Computer Technology
Working backward: Computer-aided design of zeolite templates
June 17, 2013 12:08 pm | News | Comments
Taking a page from computer-aided drug designers, Rice Univ. researchers have developed a computational method that chemists can use to tailor the properties of zeolites, one of the world’s most-used industrial minerals. The method allows chemists to work backward by first considering the type of zeolite they want to make and then creating the organic template needed to produce it.
Google begins launching Internet-beaming balloons
June 17, 2013 2:54 pm | by Martha Mendoza and Nick Perry, Associated Press | News | Comments
Eighteen months in the works, the top-secret project was announced Saturday in New...
A robot that runs like a cat
June 17, 2013 9:00 am | News | Comments
Thanks to its legs, whose design faithfully reproduces feline morphology, a Swiss...
Accelrys launches new laboratory informatics system
June 13, 2013 12:58 pm | News | Comments
Scientific innovation and lifecycle management software company Accelrys Inc. on...
Microsoft brings Office to iPhone, but not tablets
June 14, 2013 2:24 pm | by ANICK JESDANUN - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | News | CommentsEven as a pared-down version of Microsoft's Office software package arrived on the iPhone, the company is holding out on extending that to the iPad and Android devices as it tries to boost sales of tablet computers running its own Windows system.
Securing the cloud
June 10, 2013 7:21 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsA team of researchers has developed a new encryption scheme, known as a functional-encryption scheme, that solves a major problem with homomorphic encryption. The scheme would let the cloud server to run a single, specified computation on the homomorphically encrypted result, without being able to extract any other information about it.
Is Big Data turning government into 'Big Brother?'
June 7, 2013 3:08 am | by MICHAEL LIEDTKE - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | News | CommentsWith every phone call they make and every Web excursion they take, people are leaving a digital trail of revealing data that can be tracked. The revelations that the National Security Agency is perusing millions of U.S. customer phone records at Verizon Communications and snooping on the digital communications stored by nine Internet services illustrate how aggressively personal data is being collected and analyzed.
Microsoft unveils operating system update
June 5, 2013 5:04 am | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsSoftware giant Microsoft has unveiled the updated version of its touch-enabled Windows 8 operating system at the world's second largest computer show in Taipei. Tami Reller, chief financial and marketing officer of the company's Windows Division, said that Windows 8.1 would be available on both PCs and tablets later this year.
Spintronics approach enables new quantum technologies
June 4, 2013 4:12 pm | News | CommentsA team of researchers, including members of the Univ. of Chicago, highlight the power of emerging quantum technologies in two recently published papers. These technologies exploit quantum mechanics, the physics that dominates the atomic world, to perform disparate tasks such as nanoscale temperature measurement and processing quantum information with lasers.
An electrical switch for magnetism
May 31, 2013 8:22 am | by David L. Chandler, MIT News Office | News | CommentsResearchers have developed a new way of controlling the motion of magnetic domains—the key technology in magnetic memory systems. The new approach requires little power to write and no power to maintain the stored information, and could lead to a new generation of extremely low-power data storage. It controls magnetism by applying a voltage, rather than a magnetic field.
How computers can learn better
May 29, 2013 7:42 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsReinforcement learning is a technique in which a computer system learns how best to solve some problem through trial-and-error. Classic applications of reinforcement learning involve problems like robot navigation and automated surveillance. Now, researchers have developed a new reinforcement-learning algorithm that, for many problems, allows computer systems to find solutions much more efficiently than previous algorithms did.
Computational tool simplifies complex data into 2D images
May 20, 2013 9:30 am | News | CommentsResearchers at Columbia University and Stanford University have developed a computational method that enables scientists to visualize and interpret "high-dimensional" data produced by single-cell measurement technologies such as mass cytometry. A sophisticated algorithm converts difficult-to-interpret data into visual representations similar to two-dimensional "scatter plots".
Competition in the quantum world
May 20, 2013 9:24 am | News | CommentsUsing a new tool called a quantum simulator—based on a small-scale quantum computer—researchers in Austria have simulated physical phenomena a classical computer cannot investigate efficiently. Scientists there are the first to have simulated the competition between two rival dynamical processes at a new type of transition between two quantum mechanical orders
Computer research project shows shift in English language
May 16, 2013 7:38 am | News | CommentsUniversity of Illinois English professor Ted Underwood recently wrapped up a research project involving more than 4,200 books. Since that work revealed dramatic shifts in the English language between the 18th and 19th centuries, he’s now expanding his research to include more than 470,000 books—almost every English language book written during that era and preserved in a university library.
GM says supercomputers to keep recalls in check
May 13, 2013 3:31 pm | by TOM KRISHER - AP Auto Writer - Associated Press | News | CommentsGeneral Motors says a new supercomputer data storage center and efforts to write its own software are paying off. The company formally opened a giant data center on Monday in the Detroit suburb of Warren, Mich. The Detroit automaker says the changes are examples of how it's moving faster to cut costs and serve customers better.
