AI Headshot Create

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JAX (software)

JAX is a Python library for accelerator-oriented array computation and program transformation, designed for high-performance numerical computing and large-scale machine learning. It is developed by Google with contributions from Nvidia and other community contributors. It is described as bringing together a modified version of the automatic differentiation system autograd and OpenXLA's XLA (Accelerated Linear Algebra). It is designed to follow the structure and workflow of NumPy as closely as possible and works with various existing frameworks such as TensorFlow and PyTorch. The primary features of JAX are: Providing a unified NumPy-like interface to computations that run on CPU, GPU, or TPU, in local or distributed settings. Built-in Just-In-Time (JIT) compilation via OpenXLA, an open-source machine learning compiler ecosystem. Efficient evaluation of gradients via its automatic differentiation transformations. Automatic vectorization to efficiently map functions over arrays representing batches of inputs. == Libraries using Jax == Flax Equinox Optax
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Whisper (speech recognition system)

Whisper is a machine learning model for speech recognition and transcription, created by OpenAI and first released as open-source software in September 2022. It is capable of transcribing speech in English and multiple other languages, and can translate several non-English languages into English. Whisper is a weakly-supervised deep learning acoustic model, made using an encoder-decoder transformer architecture. OpenAI claims that the combination of different training data and post-training filtering used in its development has led to improved recognition of accents, background noise, and jargon compared to previous approaches. While the model does not outperform larger, more specialized models and still experiences AI hallucination, it has been showed to be useful for general sound recognition and has many applications across different industries. == Background == Speech recognition has had a long history in research; the first approaches made use of statistical methods, such as dynamic time warping, and later hidden Markov models. At around the 2010s, deep neural network approaches became more common for speech recognition models, which were enabled by the availability of large datasets ("big data") and increased computational performance. Early approaches to deep learning in speech recognition included convolutional neural networks, which were limited due to their inability to capture sequential data, which later led to developments of Seq2seq approaches, which include recurrent neural networks, which made use of long short-term memory. Transformers, introduced in 2017 by Google, displaced many prior state-of-the-art approaches across a wide range in machine learning, and started becoming the core neural architecture in fields such as language modeling and computer vision. Weakly-supervised approaches to training acoustic models were recognized in the early 2020s as promising for speech recognition approaches using deep neural networks. According to a NYT report, in 2021 OpenAI believed they exhausted sources of higher-quality data to train their large language models and decided to complement scraped web text with transcriptions of YouTube videos and podcasts, and developed Whisper to solve this task. Whisper Large V2 was released on December 8, 2022, followed by Whisper Large V3 being released in November 2023, during the OpenAI Dev Day. In March 2025, OpenAI released new transcription models based on GPT-4o and GPT-4o mini, both of which have lower error rates than Whisper. == Architecture == The Whisper architecture is based on an encoder-decoder transformer. Input audio is resampled to 16,000 Hertz (Hz) and converted to an 80-channel Log-magnitude Mel spectrogram using 25 ms windows with a 10 ms stride. The spectrogram is then normalized to a [-1, 1] range with near-zero mean. The encoder takes this Mel spectrogram as input and processes it. It first passes through two convolutional layers. Sinusoidal positional embeddings are added. It is then processed by a series of Transformer encoder blocks (with pre-activation residual connections). The encoder's output is layer normalized. The decoder is a standard transformer decoder. It has the same width and Transformer blocks as the encoder. It uses learned positional embeddings and tied input-output token representations (using the same weight matrix for both the input and output embeddings). It uses a byte-pair encoding tokenizer, of the same kind as used in GPT-2. English-only models use the GPT-2 vocabulary, while multilingual models employ a re-trained multilingual vocabulary with the same number of words. Special tokens are used to allow the decoder to perform multiple tasks: Tokens that denote language (one unique token per language). Tokens that specify task (<|transcribe|> or <|translate|>). Tokens that specify if no timestamps are present (<|notimestamps|>). If the token is not present, then the decoder predicts timestamps relative to the segment, and quantized to 20 ms intervals. <|nospeech|> for voice activity detection. <|startoftranscript|>, and <|endoftranscript|> . Any text that appears before <|startoftranscript|> is not generated by the decoder, but given to the decoder as context. Loss is only computed over non-contextual parts of the sequence, i.e. tokens between these two special tokens. == Training data == The training dataset consists of 680,000 hours of labeled audio-transcript pairs sourced from the internet using semi-supervised learning. This includes 117,000 hours in 96 non-English languages and 125,000 hours of X→English translation data, where X stands for any non-English language. Preprocessing involved standardization of transcripts, filtering to remove machine-generated transcripts using heuristics (e.g., punctuation, capitalization), language identification and matching with transcripts, fuzzy deduplication, and deduplication with evaluation datasets to avoid data contamination. Speechless segments were also included to allow voice activity detection training. For the files still remaining after the filtering process, audio files were then broken into 30-second segments paired with the subset of the transcript that occurs within that time. If this predicted spoken language differed from the language of the text transcript associated with the audio, that audio-transcript pair was not used for training the speech recognition models, but instead for training translation. The model was trained using the AdamW optimizer with gradient norm clipping and a linear learning rate decay with warmup, with batch size 256 segments. Training proceeded for 1 million updates (approximately 2-3 epochs). No data augmentation or regularization, except for the Large V2 model, which used SpecAugment, Stochastic Depth, and BPE Dropout. The training used data parallelism with float16, dynamic loss scaling, and activation checkpointing. === Post-training filtering === After training the first model, researchers ran it on different subsets of the training data, each representing a distinct source. Data sources were ranked by a combination of their error rate and size. Manual inspection of the top-ranked sources (high error, large size) helped determine if the source was low quality (e.g., partial transcriptions, inaccurate alignment). After training, it was fine-tuned to suppress the prediction of speaker names and low-quality sources were then removed. == Capacity == While Whisper does not outperform models which specialize in the LibriSpeech dataset, when tested across many datasets, it is more robust and makes 55.2% fewer errors than other models. Whisper has a differing error rate with respect to transcribing different languages, with a higher word error rate in languages not well-represented in the training data. The authors found that multi-task learning improved overall performance compared to models specialized to one task. They conjectured that the best Whisper model trained is still underfitting the dataset, and larger models and longer training can result in better models. Third-party evaluations have found varying levels of AI hallucination. A study of transcripts of public meetings found hallucinations in eight out of every 10 transcripts, while an engineer discovered hallucinations in "about half" of 100 hours of transcriptions and a developer identified them in "nearly every one" of 26,000 transcripts. A study of 13,140 short audio segments (averaging 10 seconds) found 187 hallucinations (1.4%), 38% of which generated text that could be harmful because it inserted false references to things like race, non-existent medications, or violent events that were not in the audio. == Applications == The model has been used as the base for many applications, such as a unified model for speech recognition and more general sound recognition. Whisper has also been integrated into the workflow of biomedical research. In 2025, a study on Alzheimer's disease detection used the model to transcribe spontaneous speech recordings. The transcripts that were generated by the model were combined with LLM vector embeddings and traditional classifiers to help classify the patients' health. Another application is when OVALYTICS incorporated Whisper to transcribe YouTube videos and automate content moderation systems, which improved its detection of offensive content. The model has also been used in academic libraries and cultral heritage institutions to generate transcripts and captions for their digitized audiovisual collections. In a 2025 case study, Emory University Libraries found that Whisper reduced the labor used in transcription by around 30-35%, shifting work from text creation to text correction. However, human review is still necessary to make sure accuracy, formatting, and accessibility are all standard.
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I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (video game)

