All have shipped their inventions to Delhi where they will be on display March 22 for scientists engineers and dignitaries.
and transferred to the fiber-optic cable system--similar in some ways to a data transmission line--can heat up the reaction chamber to over 600 degrees Fahrenheit to treat the waste material disinfect pathogens in both feces and urine and produce char.
While the current toilet has been created to serve four to six people a day a larger facility that could serve several households simultaneously is under design with the target of meeting a cost level of five cents a day per user set by the Gates Foundation.
His group sampled the waters in dozens of sites from New york to northwestern Minnesota; they found 83 sites that were infested.
The scientists checked out Lakes Michigan Superior and many interior lakes and lingered two years in Voyageurs national park on Minnesota's border with Canada to examine Bythotrephes'long-term effect on the native zooplankton.
They also compared their measurements with data from as far back as 2001 and found that some native zooplankton species had nosedived
North american zooplankton like many Daphnia and Bosmina species which are favorites on Bythotrephes'menu have similar hardware
Sensor-based irrigation systems show potential to increase greenhouse profitability Wireless sensor-based irrigation systems can offer significant benefits to greenhouse operators.
and then applied the methodology to data from gardenia production in a Georgia nursery. The most convenient method (of calculating profitability) is converting all revenues and costs to constant periodic payments;
The scientists found that controlling irrigation using data from moisture sensors led to substantial reductions in both production time and crop losses.
After weeks of programming I eventually got to the point where the robot could paint shapes and lines in a particular color.
offers the possibility that such devices may soon be as small as a typical smartphone.
and that excites the quartz tuning fork.""The tuning fork is a piezoelectric element, so when the wave causes it to vibrate,
Tittel is the J. S. Abercrombie Professor in Electrical and Computer engineering and a professor of bioengineering.
which has limited options for B-cell-based vaccine programming. Using Cellsqueeze circumvents this problem, and by being able to separately configure delivery and activation,
#New Algorithm Lets Robots Autonomously Plan for Tasks Researchers from MIT have developed a new algorithm that lets autonomous robots divvy up assembly tasks on the fly,
This week, at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineersinternational Conference on Robotics and Automation, a group of MIT researchers were nominated for two best-paper awards for a new algorithm that can significantly reduce robot teamsplanning time.
The plan the algorithm produces may not be perfectly efficient, but in many cases, the savings in planning time will more than offset the added execution time.
Courtesy of the researchersthe researchers also tested the viability of their algorithm by using it to guide a crew of three robots in the assembly of a chair. ee really excited about the idea of using robots in more extensive ways in manufacturing,
says Daniela Rus, the Andrew and Erna Viterbi Professor in MIT Department of Electrical engineering and Computer science,
whose group developed the new algorithm. or this, we need robots that can figure things out for themselves more than current robots do.
We see this algorithm as a step in that direction. us is joined on the paper by three researchers in her lab first author Mehmet Dogar
and Andrew Spielberg and Stuart Baker, both graduate students in electrical engineering and computer science. Grasping consequencesthe problem the researchers address is one in
Principled procrastinationthe algorithm begins by devising a plan that completely ignores the grasping problem. This is the equivalent of a plan in
Then the algorithm considers the transition from one stage of the operation to the next from the perspective of a single robot
If the algorithm were permitted to run to completion its last few grasp decisions might require the modification of every robot behavior at every step of the assembly process,
In some, they found that their algorithm could, in minutes, produce a workable plan that involved just a few drops,
But their algorithm could still produce a workable plan. ith an elegant heuristic approach to a complex planning problem,
Rus group has shown an important step forward in multirobot cooperation by demonstrating how three mobile arms can figure out how to assemble a chair,
We have an array of emitters that can be thought of as a dot matrix-printer printer, where you would be able to individually control each emitter to print deposits of nanofibers.
Melanie Gonick/MIT (with computer simulations from Alexei Bylinkskii) Friction and force fieldsthe team simulated friction at the nanoscale by first engineering two surfaces to be placed in contact:
#Engineers Develop a Computer That Operates on Water Researchers at Stanford university have developed a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets.
Their goal is to design a new class of computers that can precisely control and manipulate physical matter.
