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ESA ACT

The world's 23 toughest math questions | NetworkWorld.com Community - 0 views

www.networkworld.com/...33361

mathematics questions

shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Let's see if we can rise to the challenge... MR - Riemann Hypothesis still there... classic :)
LeopoldS

Questions Surround European Cooperative Military Space Programs | SpaceNews.com - 3 views

spacenews.com/...stions-euro-coop-milspace.html

space defence EDA

shared by LeopoldS on 05 Apr 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 05 Apr 11
     
    start of the end of the ESA space defence activities .. ?
LeopoldS

Science Inside | Lytro - 4 views

www.lytro.com/science_inside

science PHY optics

shared by LeopoldS on 22 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 22 Jun 11
     
    the standard question: can we use it for space?
  • Joris _ on 22 Jun 11
Thijs Versloot

Dutch NSA says merry christmas with this crypto christmas puzzle (Dutch) - 0 views

www.aivd.nl/...nbv-kerstpuzzel-2013

christmas puzzle

shared by Thijs Versloot on 25 Dec 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 25 Dec 13
     
    Each year the dutch NSA (AIVD) comes out with a christmas puzzle (never knew) which consists of 20 severe cryptic questions. Unfortunately, all the questions are in Dutch :( I solved 3 at the moment...
LeopoldS

NIAC 2014 Phase I Selections | NASA - 4 views

www.nasa.gov/...niac-2014-phase-i-selections

advanced NASA NIAC concepts

shared by LeopoldS on 05 Jun 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jun 14
     
    12 new NIAC 1 studies - many topics familiar to us ... please have a look at those closest to your expertise to see if there is anything new/worth investigating (and in general to be knowledgeable on them since we will get questions sooner or later on them)
    Principal Investigator Proposal Title Organization City, State, Zip Code
    Atchison, Justin Swarm Flyby Gravimetry Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218-2680
    Boland, Eugene Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed Techshot, Inc. Greenville, IN 47124-9515
    Cash, Webster The Aragoscope: Ultra-High Resolution Optics at Low Cost University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0389
    Chen, Bin 3D Photocatalytic Air Processor for Dramatic Reduction of Life Support Mass & Complexity NASA ARC Moffett Field, CA 94035-0000
    Hoyt, Robert WRANGLER: Capture and De-Spin of Asteroids and Space Debris Tethers Unlimited Bothel, WA 98011-8808
    Matthies, Larry Titan Aerial Daughtercraft NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
    Miller, Timothy Using the Hottest Particles in the Universe to Probe Icy Solar System Worlds John Hopkins University Laurel, MD 20723-6005
    Nosanov, Jeffrey PERISCOPE: PERIapsis Subsurface Cave OPtical Explorer NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
    Oleson, Steven Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken NASA GRC Cleveland, OH 44135-3127
    Ono, Masahiro Comet Hitchhiker: Harvesting Kinetic Energy from Small Bodies to Enable Fast and Low-Cost Deep Space Exploration NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
    Streetman, Brett Exploration Architecture with Quantum Inertial Gravimetry and In Situ ChipSat Sensors Draper Laboratory Cambridge, MA 02139-3539
    Wiegmann, Bruce Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS) NASA MSFC Huntsville, AL 35812-0000
  • annaheffernan on 11 Jun 14
     
    Eh, the swarm flyby gravimetry is very similar to the "measuring gravitational fields" project I proposed in the brewery
LeopoldS

Steel Treatment Paves the Way For Radically Lighter, Stronger, Cheaper Cars - Slashdot - 2 views

tech.slashdot.org/...-lighter-stronger-cheaper-cars

material

shared by LeopoldS on 14 Dec 15 - No Cached
Thijs Versloot and jcunha liked it
  • LeopoldS on 14 Dec 15
     
    my old question: how could we use it for space?
  • Thijs Versloot on 15 Dec 15
     
    It will depend on the alloys used, I am not sure but bainite might magnetic and I am not sure if nickel alloy based (stainless) steels can be processed at this low temperature... Metallurgist RF?
Dario Izzo

