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Nina Nadine Ridder

Wild Cape York and glittering reef - 1 views

www.abc.net.au/...4253295.htm

Earth_observation climate_change corals marine_biology

shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 02 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 02 Sep 15
     
    Really interesting bit hidden in the last paragraph: Monitoring coral bleaching from space with Envisat penetrating down to a depth of 10 m "[...] Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer sensor can detect coral bleaching down to depths of ten metres, meaning Envisat could potentially map coral bleaching on a global scale."
  • Ma Ru on 15 Sep 15
     
    No, it can't :-) Since 8 April 2012 Envisat is a proud holder of the title of one of the biggest pieces of space junk out there in LEO...
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 17 Sep 15
     
    admittedly correct, so the past tense would have been a more appropriate choice... Nevertheless, plenty of data to look back at and Sentinel-3 will launch eventually! ;)
jcunha

Portable ultra-broadband lasers could be key to next-generation sensors - 0 views

phys.org/...asers-key-next-generation.html

technology lasers science sensing

shared by jcunha on 11 Aug 15 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 11 Aug 15
     
    Quantum Cascade Lasers are rising in the mid-infrared region, the so-called fingerprint zone of the electromagnetic spectrum for a whole bunch of chemical species that we are most of times interested in sensing. One more sign of the underlying importance of this technology comes just by seeing NSF, USHS, Naval Air Command and NASA as the main monetary contributors to this research.
pacome delva

Stones from Sticks | Physical Review Focus - 1 views

focus.aps.org/st13

nan phy nanodiamond

shared by pacome delva on 07 Oct 09 - Cached
  • to make nanoscale diamond crystals, researchers have used their own tricks, including recipes involving carbon nanotubes.
  • nanodiamonds could be used as hard protective coatings in small scale systems or sensors.
Joris _

Japan plans to send a robot to the moon | The Australian - 1 views

www.theaustralian.com.au/...story-e6frg8y6-1225947783972

robot space moon

shared by Joris _ on 04 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the little android's oil bearings and ultrasonic sensors will not work in the lunar vacuum
  • The one-sixth gravity presents problems for stable movement, and Moon dust clogs joints.
  • the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), the country's space agency. It runs the rockets needed to deliver their robot to the Moon and, so far, has been distinctly cool on the idea.
  • Joris _ on 04 Nov 10
     
    Interesting! I like the quote "Maybe China would allow that to be a one-way trip but, in Japan, it would have to be a return ticket" talking about a human mission ....
Dario Izzo

Probabilistic Logic Allows Computer Chip to Run Faster - 3 views

www.azonano.com/news.asp

INF MAD probabilistic computing AI

shared by Dario Izzo on 07 Dec 09 - Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 07 Dec 09
     
    Francesco pointed out this research one year ago, we dropped it as noone was really considering it ... but in space a low CPU power consumption is crucial!! Maybe we should look back into this?
  • ...6 more comments...
  • Ma Ru on 07 Dec 09
     
    Q1: For the time being, for what purposes computers are mainly used on-board?
  • Dario Izzo on 07 Dec 09
     
    for navigation, control, data handling and so on .... why?
  • Ma Ru on 07 Dec 09
     
    Well, because the point is to identify an application in which such computers would do the job... That could be either an existing application which can be done sufficiently well by such computers or a completely new application which is not already there for instance because of some power consumption constraints... Q2 would be then: for which of these purposes strict determinism of the results is not crucial? As the answer to this may not be obvious, a potential study could address this very issue. For instance one can consider on-board navigation systems with limited accuracy... I may be talking bullshit now, but perhaps in some applications it doesn't matter whether a satellite flies on the exact route but +/-10km to the left/right? ...and so on for the other systems. Another thing is understanding what exactly this probabilistic computing is, and what can be achieved using it (like the result is probabilistic but falls within a defined range of precision), etc. Did they build a complete chip or at least a sub-circiut, or still only logic gates...
  • Dario Izzo on 07 Dec 09
     
    Satellites use old CPUs also because with the trend of going for higher power modern CPUs are not very convenient from a system design point of view (TBC)... as a consequence the constraints put on on-board algorithms can be demanding. I agree with you that double precision might just not be necessary for a number of applications (navigation also), but I guess we are not talking about 10km as an absolute value, rather to a relative error that can be tolerated at level of (say) 10^-6. All in all you are right a first study should assess what application this would be useful at all.. and at what precision / power levels
  • Joris _ on 07 Dec 09
     
