Simultaneously, the cost of 3-D printers has fallen sufficiently to make them household consumer items.
Now a team of MIT researchers has opened up a new frontier in 3-D printing:
From the discovery of core-forming process for bead-making in ancient Egypt, through the invention of the metal blow pipe during Roman times, to the modern industrial Pilkington process for making large-scale flat glass;
Like other 3-D printers now on the market, the device can print designs created in a computer-assisted design program,
producing a finished product with little human intervention. In the present version molten glass is loaded into a hopper in the top of the device after being gathered from a conventional glassblowing kiln.
far higher than the temperatures used for other 3-D printing. The stream of glowing molten glass from the nozzle resembles honey as it coils onto a platform,
Klein says the printing system is an example of multidisciplinary work facilitated by MIT flexible departmental boundaries in this case
the lab assembled three-dimensional computer models of illared graphene nanostructures, akin to the boron nitride structures modeled in a previous study to analyze heat transfer between layers. his time we were interested in a comprehensive understanding of the elastic and inelastic properties
Rice university, the National Science Foundation (NSF), the National institutes of health and IBM-shared University Research Award supported the research.
The researchers used the NSF-supported DAVINCI supercomputer administered by Rice Ken Kennedy Institute for Information technology n
a core faculty member at Harvard Wyss Institute, has developed now a strategy that has improved experimentally bone repair by boosting the survival rate of transplanted stem cells
and metamaterials offers tantalizing future prospects for technologies such as high resolution optical microscopes and superfast optical computers.
At the macroscale, among other applications, invisibility cloaks could prove useful for 3d displays. This research was funded by the DOE Office of Science a
and metamaterials offers tantalizing future prospects for technologies such as high resolution optical microscopes and superfast optical computers.
At the macroscale, among other applications, invisibility cloaks could prove useful for 3d displays. This research was funded by the DOE Office of Science i
and re-scan it repeating the process until the desired spatial resolution is achieved before combining the data from each scan using a computer algorithm.
Using mouse models, the researchers tested their sunblock against direct ultraviolet rays and their ability to cause sunburn.
The main limitation to mapping large parts of the brain is the analysis of the data obtained with electron microscopes.
and the second strategy is to develop new algorithms to reconstruct the brain tissue data in a more automated way.
The research group already recruited large populations of students to help determine the connectome of a part of the mouse retina
y using machine learning algorithms, we were able to develop a way to automatically classify brain tissue containing all the synapses.
bringing the analysis step closer to data generation. The researchers first trained their system with existing data sets from retina and cortex before performing an automated test of new data.
Helmstaedter: e were amazed that the new algorithm actually works extremely well for retinal and cortical data.
This is real breakthrough, and an important step towards making connectome analysis a ready-to-use technique in neuroscience labs around the world
said Conor Walsh, a contributing author of the study, a Wyss Institute core faculty member, an assistant professor of mechanical and biomedical engineering AT SEAS,
The Daimler Inspiration Truck will be tested rigorously on Nevada roads as the company gathers data about the truck performance
and monitors to locate other vehicles on the road enables the Inspiration Trucks to remain in their lane,
As Peter Stone, a University of Texas computer scientist put it, efore it became clear that the technical issues could be addressed,
Follow@smartccouncil on Twitter. Related articlesercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion Research Vehicle World premiere (video) Mercedes-benz rolling out a lineup of city-friendly hybrid EVS c
All the data in one placesmart meters and growing grids create a lot of data. Schneider Electric is also helping Spain Iberdrola keep better track of 11 million smart meters and advanced monitoring devices.
and analyze data from the meters. This gives the utility better data faster. Customers also get more timely information about their energy usage,
which helps them conserve and better manage their utility bills. System-wide management and consistencysnohomish County PUD, a utility north of Seattle that ranks as one of the largest in the U s.,is upgrading
Once the upgrade is complete management staff will have only one main system to learn. The project will integrate a new outage management system with a distribution management system
Itron adaptive technology automatically routes data over the best communications system--radio frequency or power line carrier--at the time for the data and the requirements of the application.
gather real-time data in an effort to prevent outages. By being able to view and analyze data in real-time,
the project will effectively give the company an early warning-system system. When potential faults, oscillations or other disturbances are detected,
###Kevin Ebi is a staff writer and social media coordinator for the Council. Follow@smartccouncil on Twitter.
