December 10, 2013
December 10, 2013 —
Are you a hipster, surfer or biker? What is your urban tribe? Your computer may soon be able to tell. Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, are developing an algorithm that uses group pictures to determine to which of these groups, or urban tribes, you belong. So far, the algorithm is 48 percent accurate on average. That’s better than chance--which gets answers right only nine percent of the time--but researchers would like the algorithm perform at least as well as humans would.
November 14, 2013
November 14, 2013 —
The biggest outdoor shake table in the world and a robot designed to move along utility lines have received Best of What’s New awards from Popular Science, the world’s largest science and technology magazine. The two projects are featured in the magazine’s December issue, now on newsstands.
October 17, 2013
October 17, 2013 —
On a hot Saturday afternoon in the Mojave Desert, a team of UC San Diego engineering students huddled in a small underground bunker and watched quietly as the rocket engine they had designed over the past eight months flared to life on a test platform. As a jet of rocket fuel sprang out of the engine at supersonic speed, the students cheered loudly.
October 2, 2013
October 2, 2013 —
A team of engineers led by computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, has developed a new approach that marries computer vision and hardware optimization to sort cells up to 38 times faster than is currently possible. The approach could be used for clinical diagnostics, stem cell characterization and other applications.
September 25, 2013
September 25, 2013 —
A new type of miniature camera system developed by engineers at the University of California, San Diego, promises to give users a big picture view without sacrificing high-resolution. The new imager achieves the optical performance of a full-size wide-angle lens in a device less than one-10th of the volume of a regular lens.
September 16, 2013
September 16, 2013 —
Engineers at the University of California, San Diego, have developed an iPad app that helps students learn spatial visualization, an essential skill for doing well in science, math and engineering. They have been testing the app during a high school summer program at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego, as well as on undergraduate students at the school.
August 12, 2013
August 12, 2013 —
Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have developed a new model to simulate with unprecedented accuracy on the computer the way cloth and light interact. The new model can be used in animated movies and in video games to make cloth look more realistic.
August 1, 2013
August 1, 2013 —
Don’t hire someone to wash your dirty solar panels. That’s the conclusion of a study recently conducted by a team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego. Their findings were published in the July 25 online issue of Solar Energy.
June 21, 2013
June 21, 2013 —
Almost half of the mobile apps running on Apple’s iOS operating system access the unique identifier of the devices where they’re downloaded, computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, have found.
June 13, 2013
June 13, 2013 —
Their mission: make an unmanned autonomous vehicle, better known as a UAV, take off, fly over specific markers, find five to 11 targets and then land—all in half an hour. That is the challenge that a team of 25 students at UC San Diego is getting ready to tackle next month.
