Information Technology

Oil companies could soon harness the power of distant supercomputers to tackle problems such as where to place equipment and how to clean up oil spills.

For decades, the industry has used computers to maximize profit and minimize environmental impact, explained Tahsin Kurc, assistant professor of biomedical informatics at Ohio State University.

Typically, companies take seismic measurements of an oil reservoir and simulate drilling scenarios on a local computer. Now

The average user may not notice, but the Global Positioning System (GPS) is more reliable today than it was several years ago.

Widely used by the military, first responders, surveyors and even consumers, GPS is a navigation and positioning system consisting of ground-based monitors and a constellation of satellites that rely on atomic clocks. A statistical method, developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and tested and implemented with the help of

Increasing the spread of broadband connectivity throughout Europe is central to the growth of the knowledge economy. Yet broadband technology is hardly new. So what is holding back wider implementation and investment? This is the issue at the core of the IST project NOBEL.

At the core of the Internet is a large network of optical fibres. The challenge for NOBEL is to make that network work much more efficiently, in connecting together all the growing millions of broadband use

One in five Europeans today enjoy broadband Internet access via competing technologies. Low-cost and fast data access over electricity network power lines is one such technology that is being extensively tested in four European nations.

“Electric utility companies have long used the electric network for communication purposes,” says Luis Legorburu, OPERA project coordinator. “But offering broadband Internet over power lines was only recently made possible by a number of key paten

Two design engineers at the University of Warwick have devised a simple 250 pounds plastic shield that could play a significant role in eliminating the card skimming cash machine fraud that costs banks tens of millions of pound. However, now the researchers fear arrest if they are to try and take their device forward.

Falling technology cost and increasing technical sophistication of fraudsters have led to a boom in the criminal use of hidden cameras and card “skimming” devices

Researchers at Purdue University who developed the first system capable of searching a company’s catalog of three-dimensional parts created with computer-aided design software are now providing a method to evaluate how well such systems work.

Shape-search engines could save time and millions of dollars annually by making it easier for companies to “reuse” previous designs, reducing redundancy and streamlining a company’s supply chain. The systems will enable companies to b