Author: shlomi ben-oz

Asael Reiter of Technion Wins First Place in International Mathematics Competition

Held in Bulgaria, the Israeli delegation won first place in the group ranking

Asael Reiter, a graduate of the Rothschild Scholars Technion Excellence Program, won first place in the International Mathematics Competition (IMC) held in Bulgaria August 2-3, 2017. Technion graduate Nitzan Tur won seventh place.

Teams of students from universities around the world participate in the IMC, which is held annually in Bulgaria. The Israeli delegation is comprised of students from various universities, and this year a student from the Open University and three from Tel Aviv University were also ranked among the top 20. The Israeli delegation won first place in the group ranking.

Reiter, who won first place in the competition, grew up in Moshav Nof Ayalon near Modiin, completed his high school studies at Shaalvim Yeshiva, and served in the IDF in  “Hesder,” a program for observant Jewish students combining advanced Talmudic studies with military service. He was then admitted to the Technion Excellence Program, and completed his studies last year with an undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Physics, and a second undergraduate degree in Computer Science. Reiter had the highest average grade among the graduates who took part in the recent undergraduate graduation ceremony. He is now a graduate student at Technion’s Faculty of Mathematics.

The Rothschild Scholars Technion Excellence Program is an individualized academic program designed to maximize the skills of outstanding students while fostering curiosity, creativity, and in-depth scientific research.

Science is fascinating to many, but sentences that are full of expert-level terms and description can scare away even the most passionate readers. Can scientists learn to talk about their research without using too many technical terms? One of the obstacles to avoiding jargon is that scientists suffer from “the curse of knowledge” – they simply do not remember not knowing what they now know as experts.

To help scientists recognize which words are jargon and should be avoided or explained when engaging with the public, researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and HIT–Holon Institute of Technology have created a program that automatically identifies terms the average person may not know. In a recent paper published in the journal PLoS One, the free of charge and scientist-friendly De-Jargonizer  is introduced. Once a text is uploaded or pasted, the algorithm color codes words in the text as either frequent or intermediate level general vocabulary, or jargon. This is based on frequency of the words on an internet news site, designed and written for the public. The corpus will be updated periodically, and can be expanded to include other sources and languages.

“The De-Jargonizer provides a grim glimpse at the current level of jargon in scientific writing,” says Technion Prof. Ayelet Baram-Tsabari Who led the research with Dr. Tzipora Rakedzon.

When the authors compared 5,000 pairs of lay summaries, written for a wide audience, and their corresponding academic abstracts published in the journals PLoS Computational Biology and PLoS Genetics. Results showed that lay summaries indeed include less jargon (10%) than academic abstracts (14%) on average; however, research previously showed that for adequate comprehension, readers need to be familiar with 98% of the words. Therefore, the recommended level of unfamiliar words, i.e. jargon, is 2% – much lower than the percentage found in the lay summaries.

“The scientists intuitively understand they need to use less jargon when speaking with the public than to their peers”, says Baram-Tsabari, “but using so many unfamiliar words excludes the very people they are trying to engage.”

The program is designed to help scientists and science communication instructors improve and adapt vocabulary use when communicating with non-experts. Also, professionals in medicine could use it to evaluate text level for communication with patients. Overall, the importance of such a tool is to aid in making science and research accessible to the public, to support informed citizenship and more productive dialogue in these complex times for science in society. 

Technion Formula Team ranked 8th out of 31 in the student Formula competition in Austria. Next week the team competes in Germany.

The Technion Formula Team was ranked 8th out of 31 in the Formula Student competition in Austria. In the competition, 31 of the best teams in the world competed in the combustion category. Next week, the team will participate in a similar competition in Germany.

Technion team member Alain Altari said, “The competition is divided into the static part, in which we present the project, and the dynamic events, which include Acceleration; Skidpad (skid prevention); Autocross (driving one kilometer); and Endurance, which includes changing drivers and is 22 kilometers long. Racing cars must withstand very difficult conditions, so planning requires pure science and not just mechanical knowledge. We are pleased with the ranking in Austria and are preparing for the competition in Germany. Next year we hope to compete in the new Autonomous Racing Car category.”

