science wire

Death is new design consideration in technological age
At first glance, death seems like an unlikely thesis topic for a computer scientist. But for the University of Toronto's Mike Massimi , it makes perfect sense.

Making Cars Safe for Cell Phones
At the KTH Symposium, the director of the U.S. National Science Foundation explains how scientific co-operation with Sweden benefits American research. AIMday Image is a forum for knowledge exchange between academic and industrial scientists in the field of image analysis Welcome to KTH on March 7! Reception and service at central level for international students after arrival at KTH.

Cell phone hackers can track your physical location without your knowledge
Using a cheap phone, readily available equipment, and no direct help from a service provider, hackers could listen to unencrypted broadcast messages from cell phone towers MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (02/16/2012) —Cellular networks leak the locations of cell phone users, allowing a third party to easily track the location of the cell phone user without the user's knowledge, according to new research by computer scientists in the University of Minnesota's College of Science and Engineering.

Carnegie Mellon University and Penn Engineering Receive $3.5 Million for Innovative Transportation Research
PITTSBURGH - The U.S. Department of Transportation has awarded Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Science a $3.5 mi

In new mass-production technique, robotic insects spring to life
Production method inspired by children's pop-up books enables rapid fabrication of tiny, complex devices : Caroline Perry , (617) 496-1351 - A new technique inspired by elegant pop-up books and origami will soon allow clones of robotic insects to be mass-produced by the sheet.

A new book on "Remote Sensing Image Processing"
The book "Remote Sensing Image Processing", edited by Gustavo Camps-Valls (Universitat de València), Devis Tuia ( LASIG laboratory), Luis Gómez-Chova, Sandra Jiménez and Jesús Malo, is now available at Morgan and Claypool publishers. The book deals with Earth observation, which is the field of science concerned with the problem of monitoring and modeling the processes on the Earth surface and their interaction with the atmosphere.

Start-up finds online meaning
Software developed at Oxford University that accurately assesses what people mean from what they say online will provide a valuable ‘sentiment analysis' tool for businesses, particularly finance companies.

Best time for a coffee break? There's an app for that
UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. - Caffeinated drinks such as coffee and soda are the pick-me-ups of choice for many people, but too much caffeine can cause nervousness and sleep problems. Caffeine Zone software app developed by Penn State researchers, can help people determine when caffeine may give them a mental boost and when it could hurt their sleep patterns.

World’s greenest supercomputer heads to Melbourne to boost health research
Victoria will be home to one of Australia's fastest supercomputers and the world's greenest supercomputer, the IBM Blue Gene/Q, which will be housed at the Victorian Life Sciences Computation Initiative (VLSCI) hosted by the University of Melbourne, and is aimed at advancing the study of human disease.

Grass huts and Androids: preserving language and culture in New Guinea
An ambitious experiment involving the use of mobile phones in a remote corner of Papua New Guinea, is about to be launched by researchers from the University of Melbourne.

Penn’s Work and Family Researchers Network Launches the Work and Family Commons Open Access Repository
The Work and Family Researchers Network at the University of Pennsylvania has launched the Work and Family Commons, the first open access work and family subject matter repository. The WFC was created to gather and preserve the intellectual output of the work and family research community and to offer free online access to the full text of research articles to the public.

Potential Key to Lowering Energy Costs of Cell Phones and Data Centers
AUSTIN, Texas — A systematic analysis of power usage in microprocessors could help lower the energy consumption of both small cellphones and giant data centers, report computer science professors from The University of Texas at Austin and the Australian National University.

Power profiles help electronics go green
New and better ways of measuring high-tech energy consumption could lead to significant environmental and economic gains, a study from The Australian National University has found.

Street smarts
Students develop hurricane response plans on Cambridge roads, gaining practical experience in computational science Debris lingered just outside New Orleans in July 2006 - almost a full year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region.

QRISK2 international app released for the iPhone/iPad
PA 41/12 A new smartphone app designed to identify patients at risk of heart disease has been launched by researchers at The University of Nottingham and medical software company Clinrisk Ltd.

