Computers Blog

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a $65 million grant to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK) to develop Kraken, a state of the art supercomputer. Kraken will enhance the computational power of the TeraGrid, the world’s largest, most powerful and comprehensive distributed cyberinfrastructure for open scientific research.

“Like the gargantuan sea monsters Kraken, which inspired the naming of this supercomputer, the possibilities in scientific and engineering advances it enables are enormous, limited only by the confines of human imagination and vision beyond the frontiers of science,” said NSF Director Arden L. Bement in a taped message that was played today at a luncheon in Knoxville. (more…)

Study by OHSU expert says a 40 percent hike in IT workforce will be needed to move U.S. healthcare toward a paperless system that controls costs and reduces medical errors.

If the U.S. healthcare system moves toward wider adoption of advanced information technology systems to control health care costs, reduce medical errors and improve patient care, it will need at least 40,000 additional health IT professionals - or almost 40 percent more than U.S. hospitals now are estimated to employ.

That is the finding of an analytical report presented today, at a meeting on Capitol Hill of the Steering Committee on Telehealth and Healthcare Informatics, by William Hersh, M.D., professor and chair of the Department of Medical Informatics & Clinical Epidemiology at Oregon Health & Science University.

The meeting was moderated by U.S. Rep. David Wu, D-Ore., author of a bill, H.R. 1467, addressing the need to train more health IT professionals, which the House passed recently and that is awaiting consideration in the Senate.

“I commend Dr. Hersh for his research on healthcare IT workforce issues,” said Rep. Wu. “His findings further justify the need for my 10,000 Trained by 2010 Act, which provides funds for healthcare IT education. A workforce trained in healthcare IT is essential to bringing greater quality and efficiency to the healthcare industry”.

“The need for IT professionals in health information technology (HIT) settings is large and will increase as more advanced systems are implemented,” Hersh and co-author Adam Wright concluded in their report.

“If our data represent a correct sampling of the entire U.S., then the current IT staff workforce is about 108,390 FTE (full-time equivalents). However, if the U.S. HIT agenda is fulfilled and hospitals move to higher levels of adoption, an additional 40,784 FTE will be required”.

That represents an increase of 37.6 percent over the current FTE total. This level of staffing, the report’s authors say, would bring U.S. hospitals up to the advanced level of HIT adoption that has been shown to be linked to quality improvements and cost savings. (more…)

AS IF computer viruses and worms arent enough of a nuisance, malicious hardware, which will be much more difficult to detect, could soon become a threat too.

Today, computer viruses, which are programs downloaded either as an email attachment or when someone visits a website, are responsible for most computer attacks. Hackers use them to gain control of a computer so that they can press-gang it into sending spam or downloading more malicious software, such as a keystroke logger, which can record credit card details and passwords typed in by the user.

Anti-virus (AV) software monitors a computer for signs of a virus, such as chunks of telltale code. To fight back, hackers write new viruses that use different code, or bury the code deeper in the operating system where the AV software isnt programmed to look. So AV firms and hackers are locked in an arms race, continually trying to outdo each other. (more…)

The Computer and Information Science and Engineering (CISE) directorate at the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a solicitation for proposals for the new Cluster Exploratory (CluE) initiative. The CluE program was announced in February as a part of a relationship between Google, IBM and NSF. NSF hopes this initiative will help lead to innovations in the field of data-intensive computing, as well as serve as an example for future collaborations between the private sector and the academic computing research community. (more…)

Bull party continued at the US and the Indian markets, thanks to encouraging economic data and strong numbers from corporates. The US S&P 500 gained 1.2 per cent, Dow Jones Industrial Average moved up by 1.3 per cent and the tech-focussed Nasdaq jumped 2.2 per cent.

The BSE Sensex gained 3 per cent and the NSE’s S&P CNX Nifty 2.3 per cent following RBI’s surprise decision to keep the key lending rates steady despite inflationary pressures.

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With both the markets displaying firm trends, the Indian ADRs also recorded strong gains. Among them, the biggest gainer was Satyam Computer, which jumped by 10.4 per cent to close at $27.18 over the previous week’s close of $24.61.

Satyam last week had signed an agreement with steel major Arcelor-Mittal, as one of the two global IT service providers, to consolidate sub-contractor activities and help in overall business transformation. The deal (details of which were not disclosed due to non-disclosure terms) provides opportunity to offer integrated process technology solutions from the Satyam’s manufacturing practice.

The other IT majors — Wipro (6.26 per cent), Patni Computers (6.21 per cent) and Infosys Technologies (2.32 per cent) — also ended the week on firm note.

Tata Motors was the other big gainer as its ADR jumped 6.65 per cent, despite the company announcing a dip in April sales numbers.

The company reported a decline of 5.8 per cent in sales, including exports, at 38,149 units for April compared with 40,486 units in the same month last year.

Telecom majors — Tata Communications and MTNL — also gained by 2.82 per cent and 2.31 per cent respectively.

It was a mixed show by banking majors HDFC Bank and ICICI Bank. While the former closed a tad higher, the latter ended the week with a loss of 0.64 per cent.

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However, last week’s biggest loser was Sterlite Industries, which shed 2.46 per cent. Profit-booking coupled with general softening of prices at the commodity bourses seem to have affected the sentiment of the counter. The company announced a 46.5 per cent rise in net profit at Rs 306.45 crore for the fourth quarter ended March 2008.
Rediff.com was the only other loser, whose ADR declined by 0.97 per cent at $9.2 ($9.29)