Coolest University Tech Lab Projects in the Works

NW writes "While universities like MIT, Berkeley and CMU don't tend to shout as loudly about their latest tech innovations as do Google, Cisco and other big vendors, their results are no less impressive in what they could mean for faster, more secure and more useful networks, computers, etc. Here's a good roundup of 25 of them, from studies on putting T-Rays to use in computers to advancing wireless to the next level to outsmarting terrorists on the Web."

Skull

[Ruie]

Of course, for now you need to wear a funky headband to make it work (the headband "uses laser diodes to send near-infrared light through the forehead at a relatively shallow depth â" only two to three centimeters â" to interact with the brain's frontal lobe," according to Tufts.)

2-3 cm seems to be rather large, especially since it has to go through the skull - can anyone comment on this ?

Re:

[timmarhy]

if somthing goes 3cm into your forehead, it's significant. i'd be pretty hesitant about strapping anything to my head that messes with my brain directly.

Re:Skull

[evanbd]

Step 1: Take generic TV / Stereo remote, complete with low power infrared LED (not even a laser).

Step 2: Put hand over LED.

Step 3: Place remote and hand directly in front of detector.

Step 4: Observe that enough IR gets through your hand for the remote to work.

Of course, I have no idea how much IR is needed to have an effect on the brain, or how well it propagates through your skull. But if the answers are "not much" and "more than zero" then this is plausible.

Re:

[evwah]

Step 5: cut a hole in the box

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[TapeCutter]

Of course, this being Slashdot..." - IR is at the low end, UV is the high end.

Obcomments

[argent]

"All I want is users with frikken lasers on their heads!"

And

"I for one welcome our new mind-controlling laser overlords"

Re:

[Grym]

2-3 cm seems to be rather large, especially since it has to go through the skull - can anyone comment on this ?

I can believe it. In the area of the forehead they are discussing, there is a large hollow space known as the frontal sinus [wikipedia.org]. Even a simple doctor's penlight (which is about as bright as a single LED) can be used medically in what's called "frontal sinus transillumination" to check for fluid or pus in this space. It seems quite reasonable that a much brighter light could penetrate enough to visu

55 saves gas

[tirerim]

Number 23 claims that driving more slowly due to cell phone use costs fuel. That's patently ridiculous -- on the highway, driving more slowly saves fuel, which is why highway speed limits were set to 55 during the last oil crisis. Driving while on the phone is still a bad idea, but not because you're going slower.

Re:55 saves gas

[GumphMaster]

Driving constantly at slower speed definitely saves fuel for the single vehicle. Driving with an erratic, typically slower, speed because you are not paying attention while on the phone will increase fuel consumption; accelerating on and off is wasteful. Further, traffic is not a single vehicle but an aggregate of many vehicles. In your phone induced daze, you are also slowing traffic around you, which then has to accelerate to jockey into position, overtake and regain highway speed; also wasteful.

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[Anonymous Coward]

My experience with the old V8s was that keeping a steady pressure on the gas pedal such that the engine is in its "balanced state" was the best way to go for gas mileage. Trying to hold some of those at 55 was a total waste of gas as you were constantly either letting off the gas (even applying the brake in some cases) or giving it some gas. Many of these were balanced for the older higher or non-existant speed limits that were around before the Nationwide 55 forced speed limit by the Federal government.

Gen

Re:

[eh2o]

I get about 10% better fuel efficiency by using cruise control. Unfortunately it's only practical in light traffic.

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[snarkh]

Driving constantly at slower speed definitely saves fuel for the single vehicle.

Slower than what? I doubt driving at 1mph would save much fuel.

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[Stibidor]

Hear, hear! People need to figure out how to use cruise control, IMHO.

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[Anonymous Coward]

Driving slower might have saved your 1972 Buick Skylark some gas, but driving 55 instead of 75 does little for new cars today.

Just keep a steady speed.

