ITL Newsletter
November 1998
CNN VISITS ITL TO SEE THE NIST ELECTRONIC BOOK
CNN's Science and Technology News Team recently visited the Information
Technology Laboratory (ITL) to film NIST's Electronic Book. They met with the
students who are part of the electronic book development team. The students
demonstrated to the film crew the features of the NIST Electronic Book that they
developed over the past year.
An electronic book is a device that displays text on a flat panel display, in the form of
an ordinary, paper-based book. Features that an electronic book offers over paper
books are the ability to change the font size, underline and highlight words with the
touch of a finger, search for specific terms, and incorporate an online dictionary.
The electronic book is a tool to disseminate information and to enable knowledge
management. For example, the electronic book could be used on a factory floor to
access shop manuals or be used in an education environment. In both cases, the
electronic book replaces stored volumes of paper-based books. The NIST Electronic
Book incorporates the features in a two-screen, touch-sensitive display, using Visual
Basic as the operating environment and voice activation, a feature not found on current
commercial versions. Over the next six months, four portable, commercial electronic
books are scheduled to debut: the Softbook, the Rocketbook, the EveryBook, and the
Librius Millenium Reader.
The NIST Electronic Book was the impetus for ITL and the Video Electronics
Standards Association (VESA) to co-sponsor the first conference on electronic books.
"Electronic Book '98: Turning a New Page in Knowledge Management" held at NIST
on October 8-9, 1998, was attended by more than 400. One goal of the workshop was
to gather together the various technology stakeholders in the electronic book arena:
electronic book manufacturers, display makers, publishers and other content providers,
storage manufacturers, software developers, and end-users to discuss technical and
business developments related to the emerging electronic book industry. The other goal
of the workshop was to facilitate a call to discuss voluntary standards and
interoperability concerns for commercial electronic books.
NIST Director Ray Kammer and ITL Director Shukri Wakid delivered introductory
remarks at the workshop, calling for the need for open, voluntary standards for rapidly
developed product-concepts in the information technology industry. Featured speakers
included Dick Brass, VP for Technology Development, Microsoft; Gary Shapiro,
President, Consumer Electronics Manufacturing Association; Carol Risher, VP for
Copyright and New Technology, Association of American Publishers; and John
Mancini, President, Association for Information and Image Management.
The workshop also featured an exhibit of the major commercial electronic books, as
well as the NIST Electronic Book. Further, representatives from the major electronic
book manufacturers, publishers, software developers, end-users, and NIST met to
inaugurate the Open Electronic Book Standards Committee. The Committee seeks to
develop standards for electronic publishing and encryption for content displayed by
electronic books.
Victor McCrary initiated the NIST Electronic Book idea two years ago. Working
under the leadership of ITL's John Roberts and Kwabena Kumi, a college student from
the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, the students, Joshua Thornton, James
Ward, Brandon Reed, Karthik Subramaniam, Garrett Ducker, and Christopher Brown,
have worked on this project over the past year as part of a cooperative work-study
program administered by the local-area high schools.
For more information, contact Victor McCrary, (301) 975-4321,
victor.mccrary@nist.gov.
FEDERAL INFORMATION PROCESSING STANDARDS (FIPS) ACTIVITIES
Proposed Reaffirmation of Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-1,
Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules
The Federal Register of October 23, 1998, issued a request for comments on NIST's
five-year review of FIPS 140-1, Security Requirements for Cryptographic Modules, for
federal agency use. FIPS 140-1 was first issued in 1994. The standard identifies
requirements for four security levels for cryptographic modules to provide for a wide
spectrum of data and a diversity of application environments. The standard provided
that it should be reviewed within five (5) years to consider its usefulness and new or
revised requirements that may be needed to meet technological and economic changes.
Comments from industry, government agencies, and the public are invited on the following alternatives for FIPS 140-1:
- Reaffirm the standard for another five (5) years. NIST would continue to support the validation of cryptographic modules that implement the standard. FIPS 140-1 would continue to be an approved method for protecting unclassified information.
- Revise the applicability and/or implementation statements of the standard. Please include specific recommendations. If a revision is necessary, NIST will continue to support the FIPS 140-1 validation program until the revision is approved.
Comments on other proposed recommendations would also be welcomed.
Interested parties may order a copy of FIPS 140-1 from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, VA 22161, (703) 487-1650. Copies of FIPS 140-1 may also be downloaded from http://csrc.nist.gov/fips.
Written comments concerning this standard should be sent to: Information Technology Laboratory, ATTN: Review of FIPS 140-1, Bldg. 820, Room 562, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Gaithersburg, MD 20899.
Comments may also be sent via e-mail to "140-1review@nist.gov." All comments, written and electronic, will be published on the NIST Web site, " http://csrc.nist.gov/encryption/." Comments must be received on or before January 21, 1999.
For further information, contact Miles Smid, National Institute of Standards and Technology, Bldg. 820, Room 426, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, (301) 975-2938, miles.smid@nist.gov.
