Highlights from the Manufacturing
Engineering Laboratory, March 2007

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NIST's Evaluation of Translation Devices Shines In All Languages

From January 29^th - February 2^nd 2007, NIST held its first Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) TRANSTAC (Spoken Language Communication and Translation System for Tactical Use) evaluation since being funded to serve as the Independent Evaluation Team (IET) for this program. The NIST IET team is comprised of members of MEL's Intelligent Systems Division and multiple groups within the Information Technology Laboratory. The goal of this program is to demonstrate capabilities to rapidly develop and field translation systems that enable speakers of different languages to communicate with one another in real-world tactical situations. The evaluation was held at the NIST campus and involved over 75 participants including 10 Marines, 10 Native Arabic speakers, 18 members of the evaluation team, and multiple members of five different evaluation teams (i.e., IBM, SRI, Sehda, BBN, and Carnegie Mellon University).

The TRANSTAC systems are being developed to help our military overseas communicate with people who speak different languages. The initial target language is Iraqi Arabic. In operation, a Marine speaks an English utterance into a TRANSTAC system. The system recognizes his/her speech, translates the words into Iraqi Arabic, and speaks that utterance to an Arabic speaker. The Arabic speaker then speaks their response and the same process occurs again (except from Arabic to English).

The systems were evaluation in three ways:

1. A lab experiment (in a very quiet environment) where a Marine is provided a series of questions that they need to get answers to and an Arabic speaker answers those questions (in Arabic) with answers that were provided to him. All communication must occur through the TRANSTAC device and the participants are seated at a table.
2. A field experiment that was structured similar to the lab experiment except with tightly controlled background noise and the Marine and the Arabic are mobile.
3. An "offline" experiment where audio files of voices in both Arabic and English are fed into the TRANSTAC system and the resulting translations are judged for accuracy. This allows for a highly repeatable test that minimizes subtle variations between the inputs that are fed to the teams' systems.

The results of this TRANSTAC evaluation will be analyzed over the next couple of months and will include a number of automated metrics as well as some human judgments. Very preliminary results showed marked improvement compared to previous evaluations held nine months ago.

The DARPA program manager was extremely please with the NIST team for both its IET coordination and the way that the evaluation was structured. NIST will be holding a similar evaluation again in mid-July 2007.

Contact: Craig Schlenoff, 301 975 3456

Interactions

Japanese Agency Invites MEL Researcher to Discuss SCADA Security

From February 12 - 16, 2007, MEL researcher Keith Stouffer traveled by invitation of the Japanese Information-technology Promotion Agency (IPA) to Tokyo, Japan to discuss Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) Security with members of the Japanese government, and management officers and information system engineers from the communication, electric power supply, gas, finance, traffic and medical services industries. Keith presented at the Security Seminar for Critical Infrastructures and met with the Japan Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center (JPCERT/CC) during the trip.

The Security Seminar for Critical Infrastructures was jointly hosted by IPA, the Japan Telecom Information Sharing and Analysis Center (ISAC) and JPCERT/CC. The seminar aimed to promote security issues to management officers and information system engineers from the critical infrastructures. Approximately 250 members of the Japanese government, management officers and information system engineers from the communication, electric power supply, gas, finance, traffic and medical services industries attended the seminar. On February 14^th, Keith presented a one-hour introduction to SCADA security and the NIST SCADA security efforts. This presentation was the only non-Japanese presentation during the seminar and simultaneous translation was provided for the attendees. An additional one-hour meeting was held immediately following the seminar with approximately 30 attendees, where Keith answered specific questions about SCADA security and the work that NIST and the USA is performing in the area.

On February 15^th, Keith had a four-hour meeting with JPCERT/CC to discuss SCADA security and how Japan and the USA can collaborate in the area. JPCERT/CC is Japan's central coordination center for gathering computer incident and vulnerability information, issuing security alerts and advisories, and providing incident responses as well as education and training to raise awareness of security issues. JPCERT/CC coordinates with other Computer Emergency Response Teams worldwide, including US-CERT, which coordinates defense against and responses to cyber attacks across the U.S.

Additionally, during the visit, Keith met with several high-level Japanese officials including Yusaku Nakata, Executive Director of IPA, Ikuo Misumi, General Manager of the IT Security Center at IPA, Kazumasa Utashiro, Board Chairman for JPCERT/CC, and Yurie Ito, Director of Technical Operation for JPCERT/CC to discuss how Japan and the USA can collaborate in the area.

Contact: Keith Stouffer, 301 975 3877

MEL Researchers Give Invited Talks at Tri-National Nanotechnology Workshop

MEL researchers Jon Pratt and Gordon Shaw traveled to Ottawa, Canada on February 7-8, 2007 to represent NIST at the Tri-National Workshop on Standards for Nanotechnology hosted by the National Research Council (NRC) of Canada. Both Jon and Gordon presented invited talks on nanoscale measurement and calibration needs/issues, with Jon providing an overview of emergent small force metrology, and Gordon presenting an overview of his exploratory research and development (R&D) project focused on electrochemical joining of nanocomponents. The two attended the event at the invitation of Dr. Jennifer Decker, Team Leader, Nanometrology at the Institute for National Measurement Standards (INMS) at the NRC, whom they had met during the IMEKO World Congress in Brazil last September. Dr. Decker along with Dr. Alan Steele, who delivered opening remarks and serves as the INMS Director of Metrology, invited approximately 60 representatives from the National Metrology Institutes of the U.S., Mexico, and Canada to discuss topics relating to standards for nanotechnologies, including: harmonization of measurement and characterization with health, safety, and environmental issues; and priorities for Canada, U.S., and Mexico to improve trade and expedite regulatory processes. The workshop targeted participation from researchers involved in nanotechnology exploratory R&D as well as applications. A broad spectrum of other government stakeholders involved in nanotechnologies was present, including members of the Canadian Advisory Committee to ISO TC229 Nanotechnologies.

Contact: Jon Pratt, 301 975 5470, Gordon Shaw, 301 975 6614

Recognition

MEL Researcher Elected as 2007 Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers

MEL researcher Ram D. Sriram was elected a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. This award is to acknowledge Ram's exceptional technical leadership in the area of both development and application of new information technologies to the field of engineering; and his pioneering work in the applications of artificial intelligence techniques to engineering design automation, particularly for civil and mechanical engineering applications. Ram's Distributed and Integrated Collaborative Engineering Environment (DICE) project at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1986-1994) was one of the first attempts to develop a set of tools and techniques for a computer-supported collaborative engineering environment. His recent technical leadership on interoperability standards has resulted in helping the manufacturing industry achieve considerable reduction in interoperability costs.

Contact: Steve Ray, 301 975 3508