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santecarloni

Seismic Metamaterials Could Cloak Dams and Power Stations  - Technology Review - 2 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27566

metamaterial phy

shared by santecarloni on 17 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • santecarloni on 17 Feb 12
     
    Metamaterials that absorb seismic waves rather than steer them, might be a better way to protect some buildings, say engineers
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 18 Feb 12
     
    ???
  • LeopoldS on 21 Feb 12
     
    what are seismic metamaterials?
  • LeopoldS on 21 Feb 12
     
    must look funny ... They calculate the properties of such a metatmaterial and how it might be constructed with a basic repeating unit in the form of a concrete cylinder some 18 metres in diameter, with four perpendicular holes in its sides (see picture). These cylinders, perhaps varying in size to absorb a range of seismic wavelengths, would need to surround the foundations of a building in cylindrical shells some 60 metres across. That needn't be prohibitively expensive but it would be a big structure that could only be constructed around isolated buildings (thereby somewhat negating the supposed benefit that other buildings in the earthquake 'shadow' might also be protected).
Luís F. Simões

Ville Vivante: The Dynamic Dimension of Geneva - 3 views

villevivante.ch

data visualization human swarm

shared by Luís F. Simões on 15 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Every mobile phone leaves digital traces permanently, while interacting with the mobile infrastructure. It can be seen as a mobile sensor that allows to define the geographic position of the subscription holder, almost in real-time.
  • Luís F. Simões on 15 Mar 12
     
    beautiful and hypnotic, but I'd like to know exactly what it is they are visualizing. These don't seem to be the changes in people's locations during phone calls...
LeopoldS

ScienceDirect.com - Neuroscience Letters - Brain stimulation enables the solution of an... - 1 views

www.sciencedirect.com/...S0304394012003618

BIO brain

shared by LeopoldS on 02 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 02 Apr 12
     
    "inherently difficult problem" is exaggerated but interesting experiment nevertheless; any volunteers to put their brain under voltage ?
  • Ma Ru on 03 Apr 12
     
    Solution to the problem looks easy when you see it, but note it requires thinking out of the box (literally), and I guess this is the main reason of its difficulty. What ACT could do is to check if the procedure increases one's average score in the astronaut test.
Luís F. Simões

Google Begins Testing Its Augmented-Reality Glasses - NYTimes.com - 4 views

bits.blogs.nytimes.com/...-its-augmented-reality-glasses

google augmented reality

shared by Luís F. Simões on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • On Wednesday, Google gave people a clearer picture of its secret initiative called Project Glass. The glasses are the company’s first venture into wearable computing.
  • Luís F. Simões on 04 Apr 12
     
    this will be big! check the video. according to one of the related posts, they'll be on sale already by the end of 2012! Surprising that it's Google and not Apple to come up with this
  • Ma Ru on 05 Apr 12
     
    > Surprising that it's Google and not Apple to come up with this It's sort of hard to think when your brain's gone.
Luís F. Simões

NASA Turns to 3D Printing for Self-Building Spacecraft | Space.com - 4 views

www.space.com/sa-spacecraft-3d-printing.html

cubesat 3D printing NIAC

shared by Luís F. Simões on 17 Sep 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • SpiderFab Concept CREDIT: Unlimited Tethers
  • Luís F. Simões on 17 Sep 12
     
    CubeSats + 3D printing... for space. I'm surprised this isn't an ACT project :) more info: SpiderFab: Process for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures
  • Dario Izzo on 18 Sep 12
     
    $100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense .... I can answer for 0$ ..... NO Infact the question is just stupid: a) spacecraft self-construction exist: then it is a no brainer to decide wether it makes business sense b) it does not: then there is no business
santecarloni

S T R A T O L A U N C H - S Y S T E M S - 1 views

www.stratolaunch.com/index.html

space

shared by santecarloni on 15 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • santecarloni on 15 Dec 11
     
    Will this work?
  • dejanpetkow on 16 Dec 11
     
    It can work...if it is privately funded. Technically it is not a big deal anymore.
Lionel Jacques

String-theory calculations describe 'birth of the universe' - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...48045

PHY science

shared by Lionel Jacques on 06 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • Lionel Jacques on 06 Dec 11
     
    Researchers in Japan have developed what may be the first string-theory model with a natural mechanism for explaining why our universe would seem to exist in three spatial dimensions if it actually has six more. According to their model, only three of the nine dimensions started to grow at the beginning of the universe, accounting both for the universe's continuing expansion and for its apparently three-dimensional nature. ... The team has yet to prove that the Standard Model of particle physics will show up in its model,...
LeopoldS