Researchers to receive high-performance computing grants
Projects will advance both basic science and applications, and accelerate development of exascale computing systems Seven Harvard-affiliated researchers will receive grants to support collaborative projects in high-performance computing.

Software to chart rise of Empire trade
A study of the rise of the British Empire is likely to show that mass global trading was big business at the time.

Quarter of Tweets Not Worth Reading, Twitter Users Tell Researchers
Study at CMU, MIT, Georgia Tech Finds Nine Ways To Improve Tweets : Byron Spice / 412-268-9068 / bspice [a] cs.cmu (p) edu PITTSBURGH—Twitter users choose the microblogs they follow, but that doesn't mean they always like what they get. Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Georgia Institute of Technology found that users say only a little more than a third of the tweets they receive are worthwhile.

Risk-based passenger screening could make air travel safer
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. - Anyone who has flown on a commercial airline since 2001 is well aware of increasingly strict measures at airport security checkpoints.

Online news portals get credibility boost from trusted sources
University Park, Pa. - People who read news on the Web tend to trust the gate even if there is no gatekeeper, according to Penn State researchers.

Robot welding gets 5 times faster as €4 Million project replaces guess work with maths
Remote Laser Welding (RLW) is rapidly emerging as a powerful replacement for spot welding technology in vehicle manufacturing. It promises 5 times the speed of spot welding and far more efficiency – however this can only be achieved through a frustrating process of guess work and trial & error today.

Project to improve radiotherapy planning
A collaborative project between physicists, oncologists and computer scientists at Oxford and Cambridge Universities, launched last month, will develop improved tools for the planning of high precision radiotherapy.

Degree project factory
For those studying engineering, a degree project usually forms the final component of the degree, often carried out in collaboration with industry.However, at the Ideon company Modelon, there are an

University leads the way on high performance computing
The University of Manchester is heading up a large interdisciplinary network focusing on numerical algorithms and high performance computing.

Robot competition in zero-gravity
Robot competition in zero-gravity School teams from Europe and America have been commanding robots competing in the Spheres ZeroRobotics tournament in space.

New model shows how often to review material for flashcard programs
A challenge for students and teachers - and today, for designers of educational software: How often should material be reviewed for best learning? Wait too long to review and it fades away; review too soon and the effort is wasted.

Quantum codes make cloud computing safe
Quantum supercomputers could safely store and manipulate sensitive data, with help from University research.

The advantage of ambiguity
Cognitive scientists develop a new take on an old problem: why human language has so many words with multiple meanings. Why did language evolve? While the answer might seem obvious - as a way for individuals to exchange information - linguists and other students of communication have debated this question for years.

3 new IC Professors elevated to IEEE Fellows in 2012
Babak Falsafi, Pascal Fua and Emre Telatar have been elevated to IEEE Fellows this year. This brings the number of IC professors who are IEEE Fellows to ten, a quarter of the faculty.

The faster-than-fast Fourier transform
For a large range of practically useful cases, MIT researchers find a way to increase the speed of one of the most important algorithms in the information sciences. The Fourier transform is one of the most fundamental concepts in the information sciences. It's a method for representing an irregular signal - such as the voltage fluctuations in the wire that connects an MP3 player to a loudspeaker - as a combination of pure frequencies.

Yale Health earns top marks for its focus on patient-centered care
Yale Health has been recognized as a model of 21st-century primary care by the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), which awarded the organization a perfect score for its accomplishments as a Patient-Centered Medical Home (PCMH).

DOE Awards Record Supercomputing Time to UC San Diego, SDSC Researchers
One Quarter Billion Hours Plus Allocated for 2012 Scientists from the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and other areas of the University of California, San Diego, conducting research in physics, computer science, earth science, and engineering, together were awarded an all-time high of more than a quarter billion hours in supercomputing processor time by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as part of the agency's 2012 Innovative and Novel Computational Impact on Theory and Experiment (INCITE) program.

Supercomputers help Yale astrophysicists interpret secrets of the universe
A series of papers released this week by the international scientific collaboration known as the Sloan Digital Sky Survey depended heavily on supercomputing performed by Yale astrophysicists.