Get the Smart cities Readiness Guide Ready to upgrade your electrical grid? Get your free copy of the Smart cities Readiness Guide,
#New Memristors Could Usher in Bionic Brains Last month we saw researchers in the US push the envelope of nonvolatile memory devices based on resistance switching to the point where they are now capable of mimicking the neurons in the human brain.
The researchers believe that these nanoscale memory devices promise a future of artificial intelligence network that could enable a so-called bionic brain.
Nili suggests that one of the potential applications for these nano-memory devices could be in replicating the human brain outside of the human body.
#A Computer That Can Sniff out Septic Shock Dr. David Hagar treats dozens of patients each day at the intensive care unit at John Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.
A group of computer scientists at John Hopkins University partnered with Hagar, and created an algorithm that can predict septic shock
and give clinicians more time to treat someone at risk. Septic shock, which is the third level of sepsis,
The computer system sifted through a dataset of over 16,000 patient electronic health records, which includes a historical profile of blood pressure, heart rate,
The algorithm combined 27 of the most common measurements used to diagnose septic shock and generated a targeted real-time warning score,
One hurdle that needs to be overcome is that electronic health data can be challenging to work with,
explains the study lead computer engineer, Suchi Saria. Part of the difficulty is that there may be systematic bias in the medical information recorded.
These cases hurt the algorithm performance. Current computerized clinical decision support (CDS) models that utilize electronic health records do not account for this kind of censored information.
Saria and her team address this problem by modifying pattern recognition algorithms so the computer can avoid mistaking high-risk patients for low-risk ones.
This computer system can be tailored to many different medical conditions including acute lung injury, pneumonia, and post-rehabilitation illnesses like neuropathy. e are at a very exciting time,
and more data is being collected on the electronic health records, and now our algorithms are reaching a point where they can be a real aid to clinicians. t
#See through Walls by the Glow of Your Wi-fi It used to be that a bad guy besieged by police could just shoot out the lights and hide in the dark.
As if it weren enough that today cornered malefactors have to worry about night vision goggles, tomorrow thugs may also have to worry about the soft radio glow of wireless routers and mobile communications towers.
Researchers at University college London (UCL) have devised a system for detecting the Doppler shifts of ubiquitous Wi-fi
and mobile telephone signals to eepeople moving, even behind masonry walls 25 centimeters thick. The method
The UCL technique uses only passive radiationrom Wi-fi routers (using emissions in any of the IEEE 802.11 b, g, n, ac), ambient GSM and LTE mobile signals,
a reference channel, receiving the baseline signal from the Wi-fi access point or other RF source,
Tan and company built their igh Doppler resolution passive Wi-fi radaron two multi-frequency, software-defined, FPGA-based transceivers (National Instrumentsusrp,
or Universal Software Radio Peripheral. The system compares the reference and surveillance signals, interprets the very small frequency shifts,
along with a variety of signal data. The system is described in more detail in a paper that Tan and UCL colleagues Qingchao Chen, Karl Woodbridge,
so and developed computer models demonstrating that combining graphene with lithium might do the trick. Lithium, they predicted,
In a research paper available on arxiv, the researchers demonstrated in physical experiments that the computer models were indeed correct in their predictions.
#A Driving App That Crowdsources the Weather It a cold day in winter and youe driving on dry pavement when your dashboard flashes a warning:
It comes from Inrix, a road-data provider based near Seattle, and from its partner in the service, Global Weather Corporation.
Up until now, Inrix had gathered basic data from hundreds of millions of moving objects throughout the worldostly cell phones
Those companies, in turn, typically made it available through smartphone apps or dashboard consoles. The new service, called INRIX Road Weather, adds data gleaned from the actions of the caror instance,
the switching of its windshield wipershich would imply that it has started to rain. f several cars in a location show that a low temperature is kicking in,
we take in their position from GPS signals, data from our weather partner, and then say that at that spotithin 500 metershere is black ice,
safety patrols and law enforcement. he most important data come from a handful of car functions:
Auxiliary data might include barometric pressure, the temperature of the road itself (taken by infrared sensors), barometric pressure,
Graphene has long been pursued as a potential replacement for indium tin oxide (ITO) as a transparent electrode material for displays.
Graphene has long been pursued as a potential replacement for indium tin oxide (ITO) as a transparent electrode material for displays.
and have widespread rooftop, mobile, and spaceborne applications. They added that kirigami systems might also be phased useful for array radar and optical beam steering.
