science wire

People with disabilities and those who are elderly may find it hard to communicate using existing voice telephones.

Envisat keeping an eye on the Eyjafjallajoekull volcano 21 April 2010 The development of the ash plume from Iceland's Eyjafjallajoekull volcano between 17-20 April is tracked in this series of Envisat images. On 17 and 19 April, the brown-coloured ash plume is visible travelling in a roughly southeasterly direction over the Atlantic Ocean by the prevailing western air current.

Princeton senior David Karp has parlayed a passion for the aerodynamics of supersonic jets and race cars into $250,000 in no-strings-attached research funding.

A researcher from UCL is part of a US-led team investigating how the brain and its microcircuitry react to physiological changes and what could be done to encourage its recovery from injury.

April 19, 2010 — Corla Gables — A new grant from the Office of Naval Research will fund the work of University of Miami (UM) College of Engineering professors and their collaborators from Indiana University and BAE Systems to develop automated methods for analyzing data. Such methods could potentially serve as tools for human analysts and decision makers.

The firm was founded in 2009 by Mark Cummins and James Philbin, two graduate students from Oxford University's Department of Engineering Science, to commercialise technology stemming from their doctoral research.

Flood-It is a computer game played by millions the world over. The object is to turn a board full of coloured squares into one single colour in a limited number of 'flood-filling' moves.

April 09, 2010 — Miami — Surgeons from the Department of Otolaryngology at UHealth ? University of Miami Health System have performed the first removal of throat cancer in South Florida using a surgical robot.

This Easter, motorists will experience the familiar frustration of being stuck on a motorway in a 'phantom' traffic jam that eventually disperses with no road works to blame, or any other apparent cause.

Columbia's Graduate School of Journalism and The Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science have announced plans to launch a dual-degree Master of Science Program in Computer Science and

New research by University of Manchester scientists that could help blind people find their way around the World Wide Web has been given a boost with a £50,000 grant from Google.

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (03/30/2010) —The Hiawatha light-rail line provides significant benefits for transit-dependent low-wage workers and improves overall transportation equity in the Twin Cities, according to new University of Minnesota Center for Transportation Studies research. By focusing on the impacts of the Hiawatha light-rail line, which runs between downtown Minneapolis and its southern suburbs, the study's authors attempted to uncover whether Twin Cities transitways effectively connect low-wage workers with suitable job opportunities.

Medication errors are cut by seven-fold when doctors use an electronic system to write prescriptions, compared with scrawling prescriptions by hand, reports a new study by physician-scientists at Weill Cornell Medical College (WCMC), published online recently in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

After an extensive period of testing, researchers have launched an Internet portal to showcase the real-time measurement and visualization of energy use on the University of California, San Diego campus.

"Given Princeton's deep strengths in cross-disciplinary energy research and the recent establishment of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment , we felt that energy would be a terrific t

Students at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA) are using the latest digital technology and crisis mapping tools to aid Chilean earthquake relief efforts with the web-based platform Ushahidi. On Feb. Patrick Meier, Ushahidi's director of crisis mapping and strategic partnerships, was speaking at a conference at Columbia on the role of digital technology in international affairs, sponsored by student-run blog The Morningside Post .

Energy harvesting ? using vibrations from the environment to produce electricity ? has been around for over a decade, but Dr Stephen Burrow and his team in the Department of Aerospace Engineering hope that within five years it could be powering devices such as heart monitors and mobile phones.

A ?loyal friend? of the Institute for more than 50 years, the alumnus will speak to graduates in June MIT analysis suggests wind turbines could cause temperatures to rise and fall New microscopy tech

For years, Chris Wiggins has observed a common trend in the post-Columbia career paths of his top math students: They join Wall Street banks. "They're resigned to becoming quants," says Wiggins, 39, a professor of applied mathematics at the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science . "They don't know about other options." Chris Wiggins, professor of applied math, hopes more of his students look beyond Wall Street for career options and consider job opportunities in New York's nascent tech start-up space.

Automated ticket booking lines could be improved to better understand what customers are saying, thanks to research.

Eric Brewer, professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley, is the 2009 recipient of the ACM-Infosys Foundation Award in the Computing Sciences, a prestigious honor that comes with a $150,000 prize.

A leading facility which examines the use and development of research software has received a £4.2 million grant from Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Led by EPCC at

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today named Jeffrey Jaffe ?76, SM ?77, PhD ?79 its new chief executive officer.

Zurich, Switzerland, 9 March 2010 —Some laws are made to be broken, and others are made to be followed.

Seattle and Zurich, 25 February 2010—IBM (NYSE: IBM) Research today unveiled a breakthrough method based on a mathematical algorithm that reduces the computational complexity, costs, and energy usage for analyzing the quality of massive amounts of data by two orders of magnitude. This new method will greatly help enterprises extract and use the data more quickly and efficiently to develop more accurate and predictive models.

Roy Andersson (on-site coach), Ulf Lundström, Luká? Polá?ek, Chen Xing, Fredrik Niemelä (coach) and Bill Poucher (ICPC executive director).

We're all used to hearing disclaimers about prescription drug side effects. They drone on in television commercials and take up pages of tiny print accompanying the prescriptions themselves.

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology today announced its MIT App is now available from Apple's App Store.

Bill Gates, the legend goes, started the empire that would one day become Microsoft in his garage. More recently, Cameron Cohen got a start on what looks to be a promising future while stuck at home in a hip-to-toe leg brace for six months.

Hurricane Katrina. The Southeast Asian tsunami. Now the killer earthquake in Haiti, which has claimed upwards of 50,000 lives.

Zurich - University of Zurich Wie vermarkte ich bequeme High Heels? Welche Themen sind tabu in der Spitzenmedizin? Wer an manchen Fragen schier verzweifelt, holt sich Rat auf dem Wissensportal «Starmind» - einer Entwicklung des «Artificial Intelligence Lab» der Universität Zürich.

PA 309/09 A throbbing hum, a low hiss, a high-pitched whine — for the tinnitus sufferer, these are just some of the sounds that can plague everyday life.

Through these simulations, scientists are developing a better understanding of how materials behave at the size scale of a nanometer, or one-billionth of a meter Los Alamos, New Mexico, October 29, 2009— Very tiny wires, called nanowires, made from such metals as silver and gold, may play a crucial role as electrical or mechanical switches in the development of future-generation ultrasmall nanodevices.

The Roadrunner system is now beginning its transition to classified computing to assure the safety, security, and reliability of the U.S. nuclear deterrent.

A University of Plymouth initiative that nurtures and develops start-up enterprises in the creative industries has reached capacity for the first time since it launched 19 months ago.

The model aims to look at galaxy-scale mass concentrations above and beyond quantities seen in state-of-the-art sky surveys.