Was that Xanex or Xanax? Or maybe Zantac? If you’re a health care professional you’d better know the difference–mistakes can be fatal.
An estimated 1.3 million people in the United States alone are injured each year from medication errors, and the U.S. Federal Drug Administration (FDA) has been working to reduce the possibilities of these errors, such as a documented case in which a patient needed an injection of Narcan but received Norcuron and went into cardiac a
A new software system that enables faster and more comprehensive analysis of vast quantities of information is so effective that it not only creates order out of chaos and allows computers to perform tasks that before only people could perform, it is also creating new information from old data.
“Our greatest contribution was to create a framework for integrating structured and unstructured information,” says Dr Babis Theodoulidis, Senior Lecturer at the University of Manchester’s Inst
Mechanical engineers at Purdue University have developed software that promises to increase the efficiency of creating parts for everything from cars to computer hardware by making it possible to quickly evaluate and optimize complex designs.
The new approach integrates the design and analysis processes, which are now carried out separately. Currently, the geometry of a part is first created using computer-aided design, or CAD, software. This geometry is then converted into a me
Tech-savvy students and grad transferred use of technology to households and workplaces
Universities played a unique role in the diffusion of Internet technology in the mid-1990s, according to a paper published in the March issue of the International Journal of Industrial Organization.
“The Internet, which many people view as the most important technology of the last 15 years, moved from universities to the public in an unusual way,” says Avi Goldfarb, a professor at the
Aircraft technicians these days are as likely to use a laptop as a printed manual and logbook, and to turn to the Internet for the latest job-status reports and technical information.
Engineers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are assisting them, using current computer and database technology to help military aircraft maintainers get their work done more efficiently. A team from GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL) has been developing and improvi
From cell manipulation to micro assembly, micro robots devised by an international team of researchers offer a glimpse of the future.
The MICRON project team, led by the Institute for Process Control and Robotics (IPR), Karlsruhe, Germany, brought together eight international partners. Funded under the European Commission’s FET (Future and Emerging Technologies) initiative of the IST programme, MICRON set out to build a total of five to ten micro robots, just cubic centimetres in si
E-commerce transactions are becoming more and more frequent in today’s fast-paced society. How about going one step further and making these transactions through your mobile phone, television set top box or even pen and diary based services. The technology breakthroughs achieved by the EUREKA Cluster Project A302 (Esp@ss-is) on smartcard platform development have improved the quality and the type of data that can be processed reducing even more the risks of identity theft.
In the past, a
Burglars often listen at windows and doors, leaving an earprint behind, which, just like a finger print, can be used to trace them. Lynn Meijerman is researching the value of ear prints as evidence in identifying criminals. She obtained her doctorate on 15th February, under the supervision of Professor George Maat.
In one out of every twenty burglaries the burglar leaves an earprint behind, at least this seems to be the case in and around Leiden. Fingerprints have long been accept
A new technique developed by an Indiana University School of Informatics scientist provides a strong shield against identity theft and cyber attacks.
Cybersecurity expert Markus Jakobsson and the start-up RavenWhite Inc., of which Jakobsson is a co-founder, have developed an “active cookie,” a countermeasure designed to protect against online scams such as pharming and man-in-the-middle attacks.
Pharming is obtaining personal or private (usually financial) information thr
Protoypes can help designers meet user needs
Before Jeff Hawkins ever started making the original Palm Pilot digital organizer he prototyped it as a block of wood with fake buttons and a paper screen. To this day the Palm Pilot is a successful design of human and computer interaction that remains all too rare, says Stanford computer science Assistant Professor Scott Klemmer. Every time a person uses a computer–a desktop, a cell phone or even a chip-enabled coffee maker–the inter
To present at AAAS meeting in St. Louis
Consumers who shop online may be risking their privacy with every purchase, contends University of Massachusetts Amherst computer scientist Kevin Fu. His research suggests that a confluence of factors, including the widespread use of cookies and demand for quick and easy transactions, results in Web sites that are often insecure.
“Much Web security rests on illusion and hope,” says Fu, who will discuss how Web sites leak private
The historic city of Bath in England will become the scene of a city-wide wireless computing network as part of a research project that could influence the future of mobile phone technology across the globe.
The £1.6 million Cityware project, based at the University of Bath, will turn the city centre into a ‘pervasive’ computing zone where users have access to computer services wherever they are and at all times, without disrupting Bath’s famous 18th century Georgian architec
Face recognition technology that could revolutionise security systems worldwide has been developed by computer scientists at Sheffield Hallam University. The new specialist software can produce an exact 3D image of a face within 40 milliseconds.
Other 3D systems that have been trialled have proved unworkable because of the time it takes to construct a picture and an inaccurate result.
The ground-breaking invention, by experts in the University’s Materials and Engineer
Unique views of Earth afforded by a pioneering twin ESA radar satellite flight has brought an extra dimension to maps of Canada’s newest territory, the results winning praise from the Canadian government.
Nunavut is the latest and also largest territory of Canada: located up in the frozen northeast, Nunavut has a population of only around 29 300 but an area the size of Western Europe. The Canadian government is currently refining and updating its geographic information for the
Food poisoning may become a thing of the past, if commercial kitchens link their appliances to the Internet. Unique technology developed recently in Europe for this environment also promises to reduce the risk of fire and to slash maintenance costs.
“The idea of remotely monitoring and controlling catering equipment over the Internet isn’t new,” says Stephen Read, coordinator of the IST project I’MOK. “But nobody succeeded in doing it. Our plug-and-play software and hardware is a ma
Teaching a machine to sense its environment is one of the most intractable problems of computer science, but one European project is looking to nature for help in cracking the conundrum. It combined streams of sensory data to produce an adaptive, composite impression of surroundings in near real-time.
The team brought together electronic engineers, computer scientists, neuroscientists, physicists, and biologists. It looked at basic neural models for perception and then sought t
Feedback