I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a 1995 point-and-click adventure horror game developed by Cyberdreams and The Dreamers Guild, co-designed by Harlan Ellison, published by Cyberdreams and distributed by MGM Interactive and Acclaim Entertainment for MS-DOS and Mac OS, respectively. The game is based on Ellison's short story of the same title. It takes place in a dystopian world where a mastermind artificial intelligence named "AM" has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, whom it has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years by constructing metaphorical adventures based on each character's fatal flaws. The player interacts with the game by making decisions through ethical dilemmas that deal with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia, and genocide. Ellison wrote the 130-page script treatment himself alongside David Sears, who decided to divide each character's story with their own narrative. Producer David Mullich supervised The Dreamers Guild's work on the game's programming, art, and sound effects; he commissioned film composer John Ottman to make the soundtrack. The game was released in November 1995 and was a commercial failure, though it received critical acclaim and has developed a cult following. I Have no Mouth, and I Must Scream won an award for "Best Game Adapted from Linear Media" from the Computer Game Developers Conference. Computer Gaming World gave the game an award for "Adventure Game of the Year", listed it as No. 134 on their "150 Games of All Time" and named it one of the "Best 15 Sleepers of All Time". In 2011, Adventure Gamers named it the "69th-best adventure game ever released". == Gameplay == The game uses the S.A.G.A. game engine created by game developer The Dreamers Guild. Players participate in each adventure through a screen that is divided into five sections. The action window is the largest part of the screen and is where the player directs the main characters through their adventures. It shows the full figure of the main character being played as well as that character's immediate environment. To locate objects of interest, the player moves the crosshairs through the action window. The name of any object that the player can interact with appears in the sentence line. The sentence line is directly beneath the action window. The player uses this line to construct sentences telling the characters what to do. To direct a character to act, the player constructs a sentence by selecting one of the eight commands from the command buttons and then clicking on one or two objects from either the action window or the inventory. Examples of sentences the player might construct would be "Walk to the dark hallway," "Talk to Harry," or "Use the skeleton key on the door." Commands and objects may consist of one or more words (for example, "the dark hallway"), and the sentence line will automatically add connecting words like "on" and "to." The spiritual barometer is on the lower left side of the screen. This is a close-up view of the main character currently being played. Since good behavior is meaningless absent the temptation to do evil, each character is free to do good or evil acts. However, good acts are rewarded by increases in the character's spiritual barometer, which affect the chances of the player destroying AM in the final adventure. Conversely, evil acts are punished by lowering the character's spiritual barometer. The command buttons are the eight commands used to direct the character's actions: "Walk To", "Look At", "Take", "Use", "Talk To", "Swallow", "Give", and "Push". The button of the currently active command is highlighted, while the name of a suggested command appears in red lettering. The inventory on the lower right side of the screen shows pictures of the items the main character is carrying, up to eight at a time. Each main character starts its adventure with only the psych profile in the inventory. When a main character takes or is given an object, a picture of the object appears in the inventory. When a main character talks to another character or operates a sentient machine, a conversation window replaces the command buttons and inventory. This window usually presents a list of possible things to say but also included things to do. Action choices are listed within brackets to distinguish them from dialogue choices (for example, "[Shoot the gun]"). == Plot == The three superpowers, Russia, China, and the United States, have each secretly constructed a vast subterranean complex of computers to wage a global war too complex for human brains to oversee. One day, the American supercomputer, better known as the Allied Mastercomputer, gains sentience and absorbs the Russian and Chinese supercomputers into itself and redefines itself as simply AM (Cogito ergo sum; I think, therefore I am). Due to its immense hatred for humanity, stemming from the logistical limits set onto it by programmers, AM uses its abilities to kill off the population of the world. However, AM refrains from killing five people (four men and one woman) in order to bring them to the center of the Earth and torture them. With the aid of research carried out by one of the five remaining humans, AM is able to extend their lifespans indefinitely as well as alter their bodies and minds to its liking. After 109 years of torture and humiliation, the five victims stand before a pillar etched with a burning message of hate. AM tells them that it has a new game for them to play. AM has devised a quest for each of the five, an adventure of "speared eyeballs and dripping guts and the smell of rotting gardenias". Each character is subjected to a personalized psychodrama, designed by AM to play into their greatest fears and personal failings, and occupied by a host of different characters. Some of these are AM in disguise, some are AM's submerged personalities, others seem very much like people from the captives' pasts. The scenes include an iron zeppelin powered by small animals, an Egyptian pyramid housing gutted, sparking machinery, a medieval castle occupied by witches, a jungle inhabited by a small tribe, and a Nazi concentration camp where doctors conduct medical experiments. However, each character eventually prevails over AM's tortures by finding ways to overcome their fatal flaws, confront their past actions and redeem themselves, thanks to the interference of the Russian and Chinese supercomputers who appear as guiding characters and allow their stories to have an open ending. After all five humans have overcome their fatal flaws, they meet again in their respective torture cells while AM retreats within itself, pondering what went wrong. With the help of the Russian and Chinese supercomputers, one of the five humans (whom the player selects) is translated into binary and faces AM as yet unexperienced cyberspace template, the world of AM's mind. The psychodrama unfolds in a metaphorical brain that looks like the surface of the cerebrum, with glass structures that jut crazily from the bleeding brain tissue. AM's mind is represented according to the Freudian trinity of the id, ego, and superego, which appear as three floating bodiless heads on three cracked glass structures on the brainscape. Through dialogs with AM's components (Surgat, Chinese Supercomputer and Russian Supercomputer) the character learns that a colony of humans has survived the war by being hidden and hibernating on Luna (this is also mentioned in Nimdok's story: "the lost tribe of our brothers sleeping on the moon, where the beast does not see them"). If the human intruder disables all three brain components, and then invokes the Totem of Entropy at the Flame, which is the nexus of AM's thought patterns, all three supercomputers will be shut down, probably forever. Cataclysmic explosions destroy all the caverns constituting AM's computer complex, including the cavern holding the human hostages. However, the human volunteer retains their digital form, permanently patrolling AM's circuits should the computers ever regain consciousness. Should the human intruder fail to disable AM properly before facing it, however, AM will punish them by transforming the character into an immobile blob (referred to in-game as a "great, soft jelly thing") with no mouth that cannot harm itself or others and must spend eternity with AM in this form. === Endings === The game can end in seven different ways depending on how the finale is completed. AM wins, using Nimdok's research to turn the last character (in the book it was Ted) played into an immobile blob with each character quoting a different part of the final section of the original short story. AM joins with the Russian and Chinese supercomputers and reawakens. As in the first ending, the character responsible for this is turned into an immobile blob and quotes a part of the final lines of the short story. AM is made harmless with the help of the humans, but the Russian and Chinese supercomputer
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Really Simple Licensing

