Video Game Developers and Cancer Researchers Team Up

 Even seems like a natural collaboration these days.    Had been wondering how much of that is now common between game players/designers and science in general.

Cambridge University Researchers Develop VR Tool for Cancer Treatment

Video game developers and cancer researchers have teamed up to turn spreadsheet data into highly detailed VR imagery of cancer cells.      By Marco Marcelline

Virtual reality software has become an unlikely tool in the fight against cancer. 

In a bid to help doctors better understand how to treat cancer, video game designers and cancer researchers have teamed up at the University of Cambridge, England, to turn spreadsheet data into highly detailed VR imagery of cancer cells, ITV reports(Opens in a new window). 

The university’s IMAXT Laboratory has transformed brain-crunching numbers and data into an interactive 3D picture of a tumor that makes it easy for researchers to differentiate between cancer cells, as each type of cell is colored or shaped differently. 

With the help of a VR headset, doctors and researchers can essentially step inside patients’ tumors, making it easier to assess the severity and origin of the cancer cells. The aim of the tool, its makers say, is to give a better insight into how tumors can be treated.  ... ' 

Cambridge Researchers Develop VR Tool for Cancer Treatment

Appears to be of use  ..

Cambridge Researchers Develop VR Tool for Cancer Treatment

PC Magazine

Marco Marcelline, December 29, 2022

Video game designers and cancer researchers have teamed up at the U.K.'s University of Cambridge IMAXT Laboratory to turn spreadsheet data into highly detailed virtual reality (VR) imagery of cancer cells. With a VR headset, users can essentially step inside patients’ tumors, making it easier to assess the severity and origin of the cancer cells and glean better insight into how tumors can be treated. ..  '

Algae Powered ARM Chips for Low Energy

Note low energy specification.  How practical at this time?

Scientists Create Algae Computer Powered by Photosynthesis    By The Verge, May 17, 2022

Scientists have used algae to power a low-energy computer chip for six months.

Researchers from the University of Cambridge sealed a colony of cyanobacteria, commonly known as blue-green algae, inside a metal enclosure the size of an AA battery. The unit was then left on a windowsill, according to New Scientist, where the algae photosynthesized, generating a tiny current of electricity that powered an ARM Cortex-M0+ chip.

The system is only a proof of concept, but its creators hope algae-powered chips could be used in future Internet of Things devices. They say the advantage of using algae over traditional batteries or solar power is that it has a smaller environmental impact and could potentially provide continuous power.

"The growing Internet of Things needs an increasing amount of power, and we think this will have to come from systems that can generate energy, rather than simply store it like batteries," Professor Christopher Howe, joint senior author of the paper, said in a press statement. "Our photosynthetic device doesn't run down the way a battery does because it's continually using light as the energy source."

From The Verge

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Detecting Emotion: Fundametally flawed?

We did long time tests with emotion  reading, in retail starting with work using MIT 'emotion glasses',  Was interesting for initial tests, but not spot on accurate.    Pay attention to the measurement aspects, and validate with other methods, like comments. Saw some examples used to prompt specifics in advertising copy. 

Discover the stupidity of AI emotion recognition with this little browser game

Does your face match your feelings?

Tech companies don’t just want to identify you using facial recognition — they also want to read your emotions with the help of AI. For many scientists, though, claims about computers’ ability to understand emotion are fundamentally flawed, and a little in-browser web game built by researchers from the University of Cambridge aims to show why.

Head over to emojify.info, and you can see how your emotions are “read” by your computer via your webcam. The game will challenge you to produce six different emotions (happiness, sadness, fear, surprise, disgust, and anger), which the AI will attempt to identify. However, you’ll probably find that the software’s readings are far from accurate, often interpreting even exaggerated expressions as “neutral.” And even when you do produce a smile that convinces your computer that you’re happy, you’ll know you were faking it.  ; .. ' 

Drones Detecting Physical Behavior

Another case of complex pattern recognition.  In live video.  Here the drone is classifying a set of human behaviors and them classify them as a 'brawl'.  In English a violent, multi person fight.  Could be with or without weapons.  Could then be integrated further into a model of a crowd.  And identify individuals.    No indication that the drone would do anything other than alert the authorities.    Will see how accurate this is, and how its integration into police decision making is envisioned.

AI Drone Learns to Detect Brawls      in IEEE Spectrum  by Jeremy Hsu

Researchers at the University of Cambridge in the U.K., working with colleagues at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and India's National Institute of Technology, Warangal, have used deep learning to develop a drone surveillance system that automatically detects small groups of people fighting each other. The system uses computer vision software that runs in real time to detect violent individuals, says the University of Cambridge's Amarjot Singh. The researchers trained deep learning algorithms to recognize violent actions by identifying body and limb poses in staged video footage of interns mimicking violence. Singh replaced some of the neural network layers at the front-end with fixed parameters, and used supervised learning toward the back-end, exchanging some of the deep learning process with human engineering input. This allowed the resulting ScatterNet Hybrid Deep Learning (SHDL) network to learn more quickly with less data and less available computing power. The researchers are securing permission from Indian officials to test the system at two upcoming music festivals, and Singh is working to incorporate crowd modeling into the deep learning models.  ... "