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Thijs Versloot

Communicate through the plasma sheath during re-entry - 1 views

scitation.aip.org/...1.4921751

technology plasma hypersonic

shared by Thijs Versloot on 10 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 10 Jul 15
     
    In order to overcome the communication blackout problem suffered by hypersonic vehicles, a matching approach has been proposed for the first time in this paper. It utilizes a double-positive (DPS) material layer surrounding a hypersonic vehicle antenna to match with the plasma sheath enclosing the vehicle. Or in more easy language, basically one provides an antenna as capacitor, in combination with the plasma sheath (an inductor), they form an electrical circuit which becomes transparent for long wavelength radiation (the communication signal). The reasons is that fluctuations are balanced by the twin system, preventing absorption/reflection of the incoming radiation. Elegant solution, but will only work on long wavelength communication, plus I am not sure whether the antenna needs active control (as the plasma sheath conditions change during the re-entry phase).
Nicholas Lan

Cut EU red tape: Report from the Business Taskforce - 2 views

www.gov.uk/...rt-from-the-business-taskforce

innovation regulation

shared by Nicholas Lan on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Nicholas Lan on 25 Oct 13
     
    some interesting recommendations part of a current discussion between the commission and some member states in a general, and apparently popular with all parties, drive to reduce bureaucracy to, among other things, stimulate innovation. Firms face a challenge. They produce superb products, offer world-class services and benefit from being able to sell to a European market of 500 million customers. But they are often encumbered by problematic, poorly-understood and burdensome European rules. The impact is clear: fewer inventions are patented, fewer sales are made, fewer goods are produced and fewer jobs are created.
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 13
     
    what hypocrites ... "As businesspeople, we are convinced that these and many other problems must be addressed if British and European firms are to compete in the global marketplace. We need regulation to operate in a pan-European market. We are not against regulation per se. But we need regulation that is pro-growth and pro-innovation." sure ....
johannessimon81

IBM Speech Recognition, 1986 - 0 views

www.wired.com/...bms-speech-savvy-computer-1986

AI technology

shared by johannessimon81 on 09 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 09 Nov 13
     
    Interesting historical perspective. Progress since the late '80 really seems to be fairly slow. ?: Do we need to wait for the singularity until speech recognition works without flaws?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 09 Nov 13
     
    funny - tried just yesterday the one built in on mavericks: sending one email took three times as long at least as typing it And now my speech PowerPoint Funny, trade trust yesterday they're built in speech recognition in Mavericks sending one e-mail to at least three times a talk as long as typing it. Well this was actually quite okay and relatively fast cheers nice evening
  • johannessimon81 on 13 Nov 13
     
    "I thought I would give it a try on my android sexy seems to work pretty well and I'm speaking more less at normal speed" Actually I was speaking as fast as I could because it was for the google search input - if you make a pause it will think you finished your input and start the query. Also you might notice that Android thinks it is "android sexy" - this was meant to be "on my Android. THIS seems to work...". Still it is not too bad - maybe in a year or two they have it working. Of course it might also be that I just use the word "sexy" randomly... :-\
  • Paul N on 13 Nov 13
     
    The problem is that we don't yet understand how speech in humans actually works. As long as we merely build either inference or statistical language models we'll never get perfect speech recognition. A lot of recognition in humans has a predictive/expectational basis to it that stems from our understanding of higher lvl concepts and context awareness. Sadly I suspect that as long as machines remain unembodied in their perceptual abilities their ability to either properly recognize sounds/speech or objects and other features will never reach perfection.
Paul N

Animal brains connected up to make mind-melded computer - 2 views

www.newscientist.com/...-make-mindmelded-computer.html

BIO INF FUN

shared by Paul N on 09 Jul 15 - No Cached
  • Paul N on 09 Jul 15
     
    Parallel processing in computing --- Brainet The team sent electrical pulses to all four rats and rewarded them when they synchronised their brain activity. After 10 training sessions, the rats were able to do this 61 per cent of the time. This synchronous brain activity can be put to work as a computer to perform tasks like information storage and pattern recognition, says Nicolelis. "We send a message to the brains, the brains incorporate that message, and we can retrieve the message later," he says. Dividing the computing of a task between multiple brains is similar to sharing computations between multiple processors in modern computers, "If you could collaboratively solve common problems [using a brainet], it would be a way to leverage the skills of different individuals for a common goal."
Francesco Biscani

