Finding better ways for computers to see
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Building biologically-inspired vision systems
Living organisms are very good at making sense out of what they see. Designing machines that can recognize objects when seen from an angle or at various distances is challenging. Facial or gesture recognition is becoming common in our computing devices.
Reverse engineering the visual cortex
In an attempt to improve upon current state of the art visual systems, scientists are attempting to reverse engineer biological visual systems.
Huge advances have been recently made in visualizing the structure of our visual cortex (hardware) but the inner workings of the neuronal systems (software) remain a mystery. Mimicking natural selection, scientists are testing thousands of software algorithms at a time.
Using processors from game playing computers
Using graphical processors from game playing computers (such as those found in the PlayStation 3 and high-end NVIDIA graphics cards), scientists have discovered better visual modeling systems.
"The best of these models, drawn from thousands of candidates, outperformed a variety of state-of-the-art vision systems across a range of object and face recognition tasks."
"GPUs are a real game-changer for scientific computing. We made a powerful parallel computing system from cheap, readily available off-the-shelf components, delivering over hundred-fold speed-ups relative to conventional methods,"
Sources
PLoS Computational Biology published research paper
PhysOrg.com
Visual Neuroscience Group @ The Rowland Institute at Harvard
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Carbon nanotubes as energy storage
Courtesy ghutchis
Carbon nanotube springs may be better than batteries
What does a mousetrap have in common with a wind-up clock? A spring. A spring can provide energy to run a clock for days. A mouse trap spring can deliver a quick, deadly energy burst. Unlike batteries, energy stored in a spring can last hundreds of years and is usually not diminished by extreme cold or heat.
1000 times the energy density of a steel spring
MIT scientist, Carol Livermore, "did a combination of mathematical analysis and small-scale laboratory testing to determine the potential of carbon nanotubes to be used as springs for energy storage" MITnews.
Lots of basic research and engineering challenges remain
The nanospring concept is sound in theory and may even be patented. Working out the details to provide a working device using carbon-nano-tubes to store and re-deliver energy will require plenty of additional basic research, followed by engineering work.
Sources:
- "Storing elastic energy in carbon nanotubes," by F. A. Hill, Carol Livermore et al, in Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, Aug. 26, 2009, and
- "Modeling mechanical energy storage in springs based on carbon nanotubes," F. A. Hill, Carol Livermore et al, in Nanotechnology, June 3, 2009
- Small springs could provide big power MITnews.
Inner ear provides secret to better radio reception
Cochlea model for radio reception
Courtesy WelleschikA group of MIT engineers is looking to the human body for solutions to some of our technological problems. Many of us are discovering that our HDTVs or cell phones won't work without a better antenna.
Rahul Sarpeshkar, and his graduate student, Soumyajit Mandal, realized that the cochlea in our inner ear is like an antenna. In a paper titled "A Bio-Inspired Active Radio-Frequency Silicon Cochlea" (15 pg PDF) they explain that
The biological inner ear or cochlea is an amazing custom analog computer capable of the equivalent of 1GFLOPS of spectral-analysis and gain-control computations with 14uW of power on a 150mV battery and a minimum detectable signal of 0.05 angstroms. It achieves such efficiency because of the clever use of an active nonlinear transmission line implemented with fluids, membranes, active piezoelectret cells, micromechanics, and electrochemistry.The cochlea has an amazingly large input dynamic range of 120dB, analyzes frequencies over a 100-fold range in carrier frequency (100Hz-10kHz), and amplifies signals at 100kHz even though its cells have time constants of 1ms.
Mining the intellectual resources of nature
By modeling the cochlea with analagous electronic components, they created what they call an RF silicon cochlea.
The RF cochlea, embedded on a silicon chip measuring 1.5 mm by 3 mm, works as an analog spectrum analyzer, detecting the composition of any electromagnetic waves within its perception range. Electromagnetic waves travel through electronic inductors and capacitors (analogous to the biological cochlea's fluid and membrane). Electronic transistors play the role of the cochlea's hair cells.
The chip is faster than any human-designed radio-frequency spectrum analyzer and also operates at much lower power.
Looking to nature for technological solutions
This is not the first time Sarpeshkar has drawn on biology for inspiration in designing electronic devices. Clicking this link will direct you to ten papers resulting from bio-inspired projects in sensing and computing.