Miguel Nicolelis Says the Brain Is Not Computable, Bashes Kurzweil's Singularity | MIT ... - 9 views

www.technologyreview.com/...the-brain-is-not-computable

Singularity AI Brain

shared by Dario Izzo on 28 Feb 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Dario Izzo on 28 Feb 13
     
    As I said ten years ago and psychoanalysts 100 years ago. Luis I am so sorry :) Also ... now that the commission funded the project blue brain is a rather big hit Btw Nicolelis is a rather credited neuro-scientist
  • ...14 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 28 Feb 13
     
    nice article; Luzi would agree as well I assume; one aspect not clear to me is the causal relationship it seems to imply between consciousness and randomness ... anybody?
  • Luís F. Simões on 01 Mar 13
     
    This is the same thing Penrose has been saying for ages (and yes, I read the book). IF the human brain proves to be the only conceivable system capable of consciousness/intelligence AND IF we'll forever be limited to the Turing machine type of computation (which is what the "Not Computable" in the article refers to) AND IF the brain indeed is not computable, THEN AI people might need to worry... Because I seriously doubt the first condition will prove to be true, same with the second one, and because I don't really care about the third (brains is not my thing).. I'm not worried.
  • Dario Izzo on 01 Mar 13
     
    In any case, all AI research is going in the wrong direction: the mainstream is not on how to go beyond Turing machines, rather how to program them well enough ...... and thats not bringing anywhere near the singularity
  • Luís F. Simões on 01 Mar 13
     
    It has not been shown that intelligence is not computable (only some people saying the human brain isn't, which is something different), so I wouldn't go so far as saying the mainstream is going in the wrong direction. But even if that indeed was the case, would it be a problem? If so, well, then someone should quickly go and tell all the people trading in financial markets that they should stop using computers... after all, they're dealing with uncomputable undecidable problems. :) (and research on how to go beyond Turing computation does exist, but how much would you want to devote your research to a non existent machine?)
  • Dario Izzo on 01 Mar 13
     
    [warning: troll] If you are happy with developing algorithms that serve the financial market ... good for you :) After all they have been proved to be useful for humankind beyond any reasonable doubt.
  • Ma Ru on 04 Mar 13
     
    Two comments from me: 1) an apparently credible scientist takes Kurzweil seriously enough to engage with him in polemics... oops 2) what worries me most, I didn't get the retail store pun at the end of article...
  • Dario Izzo on 04 Mar 13
     
    True, but after Google hired Kurzweil he is de facto being taken seriously ... so I guess Nicolelis reacted to this.
  • Ma Ru on 04 Mar 13
     
    Crazy scientist in residence... interesting marketing move, I suppose.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 05 Mar 13
     
    Unfortunately, I can't upload my two kids to the cloud to make them sleep, that's why I comment only now :-). But, of course, I MUST add my comment to this discussion. I don't really get what Nicolelis point is, the article is just too short and at a too popular level. But please realize that the question is not just "computable" vs. "non-computable". A system may be computable (we have a collection of rules called "theory" that we can put on a computer and run in a finite time) and still it need not be predictable. Since the lack of predictability pretty obviously applies to the human brain (as it does to any sufficiently complex and nonlinear system) the question whether it is computable or not becomes rather academic. Markram and his fellows may come up with a incredible simulation program of the human brain, this will be rather useless since they cannot solve the initial value problem and even if they could they will be lost in randomness after a short simulation time due to horrible non-linearities... Btw: this is not my idea, it was pointed out by Bohr more than 100 years ago...
  • Dario Izzo on 05 Mar 13
     
    I guess chaos is what you are referring to. Stuff like the Lorentz attractor. In which case I would say that the point is not to predict one particular brain (in which case you would be right): any initial conditions would be fine as far as any brain gets started :) that is the goal :)
  • Luzi Bergamin on 05 Mar 13
     
