Tag: mathematics
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Many Inter-Hospital Helicopter Patient Transports Not Needed
Analysts at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School in Boston found many neurosurgical patients transported by helicopter to a critical care facility from hospitals could have made the trip at least as quickly by ambulance. Their findings appeared yesterday in the online journal PLoS One. Surgeon Brian Walcott and colleagues reviewed electronic health records…
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Low-Cost Tablet Gets Hands-On Tests in Indian Schools
Researchers have tested in India an electronic tablet device designed in the U.S. and Singapore for widespread use in Indian schools. The I-slate is being developed at the Institute for Sustainable and Applied Infodynamics (ISAID), a joint program of Rice University in Houston, Texas and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore. The device, still a…
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Math Methods Devised to Design Chemical Catalysts
Research chemists at University of Utah in Salt Lake City have developed a process based on mathematics to design chemical catalysts, including those for making drugs. Professor Matt Sigman (pictured right) and doctoral student Kaid Harper report their findings in this week’s issue of the journal Science; paid subscription required. Catalysts are substances that encourage…
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Brain Circuit Model Helps Understand Parkinson’s Disease
Researchers from Indiana University-Purdue University in Indianapolis have developed a mathematical model of the brain’s neural circuitry to better understand information disruptions in the brains of Parkinson’s disease patients. Their findings appear in the journal Chaos: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Nonlinear Science (paid subscription required). Mathematical sciences professor Leonid Rubchinsky (pictured left) examined the exchange…
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NSF Grant to Fund Research on Power Distribution
A team of engineers and computer scientists at Kansas State University in Manhattan have received a $1.1 grant to research better ways of distributing solar power to homes and businesses. The grant, funded by National Science Foundation’s Cyber-Physical Systems program, aims to give utilities generating solar energy better tools for managing and distributing this power.…
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More Efficient Algorithms Devised for Robotic Motions
Computer scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have built a new robotic motion-planning system that calculates much more efficient trajectories through free space. The researchers in MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Laboratory for Information and Decision Systems (LIDS) will present their findings next week at the IEEE International Conference on…
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Simulation Improves Safety at Traffic Intersections
A computer simulation developed at Tel Aviv University in Israel incorporates human behavior data with traffic statistics to determine environmental features that lead to black spots, intersections that experience a high incidence of traffic accidents. Environmental science Ph.D. student Gennady Waizman and colleagues discussed the SAFEPED model in July at the Geocomputation 2011 conference in…
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Measure Devised of Disruption From Attacks on Wi-Fi Networks
Engineers at North Carolina State University in Raleigh have developed a way of measuring the potential disruption from various types of attacks on Wi-Fi networks. The tools proposed by professor of electrical and computer engineering professor Wenye Wang and her colleagues will appear in a forthcoming issue of the journal IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing.…
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Non-Native Insects Costing Local Governments, Homeowners
Scientists from U.S. and Canadian universities and the U.S. Forest Service built a statistical model to compute the cost of damage caused by invasive tree-feeding insects that are inadvertently imported to the U.S. The team from the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (NCEAS) at University of California in Santa Barbara published their findings…
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Computer Model Tests Effects of Heart Rhythm Drugs
Researchers at University of California in Davis have led the development of a computer model to test the effects of medications for arrhythmia — abnormal heart rhythm — before they are given to patients. The work of the team led by biophysicist Colleen Clancy is described in the 31 August issue of the journal Science…