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Multidisciplinary Design Analysis and Optimization framework developed by NASA since 2010

Metasurfaces have been made, but the problem is that they usually are static and for quantum optic applications the question is how to make a rapidly configurable metasurface. for this Harvard has initiated a multidisciplinary team that involves theoretical physics, metamaterials, nanophotonic circuitry, quantum devices, plasmonics, nanofabrication, and computational modeling

Reading "wavefront engineering" in the title I thought it had to do with wave manipulation in the sea. Nothing to do though. As I read further in this article, Harvard thrives in forming multidisciplinarity groups. Their practice is to call the best team in each expertise they need to merge. Not one researcher from each discipline, but teams of experienced professors and a series of graduate students. Maybe we could discuss it in the retreat!

StarTiger: similar, yet different from the way the ACT does things. Seems like a very interesting programme.

Nice initiative and also a good approach, problem-oriented within a fixed time frame. Could definitely be a highly motivating approach, similar to GTOC... I think the ACT should do this more often, targeted at future technologies and/or missions. The team could be structured around 'problems' instead of 'research areas', this will promote multidisciplinary work as well, plus it will also focus activities more. The problems, or more broadly concepts, are identified by the team and a few get chosen as main activities. Subsequent RF and YGT hiring is then done to strenghten the research team. These projects have a maximum lifetime maybe of 1 year? Thoughts?

I'm impressed already by what an innovative group of experts and researchers was able to achieve when resourcefully targeted at coming up with the project's name...

Big data analytic systems are reputed to be capable of finding a needle in a universe of haystacks without having to know what a needle looks like. The very best ways to sort large databases of unstructured text is to use a technique called Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA). Unfortunately, LDA is also inaccurate enough at some tasks that the results of any topic model created with it are essentially meaningless, according to Luis Amaral, a physicist whose specialty is the mathematical analysis of complex systems and networks in the real world and one of the senior researchers on the multidisciplinary team from Northwestern University that wrote the paper. Even for an easy case, big data analysis is proving to be far more complicated than many of the companies selling analysis software want people to believe.

Most of those companies are using outdated algorithms like this LDA and just apply them like retards on those huge datasets. Of course they're going to come out with bad solutions. No amount of data can make up for bad algorithms.

Some interesting future projects from NASA's IAC. (June 2014) NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts awards: "These proposals have been selected based on the potential of their concepts to transform future aerospace missions, enable new capabilities, or significantly alter and improve current approaches."

Here we explore the electrochemical performance of pyrolyzed skins from the species A. bisporus, also known as the Portobello mushroom, as free-standing, binder-free, and current collector-free Li-ion battery anodes. At temperatures above 900 °C, the biomass-derived carbon nanoribbon-like architectures undergo unique processes to become hierarchically porous. Basically they burned a Portobello mushroom and used it as a battery... now thats an multidisciplinary advanced concept