This is the fifth year that Team Technion has participated in Formula Student competitions. Technion’s car was developed as part of the New Product Design Project course led by Dr. Hagai Bamberger under the guidance of Prof. Reuven Katz, Head of the Design, Manufacturing, and CAD track at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. This year, around 50 students from 7 different faculties are participating in the project, which is led by the Mechanical Engineering and Aerospace Engineering faculties. At the unveiling held recently at Technion, certificates of merit were awarded to several students: Alain Altari, Or Amsterdam, Yael Haslavsky, Omer Cohen, Tal Lipshitz, and Tom Mazor.

The new Formula car is a dramatic upgrade of Technion’s car that competed in Europe last year. Amongst other improvements, the pneumatic transmission system was replaced with an electric one, the weight of the car dropped from 255 kg to 175 kg, and the engine was replaced by a single-cylinder KTM engine. An active suspension system based on accelerometers was installed in the new car. In both competitions in Europe, the Technion team competes against veteran teams supported by leading car companies including BMW, Audi, and Porsche.

New Era in Microscopy in Israel: Technion Purchases the World’s Best Electron Microscope

The Themis microscope will enable characterization of the structure and chemical composition of materials at sub-nanometer resolution

The Technion recently purchased a Themis, an innovative and state of the art electron microscope, one of the most advanced in the world and the best of its kind in Israel. Themis is a transmission electron microscope (TEM) capable of providing an image of individual atoms and, based on this image, provide information about the material’s structure and properties. The microscope is about 4 meters high, and enables real-time tracking of dynamic processes occurring in the material, for example as a result of heating or cooling. The new microscope was purchased with the assistance of the Russell Berrie Nanotechnology Institute (RBNI) at the Technion.

Themis (Titan Cubed Themis G2 300) is manufactured by the American company FEI (Thermo Fisher Scientific). Its installation at Technion took about a week, and preparations for its operation will be completed by company representatives and Technion’s Electron Microscopy Center staff within a few weeks. It is installed in a special room that is insulated from its surroundings to prevent the influence of acoustic noise, mechanical vibrations, and electromagnetic field interference on experiments. It is fixed to a surface anchored to a rock deep in the ground, stabilized by a floating floor that insulates it from various vibrations in the environment, and controlled from an adjacent dedicated control room.

The Themis replaces the previous microscope, the Titan (FEI Titan 80-300 KeV S/TEM), which was purchased by the Technion in 2006 and was considered the world’s leading electron microscope at the time. Dr. Yaron Kauffman, head of the Electron Microscopy Center at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, said, “We call it a microscope, but it is actually a complete laboratory that enables us to perform diverse experiments under changing conditions, monitor processes in materials, and characterize materials in ways that were previously unavailable to us. This is a significant tool for atomic-level characterization of diverse materials such as metals; semiconductors and polymers; and ceramic, organic, hybrid, and biological materials.”

“Themis will lead the microscopy revolution at the nano and quantum scale, and marks the beginning of a new era in microscopy in Israel,” said Prof. Wayne Kaplan, Technion’s Executive Vice President for Research. “The new microscope will enable us to see the bonds between atoms, and important fundamental chemical processes with nanometer resolution.”

Prof. Kaplan added, “In order to remain at the forefront of global science we must constantly update the research infrastructure at the Technion. Unfortunately, despite the quantum leap in research in Israel thanks to the new microscope, it was purchased by the Technion without financial assistance from the Planning and Budgeting Committee of the Council for Higher Education (or any other government agency). It is regrettable that the government decision-makers who congratulate us on our scientific achievements and Nobel Prizes do not understand that the State of Israel will not be able to remain a global science and technology power without massive investment in research infrastructures.”

How does it work?

The principle of the operation of the electron microscope is similar to that of the optical microscope, which the public is more familiar with; but instead of using glass lenses to illuminate the sample with a focused light beam (photons), the electron microscope uses electromagnetic lenses (coils) to project a focused electron beam onto the sample.
The main advantage of the electron microscope is its high-resolution capability. Compared with the optical microscope, which is limited to a resolution of about 200 nanometers, the electron microscope is capable of achieving a resolution below 1 Ångstrom (one tenth of a nanometer). The reason for the difference is that the wavelength of the electron is significantly shorter than the wavelength of light.

In TEM, the electrons penetrate the sample, are emitted on the other side, and monitored by various sensors. These sensors enable us to understand the structure of the material (arrangement of atoms), its chemical composition (type of atoms), and the types of chemical bonds inside it.

