A semimonthly service from The American Association for Artificial Intelligence providing an eclectic subset from the "AI in the news" page in AI TOPICS, the AAAI sponsored pathfinder web site.
For the entire collection of headlines, excerpts, and pointers to related
pages within AI TOPICS, please visit our news page at:
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/current.html
=======================================
---> FOR HEADLINES ONLY GO TO --->
November HEADLINES
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/current.html#aialert
=======================================
December 1, 2002 [issue date]: The Robot Evolution - MIT's Rodney A.
Brooks is among researchers leading the charge to develop a smarter and
more useful artificial creature. By Jill Jusko. Industry Week.
"The manufacturing industry is no stranger to robots. Huge robot arms
are commonplace in several industrial settings -- particularly automotive
-- and primarily engage in long-run, repetitive tasks such as welding and
assembly. ... Then there are the intelligent robots of science-fiction
movies and books, such as C3PO and R2D2 from the Star Wars movies, which
seem almost human in their ability to reason and feel and interact with
human beings. In his latest book, 'Flesh and Machines: How Robots Will
Change Us' (2002, Pantheon Books), Rodney A. Brooks, director of the Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
in Cambridge, suggests that the 'science fiction fantasy,' as he calls
it, is not so far off. ... But what could increasingly intelligent robots
mean to manufacturing?"
http://www.industryweek.com/CurrentArticles/Asp/articles.asp?ArticleId=1356
November 14, 2002: Man: 0 Machine: 1 -- Beating the world's chess master
was a win for human ingenuity. Book review by Elizabeth Armstrong. The
Christian Science Monitor.
"Feng-Hsiung Hsu, who worked tirelessly for almost two decades to build
this machine, demonstrates in 'Behind Deep Blue' that the computer's victory
was not a matter of machine defeating man, but rather the advancement of
a powerful tool assembled by human beings. And Hsu challenges readers to
celebrate that milestone."
http://www.csmonitor.com/2002/1114/p20s01-bogn.html
November 13, 2002: Web services will drive digital decade -- Gates.
By Anand Parthasarathy. The Hindu.
"Bill Gates wears two hats. He is Chairman and 'head honcho' of the
world's number one software company, Microsoft. He is also its 'Chief Software
Architect'; and it is in this second 'avatar' that he appeared for the
first time on his current Indian tour, speaking today in the Infosys campus,
to over 2000 of Bangalore's 'best and brightest' software engineers. ...
The message Mr. Gates brought was simple: The 'digital decade' that would
see the most startling changes that computers would make to human lives,
was already upon us. ... 'Yet the world is underestimating how fast all
this will happen,' added Mr. Gates, 'Many of the 'impossible dreams' of
computer and artificial intelligence experts will happen -- only they will
take a little longer.'"
http://www.hinduonnet.com/thehindu/stories/2002111402491800.htm
November 13, 2002: The garden of Escher delights. By Victoria James.
The Japan Times.
"In the more than 170 works now showing at the Bunkamura Museum of
Art in Shibuya, the garden of Escher's imagination spreads before us. ...
In a 1980 Pulitzer prizewinning book 'Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden
Braid,' philosopher Douglas Hofstadter speculates that the artist explores
the very notion of self. ... As groundwork, Hofstadter introduces the (mathematical
and artistic) notion of form and ground, whereby one subset is defined
by its exclusion from another set. The philosopher illustrates this with
Escher's 'Mosaic II' (1957), in which black figures against a white plane
define, in the spaces between them, a whole set of other figures (or vice-versa).
Others Escher works are similarly used to cast light on Hofstadter's formulations
of artificial intelligence and the nature of consciousness."
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fa20021113a1.htm
November 12, 2002: Robots on drugs. By Bill Lewis. The Tennessean.
"Robots, a common sight on automobile assembly lines for years, are
appearing in growing numbers in hospital pharmacies, including the one
at Centennial Medical Center in Nashville. Automakers have long known that
robots perform many mundane and repetitive tasks better than people. ...