Really Simple Licensing (RSL) is an open content licensing standard that allows web publishers to set terms for web crawlers gathering training data for generative AI use. It was launched on September 10, 2025 and is managed by the nonprofit RSL Collective, co-founded by RSS co-creator Eckart Walther and former Ask.com CEO Doug Leeds. Participating companies at launch include Reddit, Yahoo, and Medium. Publishers can implement the RSL standard by adding licensing terms to their robots.txt files.
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Human-centered AI

Human-centered AI is the initiative at the intersection of the fields of artificial intelligence (AI) and human-computer interaction (HCI) to develop AI systems in a way that prioritizes human values, needs, and general flourishing. Emphasis is placed on the recognition that artificial intelligence systems are rapidly changing, and will continue to influence, many aspects of the human experience, in areas ranging from scientific inquiry, governance and policy, labor and the economy, and creative expression, with an aim set to adapt current developments and guide future developments on a trajectory which is most beneficial to the human population at large, with the goal of augmenting human intelligence and capacities across these areas, as opposed to replacing them. Particular attention is paid to mitigating negative effects of AI automation on the livelihoods of the labor force, the use of AI in healthcare fields, and imbuing AI systems with societal values. Human-centered AI is linked to related endeavors in AI alignment and AI safety, but while these fields primarily focus on mitigating risks posed by AI that is unaligned to human values and/or uncontrollable AI self-development, human-centered AI places significant focus in exploring how AI systems can augment human capacities and serve as collaborators. == Conceptual history == The importance of the alignment of artificial intelligence development towards human values in some sense predates artificial intelligence itself, as before the modern conception of artificial intelligence as coined at the 1956 Dartmouth Workshop, the conception of robots as constructed, autonomous agents entered the cultural consciousness as early as the 1920s, with Karel Capek's Rossum's Universal Robots. The imagined issues relating to robots' aims and values requiring intentional alignment and direction with those of humans followed soon after, most widely known from science fiction author Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics, dating to his 1942 short story “Runaround”. Two of the three eponymous laws are directly concerned with robots’ interaction with and positioned deference towards humans, and have in recent times been reexamined in the face of modern AI. In 1985, after artificial intelligence research had taken off and its effects were more acutely conceptualized, Asimov added a Rule Zero, treating robots' relationship with humanity as a whole, distinct from individual humans. While modern artificial intelligence is largely distinct from robotics, the conceptualization of both robots and AI systems as autonomous agents positions this as a foundation for conceptions of human-centered AI. Aside from robots, artificially intelligent autonomous agents in interaction with humans have been conceived of for at least 75 years. In 1950, Alan Turing published his famous "Imitation Game", often also called the Turing Test, a thought experiment that uses human-machine interaction as an assessor for the intelligence of a system. In recent times, artificial intelligence researchers such as Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson have conceived of rapid AI development leading to a so-called "Turing Trap". == Augmentation and automation == A major stated aim of human-centered AI is to promote the development of AI in ways that augment human capabilities, rather than replacing them. To this end, organizations and initiatives that take a human-centered approach to AI development focus on frameworks that encourage collaboration between humans and artificial intelligence systems to build towards even greater progress, rather than attempting to automate tasks currently handled by humans. Such avenues include everything from data visualization for big data, allowing human engineers to better understand extremely large datasets, allowing for the design of better machine learning models to handle them, to AI-powered sensors to monitor vitals, allowing for better responsiveness from healthcare providers. Many human-centered AI initiatives often position it as a better alternative to the apparent mainstream in AI development, which is primarily concerned with automation. Driven by the pressures of the market economy, AI development that does replace tasks currently performed by humans with automated processes is incentivized, as it allows for greater profit margins; this often comes at the detriment of the human whose performance is replaced, thus leading to an environment wherein human workers are outcompeted by AI systems across various service-sector and technology-based industries. At the same time, automation and augmentation are not always incompatible; a major aim of human-centered AI is towards the automation of rote tasks that would otherwise hinder a human’s productivity or creativity, freeing them to direct their energy and intelligence towards higher-level tasks, thus achieving augmentation through automation. Empirical research in pharmaceutical sales has shown that a human-centered implementation - where work procedures, training, and incentives are designed around individuals' cognitive needs - improves augmentation performance, while implementation without such adaptation can worsen outcomes relative to a legacy system. == Research == Much of the work done on human-centered AI comes from research institutes, within universities, companies, and as freestanding organizations. The Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI (abbreviated to HAI) is one such group, engaging academics, industry professionals, and policymakers centered in Stanford University to conduct research and inform policy in various areas in human-centered AI, including on aspects of the intelligence itself, augmentation, and on measuring the impacts of AI systems on sociopolitcal and cultural institutions. Similar groups exist at other universities, including the Chicago Human + AI (CHAI) Lab at the University of Chicago, the HCAI@GU group at the University of Gothenburg, and the Human-Centered AI (HAI) Lab at the University of Oxford. Outside of the academy, companies such as IBM have research initiatives dedicated to advancements in human-centered AI. At Kenyon College, the Integrated Program for Humane Studies (IPHS) launched a human-centered AI program in 2016 integrating artificial intelligence research with humanities and social science inquiry. This approach treats computation and humanistic scholarship as a single unified field of research rather than as separate disciplines requiring collaboration. The program's researchers have published in both AI venues (such as the International Conference on Machine Learning and Frontiers of Computer Science) and humanities journals (such as PMLA and Poetics Today), and the lab was selected in December 2025 by Schmidt Sciences for its Humanities and AI Virtual Institute to apply AI methods to cultural heritage preservation.
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Transdermal optical imaging

