Army Ground Combat Systems adopts Sandia tool
May 21, 2013 11:35 am | News | CommentsSandia National Laboratories has developed key components of a software tool to help the Army's PEO GCS analyze countless what-if scenarios that can be manipulated as technology advances and the global environment, the federal budget, or other factors change. Sandia calls this advanced combination of modeling, simulation, and optimization decision support software the Capability Portfolio Analysis Tool (CPAT).
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.
Software spots, isolates cyberattacks to protect networked control systems
May 14, 2013 11:06 am | News | CommentsResearchers from North Carolina State University have developed a software algorithm that detects and isolates cyberattacks on networked control systems—which are used to coordinate transportation, power, and other infrastructure across the United States.
Thomson Reuters Enhances Accelus BoardLink Mobile Offering
May 8, 2013 5:06 am | by The Associated Press | News | CommentsThomson Reuters announced a range of strategic enhancements to its Accelus BoardLink service, a secure board workflow solution designed to serve companies as they operate across borders and involve increasingly mobile, global boards. The boards of public companies face heightened scrutiny from investors, regulators, and the media, and are therefore increasingly reliant on technology for support and assistance.
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.
Algorithm helps evaluate, rank scientific literature
April 18, 2013 8:14 am | News | CommentsKeeping up with current scientific literature is a daunting task, considering that hundreds to thousands of papers are published each day. Now researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a computer program to help them evaluate and rank scientific articles in their field.
New software could alleviate wireless traffic
April 12, 2013 7:53 am | News | CommentsThe explosive popularity of wireless devices is increasingly clogging the airwaves, resulting in dropped calls, wasted bandwidth, and botched connections. New software, called GapSense, being developed at the University of Michigan works like a stoplight to control the traffic and dramatically reduce interference.
Researchers find surprising similarities between genetic, computer codes
March 29, 2013 8:00 am | News | CommentsThe term "survival of the fittest" refers to natural selection in biological systems, but Darwin's theory may apply more broadly than that. New research from Brookhaven National Laboratory shows that this evolutionary theory also applies to technological systems. The team worked to compare that frequency with which components "survive" in two complex systems: bacterial genomes and operating systems on Linux computers.
Shimadzu, Integrated Analysis bring enterprise-level private-cloud services to laboratories
March 20, 2013 2:56 pm | News | CommentsIn today's laboratories, experimental data sets are growing larger, and critical tasks such as data storage, processing, mining, and sharing have become cumbersome, error prone, and expensive. The i3D Enterprise Service, offered by Shimadzu Scientific Instruments and Integrated Analysis Inc., overcomes these challenges by integrating storage, processing, and data mining in an enterprise-level private cloud.
Genomic data is growing, but what does it tell us?
March 20, 2013 2:46 pm | by Susan Meikle and Iddo Friedberg, Miami University | News | CommentsWe live in the post-genomic era, when DNA sequence data is growing exponentially. However, for most of the genes that we identify, we have no idea of their biological functions. They are like words in a foreign language, waiting to be deciphered. A new project called CAFA, for Critical Assessment of Function Annotation, is helping channel the flood of data from genome research to deduce the function of proteins.
AB SCIEX enhances software to drive micro LC
March 20, 2013 10:10 am | News | CommentsNew software and service offerings to simplify and accelerate the integration of micro liquid chromatography (LC) technology into regulated bioanalytical laboratories was introduced this week by AB SCIEX. The new software module supports 21CFR Part 11 and the new IQ/OQ/PQ service to the Eksigent line of LC solutions gives research organizations a new validated approach to micro LC
Cyberwar manual lays down rules for online attacks
March 20, 2013 10:01 am | by Raphael Satter, Associated Press | News | CommentsEven cyberwar has rules, and one group of experts is putting out a manual to prove it. Their handbook, the Tallinn Manual, due to be published later this week, applies the practice of international law to the world of electronic warfare in an effort to show how hospitals, civilians and neutral nations can be protected in an information-age fight.
Plasmonics: Model makes light work of nanocircuits
March 13, 2013 5:36 pm | News | CommentsAs computer manufacturers cram ever more processing power onto tiny chips, the connections between electronic components that measure just a few billionths of a meter across allow electrons to leak. One promising solution is to replace those electrons with photons of light. Researchers in Singapore have now developed a numerical model to simulate the performance of circuits that rely on light
Researchers find German-made spyware across globe
March 13, 2013 5:28 pm | by Raphael Satter, Associated Press | News | CommentsA Canadian research center said Wednesday that it had identified 25 different countries that host servers linked to FinFisher, a Trojan horse program which can dodge anti-virus protections to steal data, log keystrokes, eavesdrop on Skype calls, and turn microphones and webcams into live surveillance devices. This finding doesn't necessarily mean those countries' governments are using FinFisher, but it is an indication of the spyware's reach.
