12/14/2018

MIT develops superheated steam equipment to disinfect medical equipment in remote areas


The original idea of ​​the device prototype was to float the "sponge" on the surface of the water, allowing it to quickly turn the water into steam by absorbing the energy of the sun. However, in actual tests, it was found that the sponge absorbs pollutants in the water, resulting in degradation of the material. In order to solve this problem, the sponge is floated on the water in the new prototype, and the actual contact sponge is not close to the common e-reader. It has three interlayers: the top is a cermet composite with a porous carbon in the middle. Foam, a material that effectively emits infrared heat at the bottom.

The top layer absorbs short-wave solar energy from sunlight, causing the entire device to heat up. This heat is emitted from the bottom layer in the form of longer wavelength infrared radiation, which is more easily absorbed than sunlight. As a result, the water is heated to 100 ° C (212 ° F) to generate steam vapor. Rising back into the unit, the centrally heated carbon foam layer further heats the steam, which is output through the tubes in the equipment and then used for sterilization, cooking or cleaning tasks.

The research team then tested on the roof of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to produce 146oC (295oF) of steam in a basin of water in a clear environment. It is placed in a polymer housing to help prevent heat from escaping, and a curved mirror that collects sunlight on its surface.

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12/13/2018

The first orbital angular momentum waveguide photonic chip came out


According to the recent report of the American Physical Review Express website, the team of Jin Xianmin of Shanghai Jiaotong University has developed the world's first orbital angular momentum (OAM) waveguide photonic chip. This is the first time to fabricate an optical waveguide that can carry photon OAM degrees of freedom in an optical chip, and to achieve efficient and high fidelity transmission of photon OAM in the waveguide. The latest research is highlighted as a highlight article on the homepage of the website, and it is expected to “show its talents” in the fields of optical communication and quantum computing.

In recent years, twisted light has been widely used in the fields of light manipulation, optical clamps, and the like because of the intensity structure of the "doughnut" distribution, the phase structure of the spiral wavefront, and the dynamic characteristics of carrying OAM. Different from the spin angular momentum of light, OAM has unlimited topological charge and intrinsic orthogonality, which can be used to solve the problem of channel capacity shrinkage in communication systems. In the field of quantum information, photon OAM can be used to distribute high-dimensional quantum states and construct high-dimensional quantum computers.

However, the large-scale application of OAM needs to integrate its transmission, generation and manipulation. Previous studies have not allowed OAM to exist inside the chip.

In the latest research, Jin Xianmin team prepared the first three-dimensional integrated OAM waveguide photonic chip with a waveguide cross section of “doughnut” through femtosecond laser direct writing technology. By measuring the interference of the distorted light from the chip with the reference light and the projection measurement of the state before and after the chip, the experiment proves that the waveguide can transmit the low-order OAM mode with high efficiency and high fidelity, and the total transmission efficiency is 60%; and the waveguide The high-order mode is converted to the low-order mode. In addition, the waveguide can also transmit a three-bit "high-dimensional qubit" state with high fidelity, surpassing the traditional two-bit "qubit" state, indicating that the waveguide has potential for high-dimensional quantum states. Transmission and manipulation.

Jin Xianmin hopes that the chip can be used first in the field of high-throughput optical communication; and Keshan Dolakia, a light control expert at St. Andrews University in the UK, believes that the new chip is expected to open up new horizons for quantum optics and imaging. It is reported that the team has applied for invention patents for the waveguide chip to the State Intellectual Property Office.

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[DIY Tools] Cutting Board Artifact - Electric Table Saw

Made a small table saw for cutting boards.
final effect


Production process


Prepare a variety of materials: lead (775 motor), motor bracket, connecting shaft, saw blade, power port, switch, wire, housing



First install the motor, put it into the shell and try the space.








After testing the space of this shell is obviously not enough

Had to change one, and found a broken Great Wall ATX power supply shell, I feel this is not bad.



