Web searchers who evaluated identical search-engine results overwhelmingly favored Yahoo! and Google, providing evidence that branding matters as much on the Internet as off, according to a Penn State study. Researchers in Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) copied Google results pages from four different e-commerce queries, ascribing them to four different search engines -- Google, MSN Live Search, Yahoo! and an in-house engine created for the study. Then the researchers showed the pages to 32 study participants who were asked to evaluate the engines performance in returning relevant results.

Just as clouds block the sun, they interfere with laser communications systems, but Penn State researchers are using a combination of computational methods to find the silver lining and punch through the clouds. "Radio frequency communications are generally reliable and well understood, but cannot support emerging data rate needs unless they use a large portion of the radio spectrum," said Mohsen Kavehrad, the W. L. Weiss professor of electrical engineering and director, Penn State Center for Information and Communications Technology Research. "Free space optical communications offer enormous data rates but operate much more at the mercy of the environment."

Penn State researchers have developed a new algorithm which enables cell-phone users to fetch data from music to TV shows as quickly as feasible with minimal channel switches. With the computing technique, mobile devices can pick up data that may have been "missed" when first broadcast, thereby alleviating the wait for subsequent broadcast cycles. Because it minimizes channel switching, the new algorithm also reduces power use, thereby extending battery life. "Currently, mobile devices retrieve broadcast data similar to how TV viewers watch TV shows simultaneously broadcast-by switching channels," said Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "But with our algorithm, cell-phone users don't have to wait for fewer broadcast cycles to retrieve the data as the mobile device can pick up objects broadcast across parallel air channels." The researchers are continuing to explore algorithms for mobile data retrieval and anticipate developing additional ones that will even further reduce power consumption and time, Mitra said.

Beauty is no longer just in the eye of the beholder-computers "taught" to evaluate photographs can match people's aesthetic judgments of "beautiful" or "pretty" more than 70 percent of the time, according to Penn State researchers. The researchers have developed a computational-aesthetics software that enables computers to single out aesthetically pleasing photographs based on more than a dozen visual features. The software holds promise for Web users who, when searching for images, might want to hone in on what's "best" rather than browsing through thousands of returned images. It also has potential application for digital cameras. The software could inform photographers that they need to improve shot composition before they snap a picture, the researchers said. "The software trains computers to judge photographs on 56 different visual features such as color saturation, exposure and composition," said James Wang, assistant professor in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). "On average, if people think something is a 'good' picture, our computer thinks so, too."

Penn State researchers have developed software that allows databases to "talk to each other" automatically without compromising the security of the data and metadata because the queries, data communicated and other information are encrypted. The Privacy-preserving Access Control Toolkit (PACT) acts like a filter but is resilient to eavesdropping or other attacks because of the encryption. "The software automatically regulates access to data, so some information can be exchanged while other data remains confidential and private," said Prasenjit Mitra, assistant professor of information sciences and technology and member of the research team that developed the software. "Often when we implement security, we decide not to give access to data. This tool preserves security while allowing permitted access." Organizations like government agencies, non-profits and corporations frequently need to access data belonging to other organizations. But sharing data is difficult because databases are typically constructed using different terms or vocabularies.

"Play" or back-and-forth dialogue between users and designers can lead to IT systems that are more responsive to the subtleties and ambiguities of users' different perspectives, say Penn State researchers. Because it makes users and designers teammates during the development process, the "play" model also can reduce the multiple upgrades and updates that plague enterprise-wide or "Newspeak" solutions, says Frederico Fonseca, assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). Too often, system designers aim for the "killer application" with the assumption that it will work well for every user and address every business or organizational need. But users are not homogeneous, and enterprise-wide or "Newspeak" solutions don't take into account users' different perspectives. The consequence: updates and upgrades are needed. "For example, departments in banks interpret the term 'loan date' differently," Fonseca said. "One department views it as the date when the loan was applied for, another when the loan was approved and yet another when the money was released."