Information Technology

An Internet-based system to help revive flagging areas hit by the decline of traditional heavy industry, such as steel and mining, has been developed with the help of 850,000 euros from the EU’s Framework Programme.

VISION was launched to create an Internet-based system to promote rapid industrial reconversion. This is a major issue for large parts of Europe where the loss of traditional industries left areas of high unemployment and social deprivation, despite many being populated

Improving how decision-makers respond in the minutes and hours that follow the first reports of a natural disaster like the recent tsunami or a manmade incident, such as a chemical accident or a terrorist attack, is the focus of a research project at the University at Buffalo’s Center for Multisource Information Fusion.

“Responders immediately begin knitting together a picture that makes sense of what is happening based on the flow of reports they receive from the field,” said

Software behind the technology already finding its way into photo editing

Researchers are developing new technologies that may give robots the visual-sensing edge they need to monitor dimly lit airports, pilot vehicles in extreme weather and direct unmanned combat vehicles.

The researchers intend to create an imaging chip that defeats the harmful effects of arbitrary illumination, allowing robotic vision to leave the controlled lighting of a laboratory and enter the erra

Mount Desert Island Bio Lab unveils database

The Mount Desert Island Biological Laboratory has publicly released a prototype of the Comparative Toxicogenomics Database (CTD: http://ctd.mdibl.org). CTD aims to advance understanding about the impact of environmental chemicals on human health. It is the first database to provide centralized, integrated, and curated molecular and toxicology data from diverse organisms for scientists worldwide.
“It is becoming increasingly well a

Correcting for a time lag built into current Global Positioning System satellites can significantly enhance the accuracy of highly detailed GPS observations that are increasingly used to study Earth systems. Choi et al. report that existing satellite techniques often slightly misjudge the location of ground changes, such as seismic activity, ice sheet flow, and volcanic deformation, because researchers used the wrong time delay in the GPS satellites. The authors show that the orbit period

Penn State engineers have developed a new model for high-speed broadband transmissions over U.S. overhead electric power lines and estimate that, at full data rate handling capacity, the lines can provide bit rates that far exceed DSL or cable over similar spans. Dr. Mohsen Kavehrad, the W. L. Weiss professor of electrical engineering and director of the Center for Information and Communications Technology Research, led the investigation. He says, “Although broadband power line (BPL) service tri