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Ma Ru

I know at least *some* of you will like it... - 13 views

www.nerdtests.com/ft_nq.php

fun inf phy science

shared by Ma Ru on 29 Mar 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Ma Ru on 29 Mar 10
     
  • ...9 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 29 Mar 10
     
    Shit!! I only got 79, should have lied better...
  • Ma Ru on 29 Mar 10
     
    My score was obtained with *sincere* answers, don't cheat!
  • pacome delva on 30 Mar 10
     
    ouah, 80...! didn't think i was so nerd...!
  • Ma Ru on 30 Mar 10
     
    Dario, Francesco, we're waiting for your scores... are you afraid of the truth??
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 31 Mar 10
     
    hmm "Low Ranking Nerd. Definitely a nerd but low on the totem pole of nerds." , as of a score of 66
  • LeopoldS on 02 Apr 10
  • Dario Izzo on 02 Apr 10
     
    I am disappointed!!!!! Shame on me.......
  • Francesco Biscani on 02 Apr 10
     
    Sigh
  • LeopoldS on 02 Apr 10
     
    wow!
  • Francesco Biscani on 02 Apr 10
     
    My girlfriend... She must be an archaeological nerd...
  • Ma Ru on 03 Apr 10
     
    Great Scott, Leo! Honest answers?? I was kinda expecting Francesco's score, but this...
Athanasia Nikolaou

Nature Paper: Rivers and streams release more CO2 than previously believed - 6 views

www.klimacampus.de/631+M59214efc590.html

climate emissions

shared by Athanasia Nikolaou on 25 Nov 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 25 Nov 13
     
    Another underestimated source of CO2, are turbulent waters. "The stronger the turbulences at the water's surface, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. The combination of maps and data revealed that, while the CO2 emissions from lakes and reservoirs are lower than assumed, those from rivers and streams are three times as high as previously believed." Alltogether the emitted CO2 equates to roughly one-fifth of the emissions caused by humans. Yet more stuff to model...
  • ...10 more comments...
  • Dario Izzo on 26 Nov 13
     
    This could also be a mechanism to counter human CO2 emission ... the more we emit, the less turbulent rivers and stream, the less CO2 is emitted there ... makes sense?
  • johannessimon81 on 27 Nov 13
     
    I guess there is a natural equilibrium there. Once the climate warms up enough for all rivers and streams to evaporate they will not contribute CO2 anymore - which stops their contribution to global warming. So the problem is also the solution (as always).
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 27 Nov 13
     
    "The source of inland water CO2 is still not known with certainty and new studies are needed to research the mechanisms controlling CO2 evasion globally." It is another source of CO2 this one, and the turbulence in the rivers is independent of our emissions in CO2 and just facilitates the process of releasing CO2 waters. Dario, if I understood correct you have in mind a finite quantity of CO2 that the atmosphere can accomodate, and to my knowledge this does not happen, so I cannot find a relevant feedback there. Johannes, H2O is a powerful greenhouse gas :-)
  • Dario Izzo on 27 Nov 13
     
    Nasia I think you did not get my point (a joke, really, that Johannes continued) .... by emitting more CO2 we warm up the planet thus drying up rivers and lakes which will, in turn emit less CO2 :) No finite quantity of CO2 in the atmosphere is needed to close this loop ... ... as for the H2O it could just go into non turbulent waters rather than staying into the atmosphere ...
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 03 Dec 13
     
    Really awkward joke explanation: I got the joke of Johannes, but maybe you did not get mine: by warming up the planet to get rid of the rivers and their problems, the water of the rivers will be accomodated in the atmosphere, therefore, the greenhouse gas of water.
  • Dario Izzo on 03 Dec 13
     
    from my previous post: "... as for the H2O it could just go into non turbulent waters rather than staying into the atmosphere ..."
  • johannessimon81 on 03 Dec 13
     
