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LeopoldS

David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face | Alan Rusbridger ... - 0 views

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    During one of these meetings I asked directly whether the government would move to close down the Guardian's reporting through a legal route - by going to court to force the surrender of the material on which we were working. The official confirmed that, in the absence of handover or destruction, this was indeed the government's intention. Prior restraint, near impossible in the US, was now explicitly and imminently on the table in the UK. But my experience over WikiLeaks - the thumb drive and the first amendment - had already prepared me for this moment. I explained to the man from Whitehall about the nature of international collaborations and the way in which, these days, media organisations could take advantage of the most permissive legal environments. Bluntly, we did not have to do our reporting from London. Already most of the NSA stories were being reported and edited out of New York. And had it occurred to him that Greenwald lived in Brazil?

    The man was unmoved. And so one of the more bizarre moments in the Guardian's long history occurred - with two GCHQ security experts overseeing the destruction of hard drives in the Guardian's basement just to make sure there was nothing in the mangled bits of metal which could possibly be of any interest to passing Chinese agents. "We can call off the black helicopters," joked one as we swept up the remains of a MacBook Pro.

    Whitehall was satisfied, but it felt like a peculiarly pointless piece of symbolism that understood nothing about the digital age. We will continue to do patient, painstaking reporting on the Snowden documents, we just won't do it in London. The seizure of Miranda's laptop, phones, hard drives and camera will similarly have no effect on Greenwald's work.

    The state that is building such a formidable apparatus of surveillance will do its best to prevent journalists from reporting on it. Most journalists can see that. But I wonder how many have truly understood
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    Sarah Harrison is a lawyer that has been staying with Snowden in Hong Kong and Moscow. She is a UK citizen and her family is there. After the miranda case where the boyfriend of the reporter was detained at the airport, can Sarah return safely home? Will her family be pressured by the secret service? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-latin-america-23759834
LeopoldS

Peter Higgs: I wouldn't be productive enough for today's academic system | Science | Th... - 1 views

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    what an interesting personality ... very symathetic Peter Higgs, the British physicist who gave his name to the Higgs boson, believes no university would employ him in today's academic system because he would not be considered "productive" enough.

    The emeritus professor at Edinburgh University, who says he has never sent an email, browsed the internet or even made a mobile phone call, published fewer than 10 papers after his groundbreaking work, which identified the mechanism by which subatomic material acquires mass, was published in 1964.

    He doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today's academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said: "It's difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964."

    Speaking to the Guardian en route to Stockholm to receive the 2013 Nobel prize for science, Higgs, 84, said he would almost certainly have been sacked had he not been nominated for the Nobel in 1980.

    Edinburgh University's authorities then took the view, he later learned, that he "might get a Nobel prize - and if he doesn't we can always get rid of him".

    Higgs said he became "an embarrassment to the department when they did research assessment exercises". A message would go around the department saying: "Please give a list of your recent publications." Higgs said: "I would send back a statement: 'None.' "

    By the time he retired in 1996, he was uncomfortable with the new academic culture. "After I retired it was quite a long time before I went back to my department. I thought I was well out of it. It wasn't my way of doing things any more. Today I wouldn't get an academic job. It's as simple as that. I don't think I would be regarded as productive enough."

    Higgs revealed that his career had also been jeopardised by his disagreements in the 1960s and 7
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    interesting one - Luzi will like it :-)
nikolas smyrlakis

Google Maps Finally Adds Bike Routes | Autopia | Wired.com - 1 views

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    not for leiden - estec yet as I checked but hopefully soon for the netherlands
nikolas smyrlakis

German ships sailing through North East Passage - Telegraph - 0 views

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    Two German merchant ships have sailed through the once impassable North East Passage after global warming and melting ice opened a route from South Korea along Russia's Arctic coast to Siberia.
ESA ACT

"Mexican Sinkhole May Lead NASA to Jupiter" By Ceci Connolly - 0 views

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    It may not show up on MapQuest, but NASA scientists are betting that the best route to Jupiter and its ice-crusted moon Europa runs through an underwater cavern in Mexico.
Nina Nadine Ridder

To save on weight, a detour to the moon is the best route to Mars - 1 views

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    More arguments for a lunar base? "They found the most mass-efficient path involves launching a crew from Earth with just enough fuel to get into orbit around the Earth. A fuel-producing plant on the surface of the moon would then launch tankers of fuel into space, where they would enter gravitational orbit. The tankers would eventually be picked up by the Mars-bound crew, which would then head to a nearby fueling station to gas up before ultimately heading to Mars."
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    There was a paper with a very similar concept (reaching Mars via DRO) at the AAS meeting in January by Conte et al. First, the total Delta V required for a trip Earth -> LLO -> MLO is higher than Earth -> MLO. The trick is that Earth -> LLO requires less Delta V than Earth -> MLO and hence less mass has to be carried along *from Earth*. Essentially what both approaches have in common is that they say "if there's a free gas station orbiting the moon, it's cheaper to fly empty and fill up there on the way". The AAS paper actually does a decent job at estimating the "real" cost by also including estimates of the cost of a lunar base. https://pure.strath.ac.uk/portal/files/44275737/Conte_etal_AAS2015_Earth_Mars_transfers_through_Moon_distant_retrograde_orbit.pdf
Thijs Versloot

