Science and Enterprise

Category: New products

  • Wearable Sensor System Creates Real-Time Environment Maps

    Computer scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology developed a portable array of sensors that can create a digital map of a person’s environment, such as a building, while the person wearing the system walks around that environment. Maurice Fallon (pictured right), a research scientist in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and colleagues, will…

  • SBIR Grant to Support Glucagon Made for Artificial Pancreas

    National Institutes of Health (NIH) awarded Biodel Inc.,  a biopharmaceutical company in Danbury, Connecticut, a Small Business Innovation Research grant to develop a special form of glucagon used in artificial pancreas systems for diabetes patients. Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants are awarded by U.S. federal science agencies to encourage smaller enterprises to explore research…

  • Tilted Screen Displays Developed for Mobile Devices

    Computer scientists at University of Bristol and Lancaster University in the U.K. and Nokia Research Center in Tampere, Finland created a display technology that can physically adjust parts of the screen at different angles to provide more dramatic 3-D effects. The developers of the Tilt Displays, as the screen is called, will discuss the technology…

  • NSF Grant to Fund Study of Energy Storage Nanomaterials

    A physics professor at Clemson University in South Carolina will lead a team developing new nanoscale carbon materials for storing energy, funded by a grant from National Science Foundation. The four-year, $1.2 million project is headed by physicist Apparao Rao and includes participants from Clemson and the University of California-San Diego. The research is expected…

  • University to Build Toxic Gas Sensor for Firefighters

    Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Massachusetts received a grant from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop a portable sensor that alerts firefighters to the presence of toxic gases in burning buildings. The $1 million award will support the work of researchers in WPI’s Fire Protection Engineering and Electrical and Computer Engineering departments. The project…

  • Purdue, Adobe Create Process to Strengthen 3-D Print Objects

    Computer scientists at Purdue University in Indiana and computer software company Adobe Systems devised an automated process to add more robustness to objects created through three-dimensional printing. The researchers discussed their methods in a presentation last month at the SIGGRAPH 2012 conference in Los Angeles. 3-D printers create shapes by adding various materials layer-by-layer, including…

  • Polymer Nanoparticles Tested to Respond,Treat Inflammation

    Pharmaceutical scientists and engineers at University of California in San Diego developed a degradable polymer in nanoscale form that can respond to measurable concentrations of hydrogen peroxide, an indicator of inflammation associated with many disorders. The team led by pharmacy professor Adah Almutairi (pictured left) published its findings online earlier this month in the Journal…

  • Smartphone App Helps Monitor Lung Function

    Engineers at University of Washington in Seattle created a prototype smartphone app that can monitor lung functioning of patients with asthma and cystic fibrosis. A team from Washington’s electrical engineering department and Seattle Children’s Hospital presented the results of a test of the app earlier this month at the ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing.…

  • Protections Added to Voice Authentication Systems

    Computer scientists at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh devised additional safeguards for voice authentication systems that produce coded identifiers from a voice print comparable to a password. Bhiksha Raj, a professor in Carnegie Mellon’s Language Technologies Institute, with Manas Pathak, a recent Ph.D. graduate, and Isabel Trancoso of INESC-ID in Lisbon, Portugal, will discuss the…

  • Start-Up Gets Army Brain Injury Field Diagnostics Contract

    BrainScope Company Inc. in Bethesda, Maryland received a U.S. Army contract to develop a medical device to diagnose traumatic brain injuries in the field using smartphone-enabled technology. The $2.67 million contract with the four year-old company runs for two years. The award funds development of a device to help in the triage of patients in…