Information Technology

Budding computer experts from around the world will this week begin their own tests of the latest software developed by the European DataGrid Project. Students attending the 2002 CERN School of Computing in Vico Equense, Italy, will be submitting jobs that can run anywhere on the Project’s current Grid, which is based at 10 computer centres throughout Europe. This is the first in a series of important tests using software from the DataGrid Project that will take place throughout the autumn, and which

If people were computers, Srinidhi Varadarajan of Virginia Tech’s Department of Computer Science could enable them to go back to their youth to correct mistakes they made, adapt a jet engine to run a car, or change a part from one SUV engine to another as both vehicles sped down a highway side by side.

Of course, people aren’t computers and don’t need to do those things, but computers need to do equivalent processes. Varadarajan has come up with a computer technology he calls “Weaves” that

Drawing on the expertise of the blind, a University of Toronto professor is “teaching” electronic devices how to navigate using surrounding sounds.

“The goal was to build a system that mimics the acoustic navigation abilities of blind people,” says Professor Parham Aarabi of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He has developed a method by which a device fitted with as few as two microphones can combine the information from sounds around it to locate

Knowing your precise position anytime via the internet is now possible thanks to the Signal in Space through Internet (SisNet) technology developed by the European Space Agency.

This technology combines the powerful capabilities of satellite navigation and the internet. As a result, the highly accurate navigation information that comes from the European Geostationary Navigation Overlay Service (EGNOS) Signal-in-Space (SIS) is now available in real time over the internet.

EGNO

A research team, led by Dr Stuart Walker from Essex University, claims to have developed a data transmission method which can achieve world record telecommunications data rates, of over a terabit (one trillion binary digits) per second, on optical fibres which already exist in the majority of in-building communications networks throughout the world. These optical fibres are known as multimode fibres.

Dr Stuart Walker is presenting the world record transmission concept on Thursday 5 Septembe

Hands free sets for mobile phones may be on the verge of a big comeback thanks to new research by the University of Warwick. Many people used hands free sets in an attempt to avoid what they perceived as a microwave radiation risk from holding a mobile phone close to one`s head. However when it was pointed out that the standard wire based hands free kit actually itself acted as an aerial amplifying any signal to the users head the kit fell out of favour with this type of user. Now