Calculating What’s in the Universe from the Biggest Color 3-D Map
Scientific : Shirley Ho, cwho [a] lbl (p) gov Since 2000, the three Sloan Digital Sky Surveys (SDSS I, II, III) have surveyed well over a quarter of the night sky and produced the biggest color map of the universe in three dimensions ever.

IPad game to help children with autism
Children with autism as young as 18 months could be helped to improve their socialising skills thanks to a new iPad app.

Video games at school?
To video gamers, the name Microsoft Kinect is synonymous with the Xbox 360 video game console. To University of Toronto graduate student Uzma Khan , the motion-sensing input device offered a myriad of other possibilities.

Center for Advanced Computing receives national award for hepatitis research
The Cornell Center for Advanced Computing (CAC) has received a High-Performance Computing Innovation Excellence Award from the International Data Corp.

Smart way of saving lives in natural disasters
Smartphones could help save hundreds of thousands of lives in the aftermath of a disaster or humanitarian crisis, research from University of Manchester academics has found. Software developed by computer scientists could help to quickly and accurately locate missing people, rapidly identify those suffering from malnutrition and effectively point people towards safe zones simply by checking their phones.

Simple online tool to aid GPs in early ovarian cancer diagnosis
PA 01/12 The lives of hundreds of women could be saved every year, thanks to a simple online calculator that could help GPs identify women most at risk of having ovarian cancer at a much earlier stage.

New TIP Submission
Learning of Pattern Transformation Manifolds, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.

FCC Names Engineering Prof. Schulzrinne Chief Technology Officer
Columbia Engineering School Professor Henning Schulzrinne has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

FCC Names Engineering Prof. Henning Schulzrinne Chief Technology Officer
Columbia Engineering School Professor Henning Schulzrinne has been appointed as Chief Technology Officer by FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

Expanded Data Repository at Austin and Arlington Campuses to Improve Research Capacity for Entire UT System
AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) at The University of Texas at Austin today announced that it is working with The University of Texas at Arlington to deploy a data rep

Researcher Develops New Way to Assess Risk for Chemicals
— Coral Gables — Approximately 80,000 industrial chemicals are in use and about 700 new chemicals are introduced to commerce each year in the United States, according to the U.S. Government Accountability Office.

Can science predict a hit song?
Most people remember listening to the official UK top 40 singles chart and watching the countdown on Top of the Pops, but can science work out which songs are more likely to 'make it' in the chart? New research has looked at whether a song can be predicted to be a 'hit'. The paper, to be presented at an international workshop this week, argues that predicting the popularity of a song may well be feasible by using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms.

Closest Type Ia Supernova in Decades Solves a Cosmic Mystery
Type Ia supernovae (SN Ia's) are the extraordinarily bright and remarkably similar "standard candles" astronomers use to measure cosmic growth, a technique that in 1998 led to the discovery of dark energy - and 13 years later to a Nobel Prize, "for the discovery of the accelerating expansion of the universe." The light from thousands of SN Ia's has been studied, but until now their physics - how they detonate and what the star systems that produce them actually look like before they explode - has been educated guesswork.

Simple test to help diagnose bowel and pancreatic cancer could save thousands of lives
PA 387/11 A simple online calculator could offer family GPs a powerful new tool in tackling two of the most deadly forms of cancer, say researchers.

Pen and Paper Computing: an old technology in a modern world
A talk by Nadir Weibel from the University of California San Diego Monday January 30th 2012, Room RLC D1 761 Access to information is one of the most crucial aspects of everyday life.

SDSC Welcomes ’Gordon’ Supercomputer as a Research Powerhouse
When it officially comes online in early January, Gordon , a unique new supercomputer at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), will help researchers tackle the most vexing data-intensive challe

Trillion-frame-per-second video
By using optical equipment in a totally unexpected way, MIT researchers have created an imaging system that makes light look slow.

Human-Computer Interaction with a Different Touch
Talk by Hans Gellersen December 15th, 15:15, Room BC410 Touch input and two-handed interaction were intensively studied in the mid 80's but it's taken 20 years for these ideas to emerge in the mainstream, with the advent of multi-touch interfaces.

