University of Texas

Todd Humphreys and his students at the University of Texas in Austin are tired of waiting for augmented reality that meets the promise of the technology we've been hearing about and seeing in science fiction for years now. So they set out to build it themselves, and presented a very rough prototype for the first time at the South By Southwest Interactive Festival (SXSW) in Austin on Friday.  Read More

It may look like a rather beefy tablet, but the Lynx A is actually a device that could make life easier for graphic artists, animators, architects, 3D printing enthusiasts, and potentially quite a few other people. Putting it simply, it’s a point-and-shoot camera that creates digital 3D models of whatever it’s pointed at.  Read More

If you were a scientist looking at a cell with a microscope, what would you do if you wanted get a look at the far side of that cell? You could try reaching in with a very fine-tipped pair of tweezers, but ... you’d probably be better off using something known as a fiber-optic spanner.  Read More

Astronomers from the University of Texas at Austin have measured the second-largest black hole ever discovered. It takes up some 14 percent of the galaxy's mass and may lead to an overhaul of theories regarding the formation and evolution of black holes.  Read More

An international team of scientists based at the University of Texas, Dallas (UTD), has developed a new type of artificial muscle created from carbon “nanotubes” – tiny hollow cylinders constructed from the same graphite layers found in the core of a standard pencil. Despite measuring 10,000 times less than the diameter of a human hair, the new muscles can lift more than 100,000 times their own weight, which amounts to approximately 85 times the power of a natural muscle of equivalent size.  Read More

A team of researchers at the University of Texas is working on a novel design that could circumvent some of the pressing limitations of current data storage technology and open the door to a new generation of very high-density, cheap and reliable hard disk drives.  Read More

We’ve seen nanomaterials that can be used to convert light into electricity and others that can convert heat into electricity. Now researchers from the University of Texas at Arlington and Louisana Tech University have created a hybrid nanomaterial that can do both. By pairing the material with microchips, the researchers say it could be used in self-powered sensors, low-power electronic devices, and biomedical implants.  Read More

If you get a minor burn somewhere on the outside of your body, you can usually help dull the pain and promote healing by applying a piece of gauze and an ointment such as Polysporin. When you scald your tongue on a hot food or drink, however, you can’t exactly put a Band-Aid on it. That said, you may soon be able to apply a soothing medicated strip, instead.  Read More

For five years, the annual BotPrize competition has been using a variant of the Turing Test known as a "Computer game bot Turing Test" to challenge programmers, researchers and hobbyists to create a bot for Unreal Tournament 2004 (UT2004) that is indistinguishable from a human player. Fittingly, in the centenary year of Turing’s birth, not one but two teams have finally claimed the prize by achieving “humanness ratings” of over 50 percent. In comparison, human players received an average humanness rating of just over 40 percent.  Read More