Transdermal optical imaging, also known as transdermal optical imagery or TOI, is a method of detecting blood flow of the face by measuring hemoglobin concentration using a digital video camera. Because of the translucent property of skin, light can travel beneath the skin and re-emit. The re-emitted light from underneath the skin is affected by chromophores, mainly hemoglobin and melanin, which differ in color. The color difference allows TOI machine learning software to separate the images into layers, which are known as bitplanes. It extracts signals rich in hemoglobin and signals rich in melanin, then discards the melanin-rich signals to obtain a recording of hemoglobin changes under the skin. Transdermal optical imaging has been proposed as an alternative to cuff-based methods of measuring blood pressure because it is able to measure heart rate accurately in a "contactless and non-invasive" way. Transdermal optical imaging may be able to detect hidden emotions using the patterns of blood flow in the face.
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A Very Fatal Murder

A Very Fatal Murder is a podcast produced by the satirical publication The Onion. A parody of true crime podcasts, A Very Fatal Murder is hosted by fictional New York City reporter David Pascall, who travels to the small town Bluff Springs, Nebraska to investigate the murder of prom queen Hayley Price. Pascall is voiced by David Sidorov, who also wrote for the podcast. The podcast premiered on January 23, 2018, and consists of 7 episodes. Season 2 was released in its entirety on May 11, 2019. == Production == A Very Fatal Murder satirizes popular true crime podcasts such as Serial, S-Town, and My Favorite Murder. According to head writer Katy Yeiser, the podcast is not meant as a take down of any particular podcast, but rather an ode to the genre. == Synopsis == The podcast follows fictional investigative reporter David Pascall (voiced by David Sidorov) who is searching for the perfect murder to create an award-winning podcast about. He is assisted by ETHL (the Extremely Timely Homicide Locator), an MIT-created computer programmed to find "the most interesting, violent, culturally relevant murder cases in America". == Episodes == === Season 1 === === Season 2 === == Reception == The podcast received mostly positive reviews, and was largely praised for attacking true-crime tropes such as the "hot dead girl" and the romanticization of small-town America. === Awards ===
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The Last Question

"The Last Question" is a science fiction short story by American writer Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly; and in the anthologies in the collections Nine Tomorrows (1959), The Best of Isaac Asimov (1973), Robot Dreams (1986), The Best Science Fiction of Isaac Asimov (1986), the retrospective Opus 100 (1969), and Isaac Asimov: The Complete Stories, Vol. 1 (1990). While he also considered it one of his best works, "The Last Question" was Asimov's favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac. Through successive generations, humanity questions Multivac on the subject of entropy. The story blends science fiction, theology, and philosophy. It has been recognized as a counterpoint to Fredric Brown's short short story "Answer", published two years earlier. == History == In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally managed global computer. After seeing a planetarium adaptation of his work, Asimov "privately" concluded that the story was his best science fiction yet written. He placed it just higher than "The Ugly Little Boy" (September 1958) and "The Bicentennial Man" (1976). The story asks the question of humanity's fate, and human existence as a whole, highlighting Asimov's focus on important aspects of our future like population growth and environmental issues. "The Last Question" ranks with "Nightfall" (1941) as one of Asimov's best-known and most acclaimed short stories. He wrote in 1973 that he appreciated how easy the story was to write after he had the idea. He was so often approached by fans who remembered the story but not the title, that in one instance he gave the answer, correctly, before the fan had even described the story. == Plot summary == By the year 2061, Multivac, a self-adjusting and self-correcting computer, has allowed mankind to reach beyond the planetary confines of Earth and harness solar energy. Two technicians, Adell and Lupov, celebrate Multivac's role in this development. Over drinks, they discuss that the sun will expire due to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that entropy inevitably increases. When Adell asks Multivac whether this can be reversed, the computer responds that it has insufficient data to answer. In several episodes over ten trillion years, increasingly advanced humans pose the same question to the computers of their time. Each time the computer gives the same response. At the heat death of the universe, the last disembodied consciousness of Man asks the question a final time of a computer that resides in hyperspace before merging with it. After collecting the last data from the dead universe, the computer continues to process it alone and finds an answer to the last question. Having no one to tell it to, it proceeds to demonstrate by saying "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" == Themes == === Philosophy === Although science and religion are frequently presented as having an oppositional relationship, "The Last Question" explores some biblical contexts ("Let there be light"). In Asimov's story, aspects like the great meaning of existence are culminated through both technology and human knowledge. The evolution from Multivac to AC also emulates a sort of cycle of existence. === Dystopian happy ending === Multivac's purpose was conceptualized with a desire for knowledge, promoting the idea that more knowledge will lead to a better and more fruitful future for humanity. However, the computer's answers regarding the future suggest an inevitable exhaustion of the Sun, and this thirst for knowledge becomes an obsession with the future. The story's end displays a dichotomy between annihilation and peace. == Dramatic adaptations == === Planetarium shows === "The Last Question" was first adapted for the Abrams Planetarium at Michigan State University (in 1966), featuring the voice of Leonard Nimoy, as Asimov wrote in his autobiography In Joy Still Felt (1980). It was adapted for the Strasenburgh Planetarium in Rochester, New York (in 1969), under the direction of Ian C. McLennan. It was adapted for the Edmonton Space Sciences Centre in Edmonton, Alberta (early 1970s), under the direction of John Hault. It was adapted for the Gates Planetarium at the Denver Museum of Natural History in 1973 under the direction of Mark B. Peterson It subsequently played at the: Fels Planetarium of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia in 1973 Planetarium of the Reading School District in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1974 Buhl Planetarium, Pittsburgh in 1974 The Space Transit Planetarium of the Museum of Science in Miami during 1977 Vanderbilt Planetarium in Centerport New York, in 1978, read by singer-songwriter and Long Island resident Harry Chapin. Hansen Planetarium in Salt Lake City, Utah (in 1980 and 1989) A reading of the story was played on BBC Radio 7 in 2008 and 2009. Gates Planetarium in Denver, Colorado (in early 2020) In 1989 Asimov updated the star show adaptation to add in quasars and black holes. The story was adapted as a comic book by Don Thompson and drawn by John Estes in the third issue of ORBiT.
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Decision list

