Computers and Electronics
In the United States, a typical prosthetics specialist who fits artificial legs for amputees might handle 15 or 20 such patients a year, fitting them with custom-built legs that can cost upward of $6,000 apiece. Each patient then gets a series of follow-up visits to make sure the new limb was properly fitted.
Using a virtual pendulum and its real-world counterpart, scientists at the University of Illinois have created the first mixed reality state in a physical system. Through bidirectional instantaneous coupling, each pendulum “sensed” the other, their motions became correlated, and the two began swinging as one.
Two kinds of body imaging -- positron emission tomography (PET) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) -- have been combined for the first time in a single scanner. MRI scans provide exquisite structural detail but little functional information, while PET scans -- which follow a radioactive tracer in the body -- can show body processes but not structures.
Now that the primaries have narrowed the number of viable major-party presidential candidates to three, ScienceDebate2008 promises to give each of them an opportunity to address an issue that is not strictly partisan: science and technology policy and what it means for the future of our nation and the world.
Philadelphia's Franklin Institute has announced its prestigious awards, the Benjamin Franklin Medals and the Bower Awards for significant achievements in science and business leadership.
The Franklin Medal has been awarded for 184 years, far longer than the Nobel Prize, and its recipients have included many of the greatest names in international science and technology.
An unusual observation in a University of Central Florida physics lab may lead to a new generation of “Quantum Computers” that could render today’s computer and credit card encryption technology obsolete.
Researchers have identified a key molecular mechanism that may account for the development of cystic fibrosis, which about 1 in 3000 children are born with in the US every year. The findings, published February 29 in the open-access journal PLoS Computational Biology, add new knowledge to understanding the development of this disease and may also point the way to new corrective treatments.
Using “virtual peers” -- animated life-sized children that simulate the behaviors and conversation of typically developing children -- Northwestern University researchers are developing interventions designed to prepare children with autism for interactions with real-life children.
A robotics expert at the University of Sheffield will issue stark warnings over the threat posed to humanity by new robot weapons being developed by powers worldwide. In a keynote address to the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), Professor Noel Sharkey, from the University of Sheffield’s Department of Computer Science, will express his concerns that we are beginning to see the first steps towards an international robot arms race. He will warn that it may not be long before robots become a standard terrorist weapon to replace the suicide bomber.
On January 26, 1700, at about 9 p.m. local time, the Juan de Fuca plate beneath the ocean in the Pacific Northwest suddenly moved, slipping some 60 feet eastward beneath the North American plate in a monster quake of approximately magnitude 9, setting in motion large tsunamis that struck the coast of North America and traveled to the shores of Japan.
Researchers at the University of Maryland’s Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) have developed the SOMA Terror Organization Portal (STOP) allowing analysts to query automatically learned rules on terrorist organization behavior, forecast potential behavior based on these rules, and, most importantly, to network with other analysts examining the same subjects.
A team of academic, industry and independent researchers has demonstrated a new class of computer attacks that compromise the contents of “secure” memory systems, particularly in laptops. The attacks overcome a broad set of security measures called “disk encryption,” which are meant to secure information stored in a computer’s permanent memory. The researchers cracked several widely used technologies, including Microsoft’s BitLocker, Apple’s FileVault and Linux’s dm-crypt, and described the attacks in a paper and video published on the Web Feb. 21.
Preparing groundwork for an exascale computer is the mission of the new Institute for Advanced Architectures, launched jointly at Sandia and Oak Ridge national laboratories. An exaflop is a thousand times faster than a petaflop, itself a thousand times faster than a teraflop. Teraflop computers —the first was developed 10 years ago at Sandia — currently are the state of the art. They do trillions of calculations a second. Exaflop computers would perform a million trillion calculations per second.
I'd still like to see the candidates speak for themselves on scientific issues, but the Physics Today blog has a useful posting.
ScienceDebate2008 is looking more and more likely as the campaigns of two major candidates (Obama and Clinton) sent surrogates on short notice to a hastily pulled-together preliminary session at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. Senator McCain's campaign sent regrets due to the short notice, while the Huckabee and Paul campaigns did not respond at all.