Combined nanoplasmonic and optical resonators produces laser-like light emission - 0 views

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    "We have made optical systems at the microscopic scale that amplify light and produce ultra-narrowband spectral output," explained J. Gary Eden, a professor of electrical and computer engineering (ECE) at Illinois. "These new optical amplifiers are well-suited for routing optical power on a chip containing both electronic and optical components.
johannessimon81

Google combines skycrane, VTOL and lifting wing to make drone deliveries - 6 views

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    Nice video featuring the technology. Plus it comes with a good soundtrack! Google's project wing uses a lifting wing concept (more fuel efficient than normal airplane layouts and MUCH more efficient than quadrocopters) but it equips the plane with engines strong enough to hover in a nose up position, allowing vertical landing and takeoff. For the delivery of packages the drone does not even need to land - it can lower them on a wire - much like the skycrane concept used to deliver the Curiosity rover on Mars. Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. Anyways, the video is great for its soundtrack alone! ;-P
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    could we just use genetic algorithms to evolve these shapes and layouts? :P
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    > Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. I think apart from coolness using a skycrane helps keep the rotating knives away from the recipient...
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    Honest question, are we ever going to see this in practice? I mean besides some niche application somewhere, isn't it fundamentally flawed or do I need to keep my window opened on the 3rd floor without a balcony when I ordered something from DX? Its pretty cool yes, but practical?
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    Package delivery is indeed more complicated than it may seem at first sight, although solutions are possible for instance by restricting delivery to distribution centers. What we really need of course is some really efficient and robust AI to navigate without any problems in urban areas : ) The hybrid is interesting since it combines the advantage of a Vertical Takeoff and Landing (and hover), and a wing for more efficient forward flight. Challenges lie in the control of the vehicle under any angle and all that this entails also for higher levels of control. Our lab has first used this concept a few years ago for the DARPA UAVforge challenge, and we had two hybrids in our entry last year for the IMAV 2013 (for some shaky images: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XgRK7pMoU ).
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    Fair enough, but even if you consider advanced/robust/efficient AI, why would you use a drone? Do we envision hundreds of drones above our heads in the street instead of UPS vans, or postmen, considering delivers letters might be more easily achievable. I am not so sure if personal delivery will take this route. On the other hand, if the system would work smoothly, I can image that I'm send a mail with the question whether I'm home (or they might know already from my personal GPS tracker) and then notify me that they are launching my DVD and it will come crashing into my door in 5min.
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    I'm more curios how they're planning to keep people from stealing the drones. I could do with a drone army myself and having cheap amazon or google drones flying about sounds like a decent source.
Thijs Versloot

Hydrogen sulfide becomes superconductive under high pressure at minus 70 degrees Celsius - 0 views

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    En-route to metallic hydrogen, which would be superconductive at room temperature. Catch? Need a pressure that it beyond 10 million bar... good luck :)
nikolas smyrlakis

The Space Game - 3 views

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    already on slashdot with a lot of comments. Amazing work, I have no words ! I will just start playing
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    best comment, act style : If we assume teleporters, it wouldn't even take a second. Therefore my completely unrealistic solution is much better than your completely unrealistic
LeopoldS

Access : Surface-assisted cyclodehydrogenation provides a synthetic route towards easil... - 0 views

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    one step forward .... how many left to get it into commercial products ... and for space?
santecarloni

the scenic route - 4 views

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    really true!
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    page does not load ... :-(
Dario Izzo