    I guess the emphasis is on "could"... ;-) Also, everybody knows that rain is cold - so more water in the atmosphere makes the climate colder.
  • LeopoldS on 03 Dec 13
     
    do you have the nature paper also? looks like very nice, meticulous typically german research lasting over 10 years with painstakingly many researchers from all over the world involved .... and while important the total is still only 20% of human emissions ... so a variation in it does not seem to change the overall picture
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 04 Dec 13
     
    here is the nature paper : http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7476/full/nature12760.html I appreciate Johannes' and Dario's jokes, since climate is the common ground that all of us can have an opinion, taking honours from experiencing weather. But, the same as if I am trying to make jokes for material science, or A.I. I take a high risk of failing(!) :-S Water is a greenhouse gas, rain rather releases latent heat to the environment in order to be formed, Johannes, nice trolling effort ;-) Between this and the next jokes to come, I would stop to take a look here, provided you have 10 minutes: how/where rain forms http://www.scribd.com/doc/58033704/Tephigrams-for-Dummies
  • Dario Izzo on 04 Dec 13
     
    omg
  • johannessimon81 on 09 Dec 13
     
    Nasia, I thought about your statement carefully - and I cannot agree with you. Water is not a greenhouse gas. It is instead a liquid. Also, I can't believe you keep feeding the troll! :-P But on a more topical note: I think it is an over-simplification to call water a greenhouse gas - water is one of the most important mechanisms in the way Earth handles heat input from the sun. The latent heat that you mention actually cools Earth: solar energy that would otherwise heat Earth's surface is ABSORBED as latent heat by water which consequently evaporates - the same water condenses into rain drops at high altitudes and releases this stored heat. In effect the water cycle is a mechanism of heat transport from low altitude to high altitude where the chance of infrared radiation escaping into space is much higher due to the much thinner layer of atmosphere above (including the smaller abundance of greenhouse gasses). Also, as I know you are well aware, the cloud cover that results from water condensation in the troposphere dramatically increases albedo which has a cooling effect on climate. Furthermore the heat capacity of wet air ("humid heat") is much larger than that of dry air - so any advective heat transfer due to air currents is more efficient in wet air - transporting heat from warm areas to a natural heat sink e.g. polar regions. Of course there are also climate heating effects of water like the absorption of IR radiation. But I stand by my statement (as defended in the above) that rain cools the atmosphere. Oh and also some nice reading material on the complexities related to climate feedback due to sea surface temperature: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(1993)006%3C2049%3ALSEOTR%3E2.0.CO%3B2
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 10 Dec 13
     
    I enjoy trolling conversations when there is a gain for both sides at the end :-) . I had to check upon some of the facts in order to explain my self properly. The IPCC report states the greenhouse gases here, and water vapour is included: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html Honestly, I read only the abstract of the article you posted, which is a very interesting hypothesis on the mechanism of regulating sea surface temperature, but it is very localized to the tropics (vivid convection, storms) a region of which I have very little expertise, and is difficult to study because it has non-hydrostatic dynamics. The only thing I can comment there is that the authors define constant relative humidity for the bottom layer, supplied by the oceanic surface, which limits the implementation of the concept on other earth regions. Also, we may confuse during the conversation the greenhouse gas with the Radiative Forcing of each greenhouse gas: I see your point of the latent heat trapped in the water vapour, and I agree, but the effect of the water is that it traps even as latent heat an amount of LR that would otherwise escape back to space. That is the greenhouse gas identity and an image to see the absorption bands in the atmosphere and how important the water is, without vain authority-based arguments that miss the explanation in the end: http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://www.solarchords.com/uploaded/82/87-33833-450015_44absorbspec.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.solarchords.com/agw-science/4/greenhouse--1-radiation/33784/&h=468&w=458&sz=28&tbnid=x2NtfKh5OPM7lM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=96&zoom=1&usg=__KldteWbV19nVPbbsC4jsOgzCK6E=&docid=cMRZ9f22jbtYPM&sa=X&ei=SwynUq2TMqiS0QXVq4C4Aw&ved=0CDkQ9QEwAw
Juxi Leitner

JAXA | Launch Day of the H-IIA Launch Vehicle No. 17 (H-IIA F17) - 2 views

www.jaxa.jp/...20100303_h2af17_e.html

launch small satellites technology

shared by Juxi Leitner on 22 Apr 10 - Cached
  • Juxi Leitner on 22 Apr 10
     
    Interesting launch, not just the first Japanese Venus [0] mission, also an interplanetary university mission [1] and also a solar sail mission [2]. Looks very interesting ... [0] http://www.jaxa.jp/countdown/f17/index_e.html [1] http://www.unisec.jp/unitec-1/en/about_unitec-1.html [2] http://www.jaxa.jp/projects/sat/ikaros/index_e.html
nikolas smyrlakis

PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) - 0 views

www.parc.com

technology research innovation lab CMS

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    An interesting research centre in California! Focus areas: Business Services Electronic Materials, Devices, & Systems Information & Communication Technologies Biomedical Systems Cleantech
  • ...1 more comment...
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    and some very ACT- like interesting internships / ideas they have Automatic summarization of related documents http://www.parc.com/job/43/automatic-summarization-of-related-documents.html (remember Kev's idea?) Bayesian diagnosis http://www.parc.com/job/34/bayesian-diagnosis---summer.html Autonomous robotics UAVs UGVs http://www.parc.com/job/36/autonomous-robotics---summer.html
  • Juxi Leitner on 03 Dec 09
     
    XEROX PARC was definitely heavily involved in computer development: eg. mouse, GUI, ethernet, OO programming, all came out of PARC, and all that without focusing on computers but printers...
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    aaah its the XEROX centre, didn't know. Yep they made the mouse and then handed it over nicely to Apple after IBM thought it was useless
Luís F. Simões

The 70 Online Databases that Define Our Planet - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...26097

Living Earth Simulator database data modelling simulator forecast

shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • an ambitious European plan to simulate the entire planet. The idea is to exploit the huge amounts of data generated by financial markets, health records, social media and climate monitoring to model the planet's climate, societies and economy. The vision is that a system like this can help to understand and predict crises before they occur so that governments can take appropriate measures in advance.
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Dec 10
     
    website of the project working on the 'Living Earth Simulator': http://www.futurict.ethz.ch/FuturICT five page summary of the FuturICT Proposal: http://www.futurict.ethz.ch/data/FuturICT-FivePageSummary.pdf
Luís F. Simões

MoNETA: A Mind Made from Memristors (IEEE Spectrum) - 0 views

spectrum.ieee.org/...0

darpa AI memristor neuromorphic animat

shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Dec 10
     
    (don't forget to turn your hype-filters on...) MoNETA (http://cns.bu.edu/nl/moneta.html) stands for "MOdular Neural Exploring Traveling Agent". It is one of projects participating in the DARPA-funded SyNAPSE project ("Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics"): http://www.darpa.mil/dso/thrusts/bio/biologically/synapse/index.htm http://www.darpa.mil/dso/solicitations/baa08-28.html
Luzi Bergamin

FuturICT: FuturIcT - 2 views

www.futurict.ethz.ch/FuturICT

AI computer SciFi socology

shared by Luzi Bergamin on 01 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • Luzi Bergamin on 01 Jun 11
     
    FuturICT, another of these nonsense-flagships. Marek: after having read about this, I understand that BlueBrain is not the only flagship proposal that sucks. Long live the dream of cybernetics, or, apparently people never learn anything...
  • Ma Ru on 01 Jun 11
     
    The others: http://www.ga-project.eu/ - "Guardian Angels for a Smarter Planet" http://www.humanbrainproject.eu/ http://www.itfom.eu/ http://www.robotcompanions.eu/ One doesn't have a website (graphene). The message from their presentation was more or less: everyone else does intensive research in this and the Europe should not stay behind. Full list of flagship proposals including short descriptions here: http://www.fet11.eu/about/fet-flagships
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!
Luís F. Simões

Is color vision defined by language? "The Himba tribe" - BBC Horizon - 2 views

www.youtube.com/watch

neuroscience language vision perception

shared by Luís F. Simões on 26 Oct 11 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 26 Oct 11
  • Ma Ru on 26 Oct 11
     
    Yeah that's interesting stuff... We have one prof in the lab who used to do some research related exactly to this (http://www.tech.plym.ac.uk/socce/staff/tonybelpaeme/research.html). Similar question (i.e. if/how language is involved in the formation of a concept) is also valid for numbers, see for instance this recent story: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20095-without-language-numbers-make-no-sense.html
anonymous

Nasa validates 'impossible' space drive (Wired UK) - 3 views

www.wired.co.uk/...lidates-impossible-space-drive

PHY space nasa propulsion emdrive

shared by anonymous on 31 Jul 14 - No Cached
  • anonymous on 31 Jul 14
     
    NASA validates the EmDrive (http://emdrive.com/) technology for converting electrical energy into thrust. (from the website: "Thrust is produced by the amplification of the radiation pressure of an electromagnetic wave propagated through a resonant waveguide assembly.")
  • ...3 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 01 Aug 14
     
