Information Technology

Walt Scacchi of the University of California, Irvine, and his colleagues are conducting formal studies of the informal world of open-source software development, in which a distributed community of developers produces software source code that is freely available to share, study, modify and redistribute. They’re finding that, in many ways, open-source development can be faster, better and cheaper than the “textbook” software engineering often used in corporate settings.

In a series of

CAD software improves breast ultrasound, digital mammograms

New computerized systems that give doctors a “second pair of eyes” for looking at mammograms and other breast scans are showing great promise for detecting breast cancer, distinguishing it from benign problems without a biopsy, and tracking changes in a woman’s breast over time.

The systems, all developed at the University of Michigan Health System, are in various stages of readiness for clinical use. But UMHS

Virtual floods modelled inside computers are an increasingly useful means for authorities to prepare for genuine river surges. With flooding classed as the world’s most costly natural hazard, an ESA project has assessed using satellite imagery to improve flood simulation models.

Flood control and management represents a major challenge for water authorities, and as the global incidence of flooding increases, it has also become a subject of concern for the global insurance industry.

Despite continuous technical advances in the semiconductor industry, microchips are still composed of laterally-arranged (side-by-side) transistors on a silicon substrate. EUREKA project E! 2259 VSI developed new ways to break through this two dimensional approach and the restrictions it imposes by designing 3-D chips or Vertical System Integration (VSI).

This technology has immediate security benefits which are very desirable since chip cards often contain secure information or monetary val

For the first time supercomputers in the UK and the US have been linked to carry out an interactive scientific experiment. It involves three of the most powerful computing resources in the world working in parallel with each other.

This is the first demonstration of the use of the “Grid” to simultaneously link the high performance computers with remote visualisation centres in the UK and the US. This allowed scientists to interact with the computer models as they evolved in real time.

Using sophisticated computer algorithms running on standard desktop computers, researchers have designed and constructed a novel functional protein that is not found in nature. The achievement should enable researchers to explore larger questions about how proteins evolved and why nature “chose” certain protein folds over others.

The ability to specify and design artificial proteins also opens the way for researchers to engineer artificial protein enzymes for use as medicines or industrial c