    The interest of this can be a high fault tolerance for some math operations, ... which would have for effect to simplify the job of coders! I don't think this is a good idea regarding power consumption for CPU (strictly speaking). The reason we use old chip is just a matter of qualification for space, not power. For instance a LEON Sparc (e.g. use on some platform for ESA) consumes something like 5mW/MHz so it is definitely not were an engineer will look for some power saving considering a usual 10-15kW spacecraft
  • Dario Izzo on 07 Dec 09
     
    What about speed then? Seven time faster could allow some real time navigation at higher speed (e.g. velocity of a terminal guidance for an asteroid impactor is limited to 10 km/s ... would a higher velocity be possible with faster processors?) Another issue is the radiation tolerance of the technology ... if the PCMOS are more tolerant to radiation they could get more easily space qualified.....
  • Joris _ on 08 Dec 09
     
    I don't remember what is the speed factor, but I guess this might do it! Although, I remember when using an IMU that you cannot have the data above a given rate (e.g. 20Hz even though the ADC samples the sensor at a little faster rate), so somehow it is not just the CPU that must be re-thought. When I say qualification I also imply the "hardened" phase.
  • Francesco Biscani on 08 Dec 09
     
    I don't know if the (promised) one-order-of-magnitude improvements in power efficiency and performance are enough to justify looking into this. For once, it is not clear to me what embracing this technology would mean from an engineering point of view: does this technology need an entirely new software/hardware stack? If that were the case, in my opinion any potential benefit would be nullified. Also, is it realistic to build an entire self-sufficient chip on this technology? While the precision of floating point computations may be degraded and still be useful, how does all this play with integer arithmetic? Keep in mind that, e.g., in the Linux kernel code floating-point calculations are not even allowed/available... It is probably possible to integrate an "accelerated" low-accuracy floating-point unit together with a traditional CPU, but then again you have more implementation overhead creeping in. Finally, recent processors by Intel (e.g., the Atom) and especially ARM boast really low power-consumption levels, at the same time offering performance-boosting features such as multi-core and vectorization capabilities. Don't such efforts have more potential, if anything because of economical/industrial inertia?
pacome delva

BEC coupled to mechanical oscillator - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...42297

phy BEC Casimir-Polder_force

shared by pacome delva on 15 Apr 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Treutlein and colleague’s work represents an important step forward in the use of ultracold atoms to study mechanical systems. "This experiment clearly demonstrates the possibility to use ultracold atomic systems as diagnostic tools and high-precision sensors, this is a very promising route of research," he said.
  • LeopoldS on 15 Apr 10
     
    nice!!!
pacome delva

101 uses for guar gum - 0 views

www.rsc.org/...guar_gum.asp

phy soft_matter gel_film

shared by pacome delva on 01 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Guar gum, a polysaccharide, is a cheap and environmentally friendly material produced naturally by a leguminous shrub.
  • The film has a high tensile strength and Kadokawa says it can conduct electricity as efficiently as semi-conductors.   Uniquely, the film hardens upon heating but becomes soft again as it cools. These properties mean that it could be used to produce temperature sensors.
Joris _

The Origin of Artificial Species: Creating Artificial Personalities - 0 views

www.physorg.com/news161517506.html

ai behaviour robots

shared by Joris _ on 15 May 09 - Cached
  • The first artificial creature to receive the genomic personality is Rity, a dog-like software character that lives in a virtual 3D world in a PC
  • In Rity, internal states such as motivation, homeostasis and emotion change according to the incoming perception
  • The internal control architecture processes incoming sensor information, calculates each value of internal states as its response, and sends the calculated values to the behavior selection module to generate a proper behavior.
  • Joris _ on 15 May 09
     
    they have found Christina's dog !!
nikolas smyrlakis

Top 10 disappointing technologies - News - PC Authority - 0 views

www.pcauthority.com.au/...isappointing-technologies.aspx

innovation disruptive technologies failure

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 18 May 09 - Cached
  • Taiwanese robbers reportedly cut the finger of a man whose car had a fingerprint ignition, something that led scanner manufacturers to install a temperature sensor in future models to prevent a repeat.
ESA ACT

Electric fields could give subs 'fish-like' sense - tech - 04 May 2007 - New Scientist ... - 0 views

www.newscientisttech.com/...-give-subs-fishlike-sense.html

BIO Sensors

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Physicists: Can this work also outside water?
ESA ACT

Thorsten Ritz Publications - 0 views

www.physics.uci.edu/...publications.html

BIO NAN PHY magnetic sensors pigeon lab

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    The biophysics guy with the good paper.
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