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Joris _

NASA Developing Tech to Reach and Colonize Other Worlds | Gadget Lab | Wired.com - 4 views

  • The most important near-term development is electric propulsion.
  • using high-density batteries powered off ground-based solar grids
  • microwave thermal propulsion
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    "Within a few years we will see the first true prototype of a spaceship that will take us between worlds," Worden said. this sounds to me a bit too much like Pete Worden :-) but I really like this one :-) One of those billionaires might be Google's Larry Page, who is keenly interested in space travel and NASA Ames's research. "Larry asked me a couple weeks ago how much it would cost to send people one way to Mars and I told him $10 billion, and his response was, 'Can you get it down to 1 or 2 billion?,'" Worden told the Long Now audience. "So now we're starting to get a little argument over the price."
pacome delva

A Phase Transition for Light | Physical Review Focus - 3 views

  • A computer simulation shows the transition from "fermionic" to "liquid" light.
  • The possibility of sending this type of "self-focused" light pulse long distances could be important for remote sensing applications, such as LIDAR, which uses laser light the way radar uses radio waves.
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    what the heck is this?? sounds really strange but highly interesting to me ....
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    can we use this for energy transmission?
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    read it now more carefully and the answer is probably no ...
pacome delva

Penrose claims to have glimpsed universe before Big Bang - 0 views

  • According to Penrose and Gurzadyan, these circles allow us to "see through" the Big Bang into the aeon that would have existed beforehand. The circles, they say, are the marks left in our aeon by the spherical ripples of gravitational waves that were generated when black holes collided in the previous aeon.
  • Julian Barbour, a visiting professor of physics at the University of Oxford, says that these circles would be "remarkable if real and sensational if they confirm Penrose's theory". They would, he says, "overthrow the standard inflationary picture", which, he adds, has become widely accepted as scientific fact by many cosmologists. But he believes that the result will be "very controversial" and that other researchers will look at the data very critically. He says there are many disputable aspects to the theory
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    hehe, a nice controversy? or completely overinterpreted results...?
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    what the heck is this? sounds strange to me ... would I understand the original paper?
Ma Ru

Researcher Creates 'Facebook for Scientists' - 1 views

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    and we are of course there since some time :-) and even have our own group in there ... think that Tobias has first discovered it our group is: https://www.researchgate.net/group/ESA_Advanced_Concepts_Team/ everybody welcome to join ... though Ariadnet is better
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    So if I'm already on Ariadnet, there's no need for me to join this researchgate thingy? Pheew..
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    Very active group, it has exactly one member (Leo) and exactly zero (ZERO,0!!) posts since June 13, 2008!!! Well, sounds like a very typical ACT action in order to increase the key performance indicators :D.
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    Oh come on Luzi, don't be over-pessimistic! It's just because all activity takes place on Ariadnet ;-)
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    tsk tsk typical ex-ACT criticism.. Maybe for me too from next week;P
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    WRONG! You ignore the fact that I complained already while I was yet in the ACT!! Seriously: I clicked around in "ResearchGate" a little bit, couldn't find too many interesting things. Many scientists from India, Iran etc. desperately looking for contacts, retired engineers/scientists from industry that now remember that they were once at university and also quite a number of semi-crackpots. My honest conclusion: not a must. Btw: wish you a nice post-ACT depression! Keep a stiff upper lip, esp. in case you go back to Greece...
Joris _

Are cosmic rays really causing Toyota's woes? | freep.com | Detroit Free Press - 2 views

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    Sounds like one of Calvin's alibis: Aliens! Dad, aliens! A sarcastic Venusian entered the kitchen...
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    i think they could also be a cause for Greece's economic crisis
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    Well, then I suggest to elect Spaceman Spiff instead of Papandreou as Prime Minister! :-)
Luzi Bergamin

[0810.3179] The Enlightened Game of Life - 3 views

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    Revised version of a 2008 paper. Pretty crazy title and perhaps crazy content...
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    the abstract sounds like a random generated paper...
Nicholas Lan

artificial inorganic leaf (AIL) - 1 views

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    bit confused about what they actually have achieved so far but sounds like it might turn out to be interesting. "The scientists first infiltrated the leaves of Anemone vitifolia -- a plant native to China -- with titanium dioxide in a two-step process. Using advanced spectroscopic techniques, the scientists were then able to confirm that the structural features in the leaf favorable for light harvesting were replicated in the new TiO2 structure. Excitingly, the AIL are eight times more active for hydrogen production than TiO2 that has not been "biotemplated" in that fashion. AILs also are more than three times as active as commercial photo-catalysts. Next, the scientists embedded nanoparticles of platinum into the leaf surface. Platinum, along with the nitrogen found naturally in the leaf, helps increase the activity of the artificial leaves by an additional factor of ten."
Giusi Schiavone

New Molecule Could Lead to More Efficient Rocket Fuel - 1 views

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    Sounds like a metastable one. Wondering which half-life period it has, this is the primary issue concerning its technical applicability...
LeopoldS

Macroscopic invisibility cloaking of visible light : Nature Communications : Nature Pub... - 3 views