Computers and water typically don mix, but in Manu Prakash lab, the two are one and the same.
and his students have built a synchronous computer that operates using the unique physics of moving water droplets.
The computer is nearly a decade in the making incubated from an idea that struck Prakash
The work combines his expertise in manipulating droplet fluid dynamics with a fundamental element of computer science an operating clock. n this work,
Because of its universal nature, the droplet computer can theoretically perform any operation that a conventional electronic computer can crunch,
or to operate word processors on this, Prakash said. ur goal is to build a completely new class of computers that can precisely control
and manipulate physical matter. Imagine if when you run a set of computations that not only information is processed
but physical matter is manipulated algorithmically as well. We have made just this possible at the mesoscale. The ability to precisely control droplets using fluidic computation could have a number of applications in high-throughput biology and chemistry,
and possibly new applications in scalable digital manufacturing. The crucial clock For nearly a decade since he was in graduate school,
Computer clocks are responsible for nearly every modern convenience. Smartphones, DVRS, airplanes, the Internet without a clock, none of these could operate without frequent and serious complications.
Nearly every computer program requires several simultaneous operations each conducted in a perfect step-by-step manner. A clock makes sure that these operations start
and stop at the same times, thus ensuring that the information synchronizes. The results are dire if a clock isn present.
Prakash explained. he reason computers work so precisely is that every operation happens synchronously; it what made digital logic so powerful in the first place,
A magnetic clock Developing a clock for a fluid-based computer required some creative thinking.
allowing observation of computation as it occurs in real time. The presence or absence of a droplet represents the 1s and 0s of binary code
and the clock ensures that all the droplets move in perfect synchrony, and thus the system can run virtually forever without any errors. ollowing these rules,
feedback and cascadability hallmarks of scalable computation. A simple-state machine including 1-bit memory storage (known as lip-flop is demonstrated also using the above basic building blocks.
Prakash said the most immediate application might involve turning the computer into a high-throughput chemistry and biology laboratory.
and the droplet computer offers unprecedented control over these interactions. From the perspective of basic science, part of why the work is so exciting
is that it opens up a new way of thinking of computation in the physical world.
Although the physics of computation has been applied previously to understand the limits of computation, the physical aspects of bits of information has never been exploited as a new way to manipulate matter at the mesoscale (10 microns to 1 millimeter).
Right now, anyone can put these circuits together to form a complex droplet processor with no external control something that was a very difficult challenge previously
computation takes a special place. We are trying to bring the same kind of exponential scale up because of computation we saw in the digital world into the physical world
#Researchers Increase Energy-Burning Brown Fat cells A team of researchers has discovered a way to increase energy-burning human brown fat cells
piston-driven engine that generates electricity causing a light to flash, and a rotary engine that drives a miniature car.
With its current power output, the floating evaporation engine could supply small floating lights or sensors at the ocean floor that monitor the environment,
Wright team is now looking to find out how easy it is for users. The USAID competition was intended actually for systems built for individual farms,
and provide backup for renewable energy sources that produce intermittent output, such as wind and solar power. But Chiang says the technology is suited also well to applications where weight
The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards he Internet of thingsthe idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment,
and even livestock would have embedded their own sensors that report information directly to networked servers,
an MIT graduate student in electrical engineering and computer science and first author on the new paper. e need to regulate the input to extract the maximum power,
This advance has the potential to increase the data transmission rates for the fiber optic cables that serve as the backbone of the internet, cable wireless and landline networks.
The new study presents a solution to a longstanding roadblock to increasing data transmission rates in optical fiber:
which in turn extends how far signals can travel in optical fiber without needing a repeater, said Nikola Alic, a research scientist from the Qualcomm Institute, the corresponding author on the Science paper and a principal of the experimental effort.
These regenerators are effectively supercomputers and must be applied to each channel in the transmission. The electronic regeneration in modern lightwave transmission that carries between 80 to 200 channels also dictates the cost and,
The frequency comb described in this paper ensures that the signal distortions called the rosstalkthat arises between bundled streams of information traveling long distances through the optical fiber are predictable,
In this study, we present a method for leveraging the crosstalk to remove the power barrier for optical fiber
a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer engineering at UC San diego and the senior author on the Science paper. ur approach conditions the information before it is sent even,
Pitch Perfect Data transmission The UC San diego researchersapproach is akin to a concert master who tunes multiple instruments in an orchestra to the same pitch at the beginning of a concert.
