| E-waste recycling -- at whose expense? Dec 19th 2012, 13:28 Computers, tablets and mobile phones are all popular consumer products. The lifespan of these devices is usually short, between two to four years. One researcher visited Pakistan to see how these common electronic devices are dismantled and recycled. She investigated the harsh living conditions of people working with e-waste. |  | Small, portable sensors allow users to monitor exposure to pollution on their smart phones Dec 18th 2012, 18:31 Computer scientists have built a small fleet of portable pollution sensors that allow users to monitor air quality in real time on their smart phones. The sensors could be particularly useful to people suffering from chronic conditions, such as asthma, who need to avoid exposure to pollutants. CitiSense is the only air-quality monitoring system that delivers real-time data to users' cell phones and home computers -- at any time. | | Titan supercomputer debuts: Computer churns through more than 20,000 trillion calculations each second Oct 29th 2012, 14:35 The U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory has just launched a new era of scientific supercomputing with Titan, a system capable of churning through more than 20,000 trillion calculations each second -- or 20 petaflops -- by employing a family of processors called graphic processing units first created for computer gaming. Titan will be 10 times more powerful than ORNL's last world-leading system, Jaguar, while overcoming power and space limitations inherent in the previous generation of high-performance computers. | | NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center opens Oct 15th 2012, 18:20 The NCAR-Wyoming Supercomputing Center, which houses one of the world's most powerful supercomputers dedicated to the geosciences, officially opens today. Scientists at NCAR and universities across the country are launching a series of initial scientific projects on the center's flagship, a 1.5-petaflop IBM supercomputer known as Yellowstone. | | Stopping cloud computer problems before they start Sep 10th 2012, 15:25 Researchers have developed a new software tool to prevent performance disruptions in cloud computing systems by automatically identifying and responding to potential anomalies before they can develop into problems. | | Understanding complex relationships: How global properties of networks become apparent locally Jun 7th 2012, 13:26 Scientists have shown how global properties of networks become apparent in local characteristics. From infections spreading around the globe to the onset of an epileptic seizure in the brain: Many phenomena can be seen as the effects of network activity. Often it is vitally important to understand the properties of these networks. However, they are often too complex to be described completely. Scientists have now been able to show how global features of complex networks can be discovered in local statistical properties – which are much more accessible for scientific investigation. | | Nuclear weapon simulations show performance in molecular detail Jun 5th 2012, 19:59 US researchers are perfecting simulations that show a nuclear weapon's performance in precise molecular detail, tools that are becoming critical for national defense because international treaties forbid the detonation of nuclear test weapons. | | Quantum computers will be able to simulate particle collisions Jun 1st 2012, 16:06 Quantum computers are still years away, but a trio of theoretical physicists can already make the claim "there's an app for that." The theorists have developed a mathematical algorithm that will be used by a future quantum computer to study the inner workings of the universe in ways that are far beyond the reach of even the most powerful conventional supercomputers. | | Website security: Spot a bot to stop a botnet May 1st 2012, 14:00 Computer scientists have developed a two-pronged algorithm that can detect the presence of a botnet on a computer network and block its malicious activities before it causes too much harm. | | Not all today's students are 'tech-savvy' Apr 23rd 2012, 03:18 A small minority of today's university students don't use email and others are confused by the array of technologies available at universities. Yet many students couldn't bear to be without their mobile phones and find themselves distracted by social networking sites during study.  | | Quantum computer built inside a diamond Apr 4th 2012, 20:19 A team of scientists has built a quantum computer in a diamond, the first of its kind to include protection against "decoherence" -- noise that prevents the computer from functioning properly. | | Why are we made of matter? Supercomputing the difference between matter and antimatter Mar 29th 2012, 15:22 Using breakthrough techniques on some of the world's fastest supercomputers -- scientists have reported a landmark calculation of a kind of subatomic particle decay that's important to understanding matter/antimatter asymmetry. The research helps nail down the exact process of kaon decay, and is also inspiring the development of a new generation of supercomputers. | | Supercomputers help explain why there is almost no anti-matter in our universe Mar 29th 2012, 14:16 Powerful supercomputers have shed light on the behavior of key sub-atomic particles, in a development that could help explain why there is almost no anti-matter in our universe. Physicists have reported a landmark calculation of the decay of an elementary particle called a kaon, using breakthrough techniques on some of the world's fastest supercomputers. This revealed the first experimental evidence of a phenomenon known as charge-parity (CP) violation - a lack of symmetry between particles and their corresponding antiparticles that may explain why the Universe is made of matter, and not antimatter. | | Computer processors: Saving power, saving money Mar 8th 2012, 16:56 Engineers have proposed a method of cutting power use and costs in computer processors. Called fine-grained power gating, the method would shut off energy to unused portions of datapath and memory blocks. Current processors fully power all components but rarely are all fully engaged. | | Gaming technology for calculating floods Jan 18th 2012, 15:14 Norwegian researchers have borrowed a page from game developers to devise simulation technology that can save lives in many parts of the world by helping to reduce the damage from catastrophic floods. | | HokieSpeed is a new powerful supercomputer for the masses Dec 21st 2011, 15:57 Virginia Tech crashed the supercomputing arena in 2003 with System X, a machine that placed the university among the world's top computational research facilities. Now comes HokieSpeed, a new supercomputer that is up to 22 times faster and yet a quarter of the size of X. As researchers from around the world have used System X to crack riddles of the blood system and further DNA research, HokieSpeed will be a next-generation research tool for engineers, scientists, and others. | | Multi-purpose photonic chip paves the way to programmable quantum processors Dec 11th 2011, 18:40 A multi-purpose optical chip which generates, manipulates and measures entanglement and mixture -- two quantum phenomena which are essential driving forces for tomorrow's quantum computers -- has now been developed. This work represents an important step forward in the race to develop a quantum computer. | | Galaxy DNA-analysis software is now available 'in the cloud' Nov 9th 2011, 01:15 Galaxy -- an open-source, web-based platform for data-intensive biomedical and genetic research -- is now available as a "cloud computing" resource. The new technology will help scientists and biomedical researchers to harness such tools as DNA-sequencing and analysis software, as well as storage capacity for large quantities of scientific data. | | Three key questions for the IT industry Oct 27th 2011, 12:27 Today's multicore processors are not being utilized in a sufficiently intelligent way. They get too hot and run slowly because they are used inefficiently. At the same time, transistors are becoming so small that they will ultimately become unreliable. Major research organizations are now attempting to create a revolution in computer architecture. | | Breakthrough toward quantum computing Jul 15th 2011, 17:55 To build a quantum computer, one needs to create and precisely control individual quantum memory units, called qubits, for information processing. Scientists have made a breakthrough in the creation of massive numbers of entangled qubits, more precisely a multilevel variant thereof called Qmodes. | | WiFi 'napping' doubles phone battery life Jun 30th 2011, 21:17 A graduate student has found a way to double the battery life of mobile devices -- such as smartphones or laptop computers -- by making changes to WiFi technology. | | Model finds optimal fiber optic network connections 10,000 times more quickly Jun 28th 2011, 15:23 Designing fiber optic networks involves finding the most efficient way to connect phones and computers that are in different places -- a costly and time-consuming process. Now researchers have developed a model that can find optimal connections 10,000 times more quickly, using less computing power to solve the problem. | |
