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Researchers in Bangalore, India together with the Indian Space Research organization come up with an intelligent self-healing algorithm that can locate open-circuits faults and repair them in real-time. They used an insulating silicon oil containing conductive particles. Whenever a fault happens, an electric field develops there, causing the fluid to move in a 'thermodynamic automaton' way repairing the fault. The researchers make clear it could be one advantage for electronics in harsh environments, such as in space satellites.

In order to overcome the communication blackout problem suffered by hypersonic vehicles, a matching approach has been proposed for the first time in this paper. It utilizes a double-positive (DPS) material layer surrounding a hypersonic vehicle antenna to match with the plasma sheath enclosing the vehicle. Or in more easy language, basically one provides an antenna as capacitor, in combination with the plasma sheath (an inductor), they form an electrical circuit which becomes transparent for long wavelength radiation (the communication signal). The reasons is that fluctuations are balanced by the twin system, preventing absorption/reflection of the incoming radiation. Elegant solution, but will only work on long wavelength communication, plus I am not sure whether the antenna needs active control (as the plasma sheath conditions change during the re-entry phase).

Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night

very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.

Parallel processing in computing --- Brainet The team sent electrical pulses to all four rats and rewarded them when they synchronised their brain activity. After 10 training sessions, the rats were able to do this 61 per cent of the time. This synchronous brain activity can be put to work as a computer to perform tasks like information storage and pattern recognition, says Nicolelis. "We send a message to the brains, the brains incorporate that message, and we can retrieve the message later," he says. Dividing the computing of a task between multiple brains is similar to sharing computations between multiple processors in modern computers, "If you could collaboratively solve common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal."

This would fit well with a study I saw on 'nanogrooved surfaces' with which you could make very good light absorbers. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/journal/v3/n7/full/ncomms1976.html?WT.ec_id=NCOMMS-20120724

If you pry open one of today's ubiquitous high-tech devices-whether a cellphone, a laptop, or an electric car-you'll find that batteries take up most of the space inside. Indeed, the recent evolution of batteries has made it possible to pack ample power in small places.

solidstate batteries would be perfect indeed, but up to now I know of no solid electrolyte that can do the trick. The article itself does not mention any material beyond superionic lithium-ion conductors, but does not specify which one in particular. The premis seems to be "if it conducts fast enough, the battery can conduct efficiently"

"V3Solar has developed a cone-shaped solar energy harvester that is claimed to generate over 20 times more electricity than a flat panel thanks to a combination of concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced electronics."

Hmm.. that seems counter intuitive... how would it ever be that much better than a flat panel? Rotating the PV will only make sure only parts are illuminated. Operating temperature is a better argument, but that comes at the cost of exposure. Came across this little gem of a webpage, maybe we should outsource our impossibility EM drive work next time? :) https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-v3solars-spinning-solar-panel-cone-spin-cell-coolspin.t1166/

By wearing clothes that have been dip-coated in a silver nanowire (AgNW) solution that is highly radiation-insulating, a person may stay so warm in the winter that they can greatly reduce or even eliminate their need for heating their home. With as extra bonus: Besides providing high levels of passive insulation, AgNW-coated clothing can also provide Joule heating if connected to an electricity source, such as a battery. The researchers demonstrated that as little as 0.9 V can safely raise clothing temperature to 38 °C, which is 1 °C higher than the human body temperature of 37 °C. How about that for personal comfort during the cold winter months

sounds almost like the asbestos story re-started :-)

Found an European project that takes care of the environmental, health and safety aspects of nanomaterials http://phys.org/news/2015-04-unleash-full-potential-nanomaterials.html

The unique structure and properties of graphene and the morphology of the bulk graphene material make it capable of not only absorbing light at various wavelengths but also emitting energetic electrons efficiently enough to drive the bulk material following Newtonian mechanics.

Hard to believe this should actually work, but would be quite a breakthrough indeed. I wonder, since the material should build up a significant electric potential over time, thus, pulling back the ejected electrons. Well, the paper apparently is not peer-reviewed, and I found some rather critical comments in some forums. Let's see if the experiment will be verified by another research team in due course.

metamaterials to stop radiations?

hmm ... in the optical range it is already a bit tricky .... lets brainstorm a bit about it ... anything in the literature? Luzi?

the components of the metamaterial need to have a size inversely proportional to the wavelenght, but here we are talking about high energy protons. So the idea was: is there metamaterials that change the electrical properties to solve this problem of holes in the material... but i dont have a clue !

"The Illinois Commerce Commission wanted to make sure that if they deregulated the power market, individual producers of electricity would not be able to manipulate the market during times of high demand by withholding capacity or charging excessive rates. The Argonne model found that during certain times of heavy load such a situation could emerge, which led to the recommendation that independent monitors maintain some oversight of the power market." Interesting this study on power grids !

haha! is this a joke...?

well i guess the news headline is a bit too much trying to be attractive :)

"Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds," Worden said. this sounds to me a bit too much like Pete Worden :-) but I really like this one :-) One of those billionaires might be Google's Larry Page, who is keenly interested in space travel and NASA Ames's research. "Larry asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, 'Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?,'" Worden told the Long Now audience. "So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price."

from Fairouz

wonder if we can use that to power a moon base .... or on-board a SBSP satellite

I am not the physicist but I thought it might be interesting, from a space security point-of-view

Yes it seems really interesting and opens new possibilities. However this technology review article is not very good and the guy uses terms which have a precise meaning (like teleportation), which is different from the word we know... Quantum teleportation is what we use for designing quantum computers, but we are quite far from any practical applications. This energy teleportation will allow new scheme involving energy (if it is experimentally confirmed) which is very nice. However it seems this occurs in an entangled many-body system, which the only macroscopic one I know is a bose-eintein condensate (BEC). So it would mean infuse energy in the BEC by doing a measurement on one of the atom and extract it few millimeters away by doing a measurement on another atom. very far from any long distance power transmission...

can we use it for space :-) ?

nice!!! got the info from Claudio ...