Despite great progress recently, scientists say there are still significant obstacles to creating a robot with human intelligence. It is almost impossible to predict when machines will become as clever as humans, says robotics Professor Ronald Arkin. Source: Artipot

Researchers hoping to create robots that can coach, motivate and monitor people could look to recent research by interactive computing doctoral student Ja-Young Sung on how some humans develop personal relationships with their Roombas. Source: Washington Post

Matthew Wolf, a research scientist in the Center for Experimental Research in Computer Systems (CERCS), has won a 2009 Leadership in Academia Award. The Intel Academic Community, a group of more than 1,000 faculty and researchers around the world, gives out the award. Source: Intel Software Network

Interactive computing Professor Thad Starner will help kick off the 36th annual Meeting of the Research Council on Mathematics Learning at Berry College Thursday with a discussion on assistive technology for the deaf. Source: Rome News Tribune

Ajai Karthikeyan hopes the next Facebook emerges out of a Georgia Tech dorm room. The 19-year-old computing major has launched the Young Entrepreneurs Society to help students transform ideas into businesses. Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

A project led by interactive computing Professor Michael Best and Monrovia-based project manager John Etherton, a computing alumnus, provides technology to give more Liberians a voice in the country's Truth and Reconciliation process after a devastating civil war. Source: World Bank

The Computing Research Association (CRA) has honored Computing alumnus Eugene Spafford with its 2009 Distinguished Service Award. Spafford, a noted expert in information security, received a master's degree in 1981 and a Ph.D. in 1986. Source: CRA

As more people bring personal technology to work — most often smartphones — malicious code writers are targeting these weak points of entry. In its 2009 Cyber Threat Report, the Georgia Tech Information Security Center said botnets could move from the desktop to the smartphone within the year. Source: Washington Post

Interactive Computing Professors Bruce Walker and Tucker Balch are researching ways to use sound to convey information. The Accessible Aquarium Project, one of the innovative projects going on, translates the movement of fish into music. Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution

Researchers led by computer science Ph.D. student David Dagon have assembled a model, globally mapping out vulnerabilities and attacks that occurred between August 2008 and January 2009 because of a crippling cybersecurity weakness . Source: Forbes

Facebook, an online social networking Web site, angered many of its users this week when it changed its policy for keeping the content its users removed. Amy Bruckman, associate professor of interactive computing, says online content ownership and privacy is an old issue for tools like Facebook and Google. Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution

Kevin Huang, a grad student in interactive computing, has designed a glove with five vibrating motors that helps beginners develop muscle memory while learning to play the piano. Source: AP, NPR, Forbes, Fox, MSNBC, Washington Post and other media

Mark Guzdial has been developing first-year computer science curricula for students in majors other than CS and says the key is to establish the proper context and to use computing as a lens through which to view other disciplines. Source: Computerworld New Zealand

The modeling and simulation industry has great growth potential but faces formidable political and educational challenges. Professor Richard Fujimoto, Chair of the Computational Science and Engineering Division, said one is a steady decline of students entering computer science since the dot-com bubble burst nearly a decade ago. Source: Dailypress.com

Computing alumnus Alexander Stoytchev, now an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Iowa State, and his students are trying to figure out how a robot can learn what children learn over the first two years of their lives. Source: Science Daily

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Interactive Computing Professor Jarek Rossignac and his graduatestudents have developed software that enables pediatric cardiac surgeons to createand manipulate a 3D model of a patient's actual heart to explore and test surgicaloptions on a computer. Source: ACM Queue

Interactive computing Professor Gregory Abowd is one of 44 scientists to be named as a 2008 ACM Fellow. Abowd was recognized for his contributions to ubiquitous computing research, especially applications for education, home and health. Source: ACM

Barack Obama is the first president to have a BlackBerry, and it is making security officials nervous. Computing Professor Patrick Traynor said the vast majority of commercial communications devices cannot be made completely secure. Source: NPR