Like its predecessor, Themis will operate at the Electron Microscopy Center at Technion’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering. The Center is used by scientists both from the Technion and from outside academic and industrial entities in the following fields: TEM, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), application of analytical methods for chemical analysis, and computerized optical microscopy. The Center also prepares microscope samples using diamond saws, diamond polishing systems, ultrasonic cutting machines, electrochemical systems, gold and carbon coaters, and more.

HAIFA, ISRAEL and ZURICH (August 8, 2017) – Proteins are one of the most important classes of biomarkers – biological molecules indicative of a disease or health of an individual. Protein detection is critical in a wide variety of tests that include the diagnosis of malaria, detection of a cardiovascular event, cancer screening and monitoring, and more.

Now, a team from Technion-Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and IBM Research in Zurich has improved the sensitivity of protein detection in immunoassays by more than 1,000-fold, when compared to standard immunoassay implementation. The team’s method – which appears on the cover of the peer-reviewed journal Analytical Chemistry – is based on a simple piece of hardware: a microfluidic chip containing flow channels the width of a human hair.

High sensitivity in detection is particularly important when protein biomarkers are present in extremely small numbers, as is the case in the early stages of a disease. The team’s approach might one day enable simple devices capable of analyzing small samples (such as a drop of blood), replacing the large and sophisticated laboratory equipment that is currently required.

“We use an old focusing technique called isotachophoresis (ITP) in a new way,” says Assistant Professor Moran Bercovici, of the Technion Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. “Using a combination of electric fields and specialized chemistry, we collect proteins into a tiny volume and precisely deliver them to react with detection antibodies patterned on the surface of the microchannel.”

“We essentially cheat the detector,” says Federico Paratore, a joint PhD student between the groups, and the lead author on the work. “We present a protein concentration that is 10,000-fold higher than in the original sample to a standard detector, and get the detector to respond accordingly.”

The test is a simple one, as demonstrated by Paratore. A few drops of the sample are introduced into the microfluidic chip, and an electric field is turned on. The proteins are compressed to a volume of approximately 50 picoliters – about 1 million times smaller than the volume of a human teardrop, and the result is visible within a few minutes.

Paratore is part of a joint European Union project, Virtual Vials, and works across both sites, combining the strengths of the Technion’s team in electrokinetics and fluid mechanics with IBM-Zurich’s expertise in microtechnology and diagnostics. At the Technion, Paratore collaborated with Tal Zeidman-Kalman and Tally Rosenfeld, who are co-authors of this paper.

“The elegance of this approach is in its simplicity, and of course the immense enhancement in assay sensitivity that could be applied to a range of immunoassay,” says Dr. Govind Kaigala, scientist at IBM Research in Zurich. “We strongly believe such a technology will help to fill the gaps in existing immunoassay technology, and be applied directly to biological samples such as blood, saliva, or urine.”

 

In the coming weeks, the Technion Formula team will compete in two European competitions

The new Technion Formula car was unveiled in advance of two prestigious competitions in Europe, where it will compete against the top ten Student Formula teams from around the world. The Technion team will compete with Formula cars built with the support of leading car companies including BMW, Audi and Porsche, among others. Nevertheless, the team members believe in their ability to record significant achievements in both competitions, which will take place in Germany and Austria. Last year Technion Formula was ranked 82nd (out of 600 teams) worldwide.

This is the fifth year that Team Technion has participated in Student Formula competitions. The new Formula car is a dramatic upgrade of the Technion Formula car that competed in Europe last year. Among other things, the pneumatic transmission system was replaced with an electric transmission system, the weight of the car was reduced from 255 kg to 175 kg and the engine was replaced by a single-cylinder KTM engine. An active suspension system based on accelerometers was installed in the new car.

The Technion Formula car was developed as part of the “New Product Design Project” course led by Dr. Hagai Bamberger under the guidance of Prof. Reuven Katz, Head of the Design, Manufacturing and CAD track at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering. This year, around 50 students from 7 different faculties are participating in the project. At the unveiling last week, certificates of merit were awarded to the following student team members – Alain Altari, Or Amsterdam, Yael Haslavsky, Omer Cohen, Tal Lifshitz and Tom Mazor.

Researchers at the Technion, together with theorists from Canada and the Netherlands, have developed an innovative method for predicting the behavior of a molecule in a molecule-surface collision. The method enables the study of basic reaction mechanisms that form the basis of important industrial processes such as hydrogen and ammonia production.

