Information Technology

Information Technology

Unlocking Natural Ventilation With NIST’s LoopDA Software

A lack of rigorous design methods and comprehensive performance data has slowed U.S. acceptance of natural ventilation technology, which proponents argue can increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings as well as improve indoor environmental conditions. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) new LoopDA 1.0 software program (for Loop Design and Analysis) helps fill this critical information gap.

The LoopDA simulation tool enables building designers and engineers to

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Detecting Chemical Threats With "Intelligent" Networks

Prototype microsensor arrays connected to artificial neural networks—computer models that “learn”—can reliably identify trace amounts of toxic gases in seconds, well before concentration levels become lethal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and a guest researcher reported Sept. 7 at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in New York City. The system has the potential to provide cost-effective early warning of chemical warfare agents.

Lab experiments sh

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New Software Streamlines Chemistry Code Generation

A new software tool promises to aid scientists whose research has forced them to lead double lives – as computer programmers.

The tool, called the Tensor Contraction Engine (TCE), automatically generates the computer code that chemists, physicists, and materials scientists need to model the structure and interaction of complex molecules, saving them weeks or even months of work.

By making the computer code more efficient, the TCE could even reduce the amount of time required

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Advancements in Computer Vision for Security and Realism

Widespread crime and the rise of global terrorism have meant that security systems need to incorporate sophisticated and rapid computer recognition of human faces, as delegates will hear next week at the British Machine Vision Conference being held at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Another side of the same coin is in making human faces that appear on computers as convincing as possible, and in particular making speech appear realistic, as a team of UEA researchers will tell the confere

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UB Engineer Develops Leak Detection Software for ISS

NASA will use software upon completion of space station

A new software system designed by a University at Buffalo aerospace engineer will help NASA detect and find air leaks in the International Space Station.
The software will be installed in NASA’s mission control when the manned space station is expanded from its current eight-module configuration to its final 15-module configuration, according to John L. Crassidis, associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineer

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Evolution Robotics™ Software to be licensed by Sony Corporation Robot Division

Evolution Robotics ER Vision™ Software to be licensed by Entertainment Robot Company – ERC – a Division of Sony Corporation

Evolution Robotics™ Inc., a leading provider of state-of-the-art robotics solutions, today announced a technology licensing agreement with Entertainment Robot Company – ERC – a division of Sony Corporation (NYSE:SNE). Evolution Robotics will work closely with Sony ERC to optimize ER Vision™ for use in future Sony ERC products.

Sony chose to work with Ev

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3-D Chips Breakthrough: Rensselaer Researchers Innovate Interconnects

Rensselaer Researchers Pioneer Interconnect Technology that May Take Chips Into 3-D

Researchers led by Ronald J. Gutmann in the Focus Center-New York at Rensselaer (FC-NY-RPI) are pioneering new interconnect technologies that promise to deliver smaller, faster, inexpensive, microelectronics and circuits that function in three dimensions.

Researchers at Rensselaer’s Focus Center-NY for Interconnections for Gigascale Integration believe that a strategy in which several chip wa

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New Software Enhances Online Shopping with Realistic Images

Imagine shopping online for the perfect back-to-school outfit. You can see the colour and size and perhaps the texture of the fabric, but can you tell how it will look from different perspectives under fluorescent classroom lighting? “The material might be very beautiful but a potential customer wouldn’t know that because the image gives a grossly incomplete sense of texture,” says Alex Vasilescu, a doctoral candidate at U of T’s Department of Computer Science. The software she has

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Recipe for a ’Shake Gel’

Chemists and computer scientists are using a special facility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to scale molecules up for people-sized interactions. Using chemical data, NIST software, special eyewear, and floor-to-ceiling display screens, they create giant three-dimensional molecules that move. Molecular behavior can be seen and understood in minutes instead of the weeks required using traditional techniques.

NIST scientists and collaborators used the 3D facility

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PNNL Unveils Fastest U.S. Open Supercomputer at 11.8T

11.8T HP supercomputer with Intel Itanium2 processors running Linux reaches full operations.

The Department of Energy’s Pacific Northwest National Laboratory is now home to the United States’ fastest operational unclassified supercomputer. The laboratory’s 11.8 teraflops industry-standard HP Integrity system came to full operating power this week, marking the next advance in high-performance computing designed to enable new insights in the environmental and molecular sciences, includ

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Ground-breaking research to develop ‘conscious’ robot

Researchers at the Universities of Essex and Bristol will soon be launching a ground-breaking project to develop a ‘conscious’ robot.

The aim of the project, which involves computer scientists and neuropsychologists, is to advance the technology of intelligent machines, while also extending the understanding of human consciousness.

Owen Holland, Senior Lecturer in Computer Science, who will lead the three-year project at Essex, explained: ‘Consciousness is perhaps the last r

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"Quantum freeze" rescues world’s fastest computers

Whilst western Europe is feeling the effects of global warming, a “freeze” has come to the rescue of quantum computing.

Quantum Computers – computers so fast they could break any code devised for a digital computer – have a fatal flaw which has until now made it impossible to build really fast quantum computers. They make so many operations that very rare and tiny errors occur rapidly and are amplified, making them unable to function properly.

The Institute of Physics and Ge

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Liquid Crystals Paving Way Towards "Smart-Paper" Displays

Liquid crystals are most recognized in the form of liquid crystal displays (LCDs)—found in everything from digital watches to notebook computers and flat-panel desktop monitors. But liquid crystals are far more talented than that. In the August 1 issue of the journal Science, for example, University of Wisconsin chemical engineer Nicholas Abbott reported a big step toward using them in flexible, inexpensive “smart-paper” displays, and in ultra-sensitive detectors for biomolecules or toxic chemicals.

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New Diamond Graph Method Solves 3-D Bar Chart Flaws

“Diamond Graph” Corrects Long-Standing Errors of 3-D Bar Graphs

Looks can be deceiving. That’s one of the problems with today’s three-dimensional bar graph. While these graphs may look correct, researchers from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health believe they are in fact inaccurate and misleading.

Currently, the 3-D bar graph is used in countless computer programs, scientific journals, and newspapers to display financial, medical, and other information in whi

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INEEL Innovates Change Detection for Medical Imagery Analysis

System detects tissue changes

Mammograms, X-rays and other pricey medical scans do little good if doctors can’t see the tiny changes that signal early stages of disease. But such warning signs are often too subtle to spot by eye, and too complex for computers to interpret. Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory have developed the Change Detection System, technology that highlights slight differences between digit

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Researchers create the world’s fastest detailed computer simulations of the Internet

Simulate Network Traffic from over 1 Million Web Browsers in Near Real Time

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have created the fastest detailed computer simulations of computer networks ever constructed—simulating networks containing more than 5 million network elements. This work will lead to improved speed, reliability and security of future networks such as the Internet, according to Professor Richard Fujimoto, lead principal investigator of the DARPA-funded projec

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