The Chronicle T h e i n d e p e n d e n t d a i ly at D u k e U n i v e r s i t y
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2009
www.dukechronicle.com
ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTH YEAR, Issue 30
Global health injects new life into NC Former UN by Matthew Chase The chronicle
If Washington Duke—one of the famous tobacco giants during the late 1800s and a large benefactor of then-named Trinity College—were alive today, something about Duke’s progress might make him take a smoke break. According to a recent University study, the once-heralded North Carolina tobacco industry may be replaced by a field that could not be any more different from the industry that produces cigarettes.
ambassor to speak today
The study, which is authored by members of the Duke Global Health Institute and the economics department, found that global health accounted for more than 7,000 jobs and $508 million in salaries in 2007, making the total impact of global health on the state’s economy somewhere between $1.7 and 2 billion. The figures from the study are representative of what Dr. Michael Merson, director of the Duke Global Health Institute, calls a
by Ciaran O’Connor The chronicle
John Bolton, former United States ambassador to the United Nations, will speak today at the Duke School of Law on President Barack Obama’s foreign policy. The Duke chapter of The Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, a national organization of conservatives and libertarians seeking to reform the John Bolton current American legal system, invited Bolton to Q&A speak at the University. His visit is cosponsored inside by the Duke University Program in American Grand Strategy and the International Law Society. Bolton’s visit comes at “an exciting and relevant time,” said Erica Stalnecker, a second-year law student and president of the Federalist Society chapter at Duke. Bolton, currently a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank, will speak on “Obama’s
See Global Health on page 6
graphic by Hon Lung chu/The Chronicle
See BOLTON on page 4
Phone application offers precise location tracking by Tullia Rushton The chronicle
In case you don’t know where you are, your phone may soon be able to tell you. SurroundSense, an application developed by three members of the Duke community, can pinpoint the location of a phone more precisely than current GPS devices. Romit Choudhury, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and computer science, Ionut Constandache, a computer science graduate student, and senior Martin Azizyan, have recently published their work on the new mobile application. “We wanted to use the phone to create a fingerprint of the location it was in,” Constandache said. SurroundSense uses a new approach to determine the specific location of its user that employs the technology already built into the phone, including the camera, mouthpiece and accelerator, Azizyan said. The phone first uses the information gained from cell towers to generate a list of places within a certain radius of the user. SurroundSense then uses information generated by the phone such as sound, color, lighting and acceleration to determine the user’s exact location. In a Target store, for example, the phone will sense the large amounts of red in the store and that the user is walking around.
“The problems with GPS is that it doesn’t work inside, and the accuracy is not very high,” Azizyan said. He added that even a small error by a couple feet could place a user in the wrong store.
when you could just look around?” Azizyan said. Constandache noted that the program is designed like a building block so that new applications can be added. Although the technology can detect a user’s exact location, Azizyan said that privacy was not a concern when creating SurroundSense. “Privacy is an issue out of our scope” he said. “Because this is enabling technology, privacy issues must be addressed for every application that makes use of this technology.” Official production of the SurroundSense application began in summer 2008 and was completed this March, with an experimental test of SurroundSense in 51 business locations in Durham. As a result, SurroundSense had an 87 percent accuracy rate, meaning that SourroundSense was able to accurately name the location of the phone 87 percent of the time, Constandache and Azizyan said. All the SurroundSense data was recently published Illustration by courtney douglas and Lawson Kurtz/The Chronicle when Constandache, Azizyan, and Choudhury traveled to Azizyan said the program is not necessarily meant to be Beijing, China to attend MobiCom, the Annual Internationused on its own, adding that the program’s development is al Conference on Mobile Computing and Networking. valuable, but becomes more useful when paired with other The future of SurroundSense is unclear, Azizyan said, mobile applications. adding that further development of the application de“Why would you need a phone to say where you are pends who takes an interest in the program.
ONTHERECORD
“This actually tastes like cheap meat.” —A fellow diner at Taqueria Rubio on the restaurant’s chorizo. See review RECESS 4.
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