news archive

Adding a Sixth Sense to Your Cellphone

Many Indians bought their first mobile phones before they had their first experiences with personal computers. Pranav Mistry thinks that most of them might also skip keyboards and mice and go straight to more intuitive and interactive…

Splitting Up Search

Searching the Web could become faster for users and much more efficient for search companies if search engines were split up and distributed around the world, according to researchers at Yahoo.

Currently, search engines are…

Futurists' Report Acknowledges Dangers of Smart Robots

A forthcoming report from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) will explore whether robots could eventually become so intelligent that they pose a threat to society. Although some researchers…

MU Research Leads to Improved Human, Object Detection Technology

University of Missouri researchers are developing software that would enable computers to search within videos and identify humans and specific objects, as well as perform other video analysis tasks. "The goal of our research…

Announced Initiatives to Bolster U.S. Science and Technology Collaboration With Muslim Communities

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton recently announced new initiatives aimed at promoting science and technology collaboration with Muslim communities around the world. Clinton named Bruce Alberts, Elias Zerhouni,…

U.S. and Australia Dominate MAGIC Robot Competition Short List

The organizers of the Multi-Autonomous Ground-robotic International Challenge (MAGIC) have created a list of 12 teams and has asked them to develop their proposals. Ten teams will receive $50,000, and the remaining two teams…

ACM Initiative Addresses Long-Term Preservation of Digital Library Content

ACM announced that it is providing institutional library customers with advanced electronic archiving services to help preserve their electronic resources. The services, which will be provided by Portico and CLOCKSS, address…

$1.2M Project Speeds Research Data Processing

Canada's Advanced Research and Innovation Network has provided $1.2 million to researchers at the University of Western Ontario to develop a new high-speed network for handling huge amounts of research data from synchrotrons…

Tim Berners-Lee: Machine-Readable Web Still a Ways Off

World Wide Web creator Sir Tim Berners-Lee says the machine-readable Web is still a ways off and faces numerous obstacles. He says recent initiatives such as the U.S. government's Data.gov, specifically its spreadsheets and…

Online Collaboration With Built-In Clarity

Software packages that interoperate while providing online users with an overview of their colleagues' work may finally lessen the dominance of email as the world's premier collaboration tool.

Virtual Crashes and Clatters Get Real

The clatter of a dropped trash can and the crash of a cymbal – both easily recognisable sounds.

That's why computer games or CGI movies that feature such noises use samples recorded from life, not generated by software as the…

The Explainer: P vs. NP

The Clay Mathematics Institute has a standing offer of $1 million for anyone who is able to prove or disprove one of seven problems that have never been solved. One of those problems is P=NP. Essentially, P is a set of relatively…

Researchers Design Smartphone Games for Elderly Diabetics

Researchers at Saint Louis University (SLU) and Old Dominion University have developed the Chinese Aged Diabetic Assistant (CADA), new smartphone technology that uses interactive games and other techniques to help elderly people…

NIST Test Proves 'The Eyes Have It' for ID Verification

The intricate structure of the iris constitutes a powerful biometric. A new report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) demonstrates that iris recognition algorithms can maintain their accuracy and interoperability…

NSF Awards $20 Million to SDSC to Develop Shared-Memory Supercomputer

The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego has been awarded a five-year, $20 million grant from the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) to build and operate a powerful supercomputer…

AI Spacesuits Turn Astronauts Into Cyborg Biologists

Wired NewsA research team led by University of Chicago geoscientist Patrick McGuire has successfully tested a feature-identifying system that could one day be used by "cyborg astrobiologists." The algorithms were able to pick…

New Keys for the Diffusion of Information in Social Networks

Information in social networks travels at an unexpectedly slow pace over the Internet with the exception of a few mass events, according to a study by researchers at Carlos III University of Madrid (UC3M) and IBM. The researchers…

Endowment Fund to Support ICT Research

Australia will continue to serve as a hub for research into wireless technologies as a result of new funding from the Science and Industry Endowment Fund, announced by Senator the Hon Kim Carr, Minister for Innovation, Industry…

HTML 5 Progresses Despite Challenges

Development of HTML5 is progressing, but the highly anticipated upgrade to the Web language still faces some major hurdles, particularly its lack of a standard video codec. "The underlying issue is finding a video format that…

Will Smart Grid Power IPv6?

The Obama administration's effort to transform the U.S.'s electric transmission system into a smart grid could help accelerate the adoption of the next-generation Internet standard IPv6. The Smart Grid would deploy new smart…

Amir Pnueli, Distinguished Computer Scientist and Researcher, Dies

Amir Pnueli, a professor of Computer Science at New York University and winner of the 1996 ACM A. M. Turing Award, died suddenly on November 2 of a brain hemorrhage. Pnueli was recognized internationally as a pioneer in the area…

Social Networking Meets Ambient Intelligence

Sharing small snippets of information about your daily life is a key feature of the online social networking revolution. Soon status updates and other social information could be generated automatically. A team of researchers…

World's First Arabic-Speaking Robot to Serve as Staff in Shopping Malls

A laboratory in the United Arab Emirate has built what it says is the world's first Arabic-speaking robot which could soon go into mass production to serve as staff in shopping malls. According to a report in The Independent,…

Microsoft's Mundie: IT Needed to Solve Global Woes

Microsoft's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie gave a speech at Harvard University on Tuesday (Nov. 3) to discuss coming "disruptions" in computing and to argue that computer science is fundamental to solving daunting…

Long Tail Criticism Might Affect e-Business Strategies

The Long Tail theory embraced by online businesses has taken some recent criticism, raising questions about whether businesses should change their e-strategies.

Jumping on the Multi-Bandwagon

When the U.S. Department of Homeland Security put out an "APB" looking for volunteers to test a new radio that allows first responders to talk to one another across different frequency bands, the line of interested agencies was…

Research Continues on Secure, Mobile, Quantum Communications

Air Force Research Laboratory researcher David H. Hughes is using an optical laser link to create secure quantum communication capabilities for military use. The system uses adaptive optics to transmit high data-rate video and…

K-State Freshman Manages Largest Supercomputer in Kansas

Kansas State University's (KSU's) Beocat is a cluster of 122 servers that work together to form Kansas' largest academic research supercomputer. "It's easier to think of something as a single machine, so it's called a supercomputer…

Chicago Academy of Advanced Technology Opens

The Chicago Academy of Advanced Technology (CAAT) opened its doors on Sept. 8, 2009. The academy is the result of an effort to fill the need for skilled IT workers and tech-savvy executives at Chicago companies and within city…

Intel Claims Memory Research Milestone

Intel and Numonyx recently announced a breakthrough in computer memory research that they say could eventually result in a less expensive and better-performing alternative to existing memory technologies. The two companies have…