Hospitals, where medication errors endanger thousands of patients nationwide
every year, are learning the same lesson. ... Called Robot-RX, the computerized
system fills prescriptions with a minimum of human involvement. And, while
one study of hospitals and skilled nursing facilities found that one in
five doses of medicines was given in error, the robot is said to be 99.97%
accurate. ... Preparing a dose of a medicine by hand costs 15 cents, on
average. Robot-RX's cost is 5 cents. ... That frees pharmacists to do more
of the things they went to graduate school for, such as interacting with
nurses and doctors and becoming more involved in patient care, [Alfred
A. Del Gandio Jr.] said."
http://www.tennessean.com/business/archives/02/11/25160184.shtml
November 11, 2002: Good Morning, Dave... The Defense Department is working
on a self-aware computer. By Kathleen Melymuka. Computerworld.
"Any sci-fi buff knows that when computers become self-aware, they
ultimately destroy their creators. From 2001: A Space Odyssey to Terminator,
the message is clear: The only good self-aware machine is an unplugged
one. We may soon find out whether that's true. The Defense Advanced Research
Projects Agency (DARPA) is accepting research proposals to create the first
system that actually knows what it's doing. The 'cognitive system' DARPA
envisions would reason in a variety of ways, learn from experience and
adapt to surprises. It would be aware of its behavior and explain itself.
It would be able to anticipate different scenarios and predict and plan
for novel futures. ... Cognitive systems will require a revolutionary break
from current computer evolution, which has been adding complexity and brittleness
as it adds power. 'We want to think fundamental, not incremental improvements:
How can we make a quantum leap ahead?' says Ronald J. Brachman, director
of DARPA's Information Processing Technology Office in Arlington, Va. Brachman
will manage the agency's cognitive system initiative. ... But what about
HAL 9000 and the other fictional computers that have run amok? 'In any
kind of technology there are risks,' Brachman acknowledges. That's why
DARPA is reaching out to neurologists, psychologists - even philosophers
- as well as computer scientists. 'We're not stumbling down some blind
alley,' he says. 'We're very cognizant of these issues.'"
http://www.computerworld.com/softwaretopics/software/appdev/story/0,10801,75728,00.html
November 11, 2002: It's all in the mind. Comment by Mike Purton. The
Guardian.
"There is, however, one field of endeavour which holds out the hope
of solving the problems of physics and religion, and of uniting them. In
recent years, neuroscientists and philosophers have been trying to establish
the nature of consciousness. Sadly, the debate has been driven largely
by the proponents of artificial intelligence, who are intent on proving
that it is nothing more than a product of brain activity. Computers, they
insist, will one day be able to replicate it in every respect. Research
in this field has none the less thrown up some significant facts, not least
regarding human reaction times."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,837620,00.html
November 11, 2002: Ithaca Discusses Frankenstein Technology - Robotics
related to man-made man. By Aliza Wasserman. The Cornell Daily Sun.
"The Tompkins County Public Library held a community forum with the
theme 'Frankenstein and the Future of Artificial Intelligence' last Thursday
evening. Four specialists in technology and artificial intelligence from
Cornell and the Ithaca community spoke about their areas of expertise and
discussed the relevance of artificial intelligence with members of the
audience. The forum was part of a series of 'Monster Talks' and other activities
at the public library to augment the Frankenstein: Penetrating the Secrets
of Nature exhibit. ... [Bob] Walters stressed the importance of technology
education to create citizens of the world who know as much about technology
as they do about writing. 'Every student in New York state has to learn
about technology because that's what we, as humans, do,' Walters said.
Accordingly, he expressed great concern that the New York State Board of
Regents might soon eliminate the current state mandate on technology education
programs. Although Walters' program and many others have shown excellent
results, technology education is often one of the first to be cut when
funding decreases. ... Panelist Michael Babish M.S. '02 outlined his role
during the past several years with the Cornell RoboCup Soccer Team."
http://www.cornellsun.com/articles/6845/
November 10, 2002: 'I had to break the rules' - Will Wright went outside
the box in creating his popular 'Sims' computer games. Associated Press
/ available from The Herald of Everett.
"'While most of the industry was worrying about how they could build
bigger and more destructive weapons and destroy more people with every
single second of game play, Will was creating concepts that appeal to everybody,'
said Peter Molyneux, creator of the immensely popular game Black and White.