UPDATE ON NEW PUBLICATIONS
ITL publishes the results of studies, investigations, and research. The reports listed below may be ordered from the following sources as indicated for each:
Superintendent of Documents
U.S. Government Printing Office (GPO)
P.O. Box 371954
Pittsburgh, PA 15250-7954
Telephone (202) 512-1800
Fax (202) 512-2250
Home Page: http://www.access.gpo.gov
National Technical Information Service (NTIS)
5285 Port Royal Road
Springfield, VA 22161
Telephone (703) 605-6000
Rush Service (800) 553-6847
Fax (703) 321-8547 or (703) 321-9038
Home Page: http://www.ntis.gov/ordernow
The Sixth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC-6)
Ellen M. Voorhees and Donna K. Harman, Editors
NIST Special Publication 500-240
August 1998
SN003-003-03573-4 - $60.00 paper
Order from GPO
This report constitutes the proceedings of the sixth Text REtrieval Conference (TREC-6) held in Gaithersburg, Maryland, November 19-21, 1997. Co-sponsored by NIST and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the conference was
attended by 150 people. Fifty-one groups including participants from 12 countries and 21 companies were represented. The conference was the sixth of an ongoing series of workshops to evaluate new technologies in text retrieval.
A Cognitive Framework for Information Visualization: Annotated Bibliography
By Benjamin A. Knott, Marc M. Sebrechts, James. H. Howard, Michael S. Miller, and Joanna Vasilakis
NIST GCR 98-739
July 1998
PB98153562 - $33.00 paper
Order from NTIS $17.00 microfiche
This bibliography consists of selected readings that provide a preliminary cognitive
framework for the design and evaluation of information visualization. Articles are
drawn from the core areas of cognitive science, psychology, and computer science.
WebSubmit: Web-Based Applications with Tcl
By Ryan P. McCormack, John E. Koontz, and Judith Devaney
NISTIR 6165
June 1998
PB98148752 - $23.00 paper
Order from NTIS $12.00 microfiche
This report describes WebSubmit, a Web-based framework providing seamless access to applications on a collection of heterogeneous computing systems. Strong authentication methods allow users to execute tasks on remote systems as if they were directly connected. The use of Tcl packages and namespaces creates a system that is flexible, extensible, and modular.
Dielectric Breakdown in a Simplified Parallel Model
By Howland A. Fowler, Judith E. Devaney, John G. Hagedorn, and Francis E. Sullivan
NISTIR 6174
June 1998
PB98148778 - $25.50 paper
Order from NTIS $12.00 microfiche
This report describes the application of stochastic Laplacian growth as a model for fast streamer trees in liquid dielectrics. The growth of fast streamer trees in liquid-dielectric insulation provides the precursor "leader" conduction path through which damaging flashover between electrodes can take place. A global description of the process may be useful for its characterization.
Effect of Resolution and Image Quality on Combined Optical and Neural Network Fingerprint Matching
By Charles L. Wilson, Craig I. Watson, and Eung G. Paek
NISTIR 6184
July 1998
PB98146020
Order from NTIS
This paper presents results on direct optical matching, using Fourier transforms, and neural networks for matching fingerprints for authentication. Results demonstrate that
Fourier transform matching and neural networks can be used to match fingerprints that have too low image quality to be matched using minutia-based methods.
Document Image Recognition and Retrieval: Where Are We?
By Michael D. Garris
NISTIR 6231
June 1998
PB98169162
Order from NTIS
This paper discusses survey data collected as a result of planning a project to evaluate document recognition and information retrieval technologies.
UPCOMING TECHNICAL CONFERENCES
North American ISDN Users' Forum (NIUF)
The NIUF addresses high-level concerns over a broad range of Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN) issues and seeks to reach consensus on ISDN Implementation Agreements.
Participants include ISDN users, ISDN implementors, ISDN service providers, and Customer Premise Equipment (CPE) vendors.
Dates: Feb. 22-24, 1999; June 21-23, 1999; Oct. 25-27, 1999
Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Contact: Sara Caswell, (301) 975-2937, niuf@nist.gov,
http://www.niuf.nist.gov/misc/niuf.html
12th Annual Federal Information Systems Security Educators' Association (FISSEA) Conference
Founded in 1987, FISSEA is an organization run by and for federal information systems security professionals. FISSEA assists federal agencies in meeting their computer security training responsibilities. The annual FISSEA conference addresses the major challenges confronting information security trainers and educators.
Date: March 9-11, 1999
Place: Hilton Hotel, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Contact:Fran Nielsen, (301)975-3669, fnielsen@nist.gov, http://csrc.nist.gov/organizations/fissea.html
5th Human Factors and the Web Conference
NIST is hosting the 5th Conference on Human Factors and the Web. The theme this year is "The Future of Web Applications." This is an annual conference whose purpose is to provide a forum for sharing information among a community of human factors engineers, designers, and developers who are interested in producing Web sites that are more useful and usable.
Date: June 3, 1999
Place: NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland
Contact: Sharon Laskowski, 301-975-4535, sharon.laskowski@nist.gov
Registration information is not available yet.
Also visit our web site, http://zing.ncsl.nist.gov/hfweb/
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Last Update November 1998
ITL Publications