By Lotem Buchbinder

The encounter between two substances is the heart of chemistry, and its outcome depends on the chemical identity of the two substances and other variables, including the velocity of the molecule and the collision angle. Researchers at the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry have developed an innovative method for controlling the rotational state of a molecule before it collides with a surface made of a different substance, in order to characterize these states and measure the molecule’s behavior after the collision.

Under the guidance of Prof. Gil Alexandrovich, Dr. Oded Godsi and research students Gefen Corem and Yossi Alkoby have developed a general method for studying the behavior of molecules in molecule-surface collisions. The research group focused on hydrogen molecules that collide with flat and stepped copper surfaces at the same speed, but in different rotational states. The researchers found that when the surface is stepped, the effect of the molecule’s rotational state on the pattern of return from the surface is greater. The system developed and built at the Technion enables full control of the molecule’s rotational state by means of magnetic fields. This system contains a detector that makes it possible to identify the molecules that return from the surface and measure their rotational orientation in space.

In order to provide theoretical backup for the method developed by Prof. Alexandrowicz’s research group, his colleague at the faculty Prof. Tsofar Maniv entered the picture, along with research groups from Canada and the Netherlands. These groups helped analyze the results and develop the theory, in order to provide a theoretical model linking the molecule’s rotational states to the results of the collision.

The method developed represents significant progress in the study of the dynamics of chemical reactions, and Prof. Alexandrowicz plans to expand its use to molecules such as methane and ammonia, which are widely used in industry, and to platinum and iron surfaces. Prof. Alexandrovich estimates that “the development of measurement capabilities, followed by the development of new computation methods, will help the chemical industries in the future. Measurements of basic reaction mechanisms, and an understanding of the factors that influence the outcomes of molecule-surface collisions, are an essential stage in the development of computational models of chemical reactions. In the end, these models will enable control of reaction results by selecting optimal surfaces, thereby increasing the efficiency of various chemical processes.”  

The study was funded by the European Union (ERC grant), the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada.

Source: https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms15357

The research group led by Asst. Prof. Maytal Caspary Toroker from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering deciphered the reason for the success of doping iron for the best catalyst known today for splitting water. The article published in a respected journal in the field of physical chemistry, called Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, reveals for the first time why iron is successful for expedited effective oxidation of water. A deeper understanding of the mechanism of splitting water is expected to lead to the development of additional catalysts that can oxidize water and store energy.

Water splitting is a process in which water are broken down into their components, namely hydrogen and oxygen. It is a process that researchers have been trying to optimize in recent years in order to produce hydrogen fuel which is considered a ‘clean’ fuel that does not pollute the environment. Recently, a particularly good material was found that can speed up the process of water oxidation – a substance called nickel oxyhydroxide and its chemical short is called NiOOH. This material is already used in industry for batteries, but it has recently been discovered that when this material is contaminated / doped with iron then the efficiency is greatly enhanced. Since the discovery, many groups around the world have being using this catalyst for the purpose of splitting water, but the mechanism by which iron is effective has never been explained.

The research group of Asst. Prof. Maytal Caspary Toroker is engaged in theoretical-computational methods for characterizing properties of materials and for finding a correlation between the structure and material functionality. Such methods can decipher why the catalyst composition containing iron has a significant effects on the chemical activity of the material. The group found that iron is able to change easily oxidation states when the iron element is in the catalyst, which is key to the success of the chemical process that mainly depends on the ability of a material to change oxidation states during the reaction.

In 2016 the group published 12 articles, which is considered a significant quantitative achievement, of which a significant portion of the articles involve characterization of the catalyst NiOOH. The article recently published in 2017 in Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics was chosen as a cover article and bwill appear on the cover of the next issue of the journal. The article is called “The secret behind the success of doping nickel oxyhydroxide with iron”. 

The Research is supported by the Nancy and Stephen Grand Technion Energy Program (GTEP) through the Interdisciplinary Energy Graduate Studies Program (supporting Vicky Fidelsky MSc and PhD studies at the Technion).

Source: http://pubs.rsc.org/en/content/articlelanding/2017/cp/c6cp08590c#!divAbstract

The Israeli delegation to the 49th International Chemistry Olympiad for high school pupils (IChO-49) brought home one silver and two bronze medals. The delegation was selected and trained at the Technion’s Schulich Faculty of Chemistry.