Because the height is not enough, find a wooden mat to increase the height and fix the motor bracket.




Put the motor on, look at the position of the saw blade, and prepare to slot



The following four figures: slotting, slotting, grinding, testing.






I found a useless hole plate for installing power holes and switches.



Install the power hole and switch until the end of the project



My tools
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12/10/2018

Research finds that traditional toys are more suitable for children than electronic products


Mendelsohn, an associate professor of pediatrics and population health at NYU Langone Health, said that although digital toys are often labeled as "helping children learn," parents are also deeply convinced, but in reality children There are very few things that can be learned from them, because what they really need is actually free time to play.

Mendelssohn said: "Toys are just props that help parents and children spend good time together." Interpersonal interaction is the most important thing, and young children learn the most through interaction with caregivers.

Mendelssohn also pointed out that for babies, in addition to video chat with family members, there is no need to touch electronic screens. The American Academy of Pediatrics also recommends that infants under 18 months should stay away from electronic screens. Children between 18 and 24 months of age can be accompanied by guardians with a small amount of electronic screens. Children between 2 and 5 years old are advised to watch TV, computers and mobile every day. The time of the device should not exceed one hour.

Dr. Dimitri Christakis, director of the Center for Child Health, Behavior and Development at the Seattle Children's Research Institute, pointed out that the iPad has been around for a decade or so, which means that The impact that electronic devices and applications may have on young children is unclear. But it is clear that for young children, it is important to learn to “interact” with others in games, but it is difficult for electronic devices to do this.

In addition, Mendelssohn and Christakis also put forward another point: parents also need to put down their electronic devices, because if parents often play mobile phones, children will also be "liked to learn", and parents spend on electronics. The more time on the device, the less time you spend with your child.


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12/07/2018

[Electronics] DIY Simple Metal Detector



I stumbled upon this simple metal detector circuit. I was very skeptical about whether it really had this function. Later, after analysis, I found the relevant video to confirm that it really did, and then I did it myself.

Be sure to check the relevant information before you start making it, and figure out the principle of the metal detector.


1. Tools and materials

Components:
- 555
- 47kΩ resistor
- Two 2μ2F capacitors
- Circuit board
- 9 volt battery, switch, some wires
- Buzzer
- 100 m copper wire with a diameter of 0.2 mm
- Tape and glue

Buzzer You can use a 10μF capacitor and speaker (8 ohm impedance).

tool:
- Breadboards and wires
- pliers, scorpion
- Soldering iron and solder wire
- Sharp knife, ruler, pencil, compass
- Hot glue gun

2. Schematic

This picture is found online. I just added a switch between the switch and the circuit and replaced the speaker with a buzzer.


3. Coil







The coil is the most difficult part. By calculation, a 90mm diameter coil requires approximately 250 windings, a diameter of 70 mm requires 290 windings, and an inductance of up to 10 mH. You can also buy off-the-shelf coils online.

Calculator address
The coil core is made of cardboard. The coil used was an enamelled copper wire with a diameter of 0.2 mm. I circled 260 laps. Please hang the paint on the thread before welding.

4. Testing

After testing, it works! (Video can't get it)

5.PCB

After the test was successful, I made this PCB circuit.

6. Cardboard structure




I made this cardboard structure for the aesthetics and ease of use of the final work.

7. Assembly




So the parts are all ready. Here's how to assemble them all. First fix the switch with a glue gun, then put it into the battery, and finally fix the board with a glue gun.

8. Summary


This metal detector is very simple. But its detection capabilities are also limited. When working outdoors, it does not work properly. However, for beginners, this is really a good work, I like it very much!

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12/06/2018

These five computer vision technologies refresh your worldview(5)

5--Instance segmentation



In addition to semantic segmentation, instance segmentation segments instances of different classes, such as marking five cars in five different colors. In the classification, there is usually an image in which one target is the focus and the task is to say what the image is. But in order to split the instance, we need to perform more complex tasks. We see complex spots with multiple overlapping objects and different backgrounds. We not only classify these different objects, but also determine the boundaries, differences and relationships between them!