In an optical fiber information is transmitted through multiple communication channels that operate at different frequencies. The electrical engineers used their frequency comb to synchronize the frequency variations of the different streams of optical information,
called the ptical carrierspropagating through an optical fiber. This approach compensates in advance for the crosstalk that occurs between the multiple communication channels within the same optical fiber.
The frequency comb also ensures that the crosstalk between the communication channels is reversible. fter increasing the power of the optical signals we sent by 20 fold,
when it is sent through the optical fiber. With the frequency comb, the information can be unscrambled and fully restored at the receiving end of the optical fiber. e are preempting the distortion effects that will happen in the optical fiber,
said Bill Kuo, a research scientist at the Qualcomm Institute, who was responsible for the comb development in the group.
and Google Inc. for support of this work through a Google research grant. The University of California has filed a patent on the method and applications of frequency-referenced carriers for compensation of nonlinear impairments in transmission.
vercoming Kerr-induced capacity limit in optical fiber transmission, Science 26 june 2015: Vol. 348 no. 6242 pp. 1445-1448;
#MIT Chemists Develop a Quantum dot Spectrometer Researchers from MIT have designed a quantum dot spectrometer that is small enough to function within a smartphone, enabling portable light analysis. Instruments that measure the properties of light,
but MIT scientists have shown now they can create spectrometers small enough to fit inside a smartphone camera,
as well as in computer and television screens. sing quantum dots for spectrometers is such a straightforward application compared to everything else that wee tried to do,
such as labeling cells or new types of TV screens, exploit quantum dotsfluorescence a property that is much more difficult to control,
and placed on top of a photodetector such as the charge-coupled devices (CCDS) found in cellphone cameras. The researchers created an algorithm that analyzes the percentage of photons absorbed by each filter,
then recombines the information from each one to calculate the intensity and wavelength of the original rays of light.
which vary greatly in their ability to damage skin. he central component of such spectrometers the quantum dot filter array is fabricated with solution-based processing and printing,
one of their biggest limitations is the capacity of their tiny batteries to deliver enough power to transmit data.
which are needed for brief transmissions of data from wearable devices such as heart-rate monitors, computers, or smartphones, the researchers say.
They may also be useful for other applications where high power is needed in small volumes
nd it needs to broadcast data, for example using Wi-fi, over a long distance. At the moment, the coin-sized batteries used in many small electronic devices have limited very ability to deliver a lot of power at once,
which is what such data transmissions need. ong-distance Wi-fi requires a fair amount of power,
says Hunter, the George N. Hatsopoulos Professor in Thermodynamics in MIT Department of Mechanical engineering, ut it may not be needed for very long.
because of 3-D printing, is relatively cheap and fast. The robot body transitions from soft to hard, reducing the stress where the rigid electronic components join the body
senior author Robert J. Wood, Charles river Professor of Engineering and Applied sciences at the Harvard John A. Paulson School of engineering and Applied sciences (SEAS) and core faculty member at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired
a soft plungerlike body with three pneumatic legs and the rigid core module, containing power
and protected by a semisoft shield created with a 3-D printer. The design builds from previous work of co-author and chemist George Whitesides, the Woodford L. and Ann A. Flowers University Professor at Harvard.
This new design demonstrates the potential of 3-D printing in soft robotics. Traditional methods of fabrication custom molds and multistep assembly are costly and slow.
The ever-increasing variety of materials compatible with 3-D printers is allowing engineers to prototype new designs faster.
and 3-D printing is adding to the repertoire of things we can do in a really practical way,
These have been named Pc (4450)+ and Pc (4380), +the former being clearly visible as a peak in the data,
with the latter being required to describe the data fully. enefiting from the large data set provided by the LHC,
and the excellent precision of our detector, we have examined all possibilities for these signals, and conclude that they can only be explained by pentaquark states says LHCB physicist Tomasz Skwarnicki of Syracuse University. ore precisely the states must be formed of two up quarks,
The new data that LHCB will collect in LHC run 2 will allow progress to be made on these questions.