Algorithm marchers put their best feet forward

A Better Way to ID Extreme Weather Events in Climate Models
You'd think that spotting a category 5 hurricane would never be difficult. But when the hurricane is in a global climate model that spans several decades, it becomes a fleeting wisp among mountains of data.

Pair of black holes ‘weigh in’ at 10 billion suns, the most massive yet
AUSTIN, Texas — A team of astronomers including Karl Gebhardt and graduate student Jeremy Murphy of The University of Texas at Austin have discovered the most massive black holes to date - two

Record massive black holes discovered lurking in monster galaxies
University of California, Berkeley, astronomers have discovered the largest black holes to date - two monsters with masses equivalent to 10 billion suns that are threatening to consume anything, even light, within a region five times the size of our solar system.

Design could help Facebook members limit security leaks
Town Hall Forum video posted Board executive committee reaffirms, ratifies earlier decisions Students host fundraiser to benefit abused children Penn State, PA Coalition Against Rape join to

Alan Turing pardon petition launched
A University of Leeds academic is supporting an e-petition calling on the Government to posthumously pardon the mathematician and computer pioneer Alan Turing for his conviction of gross indecency.

Garden watering advice in your pocket: new app launched
1 Dec 2011 University of Melbourne researchers have launched a new iPhone app that factors in local rainfall information and plant type to help gardeners remember how much to water and when.

Grassroots effort helps shape future IT community at Stanford
More than 300 information technology professionals at Stanford gathered on campus earlier this month for an "unconference" to share information face-to-face, to raise awareness around common IT issues and to lead discussions on a theme.

Princeton's new computing research center builds research capacity
by Catherine Zandonella After several years of planning and more than a year of construction, Princeton University's High-Performance Computing Research Center opened its doors this week.

A Social Robot in a Fur Cap

Scientists striving to put a human face on the robot generation
Scientists at Plymouth University are studying the social interaction between humans and a specially-designed robot, in a project that could pave the way for a generation of more life-like androids.

At a crossroads
New research predicts which cars are likeliest to run lights at intersections. In 2008, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, 2.3 million automobile crashes occurred at intersections across the United States, resulting in some 7,000 deaths. More than 700 of those fatalities were due to drivers running red lights.

New database for vital model organism launched
An important novel component of this project is the construction of intuitive tools to allow the research community to involve itself in database curation, and ensure that the scientific information published in their papers is visible to the entire biological research community." —Steve Oliver, Professor of Systems Biology & Biochemistry, who is spearheading the initiative A new database promises to be an invaluable resource to scientists who use a unique single-celled fungus to study human diseases.

E-Reading with Grandma
Facebook, Twitter, e-readers, video games, and the seemingly endless “next generations” of smartphones.

EPFL robots will soon appear in school classrooms
EPFL scientists have developed an educational robot designed to introduce children to technology in schools.

Marc-Antoine Nuessli Public Thesis Defence
Marc-Antoine Nuessli's thesis entitled "Dual Eye-Tracking Methods for the Study of Remote Collaborative Problem Solving" on December 21th, 2011, at 17h00, room BC 410 We have the pleasure to invite you to the public defense of Marc-Antoine Nuessli's thesis entitled "Dual Eye-Tracking Methods for the Study of Remote Collaborative Problem Solving" The talk will take place at 17h00 on Dec.

Eye, I, aye
Eye, I, aye: investigating embodiment, identity and sociality and the Internet a talk from Elizabeth Churchill, on December 16th, at 10h15, in room BC 410 Abstract: In this talk I will discuss the increasingly broad remit of human computer interaction (HCI) as a discipline.

All-optical silicon chips enabling faster computing
There has been enormous progress in recent years toward the development of photonic chips - devices that use light beams instead of electrons to carry out their computational tasks. Now, researchers at MIT have filled in a crucial piece of the puzzle that could enable the creation of photonic chips on the standard silicon material that forms the basis for most of today's electronics.

