A team of researchers at Tohoku University, in collaboration with the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) and Hanyang University, has developed new phase change material which has electrical characteristics that behave differently to those of conventional materials. This new material allows a drastic reduction in power consumption for data-recording in non-volatile…
Retrospective Test for Quantum Computers can Build Trust
Tech companies are racing to make quantum computers available to customers. A new scheme from researchers in Singapore and Japan could help customers establish trust in what they get if they buy time on such machines – and protect companies from dishonest customers. Quantum computers have the potential to solve problems that are beyond the…
Ultra-thin Memory Storage Device Paves Way for More Powerful Computing
Engineers worldwide have been developing alternative ways to provide greater memory storage capacity on even smaller computer chips. Previous research into two-dimensional atomic sheets for memory storage has failed to uncover their potential — until now. A team of electrical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin, in collaboration with Peking University scientists, has…
Using Data Mining to Make Sense of Climate Change
Big data and data mining have provided several breakthroughs in fields such as health informatics, smart cities and marketing. The same techniques, however, have not delivered consistent key findings for climate change. There are a few reasons why. The main one is that previous data mining work in climate science, and in particular in the…
Using Big Data for Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry and Fishery
Power Up: Penn State’s New Data Center Crunches Big Numbers, Solves Big Problems
Too much of a good thing. That’s the situation many scientists face in this age of Big Data. With sophisticated sensors and surveys gathering information all the time, everywhere, the pile of data available to researchers is growing at a dizzying pace — so fast, that in many cases it has outstripped our ability to…
Notre Dame to Lead $26 Million Multi-University Research Center Developing Next-Generation Computing Technologies
In today’s age of ubiquitous computing, society produces roughly the same amount of data in 10 minutes that would have previously taken 100 years. Within the next decade, experts anticipate the ability to create, share and store a century’s worth of data in less than 10 seconds. To get there, researchers and technologists must overcome…
‘Holostream’ Allows High-quality Wireless 3-D Video Communications
A new platform enables high-quality 3-D video communication on mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets using existing standard wireless networks. “To our knowledge, this system is the first of its kind that can deliver dense and accurate 3-D video content in real time across standard wireless networks to remote mobile devices such as smartphones…
Software-defined Networking: the Key to a Scalable, Manageable, Adaptable Internet
Conquering Traffic Congestion with Mathematics
Permutations in Holiday Gift Selections
One of the goals of Scientific Computing’s gift guide, in addition to providing you with interesting and eclectic gift suggestions, is inclusiveness. While the most obvious reflection of that is the diversity of items we suggest, as well as ensuring that there is at least something in everyone’s price range. However, beyond that, we recognize…
New System Uses Drones to Monitor Railroads
The goal of this new development, presented at the ninth Conference on Railway Innovation, is to be able to recognize the good condition of train track elements in images taken by drones. The drones fly over the railroad corridor by means of new image recognition software created by SigmaRail in collaboration with the research group…
Bursting Through Limits with Peta-Scale Storage at SciNet
Device Makes Power Conversion More Efficient
Power electronics, which do things like modify voltages or convert between direct and alternating current, are everywhere. They’re in the power bricks we use to charge our portable devices; they’re in the battery packs of electric cars; and they’re in the power grid itself, where they mediate between high-voltage transmission lines and the lower voltages…
Researchers Devise Better Recommendation Algorithm
The recommendation systems at websites such as Amazon and Netflix use a technique called “collaborative filtering.” To determine what products a given customer might like, they look for other customers who have assigned similar ratings to a similar range of products, and extrapolate from there. The success of this approach depends vitally on the notion…
Towards Better Understanding of Railway Ballast
Faster Big-Data Analysis
We live in the age of big data, but most of that data is “sparse.” Imagine, for instance, a massive table that mapped all of Amazon’s customers against all of its products, with a “1” for each product a given customer bought and a “0” otherwise. The table would be mostly zeroes. With sparse data,…
Crowdsourcing Big Data Analysis
In the analysis of big data sets, the first step is usually the identification of “features” — data points with particular predictive power or analytic utility. Choosing features usually requires some human intuition. For instance, a sales database might contain revenues and date ranges, but it might take a human to recognize that average revenues…
Sandia Labs Team Continues to Quantify Fatigue Using Wearables
Can fatigue be predicted? Can life-threatening fatigue be differentiated from recoverable fatigue? A team of researchers led by Sandia National Laboratories is seeking answers to these questions through the Rim-to-Rim Wearables at the Canyon for Health, or R2R WATCH, study, a collaboration with the University of New Mexico and the National Park Service and funded…
Free iPhone App Could Guide MS Research, Treatment
For some diseases, a simple blood test is all that’s needed to estimate severity or confirm a diagnosis. Not so for multiple sclerosis. No single lab test can tell doctors what type of MS a patient has, nor whether it’s responding to treatment. But by better tracking patients’ symptoms and potential triggers with help from…
Intel Capital Fuels Innovation with $60M of New Investments in 15 Data-Focused Startups
Intel Capital, Intel Corporation’s global investment organization, announced new investments totaling more than $60 million in 15 technology startups. The company introduced the CEOs and founders of the startups at the Intel Capital CEO Showcase, which is being webcast in the Intel Newsroom. This latest group of new portfolio companies brings Intel Capital’s year-to-date investing to…
Industry Survey Reveals Clinical Data Management Delays Slow Trial Completion
HealthRhythms Gains NIH Grant to Improve Behavioral Health By Sensing and Stabilizing Daily Routines
Cell Phone Users to Help Protect Nation’s Water Supply
Prototype Strain Engineered Materials Are Future of Data Storage
Researchers from the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Shanghai Institute of Microsystems and Information Technology have nano-engineered a superlattice data storage material. Data is recorded at the interfaces of the superlattice layers. When the atoms at the interface are disordered, the material has a high electrical resistance while the ordered interface has…