Home > Science & Engineering

Science & Engineering

Glendale Community College Gets $200,000 Engineering Gift

7/17/2007

Glendale Community College in California has received a gift of $200,000 worth of Autodesk Inventor Professional software from engineering firm Brinderson & Associates. The gift came through the Autodesk Invest in Education program.

Universities Tap the Internet To Map the Universe ... One Galaxy at a Time

7/16/2007

You're sitting on a pile of about a million telescopic photos of the universe, and each one needs to be classified. Bit of a job. So what do you do? Astronomers at the University of Portsmouth, Oxford University, and Johns Hopkins University came up with a solution last week that not only alleviated the burden but also generated an enthusiastic response from the public: They opened up the project to volunteers via the Internet.

Duke Puts Mouse Brains Online

7/16/2007

Answering the prayers of those who like to look at mouse brains, Duke University's Center for In Vivo Microscopy last week posted the results of new advances in magnetic resonance imaging, showing off high-resolution 3D images of mouse brains, including a genetically modified mouse brain.

Schnabel Takes Over Indiana U Informatics School

7/16/2007

Computer scientist and researcher Robert B. Schnabel has been named dean of Indiana University's School of Informatics. He has succeeded J. Michael Dunn, who retired at the end of June and remains as dean emeritus.

SciTalks.com Offers Lecture Video Search Site

7/11/2007

In the same vein as YouTube, SciTalks.com (Boston, MA) has launched a searchable online collection of science lecture video files from across the world. Currently 1,000 lectures are online, with new videos being added daily.

IBM, Indian Universities Develop Curriculum for 'Service Scientists'

7/10/2007

IBM Corp. has cut a series of curriculum development deals with Indian universities designed to train students in the field of "service science," skills associated with the burgeoning market for offshore technical services and support.

U Alberta Researchers Pit AI Program Against Card Sharks

7/9/2007

A team of computer science researchers at the University of Alberta are pitting Polaris, their poker-playing computer program, against two of the best Texas Hold 'em card players in the hemisphere. The purse is $50,000 in the 2,000-hand match between card sharks Phil Laak and Ali Eslami and the Alberta team, led by Jonathan Schaeffer.

Stanford Team Enters Robot Car in DARPA Urban Race

7/3/2007

A team of Stanford University robotic researchers will test a driverless Volkswagen Passat wagon named Junior in this fall's Urban Challenge, an unmanned car race sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

UMD Researchers Build Single-Chip Supercomputer

7/3/2007

University of Maryland researchers have developed a new technology they describe as a "single-chip supercomputer prototype," which would be capable of speeds 100 times faster than current desktops. It is based on parallel processing on a single chip.

Indiana/Purdue Prof Dedicated to Making Helper Droids

6/26/2007

A professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) is working on creating life-like androids to study human behavior and social interaction, with an eye toward using them as social workers and companions for the elderly.

UT-SA Assistant Prof Wins NSF 'Up and Comer' Grant

6/26/2007

The National Science Foundation awarded Carola Wenk, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Texas-San Antonio, a five-year, $400,000 "Faculty Early Career Development" award to study "geometric shape handling."

UT Puts Force10 Switch at Heart of Physics Research

6/21/2007

The University of Tennessee's (Knoxville, TN) physics department has installed a C300 resilient switch from Force 10 Networks (San Jose, CA) to help analyze data from CERN's large hadron collider (LHC), a particle accelerator.

Artificial Intelligence Pioneer Joins WPI Game Faculty

6/19/2007

Worcester Polytechnic Institute announced that computer intelligence pioneer Charles Rich, associate director of the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge, MA, will join the university's "Interactive Media and Game Development" faculty July 1.

MIT Names Materials Science Prof Dean of Engineering

6/19/2007

MIT appointed Subra Suresh, a professor of engineering in the its Department of Materials Science and Engineering, as the next dean of the MIT School of Engineering. Suresh, who succeeds Professor Thomas Magnanti, will take over July 23.

Researchers Step Closer to Cracking RSA Encryption

6/8/2007

Researchers are closing in on deciphering 1,024-bit RSA encryption, security industry watchers said following an unprecedented numbers-cracking feat by a group of French, German, and Japanese researchers.

U Illinois Grant To Tame Unstructured Data for Research

6/5/2007

The Andrew Mellon Foundation last week awarded $1.2 million grant to the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to help find ways to solve the so-called "80 percent problem."

Carnegie Mellon, WPI Grants To Explore 'Intelligent Tutoring'

5/29/2007

The United States Department of Education has awarded Worcester (MA) Polytechnic Institute and Carnegie Mellon University a four-year, $2 million grant to enhance a computerized program to help middle school students hone their math skills. The tool is designed to tie tutoring to the assessment of student performance under federal teaching and learning guidelines.

Medill To Offer J-School Scholarships to Comp-Sci Grads

5/29/2007

The Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University is making scholarships available to those with undergraduate degrees in computer science, as well as programmers and Web developers, under a grant that recognizes that the Web has become an essential media technology.

U Mass Senior Answers Family's Plea for Assistive Tech

5/22/2007

An electrical engineering student at the University of Massachusetts at Lowell designed a voice-activated computer cursor in response to a cry for help posted on the Internet from the parents of a 5-year-old Italian girl who's been paralyzed since the age of 2.

Carnegie Mellon Adds 4 Bots to Robot Hall of Fame

5/21/2007

Carnegie Mellon University inducted four robots into its Robot Hall of Fame, including a hopping robot; the first car to drive itself across the country; a kit that enables anyone to build a robot; and the android Data from Star Trek.

University of Texas Profs, Students Unveil High-Speed Chip

5/7/2007

University of Texas computer science professors and graduate students have produced a prototype high-performance processor capable of scaling to trillions of calculations per second.

Stanford CS Taking Steps to Reverse Female Brain Drain

5/7/2007

Stanford is taking steps to retain "the extremely low number of female computer scientists on campus," the Stanford Daily reported. Thirteen percent of Stanford CS undergrads are female, the paper noted, down from 24 percent in the 1999/2000 school year.

U Illinois Partners with Nvidia for Parallel Computing Course

5/2/2007

The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is partnering with graphics processor developer Nvidia to offer a course in parallel computing--a course that will be taught by both the chair of the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the chief scientist at Nvidia, David Kirk.

MIT Completes First Course Devoted to PlayStation Tech

4/24/2007

MIT last week completed what claims is the first course in the United States devoted to the capabilities of the Cell Broadband Engine or Cell/B.E., the chip that powers the Sony PlayStation3 entertainment platform.

Iowa State To Unveil C6, Upgraded Virtual Reality Room

4/17/2007

Iowa State University will unveil next week "C6," a newly upgraded six-sided virtual reality room. The 3-meter by 3 meter C6, part of ISU's Virtual Reality Applications Center, will be able to immerse users in VR experiences enhanced by 100 million pixels of computer-generated imagery and eight channels of high-definition audio.