Rice University computer engineers have created a way to design integrated circuits that can contain many multiple 'selves.'

The chips can assume one identify or a subset of identities at a time, depending on the user's needs. New research shows that multiple "personalities" in an integrated circuit can be even a more powerful security mechanism that can be used for a variety of digital rights management tasks as well as for circuit optimization and customization without sacrificing the related power, delay and area metrics.

The technology is being unveiled today at the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in Anaheim and could be used for enhanced device security, content provisioning, application metering, device optimization and more.

In a bid to control greenhouse gas emissions linked to climate change, the European Union has been operating the world's first system to limit and to trade carbon dioxide. Despite its hasty adoption and somewhat rocky beginning three years ago, the EU "cap-and-trade" system has operated well and has had little or no negative impact on the overall EU economy, according to an MIT analysis.

The MIT results provide both encouragement and guidance to policy makers working to design a carbon dioxide (CO2)-trading scheme for the United States and for the world. A key finding may be that everything does not have to be perfectly in place to start up similar systems.

"This important public policy experiment is not perfect, but it is far more than any other nation or set of nations has done to control greenhouse-gas emissions-and it works surprisingly well," said A. Denny Ellerman, senior lecturer in the MIT Sloan School of Management, who performed the analysis with Paul L. Joskow, the Elizabeth and James Killian Professor in the Department of Economics.

A Phase III multi-center clinical trial of HBOC-201, a hemoglobin-based oxygen carrier, manufactured by Biopure Corporation, was relatively safe in patients under 80 years old who have a moderate need for transfusion, up to the equivalent of three units of regular blood, says a study published in the June edition of the Journal of Trauma.

This study is the first Phase III trial to compare a blood substitute to regular blood and was conducted at 46 sites in the United States, Europe and South Africa.

The six-week study involved 688 patients, ages 18 and older, undergoing elective orthopedic surgery, since these procedures often have a high need for blood transfusions. Patients initially received either one unit of blood, which is about a pint, or received an equivalent one unit or 65 grams of HBOC-201.

Making a virginity pledge may help some young people postpone the start of sexual activity, according to a new RAND Corporation study.

Researchers found that adolescents who made pledges to remain virgins until they are married were less likely to be sexually active over the three-year study period than other youth who were similar to them, but who did not make a virginity pledge, according to the study published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health.

"These findings do not suggest that virginity pledges should be a substitute for comprehensive sexual education programs, or that they will work for all kinds of kids" said Steven Martino, the study's lead author and a psychologist at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. "But virginity pledges may be appropriate as one component of an overall sex education effort."

A detergent solution developed at The University of Texas at Austin that treats donor nerve grafts to circumvent an immune rejection response has been used to create acellular nerve grafts now used successfully in hospitals around the country. Research also shows early promise of the detergent solution having possible applications in spinal cord repair.

The solution – combined with an enzyme treatment conceived at the University of Florida in Gainesville – is licensed by AxoGen, an Alachua, Florida-based company, and is used to create an acellular nerve graft from human cadaver tissue, called AVANCE Nerve Graft. Nationwide, nearly 100 patients suffering nerve injuries have received AVANCE grafts, all involving peripheral nerves which transmit sensory information between the brain and muscles.

This year's presidential primaries have already exhibited a number of time-honored traditions in American democracy - attacks, anonymous leaks and partisan journalism. Unfortunately, like other recent presidential elections, those include a new ritual - questions about the accuracy of techniques used to cast and count ballots.

A Center for Correct, Usable, Reliable, Auditable and Transparent Elections (ACCURATE) is a team of computer scientists and academic researchers from across the country bringing the latest research, insights and innovations from the lab to the voting booth.

The project is headed by Avi Rubin, a professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University. An expert in information security, Rubin was intrigued by the challenges associated with improving voting technologies. "There was a perceived need," Rubin says, "that these systems were not secure enough." Once they began examining the issue from a scientific perspective, Rubin and his colleagues discovered that a more holistic approach was needed to understand how the computers, touch screens and other technologies are interrelated in elections.