    I would be very very skeptic on this results and am actually ready to take bets that they are victims of something else than "new physics" ... some measurement error e.g.
  • anonymous on 02 Aug 14
     
    Assuming that this system is feasible, and taking the results of Chinese team (Thrust of 720 mN http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-02/06/emdrive-and-cold-fusion), I wonder whether this would allow for some actual trajectory maneuvers (and to which degree). If so, can we simulate some possible trajectories, e.g. compare the current solutions to this one ? For example, Shawyer (original author) claims that this system would be capable of stabilizing ISS without need for refueling. Other article on the same topic: http://www.theverge.com/2014/8/1/5959637/nasa-cannae-drive-tests-have-promising-results
  • Thijs Versloot on 04 Aug 14
     
    To be exact, the chinese reported 720mN and the americans found ~50microN. The first one I simply do not believe and the second one seems more credible, yet it has to be said that measuring such low thrust levels on a thrust-stand is very difficult and prone to measurement errors. @Krzys, the thrust level of 720mN is within the same range of other electric propulsion systems which are considered - and even used in some cases - for station keeping, also for the ISS actually (for which there are also ideas to use a high power system delivering several Newtons of thrust). Then on the idea, I do not rule out that an interaction between the EM waves and 'vacuum' could be possible, however if this would be true then this surely would be detectable in any particle accelerator as it would produce background events/noise. The energy densities involved and the conversion to thrust via some form of interaction with the vacuum surely could not provide thrusts in the range reported by the chinese, nor the americans. The laws of momentum conservation would still need to apply. Finally, 'quantum vacuum virtual plasma'.. really?
  • annaheffernan on 04 Aug 14
     
    I have to join the skeptics on this one ...
  • Marcus Maertens on 09 Aug 14
Guido de Croon

Convolutional networks start to rule the world! - 2 views

www.image-net.org/...results.html

computer vision AI neural networks

shared by Guido de Croon on 12 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 12 Jan 13
     
    Recently, many competitions in the computer vision domain have been won by huge convolutional networks. In the image net competition, the convolutional network approach halves the error from ~30% to ~15%! Key changes that make this happen: weight-sharing to reduce the search space, and training with a massive GPU approach. (See also the work at IDSIA: http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/vision.html) This should please Francisco :)
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 19 Jan 13
     
    where is Francisco when one needs him ...
  • Dario Izzo on 22 Jan 13
     
    ...mmmmm... they use 60 million parameters and 650,000 neurons on a task that one can somehow consider easier than (say) predicting a financial crisis ... still they get 15% of errors .... reminds me of a comic we saw once ... cat http://www.sarjis.info/stripit/abstruse-goose/496/the_singularity_is_way_over_there.png
  • johannessimon81 on 23 Jan 13
     
    I think the ultimate solution is still to put a human brain in a jar and use it for pattern recognition. Maybe we should get a stagiaire for this..?
LeopoldS

Meteorite Crashes In Russia, Panic Spreads (Updating) - 5 views

gizmodo.com/...rashes-in-russia-panic-spreads

shared by LeopoldS on 15 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 15 Feb 13
     
    Latest update: the European Space Agency says their experts "confirm there is no link between the meteor incidents in Russia and asteroid 2012DA14 flyby tonight". How did they find this? As they did not see this one coming, how could they come to that conclusion that early!
  • ...5 more comments...
  • johannessimon81 on 15 Feb 13
     
    As you can see from the videos of this meteorite it is coming in from an east to south-east direction (i.e. the direction of the sunrise, more or less). 2012DA14 is coming from due south as you can see here: http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2013/02/how-to-watch-asteroid-2012-da14/ So the two objects seem to be coming from different directions - at least that would be my explanation.
  • Joris _ on 15 Feb 13
     
    My point is, that if you want to come to such a conclusion (that it is not rubble) you need to be able to construct back the orbits of both objects. 2012DA14 has been observed for one year only, but it is well enough. When the meteor has been observed for the first time, such that we knew its orbit? has it been observed before? if yes, why the impact has not been predicted?
  • johannessimon81 on 15 Feb 13
     