Right now, Fraunhofer is putting the film on small panels that can be glued to the inside of a car door,
#3-D Printing Software Turns Heart Scans into Surgical Models A new 3-D printing system can transform medical scans of a patient heart into a physical models that help
The efficient system relies on a computer algorithm that requires just a pinch of human guidance to figure out a patient heart structure from MRI scans.
The new software developed by MIT and the Boston Children Hospital, can correctly identify an individual heart anatomical structures by following the lead of a human expert who interprets a small patch equivalent to just one-ninth of the area of each cross section, according to an MIT press release.
and allowing the computer algorithm to infer the rest of the patient heart structure across the rest of the MRI scan 200 cross sections.
The software results were in agreement with human experts interpreting all 200 cross sections 90 percent of the time.
said Polina Golland, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT and leader of the project,
But the new software from a team led by Danielle Pace, an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science, managed to create a fairly accurate digital 3-D model of each patient heart in just an hour.
The 3-D printing process takes several additional hours. The researchers plan to report on their system at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention in October.
They hope to improve the software accuracy by examining patches that appear in several MRI cross sections.
Seven cardiac surgeons at Boston Children Hospital will also test the usefulness of 3-D printed heart models in a clinical study this fall.
either be based on physical 3-D printed models or virtual 3-D models, with the models based on either human expertise or the computer software.
But separate clinical trials aim to test how a personalized computer model for each individual patient could improve medical care,
The relentless advance of computing power over the past half-century has relied on constant miniaturization of field-effect transistors (FETS),
Transistors act like switches that flick on and off to represent data as zeroes and ones. A key challenge that FETS now face is reducing the power they consume.
UCSB Banerjee suggests that potential applications for these new TFETS may include ultra-low-power electronics and computing,
By taking a more camera-like approach to radio frequency imaging, essentially treating microwaves like waves of light
in the same way that Microsoft latest Xbox Kinect sensor works. The time of flight camera sends out bursts of microwaves
and at 41 x 41 pixels, it sufficient resolution o be able to see how many limbs a person has, according to MIT.
which means that it may not be scalable down to cellphone size. Obviously, this is a disappointment for those of us who were looking forward to regularly misusing this kind of technology,
pediatricians explained how hardware and software specialized for genetic analysis can provide such fast and lifesaving information.
The key piece of technology: A processor from the company Edico Genome that designed to handle the big data of genetics.
Lead researcher Stephen Kingsmore, a pediatrician and genomics expert at Children Mercy Hospital in Kansas city, explains that doctors typically run targeted genetic tests for specific diseases
Using Edico Genome DRAGEN processor, the researchers got this step down from 15 hours to 40 minutes.
After that, Kingsmore team used in-house software to search through the mutations for those associated with a disease that matched the baby symptoms.
noting that Children Mercy is going to make its software packages available as freeware by the end of the year.
The DRAGEN processor delivered its critical speed gains to the hospital servers thanks to its architecture,
which is designed to deal with genomic data, says Pieter van Rooyen, CEO of Edico Genome.
The data comes from the sequencing machine in a particular file format, which is streamed efficiently through the chip without caching,
Its algorithms are tailor-made to identify genetic mutations, and while these identification processes are ticking along the data is constantly being compressed
and written to disk. verything takes place roughly at the same time, van Rooyen tells Spectrum. Van Rooyen predicts that in a few years,
He envisions the DRAGEN processor outputting its analysis directly into a patient electronic medical record, where actionable intelligence would be flagged for the physician.
These machines accelerate charged particles using either a pulse of radio frequency radiation or a wakefield (using high energy unchesof electrons to blast a tunnel through plasma;
his proof-of-principle terahertz linear accelerator demonstrates the potential for an all-optical acceleration scheme that can be integrated readily into small-scale laboratories providing users with electron beams that will enable new experiments in ultrafast electron diffraction and X-ray production
#Bright blue PHOLEDS Almost Ready for TV A new energy-efficient organic LED (OLED) that glows a deep blue is finally close to meeting the most stringent U s. video display brightness requirements,
OLEDS have enabled a new generation of bright, high-quality, low-cost, power-efficient, flexible, lightweight flat panel displays.
Each pixel in an OLED display typically consists of red, green, and blue OLEDS that shine with different brightnesses to produce any desired color.
Green and red PHOLEDS are used already in smartphones and TVS leading to longer battery lives and lower electricity bills,
but developing the kind of bright deep blue PHOLEDS needed for video displays has proven challenging.
work sponsored by Universal Display Corporation and the U s. Air force. The researchers added their new lights nearly meet the most stringent requirements of the National Television systems Committee (NTSC),
#Computer Count of Huge Crowds Now Possible Getting a headcount of crowds numbering in the hundreds of thousands need not strain human eyes any longer.
