be given in October.
Microsoft has said that engineering information about Windows 7 will be shared with attendees at two technical conferences it runs.
Windows 7 developers will show off their work at both the Professional Developers Conference and the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference.
Based on Vista, Windows 7 is expected to be released in January 2010.
The announcement about the unveiling was made on a new Windows 7 blog written by engineers putting the software together.
Before now details about Windows 7 have been scant. Writing on the blog the two senior engineers on the project, Jon DeVaan and Steven Sinofsky, said this was because Microsoft did not want to talk up features that never make it to the final product.
It was also wary, it said, of talking about features and technologies in a way that would cause confusion among its partners.
Microsoft has also been reluctant to talk about Windows 7 as it continues to promote Windows Vista as its flagship operating system.
What is known about Windows 7 is that it will use components from Vista at its core and that it will have a touch interface that, with the appropriate screen, can recognise gestures to complete tasks. For instance pinching the screen could be used to close documents or manipulate images.
Industry experts have speculated that Windows 7 will also have more virtualisation technologies onboard as well as tools that make it easier for people to get at their data and programs as they use different machines
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Ex-Apple lawyer in options deal
August 15, 2008
The former top lawyer at Apple has agreed to pay .2m (£1.1m) to settle charges over stock options.
Nancy Heinen was charged with changing records to hide illegally backdated stock options granted to Apple bosses, including chief executive Steve Jobs.
Ms Heinen neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing in settling the charges. Apple did not comment on the deal.
Apple is one of a number of firms to have been probed for backdating stock options to executives.
Incentive
The US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), said Apple had underestimated its expenses by some m because of the backdating.
The SEC alleged that Ms Heinen fraudulently allocated 4.8 million options to Apple’s executive team in February 2001 and 7.5 million options to Mr Jobs in December that year.
As part of the settlement, Ms Heinen also agreed to a five-year ban against serving as an officer or director of a public company.
Apple has not faced any charges, after agreeing to co-operate in the probe.
Fred Anderson, Apple’s ex chief financial officer, was also charged by the financial watchdog in April 2007 and agreed to a .5m settlement with acknowledging any wrongdoing.
Backdating is not illegal per se provided the practice is made clear in company accounts, otherwise there is the risk that profits can be overstated.
Stock options were often offered to employees during the dotcom boom as an incentive.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
Legal milestone for open source
August 14, 2008
By Maggie Shiels
Technology reporter, BBC News Website, Silicon Valley
Advocates of open source software have hailed a court ruling protecting its use even though it is given away free.
The US federal appeals court move overturned a lower court decision involving free software used in model trains that a hobbyist put online.
The court has now said conditions of an agreement called the Artistic Licence were enforceable under copyright law.
“For non-lawgeeks, this won’t seem important but this is huge,” said Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig.
” In non-technical terms, the Court has held that free licences set conditions on the use of copyrighted work.When you violate the condition, the licence disappears, meaning you’re simply a copyright infringer.
“This is a very important victory.”
Copyright infringement
According to details outlined in the ruling, Robert Jacobsen had written and then released code under an Artistic Licence.This meantanyone using thatfree code had to attribute the author, highlight the original source of the files and explain how the code had been modified.
Mr Jacobsen, who manages open source software group Java Model Railroad Interface, accused commercial software developerMatthew Katzer and his company ofignoring the terms of the Artistic Licence when they took his code and used it to develop commercial software products for trains.
An earlier court ruling did not agree with Mr Jacobsen’s stance that Mr Katzer and his company had infringed his copyright and said the licence Mr Jacobsen used was “intentionally broad.”Instead the court ruled he might be able to claim breach of contract.
Legal experts have said the distinction is important since under federal copyright law a plaintiff can seek statutory damages and can be more easily granted an injunction than under contract law.
But now the US appeals court “determined that the terms of the Artistic License are enforceable copyright conditions”.
“Copyright holders who engage in open source licensing have the right to control the modification and distribution of copyrighted materials,” Judge Jeffrey White wrote in his 15-page decision.
“Open source licensing has become a widely used method of creative collaboration that serves to advance the arts and sciences in a manner and at a pace few could have imagined just a few decades ago,” Judge White said.
‘Welcome change’
Mark Radcliffe of the Open Source Initiative said: “Although the reasoning is limited to the Artistic Licence and the interpretation of each open source licence will depend on the wording of its provisions, this decision is a welcome change.”
The ruling has implications for the Creative Commons licence which offers ways for work to go into the public domain and still be protected.These licenses are widely used by academic organisations like MIT for distributing coursework, scientific groups, artists, movie makers and Wikipedia among others.
Creative Commons filed an amicus or friends brief on behalf of Mr Jacobsen.Its general counsel Diane Peters told BBC News”The federal court recognised that even though licensors give up some rights it doesn’t mean they have any less rights to access the remedies our law provides.
“This opinion demonstrates a strong understanding of a basic economic principle of the internet; that even though money doesn’t change hands, attribution is a valuable economic right in the information economy.”
If the case had gone the other way it would have been a real blow to the open source movement, according to Jeff Neuberger a partner at Proskauer Rose LLP.
He told the Wall Street Journal: “Lots of companies rely on open source, and if they had lost their ability to enforce their rights theywould have shied away from the software.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation
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