Source MIT News
Nanoballs speed up battery recharge
"Nanoball" batteries charge in seconds
Courtesy fdecomite Byoungwoo Kang and Gerbrand Ceder at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have revealed an experimental battery that charges about 100 times faster than normal lithium ion batteries.
To increase the rate, the battery's surface area was increased by making the cathode out of tiny balls of lithium iron phosphate, each just 50 nanometers across.
Electric vehicles recharge in minutes
The researchers calculate that if cellphone batteries can be made using this material, they could charge in 10 seconds. Bigger batteries for plug-in hybrid electric cars could charge in just 5 minutes - compared with about 8 hours for existing batteries.
When? "2 or 3 years"
How long until we can buy these batteries?
Because there are relatively few changes to the standard manufacturing process, Professor Ceder believes the new battery material could make it to market within two to three years. BBC News
Source
'Nanoball' batteries could recharge car in minutes New Scientist
While electronic devices double their capacity every 18 months or so, battery capacity per volume are lucky to double every ten years. A new breakthrough by materials scientists at MIT promises to drastically decrease the size of batteries. In a battery, only the surfaces of the electrodes create electricity. The key to making lighter batteries is to make lots of surfaces but minimize the material under the surface - in other words make the electrodes as thin as possible.
Living viruses manufacture paper thin batteries
MIT scientists, professors Angela Belcher, Paula Hammond and Yet-Ming Chiang have used genetically engineered living viruses to assemble thin-film nanowires as the anodes and cathodes of a flexible "battery wrap" only 100 nanometers thick. The virus is a derivative the M13 bacteriophage. It is 6 x 880 nanometers in size.
Three dips will do it
The genetically engineered battery wrap is fabricated by dipping a scaffold into three beakers. The first dip picks up a layer of polyelectrolyte which can be as thin as 100 nanometers. The second dip is into a soup of the 6 x 880 nm viruses. The viruses, which are negatively charged, stick to to the positively charged scaffold kind of like the bristles on a hair brush. These viruses, when dipped into third solution, are genetically engineered to pull cobalt-oxide and gold ions onto their surfaces.
After that, the polyelectrolyte is dried out, and the 6-nm-diameter viruses dehydrate, becoming harmlessly entombed inside a sealed compartment of inorganic cobalt and gold.
"Potentially, when we grow a lithium layer on the other side of the polyelectrolyte for the other cathode, we could use this material to make batteries as thin as 100 nm,"
Paper thin batteries eliminate need for battery compartment
Thousands of these battery layers could be stacked on top of each other and still be paper thin. Such a battery could store two or three times more energy for its size and weight than conventional batteries today. Its "wrapability" would also allow the batteries to be placed around objects rather than requiring storage compartments.
Source:Living viruses create flexible battery film EE Times
Fluid flow separation: The fluid flow becomes detached from the surface of the object, and instead takes the forms of eddies and vortices.
Courtesy jaganath
Fluid flow separation explained with mathematics in 1904
In 1904, Ludwig Prandtl, considered the father of modern aerodynamics, derived the exact mathematical conditions for flow separation to occur, but only in two dimensions for steady flows.
Unsteady fluid flow in three dimensions explained with mathematics in 2008
A century later, George Haller, a visiting professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT led a group that explained the mathematics behind unsteady separation in two dimensions. This month, his team reports completing the theory by extending it to three dimensions. Papers on the experiments and theory are being published in the Sept. 25 issue of the Journal of Fluid Mechanics and in the September issue of Physics of Fluids, respectively. Haller's coauthors are Amit Surana, now at United Technologies; MIT student Oliver Grunberg; and Gustaaf Jacobs, now on the faculty at San Diego State University.
Fluid mechanics theorists are excited
The equation will forever change the face of advanced fluid dynamics and will have a profound impact on many industries, including the aerospace and automotive industries. This quote from Daily Tech Review shows that this breakthough has theorists in fluid mechanics excited;
The new work -- if it survives the extensive peer review that is to come -- will likely go down as the greatest scientific advance of the decade. The research has already survived a strenuous initial round of peer review.
Equally important, this month Thomas Peacock, the Atlantic Richfield Career Development Associate Professor and his colleagues report important experimental work verifying the theory.
"This is the tip of the iceberg, but we've shown that this theory works," Peacock said.
