Feature Channels: Technology

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Hardware hackers are creating fantastical machines from a Victorian age that never was.

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A high-tech form of bomb disposal has evolved in the streets of Iraq and Afghanistan, and may be coming to a city near you.

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After discovering a flaw in the Internet's Domain Name System, computer-security expert Dan Kaminsky helped to coordinate an industry-wide effort to patch the relevant software and prevent unwary users from being redirected to fake Websites.

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A UMDNJ case study focused on use of the Nintendo Wii for rehabilitation of a teen with cerebral palsy is believed to be the first published research showing the physical therapy benefits resulting from use of the wildly popular gaming system. Researchers say the gaming system complements traditional techniques.

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The UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Spam Data Mine reports that CareerBuilder.com, a reputable job search and employment company, has joined the list of brands targeted by a criminal who is stealing login credentials to their site by claiming to have a new Digital Certificate said to protect customers.

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Virginia Tech researchers have developed an efficient compact ultra-wideband antenna (CUA) for a range of home, automotive, medical, and military applications. The antenna has achieved a near optimal performance for size and bandwidth.

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Understanding exposures is critical for the protection of human health, but for years scientists and health officials have struggled in their attempts to collect accurate data regarding the exposure of children, emergency responders and military personnel to a wide range of environmental contaminants.

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Balancing public and private interests for nighttime lighting has been a difficult undertaking, as too little lighting may increase safety and security issues, while too much lighting may cause problems for the environment and for human well being. Scientists in the Lighting Research Center (LRC) at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed the first ever comprehensive method for predicting and measuring various aspects of light pollution.

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Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Spam Data Mine urge the public to use caution when considering a "work at home" job, especially those offered by e-mail. UAB's Spam Data Mine collects millions of e-mail messages used to provide investigators with spam intelligence and determine new attack methods.

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To date, more than 280 Internet domain names have been registered relating to Hurricane Gustav, some of them using words like "charity," "relief," and "support." The UAB computer forensic team is watching these domains to detect any signs of fraudulent use.

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Great strides are being made toward the long-sought goal of constructing MOSFETs that are suitable for large-scale digital ICs using GaAs or similar III-V semiconductors.

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Will Wright, creator of The Sims, has given life to an evolutionary--and revolutionary--new game.

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Billions of dollars spent on defeating improvised explosive devices are beginning to show what technology can and cannot do for the evolving struggle.

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The Russian government stands accused of being the source of the attacks flooding Georgian government Web sites with traffic, making them inaccessible to users. Is it true? University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB) Director of Research in Computer Forensics Gary Warner has been investigating the situation and has found some answers.

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University of Utah physicists successfully controlled an electrical current using the "spin" within electrons "“ a step toward building an organic "spin transistor": a plastic semiconductor switch for future ultrafast computers. The study also suggests it will be more difficult than thought to make highly efficient light-emitting diodes (LEDs) using organic materials.

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The UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Spam Data Mine is seeing new escalations in the so-called "Russian-Georgian Cyber War". More than 500 e-mails were received in a 90 minutes period this morning at UAB claiming to be a BBC story revealing that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili is homosexual.

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The UAB (University of Alabama at Birmingham) Spam Data Mine reports that a new spam trend using MSNBC began shortly after 3 a.m. this morning. Because the new spam attack is based on the actual emails sent to MSNBC Alert subscribers, it will be nearly impossible to block to the spam without also blocking legitimate MSNBC mail, said Gary Warner, director of Computer Forensics.

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Technological advancements in specific fields of neuroscience have implications for U.S. national security, and the intelligence community should monitor them closely, according to a new report from the National Research Council.

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Antivirus software on your personal computer could become a thing of the past thanks to a new "cloud computing" approach to malicious software detection developed at the University of Michigan.

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Researchers at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School have selected a high performance IBM computer to perform research they hope will one day lead to more effective treatment of medical conditions like infertility and thyroid problems.

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Texas Hold'em poker has exploded in popularity over the past few years. Its popularity has extended to academic researchers. Now, poker-playing artificial intelligence systems, developed by a researcher at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have been released for free use by the public.

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Throughout the month of July, spam messages using fake news headlines have been luring visitors to virus-laden Web sites that will infect the unwary Websurfer with a simple clink on any of the links.

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Smaller and faster are two goals in today's electronics market and an article in an international trade publication shows how North Dakota State University researchers, Fargo, design and build such electronics packages.

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Researchers at UMass Amherst are using software engineering techniques to develop safer ways to administer blood transfusions and chemotherapy with the goal of improving patient safety. The team is also analyzing the flow of patients in emergency rooms to reduce patient waiting times.

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A new computer language for modeling biological phenomenon can "think" like cells and molecular mechanisms think, thereby simulating the dynamics of biological phenomenon. Through incorporating basic principles of engineering, the new language, called Little b, surpasses current biological modeling software in that it goes beyond simply representing biological information. It allows biologists to create programs that can reason about biological knowledge and thereby help overcome the barrier of complexity.