    Kurzweil talks about downloading your brain to a computer, so he has a specific brain in mind; Markram talks about identifying neural basis of mental diseases, so he has at least pretty specific situations in mind. Chaos is not the only problem, even a perfectly linear brain (which is not a biological brain) is not predictable, since one cannot determine a complete set of initial conditions of a working (viz. living) brain (after having determined about 10% the brain is dead and the data useless). But the situation is even worse: from all we know a brain will only work with a suitable interaction with its environment. So these boundary conditions one has to determine as well. This is already twice impossible. But the situation is worse again: from all we know, the way the brain interacts with its environment at a neural level depends on his history (how this brain learned). So your boundary conditions (that are impossible to determine) depend on your initial conditions (that are impossible to determine). Thus the situation is rather impossible squared than twice impossible. I'm sure Markram will simulate something, but this will rather be the famous Boltzmann brain than a biological one. Boltzman brains work with any initial conditions and any boundary conditions... and are pretty dead!
  • Dario Izzo on 05 Mar 13
     
    Say one has an accurate model of a brain. It may be the case that the initial and boundary conditions do not matter that much in order for the brain to function an exhibit macro-characteristics useful to make science. Again, if it is not one particular brain you are targeting, but the 'brain' as a general entity this would make sense if one has an accurate model (also to identify the neural basis of mental diseases). But in my opinion, the construction of such a model of the brain is impossible using a reductionist approach (that is taking the naive approach of putting together some artificial neurons and connecting them in a huge net). That is why both Kurzweil and Markram are doomed to fail.
  • johannessimon81 on 06 Mar 13
     
    I think that in principle some kind of artificial brain should be feasible. But making a brain by just throwing together a myriad of neurons is probably as promising as throwing together some copper pipes and a heap of silica and expecting it to make calculations for you. Like in the biological system, I suspect, an artificial brain would have to grow from a small tiny functional unit by adding neurons and complexity slowly and in a way that in a stable way increases the "usefulness"/fitness. Apparently our brain's usefulness has to do with interpreting inputs of our sensors to the world and steering the body making sure that those sensors, the brain and the rest of the body are still alive 10 seconds from now (thereby changing the world -> sensor inputs -> ...). So the artificial brain might need sensors and a body to affect the "world" creating a much larger feedback loop than the brain itself. One might argue that the complexity of the sensor inputs is the reason why the brain needs to be so complex in the first place. I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain. Anyone? Or are they trying to simulate the human brain after it has been removed from the body? That might be somewhat easier I guess...
  • Luís F. Simões on 06 Mar 13
     
    Johannes: "I never quite see from these "artificial brain" proposals in how far they are trying to simulate the whole system and not just the brain." In Artificial Life the whole environment+bodies&brains is simulated. You have also the whole embodied cognition movement that basically advocates for just that: no true intelligence until you model the system in its entirety. And from that you then have people building robotic bodies, and getting their "brains" to learn from scratch how to control them, and through the bodies, the environment. Right now, this is obviously closer to the complexity of insect brains, than human ones. (my take on this is: yes, go ahead and build robots, if the intelligence you want to get in the end is to be displayed in interactions with the real physical world...) It's easy to dismiss Markram's Blue Brain for all their clever marketing pronouncements that they're building a human-level consciousness on a computer, but from what I read of the project, they seem to be developing a platfrom onto which any scientist can plug in their model of a detail of a detail of .... of the human brain, and get it to run together with everyone else's models of other tiny parts of the brain. This is not the same as getting the artificial brain to interact with the real world, but it's a big step in enabling scientists to study their own models on more realistic settings, in which the models' outputs get to effect many other systems, and throuh them feed back into its future inputs. So Blue Brain's biggest contribution might be in making model evaluation in neuroscience less wrong, and that doesn't seem like a bad thing. At some point the reductionist approach needs to start moving in the other direction.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 06 Mar 13
     
