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Marcus Maertens

The Science Behind the Pacific Rim Mind Meld - Science on the Web - YouTube - 1 views

www.youtube.com/watch

fun science

shared by Marcus Maertens on 04 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 04 Aug 13
     
    Lets start the Jaeger-program, shall we?
  • Beniamino Abis on 05 Aug 13
     
    I don't have a project right now....
Thijs Versloot

Hyperloop plan revealed by Elon Musk - 0 views

www.space.com/rloop-technology-revealed.html

technology transport

shared by Thijs Versloot on 13 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 13 Aug 13
     
    More details in the linked pdf file.. a low pressurized tube with pods floating on air cushions together with EM propulsion and braking.. cool, but probably not going to be build any day soon
  • ...2 more comments...
  • H H on 13 Aug 13
     
    The point of this was that California is already planning to build a train line the would cost ten times more than this and be maybe one quarter of the speed. If the plan is actually feasible with the budget, this could very well have a chance...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 13 Aug 13
     
    A similar idea existed in Switzerland as well, it was called Swissmetro (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swissmetro) and intended to reach a ridiculously small top speed of about 500km/h. It had the same fate as Musk's idea will have soon: just a piece on the dump of history.
  • Thijs Versloot on 13 Aug 13
     
    It would be great indeed, but even though the cost of the high speed train is a factor 10x higher, the prototype nature and hence relatively lower TRL of this system will probably not have it favoured. Best chance is that he develops a working prototype, one that might not even transport humans at the moment and for short distances, then maybe the project can take off
  • H H on 13 Aug 13
     
    Actually, he was talking about a prototype: "I am somewhat tempted to at least make a demonstration prototype," Musk said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. "Perhaps I'll create a sub-scale version that's operating, and then hand it over to somebody else." "I think I'll probably end up doing that," he said. http://allthingsd.com/20130812/elon-musk-will-likely-build-his-own-hyperloop-prototype/
johannessimon81

High efficiency solid state heat engine - 0 views

www.parc.com/...ciency-solid-state-engine.html

nrg technology

shared by johannessimon81 on 22 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 22 Aug 13
     
    We discussed this today during coffee. The inventor claims that he claims that a pressure differential can push hydrogen through a proton conductive membrane (thereby stripping off the electrons) which flow through an electric circuit and provide electric power. The type of membrane is fairly similar to that found in a hydrogen fuel cell. If the pressure differential is cause by selective heating this is in essence a heat engine that directly produces electricity. The inventor claims that this could be a high efficiency alternative to thermoelectric devices and could even outperform PV and Sterling engines with an efficiency close to that of fuel cells (e.g., ~60% @ dT=600K). I could not find any scientific publications as the inventor is not affiliated to any University - he has however an impressive number of patents from a very wide field (e.g., the "Super Soaker" squirt gun) and has worked on several NASA and US military projects. His current research seams to be funded by the latter as well. Here are some more links that I found: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/308268/ http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/13 http://scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=%22lonnie+g+johnson%22+&btnG=&hl=nl&as_sdt=0%2C5
Dario Izzo

NASA Brings Earth Science 'Big Data' to the Cloud with Amazon Web Services | NASA - 3 views

www.nasa.gov/...cloud-with-amazon-web-services

big data

shared by Dario Izzo on 12 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 12 Nov 13
     
    NASA answer to the big data hype
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 13 Nov 13
     
    "The service encompasses selected NASA satellite and global change data sets -- including temperature, precipitation, and forest cover -- and data processing tools from the NASA Earth Exchange (NEX)" Very good marketing move for just three types of selected data (MODIS, Landsat products) plus four model runs (past/projection) for the the four greenhouse gas emissions scenarios of the IPCC. It looks as if they are making data available to adress a targeted question (crowdsourcing of science, as Paul mentioned last time, this time climate evolution), not at all the "free scrolling of the user around the database" to pick up what he thinks useful, mode. There is already more rich libraries out there when it comes to climate (http://icdc.zmaw.de/) Maybe simpler approach is the way to go: make available the big data sets categorized by study topic (climate evolution, solar system science, galaxies etc.) and not by instrument or mission, which is more technical, so that the amateur user can identify his point of interest easily.
  • Thijs Versloot on 13 Nov 13
     
    They are taking a good leap forward with it, but it definitely requires a lot of post processing of the data. Actually it seems they downsample everything to workable chunks. But I guess the power is really in the availability of the data in combination with Amazon's cloud computing platform. Who knows what will come out of it if hundreds of people start interacting with it.
Marcus Maertens

Tangible Media Group - 5 views

tangible.media.mit.edu/...inform

technology fun

shared by Marcus Maertens on 13 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 13 Nov 13
     
