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johannessimon81

Physics tweak solves five of the biggest problems in one go - 3 views

www.newscientist.com/...the-biggest-problems-in-one-go

science PHY

shared by johannessimon81 on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 27 Oct 16
     
    Extension of standard model to explain a number of unexplained phenomena.
aborgg

Swarm of Origami Robots Can Self Assemble Out of a Single Sheet - 5 views

spectrum.ieee.org/...rd-self-folding-origami-robots

science PHY technology

shared by aborgg on 27 Oct 16 - No Cached
jcunha liked it
  • aborgg on 27 Oct 16
     
    In case you are interested in Martin's past project, this article covers his master thesis. Potential for space? One of the biggest challenges with swarms of robots is manufacturing and deploying the swarm itself. Even if the robots are relatively small and relatively simple, you're still dealing with a whole bunch of them, and every step in building the robots or letting them loose is multiplied over the entire number of bots in the swarm.
jaihobah

Breakthrough method means CRISPR just got a lot more relevant to human health - 0 views

www.theverge.com/...cleotides-dna-gene-liu-harvard

BIO CRISPR

shared by jaihobah on 22 Apr 16 - No Cached
  • jaihobah on 22 Apr 16
     
    "scientists at Harvard University say they've modified the CRISPR method so it can be used to effectively reverse mutations involving changes in one letter of the genetic code. That's important because two-thirds of genetic illness in humans involve mutations where there's a change in a single letter."
  • jcunha on 28 Apr 16
     
    "Efficient introduction of specific homozygous and heterozygous mutations using CRISPR/Cas9" http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nature17664.html?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160428&spMailingID=51249830&spUserID=MTEzODM0NjYzMzgS1&spJobID=903461217&spReportId=OTAzNDYxMjE3S0 As posted here previously, the number and importance of CRISPR is growing steadily, but still plenty of work to make it a reliable tool. Maybe, next work for the Molecular Engineering RF?
Lionel Jacques

MIT researchers create camera that can see around corners - 1 views

www.gizmag.com/...21892

technology

shared by Lionel Jacques on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Lionel Jacques on 21 Mar 12
     
    "It works by emitting a burst of light from a femtosecond laser that reflects off visible surfaces - such as an opaque wall - onto objects that are hidden from the camera's direct view. The light then bounces off the object before ultimately making its way back to a detector. This process is repeated a number of times with the laser targeted at different areas of the reflecting surface." nice video
Lionel Jacques

NASA investigates sending CubeSats to Phobos and back - 3 views

www.gizmag.com/...22037

CubeSats space

shared by Lionel Jacques on 04 Apr 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Lionel Jacques on 04 Apr 12
     
    NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts Program provides funding to study a small number of highly advanced spaceflight concepts, with the goal of understanding the technological possibilities which will guide the development of future space missions. Under this program, a JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) researcher has proposed the use of a pair of CubeSats for an autonomous mission to retrieve samples from Phobos, Mars' larger moon.
Guido de Croon

Can we automatically gauge the quality of a research paper just by means of visual appe... - 2 views

vision.ucsd.edu/...gestalt.pdf

AI FUN

shared by Guido de Croon on 25 Jun 12 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 25 Jun 12
     
    We discussed a few times about whether it is possible to determine the quality of a paper by extracting visual features from the paper and then learning a mapping to a measure of quality such as the number of citations etc. This paper circulated at CVPR 2010, and does exactly that, mapping visual features to estimate whether it has been accepted for the main conference or the workshops.
Nicholas Lan

Infinite Stupidity | Conversation | Edge - 0 views

edge.org/...e-conversation-with-mark-pagel

technology innovation BIO

shared by Nicholas Lan on 09 Jan 12 - No Cached
  • Nicholas Lan on 09 Jan 12
     
    amusing take on innovation A tiny number of ideas can go a long way, as we've seen. And the Internet makes that more and more likely. What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers.
Luís F. Simões

HP Dreams of Internet Powered by Phone Chips (And Cow Chips) | Wired.com - 0 views

www.wired.com/...1

INF hardware NRG energy data mining

shared by Luís F. Simões on 07 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • For Hewlett Packard Fellow Chandrakat Patel, there’s a “symbiotic relationship between IT and manure.”
  • Patel is an original thinker. He’s part of a group at HP Labs that has made energy an obsession. Four months ago, Patel buttonholed former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan at the Aspen Ideas Festival to sell him on the idea that the joule should be the world’s global currency.
  • Data centers produce a lot of heat, but to energy connoisseurs it’s not really high quality heat. It can’t boil water or power a turbine. But one thing it can do is warm up poop. And that’s how you produce methane gas. And that’s what powers Patel’s data center. See? A symbiotic relationship.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • Financial house Cantor Fitzgerald is interested in Project Moonshot because it thinks HP’s servers may have just what it takes to help the company’s traders understand long-term market trends. Director of High-Frequency Trading Niall Dalton says that while the company’s flagship trading platform still needs the quick number-crunching power that comes with the powerhog chips, these low-power Project Moonshot systems could be great for analyzing lots and lots of data — taking market data from the past three years, for example, and running a simulation.
  • Luís F. Simões on 07 Nov 11
     
    of relevance to this discussion: Koomey's Law, a Moore's Law equivalent for computing's energetic efficiency http://www.economist.com/node/21531350 http://hardware.slashdot.org/story/11/09/13/2148202/whither-moores-law-introducing-koomeys-law
dejanpetkow

