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Ma Ru

Learn to dock ATV the astronaut way - 3 views

www.esa.int/...SEMET6HWP0H_index_0.html

technology human spaceflight ATV ISS training astronaut e-learning

shared by Ma Ru on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Ma Ru on 11 Apr 12
     
    "Two sets of [ ATV docking training for astronauts ] lessons are now available for the home user to try." And in case you wonder *where* in the earth are they available, the links are on the right-hand column (also known as ESA's scorn on usability). As usual for the material located there, I took me a few minutes to find them...
  • LeopoldS on 12 Apr 12
     
    Well I tried and could not locate the app to download from these links and sent them a feedback on what I thought a wrong error - though the email bounced :-) So, what is the right link to the app then?
  • Ma Ru on 13 Apr 12
     
    Leo, I'm not iEnabled, so I can't help you with the app. Using other links you can try the PC version (so 20th-century-ish, I know), of course assuming you have somewhere one with Internet Explorer :-)
LeopoldS

Nature News Blog: Russia and Japan aim for the Moon : Nature News Blog - 0 views

blogs.nature.com/...ia-japan-aim-for-the-moon.html

Moon exploration

shared by LeopoldS on 24 May 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 24 May 12
     
    Ambitious
Luke O'Connor

A Flying Robot That Can Crash, Get Up, And Fly Again - 2 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...can-crash-get-up-and-fly-again

shared by Luke O'Connor on 25 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Luke O'Connor on 25 Jun 12
     
    If you've ever flown an R/C plane, you know how nerve wracking it can be. Navigating in three dimensions opens up the possibility to run into so many things, and a single crash could be your last. Now, a team from EPFL's Laboratory of Intelligent Systems has been working on a UAV called the AirBurr.
  • Luke O'Connor on 25 Jun 12
     
    An approach to robot design that makes sense. I can see applications to planetary explorers here.
santecarloni

Occupy Federal Science: "Transformative" Research Can't Come From Milquetoast | The Cru... - 4 views

blogs.discovermagazine.com/...rch-cant-come-from-milquetoast

science research

shared by santecarloni on 14 Dec 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 15 Dec 11
     
    I like this one "The kind of idle pastime that might amuse physicists is to imagine drafting Einstein's grant applications in 1905. "I propose to investigate the idea that light travels in little bits," one might say. "I will explore the possibility that time slows down as things speed up," goes another. Imagine what comments these would have elicited from reviewers for the German Science Funding Agency, had such a thing existed. Instead, Einstein just did the work anyway while drawing his wages as a technical expert third-class at the Bern patent office. And that is how he invented quantum physics and relativity." There is an even more pointer example of the Prussian academy of sciences reviewing the Dr. application of Hertz ...
  • dejanpetkow on 16 Dec 11
     
    Shocking. What is federal research funding for? No, wrong question. Instead maybe: What is federally funded review for?
Lionel Jacques

The population of natural Earth satellites - 3 views

www.dailygalaxy.com/...documented-temporary-moon.html

Space

shared by Lionel Jacques on 09 Jan 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Lionel Jacques on 09 Jan 12
     
    Earth's irregular natural satellites (NES) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. --> Possibly interesting for NEO exploration? http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3781
  • LeopoldS on 13 Jan 12
     
    How early could we detect these coming?
LeopoldS

One or more bound planets per Milky Way star from microlensing observations : Nature : ... - 1 views

www.nature.com/...nature10684.html

exploration

shared by LeopoldS on 11 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 11 Jan 12
     
    Plenty of other earths ....
Marion Nachon

Mars radar finds possible ocean sediments - 2 views

sci.esa.int/...index.cfm

Space bio

shared by Marion Nachon on 08 Feb 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 10 Feb 12
     
    exciting news ... especially now that apparently Obama proposes to cut the mars exploration programme ...
Kevin de Groote

Gephi, an open source graph visualization and manipulation software - 5 views

gephi.org

shared by Kevin de Groote on 05 Jun 12 - Cached
LeopoldS and Joris _ liked it
  • Kevin de Groote on 05 Jun 12
     
    Gephi is an interactive visualization and exploration platform for all kinds of networks and complex systems, dynamic and hierarchical graphs. Runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. Gephi is open-source and free. Learn More on Gephi Platform " Gephi 0.8.1-beta has been released! Discover a new Timeline, dynamic ranking and weighted community detection.
Aurelie Heritier

Why NASA Should Nab an Asteroid - 2 views

www.popularmechanics.com/...should-nab-an-asteroid-9890621

shared by Aurelie Heritier on 21 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Aurelie Heritier on 21 Jun 12
     
    In his last dispatch from the recent AIAA Global Space Exploration Conference, veteran astronaut and PM contributor Tom Jones argues for NASA to undertake a mission to snare a nearby small asteroid and tow it into the orbit of the moon.
Guido de Croon

Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views

robohub.org/be-smarter-than-humans-by-2029

AI

shared by Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14
     
    Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc.
  • ...9 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    "Kurzweilians"... LOL. Still not sold on embodiment, btw.
  • Ma Ru on 12 Mar 14
     