Cold storage - an Arctic solution to the data storage cooling problem | In-depth | The ... - 0 views

www.theengineer.co.uk/...1011201.article

IT

shared by LeopoldS on 19 Dec 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 19 Dec 11
     
    from Andrés (don't ask my why he is not putting it directly on diigo ....) quite an old issue, though still of high actuality ... and a nice summary in my view ...
LeopoldS

Nature article on "walking on liquids" ... as Johannes has shown us - 5 views

www.nature.com/...nature11187.pdf

physics material

shared by LeopoldS on 24 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 24 Jul 12
     
    nice article - with related podcast interviewing the former prof of Johannes ... my usual question: can we use it for space :-)
  • dejanpetkow on 25 Jul 12
     
    Eventually for damping purposes. Place a payload in it, surrounded by the fluid, and high frequency shocks might be damped. Of course, damping properties might turn out to be not good.
Luís F. Simões

Poison Attacks Against Machine Learning - Slashdot - 1 views

tech.slashdot.org/...tacks-against-machine-learning

machine learning classification security

shared by Luís F. Simões on 23 Jul 12 - No Cached
  • Support Vector Machines (SVMs) are fairly simple but powerful machine learning systems. They learn from data and are usually trained before being deployed.
  • In many cases they need to continue to learn as they do the job and this raised the possibility of feeding it with data that causes it to make bad decisions. Three researchers have recently demonstrated how to do this with the minimum poisoned data to maximum effect. What they discovered is that their method was capable of having a surprisingly large impact on the performance of the SVMs tested. They also point out that it could be possible to direct the induced errors so as to produce particular types of error.
  • Luís F. Simões on 23 Jul 12
     
    http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6389v2 for Guido; an interesting example of "takeover" research
santecarloni

How To Build A Speech Jamming Gun - Technology Review - 1 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27620

technology speech gun

shared by santecarloni on 01 Mar 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • santecarloni on 01 Mar 12
     
    he drone of speakers who won't stop is an inevitable experience at conferences, meetings, cinemas and public libraries.  Today, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University, both in Japan, present a radical solution: a speech jamming device that forces recalcitrant speakers into submission. 
  • Ma Ru on 01 Mar 12
     
    ...must...not...make...the...obvious...ACT...meeting...joke...
  • LeopoldS on 02 Mar 12
     
    Unfortunately it won't work when it is most needed .... Read this: "Their tests also identify some curious phenomena. They say the gun is more effective when the delay varies in time and more effective against speech that involves reading aloud than against spontaneous monologue. Sadly, they report that it has no effect on meaningless sound sequences such as "aaaaarghhh".
santecarloni

Was a giant planet ejected from our solar system? - physicsworld.com - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...47876

giant planet phy space

shared by santecarloni on 22 Nov 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Lionel Jacques on 22 Nov 11
     
    A fifth giant planet was kicked out of the early solar system, according to computer simulations by a US-based planetary scientist. The sacrifice of this gas giant paved the way for the stable configuration of planets seen today, says David Nesvorný, who believes that the expulsion prevented Jupiter from migrating inwards and scattering the Earth and its fellow inner planets.
  • santecarloni on 29 Nov 11
     
    A fifth giant planet was kicked out of the early solar system, according to computer simulations by a US-based planetary scientist. The sacrifice of this gas giant paved the way for the stable configuration of planets seen today, says David Nesvorný, who believes that the expulsion prevented Jupiter from migrating inwards and scattering the Earth and its fellow inner planets.
pandomilla

Experience teaches plants to learn faster and forget slower in environments where it ma... - 4 views

link.springer.com/...s00442-013-2873-7

BIO science

shared by pandomilla on 15 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • pandomilla on 15 Jan 14
     
    The work of our team on the Mimosa Pudica has been publish! It proves for the first time the ability of plants to learn. After a countless number of rejections, Oecologia had the courage of publishing it. Now the road is open to demonstrations that learning capability exists not only in sensitive plants, but also in normal plants. This can change the entire biology. A bit rhetorical, but real.
  • LeopoldS on 15 Jan 14
     
    very nice!!! congratulations! what are you working on now - also on this?
  • pandomilla on 16 Jan 14
     
    I work on some aspects of plant to plant communication! I hope to publish soon something equally exciting!! and of course I will let you know!!
Dario Izzo

Time travellers may be using Twitter and Facebook according to Robert Nemiroff and Tere... - 1 views

metro.co.uk/...ding-no-evidence-of-it-4249580

time travel space

shared by Dario Izzo on 14 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 14 Jan 14
     
    "Time travellers may be using Twitter and Facebook, claim scientists, despite finding no evidence of it" the same can be said for most moders science "big claims with no evidence" :)
Athanasia Nikolaou

Spray cyanobacteria on the desert to halt its spread - 2 views

www.newscientist.com/...desert-to-halt-its-spread.html

climate BIO

shared by Athanasia Nikolaou on 20 Jan 14 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 20 Jan 14
     
