Computers & Peripherals
IBM, Livermore form Deep Computing Solution collaboration
June 27, 2012 8:32 am | News | CommentsResearchers at IBM and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory announced that they are broadening their nearly 20-year collaboration in high-performance computing by joining forces to work with industrial partners to help boost their competitiveness in the global economy.
Dancing robot does more than just “shimi” to the beat
June 26, 2012 12:15 pm | by Jason Maderer and Liz Klipp | News | CommentsShimi, a musical companion developed by Georgia Tech’s Center for Music Technology, recommends songs, dances to the beat and keeps the music pumping based on listener feedback. Powered by an Android phone, the robot is also app-based, meaning it can perform other functions, such as face recognition, based on the type of software programmed for it.
Rewriting quantum chips with a beam of light
June 26, 2012 8:31 am | News | CommentsThe promise of ultrafast quantum computing has moved a step closer to reality with a technique to create rewritable computer chips using a beam of light. Researchers from The City College of New York and the University of California, Berkeley used light to control the spin of an atom's nucleus in order to encode information.
Graph500 adds new measurement of supercomputing performance
June 25, 2012 8:15 am | News | CommentsSupercomputing performance is getting a new measurement with the Graph500 executive committee's announcement of specifications for a more representative way to rate the large-scale data analytics at the heart of high-performance computing. An international team announced the single-source shortest-path specification to assess computing performance at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany.
Computer science tackles 30-year-old economics problem
June 25, 2012 5:44 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsNobel winner Roger Myerson's work on single-item auctions was groundbreaking research, but his question regarding the best way to organize an auction in which bidders are competing for multiple items has remained unanswered for decades. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed an algorithm to generalize this problem.
Researchers use computer model to probe mysteries of human immune system
June 25, 2012 4:21 am | News | CommentsA new computational model developed by a team of Virginia Tech researchers provides a framework to better understand responses of macrophage cells of the human immune system. The Virginia Tech team used the Metropolis algorithm, a computer simulation technique widely used in physics and chemistry, to enumerate possible molecular mechanisms giving rise to priming and tolerance.
Researchers advance biometric security
June 21, 2012 11:11 am | News | CommentsResearchers in the Biometric Technologies Laboratory at the University of Calgary have developed a way for security systems to combine different biometric measurements—such as eye color, face shape, or fingerprints—and create a learning system that simulates the brain in making decisions about information from different sources.
Study of phase change materials could lead to better computer memory
June 21, 2012 10:57 am | News | CommentsMemory devices for computers require a large collection of components that can switch between two states, which represent the 1s and 0s of binary language. Engineers hope to make next-generation chips with materials that distinguish between these states by physically rearranging their atoms into different phases. Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have now provided new insight into how this phase change happens.
$27 million award bolsters research computing grid
June 21, 2012 9:33 am | News | CommentsThe U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science and the National Science Foundation have committed up to $27 million to Open Science Grid, a nine-member partnership extending the reach of distributed high-throughput computing networks.
NNSA's Sequoia supercomputer ranked as world's fastest
June 18, 2012 9:41 am | News | CommentsThe National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) announced that a supercomputer called Sequoia at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory was ranked the world's most powerful computing system. Clocking in at 16.32 sustained petaflops, Sequoia earned the No. 1 ranking on the industry standard Top500 list of the world's fastest supercomputers.
Making it easier to build secure Web applications
June 18, 2012 9:30 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsTwo years ago, a fledgling social-networking site called Blippy accidentally posted the credit card numbers of its users online. While that was a particularly egregious example, such inadvertent information leaks happen all the time. Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have developed a new programming system that could help prevent such inadvertent information leaks.
Japanese researchers achieve world record cryptanalysis of cryptography
June 18, 2012 7:03 am | News | CommentsFujitsu Laboratories, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology, and Kyushu University jointly broke a world cryptography record with the successful cryptanalysis of a 278-digit (923-bit)-long pairing-based cryptography, which is now becoming the next generation cryptography standard.
