Research presented in a paper by Morgan McGuire, assistant professor of computer science at Williams College, and co-author Dr. David Luebke of NVIDIA, introduces a new algorithm to improve computer graphics for video games.

McGuire and Luebke have developed a new method for computerizing lighting and light sources that will allow video game graphics to approach film quality.

Because video games must compute images more quickly than movies, video game developers have struggled with maximizing graphic quality.

Producing light effects involves essentially pushing light into the 3D world and pulling it back to the pixels of the final image. The method created by McGuire and Luebke reverses the process so that light is pulled onto the world and pushed into the image, which is a faster process.

McGuire and Luebke’s algorithm is well suited to the quickened processing speed, and is expected to be featured in video games within the next two years. Read more at www.labspaces.net

Clemson University researchers have developed a hands-free alternative to cell phone texting while driving.

“If you can’t keep people from doing it, make it safer,” said Juan Gilbert, professor and chairman of the human-centered computing division of Clemson’s School of Computing.

Gilbert’s team developed an application, called VoiceTEXT, that allows drivers to speak text messages and keep their eyes on the road at the same time. Drivers using VoiceTEXT put their cell phones in Bluetooth mode and connect it to their car.

“Through the car’s speaker system or through the driver’s own Bluetooth headset, drivers can give a voice command that delivers a text message,” Gilbert said. “So you can speak to your phone and tell it to send a message to an individual. The recipient’s phone recognizes the voice as a text message and the other person is able to respond appropriately.” Read more at www.labspaces.net

A classified review of the United States Secret Service’s computer technology found that the agency’s computers were fully operational only 60 percent of the time because of outdated systems and a reliance on a computer mainframe that dates to the 1980s, according to Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn.

“We have here a premiere law enforcement organization in our country which is responsible for the security of the president and the vice president and other officials of our government, and they have to have better IT than they have,” said Lieberman

Sources tell ABC News that the Secret Service was so plagued by computer problems that the agency invited the National Security Agency to formally review its information technology systems. The Secret Service’s databases are outdated and users are at times unable to conduct searches from one system to another.

A 60 percent, fully operational average is far worse than “industry and government standards that are around 98 percent generally,”Read more at abcnews.go.com

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Over the past several years, there’s been no shortage of talk about alternative energy, and its potential to change the world. The problem is that most of it is just that — talk. But tonight, a report that aired on 60 Minutes showed one alternative that is not only real, it’s already being tested by companies such as Google and eBay. You simply have to watch this.

Bloom Energy are producing tiny fuel cell boxes they call “Bloom Boxes.” Two of these can apparently power a U.S. home (and only one for homes in countries that use less power). So how small are they? Look at the picture above, each device isn’t much bigger than a standard brick. Of course, they need to be surrounded by a larger unit that takes in an energy source (such as natural gas). But still, these units look to be about the size of a refrigerator and can easily fit outside of a home, providing it with clean, cheap energy. Read more at techcrunch.com

When people have their feelings hurt, what is actually happening inside the body to cause the physical pain in the chest?

Robert Emery and Jim Coan, professors of psychology at the University of Virginia, reply:

terms such as “heartache” and “gut wrenching” are more than mere metaphors: they describe the experience of both physical and emotional pain. When we feel heartache, for example, we are experiencing a blend of emotional stress and the stress-induced sensations in our chest—muscle tightness, increased heart rate, abnormal stomach activity and shortness of breath. In fact, emotional pain involves the same brain regions as physical pain, suggesting the two are inextricably connected. Read more at www.scientificamerican.com

Good science education at the earliest grades is supremely important, but in most classrooms it gets short shrift. Studies have found that children in kindergarten are already forming negative views about science that could cast a shadow across their entire educational careers

One report noted that science instruction in the early grades “occurs sporadically and rarely engages children in practices that encourage rigorous and reflective science learning.”

The Purdue approach, the Scientific Literacy Project

introduces children to the most fundamental idea—that science is about carefully conducted inquiry to learn about the world—and shows them that everyone can do science.

The researchers found that students participating in their project showed significant gains relative to those taking traditional classes. The kindergartners readily developed skills related to asking questions, conducting observations and experiments, drawing conclusions and sharing their findings—and had tremendous funRead more at www.scientificamerican.com

D-wave Quantum 2

Behind the scenes, in fact, Google has been working with a D-Wave quantum computer

Fast and accurate sorting capability is a must, and not just for Internet browsers. Think about the jobs of radiologists, for example, looking for a diseased cell or two in a mass of tissue. Or a baggage screener looking for a gun, a knife, or a bomb in someone’s carry-on bag

Harvard professor Jeremy Wolfe, demonstrates that the more we [humans!] look for that “needle in a haystack,” the less likely it is that we will find it. Now, how does that make you feel when you take a mammogram or get on an airplane?

But what if a quantum computer could detect the diseased cell? And not only that. What if that super computer could determine which antibody might kill that cell without harming the surrounding cells? Think about how much time that would save researchers in testing various drugs, and how much time it would save in getting approval for potential life-saving drugs. Read more at www.physorg.com

The creation of black holes in the Large Hadron Collider, which will smash protons together at nearly the speed of light, would indicate the existence of extra dimensions. A simulation of one possible fingerprint of a black hole (above) in the collider’s Compact Muon Solenoid detector shows colored cones to represent different particle types, and bar lengths indicate particles’ energy intensity.

Out in space, astrophysicists are looking hard to see if large black holes are shrinking on a time scale that might be detected by modern telescopes. If so, it might mean the black holes are evaporating into extra dimensions.

In the laboratory, black holes far smaller than anything that could be seen with a microscope might be produced in Europe’s Large Hadron Collider after it starts running again in November

The detection of such a black hole, which would evaporate in a hail of subatomic particles in a tiny fraction of a second, would provide evidence that unseen dimensions of space exist.Read more at sciencenews.org