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    and all this without magic metamaterials ...
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    Wellwellwell! I don't know how I have to complain, since I could not yet read the full article, but I'm sure I will :-).
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    It's funny to see how people get more and more humble in the desperate attempt to save their stupid ideas... At the beginning was the brave and bold aim to cloak something in free space (in a sphere or a cylinder). This requires inhomogeneous, anisotropic, magnetic materials; hopeless!! So one reduces to one polarization, now we have inhomogenous, anisotropic materials; still hopeless! At this point one downgraded the pretension: instead of cloaking in free space, we make a "carpet cloak" and hide an object behind an invisible dent in a mirror. But if that shall be continuous, we still need inhomogeneity and this is very hard. So now instead of a dent we take a cone and then it is claimed to work ... for ONE polarization. But of course the cloak can't work at all incident angles... irony of fate: everything is now made from birefringent media, the antithesis of what the metamaterials dogma was at the beginning!
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    Hi Luzi, can you please send me the paper. We are writing a project based on sulfates and carbonates, and all this BS sounds great for the introduction (The authors used Calcite as birefringent material)
Ma Ru

Dialing Phone Numbers on Cell Phones Activates Key-Concordant Concepts - 0 views

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    Personally, I have the habit of switching off keypad sounds in any device I use (mobile, camera, etc.). Now I have scientific results to back this philosophy up :) P.S. Mass-media version is here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20139-predictive-texting-alters-our-perception-of-numbers.html
Luís F. Simões

Why Randomly-Selected Politicians Would Improve Democracy - Technology Review - 4 views

  • If Pluchino sounds familiar, it's because we've talked about him and his pals before in relation to the Peter Principle that incompetence always spreads through big organisations. Back in 2009, he and his buddies created a model that showed how promoting people at random always improves the efficiency of the organisation. These guys went on to win a well-deserved IgNobel prize for this work.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.1224: Accidental Politicians: How Randomly Selected Legislators Can Improve Parliament Efficiency
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    I think I start to understand why Italian politics does so horribly bad...
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    ... because they don't follow this rule!
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    According to the authors we have four types of people in the parlement: 1) intelligent people whose actions produce a gain for both themselves and for other people. 2) helpless/naive people in the top left quadrant whose actions produce a loss for themselves but a gain for others; 3) bandits whose actions produce a gain for themselves but a loss for other people. 4) stupid people in the bottom left quadrant produce a loss for themselves and also for other people. According to the above definition it is clear that their model does not apply to the italian parlament where we only have stupid people and bandits.
LeopoldS

The iPad in Your Hand: As Fast as a Supercomputer of Yore - NYTimes.com - 3 views

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    one for the IT freaks ... - what will it be in 10 years then?
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    PaGMO on a stack of iPads? Sounds good...
pandomilla

Plant has a bat beckoning beacon - 2 views

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    A rain forest vine has evolved dish-shaped leaves to attract the bats that pollinate it, scientists have found. Tests revealed that the leaves were supremely efficient at bouncing back the sound pulses the flying mammals used to navigate. When the leaves were present the bats located the plant twice as quickly as when these echoing leaves were removed.
pacome delva

One-way Mirror for Sound Waves | Physical Review Focus - 0 views

  • If the technique is practical, it could give designers new flexibility in making ultrasonic sources like those used in medical imaging.
ESA ACT

A Sound Way To Turn Heat Into Electricity - 0 views

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    another energy conversion system... could be very interesting for nuclear power sources and other fields. more details in a few days
nikolas smyrlakis

Artificial meat grown in laboratory - UPI.com - 3 views

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    bioengineers did it in the Netherlands - hope sodexho doesn't find out soon !!
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    geee... I want to see how they "exercise" it :)
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    "If it feels and tastes like meat, people will buy it.", sounds like the normal dutch mentality on food. it feels and tastes smth like it
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    aaah! completely crazy these dutch. What's wrong with killing cows and pigs...
pacome delva

Ants Take a Cue From Facebook - ScienceNOW - 2 views

  • This pattern of interactions matches how humans share information on social networking sites like Facebook, says the study's lead author, biologist Noa Pinter-Wollman. Most Facebook users are connected to a relatively small number of friends. A handful of users, however, have thousands of friends and act as information hubs.
  • computer simulations of the ants' social networks showed that information flows fastest when a small number of individuals act as information hubs. Fast-flowing information allows ant colonies to respond faster to threats such as predators and weather hazards, Pinter-Wollman says.
  • These well-connected ants might have an advantage in responding to threats, but they are also more vulnerable to infectious diseases, which can spread quickly through the colony.
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    for Tobi! nice analogy between the threat and the fast responding in human network
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    Yet another example of "because scientifically accurate title would sound sooo boring".
Francesco Biscani

What Larry Page really needs to do to return Google to its startup roots - 0 views

  • I worked at Google from 2005-2010, and saw the company go through many changes, and a huge increase in staff.  Most importantly, I saw the company go from a place where engineers were seen as violent disruptors and innovators, to a place where doing things “The Google Way” was king, and where thinking outside the box was discouraged and even chastised.
  • Let engineers do what they do best, and forget the rest.
  • This is probably the most important single point.  Engineers at Google spend way too much time fussing about with everything other than engineering and product design.
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  • Meetings.  Seriously, people are drenched in “status update” and “team” meetings.
  • Weekly Snippets, perf, etc. I was continually amazed by the amount of “extra cruft work” that goes on.  I know it sounds important, but engineers should be coding & designing.
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    An opinion piece by an ex-Googler, talking, among other things, about how corporate culture is creeping into Google. I've highlighted some snippets which I've found eerily familiar :)
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