Tag: computer science

  • Technique Calculates X-Rays for Minimally Invasive Surgery

    Engineers and computer scientists from North Carolina State University in Raleigh and University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill devised a technique for determining the X-rays to track surgical tools in minimally-invasive procedures. NC State engineering professor Edgar Lobaton is the lead author on a paper describing this technique to be presented next month at…

  • Trial Shows Smartphone App Effective for Weight Loss

    Food scientists at University of Leeds in the U.K. found a smartphone app helped participants in a clinical trial better manage their food intake and lose weight compared to a food diary on a Web site or on paper. The findings of the team led by Leeds’s epidemiology professor Janet Cade, appear online in today’s…

  • Optical Circuits Developed with Semiconductor Diamonds

    Engineers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and colleagues in Germany developed an economical method to harness polycrystalline diamonds for optical circuits. The team led by nanotechnology lab director Wolfram Pernice published its findings earlier this week in the journal Nature Communications (paid subscription required). Optical circuits work like integrated electronic circuits, but instead of transmiting…

  • Injectable LEDs Developed to Study Brain Functions

    Biomedical engineers at University of Illinois in Champaign, with colleagues from Washington University in St. Louis, and other institutions in the U.S., Korea, and China developed tiny light-emitting diode (LED) devices that can be injected deep in the brain to study neural functions. The team led by Illinois’s John Rogers published its findings in this…

  • GE to Crowdsource Product Development from Patent Portfolio

    General Electric Company and Quirky, a product development company using social media, are collaborating on developing GE patents into consumer products. The two companies also are partnering on smartphone-enabled apps connecting to useful or important systems in people’s day-to-day lives. Quirky is a social network where inventors and product developers can submit ideas and have…

  • UConn, Pratt & Whitney Open Additive Manufacturing Lab

    Aircraft engine manufacturer Pratt & Whitney and University of Connecticut are collaborating on a laboratory to research 3-D printing as a manufacturing technique at the university’s Storrs campus. The company, a division of United Technologies, is expected to spend $8 million over the next five years on the university’s Pratt & Whitney Additive Manufacturing Center.…

  • Mayo CEO: Government Needs to Fund Health Care Innovation

    John Noseworthy, president and CEO of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, told an audience today that the U.S. government needs to fund scientific discovery to maintain U.S. health care quality and affordability, especially funding for National Institutes of Health (NIH). Noseworthy made his remarks in a speech at the National Press Club in Washington,…

  • Software Testing Technique Devised for Surgical Robots

    Computer scientsts at Carnegie Mellon University and Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) adapted new techniques for uncovering software bugs to the demanding requirements of robotic surgery. Carnegie Mellon’s André Platzer and APL’s Yanni Kouskoulas and colleagues will describe their work later this week at the Hybrid Systems: Computation and Control conference in Philadelphia.…

  • Challenge Seeks Answers for Recycling Cathode Ray Tubes

    A new challenge on InnoCentive seeks proposals for recycling the lead in glass found in old cathode ray tubes (CRTs) into new products. The competition, sponsored by Consumer Electronics Association and Institute of Scrap Recycling Industries, has a prize of $10,000 and a deadline of 1 July 2013. InnoCentive in Waltham, Massachusetts conducts open-innovation, crowd-sourcing…

  • Anatomical Models 3-D Printed from Tomography Scans

    Researchers at University of Notre Dame in Indiana developed a process for three-dimensional printing of anatomical models from computed tomography (CT) scans. The team from the lab of Matthew Leevy, a research professor at Notre Dame’s Integrated Imaging Facility, published its findings online last week in text and video form in the Journal of Visualized…