Camilla's ARIADNA study in German media - 5 views

www.heise.de/...bild-fuer-Roboter-1429208.html

bio technology Science

shared by dejanpetkow on 07 Feb 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 10 Feb 12
     
    I am a bit surprised by the number of critical comments to this article there ..
  • dejanpetkow on 10 Feb 12
     
    But the comments are not critical, it's just bullshitting.
LeopoldS

American Innovation Losing its Shine? - 4 views

freepress.intel.com/...an-innovation-losing-its-shine

technology INF science

shared by LeopoldS on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 18 Nov 11
     
    interesting reflections by MIT head on innovation in US
  • Christos Ampatzis on 20 Nov 11
     
    interesting, especially since in all COmmission papers US innovation is praised and changes expected are only related to China/India (for the better)... Article mixes a lot talk on innovation with numbers that I do not see necessarily connected (trade deficit, GDP growth etc.). Seems to me the real problematique behind the article is only the next planned distribution of federal funds and where they should cut...
  • Joris _ on 22 Nov 11
     
    well I understand her point. Spending cuts are only vicious short term solutions against economical downturn since growth (GDP is an interesting measure indeed) comes from innovation, research and production. Nonetheless, what she is describing is happening in EU too. So who will take the lead? I am not certain China is the one. In my view, it has not yet solved its domestic issues... and US still has more Nobel Prize than China. One thing for sure, the way it is EU is only a "wagon" of the train...
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!!
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.
Thijs Versloot

Worlds first 3D acoustic cloaking device - 1 views

phys.org/...-acoustic-cloaking-device.html

cloak technology

shared by Thijs Versloot on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 12 Mar 14
     
    Using little more than a few perforated sheets of plastic and a staggering amount of number crunching, Duke engineers have demonstrated the world's first three-dimensional acoustic cloak. The new device reroutes sound waves to create the impression that both the cloak and anything beneath it are not there.
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
Thijs Versloot

Existence of new element confirmed - 1 views

www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s

science

shared by Thijs Versloot on 28 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 28 Aug 13
     
    An international team of researchers, led by physicists from Lund University, have confirmed the existence of what is considered a new element with atomic number 115. The experiment was conducted at the GSI research facility in Germany. The results confirm earlier measurements performed by research groups in Russia.
annaheffernan

Physicists create 'molecules' of light - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...ists-create-molecules-of-light

PHY science

shared by annaheffernan on 27 Sep 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • annaheffernan on 27 Sep 13
     
    The first "molecules" made from two photons have been created by physicists in the US. The breakthrough could allow both conventional and quantum computers to encode and process information using photons.
  • johannessimon81 on 30 Sep 13
     
    I wonder if the effect also works with much larger numbers of photons involved. By slowing down any initial (Rydberg) photons and letting the later photons catch up it might be possible to create a very sharp "shock" front of photons. This could produce in itself be an ultra-short pulse of light or maybe it could be used as the trigger for massive stimulated emission in a laser.
johannessimon81

Evidence for High-Energy Extraterrestrial Neutrinos at the IceCube Detector - 1 views

www.sciencemag.org/...1242856

science technology space PHY

shared by johannessimon81 on 22 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 22 Nov 13
     
    IceCube detects a neutrino in about every 6 minutes but most are from within the solar system. A small number of very high energy neutrinos have been found though which have energies that cannot be produced by the sun or on Earth.
johannessimon81

Evolutionary strategy: song birds search food in morning, go eat it in afternoon - 0 views

www.bbc.co.uk/24458583

BIO

shared by johannessimon81 on 11 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 11 Oct 13
     
    Song birds don't eat in the morning because the added weight makes them slow and easy prey for other birds. They look for good food places during the early day and come back to eat as late as possible. Correlation of this behavior with the number of predators has been found as well...
Thijs Versloot

Solar singlet fission bends the laws of physics to boost solar power efficiency by 30% ... - 2 views

www.extremetech.com/...t-solar-power-efficiency-by-30

technology science

shared by Thijs Versloot on 19 May 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS and Paul N liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 19 May 15
     
    Chemists at UCR have found a way of turning a single photon into two excitons, by a process known as singlet fission. By doubling the yield of excitons in a solar cell, you theoretically double the number of electrons produced and could lead to having a max theoretical efficiency of 60% or more in an (organic) solar cell See also DOI: 10.1021/jz500676c - "Singlet Fission: From Coherences to Kinetics"
Thijs Versloot

Graphene coated silicon super-capacitors for energy storage - 1 views

news.vanderbilt.edu/...vice-electricity-silicon-chips

technology supercapacitor

shared by Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13
     
    Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 13
     
    very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.
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