Apple's Mistake - 5 views

www.paulgraham.com/apple.html

shared by Francesco Biscani on 16 Jun 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Francesco Biscani on 16 Jun 10
     
    Nice opinion piece.
  • LeopoldS on 16 Jun 10
     
    nice indeed .... especially like: "They make such great stuff, but they're such assholes. Do I really want to support this company? Should Apple care what people like me think? What difference does it make if they alienate a small minority of their users? There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. And it's largely because they got more of the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than Microsoft today. Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals? Partly because they can afford to be. The best programmers can work wherever they want. They don't have to work for a company they have qualms about. But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. And it's not fun for a smart person to work in a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that win."
  • Ma Ru on 16 Jun 10
     
    Poor programmers can complain, but they will keep developing applications for iPhone as long as their bosses will tell them to do so... From my experience in mobile software development I assure you it's not the pain of the programmer that dictates what is done, but the customer's demand. Even though like this the quality of applications is somewhat worse than it could be, clients won't complain as they have no reference point. And things will stay as they are: apple censoring the applications, clients paying for stuff that "sometimes just does not work" (it's normal, isn't it??), and programmers complaining, but obediently making iPhone apps...
LeopoldS

Open innovation and Apple .... - 6 views

www.linkedin.com/news

open innovation IT

shared by LeopoldS on 14 Jun 10 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 14 Jun 10
     
    interesting blog entry
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Francesco Biscani on 14 Jun 10
     
    Your link points to a restricted LinkedIn page... Here's the original link: http://www.15inno.com/2010/06/07/apple/
  • Francesco Biscani on 14 Jun 10
     
    A pretty standard Apple-o-getic (ah ah) blog post. How many times does the guy say 'I like Apple'? Anyway, I'm having a hard time understanding the point he is trying to make. Apple should open up its innovation? It shouldn't because they are so hip, cool, a 'unique company' and an 'exception to the rule'? Mah..
  • Ma Ru on 14 Jun 10
     
    I think the point is the guy bashes the "open innovation theory" (whatever the theory is) with his main argument being that Apple is not open and at the same time very successful.
  • LeopoldS on 14 Jun 10
     
    this guy is actually one of the most fervent supporters of open innovation and tries to promote it whereever he can ... his problem is that at least at first view Apple does not confirm his theory ...
  • Francesco Biscani on 15 Jun 10
     
    lol, the 'about' page is priceless bullshit: http://www.15inno.com/about-15inno/ "Corporate Mind Exchange (CMX) events in which corporate innovation leaders discuss relevant challenges and issues. No academics, consultants or start-ups; just corporate practitioners." We are doing it wrong, Leo. We don't need no stinking Universities! "Network groups in which 12-20 innovation leaders from different companies meet 4-6 times annually to discuss challenges and issues. Workshops and events with thought leaders and practitioners." What the hell are "innovation/thought leaders"?
pacome delva

The Coolest Antiprotons - 2 views

focus.aps.org/st1

phy antiprotons antihydrogen

shared by pacome delva on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Researchers cooled a cloud of about 4,000 antiprotons down to 9 kelvin using a standard approach for cooling atoms that has never been used with charged particles or ions. The technique could provide a new way to create and trap antihydrogen, which could help researchers probe a basic symmetry of nature.
  • hydrogen and antihydrogen should share many basic traits, like mass, magnetic moment, and emission spectrum. If antihydrogen and hydrogen have even slightly different spectra, it indicates some new physics principles beyond the standard model, a very big deal.
  • pacome delva on 05 Jul 10
     
    antihydrogen propulsion...?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jul 10
     
    how to efficiently direct it?
  • Nicholas Lan on 06 Jul 10
     
    didn't roger write an assessment of antimatter propulsion when he was in the ACT?
  • pacome delva on 06 Jul 10
     
    yeah the problem is the amount of antimatter you can get and more specifically how to trap it. I found that you would need around one gram to go to the outer Solar System. So we are far from that, but finding an efficient way to trap it, with an electromagnetic trap rather than solid walls is a first step !
pacome delva

