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5.8 GHz wireless power transmission for mainstream gadgets ...

Proximity to the transmitter impacts power delivery as follows: 4W delivered to 4 devices simultaneously within 0-5 feet 2W delivered to 4 devices simultaneously within 5-10 feet 1W delivered to 4 devices simultaneously within 10-15 feet How to make a piecewise approximation of one inverse square law for commercial purposes

:-) - which also tells us that these are not measured values but estimations it seems to me ...

interesting study showing seasonal changes to brain functions Agata, you didn't tell us about this yet :-) "the present study provides compelling evidence for previously unappreciated annual varia- tions in the cerebral activity required to sustain ongoing cognitive processes in healthy volunteers. The data further show that this annual rhythmicity is cognitive-process-specific (i.e., the phase of the rhythm changes between cognitive tasks), speaking for a complex impact of season on human brain function. Annual var- iations in cognitive brain function may contribute to explain intraindividual cognitive changes that could emerge at specific times of year."

Thank you for this interesting study. I will make a brief intro about it during our Wednesday meeting. Especially, that spring is coming...;)

Imagine if your clothing could, on demand, release just enough heat to keep you warm and cozy, allowing you to dial back on your thermostat settings and stay comfortable in a cooler room. Or, picture a car windshield that stores the sun's energy and then releases it as a burst of heat to melt away a layer of ice.

interesting indeed: Such chemically-based storage materials, known as solar thermal fuels (STF), have been developed before, including in previous work by Grossman and his team. But those earlier efforts "had limited utility in solid-state applications" because they were designed to be used in liquid solutions and not capable of making durable solid-state films, Zhitomirsky says. The new approach is the first based on a solid-state material, in this case a polymer, and the first based on inexpensive materials and widespread manufacturing technology. Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2016-01-material-harvest-sunlight-day-demand.html#jCp

This concept for a "soft-robotic rover with electrodynamic power scavenging" comes from Cornell University, and NASA has awarded it a grant under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to hoist itself up from TRL 1 to TRL 2.

Interesting to see the size of the tree doesn't influence the amount of wind it can stand against. Of particular interest to know when you can have a tree falling in your house/car here in the Netherlands

A new experiment proved the existence of a new effect in nanomaterials: flexo-electric effect. The material has built-in mechanical tension that changes shape when you apply electrical voltage, or that generates electricity if you change its shape and was theorized some decades ago. Now, SrTiO3 allowed to observe this new effect, being comparable with piezoelectric effect.

My old twente university group! :)

Isn't muscle wire quite old technology though?

Collisionless electrostatic shocks (CES) are the dominant process in heating a plasma when using high power lasers. It turns out that ion-ion collisions actually only play a small role. The ability to create small regions of very high ion energy density on time scales shorter than that of hydrodynamic expansion will be of interest in attempts to understand the processes involved in inertial confinement fusion.

Maybe something to look at for Ricarda? Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin have developed a first-of-its-kind self-healing gel that repairs and connects electronic circuits, creating opportunities to advance the development of flexible electronics, biosensors and batteries as energy storage devices. "There's no need for heat or light to fix the crack or break in a circuit or battery, which is often required by previously developed self-healing materials." Yu and his team created the self-healing gel by combining two gels: a self-assembling metal-ligand gel that provides self-healing properties and a polymer hydrogel that is a conductor.

Ricarda??

This collaborating swarm of drones acts as 3D pixels (voxels) to create giant, flying interactive displays.

I have never understood the flying part of these things. Isn't it really impracticle to have all those tiny quadrocopters zooming around. My money is on holography or still a google glass type of device, if only considering the energy requirements for doing anything kinetically.

Researchers from North Carolina State University have discovered a new phase of solid carbon, called Q-carbon, which is distinct from the known phases of graphite and diamond. They have also developed a technique for using Q-carbon to make diamond-related structures at room temperature and at ambient atmospheric pressure in air. It turns out this configuration is harder than diamond, plus the material has a very low work function. The latter might be very interesting for electronics or as electrode material.

