#Diagnosing broken buildings to make them greener The cofounders of MIT spinout KGS Buildings have a saying:
ll buildings are broken. Energy wasted through faulty or inefficient equipment, they say, can lead to hundreds of thousands of dollars in avoidable annual costs.
That why KGS aims to ake buildings betterwith cloud-based software, called Clockworks, that collects existing data on a building equipment specifically in HVAC (heating, ventilation,
The software then translates the data into graphs, metrics, and text that explain monetary losses, where it available for building managers, equipment manufacturers,
Phd 0. The software is now operating in more than 300 buildings across nine countries, collecting more than 2 billion data points monthly.
Last month, MIT commissioned the software for more than 60 of its own buildings, monitoring more than 7, 000 pieces of equipment over 10 million square feet.
Previously, in a yearlong trial for one MIT building, the software saved MIT $286, 000. Benefits, however, extend beyond financial savings,
The software can also help buildings earn additional incentives by participating in utility programs. e have major opportunities in some utility territories,
is one of a few ventures gathering quipment-level data, gathered through various sensors, actuators, and meters attached to equipment that measure functionality.
Clockworks sifts through that massive store of data, measuring temperatures, pressures, flows, set points, and control commands, among other things.
which is a finer level of granularity than meter-level analytics software that may extract,
For example, Clockworks may detect specific leaky valves or stuck dampers on air handlers in HVAC units that cause excessive heating or cooling.
But it also helps the software produce rapid, intelligent analytics such as accurate graphs, metrics, and text that spell out problems clearly.
it helps the software to rapidly equate data with monetary losses. hen we identify that there a fault with the right data,
KGS Buildingsfoundation The KGS cofounders met as participants in the MIT entry for the 2007 Solar Decathlon an annual competition where college teams build small-scale, solar-powered homes to display at the National Mall
such as developing low-cost sensing technology with wireless communication that could be retrofitted on to older equipment.
Seeing building data as an emerging tool for fault-detection and diagnostics, however, they turned to Samouhosphd dissertation,
and a framework for an early KGS module. e all came together anticipating that the building industry was about to change a lot in the way it uses data,
where you take the data, you figure out what not working well, and do something about it,
Throughout 2010, they began trialing software at several locations, including MIT. They found guidance among the seasoned entrepreneurs at MIT Venture Mentoring Service learning to fail fast,
and advancing its software into other applications. About 180 new buildings were added to Clockworks in the past year;
by the end of 2014, KGS projects it could deploy its software to 800 buildings. arger companies are starting to catch on,
Liberating data By bringing all this data about building equipment to the cloud, the technology has plugged into the nternet of thingsa concept where objects would be connected, via embedded chips and other methods, to the Internet for inventory and other purposes.
Data on HVAC systems have been connected through building automation for some time. KGS however, can connect that data to cloud-based analytics and extract eally rich informationabout equipment,
Gayeski says. For instance, he says, the startup has quick-response codes like a barcode for each piece of equipment it measures,
so people can read all data associated with it. s more and more devices are connected readily to the Internet,
Gayeski says. nd that data can be liberated from its local environment to the cloud, Grace adds.
and other sensors begins to nlock the data in the residential scale, Gayeski says, GS could adapt over time into that space, as well. o
#The incredible shrinking power brick While laptops continue to shrink in size and weight, the ower bricksthat charge them remain heavy and bulky.
and Justin Burkhart SM 0 FINSIX has developed the world smallest laptop adapter, called the Dart.
The 65-watt Dart can power most laptops, smartphones, and tablets. By November, FINSIX aims to deliver its first shipment of around 4, 500 Darts to Kickstarter backers and other customers.
flat-screen TVS, gaming consoles, laptops, electric bikes, and air conditioners, while reducing the cost of manufacturing.
the company started focusing on laptop adapters. In traditional adapters, an array of switches flip to one state and take in AC voltage from a wall outlet,
In that analogy, the bucket is the adapter that collects the water (electricity) from a full tank (outlet) and dumps it into an empty tank (laptop battery.
and computer science students who were excited to start a company. Around 2010, their interests merged in MIT Sloan 15.390 (New Enterprises),
The team used a combination of computation and experimental analysis to derive the structure of the material,
High-speed 3-D imaging Neurons encode information sensory data motor plans, emotional states, and thoughts using electrical impulses called action potentials,
which can then be recombined using a computer algorithm to recreate the 3-D structure. f you have one light-emitting molecule in your sample,
They also hope to speed up the computing process, which currently takes a few minutes to analyze one second of imaging data.
