University of Florida News

GAINESVILLE — An accountant for XYZ Widget Co. has stepped out for lunch and left his computer running with the Dilbert screen saver doing its job.

GAINESVILLE — Researchers at the University of Florida and University of California, Irvine, have designed a fusion reactor that will produce electricity twice as efficiently as a traditional coal-burning power plant and, unlike nuclear power plants, will involve no radioactive fuels or byproducts.

GAINESVILLE — Roofing shingles, gypsum board and concrete blocks could join newsprint, milk jugs and aluminum cans in the recycling bin and may help the construction industry save money in the process, say researchers at the University of Florida.

GAINESVILLE — Allergy and asthma sufferers soon may have a new weapon in their fight against airborne enemies: an indoor-air cleaning system that uses light and simple chemicals to destroy the dust mites and mold spores that cause many allergies.

GAINESVILLE — As the world marks the 40th anniversary Saturday of the first Sputnik launch and the dawn of the Space Age, scientists at the University of Florida are working on a nuclear propulsion system they say could shorten a 600-day manned trip to Mars by more than a year.

GAINESVILLE — The era of smaller, faster and cheaper computers may soon end because microscopic silicon chips are getting so small that eventually they will contain too few atoms to work, warn two University of Florida researchers.

GAINESVILLE — Hospital rooms, surgery suites, fighter plane cockpits and tanks — high-priced real estate where space is at a premium. They also are perfect places for super-thin color computer monitors that will result from technology being developed at the University of Florida.

GAINESVILLE — A revolutionary new land mine detection system, developed at the University of Florida originally for military use, is ready to be converted for a humanitarian effort to rid the world of leftover land mines lurking in former war areas.

GAINESVILLE — After designing and building their own runway, equipped with typical lighting, signs and surface area, University of Florida engineers now plan to wreak electrical havoc on their new creation by causing lightning to strike it.

GAINESVILLE — A pizza-box size desktop computer as fast as 9,000 Pentium processors soon will dramatically speed and improve everything from airport luggage checks to mammograms, using a mathematical computer shorthand developed at the University of Florida.