Current handcrafted approaches to compiler development are no longer sustainable. With each generation of re-configurable architecture, the compiler development time increases and the performance improvement achieved decreases. As high performance embedded systems move from application specific ASICs to programmable heterogeneous processors, this problem is becoming critical.

This project explores an emerging alternative approach where we use machine-learning techniques, developed in the artificial intelligence arena, to learn how to generate compilers automatically.

According to the first empirical study of its kind in the UK, by Cambridge law professor Patricia Akester, it's the former. DRM is so rage-inducing, even to ordinary, legal users of content, that it can even drive the blind to download illegal electronic Bibles.

Their system, dubbed retransmission steganography (RSTEG), relies on sender and receiver using software that deliberately asks for retransmission even when email data packets are received successfully. "The receiver intentionally signals that a loss has occurred. The sender then retransmits the packet but with some secret data inserted in it," he says in a preliminary research paper (www.arxiv.org/abs/0905.0363). So the message is hidden among the teeming network traffic.

Just when you thought invisibility cloaks couldn't get any weirder, researchers come up with this: a way to make one object look like any other.

Kurzweil’s successes at technological and social forecasting are highlighted (he correctly predicted the rise of the Internet, the fall of the Soviet Union, the year that a computer would defeat a human champion at chess, and the list goes on and on), and the Singularity – which he forecasts for 2045 – is presented as his latest and greatest prediction, resulting from a painstaking process of data analysis covering technology trends in computer technology, biotechnology, nanotechnology, AI and other areas.

"This is a capacity that everyone thought was uniquely human, but we've found evidence that some animals can keep a beat." -- Adena Schachner, Harvard University

The team of researchers [...] studied connection patterns in the BitTorrent file-sharing network — one of the largest and most popular P2P systems today. They found that over the course of weeks, groups of users formed communities where each member consistently connected with other community members more than with users outside the community. [...] Given the impact of this threat, the researchers developed a technique that prevents accurate classification by intelligently hiding user-intended downloading behavior in a cloud of random downloading.

Come join us in this ever-expanding collective worldbuilding effort. Within the vast universe that is Orion's Arm you will find:

* Hard Science

* Plausible Technology

* Realistic Cultural Development

* A vast Setting

* 10,000+ years of historical development

* Realistic Exobiology

U.K. researchers found that children with Asperger syndrome (AS) do not experience the normal twofold increase of cortisol upon waking up. Levels of the hormone in their bodies do continue to decrease throughout the day, though, just as they do in those without the syndrome.

A science-savvy robot called Adam has successfully developed and tested its first scientific hypothesis, all without human intervention. This hints at a future where robots could spare lab assistants and post-docs some of the drudgery of research.