Information Technology

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have one-upped “smart” credit cards with embedded microchips: They’ve developed a technique that lets ordinary card users program in their own spending parameters.

Penn computer scientist Carl A. Gunter presented the work at the recent European Conference on Object-Oriented Programming in Darmstadt, Germany. The technology could let employers better manage spending on corporate cards or permit parents to get teenage children emergency credi

CSIRO has developed an Internet-based simulation tool that predicts the motion of particles inside grinding mills, providing insight into the way mills work and enabling huge energy savings from smarter, more energy efficient design.

webGF-Mill assesses the design and function of the grinding mills used at mines to crush ore.

“Improving mill design is important because of the amount of energy that mills use,” says CSIRO mathematician Dave Morton. “Typically, grinding mills are very

Configuration featuring InfiniBand architecture and PCI Express technology delivers performance breakthrough

Sandia National Laboratories today announced at the Intel Developer Forum it will demonstrate an Intel-based next-generation, High Performance Computing (HPC) cluster, the first such cluster to utilize PCI Express visualization systems.

The demonstration will run PCI Express Ethernet and Graphics adapters supplied by ATI on servers supplied by Linux Networx and Celest

A lack of rigorous design methods and comprehensive performance data has slowed U.S. acceptance of natural ventilation technology, which proponents argue can increase energy efficiency in commercial buildings as well as improve indoor environmental conditions. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s (NIST) new LoopDA 1.0 software program (for Loop Design and Analysis) helps fill this critical information gap.

The LoopDA simulation tool enables building designers and engineers to

Prototype microsensor arrays connected to artificial neural networks—computer models that “learn”—can reliably identify trace amounts of toxic gases in seconds, well before concentration levels become lethal, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) scientists and a guest researcher reported Sept. 7 at the American Chemical Society annual meeting in New York City. The system has the potential to provide cost-effective early warning of chemical warfare agents.

Lab experiments sh

A new software tool promises to aid scientists whose research has forced them to lead double lives – as computer programmers.

The tool, called the Tensor Contraction Engine (TCE), automatically generates the computer code that chemists, physicists, and materials scientists need to model the structure and interaction of complex molecules, saving them weeks or even months of work.

By making the computer code more efficient, the TCE could even reduce the amount of time required