The researchers also plan to combine this technique with optogenetics, which enables neuronal firing to be controlled by shining light on cells engineered to express light-sensitive proteins.
Google; the NSF Center for Brains, Minds, and Machines at MIT; and Jeremy and Joyce Wertheimer n
#Glasses-free 3-D projector Over the past three years, researchers in the Camera Culture group at the MIT Media Lab have refined steadily a design for a glasses-free, multiperspective, 3-D video screen,
which are like tiny liquid-crystal displays (LCDS) positioned between the light source and the lens. Patterns of light and dark on the first modulator effectively turn it into a bank of slightly angled light emitters that is,
The screen combines two lenticular lenses the type of striated transparent sheets used to create crude 3-D effects in,
Exploiting redundancy For every frame of video, each modulator displays six different patterns which together produce eight different viewing angles:
But like the researchersprototype monitors, the projector takes advantage of the fact that, as you move around an object,
but by tailoring their algorithm to the architecture of the graphics processing units designed for video games,
Their system can receive data in the form of eight images per frame of video
One of the problems with LCD screens is that they don enable rue black A little light always leaks through even the darkest regions of the display. ormally you have contrast of,
Again, the researchers have developed an algorithm that can calculate those patterns on the fly. As content creators move to so-called uad HD, video with four times the resolution of today high-definition video, the combination of higher contrast and higher resolution could make a commercial version of the researcherstechnology appealing to theater owners,
and project through it and use this software algorithm, and you end up with a 4k image.
Spreading pixels Oliver Cossairt, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern University, once worked for a company that was attempting to commercialize glasses-free 3-D projectors. hat
is the prototype screen. here is this invariant of optical systems that says that if you take the area of the plane
We couldn figure out a way around that. hey came up with a screen that instead of stretching the image
which is what projection optics does moved essentially the pixels away from each other, Cossairt continues. hat allowed them to break this invariance
Think of it as a reverse crane says Glass who invented the core BAT technology. A crane has a nice stationary component
Next year the BAT will test its ability to power microgrids at a site south of Fairbanks Alaska in an 18-month trial funded by the Alaska Energy Authority.
which can be difficult to maneuver around certain sites. The modular BAT Rein says packs into two midsize shipping containers for transport
Target sites include areas where large diesel generators provide power such as military bases and industrial sites as well as island and rural communities in Hawaii northern Canada India Brazil and parts of Australia.
When the anemometers detect optimal wind speed a custom algorithm adjusts the system s tethers to extend
But perhaps the most logical added payload Glass says is Wi-fi technology: If you have a remote village for instance he says you can put a Wi-fi unit up outside the village
and you re much higher than you d get with a traditional tower. That would allow you to cover six to eight times the area you would with a tower.
At Greentown employees engage in computer modeling and design build electronics and circuit boards develop algorithms
and test winches and cables Looking back Glass credits his undergraduate years on MIT s Solar Electrical Vehicle Team a student organization that builds and races solar
Among the tools that computer scientists are developing to make the profusion of video more useful are algorithms for activity recognition or determining
At the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition in June Hamed Pirsiavash a postdoc at MIT and his former thesis advisor Deva Ramanan of the University of California at Irvine will present a new activity
-recognition algorithm that has several advantages over its predecessors. One is that the algorithm s execution time scales linearly with the size of the video file it s searching.
That means that if one file is 10 times the size of another the new algorithm will take 10 times as long to search it not 1000 times
as long as some earlier algorithms would. Another is that the algorithm is able to make good guesses about partially completed actions
so it can handle streaming video. Partway through an action it will issue a probability that the action is of the type that it s looking for.
It may revise that probability as the video continues but it doesn t have to wait until the action is complete to assess it.
