Science and Enterprise

Tag: computer science

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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.…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Two-Legged Robot Developed with Running Ability

    Engineers at University of Michigan in Ann Arbor have developed a bipedal robot with the ability to run as well as walk. MABEL, as the robot is called, is funded by the National Science Foundation and Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. MABEL was first developed in 2008 as a collaboration between Michigan’s Jessy Grizzle, a…

  • Algorithm Helps Identify Viral Strains, Mutations

    Researchers in Israel and the U.S. have developed computational methods to analyze the composition of proteins that control a virus’s ability to attach to host cells and produce more virus. The unique position of amino acids in those proteins acts as a signature for the virus, and identifying that signature can help pinpoint the virus’s…