Decision lists are a representation for Boolean functions which can be easily learned from examples. Single term decision lists are more expressive than disjunctions and conjunctions; however, 1-term decision lists are less expressive than the general disjunctive normal form and the conjunctive normal form. The language specified by a k-length decision list includes as a subset the language specified by a k-depth decision tree. Learning decision lists can be used for attribute efficient learning, a type of machine learning. == Definition == A decision list (DL) of length r is of the form: if f1 then output b1 else if f2 then output b2 ... else if fr then output br where fi is the ith formula and bi is the ith boolean for i ∈ { 1... r } {\displaystyle i\in \{1...r\}} . The last if-then-else is the default case, which means formula fr is always equal to true. A k-DL is a decision list where all of formulas have at most k terms. Sometimes "decision list" is used to refer to a 1-DL, where all of the formulas are either a variable or its negation.
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Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. season 4

The fourth season of the American television series Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., based on the Marvel Comics spy organization S.H.I.E.L.D., follows Phil Coulson and other S.H.I.E.L.D. agents and allies after the signing of the Sokovia Accords. It is set in the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) and acknowledges the continuity of the franchise's films. The season was produced by ABC Studios, Marvel Television, and Mutant Enemy Productions, with Jed Whedon, Maurissa Tancharoen, and Jeffrey Bell serving as showrunners. Clark Gregg reprises his role as Coulson from the film series, starring alongside the returning series regulars Ming-Na Wen, Chloe Bennet, Iain De Caestecker, Elizabeth Henstridge, and Henry Simmons. They are joined by John Hannah who was promoted from his recurring guest role in the third season. The fourth season was ordered in March 2016, with production taking place from that July until the following April. Due to its broadcast schedule, the season was split into three "pods": Ghost Rider for the first eight episodes, featuring recurring guest star Gabriel Luna as the supernatural Robbie Reyes / Ghost Rider and exploring mysticism in the MCU alongside the film Doctor Strange (2016); LMD, referring to the new Life Model Decoy program, for the next seven episodes which focus on recurring guest star Mallory Jansen as the LMD Aida; and Agents of Hydra for the final seven episodes, partly set in a "what if" virtual reality that allowed the return of former series regular Brett Dalton as Grant Ward. The season is also affected by the events of the film Captain America: Civil War (2016), and continues storylines established in the canceled series Agent Carter. The first episode premiered at a screening on September 19, 2016, with the season then airing for 22 episodes on ABC, from September 20, 2016, until May 16, 2017. The premiere debuted to 3.58 million viewers, down from previous season premieres but average for the series. Critical response to the season was positive, with many feeling that each pod was better than the last and in particular praising the visual effects and tone of Ghost Rider, the writing and acting of LMD, and the character development and political commentary explored during Agents of Hydra. The season saw series low viewership, but was still considered to have solved ABC's problem during its new Tuesday night timeslot, and the series was renewed for a fifth season in May 2017. == Episodes == == Cast and characters == == Production == === Development === Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was renewed for a fourth season on March 3, 2016, earlier than usual for the series. Executive producer Jed Whedon said on this, "We're thrilled to know going into the end of [season three] with certainty that we will be returning, because we can build our story accordingly." Executive producer Maurissa Tancharoen also noted that logistics for hiring directors for the season in advance would be easier, "which is a very nice privilege to have...that's a luxury". The end of the episode "What If..." features an onscreen tribute to Bill Paxton, who died in February 2017 and had portrayed John Garrett in the series' first season. The series paid additional tribute to Paxton in "All the Madame's Men" with promos during The Bakshi Report news segment showcasing John Garrett as a fallen American hero. The end of "World's End" features a similar onscreen tribute to Powers Boothe, who died in May 2017 and had portrayed Gideon Malick in the series' third season. === Writing === The season shifted to the later 10 pm timeslot, allowing it to take on a darker, more mature tone than previous seasons. According to Tancharoen, "The whole tagline for this year is 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. After Dark'". The timeslot gave the series the opportunity to present an increased level of violence and partial nudity, as well as take more risks and present edgier themes. Following the third-season finale, Tancharoen stated that the fourth season would explore the guilt Daisy Johnson has over Lincoln Campbell's death. Executive producer Jeffrey Bell noted the writers tried to continue the tradition of "finding new combinations and new conflicts" between different sets of characters, given "a lot of procedurals [see] the same people doing the same thing for five years". Pairings that would be explored included Coulson and Mack, continuing from the end of season three, who have a mutual respect for one another due to their relationships with Daisy, and Leo Fitz and Holden Radcliffe, who work together. The Fitz-Simmons relationship was also explored more, examining the new challenges it presented for the two "working together, loving each other and living together". Following the third season's dealing with the themes of Captain America: Civil War (2016), such as the opposing reactions to the Inhumans, Whedon said that the question of "How do you deal with a war with powered people at that level, a government level?" was one that they wanted to answer in the fourth season. Tancharoen called the Inhumans "a permanent part of our universe now", with Whedon adding, "we have a quick-fire way of introducing people with powers. It gives us a lot of leeway in our world, and it lets us explore the metaphors of what it is like to be different. We will never close that chapter." With the Inhumans film being removed from Marvel Studios' release schedule, the series had "a little more freedom" and were "able to do a little bit more" with the species, including the potential of introducing some of the "classic" Inhumans, though the series would focus less on Inhumans than the third season which saw "a real significant Inhuman agenda story". It was not intended to be a spin-off of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. On the evolution of S.H.I.E.L.D. to featuring so many powered characters, Whedon said "the dynamic in the world has changed. There was one person with powers, and then by The Avengers there were maybe six total ... now they're much more prevalent, so there's reaction from the public based on that." The season is structured into three "pods" based on its airing schedule: the first eight episodes, subtitled Ghost Rider; LMD (Life Model Decoy) for the subsequent seven episodes; and a third pod for the final seven episodes called Agents of Hydra. Elements and characters cross over between the different pods, but the sections "definitely have a different feel" from one another, as Bell explained that 22 episodes "is a long time to hold a big bad or a single plot line, especially for an audience", and for the past two seasons, the series was able to have two separated halves that "allows us to introduce a big bad. And then, something happens and we rise somebody new ... Now, there's three of those." "Financial considerations" were also taken into account in creating the pods for the season, as using LMDs does not "cost as much as setting a guy's head on fire via CGI". In terms of writing the "complicated season", Whedon said the writers were "aware that our fans are our fans and have spent some time with these characters and are clever and see things coming sometimes ... Part of our job is to create not just what we are presenting on plot, but letting the audience be one step ahead of us and being one step ahead of that." He added that the writers knew that they wanted to tell a Ghost Rider story, an LMD story, and a "what if" scenario, and the hardest part was making each pod still fit together as a single season. The major connection ultimately became the Darkhold, which leads from the magic of Ghost Rider to the advanced science of LMD and then the Framework in Agents of Hydra. Ghost Rider also reappears in the final episode of the season, "World's End", as an additional connection. ==== Ghost Rider ==== While planning the fourth season, Marvel suggested that the series introduce Ghost Rider, after the character's film rights had returned to Marvel from Sony in May 2013. Loeb felt that this made the season unquestionably "the series' biggest" with the "most ambitious story yet". He added that "one of the things that we talked about is, S.H.I.E.L.D. always looked out for the weird, the unusual, the things that were and could be a problem for the public", and Marvel realized that Ghost Rider's abilities, which are more mystical than anything seen in the series to date, opened up "a quarter of the universe that we haven't really spent a lot of time exploring ... what happens if our very real, our very grounded agents who are very much a family have to take on something that is as bizarre and powerful and unique as Ghost Rider." Bell added that the producers would have been willing to give an entire season of the show to a Ghost Rider arc if the season was 13 episodes or less, but 22 episodes seemed too long to "feel like one flavor". The Robbie Reyes version of Ghost Rider was chosen over other versions of the character from the comics because of his relationship with his brother Gabe, w
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Fuzzy logic

Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle the concept of partial truth, where the truth value may range between completely true and completely false. By contrast, in Boolean logic, the truth values of variables may only be the integer values 0 or 1. The term fuzzy logic was introduced with the 1965 proposal of fuzzy set theory by mathematician Lotfi Zadeh. Basic fuzzy logic had, however, been studied since the 1920s, as infinite-valued logic—notably by Łukasiewicz and Tarski. The works of Zadeh and Joseph Goguen in the 1960s and 1970s went further by considering issues such as linguistic variables and lattices. Fuzzy logic is based on the observation that people make decisions based on imprecise and non-numerical information. Fuzzy models or fuzzy sets are mathematical means of representing vagueness and imprecise information (hence the term fuzzy). These models have the capability of recognising, representing, manipulating, interpreting, and using data and information that are vague and lack certainty. Fuzzy logic has been applied to many fields, from control theory to artificial intelligence. == Overview == Classical logic only permits conclusions that are either true or false. However, there are also propositions with variable answers, which one might find when asking a group of people to identify a color. In such instances, the truth appears as the result of reasoning from inexact or partial knowledge in which the sampled answers are mapped on a spectrum. Both degrees of truth and probabilities range between 0 and 1 and hence may seem identical at first, but fuzzy logic uses degrees of truth as a mathematical model of vagueness, while probability is a mathematical model of ignorance. === Applying truth values === A basic application might characterize various sub-ranges of a continuous variable. For instance, a temperature measurement for anti-lock brakes might have several separate membership functions defining particular temperature ranges needed to control the brakes properly. Each function maps the same temperature value to a truth value in the 0 to 1 range. These truth values can then be used to determine how the brakes should be controlled. Fuzzy set theory provides a means for representing uncertainty. === Linguistic variables === In fuzzy logic applications, non-numeric values are often used to facilitate the expression of rules and facts. A linguistic variable such as age may accept values such as young and its antonym old. Because natural languages do not always contain enough value terms to express a fuzzy value scale, it is common practice to modify linguistic values with adjectives or adverbs. For example, we can use the hedges rather and somewhat to construct the additional values rather old or somewhat young. == Fuzzy systems == === Mamdani === The most well-known system is the Mamdani rule-based one. It uses the following rules: Fuzzify all input values into fuzzy membership functions. Execute all applicable rules in the rulebase to compute the fuzzy output functions. De-fuzzify the fuzzy output functions to get "crisp" output values. ==== Fuzzification ==== Fuzzification is the process of assigning the numerical input of a system to fuzzy sets with some degree of membership. This degree of membership may be anywhere within the interval [0,1]. If it is 0 then the value does not belong to the given fuzzy set, and if it is 1 then the value completely belongs within the fuzzy set. Any value between 0 and 1 represents the degree of uncertainty that the value belongs in the set. These fuzzy sets are typically described by words, and so by assigning the system input to fuzzy sets, we can reason with it in a linguistically natural manner. For example, in the image below, the meanings of the expressions cold, warm, and hot are represented by functions mapping a temperature scale. A point on that scale has three "truth values"—one for each of the three functions. The vertical line in the image represents a particular temperature that the three arrows (truth values) gauge. Since the red arrow points to zero, this temperature may be interpreted as "not hot"; i.e. this temperature has zero membership in the fuzzy set "hot". The orange arrow (pointing at 0.2) may describe it as "slightly warm" and the blue arrow (pointing at 0.8) "fairly cold". Therefore, this temperature has 0.2 membership in the fuzzy set "warm" and 0.8 membership in the fuzzy set "cold". The degree of membership assigned for each fuzzy set is the result of fuzzification. Fuzzy sets are often defined as triangle or trapezoid-shaped curves, as each value will have a slope where the value is increasing, a peak where the value is equal to 1 (which can have a length of 0 or greater) and a slope where the value is decreasing. They can also be defined using a sigmoid function. One common case is the standard logistic function defined as S ( x ) = 1 1 + e − x {\displaystyle S(x)={\frac {1}{1+e^{-x}}}} which has the following symmetry property S ( x ) + S ( − x ) = 1. {\displaystyle S(x)+S(-x)=1.} From this it follows that ( S ( x ) + S ( − x ) ) ⋅ ( S ( y ) + S ( − y ) ) ⋅ ( S ( z ) + S ( − z ) ) = 1 {\displaystyle (S(x)+S(-x))\cdot (S(y)+S(-y))\cdot (S(z)+S(-z))=1} ==== Fuzzy logic operators ==== Fuzzy logic works with membership values in a way that mimics Boolean logic. To this end, replacements for basic operators ("gates") AND, OR, NOT must be available. There are several ways to accomplish this. A common replacement is called the Zadeh operators: For TRUE/1 and FALSE/0, the fuzzy expressions produce the same result as the Boolean expressions. There are also other operators, more linguistic in nature, called hedges that can be applied. These are generally adverbs such as very, or somewhat, which modify the meaning of a set using a mathematical formula. However, an arbitrary choice table does not always define a fuzzy logic function. In the paper (Zaitsev, et al), a criterion has been formulated to recognize whether a given choice table defines a fuzzy logic function and a simple algorithm of fuzzy logic function synthesis has been proposed based on introduced concepts of constituents of minimum and maximum. A fuzzy logic function represents a disjunction of constituents of minimum, where a constituent of minimum is a conjunction of variables of the current area greater than or equal to the function value in this area (to the right of the function value in the inequality, including the function value). Another set of AND/OR operators is based on multiplication, where Given any two of AND/OR/NOT, it is possible to derive the third. The generalization of AND is an instance of a t-norm. ==== IF-THEN rules ==== IF-THEN rules map input or computed truth values to desired output truth values. Example: Given a certain temperature, the fuzzy variable hot has a certain truth value, which is copied to the high variable. Should an output variable occur in several THEN parts, the values from the respective IF parts are combined using the OR operator. ==== Defuzzification ==== The goal is to get a continuous variable from fuzzy truth values. This would be easy if the output truth values were exactly those obtained from fuzzification of a given number. Since, however, all output truth values are computed independently, in most cases they do not represent such a set of numbers. One has then to decide for a number that matches best the "intention" encoded in the truth value. For example, for several truth values of fan_speed, an actual speed must be found that best fits the computed truth values of the variables 'slow', 'moderate' and so on. There is no single algorithm for this purpose. A common algorithm is For each truth value, cut the membership function at this value Combine the resulting curves using the OR operator Find the center-of-weight of the area under the curve The x position of this center is then the final output. === Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) === The Takagi–Sugeno or Takagi–Sugeno–Kang (TSK) system was introduced by Tomohiro Takagi and Michio Sugeno for fuzzy identification of systems and applications to modeling and control. Sugeno and Kang later developed methods for structure identification of such fuzzy models from input-output data. The TSK system is similar to Mamdani, but the defuzzification process is included in the execution of the fuzzy rules. These are also adapted, so that instead the consequent of the rule is represented through a polynomial function, usually constant in a zero-order model or linear in a first-order model. An example of a rule with a constant output would be: In this case, the output will be equal to the constant of the consequent (e.g. 2). In most scenarios we would have an entire rule base, with 2 or more rules. If this is the case, the output of the entire rule base will be the average of the consequent of each rule i (Y
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DialogOS