And if you really wanted to save gas you would demand that all cities re-design their traffic control systems to eliminate unneeded red light stops at night (main roads are always green, secondary roads are flashing red) and give up on the idea of comming to a complete stop. Stop signs are dumb in most cases - all thats needed is yield signs and strict follo

Re:

[eh2o]

Traffic circles are better! Stopping is obsolete technology.

Re:55 saves gas

[jmcnaught]

I think society would be best served by city planning that makes it easier and quicker to get around by walking, biking and mass transit than by car. Making it easier to drive around isn't the answer. In my city, the city council solves all transportation issues by widening roads to make room for more cars and adding new parking lots. Cities should be layed out so that nobody lives outside of walking distance from places to play, shop or catch a bus. Reduce the need for cars, and our neighbourhoods can have less pavement and more green space. Downtown the parking lots can be built up and reclaimed as productive spaces or turned into parks to play and relax. Cities with fewer cars would also be safer. I ride my bicycle every day, and almost every day I feel in danger from cars. Drunk drivers, drivers on their cell phones and hot shots that drive too fast can easily wipe me out with the smallest mistake. It should be safe for our children and pets to run around in the streets. Cars are ridiculous in general. Using machines with triple digit horsepower that weigh tonnes to move 100-200 pound people around. It's like using a jack hammer on finishing nails. And it's not as if anyone can claim ignorance to the impact of cars on the environment these days. We all know what's happening, and still so many of us place our hopes in hybrids and new fuel sources. The type of transition it would take to get all cars off of fossil fuels would take years, possibly decades. But just about every house has a bike in the basement or garage, and a decent brand new bike can be purchased for under $500. Myself, I'm all for reducing the speed limit inside cities. Make it 30 km/h. It would be foolish to get rid of all cars. They're still useful for moving stuff around in. But most of the driving these days is just for moving people and no stuff. Mostly single people driving the same routes every day to and from work. I don't have kids, but I don't understand how people can reconcile caring about their children's futures and driving their cars.

Re:

[eh2o]

I'm all in favor of the alternatives and I'm a regular bike-commuter, but I have to admit cars really are the ideal transport system. They are fast, safe, simple to operate, weather-proof, and form a true end-to-end system (especially important in urban areas). The weight and power don't seem absurd to me... if I'm going to step into a box moving at 75mph it better be a capable one.

Anyways, in my estimation there are basically two problems -- 1) environmental factors, and 2) effect of human error in the

Re:

[imsabbel]

Sadly, the aerodynamic laws have changed little lince 72.

55 vs 75 makes an easy 10-15% difference in fuel consumption. Just try it out, both over a 10 or 20 km with cruise control.

Re:55 saves gas

[BKX]

Why do people always spout this crap? The most efficient speed will ALWAYS be the bottom speed of your top gear. In 90% of cars today this is, and likely always will be, 45-50 mph. Of course, this assumes you drive at a constant speed. Hypermilers will tell you that you should accelerate at 75% throttle (for most cars), in the manual recommended gear (automatics may require slightly less power or special tricks for correct upshifting) until you reach about 55mph. Then put in the clutch (or transmission into neutral) and coast until the bottom of your top gear. Then accelerate at 75% throttle to 55mph. Then coast again. Repeat. This the most effecient. Wind resistance prevents the most efficient speed from going higher than around 55mph, no matter what you do about gears.

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[BigBlueOx]

The most efficient speed will ALWAYS be the bottom speed of your top gear.

The actual research into MPG performance carried out by US government agencies with acronymic names and only vaguely remembered by old men such as myself and widely available in many interesting forms on many interesting interwebs found that the best gas mileage was achieved by driving a constant 30MPH. Not 20 or 25 or 32, gas mileage peaked at 30MPH.

Mileage then slowly decreased as speed increased until 60MPH was hit whereupon

T-Rays, cool!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's funny that "terahertz rays" are somehow considered "not catchy". Thus, promoting their usage had to start with their re-branding as T-Rays, which has more in common with the T-Rex than the terahertz idea. It's part of the work of the scientist today to think of a Hollywood-like publicity poster and catchy phrases in order to get grants.

Re:T-Rays, cool!

