In the article "Making Mona Lisa smile," the author describes how a new technology called the Facial

Action Coding System enables computers to identify human emotions. This is very vaulabe and could be great for classrooms. For example, if you smile when a web ad appears on your screen,a similar ad might follow. But if you frown, the next ad will be diffrent "A classroom computer could recognize when a student is becoming confused or bored," Dr. Huang predicts. "then it could be used to modify the lesson, like an affective human constructor."

the facial expressions for each emotion are universal," obeserves Dr. Huang, "even though individuals often show varying degrees of expression" (like not smiling as broadly). using video imagery, the new emotion-recognition software tracks these facia; movements-- in a real face or in the painted face by mona lisa.

in fact we humans peform this same impressive "caculation every day. for instance, you can probaly tell how a friend is feeling simply by the look on her face.

Of course, most of us would have trouble actually describing each facial trait that conveys happy, worried, etc. Dr. Huang observes that artists such as Da Vinci studied human anatomy to help them paint facial muscles precisley enough to covey specific emotions. His new computer software stores similar anatomical information as electronic code. Perhaps Dr. Huang's emotion algorithms are a different sort of "Da vinci code.

we should really give, Facial Action Coding System a chace because

"most human communication is nonverbal, including emotional communication," notes Dr. Huang. "So computers need to understand that,too."