Tag: university
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Scheme Protects Against Wireless Network Security Breach
Computer scientists at MIT have devised a method for plugging a security gap in wireless networks that allows attackers to hijack log-on signals from network devices. MIT faculty Nickolai Zeldovich and Dina Katabi, with postdoc Nabeel Ahmed and grad student Shyam Gollakota presented their findings and demonstrated the system earlier this month at the Usenix…
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Consortium Awarded Grant for Bioweapon Defense
A collaboration of universities, private company, and national lab have received a $2.4 million grant from National Institutes of Health to develop tools that detect and protect against biological weapon attacks. The grant, from NIH’s Partnerships for Biodefense Program, will fund work by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, University of Texas Medical Branch, University…
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Monitors to Prevent Elderly Falls Before They Happen
Grants from the National Science Foundation’s Smart Health and Wellbeing Program are funding development of a sensor-based system to detect the risks of falls by frail elderly people. One of the grants, to Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, will involve collaboration between the school’s engineering and gerontology departments; a smaller grant will fund similar engineering work…
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Clinical Trial Shows Drug Improves Heart Muscle Functions
A clinical trial conducted by University of Hull in the U.K. shows the drug omecamtiv mercabil improves the heart’s ability to pump blood in heart failure patients. The findings by Hull cardiology professor John Cleland and colleagues appear in the 20 August issue of the journal The Lancet (paid subscription required). Omecamtiv mercabil is one…
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Self-Powered Prosthetic Leg Developed, Patented, Licensed
Vanderbilt University engineers in Nashville have developed a prosthetic lower leg, which allows amputees to walk without the leg-dragging that characterizes conventional artificial legs. The university has patented basic elements of the device’s design, and licensed the technology to a California company for commercial development. The prosthesis is as much an electronic as an assistive…
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NSF, Energy Dept to Fund Power Grid Research Center
National Science Foundation and Department of Energy awarded a grant to the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and its partners to establish a new Engineering Research Center for research and education on the nation’s electrical grid infrastructure. The two agencies will invest $18.5 million in the research center over five years. The facility, known as the…
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Powder-Free Latex Gloves Reduces Latex Allergy Rate
Researchers at the Medical College of Wisconsin in Milwaukee have found that stopping the use of powdered latex gloves reduces allergic sensitization to latex among health care workers. The team’s findings appear online in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (paid subscription required). Kevin Kelley, professor of pediatrics and internal medicine, led the Wisconsin…
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Grants Awarded to Fund Research on Health Records, Genomics
The National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), part of National Institutes of Health, will fund research on patients’ genomic information linked to disease characteristics and symptoms in their electronic medical records. NHGRI will award grants totaling $25 million over the next four years to seven institutions in the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) network.…
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First Flaw Reportedly Found in Advanced Encryption Standard
Computer scientists from European universities and Microsoft Research have found a weakness in the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) algorithm. Andrey Bogdanov from Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium, Christian Rechberger from L’École Normale Supérieure in Paris, and Dmitry Khovratovich from Microsoft Research say that the discovered flaw makes the recovery of the secret AES encryption key…
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Ad Hoc Network Devised for Emergency Communications
Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a mobile ad hoc system called LifeNet designed to help first responders communicate after disasters. Santosh Vempala, professor of computer science at Georgia Tech and grad student Hrushikesh Mehendale will demonstrate the system at the ACM SIGCOMM conference today in Toronto, Canada. LifeNet is a wireless network designed…