Finally the amount of memory the algorithm requires is fixed regardless of how many frames of video it s already reviewed.
The grammar of actionenabling all of these advances is the appropriation of a type of algorithm used in natural language processing the computer science discipline that seeks techniques for interpreting sentences written in natural language.
For any given action Pirsiavash and Ramanan s algorithm must thus learn a new grammar.
Pirsiavash and Ramanan feed their algorithm training examples of videos depicting a particular action and specify the number of subactions that the algorithm should look for.
But they don t give it any information about what those subactions are or what the transitions between them look like.
Pruning possibilitiesthe rules relating subactions are the key to the algorithm s efficiency. As a video plays the algorithm constructs a set of hypotheses about
which subactions are being depicted where and it ranks them according to probability. It can t limit itself to a single hypothesis as each new frame could require it to revise its probabilities.
The researchers tested their algorithm on eight different types of athletic endeavor such as weightlifting and bowling with training videos culled from Youtube.
They found that according to metrics standard in the field of computer vision their algorithm identified new instances of the same activities more accurately than its predecessors.
Pirsiavash is interested particularly in possible medical applications of action detection. The proper execution of physical-therapy exercises for instance could have a grammar that s distinct from improper execution;
Action-detection algorithms could also help determine whether for instance elderly patients remembered to take their medication
if they didn t. We ve known for a very long time that the things that people do are made up of subactivities says David Forsyth a professor of computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
and nobody has given us labeled training data saying There are two pieces in a dive and seven pieces in a weightlifting and 21 pieces in a hammer throw and these are their names.
The MIT team designed their liposomes to carry doxorubicin inside the particle core, with erlotinib embedded in the outer layer.
In most photovoltaic (PV) materials, a photon (a packet of sunlight) delivers energy that excites a molecule,
Van Voorhis used experimental data gathered in samples specially synthesized by Baldo and Timothy Swager, MIT John D. Macarthur Professor of Chemistry.
The researchers are pleased with the agreement between their experimental and theoretical data especially given the systems being modeled.
and Computer science and a co-author on the new paper. There s actually not that much at five feet around you.
The researchers also developed an algorithm that determines the optimal pattern for the sensors distribution.
In essence the algorithm maximizes the number of different distances between arbitrary pairs of sensors. With his new colleagues at Lincoln Lab Krieger has performed experiments at radar frequencies using a one-dimensional array of sensors deployed in a parking lot
#Computer system automatically solves word problems Researchers in MIT Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory, working with colleagues at the University of Washington, have developed a new computer system that can automatically solve the type of word problems common in introductory algebra classes.
In the near term, the work could lead to educational tools that identify errors in studentsreasoning
an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and lead author on the new paper, the new work is in the field of emantic parsing,
or translating natural language into a formal language such as arithmetic or formal logic. Most previous work on semantic parsing including his own has focused on individual sentences,
a professor of computer science and engineering and one of his two thesis advisors, and by the University of Washington Yoav Artzi and Luke Zettlemoyer.
The researchers will present their work at the annual meeting of the Association for Computational linguistics in June.
One is the computer algebra system Macsyma, whose initial development at MIT in the 1960s was a milestone in artificial-intelligence research.
Kushman found a website on which algebra students posted word problems they were having difficulty with,
a professor of computer science of the University of Southern California. he approach of building a generative story of how people get from text to answers is a great idea.
but it can benefit from a bunch of extra data that you haven labeled in detail. a
we need ways to monitor neural function deep in the brain with spatial, temporal, and functional precision, he says.
The researchers also developed an algorithm that lets them calculate the precise amount of dopamine present in each fraction of a cubic millimeter of the ventral striatum.
