Information Technology

Despite millions of dollars spent by IT companies, digital security still contains more holes than a Swiss cheese. One European project plans to plug those holes by creating a virtual security framework independent of both devices and the networks they are trying to access.

SEINIT, the Security Experts Initiative, offers the promise of seamless security regardless of hardware, software or access protocol, whether it’s mobile phones, bluetooth, WiFi, ethernet or broadban

Design of smart homes takes into consideration technology as well as the wishes, needs and fears of residents.

The research results of Research Director Frans Mäyrä’s Morphome project confirm that test subject perceptions of computer technology are often critical or negative. The idea of computers playing a central role in the home is anathema to many. Computers are seen as being complicated and unreliable, so no one would readily submit key household functions to their control.

We are close to the point where new types of automated routines and software applications could operate independently of direct human control to carry out prescribed tasks. Helping us arrive, researchers have designed a model that supports the development of applications constructed from mobile sentient objects.

Firstly though, developers need to overcome the shortcomings of current architectures and middleware, which are still largely based on sequential programming models. T

Highlight during SC|05 in Seattle: Fraunhofer Visualization Software on an IBM Cell Cluster Prototyp.

One highlight of the International Conference on High Performance Computing SC|05 in Seattle will be the visualization software PV-4D of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics ITWM. The software has been installed on a prototype of an IBM cell blade cluster and will be presented to a large public for the first time. A successful test run was performed during the Frau

As the white wizard of Middle Earth in Lord of the Rings, Gandalf had some astounding abilities. As his modern namesake, the GANDALF project is set to cast a spell over the Internet world by offering unprecedented data transfer rates seamlessly over both fixed-line and wireless.

GANDALF has developed a groundbreaking technique to increase data rates by a thousand-fold compared to existing DSL and a hundred-fold compared to WiFi. The technology also allows data to flow seamlessly o

New software is helping scientists get a more complete view of the environment from satellites that orbit the earth.

Maps that depict the thickness of the ozone layer, for instance, frequently contain blank spots where a satellite wasn’t able to record data on a particular day, explained Noel Cressie, professor of statistics and director of the Program in Spatial Statistics and Environmental Sciences (SSES) at Ohio State University.

He and his colleagues found