Using an adaptation of a computer program developed to calculate lung densities in people with emphysema, with a medical scanner, researchers have been able to analyse the physical properties of violins without risking damage to instruments worth millions of dollars. Their findings as to why a Stradivarius violin sounds so good is now attributed of the remarkably even density of their wood.
Pyrrho is a compact and efficient relational database management system for the .NET framework. It supports the SQL2003 standard including advanced OLAP functions, and the free edition works for database files up to 8MB in size. The server has a 500KB footprint, so will run successfully on .NET enabled PDAs and mobile phones. Despite its small size it is scalable and efficient. It has been tested on high-volume scenarios, where it significantly outperforms existing commercial products, and the DataCenter edition is designed for supercomputing clusters.
The joint conferences Electro Magnetic Remote Sensing and Systems Engineering for Autonomous Systems in Edinburgh last week, show the Ministry of Defence to be committed to fostering new technologies for the changing battle frontline and to accordingly is to set up a new Centre for Defence Enterprise (CDE). The brand new, shiny Centre, situated at Harwell, logistically in the Oxford-London-Cambridge Golden Triangle will bring together inventors, investors, entrepreneurs and academics who will incubate new technologies and turn ideas to cutting edge reality, fostering new technologies for the front line. It even has its own in-house journal, Defence Codex, Issue 1 Summer 2008.
Fife teenager Alasdair Campbell who played water polo for the Great Britain youth team in Slovenia, has just completed his first year as a sports scholarship student at Lindenwood University in America. "I seriously considered trying for the 2012 Olympics, and it would have been great," he admitted in an interview with Elspeth Burnside of The Scotsman. "But it would have meant moving to the GB training base in Manchester and living and training there full-time and, to be honest, I had to accept that water polo is never going to provide me with a decent living.
Virtual Learning Angus from Angus College in collaboration with Robert Gordon University involves using the very latest online technology to help deliver virtual tuition in management, computing, administration, care and engineering. It is being funded by one of the biggest awards yet from the European Social Fund which will provide £214,000 to support £725,000 worth of new educational programmes split in two projects.
Dr Bernd Fischer at the University's School of Electronics and Computer Science (ECS) has received £300,000 funding from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to develop systematic techniques and supporting tools that will allow application developers to customise automatically generated code efficiently and reliably without needing to modify either the code generator or the generated code, improving the safety and usability of automatically generated software code commonly used in the space and automotive industries.
The Kyoto Prize, an international award that honours those who have contributed significantly to the scientific, cultural and spiritual betterment of humankind is awarded annually to recipients working in advanced technology, basic sciences, and arts and philosophy. Life sciences is honoured once every four years.
Braveheart, the technology commercialisation and investment management company has signed an agreement with the University of Aberdeen. it follows hot on the heels of the Perth based investment company tie-up with Edinburgh University in June 2007 creating a dedicated £25m fund having rights of first refusal to invest in all commercial investment opportunities that arise in respect of companies and intellectual property emanating from the university, other than in the field of medicine, veterinary medicine and life sciences, where it may take a co-investment position. In February 2007 a £12m funding deal for the Strathclyde Innovation Fund partnership with Strathclyde University shared 25% of its performance bonus with the university. In addition, when an investment is made, a payment will be made to the department which has sponsored the investment opportunity, encouraging university departments to participate in the commercialisation partnership.
Out of 113 UK Universities ranked by the Times, St Andrews continues to hold top Scottish place
and 5th in the UK followed by Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen breathing on Glasgow's heels.
Abertay squeezes in at 100= with Chester. Universities are ranked on a range of topics running from student satisfaction, through research quality including student:staff ratio and service/facilities spend, to include entry standards, competition and good honours, as well as graduate prospects.
ScottishPower and the University of Strathclyde have joined forces to provide an Advanced Research Centre (SPARC) The project is aimed at establishing the Glasgow-based utility company at the forefront of new developments and technology in the energy sector.
A Scottish university has launched a postgraduate degree that, in being a mix of the traditional and modern, is designed to meet the demands of the fast-changing world of journalism. Sign of the times, options in sport, arts or fashion, but nothing about manufacturing, science and technology. Hang in there all B2B writers and educators, you are still really needed. This is all 'face.'
A University of Bath academic, who oversees a global effort to develop an open-source machine that ‘prints’ three-dimensional objects, is celebrating after the prototype machine succeeded in making a set of its own printed parts. The machine, named RepRap, was exhibited publicly at the June Cheltenham Science Festival.
There it was, sitting in Gaberlunzie's GoogleMail inbox, which is a bit like Pandora's box, too many things fly out of it! The one line simply read Electrical Engineer Job - www.glasgowareag51.com
World class Electrical Engineer job at Thales Optronics Glasgow. Perhaps the link should also be on their Scottish Technology Prize website.
Children's Universities which have been known as innovative science communication events in many European countries are to become truly European when the European Commission signs a grant agreement to support the formation of a European network of Children's Universities - of which the University of Tubingen is a part. Founded in 2002 as the first of its kind, it is a cooperative project of the University of Tubingen with the newspaper Schwabisches Tagblattâ. In 2005 it was awarded the Descartes Prize for Science Communication of the European Community.
Drug companies could save millions thanks to a new technology to monitor crystals as they form. The technique, developed by University of Leeds engineers, is a potentially invaluable tool in drug manufacture, where controlling crystal forms is crucial both to cost and product safety.
Researchers from the 3. Physikalisches Insitut of the University of Stuttgart for the first time were able to systematically create entangled quantum states in diamond. As the results were obtained under ambient conditions it make sdiamond an ideal candidate for building a quantum computer working at room temperature seemingly to be impossible for other materials. The work is published in 6 June Science.
Israeli physicists have discovered bizarre 'quasiparticles' which have one quarter the charge of an electron, and may be useful in quantum computing. Quasiparticles are formed within a group of electrons and behave as if they are particles. But they only have a fraction of the charge of an electron, according to lead researcher Merav Dolev from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, who announced the discovery. Curiously no single particle can have a fraction of electric charge.
Scotland has several skilled practitioners in wiring harness systems, but in avionics there is currently no system that will tell manufacturers and when problems are likely to occur, or even if a problem has occurred. Currently the only test for behaviour of avionic wiring is on the ground with an out of service aircraft and separate section wiring accessed only with specially designed test equipment for a specific aircraft. Now a design team at the Institute for System Level Integration (iSLI) has teamed up with Gloucester-based Ultra Electronics BCF Ltd to achieve a new capability to eliminate this problem making aircraft easier to operate and maintain.
Researchers from the University of Antwerp in Belgium have developed a special PC that can perform their computations just as fast as hundreds of normal PCs. Using this super PC, which mainly consists of gaming hardware and costs less than 4000 euro, they can carry out their computations on three-dimensional images within a few hours, compared to weeks on a regular PC.
The research group Vision Lab at the University of Antwerp (existing Lab spinoffs are Skyscan, Diamscan and DCILabs) focuses on the development of new computational methods for tomography.
Google and IBM join forces with the three Edinburgh Universities to reverse computing talent shortfall targeting Standard Grade student. But in New Zealand the aim is to target a much younger set with the "unplugged computer."