Group items tagged

Instant offices for rent .... a good way to have the required dynamic set-up

The natural multitaskers are profited the least from this configuration. And then there is Thijs

haha :) "The psychologist Nick Perham, who studies the effect of sound on how we think, has found that office commotion impairs workers' ability to recall information, and even to do basic arithmetic. Listening to music to block out the office intrusion doesn't help: even that, Perham found, impairs our mental acuity." Actually, I grew up studying my homework in my parents shop downstairs. No noise whatsoever drives me insane :)

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".

Julius von Bismarck is only 28 years old, but his artistic resume is already several pages long. He's currently taking time off from school to be the new artist in residence at CERN ? the world's biggest particle physics research facility, home of the Large Hadron Collider.

Perhaps a new role for the ACT!?

very good idea - one that already Andrés had way back and a few years ago I was in contact with a group in Amsterdam who was interested but it never materialised ... any good recommendations? this Bismark guy seems to be a nice chap to have around in the office according to the photo on the site: long beard, a bottle of wine in the office and steering out of the window in search for ideas ... give the ugly office he might even want to swap it with our nice semi open space! :-)

Online Office, Word Processor, Spreadsheet, Presentation, CRM and more ... very nice

Did you know about this Weather Modification Office? Promising or dodgy?

Yes. In China it happens apparently quite often that weather is regionally modified, e.g. in order to have good weather conditions during certain events (like olympics in Beijing). But also in other countries weather modification is applied, for reasons of agriculture, pollution, skiing, etc. Obviously, one wonders on the environmental impact of such an artificial cloud feeding process with silver iodide. I just googled, stumbling upon this report http://www.weathermodification.org/AGI_toxicity.pdf which published the result: no environmentally harmful effects...

and w.r.t. ur question: I mean different weather conditions which we experience locally (like droughts or other extreme weather events) are (often) due to large-scale/global climatic changes. Hence, cloud seeding just describes a local, short-term mitigation of these events. However, there is a geoengineering proposal (so climate modification) which also suggests to seed clouds above the sea (i.e. increase cloud coverage, e.g. by using seaspray as cloud condesation nuclei), thereby increasing the planetary albedo (Earth reflectance) and reducing the energy reaching the Earth surface. If this idea is promising or not, I couldn't judge upon, but for sure it is worthwhile to take a closer look at.

interesting discussion on benefits and drawbacks of teleworking ...

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

$100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense .... I can answer for 0$ ..... 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

Scare tactics to prepare for Copenhagen.

can we get one of these for the office?

hihihi

University Alliance for Low Carbon Energy   Three universities, including Tsinghua University, University of Cambridge, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have fostered up an alliance on November 15, 2009 to advocate low carbon energy and climate change adaptation The alliance will mainly work on 6 major areas: clean coal technology and CCS, homebuilding energy efficiency, industrial energy efficiency and sustainable transport, biomass energy and other renewable energy, advanced nuclear energy, intelligent power grid, and energy policies/planning. A steering panel made up of the senior experts from the three universities (two from each) will be established to review, evaluate, and endorse the goals, projects, fund raising activities, and collaborations under the alliance. With the Headquarters at the campus of Tsinghua University and branch offices at other two universities, the alliance will be chaired by a scientist selected from Tsinghua University.   According to a briefing, the alliance will need a budget of USD 3-5 million, mainly from the donations of government, industry, and all walks of life. In this context, the R&D findings derived from the alliance will find its applications in improving people's life.

Maybe this technology is useful for radmap presentation. We should add this technology to the list.

they used names of scientists and research centres without these actually knowing about their involvement it seems.... I am wondering what they actually reported back in terms of results? randomly generated papers? Christos?

Hopefully I'm wrong, but I'm very pessimistic. I guess they will impose even more control, ask for even more detailed description of the results that will be delivered and concentrate even more on project funding instead of funding open research.

maybe this is what happen when there is so much paper involved... a simple phone call to one of the research scientist and the fraud is unveiled :) or maybe the "bored project officer" has a brand new mercedes...

may be better for the office :-)

What about a 3D picture of our office? - LS: nice! should I bring my camera tomorrow? who is volunteering?

collaborative working with open office - has anybody already tried this out? -LS

Like Google Docs, but hosted on your own server, which could put aside fears of privacy etc. Worth a spin on ESA intranet?

ESA did not accept you to be an astronaut? Check if you at least can be a Swedish Army officer... HEADPHONES REQUIRED!!!

for our new office?

ridiculous next frontier for patenting ... mathematics!!!!!

should I take these as an indication of news from the bankers concerning your business case?

this would trigger innovation, and kill mathematics! The world is crazy... imagine a mathematician that will have to pay to use a demonstration for his own demonstration... haha. And the interviewed guy in the article say that this would benefit mathematicians !!! what a joke ! And all the schools that will have to pay billions to Euclid's heirs ! This would kill physics too, and all domains that use mathematics as a tool !