Tag: software

  • Cell Phone, GPS Data Identify Urban Traffic Jam Sources

    Engineers at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of California at Berkeley devised a method for locating sources of urban traffic jams with anonymous data from cell phone records, which can encourage more effective strategies for reducing congestion. The team led by MIT civil and environmental engineering professor Marta González reported its findings in yesterday’s…

  • R&D Project Aims To Cut Time, Cost of Solar Installations

    A new research and development project led by North Carolina State University in Raleigh seeks to reduce the time and cost of installing rooftop solar energy systems. The five-year, $9 million grant was awarded by the U.S. Department of Energy to a consortium of NC State’s FREEDM Systems Center — an energy engineering research lab…

  • University Research Leads to Battery Sorting Machine

    Research on artificial intelligence by a professor at Gothenberg University in Sweden made possible a machine that sorts discarded household batteries and a company that developed and markets the system. Claes Strannegård, a researcher in logic and cognitive science at Gothenberg, applied his work on artificial intelligence to find a better way of sorting garbage.…

  • Portable Air Pollution Sensors Built Into Smartphones

    Computer scientists at University of California in San Diego created pollution sensors that monitor air quality in real time on smartphones. CitiSense, as the sensor system is called, comes from the lab of computer scientist William Griswold that described the system at the Wireless Health 2012 conference in October, also in San Diego. The sensors…

  • Miniature Robots Being Developed to Work in Swarms

    A computer science lab at University of Colorado in Boulder is building a miniature, limited-function robot designed to work in a swarm of similar devices. Computer science professor Nikolaus Correll and colleagues are building these small devices that they call droplets as building blocks for increasingly complex systems. Correll, with lab research associate Dustin Reishus…

  • Computer Model Shown to Predict Irregular Heartbeat

    Medical researchers at University of Rochester in New York, with computer scientists at IBM, built a computer model of the heart wall that can predict the risk of irregular heart rhythms and sudden cardiac death in patients. The results of this collaboration, led by Rochester cardiovascular professor Coeli Lopes, appear in a recent issue of…

  • DNA Sequencing Performed with Tiny Samples, No Library Prep

    Researchers from the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute and Babraham Institute, both in the U.K., developed a technique for sequencing DNA molecules requiring a tiny fraction of material and without the laborious library preparation that had been needed before. The work of the team led by Harold Swerdlow (pictured left), Sanger Institute research and development director,…

  • Mobile App and Classes Help Obese People Lose Weight

    Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago and four other institutions found a mobile app that tracks eating and activity, combined with classroom sessions, helped people at a weight loss clinic lose weight and keep it off for at least a year. The findings of Northwestern professor of preventive medicine Bonnie Spring and colleagues appear online…

  • Amgen Purchases Diagnostics Developer deCODE Genetics

    Amgen, a biotechnology company in Thousand Oaks, California, acquired deCODE Genetics, a developer of genetic disease risk assessment tests in Reykjavik, Iceland in an all-cash transaction valued at $415 million. Amgen says the transaction does not require regulatory approval and is expected to close before the end of 2012. deCODE Genetics offers genetic scans for…

  • Augmented Reality Applications Enhanced for Mobile Devices

    Computer scientists at University of California in Santa Barbara are developing augmented reality applications for mobile devices that offer more stable, realistic, and current images than available today. The lab of computer science professors Matthew Turk and Tobias Höllerer (pictured right) recently received a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research to create…