    Okay, where can I buy one?
dejanpetkow

3D Holographic Power Point Presentation at ASE 2013 - 1 views

www.youtube.com/watch

technology

shared by dejanpetkow on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • dejanpetkow on 29 Nov 13
     
    THIS is how the ACT should give its science coffees, and I am not referring to the fat stage or the guy's dress. Next time I'm attending this traditional ACT exercise I expect such a show!
  • Thijs Versloot on 30 Nov 13
     
    Thats pretty cool indeed! I am for it in the next budget run! :) However, its technically not holographic though as this looks like a projection on Mylar film at 45 degrees from a bottom projector. It looks 3D and holographic as the background is transparent.
Nicholas Lan

Plants employed as sensing devices - 1 views

pleased-fp7.eu

bioengineering

shared by Nicholas Lan on 05 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Nicholas Lan on 05 Dec 13
     
    fp7 project employing plants as part of a sensing network
Dario Izzo

Modular Mobile Phones (big G + Motorola behind this): Same idea applicable to satellite... - 1 views

www.engadget.com/...project-ara-modular-smartphone

PHY space fun technology

shared by Dario Izzo on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 30 Oct 13
     
    We thought about a modular SAT concept in tahe past (looking to the second issue of Acta Futura its already there) .... but never made concrete steps ....
Beniamino Abis

The Wisdom of (Little) Crowds - 1 views

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/...the-wisdom-of-little-crowds

BIO science math groups

shared by Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
Dario Izzo liked it
  • Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14
     
    What is the best (wisest) size for a group of individuals? Couzin and Kao put together a series of mathematical models that included correlation and several cues. In one model, for example, a group of animals had to choose between two options-think of two places to find food. But the cues for each choice were not equally reliable, nor were they equally correlated. The scientists found that in these models, a group was more likely to choose the superior option than an individual. Common experience will make us expect that the bigger the group got, the wiser it would become. But they found something very different. Small groups did better than individuals. But bigger groups did not do better than small groups. In fact, they did worse. A group of 5 to 20 individuals made better decisions than an infinitely large crowd. The problem with big groups is this: a faction of the group will follow correlated cues-in other words, the cues that look the same to many individuals. If a correlated cue is misleading, it may cause the whole faction to cast the wrong vote. Couzin and Kao found that this faction can drown out the diversity of information coming from the uncorrelated cue. And this problem only gets worse as the group gets bigger.
  • Dario Izzo on 02 May 14
     
    Couzin research was the starting point that co-inspired PaGMO from the very beginning. We invited him (and he came) at a formation flying conference for a plenary here in ESTEC. You can see PaGMO as a collective problem solving simulation. In that respect, we learned already that the size of the group and its internal structure (topology) counts and cannot be too large or too random. One of the project the ACT is running (and currently seeking for new ideas/actors) is briefly described here (http://esa.github.io/pygmo/examples/example2.html) and attempts answering the question :"How is collective decision making influenced by the information flow through the group?" by looking at complex simulations of large 'archipelagos'.
LeopoldS

Lunecase - Bring the back of your iPhone to life! by Concepter - Kickstarter - 6 views

www.kickstarter.com/...he-back-of-your-iphone-to-life

wireless power transfer WPT SPS

shared by LeopoldS on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 30 Apr 14
     
    wireless power transmission made useful ? this application did certainly not come to my mind when Guy Pignolet showed me 12 years ago how his handy would lid up a small diode after our first SPS meeting in Paris ...
  • Thijs Versloot on 02 May 14
     
    Great idea to use either unused/wasted energy. Then again, the signal power (receiver floor) is steadily going down going from 3G to 5G, yet there might be more use of bandwidth to compensate this. It is funny though that you buy a device which could have the function build in it on the back from the start, yet you put a shell around it and then harness wireless power to give it that add-on functionality.
  • Isabelle Dicaire on 02 May 14
     
    Recently I came across this article in a Japanese newspaper about wireless power transmission applications in the women beauty business. It's probably not as useful as an iPhone cover but apparently there is a market for such things! http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/18/business/led-nails-light-up-when-calling/#.U2OcWV7v2X8
Athanasia Nikolaou

Interview with an IPCC leading author - 2 views

www.klimacampus.de/2920+M563a176f1a5.html

climate economy energy

shared by Athanasia Nikolaou on 22 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 22 Apr 14
     
    CliSAP: Mr. Held, several hundred researchers worked for several years on preparing the recently published third part of the Assessment Report, without pay and on top of their normal duties. The result was a work over two thousand pages long. Was it worth it? An overview of the uncertainties when it comes to estimating investments in low carbon. Maybe there is room for computational management projects in there?
Thijs Versloot

