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 aquasight tap computer vision


AquaSight taps computer vision to tell you if water is safe to drink

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Sussing out water potability in the field is sometimes nigh impossible, depending on the remoteness of the region. The United Nations estimates that 2 million tons of sewage and industrial and agricultural waste are discharged into the world's water supply each day. And while a range of chemical kits can test for bacterial risks, not all are equally thorough. Even with recent technological advances, water pollution leads to roughly 9 million premature deaths a year and 16% of all deaths worldwide. This motivated a pair of researchers at the Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology and the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland to investigate an AI-powered Android app capable of detecting water impurity, which they describe in a newly published paper on the preprint server Arxiv.org