texas a&m

Texas project to put green products to the test

"Green" manufacturers and technology companies are stampeding to find a home in a proposed Texas development that will put the water- and energy-saving devices of tomorrow to the test in a real-world urban setting.

Texas A&M University System and a Dallas-area developer are creating a $127 million commercial and residential "incubator" where cutting-edge sensors will monitor data on everything from light bulbs to appliances and toilets.

Companies like General Electric, Philips Electronics, Owens Corning, LG Electronics and Kimberly-Clark are lining up to test their products in the proposed Urban Living Laboratory.

The 73-acre site, … Read more

Aggies rethinking truck freight with electric train

A group of Texas researchers would like to resurrect the train as chief freight mover in the U.S.

The Universal Freight Shuttle is the brainchild of Stephen Roop, assistant director Texas Transportation Institute (TTI), a branch of Texas A&M University's system chain.

The automated train, which is designed to accommodate standard shipping containers and trailers, would move forward along a track by linear induction motors powered with electricity.

Roop and others at TTI have been working on the concept and design for eight years, keeping in mind not just the technology, but how such an infrastructure … Read more

IBM teams up with universities on cloud project

IBM on Monday announced that it has partnered with three universities to develop one of the first cloud-computing platforms in the Middle East.

Big Blue, along with Carnegie Mellon University, Qatar University, and Texas A&M University in Qatar, plans to use the Qatar Cloud Computing Center to handle advanced research for search, data mining, scientific modeling and simulation, computational biology, and financial modeling.

"This will help us realize our vision of developing, evaluating, and extending a cloud-computing infrastructure in Qatar, to target regional applications and projects to help advance research," Majd F. Sakr, an associate professor … Read more

Ultrasound cuff to stop internal bleeding on battlefield

Internal bleeding can cause irreversible haemorrhagic shock within 30 seconds or progressive shock within eight hours, either way, it's not good and the military wants a portable, noninvasive way to detect and stop it right on the battlefield.

To that end, the Defense Advance Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has contracted with Siemens Healthcare, the University of Washington's Centre for Industrial and Medical Ultrasound and Texas A&M to develop something called the Deep Bleeder Acoustic Coagulation cuff (DBAC). The cuff is a semi-automated, ultrasound device designed to cut blood loss and shock resulting from combat limb injuries, … Read more

Photos: Robots to the rescue

Robots with names like Eyeball, Dragon Runner, ToughBot, Marv, Matilda and Talon fearlessly rolled and hovered over wreckage and rubble last week in Disaster City, a 52-acre training center for first responders and emergency workers.

Last week's robotics exercise, the fourth in two years sponsored by the Science and Technology Directorate at the Department of Homeland Security and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) at the Commerce Department, has a complex task: finding ways of evaluating performance of robots so that they can be fairly compared, according to The New York Times.