Information Technology

System crashes are not only annoying, they can bring a company to its knees. So IT specialists will welcome a way to measure the dependability of standard operating systems (OS). After conducting hundreds of computer-stress experiments, a European consortium has developed a new benchmarking method for commercial and open source systems.

Gone are the days when performance was all that mattered. What information technology people want – but rarely get – is a reliable system. Especially now th

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a new technique for drawing maps that could provide a valuable tool for showing human data such as census findings, election results or disease incidence.

The new technique produces cartograms—maps where sizes of areas on the map are in proportion to the population or some other variable, said Mark Newman, assistant professor of physics in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. Newman wrote a paper on the technique, which

As the pace of the Modernising Government agenda increases, support for electronic service delivery is becoming an increasingly essential pre-requisite of most ICT strategies. e-Government is forcing a radical re-evaluation of the role played by websites, Intranets and customer service teams. Many local authorities are already using the Internet imaginatively to provide community information services with limited degrees of end user interaction. Others have developed or are re-designing existing cu

Computer scientists at the University of Essex have been awarded a grant to develop an intelligent robotic wheelchair.

Researchers from the Department of Computer Science will work alongside scientists from the Institute of Automation at Beijing in developing the advanced technology needed for a high performance, low cost RoboChair which will enable the elderly and disabled to gain increased mobility and live more independently.

The RoboChair will have a user-friendly man-ma

In the battle against forest fires COMETS’ Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) monitoring and evaluation capabilities may offer beleaguered emergency crews the lifeline they need to control the fire.

The COMETS project improved the capabilities of two helicopters and an airship to enable them to cooperate. These UAVs can be used in aerial missions including natural disasters remediation, traffic and environmental monitoring, surveillance, security and law enforcement, and terrain mapping.

An engineer at the University of Sheffield is leading a £4.5m project that could revolutionise the way scientists, medics and others see the world – by allowing the earlier detection of cancer, the instant analysis of medical screening tests, and permitting the emergency and security services to work effectively in murky surroundings. It will also open up broad tracts of science to unique high-quality imaging by enabling physicists to understand better the most fundamental interactions of matter, by