Community and Member Feedback Shapes New Royalty-Free Draft
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) today published a revised Patent Policy Working Draft which is based on strong, explicit commitments to producing Royalty-Free (RF) specifications. To achieve the goal of producing Royalty-Free specifications, the draft requires all who participate in the development of W3C Recommendations to make any essential patents they hold available for free.
The option which would have permi
Light-sensitive ’plastic’ magnets could replace your hard drive.
A ’plastic’ magnet that responds to light could lead to new ways of storing and reading large amounts of computer data. Light would be used to store information in cheap, fast and high-capacity ’magneto-optic’ memories.
The light-switchable magnet is the first to be made from organic (carbon-based) molecules. This means its discoverers, Arthur Epstein of Ohio State University in Columbus and Joel Miller of the
A team of physicists in the United States has made an important step towards making quantum computing a reality. Research into a new type of noiseless quantum information bit, or qubit, is published today in the joint Institute of Physics and German Physical Society journal, New Journal of Physics.
At a sub-atomic scale the laws of quantum physics lead to strange new properties of matter. For several years physicists have been trying to exploit this quantum weirdness to build a new type of `
Joint work with IETF produces XML-based solution for digital signatures, foundation for Secure Web services
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has issued XML-Signature Syntax and Processing (XML Signature) as a W3C Recommendation, representing cross-industry agreement on an XML-based language for digital signatures. A W3C Recommendation indicates that a specification is stable, contributes to Web interoperability, and has been reviewed by the W3C Membership, who favor its widespread
Is it possible to combine a three-dimensional wire model of a face with real pictures of the same face? And is it possible to get the computer that is forming the new image to follow the face even when the person in question makes sudden movements or partially covers her face with her hand? These are a couple of the research questions for the Image Coding Group at the Department of Electrical Engineering at Linköping University in Sweden. The aim is to find a new technology for information-efficient
Several years ago an “electronic nose” was developed at Linköping University in Sweden. It was based on a number of different gas sensors and programmed to differentiate between various substances in air. This nose is now being joined by a corresponding sensor for fluids, the “electronic tongue.” The principle behind the “electronic tongue” is that a number of electrodes are submerged in the fluid. When a current is turned on across the electrodes the response varies depending on the liquid’s content
Wires one-millionth of a millimetre wide change composition along their length.
Wires one-millionth of a millimetre wide that change chemical composition along their length, just as fruit pastilles change flavour along a packet, have been grown in the United States. These multi-flavoured nanowires can act as miniature bar-codes, diodes and light sources.
Conventional microelectronics components are etched into flat layers of semiconducting material. Charles Lieber and collea
Many Europeans are now learning to deal with a new currency. But also cash dispensers and cigarette machines must distinguish clearly between euros, the old currencies and counterfeit money. A miniature computer now checks the coins by means of digital image processing.
For users of the new European currency, having adequate safeguards against forgery is a matter of great importance. The paper money incorporates features such as holograms, watermarks, a security thread, and embossed text to
A technique used by academics to analyse poetry may soon help industry to find out whether computer safety systems really ARE safe. In a novel example of interdisciplinary academic work, English literature meets computing science in an project to design a decision-making framework for the safety industry.
Newcastle University researcher Jim Armstrong, who holds a first degree in English Literature and a PhD in Computing Science, is investigating how the technique ‘deconstruction’ – usually
The University of Abertay Dundee has been named as a key member of an international project, to develop new ways of delivering computer applications via the internet.
The 2.8 million euros (£1.8 million) scheme will see academics and business people from across Europe work together to develop the technology, which is set to revolutionise the way in which computer applications are accessed, delivered and updated for users across the globe.
Abertay University, the only UK body invited
ESA’s new micro-satellite PROBA has captured its first test images of the Earth’s surface using its small but powerful optical instrument, just two months after its launch from the Indian equator.
PROBA (Project for On Board Autonomy), the size of a small box and in orbit 600 km above the Earth’s surface, has provided scientists with its first detailed environmental images thanks to CHRIS – a Compact High Resolution Imaging Spectrometer – the main payload on the 100 kg European spacecraft.
New computer programme could settle literary debates.
To date, unlike us, computers have struggled to differentiate a page of Jane Austen from one by Jackie Collins. Now researchers in Italy have developed a program that can spot enough subtle differences between two authors’ works to attribute authorship 1 .
The program can tell a text by Machiavelli from one by Pirandello, Dante or a host of other great Italian writers. It constructed a language tree of the
Playing virtual reality computer games could provide the answer to combating motion sickness.
Scientists are looking at how feelings of nausea can be induced in people who are put into a virtual reality environment. By putting them back into that environment on a frequent basis the researchers are hoping to find out if they become accustomed to the conditions and overcome the symptoms of motion sickness.
The research is being carried out by scientists at Loughborough Univers
A DEVICE that records and recognises what people are discussing at meetings – and alerts them if decisions are being re-made – is being developed with the help of information systems experts at Staffordshire University.
Staffordshire and Lancaster Universities have been jointly awarded £714,000 by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to carry out the cutting-edge research project which will be partly based on artificial intelligence (AI) technology.
Profes
A crystal that holds light could facilitate quantum computing.
Researchers in the United States and Korea have brought light to a complete standstill in a crystal. The pulse is effectively held within the solid, ready to be released at a later stage.
This trick could be used to store information in a quantum computer 1 .
Normal computers store information in simple binary form (1’s and 0’s) in electronic and magnetic devices. Stationary light pu
In the 1990s, we dubbed the Internet the `information superhighway`. So why is it still so hard to find what we are looking for online? According to Prof. Wendy Hall of the University of Southampton, it is because the web is mostly linkless. What`s more, if we want the Web to be useful in our daily lives, web links will have to become much more personal.
Prof. Hall is head of Southampton`s Intelligence, Agents, Multimedia (IAM) Research Group. She says that hand-crafted websites generally c
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