[sweet_petunias_full_]

Well see, the thing with the T-rays is that if we can aim them towards the terrorists then hopefully we can "take a big bite out of crime" so to speak, or, if it's not like a T-Rex and it's more like a T-cell then at least we can cause them some sort of cancer. If we're lucky we'll give them a big whopping brain tumor and eventually our researchers will be able to outsmart them.

Maybe not.

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[Warbothong]

The last T-* branded thing [wikipedia.org] I heard about didn't turn out to be all that good...

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[Kingrames]

At the very least, they'll save us from the velocirays.

I can beat that...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The bulk of searches (80%) proved to be informational, with the other 20% split between navigational and transactional. The researchers used an algorithm that they say classified searches with a 74% accuracy rate. "

I have a better algorithm that achieves 80% accuracy, verses their 74%....

    int QueryTypeClassifier(char *str)
    {
        return INFORMATIONAL;
    }

I better starting working on the research paper before those conference deadlines hit.

Re:

[dookiesan]

I thought this was a mistake in the article but there it is in the abstract (http://ist.psu.edu/faculty_pages/jjansen/academic/pubs/jansen_user_intent.pdf). Even a naive bayes model on a couple of predictors should have done better. Since the classes are imbalanced 74% could be a decent number if they are skilled at predicting the rare classes.

If they considered a skill score, I don't know why they quoted the error rate in the abstract. The 80% number was based on automatic classification instead of the

Re:

[Spaceman Spiff II]

Yeah, that's why I never get tested for rare diseases when I see the doctor.

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[nephari]

I actually wrote the algorithm for that research, and I can assure you that it's much more complicated than that.

My favorite cool science project

[davidwr]

Anything involving liquid helium.

Due to lack of funding

[sweet_petunias_full_]

It would appear from reading the fine article that, due to a lack of grants for this leading-edge research, the 25 projects have been cut and there are only 5 left.

Re:

[dedalus2000]

They are just so advanced that each one represents five regular projects.

Nail on the head

[RAMMS+EIN]

"While universities like MIT, Berkeley and CMU don't tend to shout as loudly about their latest tech innovations as do Google, Cisco and other big vendors, their results are no less impressive in what they could mean for faster, more secure and more useful networks, computers, etc."

I feel that hits the nail on the head. A lot of impressive innovations come out of universities, but it's the corporate world that makes most of the hype. Sometimes, they promote inventions that originally came from universities. Sometimes, they promote inferior technology to what already exists. But it's usually the hyped technology that wins. I think we should be paying more attention to university research.

Re:

[Hemogoblin]

I agree, but your example also shows that we should be paying more attention to the hyping itself if we want the better technology to succeed. There are hundreds of examples where a better technology was skipped over, simply because it wasn't presented well. Remember, perception is everything.

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[moosesocks]

Yes, but the OP's choice of universities is mildly amusing to say the least.

MIT blows its own horn very loudly. Hell, they do a better job of marketing and hyping themselves than Apple do.

The Media Lab [mit.edu] might not produce a great deal of "legitimate" scientific output, but it does a fantastic job of capturing the imagination of the public.

Their magazine [technologyreview.com] also serves as a fantastic vehicle for bolstering their own reputation.

This isn't all necessarily a bad thing, although you've got to acknowledge that most o

R&D are two different things

[wintermute1974]

Generally:
Universities do research.
Corporations do design.

You might be pleasantly distracted by the shiny toys that corporations make, but those toys rely on the knowledge gained in university labs.

Re:

[lusiphur69]

Uh, the acronym is typically Research and Development. Loathe as I am to admit it, corporations do research too - just very focused on profit - there is no research for research's sake, no pure knowledge motive. It's all about profit.

Increasingly this is how universities operate as well, as they become beholden to corporate interests to secure funding.

false positives

[icepick72]

7. Sniffing out insider threats
If an individual suddenly stops communicating or socializing with others with whom they have previously had frequent contact, then the technology could alert investigators to such changes.

It happens a lot when people become bored of Facebook or whatever the social platform du jour is. There will be many false positives in a digital environment, this being one of them.