Information Technology

By smartly tagging data and content, an XML family offshoot is revolutionising business reports. It is now used extensively across Europe and is fast becoming a mandatory standard for financial and business reports worldwide.

“It’s about better, faster and cheaper business reporting,” says Olivier Servais, director of the IST project XBRL Europe. “This was once done with proprietary electronic formats. XBRL (eXtensible Business Reporting Language) is an open standard that brings a

A virtual classroom proved superior to a traditional one in teaching medical students to identify heart sounds, according to a study presented at the American College of Cardiology meeting. Stethoscope skills are alarmingly low among doctors in training, a handicap that often continues into patient practice.

Long bothered by this lack of proficiency, lead author Michael Barrett, M.D., clinical associate professor of medicine and cardiologist at Temple University School of Medicine and Hos

A new range of mobile-terminal embedded information systems, marketed under the ubitouch brand has been developed by ASCENT. These ubitouch solutions are powerful new Java-compatible applications designed to be installed on terminals, enabling the whole of a customer’s publication, communication and gaming services, as well as advanced marketing functionalities, to be customised in a brand’s colours.

In comparison to existing resources, ubitouch solutions provide a greater degree

Researchers from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Organización Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (ONCE) have developed a Braille keyboard for PCs that has some unique features. The keyboard provides more applications for blind people and is particularly useful for scientific texts and musical scores.

The new keyboard, which connects to the PC through the USB port, will make using a computer much easier for blind people who are accustomed to using Braille typewriter

A new research project led by academics at the University of Southampton will look at how spatial connections can be managed and will use air traffic control as a model.

The ambitious £1.5m, three-year project is called ’Spatially Embedded Complex Systems Engineering’ (SECSE). It is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and has brought together experts in neuroscience, artificial intelligence, geography and complex systems, to unders

Electronics and computing engineers from the University of Ulster have teamed up with neuroscientists, physicists and biologists from across Europe to investigate the incorporation of the senses we humans take for granted into intelligent computer systems of the future.

The multi-disciplinary team concentrated on attempting to replicate in silicon the biological brain’s ability to capture data from the senses of touch and sight. In biological life forms, the brain can combine inf