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One Atom Thick Graphene -- How thick is it? Take out a piece of paper and draw a straight line on it with a pointed pencil. The line's thickness is Graphene.

With the availability of fresh water dwindling in many parts of the world, a problem that is expected to grow with populations; researrchers at MIT are looking at Seawater. The only promising source of potable water -- the world's virtually limitless supply of seawater. But so far desalination technology has been too expensive for widespread use.

Now, MIT researchers have come up with a new approach using a different kind of filtration material: sheets of graphene, a one-atom-thick form of the element carbon, which they say can be far more efficient and possibly less expensive than existing desalination systems.

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Desalination , Graphene , Innovations , MIT

One Atom thick Graphene is future of Water Desalination

Anil Singh Monday, July 2, 2012

In our every day lives, we sport both genuine and Fake smiles on our faces. Sometimes the world successfully spots a fake smile, sometimes it doesn't. As a result , we are much at ease. But imagine a future, where even your dumb computer snubs you for your fake smile.

That day, you'll definitely scratch your head.

No you will not.

As MIT researchers feel that such a responsive computer will be able to serve you much better.

Nailing down your happy and frustrated Smiles:

A new computer program developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) can guess right nearly twice as often as humans.

The computer program can analyze human smiles. Right now it can tell a genuine smile from a frustrated one--and do so with much better accuracy than we humans can. The researchers are optimistic that some day it may be able to to much more. For them, it’s the first step, they say, towards developing machines that can recognize emotions.

How the Software is created:

Researchers at the MIT’s Media Lab created the software as part of their mission to make “more intelligent and respectful” computers.

The team began by filming a sampling of spontaneous smiles, some delighted and some frustrated, from 27 people who watched the video of an adorable baby. the participants were also made to fill a lengthy, malfunctioning online form. Interestingly, 90 percent of people smiled when they got frustrated.

To develop the algorithm (flow chart), the researchers broke down the smiles into two different types: Frustrated fake smiles came on fast and disappeared quickly; happy smiles rose more gradually and faded over time. The fake smiles were also thinner and stiffer.

Next, 12 people were shown still-frame shots of the two types of smiles and asked which were frustrated and which were happy. These subjects were only able to chose correctly 50 percent of the time--no better than a random guess. The algorithm, on the other hand, was able to gauge the difference accurately 92 percent of the time.

Why the software has a great success rate:

According to Ehsan Hoque, assistant researcher of MIT’s Affective Computer Group and the study's lead author, the reason for computer software faring better than humans is that while the humans usually kind of zoom out and try to interpret an expression, a computer algorithm can utilize the nitty-gritty details of a signal, which is much more enriching.

Possible Applications:

According to the researchers, a responsive and reactive computer is not a bad scenario, as such a computer will be able to serve its human master better. The impact of emotion-sensing computers could be profound: they could sense our feelings and respond more appropriately. Ona more serious note, the software program developed could also prove a boon to those with interpersonal psychological issues, such as autism, in which an individual has difficulty picking up on emotion cues in face-to-face communication.

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Innovations , MIT

MIT Develops a computer program to spot your Frustrated OR Fake Smile

Anil Singh Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Researchers at Bawendi Lab, MIT, have built an imaging solution that allows a viewer to visualize propagation of light at an effective rate of one trillion frames per second (the light from Sun takes 8 minutes to reach earth, this means light travels like any other matter. And if you look closely at the video below you will see packets of light reaching any surface with a time difference).

In the video below, the researchers are again demonstrating the propagation of light; but this time with a different set up. The propagation of a laser pulse through different scenes:
A toy in front of a mirror, a piece of rock candy, an orange (hit from the back), and so on; all shot at an effective rate of one trillion frames per second.

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Bawendi Lab , How Light Propagates , MIT , Science

MIT Researchers show How Light propagates

Anil Singh Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory, Gregory Charvat, and John Peabody, have made an urban warfare radar that sees through walls.

Created for the purpose of speeding up the image reception in high-risk combat situation, where receiving one image in every 20 minutes is definitely not wanted; plus no one wants to stand right next to a potentially dangerous building, the new radar gun gives the information about the situation on the other side of the opaque wall.

Distinctly different from the radars shown in action hero movies; where the hero sees fine details of the happenings on the other side, the urban warfare radar just provides a representation that something or someone is on the other side. The new radar is expected to be used in the near-future by US military and for law enforcement purposes. Watch the video below, in which the two researchers are explaining and demonstrating their creation:

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Innovations , MIT , Radar that sees through walls , urban warfare radar

MIT researchers develop a Radar that sees through walls

Anil Singh Wednesday, October 19, 2011