Sound waves could be used to hack into critical sensors in a broad array of technologies including smartphones, automobiles, medical devices and the Internet of Things, new research shows.…

A new web application that makes it quick and easy for people to use 3-D printers to make terrain models of any place on Earth has now been developed by researchers. Their idea -- they call it TouchTerrain -- could be a powerful teaching tool in geology classrooms.…

Together with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), computer scientists from Saarland University have now developed a new system that listens in to these conversations and engages with the controllers. The scientists are presenting their prototype at the Cebit computer fair in Hannover, Germany. Air traffic controllers are responsible for keeping aircraft at a safe distance to one other in the air and on runways and airstrips. Their most important tool is the radar, which uses radio waves to pinpoi…

American employers increasingly rely on large datasets and computer algorithms to decide who gets interviewed, hired or promoted. While these data algorithms can help to avoid biased human decision-making, they also risk introducing new forms of bias or reinforcing existing biases. Pauline Kim, Daniel Noyes Kirby Professor of Law at Washington University in St. Louis, explains that when algorithms rely on inaccurate, biased or unrepresentative data, they may systematically undermine racial and e…

In an age of booming biotechnology, it might be easy to forget how much we still rely on the bounty of the natural world. Some microbes make us sick, some keep us healthy, while others continue to give us some of our best cures in the form of naturally occurring products such as penicillin and tetracycline. A new bioinformatics advance from the University of Illinois reveals the power of 'big data' genome technology to help us make better use of nature's inventions: a team of researchers led by …

A groundbreaking project led by a Florida State University researcher makes an exponential advance in suicide prediction, potentially giving clinicians the ability to predict who will attempt suicide up to two years in advance with 80 percent accuracy. FSU Psychology researcher Jessica Ribeiro feels an urgency to confront this relentless problem. Shadowing her research is the ever-present awareness that 120 Americans take their lives every day, nearly 45,000 a year. Ribeiro's paper, titled "Pred…

Early this year, about 30 neuroscientists and computer programmers got together to improve their ability to read the human mind. The hackathon was one of several that researchers from Princeton University and Intel, the largest maker of computer processors, organized to build software that can tell what a person is thinking in real time, while the person is thinking it. The collaboration between researchers at Princeton and Intel has enabled rapid progress on the ability to decode digital brain …

The internet of things promises to revolutionize the way we live, connecting the objects in our homes to one another and to the vast array of information available online. The possibilities are enormous, and one benefit may be improving our health. Texas A&M School of Public Health researchers have already shown that stand-capable workstations -- those in which the worker could raise or lower the desk to stand or sit as they wished throughout the day -- boost productivity in office workers, help…

A research team from the United States and Canada has developed and successfully tested new computational software that determines whether a human DNA sample includes an epigenetic add-on linked to cancer and other adverse health conditions. In the Feb. 20 issue of the journal Nature Methods, team members from Johns Hopkins University, the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research and the University of Toronto detailed their promising new method of detecting the presence of an extra mark on DNA call…

Electronic circuits are found in almost everything from smartphones to spacecraft and are useful in a variety of computational problems from simple addition to determining the trajectories of interplanetary satellites. At Caltech, a group of researchers led by Assistant Professor of Bioengineering Lulu Qian is working to create circuits using not the usual silicon transistors but strands of DNA. The Qian group has made the technology of DNA circuits accessible to even novice researchers -- inclu…