So far, we have seen how to use CNN features in many interesting ways to effectively locate different targets in images with bounding boxes. Can we extend these techniques to locate the exact pixels of each target, not just the bounding box? Explore the instance segmentation problem on Facebook AI using an architecture called Mask R-CNN.

Like Fast R-CNN and Faster R-CNN, the underlying principle of Mask R-CNN is simple. Given that Faster R-CNN works very well in target detection, can we extend it for pixel-level segmentation?

Mask R-CNN does this by adding a branch to the Faster R-CNN, which outputs a binary mask that indicates whether a given pixel is part of the target. This branch is a full convolutional network based on the CNN's feature map. Given the CNN feature map as input, the network outputs the matrix at all positions with 1s in the pixel belonging to the target, and outputs 0 (this is called binary mask) elsewhere.



In addition, when running on the original Faster R-CNN architecture without modification, the area of ​​the feature map selected by RoIPool (pool of interest area) is slightly out of alignment with the area of ​​the original image. Since image segmentation requires pixel-level specificity, unlike a bounding box, this naturally leads to inaccuracies. Mask R-CNN solves this problem by adjusting RoIPool to more precisely align by using a method called RoIAlign (region of interest alignment). In essence, RoIAlign uses bilinear interpolation to avoid rounding errors, resulting in inaccurate detection and segmentation.

Once these masks are generated, Mask R-CNN combines them with the classification and bounding boxes from Faster R-CNN to generate such an accurate segmentation:



   in conclusion

These five major computer vision technologies help computers extract, analyze, and understand useful information from one or a series of images. I haven't talked about many other advanced technologies, including style shifting, coloring, motion recognition, 3D objects, body pose estimation, and more. In fact, the cost of computer vision is too high to be explored in depth, and I encourage you to explore it further, whether through online courses, blog tutorials or official documentation. For beginners, I highly recommend the CS231n course because you will learn how to implement, train and debug your own neural network. As a bonus, you can get all the presentation slides and homework guides from my GitHub repository. I hope it will guide you to change your view of the world!

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12/05/2018

These five computer vision technologies refresh your worldview(4)

4--semantic segmentation



At the heart of computer vision is the segmentation process, which divides the entire image into groups of pixels that can then be labeled and classified. In particular, semantic segmentation attempts to semantically understand the role of each pixel in an image (for example, is it a car, a motorcycle, or another type of class?). For example, in the above picture, in addition to identifying people, roads, cars, trees, etc., we must also depict the boundaries of each object. Therefore, unlike classification, we need to perform dense pixel-by-pixel prediction from the model.

Like other computer vision tasks, CNN has had great success in segmentation. One of the popular initial methods is to perform a patch classification through a sliding window in which each pixel is divided into classes using its surrounding images. However, this is computationally very inefficient because we do not reuse the shared features between overlapping patches.

Instead, the solution is the University of California, Berkeley's Full Convolutional Network (FCN), which promotes an end-to-end CNN architecture for intensive prediction without any fully connected layers. This allows split graphs to be generated for images of any size and is much faster than patch sorting methods. Almost all subsequent semantic segmentation methods use this paradigm.



However, there is still a problem: the convolution at the original image resolution will be very expensive. To solve this problem, the FCN uses downsampling and upsampling inside the network. The downsampling layer is called stripe convolution and the upsampling layer is called deconvolution.

Although the upsampling/downsampling layer is used, the FCN generates a coarse segmentation map due to information loss during pooling. SegNet is a more efficient memory architecture than FCNs that use the largest pooling and encoding-decoder framework. In SegNet, a fast/jump connection is introduced from a higher resolution feature map to improve the upsampling/downsampling roughness.



Recent semantic segmentation studies rely heavily on full convolutional networks such as expanded convolution, DeepLab and RefineNet.

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