Mark Changizi is an interesting guy. When he’s not writing books or research papers, he undertakes endeavors like penning open letters to Hugh Hefner and sharing his experience of being interviewed by Jam-e-Jam, Iran’s primary (and state-run) newspaper. Then there was his musings on the evolutionary uselessness of belly buttons.
Recently, Changizi, an assistant professor of cognitive science here at Rensselaer, started blogging for the Telegraph, a daily UK newspaper with an historically strong science section. Kudos to them for seeking out and signing up Mark. The blog is here, and his latest piece is about Avatar, and whether the movie’s big blue antagonist actually sees himself as blue.
In Mark’s own words:
For those who haven’t seen the film, what you need to know is that Sully is a human who, from the safety of his brain-interface chamber back at the lab, can remotely control a “soul”-less alien body. And, at the end of the movie, and through the miracle of human suspension of disbelief, his human self gets literally uploaded into the alien’s body. Sully thereby becomes a bona fide eight foot tall, blue alien, and in the final frame of the movie we see his alien eyes open.
Question is: What does Sully see when he opens his eyes? And, more to the point: Does his new alien wife still appear blue to him?
These types of questions, which seem innocuous at first but actually reveal themselves as only the tip of a big iceberg of an answer, are the hallmark of Changizi’s research.
The best way to prevent yourself from inhaling deadly anthrax spores is to keep a safe distance. But how can you tell if you are in fact dealing with anthrax if you can’t get close to that suspicious package? Or take a similar dilemma - How can you can you detect the level of a specific environmental pollutant in the atmosphere without ever leaving the ground?
Researchers Jingle Liu and X.C. Zhang of the Rensselaer Center for Terahertz Research have developed a new terahertz (THz) technology that can remotely detect many toxic biochemicals, explosive materials, and atmospheric pollutants. Called Thz-REEF (radiation-enhanced-emission-of-fluorescence), the technology is the first of its kind to remotely perform high resolution THz spectroscopy.
Professor and computer vision expert Rich Radke is outfitting EMPAC with a fresh set of eyes and a new visual cortex.
He and his students are augmenting EMPAC’s Studio 2 with a testbed for researching intelligent, next-gen camera network systems. This involves “stitching together” video feeds from different cameras, investigating new ways of tracking objects and individuals, along with recognizing different types of activity and crowd behavior. This is very cool stuff.
Does anyone else remember that Pauly Shore movie Bio-Dome? If not, you aren’t missing much except some pretty scientifically-questionable antics taking place within a biosphere - a contained, self-sustaining ecosystem. OK, so what does Pauly Shore mistaking an international environmental experiment for a mall have to do with sophisticated Rensselaer research? Well, the researchers might not enjoy the analogy, but in essence they are bringing the Bio-Dome concept underwater with the aquatic equivalent of the biosphere - the mesochasm.
Their research, which takes place at the Darrin Freshwater Institute, provides important and detailed information on how different environmental contaminants impact delicate freshwater environments.
“Project: Dark Signals” may sound like Lex Luthor’s latest nefarious plot or something hatched by the Dharma Initiative, but it’s actually far more interesting.
You know the scene: An aggressive ice storm or thunderstorm downed power lines and resulted in a blown transformer. With no functioning traffic signals at intersections, your morning commute is littered with near-misses and drivers clearly ignoring the rules of the road. As if things weren’t stressful enough, the occasional fender benders slow traffic down to a snail’s pace. Cringe-worthy stuff.
This is precisely the scenario that Professor Al Wallace and Research Engineer Jeff Wojtowicz are endeavoring to erase. And their weapon of choice is Project: Dark Signals.
By now, all of us at RPI are very familiar with a tiny glycosaminoglycan named heparin. If not, bone up on your RPI research knowledge here, here, and here. But, for those who pay a little bit more attention, the sugar is synonymous with the Robert Linhardt lab. His life-saving work with the famous and infamous blood thinner has captured national attention. And while the big research results, such as his discovery of the first fully synthetic alternative to the current and potentially dangerous version scraped from the bowels of overseas livestock, usually draw all the attention, Linhardt and his colleagues are also still hard at work learning the basics about this very complex carbohydrate.
(Professor Shown Lawson wrote this excellent post for The Approach - enjoy!)
I’m Shawn Lawson , an assistant professor of computer visualization in the Department of Arts. During 2008, I was in an artist residency at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies here at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. The residency results mimicked other research of converting text into amino acids. Protein synthesis became too costly, so I stayed within the computational realm.
The idea for this Biocryptography project came from thinking about how science and art can be opposite sides of the same coin. Both are observing and trying to make sense of their environs. When I found the Kraus quotation, “Science is spectral analysis. Art is light Synthesis.” I started to see how this concept was not too far-fetched.
Congratulations to Professor Shekhar Garde for scoring the cover story of the new ACS Langmuir issue, due to hit mailboxes next week. It’s the latest of three papers his group has published on surface wettability and investigations in exploiting the hydrophobic/hydrophilic of different nanomaterials.
In general, Garde’s research focuses on better understanding the role of water structure - at the atomic level and nanoscale, so we’re talking Hs and Os here - in inducing and provoking interesting interactions between different types of molecules. This often involves coating nanoparticle with interesting things, such as hydrophobic or hydrophilic materials, and seeing how the coatings impact the behavior and properties of the overall nanoparticles in different situations.
While you might enjoy listening to little Rolling Stones or Fleetwood Mac on your iPhone during your next hike, geologists both amateur and professional will now be using the smartphone to study the original classic rocks - perhaps schist or maybe the more refined marble. One of likely the first applications to bring science to the popular device, the new MetPetDB app is allowing geoscientists to proudly declare, “I have an app for that!”
Researchers at the Center for Architecture Science and Ecology (CASE) are tackling the problem of sustainable design and building efficiency from all angles, from advanced systems controls and solar harvesting to heliotropism and hydroponic air purification. It’s all very interdisciplinary, and a fascinating look into the behind-the-scenes reality of building design. As someone who is completely unversed in the world and language of architecture, scanning the different projects listed on the CASE site made me appreciate all of the intricacies and systems-within-systems involved in design, and recognize that conventional architecture is still a ways away from weaving efficiency and sustainability into its conventions.