The Israeli delegation to the International Chemistry Olympiad, comprised of four high school students and two mentors from the Technion, returned from Bangkok with a silver and two bronze medals.

The International Olympiad was held this year in Thailand, under the patronage of Her Royal Highness the Princess of Thailand, Chemist Dr. Maha Chakri Sirindhorn, who celebrated her 60th birthday on July 4.

Ron Solan, a student of Dina Reines and Omer Horesh at Rishonim High School in Herzliya, won the silver medal.

The bronze medals went to Rina Sevostianov, a student of Michal Kaufman at Makif Gimel High School in Ashdod, and Ophir Shmul, a student of Dr. Guy Ashkenazi at the Israel Arts and Science Academy in Jerusalem. The fourth member of the delegation was Ben Pilarsky, a student of Mirit Kramer at Rabin Comprehensive High School in Kiryat Yam.  

Participants for the annual International Olympiad are selected from thousands of Israelis participating in the Chimiada, the national chemistry competition for high school students. The three winners have already won international Chemistry Olympiads in the past: Solan won a silver medal last year at the International Chemistry Olympiad and a gold medal this year at the Mendeleev Chemistry Olympiad, a prestigious competition for participants from all over Asia and Eastern Europe. Sevostianov won a bronze medal at the 2016 International Chemistry Olympiad, and Shmul won a bronze medal at the Mendeleev Chemistry Olympiad this year.

All Israeli contestants in international chemistry Olympiads are screened and prepared in a special program held at Technion under the auspices of the Israeli Ministry of Education. The head of the program, Prof. Zeev Gross of the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry, explains that the impressive achievements of Israeli competitors are the result of extensive preparations in both theoretical and practical aspects. The head instructor of the program, Dr. Izana Nigel-Etinger, carries out this complex activity with the assistance of laboratory engineers Emma Gerts and Gabriele Halevi, and Mira Katz, who is in charge of logistical management. Numerous faculty members and doctoral students – all from the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry at Technion – also participate in this major effort.

Prof. Robert Grubbs lectured at the Schulich Faculty of Chemistry as part of the Apeloig Lectures series and added his signature to the Chemistry Wall of Fame at the Faculty

The Technion Faculty of Chemistry hosted Prof. Robert Grubbs of California Institute of Technology (Caltech). As part of the Apeloig Lectures series, Prof. Grubbs, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2005, lectured to students and faculty members about his research.

The Apeloig Lectures series was founded by the Friends of the Technion in the United States and Canada as a tribute to Prof. Yitzhak Apeloig at the end of his tenure as Technion President in 2009. Prof. Grubbs is the third lecturer in the series, and the two previous lecturers (Roald Hoffman and Jean-Marie Lehn) were also Nobel laureates. Prof. Grubbs met with faculty members and students and dined with 10 outstanding Ph.D. students at the Faculty, who were excited to meet and talk to one of the world’s leading scientists.

Prof. Grubbs won the Nobel Prize for his achievements in the study of the metathesis reaction – a reaction of two organic compounds with double bonds (olefins) which switch their substituents with the help of a catalyst . His unique contribution was the discovery and development of “Grubbs catalysts” – ruthenium-based catalysts that enable the reaction to be easily performed and controlled so that only desired the products are obtained.  

“The metathesis reaction is a great example of the importance of curiosity-driven basic research,” says Prof. Apeloig. “The initial interest in the reaction stemmed from the desire to understand the mechanism in which it takes place, and this understanding has made the reaction highly useful in many reactions in industry, worth billions of dollars. Today, we find compounds synthesized by the metathesis reaction in the medicine cabinet, fuel tanks, innovative plastics, tires, road surfaces and more. In fact, nothing limits the use of this reaction except the imagination.”

In his lecture at the Technion, Prof. Grubbs focused on innovations in the development of new catalysts and on new uses for the metathesis reaction to synthesize innovative polymers and photonic crystals. He added his signature to the Chemistry Wall of Fame at the Faculty, which bears the signatures of Nobel laureates in chemistry and other important chemists who visited the Technion over the years.

Technion and Toronto Researchers Aim to See the Night in a New Light

HAIFA, ISRAEL and TORONTO (July 16, 2017) Researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology and the University of Toronto have developed a technology for producing a new understanding of the nighttime landscape—from the office level to the entire city—based on the flicker of electric lights.