... The games are so popular because they are so lifelike. In SimCity,
Wright blended several simple concepts that made the game's artificial
intelligence appear more complex. What resulted was the illusion of self-organization,
where the whole was smarter than the sum of its parts - an idea called
emergence these days. 'He was a real innovator in structuring his games
as little systems, rather than hero-centric narratives,' said Steven Johnson,
author of the book 'Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities,
and Software.''It turned out that that system - even in the first iteration
- was much more lifelike and organic feeling than any of the simulated
people we'd met in v!
ideo games.'"
http://www.heraldnet.com/Stories/02/11/10/16062938.cfm
November 10, 2002: Alligators Below City? Try Robo-Inchworms. By Erik
Baard. The New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd).
"Deep in the heart of Little Italy in Manhattan, a 'robotic inchworm'
has been born, capable of welding underground steam pipes. ...The company
provides machines to industrial clients and the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration. Two years ago, Honeybee's engineers were working
concurrently on the welding robot, for Consolidated Edison, and on a drilling
system for investigating Mars. 'They were both up on the white board, and
we kind of had a eureka moment,' said Stephen Gorevan, the Honeybee chairman."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/10/business/yourmoney/10BDIG.html
November 9, 2002: Forces eye role for airborne drones. Like U.S. predator
- 'Intelligent' craft would mimic human brain. By Tom Blackwell. National
Post.
"The Canadian Forces are looking seriously at using unmanned, remote-controlled
planes of the kind that killed several Al-Qaeda operatives recently, partly
as a way to cope with chronic shortages of troops and money. Canadian defence
researchers also want to advance the promising technology by adding a form
of artificial intelligence that mimics the human brain and could independently
spot potential targets. ... 'The whole purpose of looking at [unmanned
planes] is reducing the risk of exposure of your personnel to dangerous
situations,' said Lt.-Col. Murray Haines, with the department's directorate
of science and technology. He also acknowledged the research program stems
out of the department's need to make do with less. ... Researchers are
looking at incorporating 'biomimetic intelligence,' the science of replicating
the brain process in man-made systems. Such technology could help make
the drones not only gather the images they see below them, but identify
targets such as tanks or buildings, said Lt.-Col. Stephen Newton, who is
overseeing the research project. That means the human operators would not
have to watch hours of video or infra-red images, but could simply confirm
when the machine had identified a target, then take action, he said. And
the 'knowledge warrior' could operate several drones at the same time."
http://www.nationalpost.com/national/story.html?id=%7B88372010-F59C-4454-B39B-F3762CECD3C0%7D
November 8, 2002: Blasters From the Past. By Richard Harrington. The
Washington Post.
" Rhino's 'Testament: The Complete Slash Recordings' inspired the original
Blasters to step on stage together for the first time in 17 years. ...
Phil has carried on the Blasters name while also picking up masters and
PhD degrees in mathematics and artificial intelligence from UCLA."
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A22859-2002Nov7.html
November 8, 2002: High Tech Hustler - With his clever device, professor
Tony Jebara has given new hope to mediocre pool players everywhere. By
Drew DeNicola. Tech TV Live.
"[Tony] Jebara tries to keep up with fantasies of the future. But he's
not your average sci-fi geek. He has a special interest in the genre because
he's a professor at Columbia University's Machine Learning Lab. Meet this
creative tech guru tonight on 'Tech Live.' He explains that many people
in his field poke around the fiction world looking for ideas. 'Science
fiction's a great way to see where real science will be in a few years,
and it also keeps you more inventive,' he says. 'We have all these new
technologies, but how do we apply them? Usually the science fiction tells
us interesting new ways it can have an impact on society.' ... Jebara sees
a bright future for the [pool/billiards] system, similar to the infamous
Deep Blue supercomputer that beat champion chess player Gary Kasparov.
But, he adds, Stochasticks makes one improvement toward what he believes
will be more sophisticated artificial intelligence. Deep Blue doesn't learn.