Probabilistic Logic Allows Computer Chip to Run Faster - 3 views

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    Francesco pointed out this research one year ago, we dropped it as noone was really considering it ... but in space a low CPU power consumption is crucial!! Maybe we should look back into this?
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    Q1: For the time being, for what purposes computers are mainly used on-board?
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    for navigation, control, data handling and so on .... why?
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    Well, because the point is to identify an application in which such computers would do the job... That could be either an existing application which can be done sufficiently well by such computers or a completely new application which is not already there for instance because of some power consumption constraints... Q2 would be then: for which of these purposes strict determinism of the results is not crucial? As the answer to this may not be obvious, a potential study could address this very issue. For instance one can consider on-board navigation systems with limited accuracy... I may be talking bullshit now, but perhaps in some applications it doesn't matter whether a satellite flies on the exact route but +/-10km to the left/right? ...and so on for the other systems. Another thing is understanding what exactly this probabilistic computing is, and what can be achieved using it (like the result is probabilistic but falls within a defined range of precision), etc. Did they build a complete chip or at least a sub-circiut, or still only logic gates...
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    Satellites use old CPUs also because with the trend of going for higher power modern CPUs are not very convenient from a system design point of view (TBC)... as a consequence the constraints put on on-board algorithms can be demanding. I agree with you that double precision might just not be necessary for a number of applications (navigation also), but I guess we are not talking about 10km as an absolute value, rather to a relative error that can be tolerated at level of (say) 10^-6. All in all you are right a first study should assess what application this would be useful at all.. and at what precision / power levels
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    The interest of this can be a high fault tolerance for some math operations, ... which would have for effect to simplify the job of coders! I don't think this is a good idea regarding power consumption for CPU (strictly speaking). The reason we use old chip is just a matter of qualification for space, not power. For instance a LEON Sparc (e.g. use on some platform for ESA) consumes something like 5mW/MHz so it is definitely not were an engineer will look for some power saving considering a usual 10-15kW spacecraft
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    What about speed then? Seven time faster could allow some real time navigation at higher speed (e.g. velocity of a terminal guidance for an asteroid impactor is limited to 10 km/s ... would a higher velocity be possible with faster processors?) Another issue is the radiation tolerance of the technology ... if the PCMOS are more tolerant to radiation they could get more easily space qualified.....
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    I don't remember what is the speed factor, but I guess this might do it! Although, I remember when using an IMU that you cannot have the data above a given rate (e.g. 20Hz even though the ADC samples the sensor at a little faster rate), so somehow it is not just the CPU that must be re-thought. When I say qualification I also imply the "hardened" phase.
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    I don't know if the (promised) one-order-of-magnitude improvements in power efficiency and performance are enough to justify looking into this. For once, it is not clear to me what embracing this technology would mean from an engineering point of view: does this technology need an entirely new software/hardware stack? If that were the case, in my opinion any potential benefit would be nullified. Also, is it realistic to build an entire self-sufficient chip on this technology? While the precision of floating point computations may be degraded and still be useful, how does all this play with integer arithmetic? Keep in mind that, e.g., in the Linux kernel code floating-point calculations are not even allowed/available... It is probably possible to integrate an "accelerated" low-accuracy floating-point unit together with a traditional CPU, but then again you have more implementation overhead creeping in. Finally, recent processors by Intel (e.g., the Atom) and especially ARM boast really low power-consumption levels, at the same time offering performance-boosting features such as multi-core and vectorization capabilities. Don't such efforts have more potential, if anything because of economical/industrial inertia?
Luzi Bergamin

Power scattering and absorption mediated by cloak/anti-cloak interactions: A transforma... - 1 views

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    To keep you updated in the field of metamaterials. "Invisible sensors" are a hot topic at the moment. Of course, mainly due to military applications. Might be interesting to sense something while minimizing the perturbations due to the sensor.
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    And all seems to be allowed by transformation optics ..... mah
pacome delva

BEC coupled to mechanical oscillator - 0 views

  • Treutlein and colleague’s work represents an important step forward in the use of ultracold atoms to study mechanical systems. "This experiment clearly demonstrates the possibility to use ultracold atomic systems as diagnostic tools and high-precision sensors, this is a very promising route of research," he said.
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    nice!!!
LeopoldS

Shake, rattle and … power up? - MIT News Office - 0 views

  • Instead of taking a cantilever-based approach, the team went a slightly different route, engineering a microchip with a small bridge-like structure that’s anchored to the chip at both ends. The researchers deposited a single layer of PZT to the bridge, placing a small weight in the middle of it. The team then put the device through a series of vibration tests, and found it was able to respond not just at one specific frequency, but also at a wide range of other low frequencies. The researchers calculated that the device was able to generate 45 microwatts of power with just a single layer of PZT — an improvement of two orders of magnitude compared to current designs.
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    should we have another look at this type of technology?
Luís F. Simões

Speeding swarms of sensor robots - 2 views

  • the algorithm is designed for robots that will be monitoring an environment for long periods of time, tracing the same routes over and over. It assumes that the data of interest — temperature, the concentration of chemicals, the presence of organisms — fluctuate at different rates in different parts of the environment.
  • But it turns out to be a monstrously complex calculation. “It’s very hard to come up with a mathematical proof that you can really optimize the acquired knowledge,”
  • The new algorithm then determines a trajectory for the sensor that will maximize the amount of data it collects in high-priority regions, without neglecting lower-priority regions.
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  • At the moment, the algorithm depends on either some antecedent estimate of rates of change for an environment or researchers’ prioritization of regions. But in principle, a robotic sensor should be able to deduce rates of change from its own measurements, and the MIT researchers are currently working to modify the algorithm so that it can revise its own computations in light of new evidence. “
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    smart!
Dario Izzo

Detection of Intact Lava Tubes at Marius Hills on the Moon by SELENE (Kaguya) Lunar Rad... - 0 views

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    The paper I talked about with the proof of a gigantic lava tube discovered in 2017 from data of the Japanese lunar mission
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    Given the size of this thing we may consider a project on city urban planning inside. I would see a rocket-port outside the crater, some lift systems to get in, a closed dome with artificial atmosphere where to develop the city possible trekking routes on the lunar surface, a mirror system to get sunlight in, an energy factory just outside the entry.
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