Duke University School of Medicine

Unordered quantum computation: improved efficiency A team of physicists from the University of Vienna and the Austrian Academy of Sciences have demonstrated a new quantum computation scheme in which operations occur without a well-defined order.  The researchers led by Philip Walther and Caslav Brukner used this effect to accomplish a task more efficiently than a

A survey of teachers from the United States and Canada found that one out of four educators who used live animals as part of their science curriculum released the organisms into the wild after they were done using them in the classroom. Yet only 10 percent of those teachers participated in a planned release program,

Almost all electronics can be integrated into robotics with human-robot interaction (HRI) technologies Since Steve Jobs first unveiled Internet-based smartphones that integrated music, video, a camera, computer, and even GPS navigator, few would deny that the convergence of mobile devices have brought about a paradigm shift in the way we work and live. You may

A new seismic-resistant, fibre-reinforced concrete developed at the University of British Columbia will see its first real-life application this fall as part of the seismic retrofit of a Vancouver elementary school. The material is engineered at the molecular scale to be strong, malleable, and ductile, similar to steel—capable of dramatically enhancing the earthquake resistance of

To Catch a Thief IT ALL happened so fast and without the slightest apprehension. Queuing for a railway ticket at Waterloo station in London one quiet Sunday morning some years ago, your correspondent put his laptop blissfully down by his feet to get money out of his pocket. After taking his ticket from the window,

The robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks often begins speeches by reaching into his pocket, fiddling with some loose change, finding a quarter, pulling it out and twirling it in his fingers. The task requires hardly any thought. But as Dr. Brooks points out, training a robot to do it is a vastly harder problem for artificial

Clearly, this is a kid with some serious drive   This unique and worthwhile project was put together by a 17-year-old electronics and programming whiz from Honduras, of all places. The Eyeboard system is a low-tech eyeball-tracking device that allows users with motor disabilities to enter text into a computer using eye gestures instead of

Researchers may have found a way to slow down or prevent memory problems that arise in old age and which can become devastating in patients with dementia. The fresh hope comes from a series of studies in humans and mice that identified a protein which causes memory impairment when it builds up in the blood

Memory trouble doesn’t have to be inevitable, and they’ve found a drug therapy that could potentially reverse this type of memory decline It may seem normal: As we age, we misplace car keys, or can’t remember a name we just learned or a meal we just ordered. But University of Florida researchers say memory trouble