Information Technology

The European DataGrid (EDG)* project has taken a major step towards making the concept of a world-wide computing Grid a reality. Its latest release of middleware – the software that makes a Grid of computers work together seamlessly – will support production quality Grid computing. Markus Schulz, one of the chief software developers at CERN**, explains, “This release will take the EDG project from the laboratory bench into the real world”.

One of the main aims of the European DataGrid proje

Technical Insights’ Sensor Technology Alert

Flip chip packaging delivers enhanced electrical performance, saves space, and provides high conduction speed, making it an ideal technology for use in handheld devices and medical electronics, among other applications.

“As integrated circuit fabrication advances rapidly and the market for faster, smaller, yet less expensive electronic products accelerates, flip chip packaging comes into play,” says Technical Insights Research Ana

Emergency management teams, faced with an approaching hurricane, can access GIS map data through voice and gestures for real-time decision making on issues ranging from protecting hazardous materials sites to evacuating assisted-living facilities by using a computer system developed by Penn State researchers.

The research team says the system also can assist planners and transportation engineers visualize the impacts of potential developments and highways as well as help crisis management pe

Seeing is believing, unless you’re blind or visually impaired. To this group, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) says, “feeling is believing.”
Computer scientists and engineers at NIST have created a tactile graphic display that brings electronic images to the blind and visually impaired in the same way that Braille makes words readable.

The new imaging device was developed at NIST by the same research team that recently created an electronic Braille reader.

An innovative new software can detect and correct a database impaired by an attack while the database system continues to process transactions, says a Penn State researcher.

“We simulated attackers’ behaviors on a database and then monitored the response of the database,” said Dr. Peng Liu, assistant professor of information sciences and technology. “We can’t prevent attackers from getting in, but with this technology, the database can heal itself on-the-fly.”

Liu perfor

Potential applications abound

In a milestone that conjures up the refrain to a Paul McCartney song, researchers at MIT and University College London have linked “hands across the water” in the first transatlantic touch, literally “feeling” each other’s manipulations of a small box on a computer screen.

Potential applications abound. “In addition to sound and vision, virtual reality programs could include touch as well,” said Mandayam A. Srinivasan, director of MIT’