Radiation fears stalk stellar mission - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...43063

space_mission GAIA solar_radiation

shared by pacome delva on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Concern over ESA's handling of the radiation issue caused Michael Perryman, former GAIA project scientist, to resign from the agency in 2008. But GAIA science-team member Lennart Lindegren, an astronomer at Lund Observatory in Sweden, is confident that GAIA's unprecedented accuracy will be feasible. GAIA researchers will continue to perform tests and calibrations until at least 2011, which will include irradiating the CCDs at space-like temperatures. Lindegren admits, however, that they can never be certain of success until the spacecraft is in orbit and starts sending back data.
  • pacome delva on 05 Jul 10
     
    metamaterials to stop radiations?
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jul 10
     
    hmm ... in the optical range it is already a bit tricky .... lets brainstorm a bit about it ... anything in the literature? Luzi?
  • pacome delva on 06 Jul 10
     
    the components of the metamaterial need to have a size inversely proportional to the wavelenght, but here we are talking about high energy protons. So the idea was: is there metamaterials that change the electrical properties to solve this problem of holes in the material... but i dont have a clue !
Ma Ru

Where are all the bookmarks? - 8 views

seems there is some problem here, 0 items, but a lot of tags used quite a lot, also the email notification for bookmarks still work so ..

fun

started by Ma Ru on 29 Sep 09 2 follow-ups, last by Ma Ru on 29 Sep 09
Joris _

NASA Set to Launch Solar NanoSail into Space | Inhabitat - Green Design Will Save the W... - 0 views

inhabitat.com/...unch-solar-nanosail-into-space

shared by Joris _ on 20 Aug 10 - Cached
  • 100 square feet;
  • NASA is, rather, testing the deployment mechanism.
  • In 2008, engineers were given just four months to devise a solar sail. They pulled it off, but the rocket carrying the sail experienced launch failure.
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • to learn more about how best to bring older satellites out of space rather than allowing them to become that much more space junk
pacome delva

An evil atmosphere is forming around geoengineering - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...ing-around-geoengineering.html

climate_change geoengineering climato_sceptics

shared by pacome delva on 22 Jul 10 - Cached
  • A number of right-wing think tanks actively denying climate change are also promoting geoengineering, an irony that seems to escape them.
  • Wood believes that climate engineering is inevitable. In a statement that could serve as Earth's epitaph, he declared: "We've engineered every other environment we live in, why not the planet?"
  • It's estimated that if whoever controls the scheme decided to stop, the greenhouse gases that would have built up could cause warming to rebound at a rate 10 to 20 times that of the recent past - a phenomenon referred to, apparently without irony, as the "termination problem".
Francesco Biscani

Claimed Proof That P != NP - 4 views

science.slashdot.org/...Claimed-Proof-That-P--NP

inf

shared by Francesco Biscani on 09 Aug 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Ma Ru on 10 Aug 10
     
    Yet another one? Wish him good luck... I doubt anyone will waste time peer-reviewing his article. Here's quite a nice overview of the efforts on the problem: http://www.win.tue.nl/~gwoegi/P-versus-NP.htm
  • LeopoldS on 11 Aug 10
     
    thanks Marek - very nice link indeed ... did not know about it
duncan barker

Challenging Existence of 'Absolute Time' - 3 views

www.21stcenturysciencetech.com/...time.html

phy

shared by duncan barker on 12 Aug 10 - Cached
  • Luzi Bergamin on 12 Aug 10
     
    I doubt that Shnoll is really the first one making such experiments, but perhaps they are more complete than any others done before. Similar things are very popular in the context of Psychology and more exotic fields. If I remember correctly someone ran long experiments with random number generators... Mostly the stories died after a short time, since the experiments are not reproducable. Anyway, why do these guys always have to claim that their work is somehow fundamentally changing our view of physics, notoriously referring to Einstein-Bohr debates and this stuff. That's nonsense! If these effects exist the first explanation is always much simpler. There is somewhere something that influences physics on Earth in a defined way. But this influence depends on the relative position or whatever of the Earth to that whatever-it-is. No problem with absolute time and all that sh...
  • LeopoldS on 12 Aug 10
     
    Two years ago, nearly unnoticed in the West, the Russian biophysicist S.E. Shnoll published a paper in the prominent Russian physics journal Uspekhi Fisicheskikh Nauk ..... ah then ...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 12 Aug 10
     
    You are right, Leo, they are mostly Russians that publish in some unspellable Journals nobody knows.... or then they are supported by Templeton Foundation.
jmlloren

Exotic matter : Insight : Nature - 5 views

www.nature.com/...index.html

nan phy

shared by jmlloren on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • jmlloren on 03 Aug 10
     
    Trends in materials and condensed matter. Check out the topological insulators. amazing field.
  • ...12 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 03 Aug 10
     
