Computer Learns to Read Human Micro-Expressions

Not far from now:

A suspect sits in a police interrogation room. All the trimmings are there, a two-way mirror, the single bulb lighting fixture, steaming coffee on a steel table, the cops with rolled up sleeves and tired yet stern expressions, a video camera. These cops are positive their suspect is lying, but he isn’t breaking under pressure. However, the officers have another tool in their arsenal. Embedded in their video camera array is a micro-expression analysis system capable of picking up the slightest facial cues.

While the above scenario is entirely fictional, the technology mentioned is already here.

“In high-stake situations…an ME (micro-expression) fleeting across the face could give away a criminal pretending to be innocent, as the face is telling a different story than his statements,”write researchers from the Univ. of Oulu.

Since the 1960s, psychologists have studied micro-expressions and their ability to relay true meaning even when clouded by false statements. Paul Ekman, a co-discoverer of the phenomenon, developed micro-expression training tools to help people hone their micro-expression recognition abilities.

Wireless sensor enables study of traumatic brain injury

A new system that uses a wireless implant has been shown to record for the first time how brain tissue deforms when subjected to the kind of shock that causes blast-induced trauma commonly seen in combat veterans.

"Blast-induced traumatic brain injury, already one of the most significant wounds throughout Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, has become increasingly prevalent," said Riyi Shi, a professor in Purdue Univ.'s Dept. of Basic Medical Sciences, College of Veterinary Medicine, and Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering. "About 167,000 blast-induced traumatic brain injury cases have been documented during both deployments alone."

The consequences are dire, ranging from neurodegenerative diseases such as chronic traumatic encephalopathy to neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression and anxiety.

"These risks pose a substantial public health burden upon military members' return to civilian life, as the conditions are generally chronic and involve lengthy and costly treatment courses both in terms of dollars and quality of life," Shi said. "To pursue targeted innovation of new preventative, diagnostic, and therapeutic measures, we must first develop a greater understanding of pathogenesis, the initiating mechanical events and the links between blast-induced damage and subsequent neuropathologies."

The new research involves the use of a biocompatible "soft magnet" wireless sensor, inserted into the brains of laboratory rats. Because the gel-like magnet has mechanical properties similar to that of brain tissue, it is able to move with the brain when exposed to blast trauma, said Babak Ziaie, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering.  

Findings are detailed in a paper appearing in Scientific Reports.

"This is the first time that anybody has been able to measure brain deformation in real time wirelessly,” Ziaie said.

Findings showed the brain does not move in a simple linear direction, but rather in a more complex motion covering a wide arc, likely resulting in greater damage than that caused by ordinary blunt-force trauma.

The paper was authored by doctoral students Seung Song, Nicholas Race, Albert Kim and Tony Zhang; Shi and Ziaie.

"There is no way to see brain deformation in blast-induced trauma events using conventional imaging technologies," Ziaie said. "Because this is a wireless device, we can track the brain's movement."

The technology has a resolution of five to 10 microns, meaning deformation can be measured in minute detail. The magnet's motion is tracked with three external sensors, creating a precise 3-D measurement.

"The system's response time is very fast—milliseconds or faster," Ziaie said. "Ordinary sensors take a signal every second, but the blast events are finished in a matter of milliseconds, so you miss everything."

The magnet is about 3 mm in diameter—about six would fit across the diameter of a U.S. penny.

"It can be inserted into any part of the brain to study, for example, the hippocampus, which is critical for memory," Shi said.

The research is an example of how interdisciplinary collaborations can help to find solutions not possible through the work of specialists from a single discipline alone, Shi said.

Source: Purdue Univ.

Electrons always find a (quantum) way

Scientists from the Univ. of Basel in Switzerland have demonstrated for the first time how electrons are transported from a superconductor through a quantum dot into a metal with normal conductivity. This transport process through a quantum dot had already been calculated theoretically in the nineties, but scientists at the Univ. of Basel have now succeeded in proving the theory with measurements. They report on their findings in the scientific journal Physical Review Letters.

Transport properties such as electrical conductivity play an important role in technical applications of new materials and electronic components. Completely new phenomena occur, for example, when you combine a superconductor and nanometer-sized structures, known as quantum dots, in a component.

Researchers at the Univ. of Basel working under Professor Christian Schönenberger have now constructed such a quantum dot between a superconductor and a metal with normal conductivity to study electron transport between the two components.

