science wire

A new app for android phones allows Londoners to share their experiences about the London Underground as they travel, and could transform how we use public transport.

The University of Glasgow's groundbreaking science and engineering research was showcased today (Tuesday 3 July) during a campus visit by Minister for Learning, Science and Scotland's Languages Alasdair Allan. Allan visited the College of Science and Engineering to find out more about University scientists' work in the areas of computing, sustainable energy and sensor systems.

A Z-boson decays within the Compact Muon Solenoid detector at CERN. Large red spikes represent the resulting electron-positron pair.

Physics professor Jim Kakalios, a science consultant for the new Sony film The Amazing Spider-Man , explains the real science behind the Decay Rate Algorithm Media Note: "Spider-Man and the Decay Rate Algorithm" can be viewed at: http://z.umn.edu/spiderman.

Workshop Gathers Myriad Success Stories Across Diverse Applications A first-time workshop highlighting the latest advances in the Kepler Scientific Workflow System brought together researchers and co

Edinburgh scientists have taken a robotic football team to the last eight of the robot world cup. The RoboCup tournament was held in Mexico City and attracted 25 robotic teams from around the world, including Edinferno from Edinburgh.

New MIT software keeps tens of thousands of people logged into remote computers from mobile devices, but the underlying technology could improve a host of other programs.

A group of high-profile faculty recruits promise to make the University of Washington a leading institution for machine learning and the analysis of "big data.

Is aristocratic pornography or obscure political theory more likely to start a revolution? A new database developed at the University of Leeds will shed light on this and other historical questions.

Saturday 23 June marks the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing - mathematical genius, hero of the WWII code breakers of Bletchley Park, and father of modern computing.

New software amplifies changes in successive frames of video that are too subtle for the naked eye.

Every day researchers add another sea of data to an ocean of knowledge on the world around us — billions on top of billions of measurements, images and observations of the tiniest subatomic particles up to the movement of planets and stars.

Gil Stein, a leading scholar of ancient Mesopotamia, has been reappointed for a third five-year term as director of the Oriental Institute, a position he has held since joining UChicago in 2002.

While it's exploring confined, dangerous or cluttered zones, the flying robot "Airburr" isn't fazed by crashes or falls.

Aleksandra Sarcevic of Drexel University presents an innovative digital pen interface for information capture and display in time-critical medical work, developed in collaboration with Drs.

Disability-focused employee networks are key to retaining and advancing workers with disabilities, according to ILR School research released with the Society for Human Resource Management June 7.

If you hire a robot to help you move into your new apartment, you won't have to send out for pizza. But you will have to give the robot a system for figuring out where things go. The best approach, according to Cornell researchers, is to ask "How will humans use this?" Researchers in the Personal Robotics Lab of Ashutosh Saxena, assistant professor of computer science, have already taught robots to identify common objects, pick them up and place them stably in appropriate locations.

The door to the petascale era is being opened for critical Australian research in climate change, the environment, and a host of other areas.

A survey of the nation's sleeping and waking patterns has revealed that on average, we get over 7 hours sleep a night.

Technology originally developed to track badgers underground could soon be used to locate people in an emergency situation such as a bomb attack or earthquake.

The record for the time a delicate quantum state can be maintained in silicon has been smashed in what could be a significant step towards an ultrafast quantum computer.

Most recent Discovery grants and graduate student awards support innovation and scientific exploration in wide range of fields Whether it is for research into clean energy sources, the future of wireless communication or a better understanding of the processes involved in language learning, over 160 established McGill researchers and more than 80 graduate students will benefit from support from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) over the next five years.

Smooth moves: how space animates Hollywood If you've been to see Wrath of the Titans, then you've watched it in action.

Sustained Speeds of 100 GB/s Needed to Support SDSC's 'Big Data' Initiatives The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at the University of California, San Diego has completed the deployment of its L

Mapping Texts, a collaboration between Stanford University and the University of North Texas, allows scholars to explore visualizations of language patterns embedded in almost two centuries of Texas newspapers. An all-consuming public interest in family, religion and football in modern rural Texas is just one of the cultural snapshots that can be culled from Mapping Texts , a new interactive database that generates graphical interpretations of language trends embedded in over 230,000 pages of Texas newspapers from the late 1820s through the early 2000s.

Researchers and surgeons from King's College London and Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust are piloting 'touchless' technology in the operating theatre.

Gerard Bishop, who co-led the UK research team as Reader of Plant Biology in the Department of Life Sciences at Imperial College London, said: "The publication of the tomato genome sequence has been eagerly anticipated both by the international research community and by tomato growers and breeders worldwide.

ANN ARBOR, Mich.-The University of Michigan is putting the finishing touches on a new eco-friendly data center, known as the Modular Data Center.

Reception and service at central level for international students after arrival at KTH.

Understanding the impact of digital technology What kinds of digital technologies will emerge in the next 50 years?

The University of Birmingham has teamed up with the Channel 4 health awareness show Embarrassing Bodies to create a groundbreaking dermatological database.

A collaboration between Columbia Professors Peter Allen (Computer Science, Columbia Engineering), Nabil Simaan (formerly Mechanical Engineering at Columbia, now at Vanderbilt) and Dennis Fowler (Surg

A computerized system developed at MIT can tell the difference between smiles of joy and smiles of frustration. Can you tell which of these smiles is showing happiness? Or which one is the result of frustration? A computer system developed at MIT can. The answer: The smile on the right is the sign of frustration.

A £3.5 million supercomputing hub is set to power growth and innovation in the Midlands and London by opening up its vast number-crunching power to local firms.

Understanding the genetic diversity within and between populations has important implications for studies of human disease and evolution.

A £3.5 million supercomputing hub is set to power growth and innovation in the Midlands and London by opening up its vast number-crunching power to local firms.

Sooner than you think, we may have robots to tidy up our homes. Researchers in Cornell's Personal Robotics Lab have trained a robot to survey a room, identify all the objects, figure out where they belong and put them away.

Highlights from a year of innovative teaching, breakthrough research, inventive student projects, and global impact SEAS alumna Joanne Chang '91, owner of Flour Bakery & Cafe, prepared the enormous cake for Harvard's 375th birthday party in October.

Urologic conditions like urinary tract infections, kidney stones, and prostate cancer are a major economic burden on Americans, resulting in health care costs of close to $40 billion annually, according to a newly released national report that charts the demographic and economic impact of urologic diseases in the U.S. Urologic Diseases in America (UDA), last published in 2007, has been revised and updated for 2012 and includes a wealth of new, detailed information on the utilization of resources and the costs associated with urologic diseases among men, women and children.

Online technology has vastly increased citizens' access to public records such as political campaign contributions and real estate transactions.

A multiyear collaboration among Stanford engineering departments uses some of the world's fastest supercomputers to model the complexities of hypersonic flight.