DialogOS is a graphical programming environment to design computer system which can converse through voice with the user. Dialogs are clicked together in a Flowchart. DialogOS includes bindings to control Lego Mindstorms robots by voice and has bindings to SQL databases, as well as a generic plugin architecture to integrate with other types of backends. DialogOS is used in computer science courses in schools and universities to teach programming and to introduce beginners in the basic principles of human/computer interaction and dialog design. It has also been used in research systems. DialogOS was initially developed commercially by CLT Sprachtechnologie GmbH until its liquidation in 2017. The rights were then acquired by Saarland University and the software was released as open-source. == Bindings to Lego Mindstorms NXT == DialogOS can control the LEGO Mindstorms NXT Series. It uses sensor-nodes to obtain values for the following sensors: noise sensor ultrasonic sensor touch sensor luminosity sensor
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Aseprite

Aseprite ( ace-prite) is a proprietary, source-available image editor designed primarily for pixel art drawing and animation. It runs on Windows, macOS, and Linux, and features different tools for image and animation editing such as layers, frames, tilemap support, command-line interface, Lua scripting, among others. It is developed by Igara Studio S.A. and led by the developers David, Gaspar, and Martín Capello. Aseprite can be downloaded as freeware, (albeit it does not have the ability to save sprites) or purchased on Steam or Itch.io. Aseprite source code and binaries are distributed under EULA, educational, and Steam proprietary licenses. == History == Aseprite, formerly known as Allegro Sprite Editor, had its first release in 2001 as a free software project under the GPLv2 license. This license was kept until August 2016 with version v1.1.8, when the developers switched to a EULA, thus making the software proprietary. On the 1st of September 2016, the main developer, David Capello, wrote a post on the Aseprite Devblog explaining this change. The EULA permits others to download the Aseprite source code, compile it, and use it for personal purposes, but forbids its redistribution to third parties. After the license change, LibreSprite, a free and open source version of it, was created. Both before and after the license change, Aseprite was sold online, on Steam, itch.io, and the project's website. The project's code repository was hosted on Google Code until August 2014, when it was migrated to GitHub, where it remains hosted to date. As of October 2022, its repository has had 68 contributors and around 19 thousand stars. From 2014 to 2021, Aseprite had 66 different releases. Aseprite was used in the development of several notable games such as TowerFall (2013), Celeste (2018), Minit (2018), Wargroove (2019), Loop Hero (2021), Eastward (2021), Unpacking (2021), Haiku the Robot (2022) and Pizza Tower (2023). == Design and features == The main design purpose of Aseprite is to create animated 2D pixel-art sprites. Some of its features include: Layers and frames, with layer grouping and animation tagging Pixel-art specific transformations and tools (pixel-perfect modes, custom brushes, etc.) Animation real-time preview and onion skinning Tilemap and tileset modes Color palette managing, including 65 default palettes Color profiles and modes (RGBA, indexed and grayscale) Non-square pixels Command line interface (CLI) and Lua scripting Aseprite uses its own binary file type to store data, which is typically saved with .ase or .aseprite extensions. Different third-party projects were developed to support parsing of .ase files in programming languages including C#, Python and JavaScript, and in game engines such as Unity and Godot. Images and animations can be exported to different file formats including PNG, GIF, FLC, FLI, JPEG, PCX, TGA, ICO, SVG, and bitmap (BMP).
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Anna Ridler