It should in fact be impossible to transport electrons from the superconductor through a quantum dot at low energies. Firstly, electrons never occur on an individual basis in a superconductor but rather always in two's or in so-called Cooper pairs, which can only be separated by relatively large amounts of energy. Secondly, the quantum dot is so small that only one particle is transported at a time due to the repulsive force between electrons.

In the past, however, scientists have repeatedly observed that a current nonetheless runs between the superconductor and the metal - in other words, electron transport does occur through the quantum dot.

First evidence of the transport mechanism through a quantum dot

On the basis of quantum mechanics, theories were developed in the nineties which indicated that the transport of Cooper pairs through a quantum dot is entirely possible under certain conditions. The prerequisite is that the second electron follows the first very quickly, namely within the time roughly stipulated by Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.

The scientists at the Univ. of Basel have now been able to accurately measure this phenomenon. In their experiments the scientists found the exact same discrete resonances that had been calculated theoretically. In addition, the team including doctoral student Jörg Gramich and his supervisor Dr. Andreas Baumgartner was able to provide evidence that the process also works when energy is emitted into the environment or absorbed from it.

"Our results contribute to a better understanding of the transport properties of superconducting electronic nanostructures, which are of great interest for quantum technology applications", says Dr. Andreas Baumgartner.

Airbus Displays Counter-UAV System at CES 2016

In light of the proliferation of drones, companies are devoting resources to technologies capable of countering unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs).  Boeing’s introduced lasers capable of setting fires to drones, and a consortium of British technology companies have designed systems that detect, track, and disrupt drone flight via radio frequency inhibition. 

Now, Airbus Defense & Space, Inc. has entered the playing field. The company is displaying their Counter-UAV System through Jan. 9 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

“All over the world, incidents with universally available small drones have revealed a security gap with regards to critical installations such as factories, airports, or nuclear plants,” said Thomas Müller, who is the head of Airbus Defense & Space’s Electronics and Border Security. “As a specialist in defense electronics, we have all the technologies in our portfolio and the integration knowledge which are needed to set up a quick-response protection system with extremely low false alarm rates.”

Human-machine superintelligence can solve the world's most dire problems

The combination of human and computer intelligence might be just what we need to solve the "wicked" problems of the world, such as climate change and geopolitical conflict, say researchers from the Human Computation Institute (HCI) and Cornell University.

In an article published in the journal Science, the authors present a new vision of human computation (the science of crowd-powered systems), which pushes beyond traditional limits, and takes on hard problems that until recently have remained out of reach.

Humans surpass machines at many things, ranging from simple pattern recognition to creative abstraction. With the help of computers, these cognitive abilities can be effectively combined into multidimensional collaborative networks that achieve what traditional problem-solving cannot.

Most of today's human computation systems rely on sending bite-sized 'micro-tasks' to many individuals and then stitching together the results. For example, 165,000 volunteers in EyeWire have analyzed thousands of images online to help build the world's most complete map of human retinal neurons.

Virtual Reality May Help Curb Isolation in Deep Space Travel

Located 817 km from the geographic North Pole, theCanadian Forces Station Alert (CFS Alert) can claim the title as the most northerly, permanently inhabited location in the world. The barren landscape is considered a desert, with average precipitation less than that of the Sahara Desert. And from Oct. 10 to March 1, the 55 full-time military, civilian, and contracted personnel at the station never see sunlight.

“It’s an isolated and confined environment with an unvarying landscape,” says Dartmouth College physician and former astronaut Jay Buckey in an interview with R&D Magazine.

And that’s the precise reason Buckey and colleagues are using the station as an analogue for space. Their mission: to test how virtual reality technology may help relieve any detrimental psychological effects stirred up by deep space travel.    

Team finds black hole affecting galactic climate

A team of researchers led by Eric Schlegel, Vaughn Family Endowed Professor in Physics at The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA), has discovered a powerful galactic blast produced by a giant black hole about 26 million light years from Earth. The black hole is the nearest supermassive black hole to Earth that is currently undergoing such violent outbursts.

Schlegel's team used NASA's Earth-orbiting Chandra X-ray Observatory to find the black hole blast in the famous Messier 51 system of galaxies. The system contains a large spiral galaxy, NGC 5194, colliding with a smaller companion galaxy, NGC 5195.

"Just as powerful storms here on Earth impact their environments, so too do the ones we see out in space," Schlegel said. "This black hole is blasting hot gas and particles into its surroundings that must play an important role in the evolution of the galaxy."

Schlegel and his colleagues detected two X-ray emission arcs close to the center of NGC 5195, where the supermassive black hole is located.