Category Archives: STEM

Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics

Human Interaction Under Threat from NINA

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Nina stands for Nuance Interactive Natural Assistant and was launched on the iOS and Android platforms last August, allowing businesses to integrate the sophisticated voice recognition and natural language engine into their apps.

via Human Interaction Under Threat from NINA – the Virtual Assistant – IBTimes UK.

This sounds like an interesting development offshoot from projects like IBM’s Watson (the computer that beat the best humans on Jeopardy).  Then there’s this.

The days of human behind the counter or at the end of a telephone line at coming to an end. As voice recognition and natural language engines become ever more sophisticated, it may soon be hard to distinguish between an automated system and the real thing.

I am not looking forward to this day.  Perhaps this is what HAL tried to warn us about in 2001 A Space Odyssey.  Very prescient indeed.

Graphene’s Unique Properties Could Be Used to Make Better Photovoltaic Devices

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Conventional materials that turn light into electricity, like silicon and gallium arsenide, generate a single electron for each photon absorbed. Since a photon contains more energy than one electron can carry, much of the energy contained in the incoming light is lost as heat. Now, new research reveals that when graphene absorbs a photon it generates multiple electrons capable of driving a current. This means that if graphene devices for converting light to electricity come to fruition, they could be more efficient than the devices commonly used today.

via New Nature Physics Paper Shows That Graphene’s Unique Properties Could Be Used to Make Better Photovoltaic Devices | MIT Technology Review.

Mars Rover Curiosity in Safe Mode After Computer Glitch

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The issue cropped up Wednesday (Feb. 27), when the spacecraft failed to send its recorded data back to Earth and did not switch into its daily sleep mode as planned. After looking into the issue, engineers decided to switch the Curiosity rover from its primary “A-side” computer to its “B-side” backup on Thursday at 5:30 p.m. EST (22:30 GMT). [Curiosity Rover’s Latest Amazing Mars Photos]

via Mars Rover Curiosity in Safe Mode After Computer Glitch | Space.com.

Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug

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For readers here I think this is a great primer for what the state of things looks like if you’re not paying super close attention to smartphone cameras, and also the imaging chain at a high level on a mobile device.

Some figures are from of the incredibly useful (never leaves my side in book form or PDF form) Field Guide to Geometrical Optics by John Greivenkamp, a few other are my own or from OmniVision or Wikipedia. I’ve put the slides into a gallery and gone through them pretty much individually, but if you want the PDF version, you can find it here.

via AnandTech – Understanding Camera Optics & Smartphone Camera Trends, A Presentation by Brian Klug.

A New Approach to Databases and Data Processing

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The simplest way to handle more data using more cores (whether on a single machine or in cluster) is to partition it into disjoint subsets, and work on each subset in isolation. In the database world this is called sharding, and it makes scaling relatively simple; only downside is -— it makes writing compellingly complex applications hard.

via Parallel Universe • A New Approach to Databases and Data Processing — Simulating 10Ks of Spaceships on My Laptop.

Forgotten by the Future, Some Take the Internet Into Their Own Hands

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The next step, after raising half a million pounds from shareholders, is to convince Lancastrians to pony up about fifty dollars a month for internet service. (Those who invest £1500 or more can get a year’s free service, a tax credit of 30%, and the option to sell the entire investment back in 2016 at full value.) This isn’t AOL dial-up: customers will have access to a blazing fast 1 gigabit connection, something that many city-dwellers, myself included, would covet.

via There Will Be Broadband: Forgotten by the Future, Some Take the Internet Into Their Own Hands | Motherboard.

Amdahl’s law

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Amdahl’s law is a model for the relationship between the expected speedup of parallelized implementations of an algorithm relative to the serial algorithm, under the assumption that the problem size remains the same when parallelized. For example, if for a given problem size a parallelized implementation of an algorithm can run 12% of the algorithm’s operations arbitrarily quickly while the remaining 88% of the operations are not parallelizable, Amdahl’s law states that the maximum speedup of the parallelized version is 1/1 – 0.12 = 1.136 times as fast as the non-parallelized implementation.

via Amdahl’s law – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

The Tunnels of NYC’s East Side Access Project

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A huge public works project is currently under construction in New York City, connecting Long Island to Manhattan’s East Side. Deep underground, rail tunnels are extending from Sunnyside, Queens, to a new Long Island Rail Road terminal being excavated beneath Grand Central Terminal. Construction began in 2007, with an estimated cost of $6.3 billion and completion date of 2013. Since then, the cost estimate has been raised to $8.4 billion, and the completion date moved back to 2019. When finished, the line will accommodate 24 trains per hour at peak traffic, cutting down on commute times from Long Island, and opening up access to John F. Kennedy International Airport from Manhattan’s East Side. Collected here are images of the progress to date, deep beneath Queens and Manhattan.

via The Tunnels of NYC’s East Side Access Project – In Focus – The Atlantic.

Throwing and catching an inverted pendulum

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Armed with a good theoretical model and knowledge of its strengths and limitations, the researchers set out on a process of engineering the complete system of balancing, throwing, catching, and re-balancing the pendulum. This involved leveraging the theoretic insights on the problem’s key design parameters to adapt the physical system. For example, they equipped both quadrocopters with a 12cm plate that could hold the pendulum while balancing and developed shock absorbers to add at the pendulum’s tips.

via Video: Throwing and catching an inverted pendulum – with quadrocopters | Robohub.

Below is the Youtube video.

More info at the Flying Machine Arena.

The Flying Machine Arena (FMA) is a portable space devoted to autonomous flight. Measuring up to 10 x 10 x 10 meters, it consists of a high-precision motion capture system, a wireless communication network, and custom software executing sophisticated algorithms for estimation and control.