Podcasts about yasamin mostofi

Research by the World Wide Web Foundation has found that the gender gap for internet accessibility has cost countries billions of USD in lost GDP. In the 32 countries studied a third of women were connected to the internet compared to almost half of men. This digital gender gap, their report says, has cost low and lower middle income countries USD $1 trillion over a decade. Director of Research, Catherine Adeya, joins us live from Nairobi and we also hear from Ian Mangenga who set up the Digital Girl Africa project to get more women online. Counting people with WiFi Researchers have developed a method of counting crowds that doesn't require complex AI or expensive camera surveillance but rather simple WiFi signals. Yasamin Mostofi from the University of California Santa Barbara tells us more about how this method measures fidgeting behaviours to figure out the size of a crowd and how it could be put to use. The BFI London Film Festival Expanded The BFI London Film Festival is going immersive. Reporter Hannah Fisher has had a preview of this year's hybrid programme which is full of tech - interactive VR, 360 films, augmented reality, mixed reality and live immersive performance. The programme is presented by Gareth Mitchell with expert commentary from Bill Thompson. Studio Manager: Nigel Dix Producer: Ania Lichtarowicz (Image: Majority World / Getty Images)

In an attempt to thwart censorship, BBC News is now available through the privacy-focused browser Tor also known as the gateway to the ‘dark web’. Facebook’s ambitions to launch cryptocurrency Last week, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, addressed critical questions about the company’s ambition to launch their own cryptocurrency ‘Libra’. Dr Catherine Mulligan of Imperial College London’s Centre for Cryptocurrency Research explains why some companies are leaving the Libra association. UNICEF start crypto-currency fund UNICEF, the United Nations Children’s Fund, will now be able to receive donations in crypto-currencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. Christopher Fabian, co-founder of UNICEF’s innovation unit, explains how this will allow the organisation to buy data directly from suppliers for schools that are currently offline. New spy technology uses wi-fi signals Wi-fi signals are distorted as they bounce off objects. Dr Yasamin Mostofi from the University of California has created a way to use these distortions to ‘see’ and possibly identify a person moving behind a wall. (Image credit: BBC) Producer: Louisa Field

WiFi networks are so ubiquitous and now researchers are working on novel ways to utilize existing signals – including figuring out how to optimize heating and cooling systems in homes or buildings. But how? "You need to be able to estimate your occupancy with WiFi signals." That’s Yasamin Mostofi, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She runs a research lab there on mobile sensor networks. "That’s something that we’ve been doing more recently – trying to count people with just WiFi signals. Over the whole building, you will have more WiFi links and so then you can extend it to larger areas. So basically the WiFi card is just recording its received power for a period of time and just from that signal, we want to figure out how many people were there, which areas are more crowded? Then the heating and cooling can be optimized accordingly."

This week on Science Today. We’ve all experienced spaces with uneven heating and cooling systems, so what if this can be optimized in novel ways? We spoke to electrical and computer engineer Yasamin Mostofi of UC Santa Barbara who is using existing WiFi signals to essentially conduct a headcount. But why? "You need to be able to estimate your occupancy with WiFi signals. We want to figure out how many people were there, which areas are more crowded, then the heating and cooling can be optimized accordingly." If counting calories is more your thing, you may want to know more about added sugars in your diet. This is the one of the most significant contributors to diseases like diabetes and heart attacks, so Kris Madsen of UC Berkeley says if everyone was aware of this, there would be a better chance that public health agencies and municipalities could partner with industry to produce healthier products for people to consume. Madsen recently found that a soda tax in Berkeley led to lower consumption of sugary drinks in low-income neighborhoods. "I think some would say sugar-sweetened beverages have been unfairly singled out, they are not the only problematic item in our diet. This is true. There’s a few things about them that really makes them stand out – first of all, they are the largest source of added sugars in the American’s diet; the other problem is that we don’t usually compensate for those calories." This week we also visit the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where engineers are looking to overcome one of the current limitations of commercial 3D printers on the market – that is, the lack of material that’s being used. Engineer Chen Zhu helped develop a novel, ultra-lightweight graphene aerogel to expand the fabrication of devices or functional materials. "So first we developed the graphene aerogel ink that’s a printable ink, so that means the material is easy to flow through the very small nozzle and after squeezing the printing, the material can maintain the shape and it’s not going to shrink or collapse or deform." There’s just so much research going on at the University of California – subscribe to Science Today on iTunes or follow us on Soundcloud or Stitcher to hear these and other episodes. I’m Larissa Branin, thanks for listening. Subscribe to Science Today: iTunes: apple.co/1TQBewD Stitcher: www.stitcher.com/podcast/science-today Follow us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/ucsciencetoday Stories mentioned in this roundup: https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/wifi_systems https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/added_sugars https://soundcloud.com/sciencetoday/print_material

