In the age of global warming, forest fires are becoming more frequent and faster-growing. Clearly, the world needs sustainable solutions to preserve our natural resources, protect human lives, and avoid economic devastation. As an environmental advocate and sustainability enthusiast, I got to thinking about whether a technological solution can help with this daunting task. Fortunately, I am also a computer scientist, one who is all too aware of how tedious and time-consuming research can be. In such times, I often choose to play my ace in the hole by going straight to Intel's rich ecosystem--the Intel Partner Alliance. Not surprisingly, it led me to an ingenious solution: the AAEON Intelligent Forest Fire Monitoring System (Figure 1).

The primate visual system learns to recognize the true direction of pattern motion using local detectors only capable of detecting the component of motion perpendicular to the orientation of the moving edge. A multilayer feedforward network model similar to Linsker's model was presented with input patterns each consisting of randomly oriented contours moving in a particular direction. Input layer units are granted component direction and speed tuning curves similar to those recorded from neurons in primate visual area VI that project to area MT. The network is trained on many such patterns until most weights saturate. A proportion of the units in the second layer solve the aperture problem (e.g., show the same direction-tuning curve peak to plaids as to gratings), resembling pattern-direction selective neurons, which ftrst appear inareaMT.

The primate visual system learns to recognize the true direction of pattern motion using local detectors only capable of detecting the component of motion perpendicular to the orientation of the moving edge. A multilayer feedforward network model similar to Linsker's model was presented with input patterns each consisting of randomly oriented contours moving in a particular direction. Input layer units are granted component direction and speed tuning curves similar to those recorded from neurons in primate visual area VI that project to area MT. The network is trained on many such patterns until most weights saturate. A proportion of the units in the second layer solve the aperture problem (e.g., show the same direction-tuning curve peak to plaids as to gratings), resembling pattern-direction selective neurons, which ftrst appear inareaMT.

Linsker's model was presented with input patterns each consisting