Nuclear reactors could be built more efficiently using supercomputers to artificially 'evolve' designs, say engineers from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. They have found they can speed up the extremely complex process of designing a reactor and generate novel designs from scratch by simulating natural selection.
A scanning method that could prove crucial to the development of a practical quantum computer has been developed by US researchers.
A framework for translating the write-ups of experiments into a format that can be processed by computers has been developed by academics. The new tool could revolutionise the way scientific papers are written and help scientists make creative leaps, researchers say.
The U.S. has put thousands of untranslated documents, captured from the former Iraqi government, online in an experiment to see if volunteer researchers can find evidence of weapons of mass destruction or ties to al-Qaeda that the official intelligence agencies could not.
Japanese researchers have demonstrated laser communications chips capable of transfering information through optical fibers at a record 25 gigabits per second, a development that could lead to the first petaflop-class supercomputer by 2010.
One of the world's most powerful supercomputers has conjured a fleeting moment in the life of a virus. The researchers say the simulation is the first to capture a whole biological organism in such intricate molecular detail.
Nearly all of the information that falls into a black hole escapes back out, a controversial new study argues. The work suggests that black holes could one day be used as incredibly accurate quantum computers -- if enormous theoretical and practical hurdles can first be overcome.
Nazi code that eluded the best cryptographers the Allied forces had to offer during World War II has been solved by an amateur codebreaker with the assistance of a network of computers.
The M4 Message Breaking Project is harnessing the power of distributed computing to crack a few remaining Enigma intercepts from WWII. The first intercept has already been broken and an interpretation posted.
Surveillance companies, using networks of cheap Web-connected cameras and powerful new video-analysis software, are demonstrating the kind of surveillance capabilities that were once only possible in a Hollywood movie. Faces and license plates can now be spotted, in almost real time, at ports, military bases and companies. Security perimeters can be changed or strengthened with a mouse click. Feeds from hundreds of cameras can be combined into a single desktop view. And videotape that used to take hours, even days, to scour is searched in minutes.