Information Technology

The broadband boom is creating an ever-increasing demand for more capacity and higher rates of data transfer on both fixed-line and wireless networks. Helping to meet that demand, without the need to lay costly new infrastructure, is the LABELS project.

“Consumers are soon going to want data streams of 100 megabits per second in their homes and eventually 1 gigabit per second,” says José Capmany, a researcher at Valencia Technical University in Spain and the coordinator of the IST

A unique ’fingerprint’ formed by microscopic surface imperfections on almost all paper documents, plastic cards and product packaging could be used as a cheaper method to combat fraud, scientists suggest.

This inherent identity code is virtually impossible to modify and can be easily read using a low-cost portable laser scanner, according to research carried out at Imperial College London and Durham University, and published in Nature today.

Researchers beli

Science fiction became reality as one of the University of Essex’s newly born robots made her debut at the London Aquarium.

’Miranda’ appeared at London’s County Hall as part of the Human-Centred Robotics research team’s project to develop advanced, artificially intelligent software for human-robot interaction. The research has been part of an ambitious project, RoboCity, a joint initiative between the University and the London Aquarium which is the first

Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted into human beings hold the promise of improving patient care, particularly in emergency settings, but only after privacy questions are addressed, according to a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) physician who has a chip implanted in his arm.

Writing in the July 28 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, John Halamka, MD, chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and an emergency room physi

Although metal detectors help commercial food processors keep metal fragments from ending up in finished products, these detectors can’t identify plastic and other foreign objects.

And as plastic becomes more widespread, used in everything from conveyor belts to latex gloves, plastic contamination is a growing concern for many food processing operations.

For the past year, John Stewart, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, has been leading a

A team led by the Institute of Food Research has completed a 2-year study of food choices made at a North London school, to be published on Thursday. Scientists tested the viability of using “smart card” technology to monitor pupils’ mealtime choices.

Project leader Dr Nigel Lambert said: “School dinners are currently a highly political and emotive social issue. The government has pledged to tackle menus, but measuring children’s eating habits at school is fraught with difficultie