University of Washington
Since October, 2000 the Folding@home project has been used to understand protein folding. Scientists know the pieces that make up a protein but cannot predict how those parts fit together into a 3-D structure. So the Folding@home project harnesses the power of Internet-connected PC’s and consoles, such as the PS3, to form the most powerful distributed computing cluster in the world. But no computer in the world is big enough, and computers may not take the smartest approach. So a team from the University of Washington (UW) made a Tetris-like game that asks players to fold a protein rather than stack colored blocks and discovered that people can compete with supercomputers in this arena. Read More
The alarming number of safety recalls appearing in headlines of late is worrying enough. Now researchers have shown that it's possible to take away driver control of a moving vehicle by remotely hacking into relatively insecure computer systems common in modern automobiles. The team managed to break into key vehicle systems to kill the engine, apply or disable the brakes and even send cheeky messages to radio or dashboard displays. Read More
Researchers from the University of Washington have managed to add customization and accessibility options to proprietary software without even touching the source code. Rather than alter program code, Prefab looks for the pixels associated with the blocks of code used to paint applications to a screen, grabs hold of them and then alters them according to whatever enhancements the user has chosen to apply. Any user input is then fed back to the original software, still running behind the enhanced interface. Read More
Until robots rise up and overthrow their puny human creators, one of the main risks comes from the people using the robots. A new study warns that the current crop of household robots presents a serious safety and privacy risk. They make it all too easy for nefarious types to hijack control of the robots and access valuable data - even giving them the ability to watch and listen in on private conversations, and perform remote reconnaissance on a house. Read More
A team of engineers and artists at the University of Washington's Solheim Rapid Manufacturing Laboratory has revived an ancient Egyptian glass casting method and developed "Vitraglyphic," a technique to manufacture glass objects from fine glass powder using computer-aided design and a 3-D printer, paving the way for a significantly faster and cheaper method for artists, architects and designers to build high-precision prototypes. Read More
Scientists cure color blindness in monkeys - humans next?
When English chemist John Dalton first wrote about color blindness in 1798, he must have wondered how science would improve the quality of life for people living with the condition. Today, spectacles, contact lenses and revolutionary corrective eye surgery combat the effects of a myriad of vision disorders, yet people with color blindness still live in quiet acceptance of this common genetic disorder. Now researchers have delivered promising results by successfully treating two squirrel moneys with defective color perception using a gene therapy that could also safely eradicate color blindness in humans. Read More
A rebuilding exercise is underway in Rome, but it’s not one that uses bricks and mortar, rather, it uses digital images – maybe even ones you provided unwittingly. A team from the University of Washington (UW) has developed a new computer algorithm that uses hundreds of thousands of tourist photos to automatically reconstruct an entire city in about a day. It’s thought that one use for the technology could be to provide visitors with an on-line virtual-reality 3-D tour of cities they visit. Read More
Really green power - running an electric circuit from trees
Researchers at the University of Washington (UW) have taken the term ‘green power’ literally by running an electric circuit from the power generated by trees. Sure, there isn’t much electrical power to harness, but the researchers say it should be enough to run wireless sensors that could be used to detect environmental conditions or forest fires and could also be used to gauge a tree’s health. Read More