Structured English brings robots closer to everyday users
Move over, Jetsons. A humanoid robot named Mae is traipsing around Cornell's Autonomous Systems Lab, guided by plain-English instructions and sometimes even appearing to get frustrated. Mae understands and executes English commands, thanks to algorithms and a software toolkit called Linear Temporal Logic Mission Planning (LTLMoP) being developed in the lab of Hadas Kress-Gazit, assistant professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.

Kilobots are leaving the nest
Swarm of tiny, collaborative robots will be made available to researchers, educators, and enthusiasts : Michael Patrick Rutter , (617) 496-3815 Photo courtesy of Michael Rubenstein. The Kilobots are coming. Computer scientists and engineers at Harvard University have developed and licensed technology that will make it easy to test collective algorithms on hundreds, or even thousands, of tiny robots.

New Stanford software takes Folding@home’s biological research to supercomputers
Stanford researchers, who made impossible protein-folding simulations routine with Folding@home, bring the technology to supercomputing.

Helping computers make faster decisions
Industrial and systems engineering professor Jeff Linderoth is working on a way to help computers make yes/no decisions faster by enhancing the standard algorithm computers use to solve a class of problems called integer programs.

Moderate noise level can help learning
Sverker Sikström belongs to a group of cognitive science researchers who are conducting basic research on working memory and learning. Sometimes the step from basic research to application is not all that long. In the spring he will be launching a new app to help people who have difficulty concentrating.

Optimal qPCR primer design.
GETPrime: a gene- or transcript-specific primer database for quantitative real-time PCR.

Analyzing massive datasets is subject of major international conference
Seattle is host this week to the major international meeting about high-performance computing, giving UW scientists and computer specialists an opportunity to see over the horizon at developments that will influence how research is conducted for years to come.

New Center for Cloud Computing Will Impact Mobile Computing and Internet Security
AUSTIN, Texas — As part of its research efforts to help create safer and faster computing, the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin has partnered with SunGard Ava

Probing Question: Why are statistics important in modern life?
By Melissa Beattie-Moss Research/Penn State Quick! Think of professions that will be the jobs of the next decade. Statistician probably didn't leap to mind - but odds are it soon will. Number nerds, take heed: statistical skills are in increasingly high demand and being applied to an incredibly diverse set of exciting problems, said Penn State Professor of Statistics Naomi Altman.

$50,000 to Solve the Most Complicated Puzzle Ever Attempted
Every few years the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) holds a public competition to stretch the outer limits of what technology can do.

SDSC’s Trestles Debuts on ‘Graph500’ List
Trestles , a new supercomputer using flash-based memory and launched earlier this year by the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego, has made this year's

SDSC’s Gordon Ranks Among Top 50 Fastest Supercomputers in the World
Gordon , a unique data-intensive supercomputer using flash-based memory that will enter production in January at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Die

Burns app could save lives at the touch of a button
A former soldier has developed an app which could save the lives of burns victims, both in combat and in hospitals around the world.

Engineering Breakthrough Improves Software Reliability and Security
Anyone who uses multithreaded computer programs—and that's all of us, as these are the programs that power nearly all software applications including Office, Windows, MacOS, and Google Chrome Br

Space Shuttle Data Helps Researchers Develop Better Model for Forecasting Solar Power Production
The space shuttle program may have ended, but data the space craft collected over the past three decades are still helping advance science.

Easily ’Re-programmable cells’ could be key in creation of new life forms
PA 345/11 Scientists at The University of Nottingham are leading an ambitious research project to develop an in vivo biological cell-equivalent of a computer operating system.

New network will promote 'SAVI' uses of technology
Imagine a Blue Jays game where fans, reporters and pundits are sharing their insight and commentary using a variety of media (videos, audio and pictures).

Supercomputers Accelerate Development of Advanced Materials
NERSC : Linda Vu, (510) 495-2402, LVu [a] lbl (p) gov New materials are crucial to building a clean energy economy - for everything from batteries to photovoltaics to lighter weight vehicles - but today the development cycle is too slow: around18 years from conception to commercialization.

Lamont-Doherty Scientists Predict Faster Retreat for Antarctica Glacier
The retreat of Antarctica's fast-flowing Thwaites Glacier is expected to speed up within 20 years, once the glacier detaches from an underwater ridge that is currently holding it back, says a new study in Geophysical Research Letters. Thwaites Glacier, which drains into west Antarctica's Amundsen Sea, is being closely watched for its potential to raise global sea levels as the planet warms.

