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jcunha

Trends in Biomimetics - 1 views

www.nature.com/...gists-into-biomimetics-1.19188

BIO technology science

shared by jcunha on 21 Jan 16 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • jcunha on 21 Jan 16
     
    "The field of biomimicry mostly involves chemists, engineers and materials scientists. Fewer than 8% of the nearly 300 studies on biomimetics published in the past 3 months and indexed in the Thomson Reuters Web of Science had an author working in a biology department - a crude proxy for 'a biologist'."
LeopoldS

Strong evidence for d-electron spin transport at room temperature - 2 views

www.nature.com/...nmat4857.html

spintronics

shared by LeopoldS on 16 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 16 Feb 17
     
    Strong evidence for d-electron spin transport at room temperature
  • jcunha on 16 Feb 17
     
    WOW! Great non-local signals, at room temperature!!! Spin transistor on the way finally!? (of course electric field gate controlled is fundamental) See more about the "quest" for the spin transistor here: http://spectrum.ieee.org/semiconductors/processors/the-quest-for-the-spin-transistor
jcunha

New method uses heat flow to levitate variety of objects - 1 views

phys.org/...2-method-levitate-variety.html

technology science PHY microgravity

shared by jcunha on 16 Feb 17 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 16 Feb 17
     
    Normally we associate levitation of objects to superconducting materials. Here a new technique is shown where levitation of a whole new range of materials is shown. "The large temperature gradient leads to a force that balances gravity and results in stable levitation," said Fung, the study's lead author. "We managed to quantify the thermophoretic force and found reasonable agreement with what is predicted by theory. This will allow us to explore the possibilities of levitating different types of objects." Paper at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4974489 New microgravity experiments possibility?
  • LeopoldS on 01 Mar 17
     
    not really I fear .... "Typical sizes of the trapped particles are between 10 μm and 1 mm at a pressure between 1 and 10 Torr. The trapping stability is provided radially by the increasing temperature field and vertically by the transition from the free molecule to hydrodynamic behavior of thermophoresis as the particles ascend."
  • jcunha on 06 Mar 17
     
    Might still be OK micro to mm sized experiments. The technique seems to be reliable and cheap enough to compete with other types of microgravity approaches - more research needed to define boundaries of course.
jcunha

Electronic synapses that can learn signal the coming of the first real artificial brain - 0 views

qz.com/...he-first-real-artificial-brain

memristor neuromorphic nanotech

shared by jcunha on 06 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 06 Apr 17
     
    A nice quartz article about research in neuromorphic hardware in micro/nanotech out there and future vision of the field.
pandomilla

Not a scratch - 7 views

www.economist.com/21545971

BIO

shared by pandomilla on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • pandomilla on 12 Apr 12
     
    I hate scorpions, but this could be a nice subject for a future Ariadna study! This north African desert scorpion, doesn't dig burrows to protect itself from the sand-laden wind (as the other scorpions do). When the sand whips by at speeds that would strip paint away from steel, the scorpion is able to scurry off without apparent damage.
  • LeopoldS on 13 Apr 12
     
    Nice research, though they have done almost all the work that we could do in an Ariadna, didnt they? "To check, they took further photographs. In particular, they used a laser scanning system to make a three-dimensional map of the armour and then plugged the result into a computer program that blasted the virtual armour with virtual sand grains at various angles of attack. This process revealed that the granules were disturbing the air flow near the skeleton's surface in ways that appeared to be reducing the erosion rate. Their model suggested that if scorpion exoskeletons were smooth, they would experience almost twice the erosion rate that they actually do. Having tried things out in a computer, the team then tried them for real. They placed samples of steel in a wind tunnel and fired grains of sand at them using compressed air. One piece of steel was smooth, but the others had grooves of different heights, widths and separations, inspired by scorpion exoskeleton, etched onto their surfaces. Each sample was exposed to the lab-generated sandstorm for five minutes and then weighed to find out how badly it had been eroded. The upshot was that the pattern most resembling scorpion armour-with grooves that were 2mm apart, 5mm wide and 4mm high-proved best able to withstand the assault. Though not as good as the computer model suggested real scorpion geometry is, such grooving nevertheless cut erosion by a fifth, compared with a smooth steel surface. The lesson for aircraft makers, Dr Han suggests, is that a little surface irregularity might help to prolong the active lives of planes and helicopters, as well as those of scorpions."
  • Ma Ru on 13 Apr 12
     
    What bugs me (pardon the pun) is that the dimensions of the pattern they used were scaled up by many orders of magnitude, while "grains of sand" with which the surface was bombarded apparently were not... Not being a specialist in the field, I would nevertheless expect that the size of the surface pattern *in relation to* to size of particles used for bombarding would be crucial.
Luke O'Connor

MIT Creates Amazing UI From Levitating Orbs - 1 views

www.fastcodesign.com/...mazing-ui-from-levitating-orbs

shared by Luke O'Connor on 23 May 12 - No Cached
  • Luke O'Connor on 23 May 12
     
    See 1:13 in the video: could be useful for GTOC!
  • Dario Izzo on 24 May 12
     
    hyper cool!!!! but I am not convinced it will ever be able to overcome the intrinsic instabilities created by manipulating a magnetic field ..... you can actually see in the video the undamped vibrations in the motion ....
Lionel Jacques

Comet Lovejoy entered SOHO's LASCO C3 field of view - 0 views

planetary.org/...00003301

space science

shared by Lionel Jacques on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Lionel Jacques on 15 Dec 11
     
    nice images...
LeopoldS

Particle self-bunching in the Schwinger effect in spacetime-dependent electric fields - 3 views

arxiv.org/1106.6175

Phy

shared by LeopoldS on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
pacome delva liked it
  • LeopoldS on 11 Nov 11
     
    magic :-)
  • pacome delva on 15 Nov 11
     
    "self-bunching effect" haha
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.
santecarloni

