Though mobile communications have improved emergency services’ efficiency, noisy environments still pose communication problems for users. ANITA has addressed the issue with a noise-reduction system that could save lives.
Developed under the European Commission’s IST programme, the ANITA system uses innovative software to reduce background noise in real time to allow emergency service workers to communicate more clearly with each other and with their headquarters even in the most
Scientists reveal new technology that will help us compute more safely on the move and that ’body talk’ could control mobiles
New research by University of Glasgow scientists that enables people to interact safely with mobile computers while walking, running or driving, could help to prevent users from putting themselves in danger.
Changing tracks on digital music players of the future while on the move could be done with the nod of the head.
Walking and te
A powerful, high-capacity chip currently under development has the potential to revolutionise daily life, doing away with many of the identity documents, credit cards and passwords people have to use each day.
Due to end in June, the IST programme-funded project SM-PAYSOC has so far created a working prototype of the chip packaged in a smartcard, which in the future could also be incorporated into a USB token or a SIM card.
It allows users to access services and carry
“Our plan is to have ‘the’ operating system for buildings.” So says Richard Green, CEO of the newly-established Cambridge (UK) start-up Ubisense, about his company’s revolutionary new technology for locating staff within the workspace environment.
Green is one of the five entrepreneurs who founded the company in May 2002, and who have since seen their company more than double in size and rapidly establish a client-base in Europe, the US and the Far East. “Basically, Ubisense make
An EU computer science project hopes to make the uncertainty attached to the pervasive computing future a lot more secure through establishing trust.
Using the cost-benefit function at the heart of risk analysis, the IST programme-funded SECURE project developed software to integrate the very subjective, human concept of trust into computers, PDAs, mobile ’phones and other network devices.
Pervasive computing is a steadily emerging reality. Mobile phones and PDAs ar
Co-workers sharing digital music in the workplace via Apple Computer’s popular iTunes® software form impressions of each other based on their musical libraries, according to a new study by human-computer interaction researchers.
Employees in a mid-sized U.S. company reported that they consciously worked to portray themselves in certain ways through the collections of music they shared with co-workers, some of whom they barely knew. Sometimes their self-portrayals were misread by
Barely visible dust layer in the place of explosion would tell specialists where and when the explosive was produced. To this end, the dust should be preliminarily marked up in the way suggested by Russian researchers. The project was sponsored by the International Science and Technology Center.
When investigating the locus delicti after the explosion the experts face a significant problem. They can determine with high probability the kind and capacity of explosive device used
The German semiconductor manufacturer Infineon Technologies AG has introduced the world’s smallest and most economical chip for “ADSL2+” – the DSL data network of the future. This chip enables telecommunications companies to boost the number of super-high-speed DSL connections that they offer to their customers by approximately one third – without additional investments for cooling or for power supply and without changing cabinet sizes. With ADSL2+, which is expected to be launched as a service
Cuts Power Consumption and Footprint by One Third
Infineon Technologies AG (FSE/NYSE: IFX), a leading supplier of broadband access semiconductor solutions, today launched GEMINAX PRO, the industry’s highest-integration and lowest-power ADSL2+ chipset. Consisting of a 16-channel ADSL2+ Digital Front End (DFE) and a 4-channel Analog Front End (AFE), with integrated low-power Class D line drivers, the GEMINAX PRO chipset reduces power dissipation, footprint and overall system cost
The Semantic Web lies at the heart of Tim Berners-Lee’s vision for the future of the Web, enabling a wide range of intelligent services. Thanks to the development of the infrastructure needed for the large-scale deployment of ontologies as the bedrock of the Semantic Web, that vision is much closer to reality.
Ontologies provide the lifeblood of the Semantic Web by defining shared and common domain theories, and allowing people and machines to communicate more effectively. They als
Managing large software development projects using existing management tools can be a little imprecise. An altogether softer approach has been developed as a commercial tool, enabling project managers to get inside the development process and optimise resources. The drawback with conventional software project management tools is that they are unforgiving. There isn’t a means of ascribing levels of confidence or uncertainty and, as a consequence, the resulting answers may or may not be believable. T
Dutch researcher Mirela Tanase has developed a new technique for finding images using search engines. Her technique is based on how the human eye recognises objects. It can increase the success rate of certain search operations for objects from 10 to 70 percent.
Tanase developed two methods for decomposing objects into parts, which are then used to search for similar objects. The first method decomposes the interior of the shape. Humans find this task easy, but a computer often
Many activities in our daily lives use products and devices based on silicon chips – from computers and televisions to medical equipment and defense systems. As these products and applications become increasingly complex and miniature, so must the chips.
Chips are manufactured on a silicon wafer. Each chip is surrounded by electrical contacts (‘plots’) through which data enters and exits. The plots are connected to each other through extremely fine wires. In 1994 the distance be
Today, the Large Hadron Collider Computing Grid (LCG) project announced that the computing Grid it is operating now includes more than 100 sites in 31 countries. This makes it the world’s largest international scientific Grid. This Grid is being established in order to deal with the anticipated huge computing needs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), currently being built at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland.
The sites participating in the LCG project are primarily universities and r
UK experts develop super-realistic animation system
Computing experts at Cardiff University, UK, are developing a super-realistic animation system that simulates the movements of a face, based on speech. The team in the School of Computer Science has developed highly advanced software which is continually learning the facial dynamics associated with a speaker and applying this knowledge to synthesize realistic facial animations.
“Our aim is to create sophisticated facial a
A new method for navigation at sea, independent of GPS, is being put forward in a dissertation from Linköping University.
Today merchant marine, military, and recreational boat traffic all rely on the global satellite system GPS to determine their position at sea. But sometimes information from the system is incorrect. Poor visibility or lax attention can then spell disaster.
GPS can be jammed, either unintentionally or intentionally. Signals from the satellites can
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