Like an episode of “CSI: Computers,” a UF researcher has developed a technique that gives digital detectives twice the forensic evidence they now have to catch all kinds of hackers, from curious teenagers to disgruntled employees to agents of foreign governments.

Writing in the current issue of the International Journal of Digital Evidence, UF doctoral student Mark Foster proposes a new and improved method of computer crime solving, called “process forensics.” “If a guy walks in

Star formation is one of the most basic phenomena in the Universe. Inside stars, primordial material from the Big Bang is processed into heavier elements that we observe today. In the extended atmospheres of certain types of stars, these elements combine into more complex systems like molecules and dust grains, the building blocks for new planets, stars and galaxies and, ultimately, for life. Violent star-forming processes let otherwise dull galaxies shine in the darkness of deep space and make

“Swift,” a new NASA satellite, will head for the heavens Nov. 17, designed to detect gamma-ray bursts and whip around to catch them in the act. And the trigger software that makes the flying observatory smart enough to do this comes from the Space Science team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

Gamma-ray bursts, first discovered by Los Alamos in the course of nuclear nonproliferation data analysis, occur randomly throughout the universe. They are the most powerful explos

These images, taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express spacecraft, show the detailed structure of Coprates Catena, a southern part of the Valles Marineris canyon system on Mars.

The images were taken during orbit 438 with a ground resolution of approximately 43 metres per pixel. The displayed region covers an area centred at about latitude 14° South and longitude 301° East.

Coprates Catena is a chain of collapsed structures, which run

Could boost surveillance in public places

A new three-dimensional multi-camera system that allows viewers to search areas from various vantage points could one day boost surveillance in public places such as airports and train stations, say University of Toronto researchers. The system – based on ideas published in the October proceedings of the 2004 IEEE International Conference on Systems, Man and Cybernetics – allows users to capture images of a scene from multiple angles and

ESA’s SMART-1 is successfully making its first orbit of the Moon, a significant milestone for the first of Europe’s Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology (SMART) spacecraft.

A complex package of tests on new technologies was successfully performed during the cruise to the Moon, while the spacecraft was getting ready for the scientific investigations which will come next. These technologies pave the way for future planetary missions. SMART-1 reached its closest

Researchers from the Universities of Southampton and Glasgow have succeeded in tying knots in light beams.

Using a computer-designed hologram, they created threads of darkness embedded in a laser beam. The hologram bends the direction of optical energy flow, so these dark threads form loops. The loops can then be linked together, or tied into knots.

Dr Mark Dennis, a University of Southampton mathematician, worked in collaboration with Professor Miles Padgett, Dr Johannes

The existence of a new electronic state in superconductors, materials that can carry an electric current without resistance, has been confirmed experimentally according to research to be published in the 12 November 2004 issue of the journal Science by a team led by Ying Liu, associate professor of physics at Penn State. “We have established direct evidence for the existence of an odd-parity superconductor, which previously had been theorized but never demonstrated in an unambiguous experiment,

In June, researchers from the University of Rochester announced they had located a potential planet around another star so young that it defied theorists’ explanations. Now a new team of Rochester planet-formation specialists are backing up the original conclusions, saying they’ve confirmed that the hole formed in the star’s dusty disk could very well have been formed by a new planet. The findings have implications for gaining insight into how our own solar system came to be, as well as finding

In a paper published online today in Science, a group of researchers led by David Awschalom, a professor of physics and electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara, reports the observation of the spin Hall effect. This publication ends a 33-year long effort aimed at this discovery.

The Hall effect, named after American physicist Edwin Hall who discovered it in 1879, occurs when an electric current flows through a conductor in a magnetic field

Predicting with uncanny accuracy the effects of recent hurricanes, Los Alamos National Laboratory computer models are helping the Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Assurance, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and other organizations plan for future disasters. For those in the paths of hurricane devastation, tools such as the Los Alamos infrastructure models could mean their lights and gas return to service hours or even days more rapidly.

“The comparison of a

Penn State researchers have developed software that more quickly and efficiently ensures that databases don’t release unauthorized information.

The software, QFilter, “sits” between users and databases and filters or culls out unauthorized requests for data before a database responds to a query. “We have shifted the thinking from data filtering to query filtering,” said Dongwon Lee, assistant professor in the School of Information Sciences and Technology (IST). “This is a prac

Pluto’s status as our solar system’s ninth planet may be safe if a recently discovered Kuiper Belt Object is a typical “KBO” and not just an oddball.

Astronomers have new evidence that KBOs (Kuiper Belt Objects) are smaller than previously thought.

KBOs – icy cousins to asteroids and the source of some comets – are the leftover building blocks of the outer planets. Astronomers using the world’s most powerful telescopes have discovered about 1,000 of these objects orb

An international team led by an Edinburgh astronomer have discovered that by studying polarised light from black holes they can focus much more closely on what exactly is going on around them. The work is published this week in the monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society on November 11th.

Studying black holes at the centre of galaxies is difficult. A huge amount of material is falling on to the centre in an active black hole system, and this falling material is thought

As summer draws to a close in the southern hemisphere of Uranus, storm clouds are brewing in the upper atmosphere, northern hemisphere winds are gusting to 250 miles per hour, and the planet’s rings are getting brighter every day.

This weather report comes from researchers using the Keck II 10-meter telescope atop Mauna Kea volcano in Hawaii, where recent observations are proving that Uranus is not the “boring and unchanging” planet people have assumed, according to Imke de

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have demonstrated a technique for growing well-formed, single-crystal nanowires in place—and in a predictable orientation—on a commercially important substrate.

The method uses nanoparticles of gold arranged in rows on a sapphire surface as starting points for growing horizontal semiconductor “wires” only 3 nanometers (nm) in diameter. Other methods produce semiconductor nanowires more than 10 nm in dia