Applied Physics

At a major Artificial Intelligence competition at the University of Reading on 12 October, machines have come close to imitating human communication. As part of the 18th Loebner Prize, all of the artificial conversational entities (ACEs) competing to pass the Turing Test have managed to fool at least one of their human interrogators that they were in fact communicating with a human rather than a machine. One of the ACEs, the eventual winner of the 2008 Loebner Prize, got even closer to the 30% Turing Test threshold set by 20th-century British mathematician, Alan Turing in 1950, by fooling 25…

HAMBURG, Germany, October 14 /PRNewswire/ -- - New Office Opened in Hamburg, Germany; VP of EMEA Appointed to Manage Region Brightcove Inc., the leading online video platform, today announced the expansion of its operations in Europe with the appointment of Vanessa Wade as vice president of EMEA and a new office in Hamburg, Germany. The German operation is backed by a full complement of staff in Germany that includes sales, engineering and technical consultants. "European Internet users consume more online video than anywhere else, and Germany leads this trend both in terms of end-user…

REDMOND, Washington, October 13 /PRNewswire/ -- - Microsoft announces new rich Internet applications development and streaming media features; company outlines plans for supporting Windows, Mac and Linux tools for developing Silverlight applications. Microsoft Corp. today announced the availability of Silverlight 2, one of the industry's most comprehensive and powerful solutions for the creation and delivery of applications and media experiences through a Web browser. Silverlight 2 delivers a wide range of new features and tools that enable designers and developers to better collaborate…

LONDON, October 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Ideaworks3D Ltd, developer of the cross-platform Airplay(TM) SDK for advanced native mobile games and applications, today announced that Capcom's forthcoming "Resident Evil Degeneration" is powered by Airplay. "Resident Evil Degeneration" is a brand new installment of Capcom's flagship franchise, widely considered to be the benchmark of the survival horror video game genre. The game features cutting-edge 3D graphics and will be deployed to native mobile platforms such as KDDI au, Verizon VCAST and Nokia N-Gage. Airplay SDK is a unique cross-platform…

Heavy industry takes a lot of blame for greenhouse gas emissions but at least one segment may be able to do something to give a little back. Steelworks around the world emitting large quantities of carbon dioxide but scientists report that a byproduct of steel production could be used to absorb that greenhouse gas and help control global warming. The study is in Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research. Professor Mourad Kharoune and colleagues point out that production of one ton of steel releases up to one ton of CO2. With global steel production standing at 1.34 billion tons in…

NEW YORK, October 11 /PRNewswire/ -- - Elegant, Powerful 2009 Quattroporte S to be Raffled for Charity - Classic Sports and Luxury Cars Span Eight Decades in Outstanding Display of Engineering and Design A troop of classic and contemporary Maserati sports and luxury cars will lead New York City's 64th annual Columbus Day Parade up Fifth Avenue on October 13, 2008. In a unique display of Italian excellence in engineering and design, the Maseratis will range from a one-off, 16-cylinder Maserati Spyder, which set the world's speed record in 1929, to a 2008 GranTurismo sports coupe that goes…

Biomimetics is the application of biological methods and systems found in nature that could be used to design engineering systems and modern technology. Proponents of bionic technology believe that the transfer of technology between life forms and synthetic constructs is attractive because evolutionary pressure typically forces living organisms to become highly optimized and efficient. Therefore, they contend, designing engineering methods or tools that mimic such biological functions could be extremely efficient. Examples of biomimetics in engineering include the hulls of boats imitating…

Who needs to read science fiction when you have real science mystery in your hands? Mystery began on 19 September 2008 according to the news on 22 September: The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was shut down last Thursday owing to a fault with its cooling system. Scientists managed to restart it again last Friday, only for it to break down later in the day. Repairs will be carried out on the machine, which will take at least two months. An investigation into technical problems with the world's largest atom-smasher could produce its preliminary findings this week into why it had to be shut down.(…

ozens of cars in the Boston area are testing the latest generation of an MIT mobile-sensor network for traffic analysis that could help drivers cut their commuting time, alert them to potential engine problems and more. In the CarTel project, Professor Hari Balakrishnan and Associate Professor Samuel Madden of MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science use automobiles to monitor their environment by sending data from an onboard computer — which is about the size of a cell phone — to a web server where the data can be visualized and browsed. They do so via pre-existing…

INDIANAPOLIS and ROUSSET, France, October 8 /PRNewswire/ -- - For Doubling of Processing Power, Upgrade to AT91SAM9G20 Atmel(R) Corporation (Nasdaq: ATML) and electronic engineering design services firm, Indesign, LLC, announced today the availability of a Computer-On-Module (COM) reference platform for use in products designed by Indesign engineers for their clients. The COM platform is based on the Atmel AT91SAM9260 processor that runs the ARM926EJ-S(TM) core at 200MHz. It will enable Indesign engineers to implement designs for their customers more quickly and at lower development costs.…