infrared light
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Lie-detecting headband promises to find the truth with infrared light
While most folks working to improve on the traditional lie detector have veered towards MRIs, EEGs and the like, Scott Bunce of Drexel University's College of Medicine has taken a decidedly different approach and turned to an infrared light-based method, which he seems to think would be both less expensive and more accurate. Apparently, the system works simply by sending infrared light into your brain and measuring how much is reflected back, which varies depending on the levels of oxygen in the blood, and in turn gives an indication of brain activity. Not surprisingly, the research appears to have already attracted the interested of some of the usual suspects -- namely, the U.S. Office of Naval Research and the Department of Homeland Security, who have provided some of the funding -- but it seems like there's still some more work to be done before it moves beyond the lab. At least as far as we know.[Via Crave]
NEC's winebot detects fraudulent bottles
Apparently wine fraud is big business, with certain less-than-reputable vineyards watering down their Cabernet with a little Merlot, for instance, or even filling their supposedly boutique bottles with some off-the-shelf Manischewitz. Well the engineers / wine connoisseurs over at NEC have had enough, so they've invented a wine-tasting "robot" that can distinguish between 30 distinct varieties using only a five-milliliter sample. We've already seen NEC use infrared light in a food-tasting bot, and now they've taken a similar approach with this new device -- about twice the size of a three-liter wine box (mmm...box o' wine) -- which uses LEDs to fire infrared light at a sample and an array of photodiodes to interpret the resulting reflection. Until they can boost its recognition abilities to include many more varieties of wine (about 1,000, in fact), though, this project is little more than an academic exercise -- meaning you'll still need to bring your corkscrew to the liquor store if you want to ensure that you're getting a quality product.