It wins at chess because it has been preprogrammed with all the possible
scenarios that can occur on the board. But Jebara follows a new method
of artificial intelligence where the computer is not born brilliant but
learns by taking in data from the world, as we do."
http://www.techtv.com/news/computing/story/0,24195,3406678,00.html
November 8, 2002: High-tech Cupids hit their mark. By Gregory Baptista.
The Herald News.
"Even a robot needs romance, so area high school students designed
machines to seek out that special someone for the second annual Dating
Robots competition at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth on Thursday.
... [Howard E.] Michel developed the robot course to teach students that
engineering is largely about identifying problems and finding ways to overcome
them. Plus, he wanted to show that 'engineering is not dull.' ... His mini-course
involved 21 students from high schools in Dartmouth, Tiverton, Dighton,
New Bedford and Fall River, along with eight UMass students who served
as mentors. Michel explained that the little lovers were constructed from
Lego computerized robot kits that the students built and programmed to
navigate the maze and find other robots. The machines were not remote controlled,
but instead sent out infrared signals that other robots could track. Each
was given touch sensors and taught to react to its environment to get past
obstacles in its way. ... Jin Zhang, a junior from New Bedford High School,
said the project gave her 'a feeling of accomplishment,' and she particularly
enjoyed the teamwork involved."
http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=5995121&BRD=1710&PAG=461&dept_id=24108&rfi=6
November 7, 2002: Center's screen saver provides predictions about the
Earth. By Justin Henning. The Kansan (University of Kansas).
"One University program has spent two years developing a screen saver,
which computes, maps and provides information of where the Earth's plants
and animals have lived, currently live and could one day live. The Informatics
Biodiversity Center at the University of Kansas developed this screen saver,
called Lifemapper. Lifemapper uses an artificial intelligence algorithm,
called GARP for short. The Genetic Algorithm for Rule-set Production examines
and compares similarities between a species and the area and climate it
is found in. It can then predict the likelihood of finding a specific plant
or animal in an area. ... 'This will help researchers address global research,
management and policy issues in environmental biology,' said William Michener,
director of the Long-Term Ecological Research Network at the University
of New Mexico in a press release, 'Increasingly, these issues require efficient,
automated access to diverse and widespread data.'"
http://www.kansan.com/stories.asp?id=200211070006
November 7, 2002: Website contest to tempt teen girls. BBC.
"The UK Government is teaming up with the music industry in an attempt
to entice young girls into technology. ITbeat is a nationwide initiative,
designed to encourage girls aged 11 - 15 to rethink their attitudes to
careers in information technology. The initiative is a response to statistics
which find that the number of female technology professionals in the UK
has fallen dramatically over the last seven years to a low of just 20%.
... Statistics from research firm IDC show that the UK will increase its
spending on technology by £17bn by 2005, creating another 500,000
jobs. It is time girls saw the job opportunities presented by a career
in technology, said supporter of the project Baroness Greenfield. 'To this
age group, information technology equals computers, the toy of geeks. It's
certainly not a career option.'"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2411661.stm
November 6, 2002: Futurist airs dire warning - Says 'good science' is
in limited supply. By Tony Waltham. Bangkok Post.
"A noted futurist at British Telecom asks the question 'what's next?'
and in an article published in the BT Technology Journal, Ian Pearson then
tells us why things look pretty bleak. ... The biggest threat that he spells
out is the eventual capability of individuals to make a device capable
of wiping us all out, although there are many other risks that could lead
to our extinction. Artificial intelligence is getting better all the time,
and Mr Pearson suggests that it is reasonable to assume that there will
be 'machine consciousness,' with machines gaining the ability to design
and build their own offspring. He warns of a Terminator scenario, when
AI-enhanced weapons could eliminate humans, and he also warns that as we
hand more responsibility for our systems to AI and become unable to manage
these ourselves, so it might become hard to survive a system failure. But
the real threat is that these 'superior' intelligences may come to regard
humans as insignificant lower life for!
ms much as we disregard the insects on a building site. And he also
warns of the possibility that AI-based systems could pose a crime threat,
making the Mafia look like a convent."
http://search.bangkokpost.co.th/bkkpost/2002/nov2002/bp20021106/database/06nov2002_datacol59.html
November 6, 2002: Killing probes the frontiers of robotics and legality.