Nanoparticles made from these polymers have a hydrophobic core and a hydrophilic shell. Due to molecular-scale forces
BPA, another endocrine-disrupting synthetic compound widely used in plastic bottles and other resinous consumer goods, from thermal printing paper samples;
The researchers confirmed that a gene known as NF1 is a ajor playerin the development of skin cancer. he key finding is that roughly 45%of melanomas that do not harbor the known BRAF or NRAS mutations display loss of NF1 function,
This panel of genes can now be used in precision medicine to diagnose malignant lesions and can be applied to personalized cancer treatment.
and pressures at their cores necessary to trigger the thermonuclear reactions that power ormalstars. Theorists suggested in the 1960s that such objects should exist
#How 3g technology is improving HIV patient care in Kenya Kenya has an extensive population that infected with HIV and until very recently,
3g wireless technology. And it appears to be working. ART treatment is very laborious with a tremendous administrative burden.
The 3g technology has allowed clinics to computerize much of their administrative work, streamlining the submission process and saving time.
since patients need close supervision to ensure they are taking their medications on schedule. 3g technology is making a difference People in developed countries may think that 3g is outdated technology for smartphones,
Its effort is called Qualcomm Wireless Reach and so far has touched 40 countries through more than 100 projects.
Sesame street and other children programming is delivered on mobile devices to young children. A third-party study found children in the program showed significant gains in comprehension, language and word knowledge.
Business classes are delivered wirelessly to tablets, which also let women in the program communicate with mentors.
Masabi is known for its comprehensive mobile ticketing platform already in use by 22 transit agencies worldwide.
but does not have a user friendly reputation. A travel website article that provides step-by-step instructions for using the buses there is longer than most blog posts.
While the travel article points out a number of challenges, the issue of payment is one of the biggest.
The Mastercard/Masabi partnership allows riders to buy their tickets with a quick tap on their smartphone.
which allows people to store digital wallets securely on their mobile devices. Credit card and other payment information can be stored in the digital wallet
With the Mastercard/Masabi partnership, the smartphone is the common platform. The rechargeable contactless cards used by many transit systems also create two lines:
their smartphone is the kiosk. So far, the partners have announced only their joint work in Athens. On its own,
#IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is back: Could your city use some pro bono problem solvers?
But Council Lead Partner IBM has been doing just that with its Smarter Cities Challenge for the past four years.
IBM is continuing the grant program this year and is now accepting applications from local governments.
That's the idea behind IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge competitive grant program that has in the last four years helped 116 municipalities around the world solve critical local challenges.
How it works After intense preparation, six-person IBM pro bono consulting teams spend three weeks in the winning region analyzing all available data about a critical issue of the municipality's choosing for example
At the conclusion, IBM presents comprehensive recommendations for improving the delivery of services to citizens.
Past winners have seen results IBM notes that many of its past grant recipients have implemented their Smarter Cities Challenge recommendations
Nanjing, China implemented a social media program that engaged more than two-million people for the 2014 Youth Olympic games.
Syracuse, New york analyzes data to identify homes and neighborhoods that need revitalization. The effort has yielded a 69%increase in collection of delinquent property taxes and fees.
A program that works"We're extending IBM's Smarter Cities Challenge for one simple reason:
It works,"said Jennifer Crozier, IBM vice president of Global Citizenship Initiatives.""City leaders from around the world have told us how IBM's advice has helped them re-imagine how they can use data
and analytics to help them solve complex problems. We're told that IBM Smarter Cities Challenge is that rare program that brings people together
and gets long-term results --and we're proud of that. We invite mayors and regional leaders to apply with their toughest problems
Using data analysis technology from Council Lead Partner Microsoft, they are able to position officers where they will make the biggest difference.
How it works Microsoft Domain Awareness System gets most of the attention for its work in preventing crimes.
and other data so that they know where crimes are most likely to occur and assign officers accordingly.
While the analytics were built by Microsoft, New york city police officers guided the development. Police officers described their biggest pain points
the system can evaluate other data sources to determine if it actually dangerous, or if it a harmless type that naturally occurring
Doesn break the budget Microsoft is quick to point out that these benefits are available to cities of any size at a very modest investment.
And they already collect crime data. It the analytics that truly make all that useful,
The panels in the $3. 7 million project are linked to smart meters that increase their output
Solar Roadways developed its first road panel in 2009 and with the help of additional grants, finished up an experimental solar-paneled parking lot last year.