    If you can show that they come from different directions you know that they are not associated, even if you don't reconstruct their orbits.
  • Joris _ on 15 Feb 13
     
    I don't think so. If both objects were part of the same, they would be on different but intersecting orbits anyway, hence different directions. Anyway, I am not knowledgeable in atmospheric entry ... But, with so few information about the object, I am surprised they are 100% certain it is not related to DA14. I think science requires more cautions ... With only the direction they are 100% sure, while the probability of such event is itself extremely small, I am amazed... They can't even predict with 100% certainty where a space debris will fall... plus, nobody consider the object being part of a bigger one that broke up during early entry (which has not been observed) ... so many uncertainties and possible hypothesis... and i am not the only one :) http://www.infowars.com/russian-meteor-linked-to-da14-asteroid/
  • LeopoldS on 17 Feb 13
     
    was not that evident to me also but apparently with the right understanding it was quite clear; was amazed also how quickly NASA has published the likely trajectory of the russian object - have a look at it: quite evident that these are not coming from the same body
  • Joris _ on 17 Feb 13
     
    yes, now i get my 100% certainty with the reconstructed orbits nothing else (http://wiki.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Watch%20the%20Skies/posts/post_1361037562855.html) ... I still think that esa anouncemement was highly premature but with a high probability of being right...
  • Ma Ru on 26 Feb 13
     
    Some more results on the topic (link to an arxiv article inside): http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-21579422
Luís F. Simões

HP Dreams of Internet Powered by Phone Chips (And Cow Chips) | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...1

INF hardware NRG energy data mining

shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • For Hewlett Packard Fellow Chandrakat Patel, there’s a “symbiotic relationship between IT and manure.”
  • Patel is an original thinker. He’s part of a group at HP Labs that has made energy an obsession. Four months ago, Patel buttonholed former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan at the Aspen Ideas Festival to sell him on the idea that the joule should be the world’s global currency.
  • Data centers produce a lot of heat, but to energy connoisseurs it’s not really high quality heat. It can’t boil water or power a turbine. But one thing it can do is warm up poop. And that’s how you produce methane gas. And that’s what powers Patel’s data center. See? A symbiotic relationship.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Financial house Cantor Fitzgerald is interested in Project Moonshot because it thinks HP’s servers may have just what it takes to help the company’s traders understand long-term market trends. Director of High-Frequency Trading Niall Dalton says that while the company’s flagship trading platform still needs the quick number-crunching power that comes with the powerhog chips, these low-power Project Moonshot systems could be great for analyzing lots and lots of data — taking market data from the past three years, for example, and running a simulation.
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Nov 11
     
    of relevance to this discussion: Koomey's Law, a Moore's Law equivalent for computing's energetic efficiency http://www.economist.com/node/21531350 http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/2148202/whither-moores-law-introducing-koomeys-law
Luís F. Simões

Encouraging Behavioral Diversity in Evolutionary Robotics: An Empirical Study - MIT Pre... - 2 views

www.mitpressjournals.org/...EVCO_a_00048

evolutionary computation neural_networks robotics behaviour

shared by Luís F. Simões on 04 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • several papers recently proposed to explicitly encourage the diversity of the robot behaviors, rather than the diversity of the genotypes as in classic evolutionary optimization. Such an approach avoids the need to compute distances between structures and the pitfalls of the noninjectivity of the phenotype/behavior relation; however, it also introduces new questions: how to compare behavior?
  • In this paper, we review the main published approaches to behavioral diversity and benchmark them in a common framework.
  • The results show that fostering behavioral diversity substantially improves the evolutionary process in the investigated experiments, regardless of genotype or task.
  • Luís F. Simões on 04 Mar 12
     
    paywall skipping: http://www.isir.upmc.fr/files/2011ACLI2061.pdf The most complete study I've seen so far on a new approach (Novelty Search) that has been gaining a lot of attention lately. And they even use parallel coordinates to visualize the results!! ;)
Luís F. Simões

Barabasi, A.-L. (2012). The network takeover. Nat Phys, 8(1), 14-16. - 1 views

www.nature.com/...nphys2188.html

complex_networks complex_systems networks

shared by Luís F. Simões on 29 Feb 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS and Dario Izzo liked it
  • Reductionism, as a paradigm, is expired, and complexity, as a field, is tired. Data-based mathematical models of complex systems are offering a fresh perspective, rapidly developing into a new discipline: network science.
Christos Ampatzis

