Mathematics & Economics
University of Nevada, Reno computer science engineering team Kostas Bekris and Eelke Folmer presented their indoor navigation system for people with visual impairments at two national conferences in the past two weeks. The researchers explained how...
Recently, many U.S. Internet service providers have fallen in line with their international counterparts in capping monthly residential broadband usage. A new study by a Georgia Tech researcher, conducted during an internship at Microsoft Research,...
The use of stun guns by police significantly increases the chances of citizen injury, yet also protects the officers more than other restraint methods, according to the most comprehensive research to date into the safety of stun guns in a law...
As militaries develop autonomous robotic warriors to replace humans on the battlefield, new ethical questions emerge. If a robot in combat has a hardware malfunction or programming glitch that causes it to kill civilians, do we blame the robot, or...
American students need a dramatically new approach to improve how they learn science, says a noted group of scientists and educators led by Michigan State University professor William Schmidt. After six years of work, the group has proposed a...
As computer scientists this year celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the mathematical genius Alan Turing, who set out the basis for digital computing in the 1930s to anticipate the electronic age, they still quest after a machine as...
Have you ever been disappointed by a cantaloupe from the grocery store? Too ripe? Not ripe enough? Luckily for you, researchers from the University of California, Davis might have found a way to make imperfectly ripe fruit a thing of the past. The...
We have all heard of the smartphone and, any day now, most of us will have one. Not far behind: the smart home. Writing in the latest issue of the journal Science, Washington State University's Diane Cook says it won't be long before our homes act...
Having a triple-threat combination of protective software on your computer greatly reduces your chances of identity theft, according to a study led by a Michigan State University criminologist. In a survey of more than 600 people, the researchers...
Imagine if smartphone and tablet users could text a note under the table during a meeting without anyone being the wiser. Mobile gadget users might also be enabled to text while walking, watching TV or socializing without taking their eyes off what...
A new UCSF analysis has found that a state ballot initiative to increase the cigarette tax would create about 12,000 jobs and nearly $2 billion in new economic activity in California. The study found that the new tax would have a significant...
Consistent appraisals of homes and businesses outfitted with photovoltaic (PV) installations are a real challenge for the nation's real estate industry, but a new tool developed by Sandia National Laboratories and Solar Power Electric™ and...
Anyone who has flown on a commercial airline since 2001 is well aware of increasingly strict measures at airport security checkpoints. A study by Illinois researchers demonstrates that intensive screening of all passengers actually makes the system...
Designing an all-terrain robot for search-and-rescue missions is an arduous task for scientists. The machine must be flexible enough to move over uneven surfaces, yet not so big that it's restricted from tight spaces. It might also be required to...
Sandia National Laboratories computer scientist Casey Deccio has developed a visualization tool known as DNSViz to help network administrators within the federal government and global IT community better understand Domain Name System Security (...
A team of researchers have for the first time estimated the cost and impact of disabilities on the finances of disabled people. According to data, 90% of the population with a serious disability in Spain is in a state of moderate poverty and 56%...
North Americans and Western Europeans love a good mix of alpha-terpineol, 4-methylpentanoic acid and ethyl propionate for dinner, flavor compounds shared in popular ingredients like tomatoes, parmesan cheese and white wine. Authentic East Asian...
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) published a revised biometric standard in November, 2011, that vastly expands the type and amount of information that forensic scientists can share across their international networks to...
After last year's rollercoaster ride, the job market for college graduates has settled down and appears braced for slow but steady growth, according to Michigan State University's annual Recruiting Trends study. The survey of more than 3,300...
As feed prices have risen in recent years, feeding turkeys has become more costly than many producers can bear. Satisfying turkeys' hunger accounts for 70 percent of the cost of producing turkey meat. Now, a researcher at the University of Missouri...
Audio engineers have developed a novel artificial intelligence system for understanding and indexing sound, a unique tool for both finding and matching previously un-labeled audio files. Having concluded beta testing with one of the world's largest...
Maryland's plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions 25 percent by 2020 meets a series of benchmark tests set by state lawmakers, concludes a new pair of studies by the University of Maryland Center for Integrative Environmental Research (CIER). The...
The conventional wisdom that says the 20th century was a disaster for crop diversity is nothing more than a myth, according to a forthcoming study by a University of Illinois expert in intellectual property law. Law professor Paul Heald says overall...
Americans spend upwards of $40 billion a year on dieting advice and self-help books, but the first step in any healthy eating strategy is basic awareness -- what's on the plate. If keeping a food diary seems like too much effort, despair not:...