It plans to use money from its successful crowdfunding to take the version of the panels it used for that project into production i
Council Lead Partner Schneider Electric outlines the importance of data analytics and other technologies in transforming a dumb water network into an efficient,
On the technology side, smart water networks include the integration of supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA),
meter data management solutions, advanced metering and automated meter reading and more. Those all enhance the ability to prevent the water loss prevalent in dumb systems through leak detection and control, pressure management, equipment repairs and asset management,
###Kevin Ebi is a staff writer and social media coordinator for the Council. Follow@smartccouncil on Twitter.
More resources issecting ISO 37120: Gimme shelter, please! The homeless challenge cities facehow technology is helping cities help their homelessdata sharing helps NYC improve health and human services deliver d
The city has partnered with Council Lead Partners Cisco and Microsoft in addition to Fiberco, the Technology Innovation Agency and Nunnovation Africa Foundation on the program.
Council Lead Partners IBM Microsoft, andcisco and Associate Partner Siemens have been working with Chinese companies on national information security as well as technologies
and solutions to support the growth of smart cities there. Council Lead Partner Itron, meanwhile, completed installation of smart water, heat and gas meters and communication modules as well as its fixed network for Sino-Singapore Tianjin Eco city in Tianjin, China.
The need is certainly realone of the primary drivers for smart city upgrades throughout the world has been an influx of people from rural and outlying areas
"I don't want to live in a place where computers run my life. You're installing a whole bunch of computers
which will do a whole variety of things but you're forgetting that cities are for people.
and a processor to run the show. The Trakür is no exception. Developed in the suburbs of Buenos aires by INTA's rural engineering division, the yellow and white robot resembles a child's Tonka truck (the chassis) with a lighthouse (the sprayer) strapped to the top.
A wireless transmitter on the robot sends camera video and sensor data such as the unit's speed,
and the amount of remaining chemical to a computer outside the greenhouse, where an operator directs the Trakür virtually.
or cameras and algorithms or satellite GPS, this is guided by a cable that emits a electromagnetic signal.
use social media, work with police and get help from the general public. The digital guide is the outcome of O'Keeffe's collaboration with Studio Thick
and wants of users and service providers taken into account. Studio Thick's co-director Damon O'sullivan explains the key difference is about getting the model right from the start."
MPAN has been accessed 6, 000 times by users in Australia, the United kingdom, the United states and Germany.
The MPAN guide has proven so effective that the police are now directing the public to the site.
"Mapping the user journey Elsewhere, Melbourne's Huddle has launched recently Smart Blocks, a collaboration with the Australian government.
This action-oriented site helps apartment owners and renters implement energy efficiency in their shared property with templates
Before creating the site, the Melbourne studio conducted design research among the user group which included in depth interviews and mapping the user journey,
to gain insight into community-style apartments, and the needs and expectations of owners and managers.
which they tested with the users before launching the service.""Customer response to the service has been extremely positive,
Tech brings project filing mentality to email For now, at least, email remains one of the most widely methods of business collaboration and communication--for sharing business intelligence in its truest form.
But, oh, the pain of keeping it organized over time and over multiple projects. Addition of search tools and folders,
Enter Recommind's Decisiv Email, an add-on for Microsoft Outlook that manages messages from a collaborative perspective.
Decisiv Email offers more than a carbon-copy of what's going on it works behind-the-scenes to analyze
and tag messages --and then to file them and archive them appropriately. After making an assessment about the content,
the software either files that message in a folder that it believes relevant on its own
That's what makes Decisiv email different from the rules that you can add to your individual email system.
whether or not you were copied on the email. How automatic that tagging process winds up being is up to your individual organization:
to make sure that critical emails are accessible to all important personnel, mainly for operational purposes but also useful from a compliance standpoint.
said the idea behind Decisiv Email is to help make it simpler for organizations to find
that you have to use Outlook for the categorization to happen. Recommind is working on tablet and smartphone integration.
What about privacy, you ask? A tool like Decisiv Email will definitely make you think twice about what you write in an email or about
what you decide to exclude.""Everything that you send in corporate email will be available for people to see
if it is relevant for the business, "Schueren said d
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