Wi-fi has become ubiquitous in our world as a wireless way to get access to the Internet, but what if radio waves could be used to sense the environment? Yasamin Mostofi, an electrical and computer engineer at the University of California, Santa Barbara has been using wi-fi signals to basically give x-ray vision to robots and unmanned vehicles. "Can they image objects? Can they see through walls? Can they count people? Can they localize people?" Such technology could be used in security, search and rescue scenarios, ‘smart homes’ and even at archeological sites. "The robots basically have everyday wi-fi cards that we all have in our laptops and a directional antenna. So, one robot transmits and that transmission goes through the object and the objects interact with it, depending on their material property, their location. And in a sense we can see they leave a signature on a signal and that signature is what we’re trying to use to figure out something about the object."

Wi-Fi signals are predominantly used for communication, but a team of engineers at the University of California, Santa Barbara are working to use Wi-Fi signals as a sensing mechanism. Yasamin Mostofi and her team have shown that a Wifi signal can be used to count the number of people in a given space, which can someday be used for energy efficiency. "For instance, the current smart speakers, they have Wi-Fi cards, so we have a very rich environment in a smart home for Wi-Fi links. And so we can imagine they could be used in figuring out which areas are more crowded and optimizing all sorts of things, like heating and cooling based on where people are. We think of it as an additional way of sensing." Mostofi’s lab is also working on other uses for Wi-Fi, including using at archeological sites. "Where sometimes there’s part of a structure that’s, you know, you just don’t want to break and you want to sense something behind it and you just simply can’t use cameras – it’s not visible."

Imagine using Wi-Fi signals to see through concrete walls? Electrical and computer engineer Yasamin Mostofi of the University of California, Santa Barbara is doing just that. "We wanted to see if we can give this X-ray vision to our unmanned vehicles with only Wi-Fi. So they move around, they gather their measurements and then based on those measurements and the mathematical foundations we’ve developed, then they’re going to process it, to extract that image and build that image." This type of sensing could be used in smart homes for heating and cooling, or for home security. Mostofi is also interested in using this for search-and-rescue. "Imagine the Japan tsunami in 2011. In such a scenario there was a nuclear spill and it’s too dangerous for humans to go in. It would be great if we can have unmanned vehicles that from outside can assess the situation inside and figure out what’s going on behind the walls and then help guide humans to safe areas."

An interview with historian Professor Virginia Scharff who recently wrote The Women Jefferson Loved. Throughout his life, Thomas Jefferson constructed a seemingly impenetrable wall between his public legacy and his private life. Dr. Eva Chi shares her groundbreaking research into finding a cure for Alzheimers as she seeks answers for what causes proteins to go bad in the brain. Recipient of President Obama's Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, Dr. Yasamin Mostofi looks to future and answers the question of how we get robots to think for themselves. Produced by New Mexico PBS, CONNECT shares the inspired thinking and innovative research of the University of New Mexico. The Producer of CONNECT is Brad Stoddard. The Executive Producer is Michael Kamins. Production support provided by the University of New Mexico. www.newmexicopbs.org