I don't know why people aren't more afraid of these programs, said Merrick L. Furst, a scientist at the College of Computing. This is like having a mole in your organization that can ... send out any information it finds on machines it infects. Source: New York Times

Professor Beth Mynatt, director of the GVU Center, has been named to the CHI Academy. According to SIGCHI (Special Interest Group in Computer Human Interaction), the CHI Academy honors individuals who have made substantial contributions to the field of human-computer interaction. (Source: ACM)

Most students like to play video games, but Computational Media students Holden Link, Cory Johnson and Ian Guthridge have built and are selling their own. Their game, Audiball, was launched during the first week of Xbox Community Games in November. (Source: Georgia Tech Communications and Marketing)

Jason Ardell and Tim Dorr, who both graduated in 2005 with a B.S. in computer science, have developed a service called Feedscrub that continually learns how to filter news feeds based on the user's reading habits. Source: Atlanta Business Chronicle

For Facebook and other social networks, the struggle...is to find ways to create an environment that encourages truly meaningful dialogue, says Amy Bruckman, an Associate Professor at the College of Computing. Source: Time.com

Interactive computing Professor Thad Starner says sign-language recognition software is about 20 years behind speech recognition software. Starner's group has developed sign-language recognition software for children, using sensor-laden gloves to track hand movements. Source: ABC News and MIT Technology Review

Many girls who watched the 1970s television show The Bionic Woman dreamed of being the technologically enhanced heroine. Robotics Professor Ayanna Howard dreamed of building her. Source: Diverse: Issues in Education

Interactive Computing Professor Irfan Essa says computational journalism, which brings technologists and journalists together to create new computing tools that further the traditional aims of journalism, may even spawn a new kind of participant in the public conversation. Source: Miller-McCune

Ph.D. candidates Christina Gardner and Tamara Clegg in the School of Interactive Computing have cooked up Kitchen Science Investigators, a novel curriculum that uses baking and kitchen staples such as yeast and eggs to help kids get excited about chemistry. Source: New York Times

Assistant Professor Nick Feamster has been recognized as one of the nation's top young scientists with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE). The ceremony was held today at the White House. Source: Georgia Tech Communications and Marketing

Babysitting robots, once the province of futuristic fiction, are on the market. They make conversation, recognize faces and keep track of kids. But some researchers worry kids could be harmed. Roboticist Ronald Arkin says, This stuff absolutely warrants further study. Source: Wired

Computer Science Assistant Professor Jonathon Giffin says the greatest danger to Internet security today are bots and botnets, which have infiltrated up to 15 percent of all computers linked to the Internet. The worst part? It's difficult for individual computer users to protect themselves. Source: Minnesota Public Radio

Georgia Tech's Center for Manycore Computing has been named one of 10 really cool university networking labs. Director Tom Conte says, We're shrinking the technology that made the Internet possible and implementing it inside a single microchip. Source: Network World

The Georgia Tech Information Security Center estimates that15 percent of online computers worldwide are part of botnets: millions ofcomputers infected with malicious code that lets attackers turn them intozombies for their own evil electronic deeds. That's up from 10percent a year ago. Source: The Chronicle of Higher Education

Ali Suleman, who graduated in 2003 with a bachelor's in computer science, founded a company last year called Esgut'a portfolio of Facebook applications that became a genuine viral hit. In April, he sold the company to the Social Gaming Network for seven figures. Source: cnn.com

A course called Computing for Good gave two Ph.D. candidates the opportunity to solve a life-or-death problem: monitoring the safety of blood supplies in African nations ravaged by HIV and AIDS. Source: Network World

Atlanta (December 9, 2008) If you write a blog and haven't been to Skribit (skribit.com) perhaps it's just a matter of time. Paul Stamatiou created the service as a tool to help cure blogger's block (writer's block for bloggers) a little over a year ago, and already it gets about 4 million hits per month from the more than 4,000 blogs using it. Source: GT Communications and Marketing