    The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting...
  • Paul N on 13 Mar 14
     
    The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment.
  • Marcus Maertens on 14 Mar 14
     
    I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment.
  • johannessimon81 on 14 Mar 14
     
    @Paul: How would embodiment be done RIGHT?
  • Guido de Croon on 16 Mar 14
     
    Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
  • Ma Ru on 17 Mar 14
     
    @Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Mar 14
     
    Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
  • Paul N on 17 Mar 14
     
    Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
  • Ma Ru on 18 Mar 14
     
    All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
  • Paul N on 24 Mar 14
     
    These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
Luís F. Simões

Evolution of AI Interplanetary Trajectories Reaches Human-Competitive Levels - Slashdot - 4 views

science.slashdot.org/...aches-human-competitive-levels

AI MAD GTOC PaGMO evolutionary computation trajectory optimization awards

shared by Luís F. Simões on 19 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • "It's not the Turing test just yet, but in one more domain, AI is becoming increasingly competitive with humans. This time around, it's in interplanetary trajectory optimization. From the European Space Agency comes the news that researchers from its Advanced Concepts Team have recently won the Gold 'Humies' award for their use of Evolutionary Algorithms to design a spacecraft's trajectory for exploring the Galilean moons of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto). The problem addressed in the awarded article (PDF) was put forward by NASA/JPL in the latest edition of the Global Trajectory Optimization Competition. The team from ESA was able to automatically evolve a solution that outperforms all the entries submitted to the competition by human experts from across the world. Interestingly, as noted in the presentation to the award's jury (PDF), the team conducted their work on top of open-source tools (PaGMO / PyGMO and PyKEP)."
  • Luís F. Simões on 19 Jul 13
     
    We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)
  • Ma Ru on 23 Jul 13
     
    Congratulations, gentlemen!
Thijs Versloot

Future of the ISS - 0 views

news.yahoo.com/ast-beyond-2020-222429165.html

ISS

shared by Thijs Versloot on 20 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 20 Aug 13
     
    In follow up of our discussion yesterday, what would be required to get private investment to keep an orbiting station going? Do we actually want to? On the side, at least the budget for NASA seems to make it unlikely to be able to afford both ISS and a beyond-Earth orbit exploration program (http://www.americaspace.com/?p=36568)
johannessimon81

Timeline: Plutonium-238′s Hot and Twisted History - 2 views

www.wired.com/...plutonium-238-history-timeline

PHY space

shared by johannessimon81 on 19 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 19 Sep 13
     
    Wired magazine has a special focus today on Plutonium-238 the fuel for RTG power sources. The history of the material plus the challenges due to the shortage of it - potentially ending deep space exploration as we practice it today (?)...
Beniamino Abis

Snake Robots for Exploration - 1 views

www.sintef.no/...Snake-robot-on-Mars

technology space

shared by Beniamino Abis on 18 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Beniamino Abis on 18 Sep 13
     
    The researchers are busy working on a feasibility study assigned to them by the ESA. The idea is that by combining a rover that can navigate over large distances with a snake robot that can crawl along the ground and can get into inaccessible places, so many more possibilities could be opened up, e.g. collecting samples from tight spots that the rovers cannot reach.
Nicholas Lan

A Case Study of Gut Fermentation Syndrome (Auto-Brewery) with Saccharomyces cerevisiae ... - 0 views

file.scirp.org/...1-2100535_33912.htm

bioengineering

shared by Nicholas Lan on 26 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • Nicholas Lan on 26 Sep 13
     
    man infected with brewer's yeast brews beer and gets drunk whenever he injests carbohydrates. This surely presents an excellent opportunity to address long term manned space exploration psychological issues by infecting astronauts with yeast rather than investing in costly and bulky space-brewing equipment.
Beniamino Abis

Wanted: Volunteers for Yearlong Mock Mars Mission in Canadian Arctic - 2 views

www.space.com/mission-arctic-volunteers.html

shared by Beniamino Abis on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Beniamino Abis on 31 Oct 13
     
    Mars Society, which advocates for manned exploration of the Red Planet, has released its requirements for the six volunteers who will be expected to spend 12 months at the society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Canada's Devon Island, which is about 1,450 kilometers from the North Pole, beginning in July 2014. Crewmembers will spend most of their time doing science, studying things such as carbon release from the permafrost and human performance in extreme conditions. If they want to go outside their base, they'll have to wear a spacesuit. If something breaks, they're the ones who are going to have to fix it.
Thijs Versloot

Taking the internet underwater - 0 views

phys.org/...13-10-internet-underwater.html

technology

shared by Thijs Versloot on 15 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 15 Oct 13
     
    University at Buffalo researchers are developing a deep-sea Internet. The technological breakthrough could lead to improvements in tsunami detection, offshore oil and natural gas exploration, surveillance, pollution monitoring...
Luís F. Simões