Artificial lighting plays a central role in our lives—in the home, in the office, on the road, and more—and is produced by a variety of lamps that are found in streetlights, offices, searchlights, billboards, computer monitors and more. Light emitted from all lamps connected to the electricity grid is constantly changing, but because of the high speed of this effect, people do not sense this flickering.

In a study to be presented July 22^nd at the Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition conference of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), lead researcher Mark Sheinin of the Technion’s Andrew and Erna Viterbi Faculty of Electrical Engineering, along with Technion Professor Yoav Schechner and Professor Kyros Kutulakos of the University of Toronto will present a new way to produce a great deal of useful information from the flicker patterns of lighted scenes. The approach combines various fields of research, including optics, computer vision, image processing and electrical grid engineering.

The researchers developed a system that extracts information from a passive video (without additional lighting) of the desired scene—office, hallway, even an entire city. The analysis of the information obtained from the photograph concludes, among other things, how the scene would look if some of the bulbs were turned off, amplified or replaced them with a different type of light, which may also help to cancel the reflections from windows. The analysis could help people take “selfies” in a restaurant and digitally eliminate a shadow-casting ceiling bulb, and vary the color and shading in the background.

Furthermore, the researchers found that the flicker across city scale provides valuable information about the electric grid itself, with potential to indicate anomalies in its dynamics. Based on this industrial application, they thus submitted a patent jointly with Technion Professor Yoash Levron.

The reason for the flicker of the light is that electrical networks operate in an alternating current (AC), in which the current of the electrons continuously reverses its direction. In North America, for example, the frequency in the grid is 60 Hz, which means that the electron current changes direction 120 times per second, and that is the rate at which the light flickers. The jitter pattern depends on the type of bulb—fluorescent, mercury, halogen, LED—since each bulb converts the electricity energy to light in a different process; in other words, each type of bulb has a unique time signature.

For photographers, flicker photography is a challenge. On the one hand, identifying the dynamics of flicker requires a very brief exposure. On the other hand, photography at night requires a long exposure to collect enough light to create an image. To solve this discrepancy, the researchers developed a unique electro-optical camera called ACam to sense the flicker of the alternating current. The camera, which is connected to the electricity grid, uses the flicker cycle to capture fast signals from the scene. The camera’s electronic shutter is open the entire time an image is taken, but the scene is only visible to the sensor in the desired time section of each flicker cycle.

The technology has developed a pathway for further research to perform a wide range of tasks, including the controlled illumination of objects, the measurement of three-dimensional objects and their surface texture based on their shadow, and the analysis of the properties of the electrical grid remotely by optical methods.

Srinivas Narasimhan, a professor in the School of Computer Sciences at Carnegie-Mellon University who was not involved with the study, said the ACam paper demonstrates “really innovative work, by measuring a signal that is hidden in plain sight and turning it into useful information. Its applications could include light pollution monitoring, air quality estimation at night, non-line-of-sight imaging, and monitoring power grid output and fluctuations.”

Professor Schechner’s interest in amateur astronomy, and the challenge light pollution poses for city star-gazers, prompted an interest in studying these subtle changes in light. Street lights flicker, so he reasoned “a way to capture the flicker could allow us to make urban night-sky observations, by integrating the brief moments that the light flicker has minimum brightness.”

But the researchers soon discovered that light bulbs don’t all flicker in the same way. “When one bulb reaches a minimum brightness, another bulb might be approaching its own maximum.”

“So the astronomical idea was shelved for the time being,” Professor Schechner added, “but we found great new uncharted territory to explore: the electrical grid.”

The research was supported by the Taub Foundation, the Israel Science Foundation and the German Minerva Foundation, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, the Mitacs Canada-Israel Globalink Innovation Initiative, and DARPA.

Pancake Printer, Smart Luggage, Robotic Breakfast

These are just some of the projects presented by students from Technion’s Computer Science Department at a fair for innovative and creative developments based on Android and IoT programming

The annual student project fair at Technion’s Computer Science Department took place last week. At the fair, students from the Systems and Software Development and Cyber and Information Security laboratories presented their developments. The exhibition included development projects in Android, IoT, and systems related to information security and cyber.