    @ Dario: absolutely agree, the reductionist approach is the main mistake. My point: if you take the reductionsit approach, then you will face the initial and boundary value problem. If one tries a non-reductionist approach, this problem may be much weaker. But off the record: there exists a non-reductionist theory of the brain, it's called psychology... @ Johannes: also agree, the only way the reductionist approach could eventually be successful is to actually grow the brain. Start with essentially one neuron and grow the whole complexity. But if you want to do this, bring up a kid! A brain without body might be easier? Why do you expect that a brain detached from its complete input/output system actually still works. I'm pretty sure it does not!
  • johannessimon81 on 06 Mar 13
     
    @Luzi: That was exactly my point :-)
Marcus Maertens

The Silurian Hypothesis: Would it be possible to detect an industrial civilization in t... - 1 views

arxiv.org/...1804.03748

BIO

shared by Marcus Maertens on 03 May 18 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Marcus Maertens on 03 May 18
     
    A NASA study which is concerned with the question whether we could detect lost industrial civilizations on earth by analyzing the climate fingerprints.
Marcus Maertens

Scientists establish freaky two-way communications with lucid dreamers - 0 views

newatlas.com/...lucid-dream-communication

shared by Marcus Maertens on 06 Mar 21 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 06 Mar 21
     
    Success rate is a little questionable, but as a proof of concept this is good enough I guess.
LeopoldS

Decreasing human body temperature in the United States since the industrial revolution ... - 1 views

elifesciences.org/49555

shared by LeopoldS on 11 Jan 20 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 11 Jan 20
     
    Nice paper and linked to so many other factors.... curious "The question of whether mean body temperature is changing over time is not merely a matter of idle curiosity. Human body temperature is a crude surrogate for basal metabolic rate which, in turn, has been linked to both longevity (higher metabolic rate, shorter life span) and body size (lower metabolism, greater body mass). We speculated that the differences observed in temperature between the 19th century and today are real and that the change over time provides important physiologic clues to alterations in human health and longevity since the Industrial Revolution."
LeopoldS

Can lab-grown brains become conscious? - 0 views

www.nature.com/...d41586-020-02986-y

brains BIO

shared by LeopoldS on 28 Oct 20 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 28 Oct 20
     
    very relevant initiative and full of interesting questions
LeopoldS

Google Says the FBI Is Secretly Spying on Some of Its Customers | Threat Level | Wired.com - 3 views

www.wired.com/...google-nsl-range

spying google INF

shared by LeopoldS on 06 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 06 Mar 13
     
    not a surprise though still bad to read ....
  • Ma Ru on 07 Mar 13
     
    On a side note, it's hilarious to read an article on something repeatedly referred to as being secret...
  • LeopoldS on 10 Mar 13
     
    quite self-explanatory described though: "The terrorists apparently would win if Google told you the exact number of times the Federal Bureau of Investigation invoked a secret process to extract data about the media giant's customers. That's why it is unlawful for any record-keeper to disclose it has received a so-called National Security Letter. But under a deal brokered with the President Barack Obama administration, Google on Tuesday published a "range" of times it received National Security Letters demanding it divulge account information to the authorities without warrants. It was the first time a company has ever released data chronicling the volume of National Security Letter requests. National Security Letters allow the government to get detailed information on Americans' finances and communications without oversight from a judge. The FBI has issued hundreds of thousands of NSLs and has even been reprimanded for abusing them. The NSLs are written demands from the FBI that compel internet service providers, credit companies, financial institutions and businesses like Google to hand over confidential records about their customers, such as subscriber information, phone numbers and e-mail addresses, websites visited and more as long as the FBI says the information is "relevant" to an investigation." and ""You'll notice that we're reporting numerical ranges rather than exact numbers. This is to address concerns raised by the FBI, Justice Department and other agencies that releasing exact numbers might reveal information about investigations. We plan to update these figures annually," Richard Salgado, a Google legal director, wrote in a blog post. Salgado was not available for comment. What makes the government's position questionable is that it is required by Congress to disclose the number of times the bureau issues National Security Letters. In 2011, the year with the latest available figures, the FBI issued 16,511 National Sec
johannessimon81

