Technology

The mention of facial composites often conjures up images of a sinister criminal, skillfully depicted by a sketch artist using pencil and paper. In reality, the vast majority of law enforcement agencies use mechanized methods, usually computer software, when creating facial composite. By having a vast repertoire of eyes, ears, hair and so on at their disposal, witnesses have the ability to create an image that ideally encompasses all of the features of the perpetrator. So have these technological advances improved our ability to identify and apprehend criminals? Gary Wells and Lisa Hasels of…

Wouldn't it be great if we could get computer chips to grow on trees? Or at least use the specific bonds of DNA molecules to get nanostructures to grow themselves right in the test tube? This technology could be used to build everything from tiny electronics components to machines that sequence DNA. This is shown in a dissertation from Mid Sweden University. Building structures as tiny as a few nanometers is a major problem with today's technology. This is an important hurdle, because really tiny things can be extremely useful. Good examples are microelectronics, the smaller you can make the…

MORGANTOWN, W.Va., Feb. 5 (UPI) -- U.S. scientists are using a computer program to develop an objective method of determining when a boxing match should be stopped. The researchers at West Virginia University say a computerized approach to counting punches at ringside identifies certain characteristics related to deaths in the ring. "This approach could provide sufficient data to stop matches that might result in fatalities," said Drs. Vincent Miele and Julian Bailes of West Virginia University School of Medicine. Miele and Bailes performed a computer-assisted video analysis to compare three…

Shipborne activists hunting a Japanese whaling fleet in a potentially violent high-seas game of hide-and-seek offered a 25,000-dollar reward Monday for help in tracking the whalers down. Sea Shepherd president Paul Watson made the offer in a satellite telephone interview with AFP from aboard his flagship in the icy waters of the Antarctic, saying the Japanese were using satellite technology to evade their pursuers. The Sea Shepherd group are hunting the Japanese whaling fleet with the Robert Hunter (pictured), the Farley Mowat, 70 crew form 14 countries and a helicopter. Photo courtesy AFP…

In one of the biggest advancements in fundamental transistor design, Intel Corporation revealed that it is using two dramatically new materials to build the insulating walls and switching gates of its 45 nanometer (nm) transistors. Hundreds of millions of these microscopic transistors -- or switches -- will be inside the next generation Intel® Core™ 2 Duo, Intel Core 2 Quad and Xeon® families of multi-core processors. The company also said it has five early-version products up and running -- the first of fifteen 45nm processor products planned from Intel. The above photo show a close-up of a…

For soldiers injured in combat today, the survival rate is 90 percent or higher--a significant improvement even since the Gulf War in the early 1990s, according to Col. W. Bryan Gamble, M.D., Commander of Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany. Dr. Gamble credits advances in three key areas with improving the outcomes of combat injuries: • Personal Protective Equipment: Incorporated into vests, new composite material plates are capable of stopping high-velocity rounds, making previously fatal chest wounds survivable. Standard equipment for each solider now includes an individual "one-…

IBM has announced it has developed a long-sought improvement to the transistor -- the tiny on/off switch that serves as the basic building block of virtually all microchips made today. Working with AMD and its other development partners Sony and Toshiba, the company has found a way to construct a critical part of the transistor with a new material, clearing a path toward chip circuitry that is smaller, faster and more power-efficient than previously thought possible. As important, the technology can be incorporated into existing chip manufacturing lines with minimal changes to tooling and…