NASA news conference Dec. 2, on extraterrestrial life?! - 3 views

www.nasa.gov/...M10-110.html

space BIO fun

shared by Christos Ampatzis on 01 Dec 10 - No Cached
  • Christos Ampatzis on 01 Dec 10
     
    Let's start betting which party Aliens vote: GREEN, BLUE, RED, BLACK?
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 01 Dec 10
     
    yes, the internet is going crazy over this one :) (http://cumbriansky.wordpress.com/2010/11/30/nasas-astrobiology-press-conference/) This is the most likely scenario I've seen so far for what will be announced tomorrow: http://skymania.com/wp/2010/11/alien-life-form-is-here-on-earth.html/ "...discovery of microbes in a deadly poisonous lake that get their energy from arsenic. Experts say this shows they had a completely different origin to any other creature known on our planet. It means that life began not just once but at least twice on Earth."
  • Joris _ on 02 Dec 10
     
    well, we've all seen the movie Evolution (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0251075/) ;p ... this is exactly this scenario indeed.
  • Ma Ru on 02 Dec 10
     
    yaaawnnn... Let's wait until they actually announce it.
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 02 Dec 10
     
    http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ for the moment is down. My bet, the microbe they found notified its cousins and they are currently invading the US
  • Luís F. Simões on 02 Dec 10
     
    you can still see the rest of it here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html a good link with a summary and discussion on the announcement is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/02/nasa-life-form-bacteria-arsenic
Juxi Leitner

Data Nerds Hack NASA - in a Good Way | Wired Science | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...nasa-hackathon

data representation tech

shared by Juxi Leitner on 14 Dec 09 - Cached
  • The event is just one of dozens this weekend being promoted by the Sunlight Foundation as part of its Great American Hackathon. Each one is being organized by volunteers who want to make government data easier to access and more useful to the public. In Pittsburgh, the hackers will be working on making stimulus spending easier to understand. In Boston, the Massachusetts Department of Transportation data will be the focus.
nikolas smyrlakis

UNITED KINGDOM SPACE AGENCY UKSA (fake website) - 3 views

www.uk-space.com

space united kingdom fun

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 24 Mar 10 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 24 Mar 10
     
    according to the normal website (http://www.bnsc.gov.uk/): "The UK Space Agency website will officially launch on 1 April 2010. Until then, the BNSC website will be in a state of transition " the guys above i think just take the piss coz theres no official website. Mission statement: TOGETHER WE ARE GOING TO EMBARK ON A JOURNEY INTO SPACE. ..........................THE MISSION IS......MARS................................."
  • Ma Ru on 24 Mar 10
     
    I've just read a blog entry about this on New Scientist, and while the entry itself is not interesting, I learned from it where the UKSA and ESA's UK establishment are going to be based. Answer: it's even more in the middle of nowhere than Plymouth! BTW does anyone (Leo?) know what is the basis on which new ESA establishments locations are chosen (if this info is classified, you can send it on priv ;) [Edit] Esa has released a news item about it... Whatever one can say about the British Space Agency, they certainly have a fantastic logo!
Joris _

The 2010 Global Innovation 1000: How the Top Innovators Keep Winning - 4 views

www.booz.com/...innovation_1000_2010

technology science innovation

shared by Joris _ on 03 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 03 Mar 11
     
    Paper Discussion Deck
  • LeopoldS on 05 Mar 11
     
    despite being a consultancy paper, quite interesting ... " the success of these companies is not a matter of how much these companies spend on research and development, but rather how they spend it." could also be translated into: "you need us to tell you how to spend your R&D money" :-)
Luís F. Simões

Shell energy scenarios to 2050 - 6 views

www.shell.com/...shell_energy_scenarios_2050

energy future forecast politics economy climate_change

shared by Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Mar 11
     
    just in case you were feeling happy and optimistic
  • ...7 more comments...
  • Francesco Biscani on 09 Mar 11
     
    An energy scenario published by an oil company? Allow me to be sceptical...
  • Joris _ on 10 Mar 11
     
