Tag: physical sciences
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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.…
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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…
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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…
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Study to Genetically Alter Algae for Faster Biofuel Output
Biochemists and engineers at Texas A&M AgriLife Research in College Station are researching the genetic characteristics of algae to produce a type of the organism that can quickly make fuel-grade oil in commercial quantities. The project that includes collaborators from Cornell University and Boyce Thompson Institute for Plant Research is funded by a $2 million…
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23andMe Opens Application Interface to Outside Developers
The personal genetics company 23andMe Inc. in Mountain View, California will make available to outside systems developers the codes and routines needed to access its DNA analysis database. Mike Polcari, the company’s engineering director, will describe the initiative at the Quantified Self Conference in Palo Alto, California, on 16 September. An application program interface (API),…
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Prototype Net-Zero Energy Home Being Tested
National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency of the U.S. Department of Commerce, unveiled this week a two-story suburban-style home to demonstrate that a family of four can generate as much energy as it uses in a year. The year-long pilot is expected to improve testing methods for residential energy efficiency and develop…
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Synthetic Nanomaterial Developed for Semiconductors
Chemists and physicists at University at Buffalo in New York created a synthetic nanoscale material with properties making it a potential replacement for silicon in electronic components. The team led by chemist Sarbajit Banerjee and physicist Sambandamurthy Ganapathy published its findings in a recent issue of the journal Advanced Functional Materials (paid subscription required). The…
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Levitation Technique Devised to Create More Soluble Drugs
Researchers at Argonne National Laboratory, a division of the U.S. Department of Energy in Illinois, developed techniques making it more feasible to create drugs that are more soluble, and thus more effective in lower doses. X-ray physicist Chris Benmore led the study that uses levitation to suspend the solution in air while it evaporates, leaving…
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Computer Chips Recast for High Frequency Detector Circuits
Engineers at Tel Aviv University in Israel reconfigured common computer chips into high frequency circuits, making them useful for building low-cost security imaging devices. Eran Socher, a lecturer in Tel Aviv’s engineering department, is leading the university’s research team that published its findings in a recent issue of the journal IEEE Microwave and Wireless Components…
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Project to Study Light-Enabled Quantum Dot Circuits
Researchers at Tampere University of Technology in Finland are developing a new process for designing and fabricating logic circuits that consume no current and can be read and written with light. The four-year, €1.6 million ($US 2.1 million) study is funded by the Academy of Finland, the country’s main science agency. The project draws on…