Information Technology

An ancient shellfish not seen for 425 million years is recreated in vivid 3D images published today, following a unique fossil find in the UK.

The ’articulate brachiopod’ fossil, found in a quarry in Herefordshire, England, is the first of its kind to be preserved with its soft parts intact in 3D. It was discovered by Dr Mark Sutton of Imperial College London, who reveals the structure of the clam-like organism using a 3D colour computer model in this week’s Natu

Using a powerful microscope and computer software, a team of scientists from Johns Hopkins, the University of Arkansas, Worcester Polytechnic Institute and elsewhere has developed a faster and more objective way to examine the surfaces of fossilized teeth, a practice used to figure out the diets of our early ancestors.

By comparing teeth from two species of early humans, Australopithecus africanus and Paranthropus robustus, the researchers confirm previous evidence that A. african

The broadband boom is creating an ever-increasing demand for more capacity and higher rates of data transfer on both fixed-line and wireless networks. Helping to meet that demand, without the need to lay costly new infrastructure, is the LABELS project.

“Consumers are soon going to want data streams of 100 megabits per second in their homes and eventually 1 gigabit per second,” says José Capmany, a researcher at Valencia Technical University in Spain and the coordinator of the IST

A unique ’fingerprint’ formed by microscopic surface imperfections on almost all paper documents, plastic cards and product packaging could be used as a cheaper method to combat fraud, scientists suggest.

This inherent identity code is virtually impossible to modify and can be easily read using a low-cost portable laser scanner, according to research carried out at Imperial College London and Durham University, and published in Nature today.

Researchers beli

Science fiction became reality as one of the University of Essex’s newly born robots made her debut at the London Aquarium.

’Miranda’ appeared at London’s County Hall as part of the Human-Centred Robotics research team’s project to develop advanced, artificially intelligent software for human-robot interaction. The research has been part of an ambitious project, RoboCity, a joint initiative between the University and the London Aquarium which is the first

Radio frequency identification (RFID) chips implanted into human beings hold the promise of improving patient care, particularly in emergency settings, but only after privacy questions are addressed, according to a Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) physician who has a chip implanted in his arm.

Writing in the July 28 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, John Halamka, MD, chief information officer at BIDMC and Harvard Medical School and an emergency room physi