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Using the angular momentum transmitted by an internal flywheel as an impulse, these cubes can move, jump, roll across the ground and climb over and around one another. They stick together using a set of small magnets, smart !

That is indeed a great way of using modular robots to build larger structures. I think we did bump into this some time back, but never really considered it much. Considering now the working group on structure assembling, I think we should add it to the list of building strategies and seriously consider it.

This is an interesting report from a student in sociology, who worked with a group of scientists on a synthetic biology project for the competition IGEM (http://2009.igem.org/Main_Page). This is what happen when you mix hard and soft sciences. For this project they won the special prize for "Best Human Practices Advance". You can read the part on self or exploded governance (p.34). When reading parts of this reports, I thought that it could be good to have a stagiaire or a YGT in human science to see if we can raise interesting question about ethics for the space sector. There are many questions I'm sure, about the governance, the legitimacy of spending millions to go in space, etc...

Perhaps interesting for the SPS self-assembling

nice, read only the abstract so far but looks to me like a bit of 19th century crystallography reinvented ...

Just read about this, it looks like an interesting example of bottom-up innovation and self-organization.

Avoiding plagiarism, self-plagiarism, and other questionable writing practices: A guide to ethical writing

No Abstract available (??)

large invisible cables and self-cleaning releasable superadhesive materials

Self-organizing equipment could cut energy bills.

A popular article about a real paper.

Luca and Tobias - have a look at this ... LS

Impressive video about self-healing rubber. The video shows how a piece of rubber broken into two recovers its elastic properties after resting for 24 hours.

... proof that humanity is good?

"The dataset contains practically all actions of all players of the MMOG Pardus since the game went online in 2004 [18]. Pardus is an open-ended online game with a world- wide player base of currently more than 370,000 people. Play- ers live in a virtual, futuristic universe in which they interact with others in a multitude of ways to achieve their self-posed goals [22]. Most players engage in various economic activities typically with the (self-posed) goal to accumulate wealth and status. Social and economical decisions of players are often strongly influenced and driven by social factors such as friend- ship, cooperation, and conflict." quite impressive ...

Bio-inspired assembly of fluorescent molecules boosts the fluorescence output.

Nice read! It is actually part of the Ariadna PETE study of one of the teams. You can supervise if you want :)