Quantum Biology and the Puzzle of Coherence - Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27628

biology quantum technology bio

shared by santecarloni on 06 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • santecarloni on 06 Mar 12
     
    Quantum processes shouldn't survive in hot, wet biological systems and yet a growing body of evidence suggests they do. Now physicists think they know how
  • ...2 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 09 Mar 12
     
    Tobias, José and myself considered an ACT project in quantum biomimetics, but it never led anywhere. Perhaps the field is sexy enough now...
  • LeopoldS on 09 Mar 12
     
    Considered is the right word ... You unfortunately never passed the step after "considering" :-)
  • Luzi Bergamin on 10 Mar 12
     
    Yes, because our bosses forced us to write strategic reports on "system of systems" :-)
  • LeopoldS on 10 Mar 12
     
    Oh these terrible ignorant slave masters .... Would love to see your "reports on system of systems" :-)
Christos Ampatzis

Letters to Science: Support for Greece - 1 views

www.sciencemag.org/...978.full

shared by Christos Ampatzis on 14 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Christos Ampatzis on 14 Jun 12
     
    22 internationally renowned leaders in various fields of science and technology (2) have drafted and signed a petition addressed to Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament; Herman Van Rompuy, President of the European Council; and José Manuel Durão Barroso, President of the EU Commission.
Beniamino Abis

Antimatter experiment produces first beam of antihydrogen - 1 views

home.web.cern.ch/...oduces-first-beam-antihydrogen

science phy

shared by Beniamino Abis on 22 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Beniamino Abis on 22 Jan 14
     
    The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. The ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140121/ncomms4089/full/ncomms4089.html
Thijs Versloot

Autonomous drones flock like birds (video) #Nature - 2 views

www.nature.com/...rones-flock-like-birds-1.14776

AI drone

shared by Thijs Versloot on 27 Feb 14 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 27 Feb 14
     
    A Hungarian team has created the first drones that can fly as a coordinated flock. The researchers watched as the ten autonomous robots took to the air in a field outside Budapest, zipping through the open sky, flying in formation or even following a leader, all without any central control.
  • Dario Izzo on 28 Feb 14
     
    old news, but wow .... Nature is becoming more and more like a magazine and less and less a scientific journal. This stuff is highly irrelevant but to the group that did it.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Mar 14
     
    this is not a nature paper but just an article on their website - the papers they provide as references are all old
Guido de Croon

Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views

robohub.org/be-smarter-than-humans-by-2029

AI

shared by Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14
     
    Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc.
  • ...9 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    "Kurzweilians"... LOL. Still not sold on embodiment, btw.
  • Ma Ru on 12 Mar 14
     
    The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting...
  • Paul N on 13 Mar 14
     
    The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment.
  • Marcus Maertens on 14 Mar 14
     
    I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment.
  • johannessimon81 on 14 Mar 14
     
    @Paul: How would embodiment be done RIGHT?
  • Guido de Croon on 16 Mar 14
     
    Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
  • Ma Ru on 17 Mar 14
     
    @Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Mar 14
     
    Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
  • Paul N on 17 Mar 14
     
    Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
  • Ma Ru on 18 Mar 14
     
    All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
  • Paul N on 24 Mar 14
     
    These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
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
johannessimon81

Earth's inner core rotates eastward while the outer core rotates westward - 0 views

www.leeds.ac.uk/...he_dynamics_of_the_earths_core

science PHY

shared by johannessimon81 on 19 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 19 Sep 13
     
    Apparently the core does not only produce a magnetic field - it is also an electric motor!
Thijs Versloot

Word of the day - thermoelectric magnetohydrodynamic flow - 1 views

physics.aps.org/st8

fusion MHD

shared by Thijs Versloot on 10 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 10 Dec 13
     
    Heat and a magnetic field cause the liquid lithium to swirl rapidly, an effect that could be useful in fusion reactors. With a nice video http://physics.aps.org/assets/eab7d11d-20cd-4c37-ab2c-313729ad8422/video-v1.mp4
Athanasia Nikolaou

Polymer scientists jam nanoparticles, trapping liquids in useful shapes - 1 views

phys.org/...sts-nanoparticles-liquids.html

fluids nanoparticles PHY

shared by Athanasia Nikolaou on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 30 Oct 13
     
    Inserting a droplet of polymer enriched water into oil and manipulating its shape by applying an electric field. The shape remains intact after cease of the forcing. <br /> "Russell (...) points out that the advance holds promise for a wide range of different applications including in drug delivery, biosensing, fluidics, photovoltaics, encapsulation and bicontinuous media for energy applications and separations media."
Thijs Versloot

Quantum #teleportation theory to be tested on the #ISS - 8 views

phys.org/...eleportation-theory-space.html

science quantum ISS

shared by Thijs Versloot on 22 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 22 Oct 13
     
    A theory-SuperDense quantum teleportation-posed by Hampshire College physics professor Herbert Bernstein will be tested on the International Space Station. Theoretical physicist Bernstein devised the SuperDense scheme more than a decade ago in his investigations of different ways to send a quantum state from one part of a laboratory to a remote station.
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 13
     
    Anna could you have a closer look into this - we should at least know what they are up to, be able to explain if anybody asks ... I also somehow missed this one in the NIAC study descriptions ... maybe a good moment to have another look at these "This is the second NASA grant for SuperDense quantum teleportation. A grant awarded in 2010 through NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) investigated the viability of the theory and produced the world's first experimental demonstration. Surprising or seminal experiments have marked Bernstein's research career. This is the fourth time a major proposal has become reality; two of his experiments helped found new sub-fields of physics (neutron interferometry and entanglement for quantum information)."
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