An area known as the nucleus accumbens core, known to be one of the main targets of dopamine from the VTA,
And we have a solution. ompared to our competitors at the panel level, we can recover twice as much energy under partial shading conditions, at a fraction of existing costs, added Arthur Chang,
an MIT Phd student in electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) who invented the technology. With the prize money, the team including students from MIT, the California Institute of technology,
Existing solutions for partially shaded solar panels optimize power at the panel level. But these bulky oxesrely on costly energy storage components
The idea is that providing power balance for individual PV cells instead of for an entire panel allows for finer tuning of power optimization. hen youe at the cell level,
an EECS Phd student studying power electronics, said during the team pitch. t empowers users to build their own grid, from the ground up,
which is developing smart LED LIGHTS that can wirelessly connect to the Internet and change colors to match people moods p
which houses computers for automation and control, and expandable 20,000-gallon treatment units. In these units, microbes called xoelectrogensexecute a unique process, electromethanogenesis which is being used for the first time ever in treating wastewater.
Depending on several site factors, this produces anywhere from 30 to 400 kilowatts of electricity. Treated wastewater exits the reactor with 80 to 90 percent of pollutants removed,
Ecovolt, on the other hand, is applicable to a range of sites, and has demonstrated a more robust treatment process,
and provides real-time data thanks to using exoelectrogens as sensors. hese bugs are generating electricity,
But the core technology began as a bit of aerospace ingenuity and has since found its way back to space.
The researchers also believe this test could be exploited to screen for new drugs that inhibit
Another important application for this test could be studying fundamental biological processes such as how cells recruit backup repair systems to fill in
and to monitor whether treatments are having the desired effect according to the researchers who describe the device in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences the week of April 21.
Long-term MRIMRI uses magnetic fields and radio waves that interact with protons in the body to produce detailed images of the body s interior.
and sciences at MIT gets about 100 emails daily from people across the world interested in his bionic limbs.
Then algorithms generate fluctuating power depending on terrain to propel a wearer up and forward. When fitting the prosthesis to patients prosthetists can program appropriate stiffness
and power throughout all the stages of a gait using software created by Herr s group a process the company calls Personal Bionic Tuning.
Several of these prototype designs with exposed mechanical parts and looping wires are on permanent display at the MIT Media Lab. Still today Herr can remember stepping into the group s first bionic leg prototype and then back
Herr s experience commercializing a computer-controlled knee joint designed by his group for the Icelandic company Ossur inspired him to launch iwalk in 2006.
One could just bolt these pieces together to produce a humanoid hardware platform Herr says.
based on computer analysis. But translating that theoretical work into a practical material proved daunting: In order to reach the desired energy density the amount of energy that can be stored in a given weight
what their computer simulations showed they would need, the material nevertheless seemed to deliver the heat storage they were aiming for.
smartphone-readable particle that they believe could be deployed to help authenticate currency, electronic parts, and luxury goods, among other products.
without impacting smartphone readout or requiring a complete redesign of the system. Another advantage to these particles is that they can be read without an expensive decoder like those required by most other anti-counterfeiting technologies.
Using a smartphone camera equipped with a lens offering twentyfold magnification anyone could image the particles after shining near-infrared light on them with a laser pointer.
The researchers are also working on a smartphone app that would further process the images and reveal the exact composition of the particles.
The study covers prices of thousands of products, drawing on data from four major international firms:
Online pricing data was crapedusing a harvesting technique that Rigobon and Cavallo first developed for the illion Prices Project,
They would also like to collect more data illuminating how companies set prices when new goods are introduced first.
and privacy filters for display screens. The work is described in a paper appearing this week in the journal Science,
The filtering could also be applied to display screens on phones or computers so only those viewing from directly in front could see them.
Using a computer algorithm that traces the shapes of neurons and groups them based on structural similarity,
the researchers sorted more than 350 mouse retinal neurons into 15 types, including six that were unidentified previously.
Using a computer algorithm, they traced along the many branches, known as dendrites, that extend from each cell to connect with other cells.
the researchers used a computer program to align and condense each one so that the arbors were represented by smaller,
the computer program correctly classified all of the known neurons. Among the randomly selected neurons, some ended up being grouped with the known types,
who was involved not in this research. hat nice here is that this is a comprehensive approach to try to get a good amount of data on many different cells.
