ANTARCTICA REVISITED...A team of research and field specialists from Robotics, the Univ. of Pittsburgh, NASA Ames Research Center and the Antarctic Chilean Institute are beginning a trip to Patriot Hills in Antarctica at the end of December. They will be testing component technologies to enable robots to search for meteorites on the frozen continent. The expedition, one of a series of upcoming treks, will "address the technological and operational issues related to long-term robotic exploration of the Moon or Mars." Among the research efforts planned ares deployment and testing of a panospheric camera allowing 360-degree visualization under Antarctic conditions; evaluation of the accuracy of a radar sensor for mapping potentially dangerous ice fields and detecting buried objects; experiments to quantify solar power output in Antarctica through a collection system built by RI researchers in their preparations to develop a solar-powered robot; and, testing of systems for direct ground- to-satellite communication and evaluation of the usefulness of the Global Positioning System (GPS) in Antarctica. Robograds Matthew Deans, Alex Foessel and Liam Pederson, and their fellow researchers will gather in Punta Arenas, the southernmost town in Chile, to then be transported to Patriot Hills. Per Dimitrios Apostolopoulos, project manager, "most of the experiments will be performed locally, within two kilometers of the Patriot Hills base camp in fairly well-known terrain." Watch for updates!

HAL, HAL, HIS TEAM'S ALL HERE...The USA team for the International Olympiad of Informatics returned last week from this year's contest in Cape Town, South Africa. The team of 4, including students from Dallas, TX, St. Paul, MN, Baton Rouge, LA and New Providence, NJ, brought home a gold medal, silver medal and bronze medal for their efforts, noted Hal Burch, who served as one of the team coaches. 63 countries participated in the event, with a total of 220 competitors (no more than 4 from each country). The contest included two days of competition, with the students being assigned three programming problems on each day. Hal recommends you check out the on the IOI or the USA Computer Olympiad site at either www.win.tue.nl/ioi or usaco.uwp.edu for all particulars.

BLACK FRIDAY ARRIVES...CS will assemble December 17/18 in Wean 4623. RI meets Friday (yes, an actual Friday, Black Friday) on December 19. Students will frolicking elsewhere :-)

SCS INVITED TALKS...
**RANDY BRYANT was one of 3 invited speakers at the ASIAN '97 Computer Science Conference, held in Kathmandu Nepal. He notes, "It was quite a study in contrasts: attending sessions dealing with very theoretical aspects of computer science, and then going outside into primitive, third world conditions." Randy adds, "I also had the following celebrity sightings: Michael Rabin (our keynote speaker), and movie actors Richard Gere & Steven Seagal. The latter were in Kathmandu to attend the investment ceremony for a lama as the head of the Nyingma school of Tibetan Buddhism. Although just 2 years old, he is said to be the reincarnation of a great Buddhist master. Seagal, by the way, is the reincarnation of the great 17th century master Chungdrag Dorje." From our own master :-)
**ED CLARKE was a Distinguished Speaker in Computer Science at Rice University on November 17. He spoke on "Model Checking." On November 18, he presented a Distinguished Lecture in Computer Science at the University of Houston, where he addressed "A Model Checker for Security Protocols." A busy December is also in the works. From December 18-20, Ed will attend the Seventeenth Conference on the Foundations of Software Technology & Theoretical Computer Science in Kharagpur, India, where he will deliver an invited talk on "Model Checking."

IN THE UPCOMING NEWS...This week's upcoming Chronicle of Higher Education (December 19) will feature a story on the Alice Project. "Carnegie Mellon U. Gives Away Animation Program" notes that CMU has "given away 17,000 copies -- and counting -- of a new program that allows virtually anyone to create animated three-dimensional graphics." Operating on any PC equipped with Windows95 or Windows NT, the program is designed so effectively that "a college sophomore majoring in art would find it easy to use." Project leader, Randy Pausch, also notes that "Alice handles the technical details; all the creator does is specify what the objects on the screen are to do." Good stuff. Check it out!