Maybe* this is the wonder material with very low workfunction needed in the Photon Enhanced Thermionic Emitter future prototype :)

Babies learn about the world by exploring how their bodies move in space, grabbing toys, pushing things off tables and by watching and imitating what adults are doing. But when roboticists want to teach a robot how to do a task, they typically either write code or physically move a robot's arm or body to show it how to perform an action.

Researchers have managed to create a materials that can extract CO2 from a humid environment, which was up to now not possible due to water blocking the absorption. With this hurdle taken, it may be possible to extract CO2 in large quantities from the atmopshere. This would then either be stored or possible even processed with H2 to form carbohydrates. Marsian atmosphere?

Quoted from one of the authors in a separate interview: "We know that the spin states of atomic nuclei associated with semiconductor defects have excellent quantum properties at room temperature," said Awschalom, Liew Family Professor in Molecular Engineering and a senior scientist at Argonne National Laboratory. "They are coherent, long-lived and controllable with photonics and electronics. Given these quantum 'pieces,' creating entangled quantum states seemed like an attainable goal." Bringing the quantum world to the macroscopic scale could see some interesting applications in sensors, or generally entanglement-enhanced applications.

They were previously working on the same concept in N-V centers in diamond (as a semiconductor). Here the advantage is that SiC could in principle be integrated with Si or Ge. Anyway its all about controlling coherence. In the next 10 years some breakthroughs are expected in the field of semiconductor spintronics, but quantum computing in this way lies still in the horizon

Research in active-matter systems is a growing field in biology. It consists in using theoretical statistical physics in living systems such as molecule colonies to deduce macroscopic properties. The aim and hope is to understand how cells divide, take shape and move on these systems. Being a crossing field between physics and biology "The pot of gold is at the interface but you have to push both fields to their limits." one can read

Maybe we should discuss about this active matter one of these days? "These are the hallmarks of systems that physicists call active matter, which have become a major subject of research in the past few years. Examples abound in the natural world - among them the leaderless but coherent flocking of birds and the flowing, structure-forming cytoskeletons of cells. They are increasingly being made in the laboratory: investigators have synthesized active matter using both biological building blocks such as microtubules, and synthetic components including micrometre-scale, light-sensitive plastic 'swimmers' that form structures when someone turns on a lamp. Production of peer-reviewed papers with 'active matter' in the title or abstract has increased from less than 10 per year a decade ago to almost 70 last year, and several international workshops have been held on the topic in the past year."

Inspired by the work that was done at the ACT, I continued working on optical flow landing at TU Delft. Today Bio & Bio published my article on a new theory that allows drones to see distances with a single camera. It shows that drones approaching an object with an insect-inspired vision strategy become unstable at a specific distance from the object. Turning this weakness into a strength, drones can actually use the timely detection of that instability to estimate distance. The new theory will enable further miniaturization of autonomous drones and provides a new hypothesis on flying insect behavior. Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm7SMJp8EA4&feature=youtu.be Article: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-3190/11/1/016004

According to their Nature article, they can detect "a tunnel less than 1m across, buried 2m underground" just from its gravitational difference. Using a device that they predict could cost ~100 € in mass production. UK researchers have built a small device that measures tiny fluctuations in gravity, and could be used to monitor volcanoes or search for oil. Such gravimeters already exist but compared to this postage stamp-sized gadget, they are bulky and pricy.

Computer scientists have been searching for years for a type of problem that a quantum computer can solve but that any possible future classical computer cannot. Now they've found one.

Oh this is a big one! Unfortunately, the problem is only relativized (i.e. you need an oracle for it) but nevertheless an impressive result.

A new study from Harvard reveals that open plan offices decrease rather than increase face-to-face collaboration.

I vote for a silent booth for everyone in ACT

Great study! If something goes wrong Leo and Dario could always blame the "open office".

he initiative, 'Plan-S' (https://www.scienceeurope.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Plan_S.pdf), brings together eleven top national research funders, plus the European Research Council, in an effort to release some of the world's highest quality and highest impact research from behind journal paywalls.

the russian made it years back for everybody and for free :)