Singularity University, class of 2010: projects that aim to impact a billion people wit... - 8 views

www.kurzweilai.net/ty-webinar-today-sneak-preview

AI robotics biomedicine biotechnology electronics energy nanotechnology singularity futures social ethics space synthetic biology computer science defence

shared by Luís F. Simões on 22 Sep 10 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 22 Sep 10
     
    At the link below you find additional information about the projects: Education: Ten weeks to save the world http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100915/full/467266a.html
  • ...8 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 23 Sep 10
     
    this is the podcast I was listening to ...
  • Dario Izzo on 23 Sep 10
     
    We can do it in nine :)
  • LeopoldS on 24 Sep 10
     
    why wait then?
  • Juxi Leitner on 24 Sep 10
     
    hmm, wonder how easy it is to get funding for that, 25k is a bit steep for 10weeks :)
  • Dario Izzo on 26 Sep 10
     
    well, we wait for the same fundings they get and then we will do it in nine.... as we say in Rome "a mettece un cartello so bboni tutti". (italian check for Juxi)
  • LeopoldS on 26 Sep 10
     
    and what you think about the project subjects?
  • LeopoldS on 26 Sep 10
     
    I like the fact that there are quite a lot of space projects .... and these are not even bad in my view: The space project teams have developed imaginative new solutions for space and spinoffs for Earth. The AISynBio project team is working with leading NASA scientists to design bioengineered organisms that can use available resources to mitigate harsh living environments (such as lack of air, water, food, energy, atmosphere, and gravity) - on an asteroid, for example, and also on Earth . The SpaceBio Labs team plans to develop methods for doing low-cost biological research in space, such as 3D tissue engineering and protein crystallization. The Made in Space team plans to bring 3D printing to space to make space exploration cheaper, more reliable, and fail-safe ("send the bits, not the atoms"). For example, they hope to replace some of the $1 billion worth of spare parts and tools that are on the International Space Station.
  • Dario Izzo on 26 Sep 10
     
    and all in only a three months summer graduate program!! that is impressive. God I feel so stupid!!!
  • LeopoldS on 26 Sep 10
     
    well, most good ideas probably take only a second to be formulated, it's the details that take years :-)
  • Dario Izzo on 26 Sep 10
     
    I do not think the point of the SU is to formulate new ideas (infact there is nothing new in the projects chosen). Their mission is to build and maintain a network of contacts among who they believe will be the 'future leaders' of space ... very similar to our beloved ISU.
LeopoldS

Plant sciences: Plants drink mineral water : Nature : Nature Publishing Group - 1 views

www.nature.com/...512351e.html

plant water Mars exploration terraforming

shared by LeopoldS on 02 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 02 Sep 14
     
    Here we go: we might not need liquid water after all on mars to get some nice flowering plants there! ... and terraform ? :-) Thirsty plants can extract water from the crystalline structure of gypsum, a rock-forming mineral found in soil on Earth and Mars.

    Some plants grow on gypsum outcrops and remain active even during dry summer months, despite having shallow roots that cannot reach the water table. Sara Palacio of the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Jaca, Spain, and her colleagues compared the isotopic composition of sap from one such plant, called Helianthemum squamatum (pictured), with gypsum crystallization water and water found free in the soil. The team found that up to 90% of the plant's summer water supply came from gypsum.

    The study has implications for the search for life in extreme environments on this planet and others.

    Nature Commun 5, 4660 (2014)
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 02 Sep 14
     
    Very interesting indeed. Attention is to be put on the form of calcium sulfate that is found on Mars. If it is hydrated (gypsum Ca(SO4)*2(H2O)) it works, but if it is dehydrated there is no water for the roots to take in. The Curiosity Rover tries to find out, but has uncertainty in recognising the hydrogen presence in the mineral: Copying : "(...) 3.2 Hydration state of calcium sulfates Calcium sulfates occur as a non-hydrated phase (anhydrite, CaSO4) or as one of two hydrated phases (bassanite, CaSO4.1/2H2O, which can contain a somewhat variable water content, and gypsum, CaSO4.2H2O). ChemCam identifies the presence of hydrogen at 656 nm, as already found in soils and dust [Meslin et al., 2013] and within fluvial conglomerates [Williams et al., 2013]. However, the quantification of H is strongly affected by matrix effects [Schröder et al., 2013], i.e. effects including major or even minor element chemistry, optical and mechanical properties, that can result in variations of emission lines unrelated to actual quantitative variations of the element in question in the sample. Due to these effects, discriminating between bassanite and gypsum is difficult. (...)"
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 02 Sep 14
Thijs Versloot

Shrew with spine of steel - 0 views

news.sciencemag.org/...shot-new-shrew-has-spine-steel

biology

shared by Thijs Versloot on 04 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 04 Nov 13
     
    After exploring the shrews' swampy palm forests habitat, the researchers also have a new guess about why the spine evolved: They suggest that the creatures might wedge themselves between the trunk of a palm tree and the base of its leaves, then use the strength and flexion of their muscular spine to force open this crevice, revealing insect larvae-a food source that other animals can't access. However, no hero shrew has yet been observed busting its back for a snack.
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