Meet SCiO. It is the world's first affordable molecular sensor that fits in the palm of your hand. SCiO is a tiny spectrometer and allows you to get instant relevant information about the chemical make-up of just about anything around you, sent directly to your smartphone.
The Network Behind the Cosmic Web - 1 views
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"The concept of the cosmic web-viewing the universe as a set of discrete galaxies held together by gravity-is deeply ingrained in cosmology. Yet, little is known about architecture of this network or its characteristics. Our research used data from 24,000 galaxies to construct multiple models of the cosmic web, offering complex blueprints for how galaxies fit together. These three interactive visualizations help us imagine the cosmic web, show us differences between the models, and give us insight into the fundamental structure of the universe."
Inferring individual rules from collective behavior - 2 views
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"We fit data to zonal interaction models and characterize which individual interaction forces suffice to explain observed spatial patterns." You can get the paper from the first author's website: http://people.stfx.ca/rlukeman/research.htm
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PNAS? Didnt strike me as sth very new though... We should refer to it in the roots study though: "Social organisms form striking aggregation patterns, displaying cohesion, polarization, and collective intelligence. Determining how they do so in nature is challenging; a plethora of simulation studies displaying life-like swarm behavior lack rigorous comparison with actual data because collecting field data of sufficient quality has been a bottleneck." For roots it is NO bottleneck :) Tobias was right :)
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Here they assume all relevant variables influencing behaviour are being observed. Namely, the relative positions and orientations of all ducks in the swarm. So, they make movies of the swarm's movements, process them, and them fit the models to that data. In the roots, though we can observe the complete final structure, or even obtain time-lapse movies showing how that structure came out to be, getting the measurements of all relevant soil variables (nitrogen, phosphorus, ...) throughout the soil, and over time, would be extremely difficult. So I guess a replication of the kind of work they did, but for the roots, would be hard. Nice reference though.
Picbreeder: Collaborative Interactive Art Evolution (Genetic Art) - 1 views
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Following up on our coffee-time discussion, here's an Evolutionary Algorithm where you are the fitness function, and evolution is guided by your subjective artistic sense. Start from scratch, or pick an existing image in the database, and start evolving. At every generation, you are presented with the individuals/images in the population. Pick the ones you like. Those will be the parents from which the next generation will be bred. Repeat, repeat... where do you get to? If you want to learn more about the science behind this, check the tutorial below by Kenneth Stanley, who is also this site's supervisor: http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/1830761.1830920
How to quadruple your productivity with an army of student interns - 6 views
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Potential lessons for out own trainee program?
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well - part of it we already do ... e.g. : (did you see the picture in the report?) "Tolerate a little crowding. It took a little creativity to suddenly find a dozen new workspaces in our two-room office. Fortunately, we've found that a room can always fit one more person-and by induction, you can fit as many as you need. (All those years we spent proving math theorems came in handy after all.) "
A Groundbreaking Idea About Why Life Exists - 1 views
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Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life. The simulation results made me think of Jojo's attempts to make a self-assembling space structure. Seems he may have been on the right track, just not thinking big enough
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:-P Thanks Thijs... I do not agree with the premise of the article that a possible correlation of energy dissipation in living systems and their fitness means that one is the cause for the other - it may just be that both go hand-in-hand because of the nature of the world that we live in. Maybe there is such a drive for pre-biotic systems (like crystals and amino acids), but once life as we know it exists (i.e., heredity + mutation) it is hard to see the need for an amendment of Darwin's principles. The following just misses the essence of Darwin: "If England's approach stands up to more testing, it could further liberate biologists from seeking a Darwinian explanation for every adaptation and allow them to think more generally in terms of dissipation-driven organization. They might find, for example, that "the reason that an organism shows characteristic X rather than Y may not be because X is more fit than Y, but because physical constraints make it easier for X to evolve than for Y to evolve." Darwin's principle in its simplest expression just says that if a genome is more effective at reproducing it is more likely to dominate the next generation. The beauty of it is that there is NO need for a steering mechanism (like maximize energy dissipation) any random set of mutations will still lead to an increase of reproductive effectiveness. BTW: what does "better at dissipating energy" even mean? If I run around all the time I will have more babies? Most species that prove to be very successful end up being very good at conserving energy: trees, turtles, worms. Even complexity of an organism is not a recipe for evolutionary success: jellyfish have been successful for hundreds of millions of years while polar bears are seem to be on the way out.
'Superman memory crystal' that could store 360TB of data forever | ExtremeTech - 0 views
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A new so called 5D data storage that could potentially survive for billions of years. The research consists of nanostructured glass that can record digital data in five dimensions using femtosecond laser writing.
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Yes Alex, indeed, the durability is the point I think they highlight and focus on (besides the fact the abstract says something as the extrapolated decay time being comparable to the age of the Universe..). Indeed memories face problems with retention time. Most of the disks retain the information up to 10 years. When enterprises want to store data for longer times than this they use... yeah, magnetic tapes :-). Check a interesting article about magnetic tape market revival here http://www.information-age.com/technology/data-centre-and-it-infrastructure/123458854/rise-fall-and-re-rise-magnetic-tape I compared for fun, to have one idea of what we were talking about. I am also very curious so see the writing and reading times in this new memory :)
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But how can glass store the information so long? Glass is not even solid?!
new 24qbits quantum computer - 0 views
evolectronica | survival of the funkiest - 1 views
Stephen Hawking: 'There are no black holes' : Nature News & Comment - 1 views
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Event Horizon - a modern myth?
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GR is valid on large scales and is, therefore, a simplification of the unknown GUT. As such, the mathematical solutions obtained in GR are strictly speaking valid only within GR. Certainly, the solution called black hole is an extremely heavy object and at the same time extremely small - a point without geometrical extension. The latter is heavily in conflict with the validity range of the underlying theory and, hence, makes lots of people (including experts unlike me) question the concept of black holes despite the fact that something has been "observed" which fits into this concept. Regarding the movie: Event Horizon might be a myth but it emphasizes what Sante said in on of his presentations: Don't use a black hole for travelling, take the worm hole instead. The constructor of Event Horizon created a black hole not considering that the damn thing has no exit...where did he think the Event Horizon would end?
SCiO: Your Sixth Sense. A Pocket Molecular Sensor For All ! by Consumer Physics, Inc. -... - 8 views
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Upload and tag the spectrum of any material on Earth to our database.
Massively collaborative mathematics : Article : Nature - 28 views
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peer-to-peer theorem-proving
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it seems that i should visit you guys at estec... :-)
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urgently!! btw: we will have the ACT christmas dinner on the 9th in the evening ... are you coming?
New generator creates electricity directly from heat - 4 views
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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
Forget Brainstorming - Newsweek - 6 views
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nice link from toby .... it contains some of the things that I have been saying to the wind!!
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"Do something only you would come up with-that none of your friends or family would think of." - according to them, this is one of their success recipes .... a recipe for the team?
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>Get moving. I always said that fitness test should be included in the recruitment process!!!
ACE Acronym CrEator - generate your own acronym! - 1 views
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this is how they do it :-)
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But seriously, my PhD project title from now on becomes: Robotic mOdels maThematIcal Cognition (eROTIC)
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your thesis title fits perfectly then ...
Train Like an Astronaut ESA Initiative - 2 views
Space shuttles for sale - Short Sharp Science - New Scientist - 4 views
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If an entire shuttle is beyond your budget, consider a main engine instead. NASA had hoped to charge up to $800,000 for these but lack of interest has forced it to slash the price. They are now available for free
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