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Innovations: Cutting-edge research from Berkeley Engineering
Innovations is a regular column
featuring brief updates on the pioneering research done by Berkeley
College of Engineering faculty and students. See more at www.coe.berkeley.edu/newsroom.
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The
software presents the user with a cluster of photos of a particular
individual, and each photo is linked to the news story where
it appeared.
PHOTO COURTESY OF THE RESEARCHERS |
Faces in the news
EECS graduate student Tamara Miller, CS professor David Forsyth,
and colleagues are working on a project that could advance the
science of computer face recognition and have potential applications
in everything from image archiving to surveillance. They have
developed computer software that automatically associates 45,000
images of human faces gathered from online news articles with
the names of the individuals pictured.
"Most photos in the news aren’t mug shots, with the
person looking right into the camera," says Forsyth, who
is also an investigator with the Center for Information Technology
Research in the Interest of Society (CITRIS). Among the tasks
the software must accomplish are separating the face from the
photo’s larger context, correcting the face’s positioning
to match a "canonical" pose, and culling the associated
name from photo captions. The software is 95 percent accurate
at identifying dozens of images of a single individual, even when
the face is shown in a variety of positions, angles, lighting
conditions, and with a range of facial expressions.
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Research
on the fluorescence microscopy detection system, which provides
a cheap and portable method for identifying specific toxins
or DNA, was funded by the National Science Foundation.
UC BERKELEY PHOTO |
Tiny computer chip can detect
toxins
Berkeley has filed a patent application on a tiny computer chip
that uses fluorescence microscopy to detect target molecules of
a toxic substance in a sample. The "lab on a chip,"
its developers say, could have potential applications in law enforcement,
environmental pollution detection, military medical care, or for
anyone who needs a cheap and portable method of identifying the
presence of specific toxins or DNA without the benefit of a laboratory.
"Imagine if you needed to determine whether a soldier in
battle had been exposed to a biochemical agent," says MSE
graduate student J. Alex Chediak. "This device could be developed
into something medics use in the field to get answers in a matter
of minutes rather than hours." Also involved in the research
are graduate students Zhongsheng Luo and Jeonggi Seo, BioE professor
Luke Lee, and EECS professor Nathan Cheung, under the leadership
of Purdue’s Timothy Sands, who initiated the work as an
MSE professor at Berkeley.
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Paulo
Monteiro joined the CE faculty in 1987 and is also group head
of Structural Engineering, Mechanics, and Materials.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO |
Visualizing the chemistry of
concrete
In an effort to create a "band-aid" for concrete,
CEE professor Paulo Monteiro has borrowed a research tool from
the biological sciences to study the chemistry of concrete more
closely than ever before. It is the soft x-ray microscope, which,
because it penetrates water, a key ingredient in concrete as well
as living cells, helps visualize reactions that occur when concrete
is mixed with other substances.
"Using the x-ray microscope," Monteiro says, "we’re
able for the first time ever to watch these reactions as they
happen."
He and his colleagues are developing a polymer-based adhesive
that would perform better than currently available repair materials
at patching aging concrete in buildings and bridges. Their motivation?
Most of the infrastructure in the U.S. was built during the economic
boom following World War II, and already 60 percent of our 500,000
bridges are showing signs of decay. The price tag to repair just
those bridges, Monteiro says, could be as high as $120 billion.
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FOREFRONT takes you into the
labs, classrooms, and lives of professors, students, and alumni
for an intimate look at the innovative research, teaching, and
campus life that define the College of Engineering at the University
of California, Berkeley.
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