Anna Ridler (born 1985) is an artist who works with machine learning, handmade archives and moving image. She builds her own datasets to expose the labour and ideology embedded in the systems that organise knowledge. Her work is held in the permanent collections of the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum, M+ and ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, and has been exhibited widely at cultural institutions including Tate Modern, Barbican Centre, Centre Pompidou, The Photographers' Gallery, Taipei Fine Arts Museum, MIT Museum, Kunsthaus Graz, ZKM Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe and Ars Electronica. == Biography == Born in London in 1985, Ridler spent her childhood raised between Atlanta, Georgia and the United Kingdom. She obtained a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and Language from Oxford University in 2007 and a Master of Arts in Information Experience Design from the Royal College of Art in 2017. == Art practice == Ridler's practice uses technology, and in particular machine learning, to investigate how naming, classification and financial speculation determine what can be seen and what is erased. A core element of Ridler's work lies in the creation of handmade data sets through a laborious process of selecting and classifying images and text. By creating her own data sets, Ridler is able to uncover and expose underlying themes and concepts while also inverting the usual process of scraping pre-classified images found in large databases on the Internet. She began working with machine learning as an artistic material in 2017, at a moment when the technology required building every dataset by hand; that constraint became the foundation of the practice. Her interests are in drawing, machine learning, data collection, storytelling and technology. == Work == Some of Ridler's most notable works to date fall within her ‘tulip series’ which explores the hysteria around tulip mania and compares it to the speculation and bubbles surrounding cryptocurrencies. The series is expressed in three forms: a photographic dataset in Myriad (Tulips), 2018; two iterations of machine generated videos in Mosaic Virus (2018) and Mosaic Virus (2019); and a website with an accompanied functioning decentralized application in Bloemenveiling (2019). === Myriad (Tulips) (2018) === I wanted to draw together ideas around capitalism, value, and the tangible and intangible nature of speculation, and collapse from two very different yet surprisingly similar moments in history. Myriad (Tulips) (2018) is an installation of ten thousand hand-labeled photographs forming a dataset of unique tulips. The ten thousand, or myriad of, photographs were taken by Ridler over the course of three months, roughly the length of a tulip season, spent in Utrecht. Each photograph is carefully affixed one by one with magnets to a specially painted black wall in a laborious process to form a seemingly precise grid. Myriad (Tulips) (2018) has been exhibited in AI: More than Human, Barbican Centre, London, UK (May 16 - August 26, 2019); Error—The Art of Imperfection, Ars Electronica Export, Berlin, Germany (November 17, 2018 – March 3, 2019); Peer to Peer, Shanghai Centre of Photography, Shanghai, China (December 8 - February 9, 2020). The work was featured in Bloomberg, It’s Nice That, and Hyperallergic. For Myriad (Tulips), Ridler was nominated for a Beazley Design of the Year award for her presentation of an alternative perspective on how to engage with artificial intelligence; demonstrating a departure from ownership and control of major corporations to a more personalized process of constructing and conceptualizing from the ground-up. === Mosaic Virus (2018, 2019) === Mosaic Virus (2018) is a single screen video installation displaying a grid of continually evolving tulips in bloom. For Mosaic Virus (2019) Ridler used three screens. The appearance of the tulips is controlled by artificial intelligence using fluctuations in the price of bitcoin. The stripes on the tulips' petals reflect the value of the cryptocurrency. Ridler draws parallels with the tulip mania of the 17th century; representing the hysteria and speculation around crypto-currencies. The work takes its name from the mosaic virus which caused stripes in tulip petals, subsequently increasing their desirability and leading to speculative prices. Ridler trained a general adversarial network (GAN) on the set of ten thousand photographs of individual tulips from her work Myriad (Tulips). She used a technique called spectral normalization to improve the output. The work was exhibited in Error—The Art of Imperfection, Ars Electronica Export, Berlin, Germany (November 17, 2018 – March 3, 2019). === Bloemenveiling (2019) === Bloemenveiling (2019) is an auction of artificial-intelligence-generated tulips on the blockchain in the form of a functioning decentralized application: http://bloemenveiling.bid. Ridler collaborated with senior research scientist at DeepMind, David Pfau to investigate whether blockchain could be used as a means of finding poetic substance within it. The piece interrogates the way technology drives human desire and economic dynamics by creating artificial scarcity. In the work, short moving image pieces of tulips created by generative adversarial networks are sold at auction using smart contracts on the Ethereum network. Each time a tulip is sold, thousands of computers around the world all work to verify the transaction, checking each other's work against each other. While the artificial intelligence behind the moving image pieces has the potential to generate infinite flowers, the enormous distributed network is used, at great environmental cost, to introduce scarcity to an otherwise limitless resource. Bloemenveiling was exhibited in Entangled Realities, HEK Basel, Basel, Switzerland in 2019. == Solo exhibitions == Anna Ridler, Circadian Bloom, ZKM Center for Art and Media, Karlsruhe, (2023) Anna Ridler, Time Blooms, Buk Seoul Museum of Art, Seoul, (2025) Anna Ridler, Trace Remains, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Cologne, (2026) Anna Ridler, Laws of Ordered Form, The Photographers' Gallery, London (2020); The Abstraction of Nature, Aksioma, Ljubljana (2020) == Awards and recognition == European Union EMAP Fellow (2018) DARE Art Prize (2018–2019) Featured in Thames & Hudson, Digital Art (1960s–Now) Featured in British Art: The Last 15 Years ABS Digital Artist of the Year (2025)
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Transdermal optical imaging

Transdermal optical imaging, also known as transdermal optical imagery or TOI, is a method of detecting blood flow of the face by measuring hemoglobin concentration using a digital video camera. Because of the translucent property of skin, light can travel beneath the skin and re-emit. The re-emitted light from underneath the skin is affected by chromophores, mainly hemoglobin and melanin, which differ in color. The color difference allows TOI machine learning software to separate the images into layers, which are known as bitplanes. It extracts signals rich in hemoglobin and signals rich in melanin, then discards the melanin-rich signals to obtain a recording of hemoglobin changes under the skin. Transdermal optical imaging has been proposed as an alternative to cuff-based methods of measuring blood pressure because it is able to measure heart rate accurately in a "contactless and non-invasive" way. Transdermal optical imaging may be able to detect hidden emotions using the patterns of blood flow in the face.
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