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I know it's not the most reliable source of scientific information but just in case anybody is looking for some inspiration...

Excellent visualization tool for scientific data. Only for Mac Os X.

A rough guide to Scientific Computing On the PlayStation 3

Is there such a law for the technology used in satellites ?

A compilation of the highlights of the year, with Rosetta on the first page. There is a follow-up article about potential breakthroughs for 2015 based on ongoing research very interesting to see as well.

"By extension, GCMs are not fit for the purpose of justifying political policies to fundamentally alter world social, economic and energy systems. It is this application of climate model results that fuels the vociferousness of the debate surrounding climate models."

but you know wo these global warming policy foundation is, do you? they are the main advocacy group for climate change deniers in the UK, nothing scientific to start with; fine to post here reasonable scientific papers criticising global climate models but please not this shit

"Publishing industry exerts too much influence over what scientists choose to study, which is ultimately bad for science itself"

On a related topic - a nice read written in 1939 from Abraham Flexner the founder of Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, home of some great minds on the "Usefulness of Useless Knowledge". Enjoy https://library.ias.edu/files/UsefulnessHarpers.pdf

This article is fantastic - starts already well with : "r IT not a curious fact that in a world steeped in irrational hatreds which threaten civilization itself, men and women-old and young-detach them-selves wholly or partly from the angry current of daily life to devote themselves to the cultivation ofbeauty, to the exten-sion ofknowledge, to the cure ofdisease, to the amelioration of suffering, just as though fanatics were not simultaneously engaged in spreading pain, ugliness, and suffering?" Could almost be written now

New results in NLP might allow to automate scientific discoveries by data mining of papers. Work considers 3.3M abstracts from material science, physics and chemistry and claims to discover new materials before they are published later on.

ACT did that from diigo post digging in the retreat of 2014! Still without NLP.

That's cool! Didn't know.

We had a short discussion yesterday about using nuclear isomers as batteries for spacecraft. The principle is that energy is stored as an excitation of the nucleus which can then release the energy as a gamma-photon. However angular momentum has to be conserved an this suppresses the decay strongly - making these states stable up to 10^35 longer than a typical decay.

The key is the triggering of the dacay wheras the triggering comsumes less energy than the decay provides. The x-ray based triggering of the gamma photon decay turned out to be quite controversial and needs significantly more scientific attention.

I think that there should be some references and traces of the discussions we had on this on the shared drive or wiki ... One other aspect: converting the omnidirectional gamma bursts into useful energy ....

Another great piece from "Ten Simple Rules" series by PLOSCB

One more reason why we should be much more open about all these EO data we have .... The two citizen scientists, Kian Jek and Robert Gagliano, are listed as authors on the scientific paper recently published. I love this: the digital nature of these data make it far, far easier to analyze the science than it was in the past, and also easier to get the data out to people. Because of this, we have an explosive growth in these kinds of projects. Planet Hunters is great, but then so is Galaxy Zoo, Moon Mappers, Ice Hunters, and so many others. You can find several of these collected at the CosmoQuest website.

Wiktor is also collecting these science games in the ACT-wiki. You should have a look at: http://sophia.estec.esa.int/actwiki/index.php/On-line_Games_4_Science

remember the discussion I tried to trigger in the team a few weeks ago ...

I love the linked article provided by Johannes! It expresses very elegantly why I still fail to understand even extremely smart and busy people in my view apparently waiting their time in playing computer games - but I recognise that there is something in games that we apparently need / gives us something we cherish .... "In fact, half a million players so far have registered to help destroy the 64 billion tiny blocks that compose that one gigantic cube, all working in tandem toward a singular goal: discovering the secret that Curiosity's creator says awaits one lucky player inside. That's right: After millions of man-hours of work, only one player will ever see the center of the cube. Curiosity is the first release from 22Cans, an independent game studio founded earlier this year by Peter Molyneux, a longtime game designer known for ambitious projects like Populous, Black & White and Fable. Players can carve important messages (or shameless self-promotion) onto the face of the cube as they whittle it to nothing. Image: Wired Molyneux is equally famous for his tendency to overpromise and under-deliver on his games. In 2008, he said that his upcoming game would be "such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." That game turned out to be Milo & Kate, a Kinect tech demo that went nowhere and was canceled. Following this, Molyneux left Microsoft to go indie and form 22Cans. Not held back by the past, the Molyneux hype train is going full speed ahead with Curiosity, which the studio grandiosely promises will be merely the first of 22 similar "experiments." Somehow, it is wildly popular. The biggest challenge facing players of Curiosity isn't how to blast through the 2,000 layers of the cube, but rather successfully connecting to 22Cans' servers. So many players are attempting to log in that the server cannot handle it. Some players go for utter efficiency, tapping rapidly to rack up combo multipliers and get more

why are video games so much different than collecting stamps or spotting birds or planes ? One could say they are all just hobbies

The spreadsheet software Microsoft Excel, when used with default settings, is known to convert gene names to dates and floating-point numbers. A programmatic scan of leading genomics journals reveals that approximately one-fifth of papers with supplementary Excel gene lists contain erroneous gene name conversions. The reason why you shouldn't use Excel (or Numbers or OpenOffice or ...) without knowing what it actually really does!

"The One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, launched in the fall of 2014, is a long-term investigation of the field of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its influences on people, their communities, and society." (...) "The report is designed to address four intended audiences. For the general public, it aims to provide an accessible, scientifically and technologically accurate portrayal of the current state of AI and its potential. For industry, the report describes relevant technologies and legal and ethical challenges, and may help guide resource allocation. The report is also directed to local, national, and international governments to help them better plan for AI in governance. Finally, the report can help AI researchers, as well as their institutions and funders, to set priorities and consider the ethical and legal issues raised by AI research and its applications."

An incresingly popular scientific enome re-writting tool. Might prevent future generations from being born with some types of disorders or disabilities! Also, for fun, can be looked at one step closer to having a real wolverine..

"Chinese team uses CRISPR to genetically modify human embryo" http://medicalxpress.com/news/2016-04-chinese-team-crispr-genetically-human.html?utm_source=nwletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=weekly-nwletter

A real scientific study...

"That's why silicon chips operate at temperatures hot enough to fry eggs." I stopped reading after this sentence... is the remaining part of the article equally scientifically (in)accurate?

Science aficionados have odd and surprising interests By Mark Fischetti | November 16, 2011 | People who are intrigued with physics are somewhat intrigued with computer science, too, but they are crazy about fashion. Who knew? Hilary Mason did.

Did you know that papers in space science are among the most quoted? Check how your country is doing .... you will be surprised :)

this might also be an indication / point to an issue with their data concerning space science publications ... quite surprising indeed that all Europeans are doing so well in this field

Something should be wrong, for Spain I can read: Economics & Business 4.54 -28 Only minus 28!