Technical Research Centre of Finland, VTT is serving as an expert in a European project for developing processing methods for mobile videos. In the near future, consumers will be able to store videos taken by video camera and video phones to their personal digital archives, where they can search and browse them, share them with their friends and view them on their own devices. The videos are easy to find and view on a computer, mobile phone or handheld computer. The new methods promote the commercial

Microchip miniaturization is making quality control-related measurement of features during the production process increasingly difficult. New National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) software and research results* should help manufacturers reduce errors in measuring microchip features which today measure less than 37 nanometers (about 1.5 millionths of an inch) in width and are expected to shrink to 25 nanometers (about 1 millionth of an inch) by 2007.

Currently, most semicondu

These images were taken by the High Resolution Stereo Camera (HRSC) on board ESA’s Mars Express of the Acheron Fossae region, an area of intensive tectonic (continental ‘plate’) activity in the past.

The images show traces of enormous stress and corresponding strain in the crust of the Red Planet. The HRSC was pointed twice at this interesting geological feature in the Acheron Fossae mountain range, during orbits 37 and 143.

The feature is situated at approximately 35º-40º North a

Project will examine potential for artificial intelligence

A project jointly led by Cardiff University and Salford University will examine whether it is possible for a computer to make a judgement about the acoustic quality of a space, such as a concert hall or pop music arena.

Professor Jonathon Chambers of the School of Engineering at Cardiff and Professor Trevor Cox at Salford’s Acoustics Research Centre aim to discover whether an artificial intelligence system could

VLT Measures Properties of New Jupiter-Size Objects in Very Close Orbits

Discovering other Worlds

During the past decade, astronomers have learned that our Solar System is not unique, as more than 120 giant planets orbiting other stars were discovered by radial-velocity surveys (cf. ESO PR 13/00, ESO PR 07/01, and ESO PR 03/03).

However, the radial-velocity technique is not the only tool for the detection of exoplanets. When a planet happens to pass in front o

Dutch researcher Steve van Straaten set a record during his doctoral research. The researcher registered the fastest ever change in the X-ray emission originating from a binary star. The record-breaking binary star consists of a neutron star and a lighter companion star.

Astronomer Steve van Straaten studied the time variations in the X-ray emission from various binary stars. He found that one of the binary stars had a vibrational frequency of 1330 Hz. This means that the intensity of the X-

’Virtual’ technology could change how experiments are done

Tidewater Community College has found a groundbreaking way to “virtualize” real-life experiments through cutting-edge software programs. Determined to mine the latest technology for better – and affordable – learning methods, professors in TCC’s electronic engineering technology (EET) program have succeeded in bringing “virtual instruments” to life for their students.

The result: a virtually functionin

An error in a spreadsheet or Web page calculation sounds harmless enough, unless you’re the person whose retirement funds, credit history or medical treatment rely on decisions based on that calculation. A six-campus team of computer scientists led by Margaret Burnett at Oregon State University is working to help exterminate the bugs that infest the spreadsheets and other “programs” created by millions of computer users. You may not think of yourself as a programmer, but that’s jus

Trailblazing VLT Interferometer Studies of the Central Region in Active Galaxy NGC 1068

Fulfilling an old dream of astronomers, observations with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) at the ESO Paranal Observatory (Chile) have now made it possible to obtain a clear picture of the immediate surroundings of the black hole at the centre of an active galaxy. The new results concern the spiral galaxy NGC 1068, located at a distance of about 50 million light-years.

They

Since November, a physics experiment called the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) has been looking for components of dark matter, the primary “stuff” of which the universe is made. Conducted from the Soudan Underground Mine in northern Minnesota, the search is for postulated dark matter particles called WIMPS–weakly interacting massive particles. So far, the experiment has found no WIMPs, but neither has it found contamination from stray neutrons. CDMS II member Priscilla Cushman, a physics pro

CDMS II presents new results on Weakly Interacting Massive Particles that could make up most of the matter of our universe

With the first data from their underground observatory in Northern Minnesota, scientists of the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search have peered with greater sensitivity than ever before into the suspected realm of the WIMPS. The sighting of Weakly Interacting Massive Particles could solve the double mystery of dark matter on the cosmic scale and of supersymmetry on the

Computer security – or the apparent lack of it – is increasingly a worry for network administrators. But viruses and other such vulnerabilities are no mystery for Europe’s Computer Security Incident Response Teams, now also finding their feet in the European Union’s newest Member States.

Creating and managing Computer Security Incident Response Teams (CSIRTs) is just one of the topics at this year’s Computer Security Incident Handling Conference. Organised by FIRST (Forum of

The fastest known cryptographic system based on transmission of single photons—the smallest pulses of light—has been demonstrated by a team at the Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The transmissions cannot be intercepted without detection, so that messages encrypted with the system can be kept secret.

The NIST “quantum key distribution” (QKD) system transmits a stream of individual photons to generate a verifiably secret key–a random seri

Rice-Los Alamos team find remarkable similarity between data from sky and computer

In the early years of the Space Age, astronomers made the startling discovery that short, transient flashes of gamma rays occurred randomly in the sky every night. Only within the past decade have scientists uncovered evidence to associate gamma-ray bursts with the death cries of massive stars from the edge of the universe. But they’ve had very few clues about how a “hypernova” or “collapsar” might

A new breed of faster, more powerful computers based on quantum mechanics may be a step closer to reality, report scientists from Purdue and Duke universities.

By linking a pair of tiny “puddles” of a few dozen electrons sandwiched inside a semiconductor, researchers have enabled these two so-called “quantum dots” to become parts of a transistor – the vital switching component in computer chips. Future computers that use quantum dots to store and process digital information might outperform

In some hours, at midnight between Friday and Saturday, ten more countries will join the European Union. The EC-supported Venus Transit 2004 (VT-2004) programme is active in almost all of these, with VT-2004 National Nodes already established the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Slovenia and Slovakia; more are likely to follow soon. The organisers include the Astronomical Institute of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic and the next VT-2004 meeting will be held near Prague on May 7-