R&D and Technology Transfer

Semantically Enhanced Representation of Legal Contracts for Web Applications

by Mihály Héder and Balázs Rátai

Carneades Contract Format (CCF) is a flexible and extensible representation framework for legal contracts. This new format makes it possible to represent equally the text, document structure and semantics of legally binding agreements. The concept was developed by Carneades Consulting and the Internet Technology Department of SZTAKI, which also played an important role in the selection of the optimal technical solution and developed the first demo implementation.

Contiki: Bringing IP to Sensor Networks

by Adam Dunkels

The open-source Contiki operating system brings IP, the Internet Protocol, to sensor networks through the uIP (micro Internet Protocol), uIPv6 protocol stacks and the SICSlowpan IPv6-over-802.15.4 adaptation layer.

Preferential Text Classification: Learning Algorithms and Evaluation Measures

by Fabio Aiolli, Riccardo Cardin, Fabrizio Sebastiani and Alessandro Sperduti

Researchers from ISTI-CNR, Pisa and from the Department of Pure and Applied Mathematics at the University of Padova, are explicitly attacking the document classification problem of distinguishing primary from secondary classes by using 'preferential learning' technology.

DataCell: Exploiting the Power of Relational Databases for Efficient Stream Processing

by Erietta Liarou and Martin Kersten

Designed for complex event processing, DataCell is a research prototype database system in the area of sensor stream systems. Under development at CWI, it belongs to the MonetDB database system family. CWI researchers innovatively built a stream engine directly on top of a database kernel, thus exploiting and merging technologies from the stream world and the rich area of database literature. The results are very promising.

On looking FORWARD

by Sotiris Ioannidis, Evangelos Markatos and Christopher Kruegel

Computer systems, networks and Internet users are under constant threat from cyber attacks. FORWARD is an initiative by the European Commission to promote collaboration and partnership between academia and industry in their common goal of protecting Information and Communication Technology infrastructures.

Enhancing Authentication in eBanking with NFC-Enabled Mobile Phones

by Diego A. Ortiz-Yepes

In the past few months, a mobile phone-based authentication mechanism for eBanking has been developed at the IBM Zurich Research Laboratory. At the core of this mechanism, we have used NFC and CAP. The latter, Chip Authentication Program (CAP), is a specification developed by MasterCard that provides mechanisms for customer authentication based on smart cards compliant with EMV (Europay - MasterCard - Visa). The former, Near-Field Communication (NFC), is an emerging technology related to RFID that is already being incorporated into commercially available mobile phones, allowing them to communicate over very short distances (in the order of a few centimetres) with other NFC-enabled devices. This ability, when employed in tandem with CAP - as we have done in our authentication mechanism - greatly enhances the overall usability of the authentication system.

Sino-French IT Lab in Beijing Opens to European Institutions

by Stéphane Grumbach

After twelve years, the Sino-French IT Lab in Beijing has opened its doors to European partners. Created in 1997 by INRIA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences to promote cooperation between France and China in IT, LIAMA ('Laboratoire d'Informatique, d'Automatique et de Mathématiques Appliquées') has conducted more than 100 research projects associating laboratories in the two countries.

DocSearch: UHF RFID Technology for Document Localization

by Marina Buzzi, Marco Conti and Daniele Vannozzi

Radio-frequency identification (RFID) and sensor technologies are now enabling the Internet of Things. Ultra High Frequence (UHF) RFID readers and passive tags can be valuable tools for emerging pervasive services since they allow tags to be read at distances ranging from one-half to few meters, depending on antenna power, size and polarization. However, UHF has limits due to RF reflection, shadowing and absorption. Our experimental study investigates the feasibility of UHF RFID for reliable and efficient retrieval of archived documents.

Integrated Site Security for Grids

by Kate Bradshaw

Between 90 and 98% of the emails received each day by most organizations are spam. While some are nothing but a harmless nuisance, others are malicious and capable of causing substantial damage. This is just one of the ways in which Grid and other computing sites can be attacked. To increase awareness and provide security guidance, CERN has led a European Commission co-funded project entitled Integrated Site Security for Grids (ISSeG), which was completed at the end of March 2008. The final results of this 26-month project are available from the project Web site.