ScienceDaily: Computers & Math News

New technique for making graphene competitor, molybdenum disulfide Posted: 19 Feb 2015 11:46 AM PST Researchers have made an advance in manufacturing molybdenum disulphide, a 2-D material that could compete with graphene for replacing silicon in next-generation electronics. By growing flakes of the material around 'seeds' of molybdenum oxide, they have made it easier to control the size, thickness and location of the material.

Tracing languages back to their common ancestors through the statistics of sound shifts Posted: 19 Feb 2015 10:30 AM PST A statistical technique that sorts out when changes to words’ pronunciations most likely occurred in the evolution of a language offers a renewed opportunity to trace words and languages back to their earliest common ancestor or ancestors.

New NIST tools to help boost wireless channel frequencies and capacity Posted: 19 Feb 2015 08:56 AM PST To help solve growing problems with wireless bandwidth crowding and support the next generation of mobile technology, researchers are developing measurement tools for channels that are new for mobile communications and that could offer more than 1,000 times the bandwidth of today's cell phone systems.

Supercomputer simulations explore how an air-reed instrument generates air flow and sound Posted: 19 Feb 2015 07:17 AM PST Toyohashi Tech's researcher has succeeded in directly predicting sound radiating from a recorder for the first time all over the world. The calculations for this study took two weeks using about 100 nodes of supercomputers. The findings contribute to proposal of a new design of musical instrument easy-to-play or totally new musical instruments.

New approach to distributing computations could make multicore chips much faster Posted: 19 Feb 2015 07:17 AM PST Computer chips' clocks have stopped getting faster. To keep delivering performance improvements, chipmakers are instead giving chips more processing units, or cores, which can execute computations in parallel. But the ways in which a chip carves up computations can make a big difference to performance.

Neck pain can be changed through altered visual feedback Posted: 19 Feb 2015 07:16 AM PST Using virtual reality to misrepresent how far the neck is turned can actually change pain experiences in individuals who suffer from chronic neck pain, according to research.

Digital games and classroom learning: Study finds helpful features, gaps Posted: 19 Feb 2015 06:04 AM PST A new report on how teachers use video games in classrooms identifies features they find most useful to track student learning, as well as gaps where better tools could help link games more closely to the curriculum.

Wikipedia use: nothing to be ashamed about, experts say Posted: 11 Feb 2015 09:37 AM PST Academics and students alike should be making better use of Wikipedia, a major study of digital technology use in Higher Education has recommended.

New technology could help patients make better decisions on care Posted: 11 Feb 2015 07:18 AM PST Traditional decision aids to help patient-doctor discussions have drawbacks, but a new electronic model holds promise of revolutionizing shared decision-making in the doctor's office with the touch of an electronic tablet.

Changes proposed to improve research on health information technology Posted: 10 Feb 2015 12:59 PM PST The American health system is investing a vast amount of money to adopt health information technology, but the benefits and drawbacks of the move are not fully understood. Researchers say a new approach is needed to better understand the value of the technology, one that expands reviews to include both costs and benefits, and longer study periods to capture long-term implications.

Crowdfunding helps solve rare disease mystery Posted: 10 Feb 2015 10:31 AM PST The cost of identifying the source and progression of rare diseases remains prohibitive for many families, but there is hope for them in our Internet age. Researchers recently concluded a successful experiment to identify a novel genetic mutation as the source of a specific rare disease, and their experiment was supported through crowdfunding.

Key pathways underlying different subsets of systemic sclerosis discovered Posted: 10 Feb 2015 10:04 AM PST Sorting out patients with systemic sclerosis (SSc) according to their shared biology, researchers discovered how disease heterogeneity can be defined, allowing for targeted selection of patients for clinical trials.

Optimized application of high intensity focused ultrasound Posted: 10 Feb 2015 05:38 AM PST The field of nonlinear acoustics is currently receiving a lot of attention, thanks to applications focused on the improvement of ultrasonic cleaning, ultrasonic welding, sonochemistry, or thermotherapy. Lithotripsy – the demolition of kidney stones based on the use of high intensity focused ultrasound – represents a further medical field of application.