The researchers believe there may be still more types of neurons that did not appear in their data set
By programming cells to produce different types of curli fibers under certain conditions the researchers were able to control the biofilms properties
Results can be plugged into the company software, which tracks contaminated products and can provide analytics on
and paper or spreadsheets to track contamination hich makes it nearly impossible to gather large amounts of data,
nature provides a rich database of phages which target desired bacteria. Thus, by sourcing from nature, we can adapt the platform to other pathogens and applications,
which excites electrons that flow through the thylakoid membranes of the chloroplast. The plant captures this electrical energy
We re excited about soft robots for a variety of reasons says Daniela Rus a professor of computer science
and engineering director of MIT s Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory and one of the researchers who designed
and Computer science and lead author on the new paper where he s joined by Rus and postdoc Cagdas D. Onal.
He used the lab s 3-D printer to build the mold in which he cast the fish s tail
Video Melanie Gonick All of our algorithms and control theory are designed pretty much with the idea that we ve got rigid systems with defined joints says Barry Trimmer a biology professor at Tufts University who specializes in biomimetic soft robots.
and survive at a distant site, the researchers say. Many of the proteins overexpressed in the more aggressive tumors are activated by the same cellular signaling pathways,
It would be impractical to do this kind of large-scale protein screen in patients, but it could be possible to test samples for certain proteins using antibodies,
Custom software reads the driver s braking habits and optimizes the system. The startup also collects operational data from the vehicles to inform fleet managers of the best vehicles for the technology usually ones traveling in the stop
-and-go traffic of urban areas. Over the past year XL Hybrids co-founded by Clay Siegert SM 09
With the Internet boom in full swing he co-founded a couple of dot-coms but began viewing climate change and energy as the real challenges of my generation.
When we invented this new class of synthetic biomarker we used a highly specialized instrument to do the analysis says Bhatia the John and Dorothy Wilson Professor of Health Sciences and Technology and Electrical engineering and Computer science.
The simple readout could even be transmitted to a remote caregiver by a picture on a mobile phone.
These particles congregate at tumor sites where MMPS cleave hundreds of peptides which accumulate in the kidneys
For example the program has produced the first of a planned series of science centers a simple concrete building outfitted with computers
The program links MIT teachers and mentors to Tibetan community programs through Skype supplemented by regular travel by Dalai lama Center staff alumni and students who among other work teach weeklong leadership
and a bicycle-powered charging system for cellphones and lanterns. Davide Zaccagnini a vascular surgeon and program manager for the Science Monks and Technology Leadership Program says he was motivated to join because
Patients play a video game by maneuvering the robot arm, with the robot assisting as needed. While the robot has mainly been used as a form of physical therapy,
As a patient moves the robot arm, the robot collects motion data, including the patient arm speed, movement smoothness, and aim.
For the current study, the researchers collected such data from 208 patients who worked with the robot seven days after suffering a stroke,
The researchers created an artificial neural network map that relates a patient motion data to a score that correlates with a standard clinical outcome measurement.
#Cochlear implants with no exterior hardware Cochlear implants medical devices that electrically stimulate the auditory nerve have granted at least limited hearing to hundreds of thousands of people worldwide who otherwise would be totally deaf.
low-power signal processing chip that could lead to a cochlear implant that requires no external hardware.
both in MIT Department of Electrical engineering and Computer science, will also exhibit a prototype charger that plugs into an ordinary cell phone
and can recharge the signal processing chip in roughly two minutes. he idea with this design is that you could use a phone, with an adaptor,
Lowering the power requirements of the converter chip was the key to dispensing with the skull-mounted hardware.
and found a low-power way to implement it in hardware. Two of their collaborators at MEEI Konstantina Stankovic, an ear surgeon who co-led the study with Chandrakasan,
It a window into processes happening at the millisecond and millimeter scale, says Aude Oliva, a principal research scientist in MIT Computer science and Artificial intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL.
but the MIT researchers are the first to use it to link fmri and MEG data from human subjects.
and twice in an MEG scanner giving the researchers a huge set of data on the timing and location of brain activity.
Millisecond by millisecond By analyzing this data, the researchers produced a timeline of the brain object-recognition pathway that is very similar to results previously obtained by recording electrical signals in the visual cortex of monkeys,
The MIT researchers are now using representational similarity analysis to study the accuracy of computer models of vision by comparing brain scan data with the modelspredictions of how vision works.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011