By Brian Whitaker and Oliver Burkeman. The Guardian.
"'To have a drone that engages and kills people, that is quite a threshold
to cross,' Clifford Beal, editor of Jane's Defence Weekly, told Reuters.
'This is the beginning of robotic warfare. There is underlying tension
in the military about using it. The CIA does not have any qualms. This
is really the first success story of this system.'"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,834311,00.html
November 5, 2002: The education of Jun-young. By Choi Jie-ho. JoongAng
Ilbo,
"Yun Jun-young is a fourth-grader at Seoul's Samjeon Elementary School.
... He has an IQ of more than 156 and holds government accredited licenses
in two technical fields: Information management and Internet searching.
... In 2000, Mensa Korea decided to admit youngsters with exceptional intelligence,
and after a series of tests, which certified his IQ to be over 156, Jun-young
became the youngest member to join in Korea. ... All this fine with Jun-young,
but first he wants to master computer language. Sitting in front of a computer
-- but not playing computer games -- he says, 'My big passion is artificial
intelligence. You know, creating something like animal terminators.'"
http://english.joins.com/Article.asp?aid=20021105233937&sid=600
November 3, 2002: Translating a Dog's Bark - Man vs. Machine. By James
Gorman. The New York Times (no-fee reg. req'd).
"The latest evidence of humanity's terminal slide into isolation and
alienation from all other living things comes in the form of a toy. A Japanese
company has produced a hand-held gizmo called the Bowlingual that uses
voice-recognition technology and a computer chip to translate a dog's bark
into a text message. ... Whoever is behind the animal translation initiative,
however, is avoiding a much more difficult task, which is to use technology
to decipher vocal messages from human beings. Engineers and software writers
may be under the impression that this problem was solved by the invention
of language. The only correct response to this is: yeah, right. Those are
two simple words, and their meaning is crystal clear. But in this case,
of course, they mean the opposite of what they mean."
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/03/weekinreview/03GORM.html
November 3, 2002: Terror And Bureaucracy -- The Red, Red Tape Of Home.
Opinion by Sandip Roy. Pacific News Service / available from The Black
World Today / also available from AsianWeek (November 8 - 14, 2002).
"I never thought the United States could become a paper bureaucracy
like India. Over the years, whenever we Indians talked about the brain
drain from our home country, we heard the same story. The best and brightest
were leaving to flee the 'license raj.' Their entrepreneurship was continually
being tripped up because they had forgotten to fill out some form or another.
They were departing for the can-do West, where they believed a good idea
could go all the way from a garage in Palo Alto to the top of the NASDAQ.
... Every trip home, my neighbor's son would ask me what I thought he should
study that might help him get to the United States -- information technology,
say, or artificial intelligence. This time he just asked soberly, 'Do your
friends have jobs still? Are Indian software engineers working as waiters?'
The image of the land of opportunity was waning rapidly in popular imagination."
http://athena.tbwt.com/content/article.asp?articleid=1883
http://www.asianweek.com/2002_11_08/opinion_voices.html
November 2, 2002: The Mind in the Cave, by David Lewis-Williams. Reviewed
by Mike Pitts. New Scientist Magazine.