Pancake Printer was developed by Rana Mansur, Ala Sabani, and Muram Awadi. The three students saw a video on the Internet showing how to make pancakes, and decided that 3D printing technology could be of assistance. The result is a system for printing pancakes using a servo motor, 3D printer, and dedicated algorithms. They said, “Besides having to write code we had to cope with the system’s electronic and mechanical challenges, without any of us having a background in the field.” When the projects were presented, the system worked perfectly and provided those present with delicious pancakes in a wide variety of shapes.

 

i-Carry is a smart luggage transportation system developed by Masha Schmidt, Iris Iluz, and Alexander Gemintern. The suitcase moves either according to instructions given via smartphone or according to the hand movements of the user, who wears a dedicated bracelet. The suitcase not only follows the user but also signals its location on the baggage claim conveyor belt at the airport.

BreakFast is a system developed by Omri Kramer, Lior Fish, and Valentin Dashinsky, which automatically makes a breakfast consisting of cereal and a cup of coffee, according to the definitions provided by the user in advance – the type of cereal, type of coffee, amount of milk and sugar, etc. The meal will be ready as soon as the user wakes up in the morning or at any other predefined time. “Since we get up a few minutes before class and don’t have time in the morning, we developed this product that will greet us with a prepared breakfast. It could save time and reduce pressure,” said Dashinsky.

i-Chess is a physical (not virtual) system that plays chess with the user, developed by Yonatan Zaretsky, Ziv Yizhar, and Roi Shachori. It’s a magical chessboard where the pieces move independently. “We were looking for a solution that would not be virtual, and on the other hand it would not require the use of robotic arms to move the pieces,” said Zaretsky. “That’s how we arrived at this solution – a system based on artificial intelligence that moves the pieces by means of electromagnetic fields located underneath the board.”

BraceletMatching is a smart bracelet developed by Yevgeny Longo, Lorraine Ramel, and Nikita Dizhor, enabling its users to meet new people according to criteria. The user enters his data (age, height, gender, hobbies, languages, etc.) and the data he wants in the other person, into a dedicated smartphone app. When two users wearing the bracelet enter a range that also allows for WiFi reception, the bracelet directs them towards each other if they are compatible according to the criteria. According to Longo, “The bracelet can be used for romantic purposes but is also suitable for meeting people at conferences and in crowded places. Inside a building the bracelet uses WiFi transmission and reception alone, but outdoors it also uses GPS.”

Darbuka, developed by Muhammed Ismail, Muhammad Rayyan, and Muad Murad, teaches the user to play the darbuka according to music files downloaded from a computer. The system can either play by itself on the basis of a file that it receives or let the user drum using the app.

i-chant was developed by Sami Abdo, Bashir Khayat, and Ibrahim Balik. This system teaches the user to play the bagpipes using lights that tell him where to place his fingers. The system gives the user grades so that he can improve, and when he no longer needs the help of the lights he is invited to play by heart in order to test himself.

Bialik is a mobile platform that helps novices write poetry. The platform helps Hebrew writers by suggesting rhymes and English writers by suggesting synonyms. In addition, the platform reports the number of words that the user wrote during the week.

Learnguage is a smartphone app that helps the user acquire a new language using existing images or new ones added by the user. The system writes the appropriate word, in the language chosen by the user, for the photographed object.

Other projects presented at the exhibition included Mambo, which helps hearing-impaired people drive; LarMe, a smart anti-theft system; 3D Pong, a Ping-Pong game on a 3D LED cube; Tanks, a multiplayer game with autonomous tanks; Voice maze, a smart car that helps improve the spelling of words; BiPo, a device that monitors attendance in class; SportTime, which keeps track of sporting event schedules and receives notifications regarding delays; TestMe, a virtual study-buddy; Toudly, which creates a spontaneous community of people with a common interest; BookASeat, a system for reserving a seat at the library; UP&GO, an easy-to-use program scheduler; Athenizer, which makes it possible to expand or reduce code in order to make it more understandable; Smart City Accessibility, which checks locations according to their accessibility; and Smart Parking, which finds the best route to a parking spot nearest the user’s destination.

“Every year our students surprise us with their original ideas, which they translate into practical developments,” said Itai Dabran, manager of the Computer Systems and Software Development Laboratory at the Computer Science Department. “This is their first significant experience in coping with complex engineering projects like the ones awaiting them in the industry.”