Nano-Suit Protects Bugs From Space-Like Vacuums - 0 views

www.wired.com/...nano-suit-vacuum

BIO science space

shared by johannessimon81 on 17 Apr 13 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Apr 13
     
    Electron microscope studies reveal that the electron bombardment leads to polymerization of the outer layer of some insect larva's skin and protects them from dehydration. Artificial method to create this effect tested as well. Allows observation of living animals under electron microscope! Question: can the insects still breath after they are back in air? :-S
Isabelle Dicaire

Object likely benign plastic from Curiosity rover - 5 views

www.sciencedaily.com/...121010103423.htm

shared by Isabelle Dicaire on 19 Oct 12 - No Cached
  • Isabelle Dicaire on 19 Oct 12
     
    Rover Curiosity finds man-made shiny material on Mars. It seems the rover is littering plastic on the planet!
  • LeopoldS on 19 Oct 12
     
    Their planetary protection officers will have some interesting questions to ask ...
Alexandre Kling

Chabot: Elbot the Robot - 2 views

www.elbot.com

AI

shared by Alexandre Kling on 02 Nov 12 - Cached
  • Alexandre Kling on 02 Nov 12
     
    Hey Guys, Is one of you has any idea about how it's coded? I mean, is it just a basic database of already-written answers or something more sophisticated? Anyway, have fun! Alex
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Luís F. Simões on 03 Nov 12
     
    I assume it's one more descendant of ELIZA, so, database + pattern matching. See the Loebner Prize for the state of the art in similar chatbots.
  • Alexandre Kling on 03 Nov 12
     
    Hi, thanks for your answer. I had a look to the different versions, that's pretty interesting to see how they have evolved over the years.
  • LeopoldS on 06 Nov 12
     
    I was not at all impressed - stopped after a few questions since getting ridiculous answers or trials to change topic
LeopoldS

Characterizing Quantum Supremacy in Near-Term Devices - 2 views

arxiv.org/1608.00263

shared by LeopoldS on 04 Sep 16 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 04 Sep 16
     
    google paper on quantum computers ... anybody with further insight on how realistic this is
  • johannessimon81 on 05 Sep 16
     
    Not an answer to Leopold's question but here is a little primer on quantum computers for those that are (like me) still confused about what they actually do: http://www.dwavesys.com/tutorials/background-reading-series/quantum-computing-primer It give a good intuitive idea of the kinds of problems that an adiabatic quantum computer can tackle, an easy analogy of the computation and an explanation of how this get set up in the computer. Also, there is emphasis on how and why quantum computers lend themselves to machine learning (and maybe trajectory optimization??? - ;-) ).
jcunha

IBM Watson: The inside story of how the Jeopardy-winning supercomputer was born, and wh... - 0 views

www.techrepublic.com/...n-and-what-it-wants-to-do-next

IBM watson AI supercomputer jeopardy

shared by jcunha on 25 Mar 16 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 25 Mar 16
     
    A nice read. IBM Watson wowed the tech industry with a 2011 win against two of television show Jeopardy greatest champions. Using something that seemed like a sort of tree search for me IBM DeepQA algorithm managed to ingest sparse data (clues), process it getting one answer, understand what that answer means and come up with the question that leads to that answer. Now, IBM tells us that the same system can tackle medical diagnosis and financial risk problems.
Luís F. Simões

The Amazing Trajectories of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth - Technology Review - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...27720

BIO life meteorite microbes

shared by Luís F. Simões on 11 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • That raises another interesting question: how quickly could life-bearing ejecta from Earth (or anywhere else) seed the entire galaxy? Hara and co calculate that it would take some 10^12 years for ejecta to spread through a volume of space the size of the Milky Way. But since our galaxy is only 10^10 years old, a single ejection event could not have done the trick. However, they say that if life evolved at 25 different sites in the galaxy 10^10 years ago, then the combined ejecta from these places would now fill the Milky Way.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1204.1719: Transfer of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth to Other Planets
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
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