New software has carried out the first automated crowd count on that scale ever by analyzing aerial photographs of a huge demonstration timesaving innovation that could eventually help save lives
The software, developed by University of Central Florida researchers, can drastically cut the time needed for crowd counts from a week to just half an hour.
and other dangers. utomated computer analysis of such large-scale and dense crowds has never been done before,
said Mubarak Shah, computer science professor and director of the Center for Research in Computer Vision at the University of Central Florida, in a press release.
Shah and his colleagues tested their software on aerial photographs of a demonstration involving thousands of people calling for the independence of the Catalonia province from Spain.
The software analyzed 67 aerial photographs taken of the demonstration in Barcelona and came up with a headcount within 30 minutes.
The images and software calculations were double checked by a team at the Pompeu Fabra University in Spain.
The timesaving software could also make accurate crowd counts a crucial new tool for managing large crowds.
For more, see the IEEE Spectrum article on how the Hajj crowds defy conventional computer simulations.
In what can be described as the Netscape moment for agriculture technology, the sector had a breakout year in 2014,
according to data we pulled from Crunchbase as well as press releases and SEC filings for last year. Surprisingly, this $2. 36 billion figure has surpassed now well-known sectors like fintech ($2. 1 billion) and the former queen of green
According to data from the Cleantech Group, investment in Agtech was relatively flat before 2013. Most tech innovation in agriculture was concentrated narrowly in biotechnology and seed genetics,
Taken together with our data (while recognizing our unique methodological approaches), Agtech subsequently grew 170 percent in 2014
and a confluence of new hardware technologies that freed computation from the desktop and automated multivariate collection of big data.
Finally, a confluence of hardware and software technology advances are creating opportunities to address this market.
Inexpensive and infinitely configurable mobile devices (enabled by advances in wireless and energy storage) have liberated technology from the office desktop.
inexpensive but sophisticated hardware sensors have emerged to automate the collection of massive data sets. With these technology shifts, exciting technologies like drones, AI, satellite mapping, robotics,
It hardware/software solution enables farmers to analyze every drop of water on their property,
Founders Fund, Li-Kai Shing Horizons Ventures, Jerry Yang (Yahoo), Marc Benioff (Salesforce), and Eduardo Saverin (Facebook).
And even further out there, New york-based Modern Meadow is printing meat and leather products with 3d technology.
#Apple Patents Learning Computer Vision For Gesture Control Apple has a new patent (via Appleinsider) for 3d gesture control,
specifically describing the tech used to help a computer identify hand motions made by a user.
meaning it would make gesture interaction theoretically less painful for users, and therefore more likely to be used at all.
The key innovation Apple made with the iphone interaction model was based getting touch input right its capacitive screens
#Square Brings Accountability To Email Marketing Square is in the process of building up a series of products and services that use its payments platform as a foundation.
is an email marketing tool gives physical businesses the same advantages of online stores. Square Marketing is a set of tools that lets brick
Email marketing has grown more sophisticated over the years, and the space is crowded with companies like Mailchimp, Marketo,
data. The tool allows users of Square payments services to click through an ngage your customerslink from their Insights dashboard,
which gives them an overview of their current business collated from data gathered via sales.
The dashboard has been around a while, but it has existed without a way to actually do anything about the trends it was telling businesses that they were experiencing.
They might bounce out to an email tool to craft a campaign and send it to a list of emails gathered via paper,
or by hand using clerks at the counter. A retail store I worked at used to gather them by requiring an email with every transaction
but that requirement can slow down transactions, and is really only practical if a user terminal was involved in the flow.
And half the time you end up with fake emails and unverifiable information. Square data is already easier to gather
and far more likely to be accurate because it tied directly to the customer payment accounts.
If theye paying by card the Square flow asks them for an email for a receipt
and because youe talking about money here people are more likely to give accurate info.
All of that leads to a Square business having a core list of emails for customers that is ready to act on.
Already youe far ahead of a dumb list of emails, which contain no such contextual data.
You can also add your own lists of emails gathered via conventional means. You can choose groups based on trends that youe seeing
and the type of campaign you want to create. If you have a loyal customer, youe going to want to send them notices of special events or community notices.
show you delivery data as well as eadnotifications for your emails. But Square takes the next step here by allowing you to actually see
if those customers take action on your email with a visit and a purchase. It hard to overstate the importance of being able to directly track the return on your investment in this email marketing by equating it with dollars spent in your establishment.
