Computer Science

A presentation at the Optical Fiber Communication Conference and Exposition/National Fiber Optic Engineers Conference (OFC/NFOEC) in San Diego on March 24 will examine the technologies that will emerge in the next three to four years to power warehouse-scale computing data centers, upon which companies such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, and many more are increasingly relying.

Computers should not play dice. That, to paraphrase Einstein, is the feeling of a University of Washington computer scientist with a simple manifesto: If you enter the same computer command, you should get back the same result. Unfortunately, that is far from the case with many of today's machines. Beneath their smooth exteriors, modern computers behave in wildly unpredictable ways, said Luis Ceze, a UW assistant professor of computer science and engineering.

Every place and object in the world has a secret past: who lived there, who passed by, who touched it. The secret lives of objects are filled with such details. If only you could make them talk. But what if you could give any physical object a story simply by sticking a barcode on it and appending a message to that barcode?

The Internet giant has applied its muscle to a phone application that can 'listen' to speech and provide translations in a computerized voice for English, Mandarin and Japanese.

New findings by a team of University of Maryland researchers may lead to new, non-invasive technologies for portable brain-computer interface systems. Such technologies potentially could allow people with disabilities or paralysis to operate a robotic arm, motorized wheelchair or other prosthetic device using a headset with scalp sensors that send signals from the brain to the device.

Random thermal fluctuations in magnetic memory can be harnessed to reduce the energy required to store information, according to an experiment reported in the current issue of Physical Review Letters.

Stanford researcher Jesse Fox finds that experiences with avatars, including personalized images of ourselves, can change our view of reality and the way we act in the real world.

Google on Saturday quickly activated an online "person finder" tool to allow relatives and friends to find loved ones following the huge earthquake in Chile.

Armies of networked computers that have been compromised by malicious software are commonly known as Botnets. Such Botnets are usually used to carry out fraudulent and criminal activity on the Internet. Now, writing in the International Journal of Information and Computer Security, US computer scientists reveal that the honeypot trap designed to protect computers from Botnets are now vulnerable to attack because of advances in Botnet malware.

Baby monitors of the future could translate infant cries, so that parents will know for certain whether their child is sleepy, hungry, needing a change, or in pain.

A new approach to generating truly random numbers could lead to improved Internet security and better weather forecasts, according to researchers writing in the International Journal of Critical Computer-Based Systems.

Science writers know as well as anyone how much information a diagram can contain. We often labor to express in words what a researcher was able to convey in a single image.

Research presented in a paper by Morgan McGuire, assistant professor of computer science at Williams College, and co-author Dr. David Luebke of NVIDIA, introduces a new algorithm to improve computer graphics for video games.

Researchers at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and University of Stockholm have created a computer modelling of the structural malfunctioning of the ApoE4 protein when it enters into contact with the Amyloid beta molecule, the main cause of Alzheimer's disease.

More and more academics are taking to blogging. Here is a sampling, in no particular order: Pharyngula (biology and science politics), Cosmic Variance (physics), Panda's Thumb (biology), Volokh Conspiracy (law), Cliopatria (history), Brad DeLong (economics), Informed Comment (Middle East politics), Geniocity (law), Current Epigraphy (classics). You can see a comprehensive list of academic blogs classified by subject matter here.