Ancient artists used a technique called stippling – in which pictures are created by painting or carving a series of tiny dots – to produce drawings on cave walls and utensils thousands of years ago.

Now engineers at Purdue University have created a new kind of computer-imaging software that uses stippling to quickly produce complex pictures of internal organs and other renderings. The method is 10 times faster than some conventional methods and could provide a tool for medical professionals

Internet traffic jams may become history if ESA succeeds in developing new technology to see nearby Earth-sized planets. Why? In looking for new ways to detect planets ESA is thinking that, instead of bulky mirrors and lenses in space, one can build miniaturised optical systems that fit onto a microchip. Such ‘integrated optics’ would also allow earthly computer networks to use high-speed routing of data streams as a natural spin-off.

Data moving around the Internet are like road traffic in

VLT Images Intergalactic Shock The Universe is a violent place – as astronomers use increasingly sensitive means and methods to study the diverse processes out there, they become aware of the extraordinary forces acting in the space that surrounds us. With larger telescopes and ever-more sophisticated instruments, new information is gained about remote celestial objects and their behaviour. Among the most intriguing ones are the radio galaxies which emit prodiguous amounts of

Indiana University information technology experts working with others from the state’s leading educational institutions presented several new tools in high-performance computing, networks and visualization this week to colleagues at the international Supercomputing2002 conference. Among the tools demonstrated were a system that can track the physical location of wireless devices and a powerful mapping application.

The contributions of IU and its Research in Indiana (http://www.research-

A Northumbria University lecturer has helped devise a scheme to use music to catch computer bugs.

Dr Paul Vickers from Northumbria and Professor James Alty from Loughborough University’s Department of Computer Science have come up with an idea that would see features of computer programming languages being given short, musical themes. All similar instructions would be given related tunes so that any bug would be easily identified within the system.

“To ensure the musicality

Record-high magnetic fields in the lab, almost a Gigagauss in magnitude, have been achieved by aiming intense laser light at a dense plasma, expanding the possibilities for laboratory re-creations of astrophysical events.

At last week’s APS Division of Plasma Physics Meeting in Orlando, researchers from Imperial College, London, and the Rutherford Appleton Lab in the UK announced evidence of super-strong magnetic fields that are hundreds of times more intense than any previous magnetic

The measured abundance of helium in the universe (about 25% of all normal matter) suggests that there is about one proton for every 1010 photons. This in turn suggests that at some earlier phase of the universe an almost equal number of protons and anti-protons existed and gradually annihilated, but that because of some fundamental asymmetry (at the level of one part per ten billion) in the way that the weak nuclear force treats matter and antimatter, protons but not anti-protons survived to the pre

When they make their first public demonstration of tele-immersion at this week’s Super Computing 2002 conference in Baltimore, computer scientists will also attain another first: a “network computer” that processes data at a location far removed from either input or output.

While the tele-immersion system will gather and display information in side-by-side booths at the Baltimore Convention Center, actual data processing will occur some 250 miles away at the Pittsburgh Supercomputing C

The first pictures from the new Swedish solar telescope on La Palma, Canary Islands, are presented in an article in the prestigious science journal Nature from November 14. The images of the sun are the most detailed ever seen. One of the most sensational discoveries is a previously unknown detailed sunspot structure.

The impact of this discovery is now capturing the attention of solar researchers, and it won`t be long before new and revised theories are formulated.

The solar tele

It is already possible for PC users to switch off simply by winking their eyes, but it is expected this will soon be possible wirelessly! Now in its start-up phase, the Academy of Finland’s Research Programme on Proactive Information Technology or PROACT includes a project dedicated to the development of wireless technology. One of the applications is a PC interface controlled by eye movement.

All five Academy research programmes launched during 2002 will benefit from international funding.

University of Alberta physicist was part of a Canadian research team which recently set a WORLD RECORD for high-speed disk-to-disk transfer of research data.

Bryan Caron of the University of Alberta’s Centre for Subatomic Research was a leading member of the team, which performed the record-breaking demonstration.

The rates achieved were equivalent to transferring all the data from a full-length DVD movie from one part of the world to another in less than 60 seconds, o

The European DataGrid (EDG)* project has taken a major step towards making the concept of a world-wide computing Grid a reality. Its latest release of middleware – the software that makes a Grid of computers work together seamlessly – will support production quality Grid computing. Markus Schulz, one of the chief software developers at CERN**, explains, “This release will take the EDG project from the laboratory bench into the real world”.

One of the main aims of the European DataGrid proje

Scientists have recreated a temperature not seen since the first microsecond of the birth of the universe and found that the event did not unfold quite the way they expected, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letters. The interaction of energy, matter, and the strong nuclear force in the ultra-hot experiments conducted at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) was thought to be well understood, but a lengthy investigation has revealed that physicists are missing something in their mo

Technical Insights’ Sensor Technology Alert

Flip chip packaging delivers enhanced electrical performance, saves space, and provides high conduction speed, making it an ideal technology for use in handheld devices and medical electronics, among other applications.

“As integrated circuit fabrication advances rapidly and the market for faster, smaller, yet less expensive electronic products accelerates, flip chip packaging comes into play,” says Technical Insights Research Ana

An international team of astronomers, led by scientists at the University of Manchester have produced new evidence that most of the energy in the Universe is in the form of the mysterious “Dark Energy”. The new evidence comes from a 10-year census of the sky for examples of gravitational lenses, which are seen when a galaxy bends the light from a distant quasar to form several images of the same quasar. Linking the number of lenses they found with the latest information on the numbers of galaxies, th

When it comes to sleuthing in science, few are better than the intrepid investigators at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For example, take the “Case of the Stray Electrons.”

NIST researchers have created nanoscale devices that manipulate electrons in order to count them one at a time. Such counting is critical to the development of new fundamental electrical standards. When two electrons are bound in pairs (called Cooper pairs) in a superconductor, they can be man