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Research by CU-Boulder Physicists Creates ‘Recipe Book’ for Building New Materials

By Guest PostJanuary 1, 2013Scienceamherst, bohdan senyuk, China, coffee cup, colloids, colorado boulder, continuously deformed, creation, ivan smalyukh, liquid crystal, liquid crystal displays, materials genome initiative, mathematical theorems, Pennsylvania, president barack obama, qingkun liu, randall kamien, recipe book, robert kusner, sailing he, tiny particle, tom lubensky, topology, university, university of massachusetts, White House, zhejiang university

By showing that tiny particles injected into a liquid crystal medium adhere to existing mathematical theorems, physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder have opened the door for the creation of a host of new materials with properties that do not exist in nature.

The findings show that researchers can create a “recipe book” to build new materials of sorts using topology, a major mathematical field that describes the properties that do not change when an object is stretched, bent or otherwise “continuously deformed.” Published online Dec. 23 in the journal Nature, the study also is the first to experimentally show that some of the most important topological theorems hold up in the real material world, said CU-Boulder physics department Assistant Professor Ivan Smalyukh, a study senior author. (more…)

Transactional Memory: An Idea Ahead of Its Time

By Guest PostApril 10, 2012Science, Technologyamherst, ars technica, blue gene, brown university, buzz, computer, computer scientist, computing technology, core processor, eliot moss, hardware architecture, hardware computing, haswell, ibm, maurice herlihy, mike cohea, parallel processor, q supercomputer, richard lewis, transactional memory, university of massachusetts

Nearly 20 years ago, two Brown University computer scientists were working on a largely theoretical problem: How could multiple parallel processors make changes to shared resources safely and efficiently? Their proposal — transactional memory — is sparking fresh interest as a new generation of processors seeks improved power and speed.

In 1993, Maurice Herlihy and a colleague published a paper on transactional memory — a new, clever tactic in computing to deal with handling shared revisions to information seamlessly and concurrently. Few noticed.

Nearly 20 years later, transactional memory is an idea that’s now the rage in hardware computing, and Herlihy, computer science professor at Brown University, has morphed into a prophet of sorts, a computing pioneer who was far ahead of his time. Intel recently announced that transactional memory will be included in its mainstream “Haswell” hardware architecture by next year. IBM has adopted transactional memory in the Blue Gene/Q supercomputer. The original paper by Herlihy and Eliot Moss has been cited more than 1,300 times. (more…)

Researchers ‘Print’ Polymers That Bend Into 3-D Shapes

By Guest PostMarch 14, 2012Science3d shape, amherst, christian santangelo, daryl hess, national science foundation, photographic techniques, photolithography, photomask, polymer, robotics, ryan hayward, three-dimensional, two dimensional sheets, ultraviolet light, university of massachusetts, uv

*Technique could be used to direct growth of blood vessels or tissues in the laboratory*

Christian Santangelo, Ryan Hayward and colleagues at the University of Massachusetts Amherst recently employed photographic techniques and polymer science to develop a new technique for printing two-dimensional sheets of polymers that can fold into three-dimensional shapes when water is added. The technique may lead to wide ranging practical applications from medicine to robotics

The journal Science publishes the research in its March 9 issue. (more…)

Preventing Problems: Georgia Tech Helps to Develop System That Will Detect Insider Threats from Massive Data Sets

By Guest PostNovember 13, 2011Technologyadams, advanced statistical anomaly detection methods, algorithm, anomaly detection at multiple scales, army research office, carnegie mellon university, cyber network, darpa, david a bader, defense advanced research projects agency, edmond chow, electronically recorded activities, email, erica briscoe, file transfers, fred wright, georgia institute of technology, georgia tech research institute, gtri, homicidal, insider threats, irfan essa, john fratamico, joshua l davis, lora weiss, oregon state university, prototype, richard boyd, saic, scalable graph processing algorithms, science applications international corporation, soldier in good mental health, text messages, university of massachusetts, unusual activity

When a soldier in good mental health becomes homicidal or a government employee abuses access privileges to share classified information, we often wonder why no one saw it coming. When looking through the evidence after the fact, a trail often exists that, had it been noticed, could have possibly provided enough time to intervene and prevent an incident.

With support from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the Army Research Office, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are collaborating with scientists from four other organizations to develop new approaches for identifying these “insider threats” before an incident occurs. The two-year, $9 million project will create a suite of algorithms that can detect multiple types of insider threats by analyzing massive amounts of data — including email, text messages and file transfers — for unusual activity. (more…)

UMD and UMass Chemists Design Cloaked, Anti-Cancer Toxin to Kill Tumors from Within

By Guest PostOctober 9, 20101 commentHealth, Scienceanti-cancer toxin, biomolecules, cucurbituril, gold nanoparticle, lyle isaacs, nature chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, uncloaked toxic, university of massachusetts, vincent rotello

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — A research team including University of Maryland chemistry and biochemistry Professor Lyle Isaacs and University of Massachusetts Amherst chemist Vincent Rotello has demonstrated that they can deliver a dormant toxin into a specific site such as a tumor for anti-cancer therapy, then chemically trigger the toxin to de-cloak and attack from within. It holds promise as a complex and sophisticated synthetic, therapeutic drug delivery system for living cells. (more…)

Tag Archives: university of massachusetts

Research by CU-Boulder Physicists Creates ‘Recipe Book’ for Building New Materials

Transactional Memory: An Idea Ahead of Its Time

Researchers ‘Print’ Polymers That Bend Into 3-D Shapes

Preventing Problems: Georgia Tech Helps to Develop System That Will Detect Insider Threats from Massive Data Sets

UMD and UMass Chemists Design Cloaked, Anti-Cancer Toxin to Kill Tumors from Within