Fluid dynamics makes a difference
Understanding how surfaces effect how an object flows through a fluid (including air) can make big differences in maximizing performance. Did the new swimsuits make a difference in breaking world records in Olympic swimming competition? How about the surfaces of baseballs, golf balls, and tennis balls? The effects on miles per gallon for autos and airplanes can save millions (billions?) of dollars.
Source: MIT News
MIT breakthrough in electric storage problem
Splitting water to store electricity: A snapshot showing the new, efficient oxygen catalyst in action in Dan Nocera's laboratory at MIT.
Courtesy MIT/NSF
Saving up energy for use at night
Want to be energy independent? Solar and wind energy are great but what do you do when the sun goes down and the wind doesn't blow? Batteries with the needed capacity are very expensive.
Energy can be saved up by breaking water apart into hydrogen and oxygen
Using a surprisingly simple, inexpensive technique, chemists have found a way to pull pure oxygen from water using relatively small amounts of electricity, common chemicals and a room-temperature glass of water. At night that oxygen can be combined with hydrogen (also extracted from water) in a fuel cell to make electricity.
The new process, enabling water to more easily be split, is to use a catalyst consisting of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water.
"When electricity -- whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source -- runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced."
"The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it's easy to set up. That's why I know this is going to work. It's so easy to implement," Danial Nocera (MIT news office)
Within ten years
Nocera hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electric vehicles will also power up from this home system.
Learn more: MIT News
"Paper towel" can clean up oil spills
Researchers at MIT have combined a nanowire mesh with a water-repellant coating that can absorb up to 20 times its weight in oil. The oil absorbed can be recovered and the "paper towel" can be reused many times.
"Made of potassium manganese oxide, the nanowires are stable at high temperatures. As a result, oil within a loaded membrane can be removed by heating above the boiling point of oil. The oil evaporates, and can be condensed back into a liquid. The membrane--and oil--can be used again." MIT News
MIT electric "City Cars" are stackable
in Energy Transformations, Scientific Enterprise, and Flow of Matter and Energy
Fit five cars into one parking space
Smart "City Car": MIT Car by Mitchell Joachim Coming soon are electric vehicles that will be stacked like grocery carts outside of popular destinations. A swipe of your credit card and you can drive it to another location. The body of the car will be made of lightweight composite material such as Kevlar or carbon fiber.
Embedded in each of its four wheels will be an electric motor, steering and braking mechanisms, suspension, and digital controls, all integrated into sealed units that can be snapped on and off. The Boston Globe.
These cars will be smart
These smart cars will be like computers on wheels. They can charge or give back electricity while stacked up waiting for users. They will know where parking is available and the best routes to their destination, avoiding traffic delays. I also predict that they will soon be able to drive themselves. (Read about the DARPA Urban Challenge)
Update: more Mitchell Joachim MIT car designs
Mitchell Joachim's archinode.com website has seven more vehicles vehicles like the one pictured. Click on each car for more information. One design has passengers drive while standing up.
Recommended links
Video demo of MIT stackable electric vehicles.
City Car presentation by The Boston Globe
MIT "Smart Cities" web page
Stop bleeding fast: photo by crystal via wikimedia
Super quick fix for bleeding.
Last June 4th, I reported that MIT researchers used a self-assembling peptide nanofiber scaffold to repair severed brain structures in blind rodents and restore their sight. Those same researchers noticed the material's dramatic ability to stop bleeding in the brain and began testing it on a variety of other organs and tissues.
In a study published online October 10 in Nanomedicine the researchers report that the liquid controlled bleeding in rodents within 15 seconds in seven other wound types, including cuts to the spinal cord, liver [view video here] and femoral artery as well as skin punctures.
Platelets not needed
The liquid does not seem to form a conventional blood clot, the group notes. Electron microscopy turned up no sign of the platelets that would normally gather in a clot. The proteins might instead form tangles that act like hair blocking a drain, Ellis-Behnke suggests.
The gel eventually breaks down into amino acids, the building blocks of proteins, that can be used by surrounding cells for tissue repair.
This discovery has created lots of excitement, especially by surgeons. Still, they caution that extensive clinical trials are needed to make sure the materials work properly and are safe. The MIT researchers hope to see those crucial human trials within three to five years.
Read more at: New Scientist Tech and Scientific American
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