    Indeed, Shell is an energy company, not just oil, for some time now ... The two scenarii are, in their approach, dependant of economic and political situation, which is right now impossible to forecast. Reference to Kyoto is surprising, almost out-dated! But overall, I find it rather optimistic at some stages, and probably the timeline (p37-39) is unlikely with recent events.
  • Luís F. Simões on 10 Mar 11
     
    the report was published in 2008, which explains the reference to Kyoto, as the follow-up to it was much more uncertain at that point. The Blueprint scenario is indeed optimistic, but also quite unlikely I'd say. I don't see humanity suddenly becoming so wise and coordinated. Sadly, I see something closer to the Scramble scenario as much more likely to occur.
  • LeopoldS on 12 Mar 11
     
    not an oil company??? please have a look at the percentage of their revenues coming from oil and gas and then compare this with all their other energy activities together and you will see very quickly that it is only window dressing ... they are an oil and gas company ... and nothing more
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    not JUST oil. From a description: "Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemical companies." Of course revenues coming from oil are the biggest, the investment turnover on other energy sources is small for now. Knowing that most of their revenues is from an expendable source, to guarantee their future, they invest elsewhere. They have invested >1b$ in renewable energy, including biofuels. They had the largest wind power business among so-called "oil" companies. Oil only defines what they do "best". As a comparison, some time ago, Apple were selling only computers and now they sell phones. But I would not say Apple is just a phone company.
  • LeopoldS on 14 Mar 11
     
    window dressing only ... e.g. Net cash from operating activities (pre-tax) in 2008: 70 Billion$ net income in 2008: 26 Billion revenues in 2008: 88 Billion Their investments and revenues in renewables don't even show up in their annual financial reports since probably they are under the heading of "marketing" which is already 1.7 Billion $ ... this is what they report on their investments: Capital investment, portfolio actions and business development Capital investment in 2009 was $24 billion. This represents a 26% decrease from 2008, which included over $8 billion in acquisitions, primarily relating to Duvernay Oil Corp. Capital investment included exploration expenditure of $4.5 billion (2008: $11.0 billion). In Abu Dhabi, Shell signed an agreement with Abu Dhabi National Oil Company to extend the GASCO joint venture for a further 20 years. In Australia, Shell and its partners took the final investment decision (FID) for the Gorgon LNG project (Shell share 25%). Gorgon will supply global gas markets to at least 2050, with a capacity of 15 million tonnes (100% basis) of LNG per year and a major carbon capture and storage scheme. Shell has announced a front-end engineering and design study for a floating LNG (FLNG) project, with the potential to deploy these facilities at the Prelude offshore gas discovery in Australia (Shell share 100%). In Australia, Shell confirmed that it has accepted Woodside Petroleum Ltd.'s entitlement offer of new shares at a total cost of $0.8 billion, maintaining its 34.27% share in the company; $0.4 billion was paid in 2009 with the remainder paid in 2010. In Bolivia and Brazil, Shell sold its share in a gas pipeline and in a thermoelectric power plant and its related assets for a total of around $100 million. In Canada, the Government of Alberta and the national government jointly announced their intent to contribute $0.8 billion of funding towards the Quest carbon capture and sequestration project. Quest, which is at the f
  • Joris _ on 14 Mar 11
     
    thanks for the info :) They still have their 50% share in the wind farm in Noordzee (you can see it from ESTEC on a clear day). Look for Shell International Renewables, other subsidiaries and joint-ventures. I guess, the report is about the oil branch. http://sustainabilityreport.shell.com/2009/servicepages/downloads/files/all_shell_sr09.pdf http://www.noordzeewind.nl/
  • LeopoldS on 16 Mar 11
     
    no - its about Shell globally - all Shell .. these participations are just peanuts please read the intro of the CEO in the pdf you linked to: he does not even mention renewables! their entire sustainability strategy is about oil and gas - just making it (look) nicer and environmentally friendlier
  • Joris _ on 16 Mar 11
     
    Fair enough, for me even peanuts are worthy and I am not able to judge. Not all big-profit companies, like Shell, are evil :( Look in the pdf what is in the upstream and downstream you mentionned above. Non-shell sources for examples and more objectivity: http://www.nuon.com/company/Innovative-projects/noordzeewind.jsp http://www.e-energymarket.com/news/single-news/article/ferrari-tops-bahrain-gp-using-shell-biofuel.html thanks.
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