"Studies of chimpanzees, current human thinking and artificial intelligence
are not enough, he says, to understand how the human mind came to be -
so evolutionary psychology fails to deliver. Homo sapiens evolved, physically
and intellectually, in Africa, entering Europe to find it dominated by
Neanderthals. The two species co-existed for 10,000 years. Here, he says,
is a unique opportunity to explore our emergent intellect. ... His inspired
archaeological review shows that Neanderthals adopted from H. sapiens certain
tricks, such as types of stone tool, while ignoring others, including representational
art. This indicates, he says, not just a gap in intelligence, but different
kinds of consciousness."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,834311,00.html
November 1, 2002: Smallest Circuits: Tim Berners-Lee discusses the future
of the Web. NPR Talk of the Nation: Science Friday With Ira Flatow. [Radio
Interview]
"Mr. BERNERS-LEE: ...When we have a Web of data out there, when we
have all--if you think of all the databases out there being accessible
so that you can do a query which correlates across them, then I think there
will be new applications in a few years' time, built on top of that web
of data which we just can't get at now because we don't have a working
web of data out there to play with. FLATOW: Mm-hmm. And, of course, would
that take some sort of artificial intelligence to figure out how to put
it all together for us? Mr. BERNERS-LEE: Well, I'm really hesitant to talk
about artificial intelligence because, really, the important thing to understand
about the semantic web, as I call it, this web of data, is that the basic
infrastructure and the most important thing is really just a Web of data,
and the fundamental things you'll be able to do will be to join one part
of it with another, to look for people who live in this county and have
a car of this color or whatever, which are very simple operations and they're
very predictable, and they're the sort of things which allow you to prepare
your taxes from your bank statements and things like that. Artificial intelligence--the
artificial intelligence community developed all kinds of useful pieces
of software which are very good for dealing with a web of knowledge, but
some of the things they were aiming for, of making something that thinks
like a human being, is really nothing to do with the basic semantic Web.
So we don't need artificial intelligence to be able to do really exciting
things with the semantic Web. The other side of the coin is that when we've
got the semantic Web, the artificial intelligence folks are really excited
about what they will be able to do on top of it. They'll be able to sort
of try out some of their dreams that they could never really--they didn't
have anywhere to run them."
http://www.sciencefriday.com/pages/2002/Nov/hour2_110102.html
November 1, 2002: System adds to biodefense readiness. By Gretel Johnston
IDG News / Bio-IT World.
"U.S. military medical researchers are using a computer-based biosurveillance
system that collects data from patients at military medical facilities
to detect outbreaks of infectious disease as well as incidences of bioterrorism.
The Electronic Surveillance System for the Early Notification of Community-based
Epidemics (ESSENCE) has been in use since 1999, initially collecting and
interpreting data submitted daily by doctors and other health care professionals
at military treatment facilities in the Washington, D.C., area. But its
role began expanding after the Sept. 11 terror attacks and is now gathering
data from military medical facilities worldwide as well as other health
care sources, said Lt. Col. Julie Pavlin, a researcher at the Walter Reed
Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland. ESSENCE helped officials
detect an outbreak of 138 cases of the Norwalk virus in San Diego early
this year among troops at a training facility."
http://www.bio-itworld.com/news/110102_report1436.html
=======================================
PLEASE NOTE: Though we have tried to provide you with links that will
be active when you receive this ALERT, be advised that news articles have
a tendency to quickly relocate or disappear. The good news, however, is
that most stories have several incarnations such that an online search
will usually lead to another source. See our News FAQ at
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/springbd.html#newsfaq
Back issues of the AI ALERT can be found online at
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/articles&columns/aialerts.html
=======================================
NOTICE: AI ALERT is intended to keep you informed of news articles published
by third parties. The mere fact that a particular item is selected for
inclusion does NOT imply that AAAI or AI TOPICS has verified the information
or that there is endorsement of any kind. These policies are further detailed
at:
http://www.aaai.org/Publications/Author/copyright.html
http://www.aaai.org/AITopics/html/notices.html
=======================================
Because this service is for YOUR benefit, we'd really like to hear from
you. Comments, suggestions, and feedback of any sort will be greatly appreciated
and should be sent to: aitopics@aaai.org
THANK YOU
=======================================
IMPORTANT DETAILS ABOUT THIS AUTOMATED MAJORDOMO MAILING LIST
-> DO NOT REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE. This is an automated mailer. <-
If you've changed email addresses since subscribing to the AAAI Members
mailing list or you wish to unsubscribe, please
unsubscribe your old email address by sending a message to majordomo@aaai.org
with the following in the body of your message:
unsubscribe aaai-members "email address you subscribed with"
To subscribe with your new email address, send a message to majordomo@aaai.org with the following in the body of your message:
subscribe aaai-members "new email address you wish to subscribe"
For detailed help information about our list server, you can send a message to majordomo@aaai.org with the following in the body of your message:
help
TIP: Since majordomo treats everything in the body of your message as a command, turn off your email signature to avoid receiving error messages back from majordomo.
============================================
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
END END END END END
END END
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
============================================