The Robotic Moment

The Robotic Moment The Robotic Moment The Robotic MomentSherry Turkle, the psychologist who directs MITs Initiative on Technology and Self, sometimes tells the anecdote about how she welches once approached by a young psychology graduate student after a talk about reactions to sociable robots that can mimic and evoke emotions. Anne, the student, confided that she would trade in her boyfriend for a sophisticated Japanese robot if it could provide what she described as caring behavior.According to Turkle, who retold the anecdote during a plenary lecture to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston this past February, Anne told me that she relied on a feeling of civility in her house and did not want to be alone. She said, If the robot could provide the environment, I would be happy to produce the illusion that there was somebody really with me.This was exactly the type of ironic remark graduate students make. Yet Anne was not joking. According to Turk le, who has studied the psychology of human interactions with technology since the first electronic games appeared in the late 1970s, there are so many people who feel as Anne does that something must be changing fundamentally in our relationship with robots and artificial intelligence.Todays robots are not only smarter, but increasingly able to engage us emotionally. As a result, Turkle said, humans have begun to think about their relationships with robots in new and often startling ways. For Further Discussion

Is the C-Suite Your Sweet Spot

Is the C-Suite Your Sweet SpotIs the C-Suite Your Sweet SpotProve your worth in the C-seat by mastering leadership and eliciting excellence from others.What does it take to make it to the top of the corporate ladder? Few of us whove achieved senior corporate positions lack self-confidence, and weve convinced at least one employer of our ability to lead and function with significant independence. How does success in one or two functions translate into a top management position and how can you improve your chances if thats where youve platzdeckchen your sights?For this package, reporter Kevin Fogarty asked a variety of career experts about the secret ingredient to help a senior manager convince an employer that shes ready to raise her game to the next level.The key, experts agreed, lies in building on the leadership skills youve demonstrated within a prescribed function and proving that you can extend them to lead large groups of people whose specialties you cant replicate personally. Common wisdom warns against becoming a jack of all trades, master of none. But leadership itself is a trade to be mastered and the ability to apply it to elicit excellence from other specialists is a common trait of successful C-level executives.

The NetZero Water Dorm

The NetZero Water Dorm The NetZero Water Dorm University of Miami researchers are entwurfing and building a net-zero water building on campus. This four-bedroom dorm project will house university students and serve as a proof-of-concept as part of the Design for Autonomous Net-Zero Water Buildings project funded by a $2-million, multi-year NSF Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation grant.The concept of net-zero water buildings involves treating and re-using all wastewater with their own water treatment units in the building. Dr. James Englehardt, principal investigator for the project, described one of the projects main goals to be able to do this for a single stand-alone building with a low-energy and low-emission water-treatment ordnungsprinzip.Were developing design principles for future buildings that are off the water and wastewater grids, and the basic research includes many aspects of system design. Project investigators are studying what net-zero water buildings could include and what they would look like, and designing treatment and risk-detection systems that could be commercialized, Englehardt says.All of the wastewater from the buildings sinks, laundry, toilets, dishwasher, and showers in four bathrooms and a kitchen will go to a system that treats the water to drinking-water quality standards. The students will use the treated water for everything but drinking and cooking.Low-Energy Water TreatmentWastewater treatment involves separating liquids from solids and several stages of treatment. The University of Miami system will destroy all organics, including pharmaceuticals, by oxidizing them to carbon dioxide, and removing all metals, which arent typically an issue with municipal wastewater. Some of the organics will go to sludge which will enter the sewer, but ultimately we want to convert those as well, Englehardt says.University of Miami autonomous net-zero water dorm system. Source Miami.eduOne motivation for this project is to see if all of this can be done using low energy. Englehardt explains that, on average in the U.S., water and wastewater conveyance costs consumers four times the amount of energy moving back and forth from central plants than treating at centralized treatment plants. He says development of low-energy, single-building treatment plants, coupled with avoidance of conveyance energy, offers the prospect of equivalent treatment and lower emissions at equivalent cost.Technologies such as reverse osmosis or infrared distillation that remove ions or natural minerals in the water use too much energy, so, the Miami low-energy system will not remove them. It will produce mineral water that meets drinking water standards and would be excellent for irrigation. To prevent minerals from accumulating to concentrations that are too high, they will recycle 80% of the water and dispose up to 20% of the treated water to the sewer, and use rainwater collected from cisterns to make up the difference. Englehardt say snet-zero water buildings would have no sewer. Because there are no current regulations for potable water reuse, discharging to the sewer made regulatory permission easier for this research project.The treatment system addsCalcium carbonate, a beneficial mineralNatural ozone and hydrogen peroxide, which decomposes to oxygen and water as part of the oxidation and disinfection processEthanol as a carbon source, which aids bacteria nitrogen conversionPart of the research is to determine whether the wastewater in the treatment system is alkaline and organic-rich enough so carbonate and organic carbon may not be needed.Dorm LifeStudents applied to live in the dorm in 2011, and the four selected live there now that the building interior is ready. Wastewater is going directly to the sewer until the system is fully installed. Building retrofit began this summer and is expected to be completed this month. The treated water will be discharged to the sewer during the fall semester, while the s ystem is stabilized and the water is tested and approved for supply to the apartment. Researchers plan to turn on the first recycled water in January 2013, for nearly closed-loop operation beginning in the spring.The net-zero water dorm developers (from left to right), Sabina Rakhimbekova, Mirek Miroslav, Vincent Warger, John Pittaluga, James Englehardt, Sebastian Eilert, Tingting Wu, Tianjiao Guo, Cristina Delphus and Ali Habashi. Photo courtesy Joshua Prezant. Source TheMiamiHurricane.comThe project will collect two years of data, including formal water quality analyses with an outside lab and water-quality measurements from many sensors monitoring the water pipes and different parts of the system. Researchers will collect florescence spectra, electrical conductivity, dissolved oxygen content, turbidity, and pH measurements three or more times daily, for five days a week and access data from a central, web-based control system.Water quality data entered into software will be used to control the treatment system remotely but manually. One goal is to develop real-time risk-detection software that will send signals to the water treatment system and problem alerts so everyone will know and can respond, but it will not yet be operational at the residence hall.Current risk-analysis methods are cumbersome. Were not good at knowing the health response to a certain concentration of a single chemical were monitoring, much less a mixture. It is even harder to predict response to microbes. We want to skip the middle step and go from an electronic signal to a risk without identifying individual chemicals or concentrations. That makes it easier, less expensive, and would accelerate acceptance of the technology by allowing people to feel more protected, Englehardt says.Architects, psychologists, and a cultural anthropologist are also part of the research, to help understand motivations for and against living in a net-zero building. Englehardt says, Barriers in these areas are just as real and high as engineering barriers. Were learning how to explain and present these systems to the public so it would be accepted.The general design principles were working on would apply across the country, but more work will be needed to hilfestellung specific applications and commercialization of the technology by industry in the future. This research could be conducted in the private sector, but industry would not likely fund it until regulations are changed to allow net-zero water systems.Debbie Sniderman is CEO of VI Ventures LLC, a technical consulting company.Were developing design principles for future buildings that are off the water and wastewater grids.Dr, James Englehardt, University of Miami