Unless youe been in small business retail or sales and have tried to craft a marketing campaign
This is the kind of thing that has made marketers so hot and bothered about the possibilities of beacons small devices that track visitors via apps installed on their smartphones.
But square does it without any additional hardware by leveraging the fact that they own the payments stack.
The emails are affordable, if a bit pricier than similar levels in services like Mailchimp. You can pay $0. 10 per email on an s you gobasis or $15/mo for unlimited emails to 500 customers.
The cost isn quite analogous to any other service because of Square unique ability to track customer visits
It lets them cut down on the number of moving parts they have to keep track of to make their email marketing effective.
a CRM, an email service and tracking software to attempt to link those emails to return customers hey can just click a link in the insights dashboard of their Square account.
Square says that sellers using the service have seen open and redemption rates that are double the ndustry averageand that Square sellers generated almost $1m in sales tied to promo redemptions.
slick analytics tools and cleverly executed email marketing will lead to new business, not just retention and satisfaction.
The setup and execution of a campaign are so simple already that it makes sense to let those sellers using mobile devices primarily to collect campaigns to do it just as easy as those sitting at their desktops.
and they can do it right from their phones that a tectonic shift in that arena. The suite of tools Square is building out like Register
So whether that resonates with new users will be key i
#Apple Patents A System To Broadcast Your Availability For Calls Apple has a new patent,
location and cell network strength to automatically determine whether youe available for a call and display that information to friends.
The new Apple patent details a system that would use all relevant signals from a mobile phone,
with the user of the phone sending status able to specify which contacts specifically should be able to have access.
It would appear in contact cards on the iphone, with status polling happening on demand to ensure youe looking at current information.
and data analysis can more reliably predict what youe doing with your phone at any given time.
Apple could probably expect users to play along. Still, the system ultimately depends on the calling party respecting the message,
The Bluetooth-powered device can stick to your wall or you can put it on any surface.
said Han. he devices can be configured easily with just a smartphone app. The separation of the control plane from the power plane makes a foundation for fully configurable ecosystem.
-and-forget nature of the connection software. Each object connects to the controller app automatically with no pairing
a feature that will impress folks who have tried to connect to Bluetooth light bulbs in the past. The martphone-centricapproach lets the company add tools like the Control to the mix as well.
#Gaming Startup Code Kingdoms Exits Beta On A Quest To Get Kids Coding Changes to the computing curriculum in England,
which arrived last September requiring schools to teach bona fide programming skills to kids as young as five,
Its educational Javascript teaching software targets the six-to 13-year-old age-range and can be played either as a web app via the Code Kingdomssite,
or as an ios app. There are actually two versions of Code Kingdoms: one that free for schools to use,
which strips out the gameplay element entirely so it becomes purely a simplified educational tool for teaching Javascript;
and another version that kids can play at home in their spare time which is first and foremost a game,
and his cofounder spending time volunteering in schools teaching kids programming, as part of corporate social responsibility programs when they worked for Intel and ARM.
In schools they were using the MIT graphical programming language Scratch, but spotted what they saw as an opportunity to update Scratch approach
and teach a real programing language, rather than a pseudo-language. ost things out there are designed for teachers,
so they get excited about learning to code computer science, and then hopefully go on because theye excited to actually explore it as a career,
He argues that Scratch is no longer up to scratch for England schools as it does not teach a real programming language which is a requirement of the new curriculum.
having being built for an earlier, desktop computing world, rather than the modern mobile-focused space.
which involves both DIY hardware and learn to code software, and similarly offers a graphical interface to simplify programming.
But Targett argues Kano is a platform on which the Code Kingdoms product could happily sit.
So doesn seem them as like-for-like competition. He says Code Kingdoms is also working with various other learn to code outreach organisations, such as Code Club and Teach First,
Of course it is also possible to learn Java coding via making Minecraft mods but Targett reckons that uite a step upin terms of ability required. e want to bridge that gap,
So, while it giving its software to schools for free it aiming to monetize via the play at-home game version of the product using schools as its low-cost distribution mechanism to get in front of lots of kidseyeballs.
In future it plans to sell premium content for the non-schools version of its software to kidsparents,
says Targett. e see schools as a channel to acquire users, he notes. he kids will discover the product in their class
and playwe thought this was a really good way to acquire users very cheaply that are engaged very.
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