    A wide scale 8 year experiment in China on combating desertification seems to have been successful. Instead of using cyanobacteria blooms in the sea, the tested method proposes to spray them on the boundaries of desert/farmland every few days, so that the carbon they capture stays on the ground. It is useful in fixing the organic material against wind erosion only complementary to planting hardy grasses. Very fast result, nevertheless. Could be classified as a geoengineering activity.
  • LeopoldS on 22 Jan 14
     
    130 km2 as next step will be quite an area
johannessimon81

Facebook is buying WhatsApp for ~ $ 19e9 - 1 views

www.bloomberg.com/...p-whatsapp-for-16-billion.html

technology

shared by johannessimon81 on 20 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 20 Feb 14
     
    That is about € 14e9 - enough to pay more than a million YGTs for half a year. Could we use maybe just half a million YGTs for half a year to build a similar platform and keep the remaining € 7e9 for ourselves? Keep in mind that WhatsApp only has 45 employees (according to AllThingsD: http://goo.gl/NtJcSj ). So we would have an advantage > 10000:1. On the other hand does this mean that every employee at WhatsApp gets enough money now to survive comfortably for ~5000 years or will the inevitable social inequality strike and most people get next to nothing while a few get money to live comfortably for ~1000000 years? Also: Does Facebook think about these numbers before they pay them? Or is it just a case of "That looks tasty - lets have it"? Also (2): As far as I can see all these internet companies (Google, Facebook, Yahoo, WhatsApp, Twitter...) seem to make most of their income from advertising. For all these companies together that must be a lot of advertising money (turns out that in 2013 the world spent about $ 500 billion on advertising: http://goo.gl/vYog15 ). For that money you could of course have 20 million YGTs roaming the Earth and advertising stuff door-to-door... ... ...
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Thijs Versloot on 20 Feb 14
     
    Jo, thats just brilliant... 500billion USD total on advertising, that sounds absolutely ridiculous.. I always wondered whether this giant advertisement scheme is just one big 'ponzi'-like scheme waiting to crash down on us one day when they realize, cat-picture twittering fb-ing whatsapping consumers just aint worth it..
  • Juxi Leitner on 20 Feb 14
     
    The whole valuation of those internet companies is a bit scary. Things like the Facebook and Twitter ipo numbers seem just ridiculous.
  • Paul N on 21 Feb 14
     
    Facebook is not really so much buying into a potential good business deal as much as it's buying out risky competition. Popular trends need to be killed fast before they take off the ground too much. Also the amount of personal data that WhatsApp is amassing is staggering. I have never seen an app requesting so many phone rights in my life.
Luís F. Simões

Mars Code | Communications of the ACM - 1 views

cacm.acm.org/...fulltext

INF software redundancy fault detection model checking Curiosity Mars

shared by Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • As can be expected, all functions on the rover, and on the spacecraft that brought it to its destination 350 million miles from Earth, are controlled by software. This article discusses some of the precautions the JPL flight software team took to improve its reliability.
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    Interesting read if you're interested on the kind of coding that goes into something like the Curiosity rover. :) btw.. nice fill-packet being sent by Curiosity: "Elvis has Spirit. The answer is 42....END\r\n"
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!
Beniamino Abis

Ardusat - Your Personal Satellite Built on Arduino - 3 views

www.diyspaceexploration.com/rdusat-your-personal-satellite

shared by Beniamino Abis on 10 Jul 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Beniamino Abis on 10 Jul 13
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 16 Jul 13
     
    funny to read this post here ... I have been one of the "backers" of this on kickstarter .... will get some time on it to take pictures of my liking I think
  • Beniamino Abis on 16 Jul 13
     
    Think it's a really interesting project!
  • Juxi Leitner on 16 Jul 13
     
    There's also http://www.nanosatisfi.com started by some Austrian guy it seems
Marcus Maertens

Gadget Genius - nanotechnology breakthrough is big deal for electronics : The Universit... - 2 views

www.uakron.edu/...news_details.dot

science technology

shared by Marcus Maertens on 28 Jul 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 28 Jul 13
     
    Quote: "This is exactly what we are pursuing - self-assembling materials that organize at smaller sizes, say, less than 20 or even 10 nanometers"
  • Thijs Versloot on 29 Jul 13
     
    Direct Self-Assembly (DSA) is one of the competitors for the next-generation 'lithography' together with direct-write via electron beam and the more traditional extreme UV (EUV) lithography. Although there are huge benefits to use DSA, the technology does have some drawbacks when it comes to line edge roughness. It seems however particularly good for repetitive structures that are used in memory chips. As long as EUV is struggling to get it working, DSA definitely has a fighting chance to enter the market one day.
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