ISEE-3 Reboot Project - Recovering an satellite from deep space by crowdsourcing @Spac... - 3 views

www.rockethub.com/42228

space satellite crowdsourcing

shared by Thijs Versloot on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 25 Apr 14
     
    "A band of space hackers and engineers are trying to do something never done before - recover a 36 year old NASA spacecraft from the grips of deep space and time. With old NASA documents and Rockethub crowdfunding, a team led by Dennis Wingo and Keith Cowing is attempting to steer ISEE-3, later rechristened ICE, the International Cometary Explorer, back into an Earth orbit and return it to scientific operations. Dennis says, 'ISEE-3 can become a great teaching tool for future engineers and scientists helping with design and travel to Mars'. Only 40 days remain before the spacecraft will be out of range for recovery. A radio telescope is available, propulsion designs are in hand and the team is hoping for public support to provide the small amount needed to accomplish a very unique milestone in space exploration
jmlloren

3D Fractals - 7 views

www.skytopia.com/...mandelbulb.html

INF science

shared by jmlloren on 16 Nov 09 - Cached
  • jmlloren on 16 Nov 09
     
    Amazing renderings.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Ma Ru on 16 Nov 09
     
    For all those who find solving differential equations boring...
  • pacome delva on 10 Dec 09
     
    wow, amazing pictures !
  • LeopoldS on 10 Dec 09
     
    nice
Dario Izzo

Plasma Jet Electric Thrusters for Spacecraft by Chris Faranetta - Kickstarter - 6 views

www.kickstarter.com/...ctric-thrusters-for-spacecraft

shared by Dario Izzo on 09 Sep 14 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 09 Sep 14
     
    Funded!!!
  • Thijs Versloot on 10 Sep 14
     
    "Because, quite simply, we think ours will be better!"
  • Marcus Maertens on 11 Sep 14
     
    "Right hand rules!"
Thijs Versloot

Sunlight to jet fuel - European collaboration SOLAR-JET produces first solar kerosene - 4 views

www.solar-jet.aero/...ldquosolarrdquo-kerosene-6.php

solar fuel kerosene propulsion CO2

shared by Thijs Versloot on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 05 May 14
     
    With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.
Thijs Versloot

The SupraThermal Ion Monitor for space weather predictions - 4 views

scitation.aip.org/...1.4873327

cubesat sun spaceweather

shared by Thijs Versloot on 05 May 14 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 05 May 14
     
    The novel part here is that it can be scaled down to the cubesat platform. I then wondered, could we place multiple of such Cubesats in a 'decaying orbit' around the Sun? Fractionated will give spatial and temporal information which, even with a simple langmuir probe setup, can give information on density, temperature, velocity, ion energy distribution, potential.. Of course they will be lost relatively quickly, but more could be ejected from a mother ship which is orbiting at a safer distance.
  • Thijs Versloot on 08 May 14
     
    For example like the KickSat projec https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space Although a pc-reboot due to a radiation event in the electronics has reset the deployment timeline to approximately 2 days after re-entry... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/06/kicksat-satellites_n_5273821.html
Thijs Versloot

Extremely durable hydrophobic ceramics - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...hydrophobics-get-tough

materials

shared by Thijs Versloot on 19 Jun 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 23 Jun 13
     
    this is very interesting - we should speak to some colleagues here about it, e.g. in the melissa project ....
Alexander Wittig

Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

blogs.nvidia.com/...flickr

AI

shared by Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15
     
    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jul 15
     
    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Jul 15
     
    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
  • Alexander Wittig on 23 Jul 15
     
    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
  • jcunha on 23 Jul 15
     
    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
  • Paul N on 29 Jul 15
     
    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
  • jcunha on 31 Jul 15
     
    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
Nina Nadine Ridder

Surprising similarity in fly and mouse motion vision - 2 views

medicalxpress.com/...arity-mouse-motion-vision.html

BIO science evolution biomimetics vision

shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 30 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 30 Jul 15
     
    Loosely related to an old ACT project on optical flow (if I remember correctly but even if not still an interesting read I think): "At first glance, the eyes of mammals and those of insects do not seem to have much in common. However, a comparison of the neural circuits for detecting motion shows surprising parallels between flies and mice. Scientists have learned a lot about the visual perception of both animals in recent years."
Alexander Wittig

PQCRYPTO ICT-645622 - 0 views

pqcrypto.eu.org/press.html

Math Cryptography

shared by Alexander Wittig on 11 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Alexander Wittig on 11 Sep 15
     
    Horizon2020 project on post quantum cryptography just released their first draft of recommendations for quantum computer safe encryption algorithms. No big surprise with the symmetric algorithms (what's used today is fundamentally sound), but the asymmetric public-key methods will be interesting.
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