THE IMPORTANCE OF GOOD THEORY/ALGORITHMS...At the recent IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, David Wilner, CTO of Wind River Systems, the makers of VxWorks, a real-time embedded systems kernel used in the Mars Pathfinder mission, "explained in detail the actual software problems that caused the total system resets of the Pathfinder spacecraft, how they were diagnosed, and how they were solved" says Mike Jones of Microsoft. In a summary he shared on the internet, Mike noted that David said "some of the real heroes of the situation were some people from CMU who had published a paper he'd heard presented many years ago who first identified the priority inversion problem and proposed the solution ...Bringing things full circle, it turns out that the three authors of this result were all in the room, and at the end of the talk were encouraged by the program chair to stand and be acknowledged. They were Lui Sha, John Lehoczky, and Raj Rajkumar. When was the last time you saw a room of people cheer a group of computer science theorists and their significant practical contribution to advancing human knowledge? :-)" The paper referenced was "Priority Inheritance Protocols: An Approach to Real-Time Synchronization", IEEE Transactions on Computer, September 1990. A great talk by David, a refreshing summary by Mike, and many pats on the back to our real-time team!

FACILITIES UPDATE...SCS Facilities will be working with a "skeleton" crew from December 23 through January 5, to allow the team a chance to get in some well-earned vacation after a busy year.
**The Help Desk will be closed during this period, with their normal 9:00-5:00 schedule of operations resuming January 5.
**Operations will have mimimal, but continuous staffing 24 hours each day over the holidays. Emergencies may be reported to the Operator at x2607, although non-critical interruptions in core services will be deferred until January 5.
**Help/Gripe will not be read from December 24 through January 5.
**The campus network will experience a "complete system shutdown" from 5:00 am on December 26 to 1:00 am on December 27, for their annual fire inspection, HVAC work, and network upgrades. The SCS network will be unable to reach the campus network or connect outside SCS/CMU during this time.
So, PLEASE plan accordingly and watch the SCS Bboard for updates or revisions related to this scheduling.

WIZARDS AND THEIR WONDERS..."Wizards and Their Wonders: Portraits in Computing" has been published jointly by ACM and The Computer Museum. Developed as a companion piece to the "Wizards and Their Wonders" exhibit, shown in Washington DC and The Computer Musem in Boston in Fall 97, this astounding and touching collection of photographs documents and pays tribute to the forerunners, inventors, entreprenuers, communicators, and venture capitalists who have made the "computer revolution" so profound, exciting and enduring. Among the notables, Allen Newell, Raj Reddy, Herbert Simon, Gordon Bell, Edward Feigenbaum, James Gosling, Anita Jones, Rick Rashid, William Strecker, William Wulf...and many more alumni/friends of SCS.

AND MORE NEWS...
**"A Virtual Wonderland: A computer program named 'Alice' helps develop animated worlds" was featured in the December 1 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. A happy Randy Pausch "surrounded by stuffed animals and strings of Christmas lights" in his lab, with Kevin Christiansen sporting a virtual reality program in the background, was the photographic accompaniment to this article highlighting Alice and the lab's perspectives and expectations for future applications.
**"CMU Professor's Computer Program Speaks Her Mind", details Mike "Fuzzy" Mauldin's experiences with Julia, "a chatterbot, a program that can carry on a typed conversation with a person." Fuzzy's new company, Virtual Personalities, will be developing the concept of computerized personalities and trying to make them commercial (watch for Sylvia!). The article also notes recent "computerized characters" developed in SCS, including Albert Einstein (with Grand Illusion Studios), The Woggles, and Nurse and Patient (Phoebe Sengers). The article, appearing in the November 30 Tribune-Review is available from scstoday or from the SCS News Board.
**Fuzzy Mauldin's work on Julia and Sylvia also made Time Magazine!
**"CMU Scientist Warns" They're Gaining on Us!", was featured in a recent a Tribune-Review. It offers some glimmerings and insights into Hans Moravec and his expectations for a robotic future in everyone's life. Hans's new work, "Robot: Mere Machine to Transcendent Mind" will soon be released by Oxford University Press, but for now...catch the article.

SLEIGH BELLS RINGS, ENGINES REVVING, BUSSES TOOTING, AND AIRPLACES LIFTING... as students and members of the SCS community begin their holiday travels. Best wishes to all for a festive year's end and a great New Year!

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