The manuscript seems straight out of fiction: a strange, handwritten message in abstract symbols and Roman letters meticulously covering 105 yellowing pages hidden in the depths of an academic archive. Now, more than three centuries after it was...
Every state in America legislates its own gun laws, but not without significant spillover effects on nearby states, according to a new study by Brown University economist Brian Knight. In a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) working paper,...
A neighbourhood's raw, edgy atmosphere is an essential feature in attracting designers, according to new research from Concordia University and the University of Toronto. The study focused on Mile End, a multicultural district just north of downtown...
One of America's most costly natural disasters are wildland fires, and wildland-urban interface (WUI) fires rank among the worst of these. WUI is the threshold where wildfires consume not only the landscape, but also infrastructure. Once that...
Businesses looking for a sign on how to prosper in a down economy need look no further than their own indoor and outdoor signage. That's because University of Cincinnati analysis of a market research survey of more than 100,000 North American...
An iPhone app that measures the user's heart rate is not only a popular feature with consumers, but it sparked an idea for a Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) researcher who is now turning smart phones, and eventually tablet devices, into...
Medical researchers are demonstrating that Office of Naval Research (ONR)-funded software developed for finding and recognizing undersea mines can help doctors identify and classify cancer-related cells. "The results are spectacular," said...
Traffic planners and engineers worry about "black spots" -- intersections that experience a high incidence of traffic accidents. But when it comes to designing safer roads, they lack effective tools to determine what turns a junction into...
News coverage of Washington politicians and their rhetoric appears to have less influence on the American public compared to other news coverage, according to a study by a Michigan State University political scientist. Instead, citizens are more apt...
The increasing complexity of multi-invention technologies such as laptops and smartphones raises serious challenges for firms looking to cash in with the "next big thing," and points to a need for businesses to integrate their patent and...
Researchers have created an application that enables cell phones and other portable devices to translate foreign-language food menus for English speakers and could be used for people who must follow restricted diets for medical reasons. "You...
U.S. exports of advanced technology products (ATP) fared better than other non-advanced technology exports during the recent U.S. recession, says a new report from the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF's National Center for Science and...
The U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and the Space Dynamics Laboratory (SDL), through the support of the Office of Naval Research (ONR), have shown an autonomous multi-sensor motion-tracking and interrogation system that reduces the workload for...
Almost everything we do leaves a digital trace, whether we send an email to a friend or make a purchase online. That includes law-abiding citizens — and criminals. And with digital information multiplying by the second, there are seemingly endless...
A University of Washington computer scientist is calling on the international academic community and engineers working in industry to take a bolder approach when designing how people find information online. In a two-page commentary titled "Search...
Personal photos occupy an ever-expanding amount of hard drive space. Baby, family and vacation photos can now number in the thousands. While some poke fun at the digital glut, others see a unique opportunity. Researchers at the University of...
Regulatory hurdles abound for the successful commercialization of emerging liquid biofuels, which hold the promise of enhancing U.S. energy security, reducing greenhouse gas emissions and serving as a driver for rural economic development, according...
Growing up in soccer-crazed Turkey, Hakan Yildiz knew so little about baseball, even the word "umpire" had no meaning to him. Today, Yildiz, an assistant business professor at Michigan State University, is part of a team of researchers whose complex...
Online consumers thought to be motivated primarily by savings are, in fact, often willing to pay a premium for purchases from online vendors with clear, protective privacy policies, according to a new study in the current issue of a journal of the...
Machines stretch from one end of the production hall to another, each of them an important part of the manufacturing process. When one of these complex pieces of machinery stops working, the on-site technicians grab their tools and the manual and...
Drivers were freed from their dependence on maps a long time ago – nowadays they rely on their navigation device to get them to destinations in unfamiliar areas. But this luxury has so far remained elusive for users of local public transport systems...
Twitter allows millions of social media fans to comment in 140 characters or less on just about anything: an actor's outlandish behavior, an earthquake's tragic toll or the great taste of a grilled cheese sandwich. But by sifting through this busy...
Radiofrequency Identification (RFID), or microchip technology, has been used for years in animal identification systems and is now being tested for use in plants. Researchers note that microchip techniques have varied applications for plants. The...
A study published by the University of Reading's Centre for Agri Environmental Research suggests that honeybees may not be as important to pollination services in the UK than previously supposed. The research was published in the Journal Agriculture...
Sweetpotato is gaining popularity in the United States, where health-conscious consumers have created increased demand for the tasty, versatile food. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, per capita consumption of the crop increased over...
A Duke University graduate student has found a way to double the battery life of mobile devices – such as smartphones or laptop computers – by making changes to WiFi technology. WiFi is a popular wireless technology that helps users download...
