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so it took us 70% of the time Earth is in the habitable zone to develop, would this be normal or could it be much faster? In other words, would all forms of life that started on a planet that originated at a 'similar' point in time like us, be equally far developed?

That is actually quite tricky to estimate rly. If for no other reason than the fact that all of the mass extinctions we had over the Earth's history basically reset the evolutionary clock. Assuming 2 Earths identical in every way but one did not have the dinosaur wipe-out impact, that would've given non-impact Earth 60million years to evolve a potential dinosaur intelligent super race.

The opposite might be true - or might not be ;-). Since usually the rate of evolution increases after major extinction events the chance is higher to produce 'intelligent' organisms if these events happen quite frequently. Usually the time of rapid evolution is only a few million years - so Earth is going quite slow. Certainly extinction events don't reset the evolutionary clock - if they would never have happened Earth gene pool would probably be quite primitive. By the way: dinosaurs were a quite diverse group and large dinosaurs might well have had cognitive abilities that come close to whales or primates - the difference to us might be that we have hands to manipulate our environment and vocal cords to communicate in very diverse ways. Modern dinosaur (descendents), i.e. birds, contain some very intelligent species - especially with respect to their body size and weight.

nice indeed! " Triggered by commonly available ambient mechanical energy such as human footfalls, a NG with size smaller than a human palm can generate maximum short-circuit current of 2 mA, delivering instantaneous power output of 1.2 W to external load. The power output corresponds to an area power density of 313 W/m2 and a volume power density of 54 268 W/m3 at an open-circuit voltage of 1200 V. An energy conversion efficiency of 14.9% has been achieved. The power was capable of instantaneously lighting up as many as 600 multicolor commercial LED bulbs. The record high power output for the NG is attributed to optimized structure, proper materials selection and nanoscale surface modification. This work demonstrated the practicability of using NG to harvest large-scale mechanical energy, such as footsteps, rolling wheels, wind power, and ocean waves."

You should be able to put it also in your shoes such that you may be able to power some gadgets. Thinking about it, I have seen many kids already running around with brightly lit sneakers!

Using light-weight membranes to build telescopes in space it may be possible to one day image the whole planet completely at high resolution, hence also the interest of darpa.

Apr 30, Physics/General Physics A large pile of sand accumulates in front of the sledge when this is pulled over dry sand (left). On the wet sand (right) this does not happen.

A vascular synthetic system that restores mechanical performance in response to large-scale damage. Gap-filling scaffolds are created through a two-stage polymer chemistry that initially forms a shape-conforming dynamic gel but later polymerizes to a solid structural polymer with robust mechanical properties.

if you ever wanted to know how the famous MI5 started ... in the mind of a paranoid novelist

I just love this sentence: " He gave in - and MI5 was set up - created in large part by the dreams of a socially excluded novelist, and the paranoid imaginings of the readers of the Daily Mail."

Innovative techniques that use satellites to monitor ocean acidification are set to revolutionize the way that scientists study the Earth's oceans. This new approach offers remote monitoring of large swathes of inaccessible ocean from satellites, including ESA's Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity (SMOS) mission.

Nice opinion piece.

nice indeed .... especially like: "They make such great stuff, but they're such assholes. Do I really want to support this company? Should Apple care what people like me think? What difference does it make if they alienate a small minority of their users? There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. And it's largely because they got more of the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than Microsoft today. Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals? Partly because they can afford to be. The best programmers can work wherever they want. They don't have to work for a company they have qualms about. But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. And it's not fun for a smart person to work in a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that win."

Poor programmers can complain, but they will keep developing applications for iPhone as long as their bosses will tell them to do so... From my experience in mobile software development I assure you it's not the pain of the programmer that dictates what is done, but the customer's demand. Even though like this the quality of applications is somewhat worse than it could be, clients won't complain as they have no reference point. And things will stay as they are: apple censoring the applications, clients paying for stuff that "sometimes just does not work" (it's normal, isn't it??), and programmers complaining, but obediently making iPhone apps...

"we conclude that HE 0437-5439 was most likely a compact binary ejected by the Milky Way's central black hole" reminds me a bit of Francesco's proposal to get rid of Mercury for the stability of our solar system ... what was the proposal: "get rid of the sucker?"

1) it has to actively work and produce a result that's what you intended 2) the design must be robust. 3) it should be efficient 4) it should minimize unintended consequences. "But we have to establish a formal, mathematically precise mechanism to measure complexity and adaptability . . . [where] adaptability means the system elements have sufficient margin, and can serve multiple purposes." "We need to break the paradigm of long cycles from design to product" some interesting questions....

what is the outcome of the CDF study ? I think actually that optimisation is not at all the key point. As it is stressed in this news, it is robustness (points 2 and 4). This is something we should think about ...

SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS, SYSTEM OF SYSTEMS!!! :-D

Sante have a look at this ... Daniel is the TU researcher who did the study I was sending you a few years ago with Luzi - very nice and smart guy .... Luzi: now you will have difficulties in shooting :-)

"With a resolution of 297.500 x 87.500 pixel (26 gigapixel) the picture is the largest in the world. (stand December 2009)" Daring statement... I'm not quite sure, but I'd quess microscopic images used in medicine can easily reach terapixels... What a waste of pixels anyway... they weren't able to find a bit more interesing city?

yeah... like Leiden !

some ideas for movie Fridays A "must" see on my opinion (never heard about it in the past!) : Primer Sounds ideal: "Primer is a 2004 American science fiction film about the accidental discovery of time travel. The film was written, directed and produced by Shane Carruth, a mathematician and a former engineer, and was completed on a budget of $7,000.[1] Primer is of note for its extremely low budget, experimental plot structure and complex technical dialogue, which Carruth chose not to 'dumb down' for the sake of his audience. One reviewer said that "anybody who claims [to] fully understand what's going on in Primer after seeing it just once is either a savant or a liar."[2] The film collected the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance in 2004 before securing a limited release in US cinemas, and has since gained a cult following."

I watched it a while ago during my studies in Belgium... The plot is quite well summarized on this diagram: http://xkcd.com/657/large/ According to the text above I'm either savant or a liar (you choose). But I watched the movie under significant exposure to Belgian beer, so this may have helped...

we were 1,5 year ahead to switch to diigo !

Man, I remember, long long time ago, altavista was my first contact with the internet ever.

indeed ... and it was largely thanks to you ... remember well the discussion in the group meeting with the arguments brought forward: why change, it works ...