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Four Brazilian geeks dream of creating the next big hit in massive online games--with creativity, a bit of luck, and an IBM mainframe.

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A novel form of data compression effectively doubles the memory in embedded systems while barely slowing them down.

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To help IT managers safeguard valuable information most efficiently, computer scientists at NIST are applying security metrics to computer network pathways to assign a probable risk of attack, calculating the most vulnerable points of attack.

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Supercomputer performance and energy efficiency can co-exist. Roadrunner, the top-ranked supercomputer in the TOP500, is ranked third on the Green500. The first sustained petaflop supercomputer, Roadrunner was developed by the U.S. Department of Energy Los Alamos National Laboratory.

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A federal grant will allow Johns Hopkins researchers to purchase a powerful $2 million computer that will speed up their efforts to find new ways to diagnose and treat brain disease, heart illnesses, cancer and other medical ailments.

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Personalized computer interfaces that adapt to each user's vision and motor abilities significantly speeds up computer tasks, especially in disabled users. The prototype system offers the first instantly customizable computer interface.

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Multithreaded Cray XMT supercomputer seeks advanced software for data-intensive computing.

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For a generation of surgeons who have grown up playing video games, they are now learning temporal bone surgery of the skull in a similar way. Physicians and researchers at Nationwide Children's Hospital are using state-of-the-art computer animation to help train the next generation of surgeons.

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A newly published study that found wireless systems that track hospital medical equipment can cause potentially hazardous incidents involving lifesaving devices may have needlessly alarmed patients, their families and hospital administrators.

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Star of Arkansas, a supercomputer operated by the University of Arkansas, has been listed as one of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers. Each year, the global high-performance computing community announces the TOP500, a list of the world's most powerful computers. At this year's International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany, Star of Arkansas was ranked at No. 339. The university is one of only 33 entries from U.S. academic institutions to make the list.

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Computer scientists at the University of Michigan developed open-source software that cuts the time to find symmetries in complicated equations from days to seconds in some cases.

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Steffen Schmidt and Michael McCoy -- both researchers in Iowa State University's Center for Information Protection -- provide information on how identity theft may be perpetrated and protection tips in a new book, "The Silent Crime: What You Need to Know About Identity Theft" (Twin Lakes Press, 2008).

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Research and innovation is being funded at an unprecedented pace around the world, yet U.S. research and innovation funding faces budget cuts. Ways to increase efficiencies and increase competitiveness will be on the agenda as research park executives gather June 16 at BioParks 2008. Key pacesetters from the public and private sectors will examine emerging efforts to increase the speed of discovery and the process of bringing new discoveries into the marketplace to create new jobs and increased prosperity.

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A Kansas State University youth expert says parents need to keep their status as technology immigrants in mind when helping their children -- the technology natives -- deal with issues like cyberbullying.

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Georgia Tech researchers have created a new, single-exposure imaging tool that could significantly improve point-of-care medical and forensic imaging by empowering front line clinicians with no specialized training to detect and assess, in real-time, the severity of bruises and erythema, regardless of patient skin pigmentation or available lighting.

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If you're waiting to upload your consciousness into a computer, don't hold your breath; the rapture of the geeks could be a long time in coming.

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Even before Weixiao Huang received his doctorate from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his new transistor captured the attention of some of the biggest American and Japanese automobile companies. The 2008 graduate's invention could replace one of the most common pieces of technology in the world"”the silicon transistor for high-power and high-temperature electronics.

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A new book, Cyber Security: Economic Strategies and Public Policy Alternatives, provides the first systematic analysis of the economics of protecting cyberspace.

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Researchers have designed a system capable of simultaneously measuring hundreds of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags and rapidly testing new RFID tag prototypes. This testbed allows researchers to measure the signal strength of tags hidden behind other tags and to rapidly test unique antenna configurations and multiple antennas without actually constructing new tags for each experiment.

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Microscopic X-ray computed tomography is expected to help scientists testing gene function across species. A report on the new technique is in the May issue of The Anatomical Record. Authors are from San Antonio, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; and Washington, D.C.

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One of the first large-scale analyses of how people share knowledge on Yahoo Answers has found that participants use the site to exchange advice and opinions, in addition to technical expertise.

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The first android candidates for 2048 President of the United States invite everyone to visit their new campaign booths on the University of Arkansas island in the virtual world of Second Life.

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Researchers at NIST have demonstrated a new imaging system that detects naturally occurring terahertz radiation with unprecedented sensitivity and resolution.

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In the 10 April issue of Nature, a new artificial material is revealed that marks the beginning of a revolution in the development of materials for electronic applications. The new material, a superlattice, which has a multilayer structure composed of alternating atomically thin layers of two different oxides (PbTiO3 and SrTiO3), possesses properties radically different to either of the two materials by themselves.

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University of Utah engineers took an early step toward building superfast computers that run on far-infrared light instead of electricity: They made waveguides -- the equivalent of wires -- that carried and bent this form of light, also known as terahertz radiation, which is the last unexploited portion of the electromagnetic spectrum.