Tag Archives: NcStateUniversity

This colorful cube grounds virtual objects in the real world

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You can't usually spin, stretch and otherwise manipulate virtual objects all that easily. You're often relegated to clicking and dragging on a mouse, and even exotic approaches like HoloLens or VR headsets introduce issues like lag. However, North...

Android 4.2 App Verification Service tested, found no substitute for full anti-malware tools

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Android 42 App Verification Service tested, found no substitute for dedicated antimalware tools

Google's App Verification Service is a quiet addition to Android 4.2, but potentially game-changing: it promises malware checks for any installable Android app, whether it comes from a Bouncer-verified Google Play or a website lurking in the shadows. NC State University Associate Professior Xuxian Jiang doesn't want to simply accept the claim at face value, though. He just pitted the service against 10 anti-malware apps to gauge its effectiveness at stopping a wide range of rogue code. The short summary? Don't quit your day job, Google. Among 1,260 samples, the App Verification Service caught 193 instances, or 15.32 percent -- well below the 50 percent of its closest challenger, and nowhere near the perfect scores of two apps. According to the professor, Google's shortcoming mostly comes from a relatively skin-deep routine that checks the SHA-1 value and install package name, not underlying code that's tougher to change. Android malware isn't a serious enough issue for us to be worried at present, but nor would we lean on the App Verification Service as our only safety net.

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NC State University’s WiFox could improve public WiFi performance by up to 700 percent

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NC State University's WiFox could improve public WiFi performance by up to 700 percent

If you've ever swallowed your pride and bit the bullet on hotel WiFi, you've probably felt the sluggish pull of other users dragging down your connection speed. Coffee shops, airports and other heavily impacted public hotspots can slow to a crawl as they try to mete out data to dozens of users sharing a single channel. All hope is not lost, however -- a team at NC State University are about to release a paper detailing a technology that could bolster WiFi data throughput performance by up to 700 percent. The team is calling their technology WiFox, and it's already made their local test network four times faster, on average. WiFox keeps track of the amount of traffic gumming up a WiFi channel and actively assigns priority access to avoid a traffic jam of data requests. Fixing sluggish hotspots should be a snap, too -- Student and lead author Arpit Gupta says WiFox could be "packaged as a software update that can be incorporated into existing WiFi networks." The full paper will be presented at ACM CoNext next month in Nice, France. Can't wait? Feel free to click on the source and ogle the paper's abstract.

[Image credit: Charleston's TheDigitel, Flickr]

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NC State University's WiFox could improve public WiFi performance by up to 700 percent originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 15 Nov 2012 04:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Alt-week 9.8.12: Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 year-old girl to life

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Alt-week peels back the covers on some of the more curious sci-tech stories from the last seven days.

Altweek 9812 Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 yearold girl to life

Some weeks things get a little science heavy, sometimes it's a little on their weird side, and there's usually a bit of space travel involved, but these week's trend seems to be "mind-blowing." Want to grow carrots on the Moon? We got you covered. How about bringing a 50,000 year-old ancient human back to life? Sure, no biggie. Oh but what about a solar eruption that reaches some half a million miles in height. We've got the video. No, really we have. Mind blown? This is alt-week.

Continue reading Alt-week 9.8.12: Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 year-old girl to life

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Alt-week 9.8.12: Moon farming, self powered health monitors and bringing a 50,000 year-old girl to life originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers take full control of cockroach’s movement, turn it into a wireless sensor

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DNP Cockroaches

Built-in power supply? Check. Ability to survive anything? Check. Easy to control? Okay, anyone who's had a cockroach as an uninvited houseguest knows that's not the case. So, rather than re-inventing the biological wheel with a robotic version, North Carolina State university researchers have figured out a way to remotely control a real Madagascar hissing cockroach. They used an off-the-shelf microcontroller to tap in to the roach's antennae and abdomen, then sent commands that fooled the insect into thinking danger was near, or that an object was blocking it. That let the scientists wirelessly prod the insect into action, then guide it precisely along a curved path, as shown in the video below the break. The addition of a sensor could allow the insects to one day perform tasks, liking searching for trapped disaster victims -- something to think about the next time you put a shoe to one.

Continue reading Researchers take full control of cockroach's movement, turn it into a wireless sensor

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Researchers take full control of cockroach's movement, turn it into a wireless sensor originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Sep 2012 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Researchers partially automate CPU core design, aim to fast track new PC processor production

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NC State researchers automate CPU core design, potentially put new PC processors on the production fast trackTired of the year wait (or more) in between new silicon architecture offerings from Chipzilla and AMD? Well, if some Wolfpack researchers have anything to say about it, we'll measure that wait in months thanks to a new CPU core design tool that automates part of the process. Creating a new CPU core is, on a high level, a two step procedure. First, the architectural specification is created, which sets the core's dimensions and arranges its components. That requires some heavy intellectual lifting, and involves teams of engineers to complete. Previously, similar manpower was needed for the second step, where the architecture spec is translated into an implementation design that can be fabricated in a factory. No longer. The aforementioned NC State boffins have come up with a tool that allows engineers to input their architecture specification, and it generates an implementation design that's used to draw up manufacturing blueprints. The result? Considerable time and manpower savings in creating newly designed CPU cores, which means that all those leaked roadmaps we're so fond of could be in serious need of revision sometime soon.

Researchers partially automate CPU core design, aim to fast track new PC processor production originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 Jun 2012 07:58:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Scientists tweak wireless power transfer, Tesla nods happily in his grave

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Wireless charging may be all the rage these days, but actually beaming electricity -- as sketched above by the man Tesla himself -- still has some snags. North Carolina State U researchers have found a way to possibly vanquish the biggest problem: the difficulty of exactly matching resonant frequencies to amplify current. If external factors like temperature change the tuning of a transmitter even slightly then power drops will occur, but circuitry developed by the NC State scientists would allow receivers to detect these changes and automatically re-tune themselves to match. This could make for more potent car and device charging in the future and, if they stretch the distances a bit, maybe we'll finally get the wire-free utopia Nikola dreamed up 120 years ago.

Scientists tweak wireless power transfer, Tesla nods happily in his grave originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 May 2012 11:14:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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New research brings better wireless to remote locations, 80 percent faster GoT downloads

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Not getting the bandwidth you need, Heidi? Then maybe the folks at North Carolina State University can help. They've figured out a way to boost multi-hop networks, where data is forwarded across two or more nodes (hops) in order to reach far-flung users. Networks like this can often get bogged down by interference between neighboring nodes. But by using algorithms to automatically modulate the power of each link, the NC State scientists have managed to jump efficiency by up to 80 percent. This has the effect of not only increasing speed, but also saving juice if the systems are battery powered -- like those used by the US Army, which sponsored the research. After all, just because you're away from the throne doesn't mean you have to be out of the game.

New research brings better wireless to remote locations, 80 percent faster GoT downloads originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 23 Apr 2012 03:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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