    Aparently very interesting, will it survive the short hype? Relevant work describing mirror charges of topological insulators and the classical boundary conditions were done by Ismo and Ari. But the two communities don't know each other and so they are never cited. Also a way to produce new things...
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    Thanks for noticing! Indeed, I had no idea that Ari (don't know Ismo) was involved in the field. Was it before Kane's proposal or more recently? What I mostly like is that semiconductors are good candidates for 3D TI, however I got lost in the quantum field jargon. Yesterday, I got a headache trying to follow the Majorana fermions, the merons, skyrnions, axions, and so on. Luzi, are all these things familiar to you?
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Ismo Lindell described in the early 90's the mirror charge of what is now called topological insulator. He says that similar results were obtained already at the beginning of the 20th century... Ismo Lindell and Ari Sihvola in the recent years discussed engineering aspects of PEMCs (perfect electro-megnetic conductors,) which are more or less classical analogues of topological insulators. Fundamental aspects of PEMCs are well knwon in high-energy physics for a long time, recent works are mainly due to Friedrich Hehl and Yuri Obukhov. All these works are purely classical, so there is no charge quantisation, no considerations of electron spin etc. About Majorana fermions: yes, I spent several years of research on that topic. Axions: a topological state, of course, trivial :-) Also merons and skyrnions are topological states, but I'm less familiar with them.
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    "Non-Abelian systems1, 2 contain composite particles that are neither fermions nor bosons and have a quantum statistics that is far richer than that offered by the fermion-boson dichotomy. The presence of such quasiparticles manifests itself in two remarkable ways. First, it leads to a degeneracy of the ground state that is not based on simple symmetry considerations and is robust against perturbations and interactions with the environment. Second, an interchange of two quasiparticles does not merely multiply the wavefunction by a sign, as is the case for fermions and bosons. Rather, it takes the system from one ground state to another. If a series of interchanges is made, the final state of the system will depend on the order in which these interchanges are being carried out, in sharp contrast to what happens when similar operations are performed on identical fermions or bosons." wow, this paper by Stern reads really weired ... any of you ever looked into this?
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    C'mon Leopold, it's as trivial as the topological states, AKA axions! Regarding the question, not me!
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    just looked up the wikipedia entry on axions .... at least they have some creativity in names giving: "In supersymmetric theories the axion has both a scalar and a fermionic superpartner. The fermionic superpartner of the axion is called the axino, the scalar superpartner is called the saxion. In some models, the saxion is the dilaton. They are all bundled up in a chiral superfield. The axino has been predicted to be the lightest supersymmetric particle in such a model.[24] In part due to this property, it is considered a candidate for the composition of dark matter.[25]"
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    Thank's Leopold. Sorry Luzi for being ironic concerning the triviality of the axions. Now, Leo confirmed me that indeed is a trivial matter. I have problems with models where EVERYTHING is involved.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Well, that's the theory of everything, isn't it?? Seriously: I don't think that theoretically there is a lot of new stuff here. Topological aspects of (non-Abelian) theories became extremely popular in the context of string theory. The reason is very simple: topological theories are much simpler than "normal" and since string theory anyway is far too complicated to be solved, people just consider purely topological theories, then claiming that this has something to do with the real world, which of course is plainly wrong. So what I think is new about these topological insulators are the claims that one can actually fabricate a material which more or less accurately mimics a topological theory and that these materials are of practical use. Still, they are a little bit the poor man's version of the topological theories fundamental physicists like to look at since electrdynamics is an Abelian theory.
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    I have the feeling, not the knowledge, that you are right. However, I think that the implications of this light quantum field effects are great. The fact of being able to sustain two currents polarized in spin is a technological breakthrough.
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    not sure how much I can contribute to your apparently educated debate here but if I remember well from my work for the master, these non-Abelian theories were all but "simple" as Luzi puts it ... and from a different perspective: to me the whole thing of being able to describe such non-Abelian systems nicely indicates that they should in one way or another also have some appearance in Nature (would be very surprised if not) - though this is of course no argument that makes string theory any better or closer to what Luzi called reality ....
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Well, electrodynamics remains an Abelian theory. From the theoretical point of view this is less interesting than non-Abelian ones, since in 4D the fibre bundle of a U(1) theory is trivial (great buzz words, eh!) But in topological insulators the point of view is slightly different since one always has the insulator (topological theory), its surrounding (propagating theory) and most importantly the interface between the two. This is a new situation that people from field and string theory were not really interested in.
  • Dario Izzo on 04 Aug 10
     
    guys... how would you explain this to your gran mothers?
  • jmlloren on 05 Aug 10
  • LeopoldS on 07 Aug 10
     