Electronics comes to paper
May 8, 2013 9:43 am | News | CommentsPaper, a light and foldable raw material, could be a cost-efficient and simple basis for electronic devices if a practical solution for depositing conductive structures could be found. Researchers in Germany say they have done this by creating targeted structures by printing and heating a catalyst on a sheet of paper. The solution was created with a conventional inkjet printer.
Telling time on Saturn
May 3, 2013 12:30 pm | News | CommentsA University of Iowa undergraduate student has discovered that a process occurring in Saturn’s magnetosphere is linked to the planet's seasons and changes with them, a finding that helps clarify the length of a Saturn day and could alter our understanding of the Earth’s magnetosphere.
Computer simulations reveal the energy landscape of ion channels
May 3, 2013 11:55 am | News | CommentsIon channels are important drug targets. A team of researchers University of Vienna has investigated the opening and closing mechanisms of these channels, which represent large proteins with more than 400 amino acids. Their work for the first time calculates in atomic detail the full energy landscape of this protein.
Study shows that individual brain cells track where we are, how we move
May 3, 2013 9:36 am | News | CommentsLeaving the house in the morning may seem simple, but with every move we make, our brains are working to create maps of the outside world that allow us to navigate and remember where we are. Ultimately, the brain constructs its own pinpoint geographical chart that is far more precise than anything you'd find on Google Maps. But just how neurons make these maps of space has fascinated scientists for decades. Until now.
New research could let vehicles, robots collaborate with humans
May 3, 2013 7:39 am | by Helen Knight, MIT News correspondent | News | CommentsYou get into your car and ask it to get you home in time for the start of the big game, stopping off at your favorite Chinese restaurant on the way for takeout. But the car informs you that the road past the Chinese restaurant is closed for repairs, and you will have to choose a different place. You select a nearby Korean restaurant from the options the car suggests. Autonomous devices could soon collaborate with humans in this way.
Intel names Krzanich as chipmaker's next CEO
May 2, 2013 2:44 pm | by PETER SVENSSON - AP Technology Writer - Associated Press | News | CommentsIntel's chief operating officer, Brian Krzanich, will become its next CEO in two weeks, tasked with steering the world's largest chipmaker through an industry shake-up that is seeing tablets and smartphones overshadow Intel's base in personal computers.
Computer algorithms find genetic cancer networks
May 2, 2013 10:44 am | News | CommentsResearchers at Washington University in St. Louis, using powerful algorithms developed by computer scientists at Brown University, have assembled the most complete genetic profile yet of acute myeloid leukemia, an aggressive form of blood cancer.
Scientists make world’s smallest stop-motion film
May 2, 2013 9:22 am | News | CommentsEven without certification by Guinness World Records, it would be easy to believe a short, 250-frame film recently created by an IBM Research team is the world’s smallest. Named “A Boy and His Atom,” the movie was created by precisely placing thousands of atoms using a scanning tunneling microscope. This type of atomic-level control is the result of years of efforts by IBM to determine the lower limits for storing data.
New theory could streamline operations management, cloud computing
May 1, 2013 11:22 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsIt’s often said that we live in an age of increased specialization. But in a series of recent papers, researchers have shown that, in a number of different contexts, a little versatility can go a long way. Their theoretical analyses could have implications for operations management, cloud computing—and possibly even health care delivery and manufacturing.
Study: People may welcome talking tissue boxes
May 1, 2013 9:55 am | News | CommentsAccording to researchers from Penn State University, who presented their findings at the 2013 Annual Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Paris today, people who have embraced computers and smart phones are likely to give their blessing other smart objects, like talking tissue boxes or tweeting refrigerators. Their tests involved the use of actual talking, interacting objects.
Material loss protects teeth against fatigue failure
May 1, 2013 9:07 am | News | CommentsComputer simulations conducted in Germany have shown that the reduction of natural dental wear might be the main cause for widely spread non-carius cervical lesions—the loss of enamel and dentine at the base of the crown—in our teeth. The discovery was made by examining the biomechanical behavior of teeth using finite element analysis methods typically applied to engineering problems.
Room-temperature nuclear spins advance quantum computing efforts
April 30, 2013 11:42 am | News | CommentsAn international team of researchers has recently succeeded in both initializing and reading nuclear spins—which are relevant to qubits for quantum computers—at room temperature. With the help of a spin filter developed in 2009, the team has produced a flow of free electrons with a given spin in a material.
Older is wiser: Study shows software developer's skills improve over time
April 30, 2013 10:08 am | News | CommentsThere is a perception in some tech circles that older programmers aren’t able to keep pace with rapidly changing technology, and that they are discriminated against in the software field. But a new study from North Carolina State University indicates that the knowledge and skills of programmers actually improve over time—and that older programmers know as much (or more) than their younger peers.
Computer scientists suggest new spin on origins of evolvability
April 29, 2013 8:53 am | News | CommentsScientists have long observed that species seem to have become increasingly capable of evolving in response to changes in the environment. But computer science researchers now say that the popular explanation of competition to survive in nature may not actually be necessary for evolvability to increase.
