• New forensic tool advances data recovery

    Data recovery for images will be applied to other file types; new text tool will make it possible to recover more data from corrupted hard drives; the text tool will examine fragmented chunks of files that may be distributed across a disk and analyze their content to see which ones likely go together

  • Software helps World Cup emergency planning

    The organizers of this summer’s World Cup are using a simulation software developed by researchers at the University of Salford which allows emergency personnel and hospital better prepare for different emergencies

  • Laptops to serve as roaming earthquake detectors

    Newer models of laptops contain accelerometers — motion sensors meant to detect whether the computer has been dropped; if the computer falls, the hard drive will automatically switch off to protect the user’s data; researchers say this motion sensing ability allows laptop to serve as roaming earthquake detectors — even though laptop accelerometers are not as sensitive as professional-grade seismometers, so they can only pick up tremors of about magnitude 4.0 and above

  • Charles Thacker wins Turing Award

    Inventor Charles Thacker wins computer industry’s most prestigious award for his contributions to the field; Thacker built a prototype of a desktop computer, called the Alto, which featured a number of innovations that have since become commonplace: a television-like screen, a graphical user interface, and a WYSIWYG text editor; Thacker was also co-inventor of the Ethernet networking technology

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  • New group calls for holding vendors liable for buggy software

    The group released draft language it advises companies to incorporate into procurement contracts between user organizations and software development firms; SANS Institute, Mitre also release 2010 list of Top 25 programming errors

  • Oak Ridge develops powerful intrusion detection systems

    The attack analysis program uses machine learning to increase effectiveness; ORCA effectively sits on top of off-the-shelf intrusion detection systems, and its correlation engine processes information and learns as cyberevents arrive; the correlation engine supplements or replaces the preset rules used by most intrusion detection systems to detect attacks or other malicious events

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  • NAS: selling vast federal helium reserves is a mistake

    Helium is used in airships, space rockets, nuclear missiles, IT hardware, enormous magnetic particle cannon dimension portals, MRI brain probes, and deep-diving breathing gases; U.S. annual helium use amounts to 650 million cubic feet; in the U.S. federal helium reserve in Texas, though., more than 35 billion cubic feet are stored; Congress wants this vast amount sold by 2015, scientists say it is a bad idea

  • U.S. scientists get free cloud free access

    Microsoft and the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) will provide free access to cloud computing resources for select NSF-funded researchers for the next three years; those selected will get to use remote Microsoft Azure data centers full of Windows/Dell servers and storage so that they can run compute-intensive algorithms on masses of data

  • Computer spots behavior patterns

    New cognitive computational system recognizes and predicts human behavior; applications for the system could include intelligent surveillance and accident prevention

  • DHS invites Kiwi research cooperation

    A DHS representative visited New Zealand to explore research collaboration with New Zealand institution; of special interest to DHS is work done at the Human Interface Technology (HIT) Lab at Canterbury University about finding new ways of interacting with large amounts of data, particularly unstructured data — enabling zettabytes (10 to the power 21 bytes) of data to be economically represented in ways that make patterns such as clusters of similarity and outliers readily appreciable by the human eye.

  • MIT wins DARPA's red-balloon competition

    To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Internet, DARPA on Saturday launched ten red weather balloons in unannounced locations in the United States; the first team of spotters to identify the locations of the balloon received $40,000 in prize money; MIT researchers found a clever way to recruit hundreds of spotters, and the MIT team won

  • Computer scientists report progress on world-simulation tool

    Computer scientists say that advances in different fields now make modeling of world events more realistic as an aid in high-level decision making

  • U.S. Army funds a new discipline: Network Science

    The U.S. Army gives Rensselaer Polytechnic in New York State $16.75 million to launch the Center for Social and Cognitive Networks; the new center will link together top social scientists, neuroscientists, and cognitive scientists with leading physicists, computer scientists, mathematicians, and engineers in the search to uncover, model, understand, and foresee the complex social interactions that take place in today’s society

  • New antiterror technology tool uses human logic

    A new interactive image-based software can be used on touch-screen table-top displays and other large-screen systems better to manage the huge amounts of data collected in connection with alleged terrorist plots

  • Oregon's bridges to be readied for the Big One

    There are 2,671 bridges in Oregon’s highway system; researchers develop a computer model which, for the first time, gives state authorities bridge-by-bridge estimates of damage, repair cost, and traffic delay costs associated with a shattering western Oregon quake; the new tool would allow engineers to prioritize which of the state’s bridges should get seismic upgrades