Computer Science

Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Dr. Prabir Bhattacharya and his computers might. He and Concordia graduate student Abu Sayeed Sohail are developing a computer image processing system that detects and classifies human facial expressions.

Many computing luminaries, such as Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, have an early experience in common--an engaging experience in middle school or high school that sparked an excitement for learning everything they could about computers. Today, many young people are surrounded by computing at home and in school, and some of them will likely find a similar passion that will lead them to push tomorrow's frontiers in computer science. For visually impaired students, however, the pathways to studying computer science are more complicated.

A team at Rice University has determined that a strip of graphite only 10 atoms thick can serve as the basic element in a new type of memory, making massive amounts of storage available for computers, handheld media players, cell phones and cameras.

A Cray XT high-performance computing system at the Department of Energy's (DOE) Oak Ridge National Laboratory is the world's fastest supercomputer for science. The annual ranking of the world's top 500 computers (www.top500.org) was released Tuesday in Austin at an annual international supercomputing conference.

Google Inc. is adding speech-activated search to Apple Inc.'s iPhone, a move experts believe may finally enshrine voice-recognition as a mainstream technology.

Increased use of computers to create predictive models of human disease is likely following a workshop organised by the European Science Foundation (ESF), which urged for a collaborative effort between specialists in the field. Human disease research produces an enormous amount of data from different sources such as animal models, high throughput genetic screening of human tissue, and in vitro laboratory experiments. This data operates at different levels and scales including genes, molecules, cells, tissues and whole organs, embodying a huge amount of potentially valuable insight that current computer modelling approaches often fail to exploit properly.

Computers are getting smaller and smaller. And as hand-held devices — from mobile phones and cameras to music players and laptops — get more powerful, the race is on to develop memory formats that can satisfy the ever-growing demand for information storage on tiny formats. Researchers at The University of Nottingham are now exploring ways of exploiting the unique properties of carbon nanotubes to create a cheap and compact memory cell that uses little power and writes information at high speeds.

A computer model that can predict how people will complete a controlled task and how the knowledge needed to complete that task develops over time is the product of a group of researchers, led by a professor from Penn State's College of Information Sciences and Technology.

New computer tools have the potential to revolutionize the practice of mathematics by providing far more-reliable proofs of mathematical results than have ever been possible in the history of humankind. These computer tools, based on the notion of "formal proof," have in recent years been used to provide nearly infallible proofs of many important results in mathematics.

Our mothers told us that true beauty is more than skin deep — but researchers from Tel Aviv University are now challenging Mom. They've built a beauty machine that, with the press of a button, turns a picture of your own ordinary face into that of a cover model. While its output is currently limited to digitized images, the software may be able to guide plastic surgeons, aid magazine cover editors, and even become a feature incorporated into all digital cameras.

Ongoing research to be published in the International Journal of Liability and Scientific Enquiry suggests that there is a huge amount of sensitive data still on redundant computer hard disks. These devices are often disposed of or sold into the second-hand market by corporations, organizations, and individuals with the data intact.

UC San Diego computer scientists have built a software program that can perform key duplication without having the key. Instead, the computer scientists only need a photograph of the key.

A research team, led by North Carolina State University’s Dr. Mitzi M. Montoya, has developed a new way of measuring how “real” online virtual worlds are – an important advance for the emerging technology that can be used to foster development of new training and collaboration applications by companies around the world.

There have been several revolutions during the 60 year history of electronic computation, such as high level programming languages and client/server separation, but one key challenge has yet to be fully resolved. This is to break down large complex processes into small more manageable components that can then be reused in different applications.

Google has released a custom Google Earth application for the iPhone/iPod Touch, and it's stunning.