UW-Madison home to weather-predicting supercomputer
A new supercomputer designed to run weather prediction models is now the most powerful computer of its kind on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus, where researchers will help make those models more accurate. The National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration approached UW-Madison's Space Science and Engineering Center with a $1 million grant to design and install the Supercomputer for Satellite Simulations and Data Assimilation Studies (known as S4).

Crowdsourcing nutrition in a snap
Counting calories in photos, PlateMate proves the wisdom of the (well-managed) crowd Americans spend upwards of $40 billion a year on dieting advice and self-help books, but the first step in any healthy eating strategy is basic awareness - what's on the plate. If keeping a food diary seems like too much effort, despair not: computer scientists at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) have devised a tool that lets you snap a photo of your meal and let the crowd do the rest.

Hackers Take on the Planet
The two top entries in the first Stockholm Green Hackathon, held over the weekend of October 21st and 22nd in the R1 Reactor Hall, show gamers and Web users how everyday activities contribute to carbon dioxide emissions. Bringing together more than 30 participants, the Green Hackathon was designed to put creative minds to work spotlighting solutions to environmental threats.

New algorithm could substantially speed up MRI scans
Faster scans could reduce the time patients spend in the machine from 45 to 15 minutes. CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

It’s All About the Hair
It's not every day that computer science students get invited to a Hollywood premiere to recognize the work they have done.

NASA Launches JPL-Built Earth Science Experiment
October 31, 2011 An experiment developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., to test technology for future NASA Earth science missions was aboard one of five small "CubeSat" research satellites that hitched a ride to orbit Oct. 28 with NASA's newest Earth-observing satellite, the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project, or NPP.

Your phone as counselor: monitoring mental health from your pocket
Your smartphone knows where you go and how fast, while its microphone hears your voice. Soon, your phone may use these capabilities to measure the stress in your life and help you deal with it.

Fall 2011 SEAS newsletter is now available
Dive down into the genetic rabbit hole, learn about cool research, and discover other news around Oxford Street Dean's Note: Down the Genetic Rabbit Hole "While we cannot - and should not

Stanford’s John McCarthy, seminal figure of artificial intelligence, dies at 84
McCarthy created the term "artificial intelligence" and was a towering figure in computer science at Stanford most of his professional life.

Professor Steven Bellovin Discusses Computer Security
Steven Bellovin always had a knack for catching computer hackers—even before most people knew what they were.

Shih-Fu Chang Sees New Angles in Visual Search
Engineering professor Shih-Fu Chang is trying to make visual search technology as effortless as typing a keyword like “Morningside restaurants” into Google.

Computer Scientist Seeks the Real Meaning of Language
Better be careful about telling a lie to Julia Hirschberg. The computer science professor, an expert in spoken language, examines what people unconsciously communicate through such things as intonation, accent and phrasing. One of the enduring questions she studies is whether it's possible to detect a lie.

Seeing through walls
Researchers at MIT's Lincoln Lab have developed new radar technology that provides real-time video of what's going on behind solid walls. Lincoln Laboratory researchers John Peabody and Gregory Charvat explains how their team's system can see through walls. Video: Melanie Gonick CAMBRIDGE, Mass.

University of Minnesota robots to join search for invasive species
$2.2 million NSF grant funds development of robotic boats to track nonnative carp Media Note: View video of prototype robotic boats in action at z.umn.edu/carptracker.

Registration opens for KTH Energy Initiative, Nov. 9
The KTH Energy Initiative, hosted by the Energy Platform, is an annual event aimed at profiling the wide range of energy-related research being conducted in KTH's various schools and programmes.

Computer Models of "Brilliant" Engineering Professor Drive Animated Films and New Research
In September, Popular Science named Eitan Grinspun to its “Brilliant 10” list of top researchers in the U.S. Calling him a “computational contortionist,” the magazine

Researchers launch Ethnic minority Internet & mobile phone use survey with free phone calls reward
Search News & Events Search University of Warwick Search for people at Warwick Search Warwick Blogs Search past exam papers Search video Researchers at the University of Warwick are key collaborators in an an online survey launched this week, which will investigate how minority ethnic groups and migrants are using new information and technologies.