New quantum computing algorithm could stimulate giant particle accelerators
June 14, 2012 4:54 am | News | CommentsA trio of theorists, including one from the NIST, have described how a future quantum computer could be used to simulate complex, high-energy collisions of subatomic particles. Given a working quantum computer—still under development—the algorithm could solve important physics problems well beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputers.
Computer model predicts drug side effects
June 11, 2012 10:19 am | News | CommentsA new set of computer models has successfully predicted negative side effects in hundreds of current drugs, based on the similarity between their chemical structures and those molecules known to cause side effects, according to a paper.
A new type of Internet search engine
June 11, 2012 5:11 am | News | CommentsComputer scientists at the University of Glasgow are participating in a new project to develop a search engine which will draw its results from sensors located in the physical world.
New research helps quantum computers move closer to reality
June 7, 2012 11:03 am | News | CommentsThe quantum computer is a futuristic machine that could operate at speeds even more mind boggling than the world's fastest supercomputers. Research involving physicist Mike Thewalt of Simon Fraser University offers a new step towards making quantum computing a reality, through the unique properties of highly enriched and highly purified silicon.
Rice, UCLA slash energy needs for next-generation memory
June 7, 2012 7:56 am | News | CommentsResearchers from Rice University and the University of California, Los Angeles unveiled a new data-encoding scheme that slashes more than 30% of the energy needed to write data onto new memory cards that use phase-change memory—a competitor to flash memory that has big backing from industry heavyweights.
Oracle purchases Collective Intellect
June 5, 2012 9:01 am | News | CommentsOracle has announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire Collective Intellect, a company that specializes in cloud-based social intelligence solutions that enable organizations to monitor, understand, and respond to consumers' conversations on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.
Research identifies precise measurement of radiation damage
June 5, 2012 6:42 am | News | CommentsLawrence Livermore National Laboratory researchers have for the first time identified a precise measurement of the amount of radiation damage that will occur in any given material. With a full understanding of the early stages of the radiation damage process, researchers are provided with better knowledge and tools to manipulate materials to our advantage.
Nuclear weapon simulations show performance in molecular detail
June 5, 2012 6:26 am | News | CommentsU.S. researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail. Because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons, tools that can accurately depict an explosion are becoming critical for national defense.
Protein pathways provide clues in leukemia research
June 4, 2012 9:50 am | News | CommentsScientists at Rice University and the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center have successfully profiled protein pathways found to be distinctive to leukemia patients with particular variants of the disease. Their research involved the creation of a new computational approach to identifying complex networks in protein signaling.
System improves automated monitoring of security cameras
June 4, 2012 9:27 am | News | CommentsPolice and security teams guarding airports, docks, and border crossings from terrorist attack or illegal entry need to know immediately when someone enter a prohibited area. A network of surveillance cameras is typically used to monitor these at-risk locations. Now, a system being developed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology can perform security analysis more accurately and in a fraction of the time it would take a human camera operator.
A search engine for social networks based on ants
June 4, 2012 9:05 am | News | CommentsResearch at Carlos III University in Madrid is developing an algorithm, based on ants' behavior when they are searching for food, which accelerates the search for relationships among elements that are present in social networks.
Complex networks, animal or computer, share similar skeletons
June 4, 2012 3:48 am | News | CommentsNorthwestern University researchers are the first to discover that very different complex networks—ranging from global air traffic to neural networks—share very similar backbones. By stripping each network down to its essential nodes and links, they found each network possesses a skeleton and these skeletons share common features, much like vertebrates do.
Quantum computers will simulate particle collisions
May 31, 2012 11:13 am | News | CommentsQuantum computers are still years away, but a trio of theorists has already figured out at least one talent they may have. According to the theorists, physicists might one day use quantum computers to study the inner workings of the universe in ways that are far beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputers.