Making cloud computing more efficient
March 13, 2013 8:10 am | by Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office | News | CommentsFor many companies, moving their Web-application servers to the cloud is an attractive option, since cloud-computing services can offer economies of scale, extensive technical support, and easy accommodation of demand fluctuations. But for applications that depend heavily on database queries, cloud hosting can pose as many problems as it solves. Researchers are developing a new system that could help solve these problems.
Researchers create an Internet for robots
March 11, 2013 9:57 am | News | CommentsSoftware engineers at five European universities have developed a cloud-computing platform for robots. The platform allows robots connected to the Internet to directly access the powerful computational, storage, and communications infrastructure of modern data centers—the giant server farms behind the likes of Google, Facebook, and Amazon—for robotics tasks and robot learning.
International consortium builds “Google Map” of human metabolism
March 4, 2013 1:28 pm | News | CommentsBuilding on earlier pioneering work by researchers at the University of California, San Diego, an international consortium of university researchers has produced the most comprehensive virtual reconstruction of human metabolism to date. Scientists could use the model, known as Recon 2, to identify causes of and new treatments for diseases like cancer, diabetes and even psychiatric and neurodegenerative disorders.
Researchers propose breakthrough architecture for quantum computers
February 15, 2013 1:19 pm | News | CommentsA team of researchers in Canada has proposed a new computational model that may become the architecture for a scalable quantum computer. They say the model should use multi-particle quantum walks for universal computation. In a multi-particle quantum walk, particles live on the vertices of a graph and can move between vertices joined by an edge. Furthermore, nearby particles can interact with each other.
Agilent commits $90 million gift to Georgia Tech
February 11, 2013 8:11 am | News | CommentsAgilent Technologies Inc. announced the largest in-kind software donation ever in its longstanding relationship with the Georgia Institute of Technology. Last year, Georgia Tech dedicated a new laboratory to Agilent after the company made a substantial donation to the Institute's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Missouri researchers ID largest prime number yet
February 7, 2013 10:03 am | by Heather Hollingsworth, Associated Press | News | CommentsThe University of Central Missouri said Wednesday that a group led by computer science and mathematics professor Curtis Cooper found the largest known prime number last month. The 17 million-digit number is the 48th known Mersenne prime and is the third discovered at the 11,800-student university in Warrensburg, about 50 miles east of Kansas City.
New modeling approach transforms imaging technologies
February 5, 2013 12:09 pm | by Emil Venere, Purdue University | News | CommentsResearchers are improving the performance of technologies ranging from medical computed tomography scanners to digital cameras using a system of models to extract specific information from huge collections of data and then reconstructing images like a jigsaw puzzle. The new approach is called model-based iterative reconstruction, or MBIR, and it is helping to greatly reduce the noise in data, providing great clarity at lower radiation intensities.
Corrosive behavior? There's an app for that
February 4, 2013 7:53 am | News | CommentsIt may not be as popular as Angry Birds, but the Corrosion iPhone app developed by University of Toronto engineering student Jason Tam is finding a grateful audience among professional engineers and engineering students.
Winners of annual NSF visualization competition announced
February 1, 2013 12:03 pm | News | CommentsThe National Science Foundation (NSF), along with the journal Science, this week announced the 53 winners and honorable mentions of the International Science & Technology Visualization Challenge, a contest jointly sponsored by NSF and the joournal Science. The winning entries highlight the often stunning capabilities of computer-aided visualization techniques.
Novel gene-searching software improves accuracy in disease studies
January 23, 2013 8:43 am | News | CommentsA new software tool, developed at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, streamlines the detection of disease-causing genetic changes through more sensitive detection methods and by automatically correcting for variations that reduce the accuracy of results in conventional software. The software, called ParseCNV, is freely available to the scientific-academic community.
Study: Quality of care measures can be improved for EHRs
January 16, 2013 7:55 am | News | CommentsHealth care providers and hospitals are being offered up to $27 billion in federal incentives to use electronic health records (EHRs) in ways that demonstrably improve the quality of care. The incentives are based, in part, on the ability to electronically report clinical quality measures. A new study has found ways in which quality measurement from EHRs—which are primarily designed for documentation of clinical care for individual patients—can be improved