Brain art
A new exhibition showcasing the University's world-leading brain imaging research will be on display as part of a Cardiff festival.

Caltech Awarded $12.6 Million for New Institute for Quantum Information and Matter
The California Institute of Technology (Caltech) has been awarded $12.6 million in funding over the next five years by the National Science Foundation (NSF) to create a new Physics Frontiers Center.

$3.45M for new technologies to study birds, other species
A gift and a grant totaling $3.45 million will help the Cornell Lab of Ornithology develop new computer technologies to better understand the movements and behaviors of birds and other species.

With NSF and Microsoft support, Cornell team aims to take errors out of cloud computing
Cloud computing, which taps the resources of a network of remote computers, offers tremendous potential for storing and processing vast amounts of data quickly and cheaply.

Honorary Doctorates Named
KTH has announced the recipients of honorary doctorates for 2011: - Professor Liam Bannon, University of Limerick, Ireland.

Progress in quantum computing, qubit by qubit
Researchers control the rate of photon emission from luminescent imperfections in diamond Engineers and physicists at Harvard have managed to capture light in tiny diamond pillars embedded in silver, releasing a stream of single photons at a controllable rate.

BBC documentary brings the world’s oldest underwater city back to life
Movie industry computer graphics and the very latest digital marine technology have brought the world's oldest submerged city back to life in a BBC Two documentary due to be shown this Sunday (October 9) at 8pm. Just a few metres under the sea, off the southern coast of Greece, lies Pavlopetri — the oldest submerged city in the world.

Unleashing the power of green data
Footprinted.org is working to give sustainability decision-makers access to open environmental impact data. Sustainability practitioners know that quantitative environmental research is the cornerstone of sound decision-making. But these results are too often found in closed, costly databases based on proprietary software.

University of Minnesota receives $8M grant for first-of-its-kind use of global population and environment data
Terra Populus: A Global Population / Environment Data Network will integrate the world's largest population database with global data on land use, land cover and climate change.

Weatherspoon gets $1.35M to fix ’potholes’ in private information superhighways
To avoid the congestion of the public Internet, scientists, the military and the managers of huge "cloud computing" data centers have created private information superhighways - dedicated fiber-optic systems known as lambda networks.

Car Talk
Calling all gamers: If you like to play first-person racing games, you may be able to help campus researchers better understand typical driving behaviors.

Robots of a feather flock together
Up to ten autonomous flying robots flock like birds in a real-sky experiment. A flock of birds suddenly taking off and flying in formation, acting like one entity, is a stunning and complex communication effort.

Saving heart attack victims with computer science
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—Subtle markers of heart damage hidden in plain sight among hours of EKG recordings could help doctors identify which heart attack patients are at high risk of dying soon. That's according to a new study involving researchers from the University of Michigan, MIT, Harvard Medical School, and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

SDSC Announces Scalable, High-Performance Data Storage Cloud
San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) SDSC Cloud UC San Diego Arista Networks OpenStack SDSC Announces Scalable, High-Performance Data Storage Cloud Web-based System Offers Hig

Researchers Develop Optimal Algorithm for Determining Focus Error in Eyes and Cameras
Sept. 26, 2011 AUSTIN, Texas — University of Texas at Austin researchers have discovered how to extract and use information in an individual image to determine how far objects are from the focus distance, a feat only accomplished by human and animal visual systems until now. Like a camera, the human eye has an auto-focusing system, but human auto-focusing rarely makes mistakes.

Dieter Fox to co-lead new Intel Science and Technology Center
Intel newsroom Intel Science and Technology Center – UW Fox faculty page University of Washington computer scientist Dieter Fox will co-lead an Intel Science and Technology Center th

NSF-funded project to test cloud computing for smart grid
A Cornell research team has received a four-year, $1.9 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a system for computation and information sharing when designing a "smart" electrical grid.

