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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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Shana Tovah, 5773
Science Business will take a break for Jewish new year observances on Monday, 17 September. We will resume the blog on Tuesday. In the meantime, here’s a video to get into the spirit of the new year. * * *
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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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Home Computer Fetal Ultrasound System Developed
Engineers at Newcastle University in the U.K. created a low-cost ultrasound scanner that can display images of a fetus on a home computer display. The device aims to make the monitoring of fetal development a more routine task, particularly in less developed areas of the world. The scanner, about the size of a computer mouse,…
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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…