    *you* tried *your* best .... ??
LeopoldS

Technology Review: Commercial Spaceflight, We Have a Problem - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...25868

commercial spaceflight NASA

shared by LeopoldS on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 03 Aug 10
     
    how much will be left after all the review processes?
Giusi Schiavone

The importance of stupidity in scientific research. - 10 views

jcs.biologists.org/...1771

shared by Giusi Schiavone on 07 Sep 10 - Cached
  • Giusi Schiavone on 07 Sep 10
     
    I suggest you this easy reading ( is on a peer-reviewed scientific journal, IF = 6.14) 'We just don't know what we're doing!!!'
  • ...2 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 08 Sep 10
     
    as a start of a peer reviewed paper this is an interesting first paragraph: "I recently saw an old friend for the first time in many years. We had been Ph.D. students at the same time, both studying science, although in different areas. She later dropped out of graduate school, went to Harvard Law School and is now a senior lawyer for a major environmental organization. At some point, the conversation turned to why she had left graduate school. To my utter astonishment, she said it was because it made her feel stupid. After a couple of years of feeling stupid every day, she was ready to do something else."
  • Ma Ru on 08 Sep 10
     
    Hilarious! Mr Schwartz, who made a PhD at Stanford(!) and apparently is working as a postdoc now, has finally discovered what science is about!!! Quote: "That's when it hit me: nobody did. That's why it was a research problem." And he seems so excited about it! I think he should not only get published in 6.14 journal, but also get the Nobel Prize immediately! Seriously, after reading something like this, how one may not have superstitions about the educational system in the US?
  • LeopoldS on 10 Sep 10
     
    I tend to agree with you but I think that you are too harsh - its still only an "essay" and one of his points of making sure that education at post graduate level is not about indoctrinating what we know already is valid ...
  • Francesco Biscani on 20 Sep 10
     
    I think this quote by Richard Horton is relevant to the discussion: "We portray peer review to the public as a quasi-sacred process that helps to make science our most objective truth teller. But we know that the system of peer review is biased, unjust, unaccountable, incomplete, easily fixed, often insulting, usually ignorant, occasionally foolish, and frequently wrong." :P
Joris _

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics - Space and the Biological Economy - 0 views

www.aiaa.org/content.cfm

BIO MAD space science

shared by Joris _ on 11 Oct 10 - No Cached
  • the U.S. space program has a robust life science program that is diligently working to innovate new approaches, research and technologies in the fields of biotechnology and bio-nanotechnology science, which are providing new solutions for old problems – including food security, medical needs and energy needs
  • more money be allocated to develop environmentally sound and energy efficient engine programs for commercial and private aviation
  • waste water program
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • we lack fundamental knowledge about the entire effect of the photosynthesis system on food growth, and that space-based research could provide vital clues to scientists on how to streamline the process to spur more efficient food growth
  • From the start of the space age until 2010 only around 500 people have journeyed into space, but with the advent of private space travel in the next 24 months another 500 people are expected to go into space
  • Wagner indentified prize systems that award monetary prizes to companies or individuals as an effective way to spur innovation and creativity, and urged the Congressional staffers present to consider creating more prize systems to stimulate needed innovation
  • Joris _ on 11 Oct 10
     
    a bunch of ideas, iinitiatives, and good points about upcoming changes in space ...
nikolas smyrlakis

Tiny brained bees solve a complex mathematical problem - 3 views

www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx

shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 25 Oct 10 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 25 Oct 10
     
    nice indeed!
Joris _

Japan plans to send a robot to the moon | The Australian - 1 views

www.theaustralian.com.au/...story-e6frg8y6-1225947783972

robot space moon

shared by Joris _ on 04 Nov 10 - No Cached
  • the little android's oil bearings and ultrasonic sensors will not work in the lunar vacuum
  • The one-sixth gravity presents problems for stable movement, and Moon dust clogs joints.
  • the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (Jaxa), the country's space agency. It runs the rockets needed to deliver their robot to the Moon and, so far, has been distinctly cool on the idea.
  • Joris _ on 04 Nov 10
     
    Interesting! I like the quote "Maybe China would allow that to be a one-way trip but, in Japan, it would have to be a return ticket" talking about a human mission ....
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