A made-to-measure social network for the academic world
The scientists working at EPFL didn't wait for Netvibes to get famous on connecting through a collaborative Web 2.0 platform.

Smarter robot arms
A combination of two algorithms developed at MIT allows autonomous robots to execute tasks much more efficiently - and move more predictably.

NSF Grant to Help Identify New Teaching Methods to Retain Women in Computing and IT
Sept.

UCLA, Rutgers collaborate on technology to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution
The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant worth nearly $2 million to UCLA and Rutgers to develop intelligent metropolitan traffic management technology that reduces urban traffic congestion and air pollution.

"Using your phone in the car cuts costs and pollution - and it can save lives"
Peter Händel wants you to make your mobile phone a part of the car's dashboard. The KTH Professor of Signal Processing has helped create a new mobile application for safer and more efficient driving.

Biodiversity Virtual e-Laboratory launched
A groundbreaking research project which could revolutionise the study of biodiversity around the world has been launched at the University.

Smartphone battery life could dramatically improve with new invention
Sept. 15, 2011 Smartphone battery life could dramatically improve with new invention ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new "subconscious mode" for smartphones and other WiFi-enabled mobile devices could extend battery life by as much as 54 percent for users on the busiest networks.

New study quantifies use of social media in Arab Spring
In the 21 st century, the revolution may not be televised – but it likely will be tweeted, blogged, texted and organized on Facebook, recent experience suggests.

Ferroelectrics could pave way for ultra-low power computing
Engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, have shown that it is possible to reduce the minimum voltage necessary to store charge in a capacitor, an achievement that could reduce the power draw and heat generation of today's electronics. “Just like a Formula One car, the faster you run your computer, the hotter it gets.

KTH Enters Strategic Partnership with University of Illinois
The chief executives of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, U.S.A., and KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden, have formally announced a long-term strategic alliance designed to benefit students and faculty at both institutions.

$13-million NSF center to explore new ways to manipulate light at the nanoscale
Sept. 9, 2011 $13-million NSF center to explore new ways to manipulate light at the nanoscale ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A new $13-million National Science Foundation center based at the University of Michigan will develop high-tech materials that manipulate light in new ways.

A canopy view of climate change -- novel art installation reaches heart of Sherwood Forest
Image courtesy of Active Ingredient PA 267/11 An ambitious touring art installation is to use real-time data collected from the canopies of trees in Sherwood Forest to raise awareness of the environmental changes affecting our planet as a result of the continued rise in CO2 emissions.

KTH Great Prize awarded to MAX-lab’s Mikael Eriksson
Professor Mikael Eriksson, a driving force behind the MAX-lab research laboratory in Lund is this year's recipient of the KTH Great Prize.

Morgan car lovers first to benefit from High Dynamic Range Television’s arrival on domestic TV
HDR video captures a wider range of light intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to lowlight images and thanks to a partnership between Researchers at WMG, University of Warwick, goHDR Ltd.

NASA Gives Public New Internet Tool to Explore the Solar System
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA is giving the public the power to journey through the solar system using a new interactive Web-based tool.

Robots learn to handle objects, understand new places
Infants spend their first few months learning to find their way around and manipulating objects, and they are very flexible about it: Cups can come in different shapes and sizes, but they all have handles. So do pitchers, so we pick them up the same way. Similarly, your personal robot in the future will need the ability to generalize - for example, to handle your particular set of dishes and put them in your particular dishwasher.

Word association: Princeton study matches brain scans with complex thought
by Morgan Kelly In an effort to understand what happens in the brain when a person reads or considers such abstract ideas as love or justice, Princeton researchers have for the first time matched images of brain activity with categories of words related to the concepts a person is thinking about.

New laser could treat acne with telecom technology
Aug. 30, 2011 New laser could treat acne with telecom technology ANN ARBOR, Mich.—A laser developed at the University of Michigan is designed to melt fat without burning surrounding tissue. It could potentially be used to treat acne, researchers say. Its 1,708-nanometer, infrared beam takes advantage of a unique wavelength that fat can absorb more efficiently than water , which makes up more than half of the human body.