Joe
Retired computer consultant
Science & Technology. Natural Phenomena. Neural networks referees in 2012. Bioinformatics. Productivity. Transhuman. DARPA combines human brains and 120-megapixel cameras to create the ultimate military threat detection system. After more than four years of research, DARPA has created a system that successfully combines soldiers, EEG brainwave scanners, 120-megapixel cameras, and multiple computers running cognitive visual processing algorithms into a cybernetic hivemind. Called the Cognitive Technology Threat Warning System (CT2WS), it will be used in a combat setting to significantly improve the US Army’s threat detection capabilities. There are two discrete parts to the system: The 120-megapixel camera, which is tripod-mounted and looks over the battlefield (pictured below); and the computer system, where a soldier sits in front of a computer monitor with an EEG strapped to his head (pictured above).
Images from the camera are fed into the computer system, which runs cognitive visual processing algorithms to detect possible threats (enemy combatants, sniper nests, IEDs). In short, CT2WS taps the human brain’s unsurpassed ability to recognize objects. Now read: Changing the world: DARPA’s top inventions. Donjon; RPG Tools. Speech Recognition and Dictation. Resources. Year 3 Biotechnology. Chemical Engineering Wikibook. New nuke could POWER WORLD UNTIL 2083. High performance access to file storage Could not load plugins: File not found A company spun off from MIT is claiming it has cracked the holy grail of nuclear technology: a reactor design that runs on materials the industry currently discards as waste and which could meet all of the world's power demands for the next 70 years.
It's also "walk-away safe," the designers claim, making it immune to the kind of meltdown that destroyed the Fukushima reactors. The Waste Annihilating Molten Salt Reactor (WAMSR) is based on designs first dreamt up in the 1950s for reactors that used liquid rather than solid fuels. Two graduate students at MIT have now upgraded those designs so that the reactors can be fueled by nuclear waste, and also designed a safety system that will automatically shut the reactor down without power or human intervention. Most conventional nuclear reactors – in the US at least – are light-water reactors, but this design has a number of disadvantages. Eulerian Video Magnification. Banner slider Many seemingly static scenes contain subtle changes that are invisible to the naked human eye. However, it is possible to pull out these small changes from videos through the use of algorithms we have developed. We give a way to visualize these small changes by amplifying them and we present algorithms to pull out interesting signals from these videos, such as the human pulse, sound from vibrating objects and the motion of hot air.
Videos Software and Code Eulerian Video Magnification code Matlab code and executables implementing Eulerian video processing for amplifying color and motion changes. Phase Based Video Motion Processing code Matlab code for implementing the new and improved phase-based motion magnification pipeline. Videoscope Web interface for motion and color magnification. Publications (Magnifying Motion and Color Changes) Publications (Analysis of Small Motions) People Faculty: Students, Postdocs and Affiliates: Collaborators: Edward H. Talks. Academic Journals.
JSTOR. Nanotechnology Science. Down to the wire: Inexpensive technique for making high quality nanowire solar cells developed. (PhysOrg.com) -- Solar or photovoltaic cells represent one of the best possible technologies for providing an absolutely clean and virtually inexhaustible source of energy to power our civilization. However, for this dream to be realized, solar cells need to be made from inexpensive elements using low-cost, less energy-intensive processing chemistry, and they need to efficiently and cost-competitively convert sunlight into electricity.
A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory has now demonstrated two out of three of these requirements with a promising start on the third. Peidong Yang, a chemist with Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division, led the development of a solution-based technique for fabricating core/shell nanowire solar cells using the semiconductors cadmium sulfide for the core and copper sulfide for the shell.
Explore further: New physical phenomenon on nanowires seen for the first time. Nanotechnology. A Super-Absorbent Solar Material. A new nanostructured material that absorbs a broad spectrum of light from any angle could lead to the most efficient thin-film solar cells ever. Researchers are applying the design to semiconductor materials to make solar cells that they hope will save money on materials costs while still offering high power-conversion efficiency. Initial tests with silicon suggest that this kind of patterning can lead to a fivefold enhancement in absorbance. Conventional solar cells are typically a hundred micrometers or more thick. Researchers are working on ways to make thinner solar cells, on the order of hundreds of nanometers thick rather than micrometers, with the same performance, to lower manufacturing costs. However, a thinner solar cell normally absorbs less light, meaning it cannot generate as much electricity. Some researchers are turning to exotic optical effects that emerge at the nanoscale to solve this conundrum.
Aydin and Atwater are now doing just that. NW Engineers’ Christmas Lecture: The Four Facets of Alan Turing and our work on Morphogenesis. By Tuesday, 4 Dec 2012 , 6:00 PM - 8:00 PMLocation: John Dalton Building, MMU, Chester Street/Oxford Road, M15 6BH Add this event to your calendar iCal Speaker: Prof. Bernard Richards, MSc, PhD, FBCS, FIMA, FIHRIM, FRAMS, CEng, CSci, CMath, CITP This free NW Engineers Christmas Lecture is organised by the Joint Institutions Group. To register to attend this event here. This Talk will demonstrate that Alan Turing was a man of many talents, but that these were not all recognised simultaneously during his life-time: indeed, some were not fully recognised until after his death. About the Speaker Professor Bernard Richards served as Professor of Computation and Professor of Medical Informatics at UMIST.
As a young man, Bernard studied as the MSc student of Alan Turing in the University of Manchester, working with him on his equations of morphogenesis. Bernard’s recollections of Turing have been placed in the Jubliee Time Capsule, The Legacy of Alan Turing by his Student Bernard Richards. Most Interesting Documentaries. Website Tools. Help.
Challenge 5 - Curate Resources using Pearltrees. If you listened to the episode of the Instructional Tech Talk podcast that discussed curating content in the classroom you know how valuable curating resources can be both with students and for your own resources. Social bookmarking has become a huge activity – spreading many genres and via many platforms. It has revolutionized the way in which we share and find information. Like I mentioned, there are many ways to participate in social content curation and each way looks a little different. For the purpose of this challenge, we will be using the popular curation tool Pearltrees to begin our content curation adventure. Don’t worry – it is easy, fun, and extremely addictive. Pearltrees is a way to store all the websites you use on a regular basis (and even the ones that you won’t use again for 2 years) to allow for instant reference. The Challenge Create a Pearltrees account and start curating resources. How to Complete the Challenge 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.
F.Y.I./Informative and Thought Provoking. Search. Future Society & Enviroment. Lasers. Self Sufficiency. DefnOfDisability.doc. Planet Earth. Trafalgar Square Twilight Panorama | 360 Panoramic Photographer London. Photo | places | NYC. Spare. Disaster Alert Network - ubAlert. The Arctic (cooler than a polar bear's toenails) Japan Earthquake, 2 Years Later: Before and After - In Focus. In a few days, Japan will mark the 2nd anniversary of the devastating Tohoku earthquake and resulting tsunami. The disaster killed nearly 19,000 across Japan, leveling entire coastal villages. Now, nearly all the rubble has been removed, or stacked neatly, but reconstruction on higher ground is lagging, as government red tape has slowed recovery efforts.
Locals living in temporary housing are frustrated, and still haunted by the horrific event, some displaying signs of post-traumatic stress disorder. Collected below are a series of before-and-after interactive images. Click on each one to see the image fade from before (2011) to after (2013). [18 photo pairs] Use j/k keys or ←/→ to navigate Choose: The tsunami-devastated Kesennuma in Miyagi prefecture, is pictured in this side-by-side comparison photo taken March 12, 2011 (left) and March 4, 2013 (right), ahead of the two-year anniversary of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami that damaged so much of northeastern Japan.
Nature Photos Team.