Tag: computer science
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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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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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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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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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FDA Issues Regulatory Science Modernization Plan
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration today released its Strategic Plan for Regulatory Science that calls for modernization of the science used to protect the nation’s food and drug supplies. The plan describes the agency’s intent to improve the ways it develops and evaluates new products and materials, as well as improve the way it…
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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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Lab Develops Automated DNA Construction Software
A team of researchers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California has written a software package that they say streamlines the process of DNA construction. The software, known as j5, is available for free for non-commercial users. DNA construction, also known as DNA cloning or recombinant DNA technology, has become a critical tool of modern…
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Weather Company to Partner with European Climate Researchers
Weather and climate data company Earth Networks in Germantown, Maryland announced today a collaboration with Integrated Carbon Observation System (ICOS), a consortium of European climate research institutes. Earth Networks says it plans to work with ICOS’s network of climate scientists to increase the size of Europe’s greenhouse gas monitoring network and collaborate on data management…
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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…