Digital vermin poses a real threat to RFID tags
Is your pet infected with a computer virus?
Has your dog or cat contracted a computer virus? It’s not impossible. These days, large numbers of pets and livestock have a small chip implanted under the skin so that they can be identified if they stray or turn out to be infected with a disease. As these chips only have a limited memory capacity, it was widely assumed that they could not become infected with a computer virus. Howe
The first day of racing at the Cheltenham Festival, the Olympics of steeplechasing, gets under way today. There will be many betting tips offered over the next few days, and advice given on how to back a winner. However, Royal Veterinary College researchers reveal that a great racehorse is more than just quick footed – it must also be rather average.
The Royal Veterinary College research reveals the secret to what makes a fast thoroughbred. Some 80 percent of modern thoroughbred r
By smartly tagging data and content, an XML family offshoot is revolutionising business reports. It is now used extensively across Europe and is fast becoming a mandatory standard for financial and business reports worldwide.
“It’s about better, faster and cheaper business reporting,” says Olivier Servais, director of the IST project XBRL Europe. “This was once done with proprietary electronic formats. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open standard that brings a
A virtual classroom proved superior to a traditional one in teaching medical students to identify heart sounds, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting. Stethoscope skills are alarmingly low among doctors in training, a handicap that often continues into patient practice.
Long bothered by this lack of proficiency, lead author Michael Barrett, M.D., clinical associate professor of medicine and cardiologist at Temple University School of Medicine and Hos
A new range of mobile-terminal embedded information systems, marketed under the ubitouch brand has been developed by ASCENT. These ubitouch solutions are powerful new Java-compatible applications designed to be installed on terminals, enabling the whole of a customer’s publication, communication and gaming services, as well as advanced marketing functionalities, to be customised in a brand’s colours.
In comparison to existing resources, ubitouch solutions provide a greater degree
Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE) have developed a Braille keyboard for PCs that has some unique features. The keyboard provides more applications for blind people and is particularly useful for scientific texts and musical scores.
The new keyboard, which connects to the PC through the USB port, will make using a computer much easier for blind people who are accustomed to using Braille typewriter
A new research project led by academics at the University of Southampton will look at how spatial connections can be managed and will use air traffic control as a model.
The ambitious £1.5m, three-year project is called ’Spatially Embedded Complex Systems Engineering’ (SECSE). It is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has brought together experts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, geography and complex systems, to unders
Electronics and computing engineers from the University of Ulster have teamed up with neuroscientists, physicists and biologists from across Europe to investigate the incorporation of the senses we humans take for granted into intelligent computer systems of the future.
The multi-disciplinary team concentrated on attempting to replicate in silicon the biological brain’s ability to capture data from the senses of touch and sight. In biological life forms, the brain can combine inf
Researchers at the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute at Virginia Tech have launched a publicly-available microbial database to host a range of microbial genome sequences.
The VBI Microbial Database (VMD), which is described in a recent article published in Nucleic Acids Research (Vol.34, D379-D381), contains genome sequence and annotation data for the plant pathogens Phytophthora sojae and Phytophthora ramorum. The purpose of the database is to make widely available to researc
The University of Kent has launched UltraSoC Technologies Ltd, a new spin-out company that is developing a technology platform for real-time embedded systems-on-chip (SoC). This ground-breaking technology has produced improved debugging tools and testing methods for many computer systems within devices such as mobile phones, white goods and motor vehicles. The work has already resulted in applications for three worldwide patents.
UltraSoC Technologies Ltd recently won a Proof-of-Concept
Barrels of chemicals that ‘talk’ to each other to improve safety and smart shelves that automatically log inventory changes are just some of the ways businesses stand to benefit from new sensor network technology currently being developed in Europe.
The IST-funded CoBIs project is going a step beyond existing Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) systems – the generally passive smart tags used to identify goods, pets and even people – to create Collaborative Business Items (CoBIs
’Synthetic validity’ holds promise for better hiring decisions, billions in savings
With the assembly line, Henry Ford created a unified production process that revolutionized the manufacturing industry. Now, a University of Calgary business professor has designed a unified selection process that promises to revolutionize the world of human resources.
Its technical name is ’synthetic validity,’ and it has been the Holy Grail of business academics for the past 50 ye
Research financiers Vinnova in Sweden and Tekes in Finland have granted SEK 6 million to a Nordic research project in printed electronics and RFID, Radio Frequency Identification. Eventually RFID will replace bar codes on packaging, for example. With the help of radio technology, many items can then be identified at the same time, which is of great value in taking inventory, for instance. The research project was initiated by a research team in RFID technology at Mid Sweden University.
T
A survey has revealed that girls would miss their mobile phones most if they were denied them for 40 days while boys would not want to live without the Internet.
The poll, which was conducted by the University of Hertfordshire in the run up to the University’s 40th anniversary of the degree in Computer Science, asked students what technology they would miss most if they had to give it up for 40 days and which would they happily live without.
Respondents were asked to in
Syngo iPilot supports physicians during interventions
Global Positioning Systems for cars search for the fastest and most practical way to reach a specific destination. The software function syngo iPilot from Siemens Medical Solutions (Med) works in a similar way: It supports the physician in guiding the catheter as smoothly as possible through the arteries during interventional procedures. During this time, syngo iPilot visualizes the two-dimensional fluoro image, which appears in
PhD Student Tom Lysemose is the world’s first to have developed software that is able to effectively detect attacks by an unknown computer virus.
Possible customers include the large anti-virus companies. A problem with today’s anti-virus software is that they can only protect from known viruses. Unknown viruses are not stopped.
A great number of viruses exist. Some of these viruses need active handling by the user in order to infect a computer, such as when someone is tri
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