Having vital location or map-based information at their fingertips could make the difference between life and death for rescue workers and emergency services working at the scene of a natural disaster or terrorist attack.
A research centre is being launched at The University of Nottingham to look at how the latest advances in computer software and mobile communications could help agencies to prepare for a major event, such as the 2012 Olympic Games, and plan their response should a
A far reaching analysis of the potential futures faced by Europe’s information communication technologies (ICT) sector in a global context is laying detailed and incisive groundwork for policy makers to improve Europe’s situation by guiding ICT developments over the medium to long term.
“FISTERA aimed to investigate long-term trends in ICT to make a foresight analysis of changes in information communication technologies and uses by 2020,” says Ramón Compañó, of the Institute fo
Today, most computer and consumer electronic devices require wires to record, play or exchange data. UWB (Ultra Wide Band) eliminates the need for such wires freeing people to perform activities such as remotely connecting their mobile PC to a printer, streaming audio from an MP3 player to speakers, or wirelessly transferring digital pictures to a photo print kiosk.
Tel Aviv-based Wisair develops UWB chipsets that facilitate the production of low cost, low power, and high bit-rate communica
The sheer number and variety of security protocols for Internet applications under development makes it difficult to be sure that any one protocol is 100 per cent secure from attack. Now an automated tool can systematically validate these security-sensitive protocols and applications.
“The AVISPA software tool enables a security protocol designer to input the protocol and the language he/she wishes to use, then feeds back information on this protocol including any known bugs or
The new technology developed by VTT, Technical Research Centre of Finland makes it possible to identify the user based on her or his physical movements such as walking style. This feature prevents unauthorised use of portable devices such as laptops or mobile phones. In the future, credit cards may also verify user’s identify based on their physical movements before approval of payment transactions.
For the user the new identification system offers the advantages of increased se
Metal detectors currently used for screening aircraft passengers could soon be supplanted by novel millimetre-wave cameras, able to detect even non-metallic concealed objects. The new system, named after a Brazilian bat, is based on technology developed for ESA spacecraft. Tadar is being demonstrated at this week’s Inter Airport Europe Exhibition in Munich.
Conventional metal detectors, such as those used to check passengers at airports, are limited in that they can on
Currently, the density of transistors that electronic devices now allow is such that the integration of complete digital systems in a single integrated circuit is now possible. With the aim of reducing the period of design and development and enabling the tackling of these kinds of designs possible, these are made up of a base of modules or cores. Given their complexity, these modules often include one or more processors, whereby, in these cases, multi-processor systems are possible.
Many vision systems require text recognition captured at very high speed: vehicle registration identification devices, scanners, etc. Current technology enables the use of complex image pre-processing systems to enhance reading characteristics. This PhD thesis puts forward two binarisation algorithms that are suitable for high-precision applications in optical character reading (OCR). The binarisation of a digital image involves the conversion of the digital image into a black and white one in su
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
When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web 15 years ago, he always intended that it should be easy for people to write to it, not just read from it. But if websites are opened up to anyone, they often get vandalised by people with axes to grind. Now, a researcher from Manchester has brought together two of computing’s current buzzwords – the Grid, and Wikis – to overcome this problem.
A Wiki is a web site where users can easily add and edit its content. Although some Wikis a
Shared-memory computing applications have never taken particularly well to operating on distributed-memory systems, at least until now. A possible solution has emerged, of interest to NASA and IBM, and is being tested on their distributed computing systems.
Funded under the European Commission’s IST programme, the POP project focused on generating an environment to allow applications designed using the OpenMP Application Program Interface (API) to operate on distributed-memory
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