More traffic, more incidents; an urban traffic manager’s nightmare. Yet tried and tested solutions to predict, detect, verify, and respond to such incidents are a dream come true.

The solutions were the result of research undertaken by the IST programme-funded PRIME project. The objective of PRIME, an acronym for Prediction of Congestion and Incidents In Real Time for Intelligent Incident Management and Emergency Traffic Management, was to develop innovative methods to improve the dyna

’The Fusion of Neuroscience and Robotics for Augmenting Human Capabilities’

FET, the Unit dealing with Future and Emerging Technologies and acting as the pathfinder of IST by exploring new science and technology frontiers, has launched a new research initiative- Beyond Robotics. Neurobotics is one out of three so-called Integrated Projects.

The ultimate objective of the NEUROBOTICS project is to introduce a discontinuity in the robot design, thus going literally “

With Euro 2004 fast approaching, all eyes will be fixed on David Beckham’s right foot, with the fervent hope that he will kick the perfect free kick. Now researchers at Loughborough University have invented the world’s first device to capture this magic formula – in an instant.

To kick the perfect free kick, the ball must travel with sufficient speed and elevation to clear any defensive wall, whilst spinning fast enough to swerve away from the goalkeeper and into the goal. Until now it has n

In a remarkable collaboration between engineers, physicists and biologists, Princeton scientists have invented a device that rapidly sorts microscopic particles into extremely fine gradations of sizes, opening a range of potential uses.

The researchers have used the device to sort particles ranging in size from bacterial cells to large segments of DNA and reported their results in the May 14 issue of Science. The technology could greatly accelerate the work of sequencing genomes and could f

Samples of diesel exhaust particles (DEP) collected from automobiles and forklifts varied widely in both their composition and their toxicity, according to a pair of studies published today in the June issue of the peer-reviewed journal Environmental Health Perspectives (EHP). The studies show that the two samples of DEP have different physical and chemical properties, as well as different mutagenic effects in bacteria and pulmonary toxicity effects in mice. The results confirm that DEP can be highl

Striking pictures of magnetic waves inside advanced ceramics may be the clue to understanding how they can transmit electricity without losing energy, according to results obtained by two teams of scientists using the UK’s world-leading ISIS neutron source in Oxfordshire and published this week in the journal Nature.

The ceramics, known as high-temperature superconductors, lose all resistance to the flow of electricity when cooled below a critical temperature. Wires made from the ceramics ca

An engineering team at the University of Dundee has just secured funding to work with European colleagues on the construction of artificial corneas which will allow all cornea replacements to go ahead without the patient having to wait for a donor.

The Euro 2.4m project will help people who suffer from a number of diseases requiring corneal grafting including keratoconus – a thinning of the cornea. Instead of relying on donor corneas from an eye bank, the new technology invented by biochemis

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Brookhaven National Laboratory, in collaboration with researchers at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory in the United Kingdom and Tohoku University in Japan, have discovered evidence supporting a possible mechanism for high-temperature superconductivity that had previously appeared incompatible with certain experimental observations. The finding, which hinges paradoxically on what the scientists observed in a particular material that loses its superconduc

While the memory inside electronic devices may often be more reliable than that of humans, it, too, can worsen over time.

Now a team of scientists from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Argonne National Laboratory may understand why. The results are published in the early online edition (May 23) of the journal Nature Materials.

Smart cards, buzzers inside watches and even ultrasound machines all take advantage of ferroelectrics, a family of materials that can retain informa

The Robosoft company in Bidart (Lapurdi/Labourd) makes and markets robots that are programmed according to the requirements of the customer. These customised devices – robots – carry out numerous tasks that, in general, are laborious for us – lugging heavy loads around, cleaning chores, handling very small objects, and so on. The size and shape of each robot is distinct, according to the task(s) assigned it.

What is manufactured is a robot that is something like a train – it serves as a mean

Having lost ground to road transport in recent years, rail freight may be on the verge of making a comeback in Europe with the development of a wagon fleet management system that promises to increase efficiency, expand market potential and offer important benefits to society as a whole.

Due to begin trials this summer, the system developed by the IST project F-MAN offers fleet managers, railway companies and end customers with an integrated set of Web-based applications to trace wagons, man

To convert a gaseous fuel into a clean liquid one is the target of the research project being undertaken by the School of Industrial Engineering and Telecommunications Engineers of Bilbao in the Basque Country. It involves, in the final analysis, obtaining fuels which do not have contaminant components, i.e. sulphur, nitrogen or aromatic components.

Participating in this project, financed by the MARCO programme of the European Union, are nine groups from different European countries, under t

The main objective of the Dressman robot is to dry and press shirts. On placing a damp shirt on the ironing figure, this dummy inflates with hot air in its interior, and thus puffs the shirt up, removing creases drying the garment (it has to be previously wet and undergone a spin-dry in a washing machine).

The device has a heater box inside with a number of different resistance elements. While we are placing the shirt on it, this box stores up heat in such a way that, when the garment is pos

Just as low-carbohydrate diets are trimming the American waistline, more judicious use of hydrocarbon-based fossil fuels would reduce U.S. energy consumption by 33 percent and save consumers $438 billion a year by 2014, according to an analysis by Cornell University ecologists.

David Pimentel, Cornell professor of ecology, and 11 student ecologists found the most fat for trimming — with the best potential for major energy savings — in the transportation, residential heating and cooling, i

Microarrays, sometimes called “gene chip” devices, enable researchers to monitor the activities of thousands of genes from a single tissue sample simultaneously, identifying patterns that may be novel indicators of disease status. But generating consistent, verifiable results is difficult because of a lack of standards to validate these analyses, scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and collaborators warn in the May 20 online issue of Clinical Chemistry.

An improved method for correcting nano- and micro-scale friction measurements has been developed by researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The new technique should help designers produce more durable micro- and nano-devices with moving parts, such as tiny motors, positioning devices or encoders.

Friction measurements made at the micro- and nano-scale can differ substantially due to changes in applied load. In a series of experiments described by nanotribol