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A new class of exotic materials could find its way into next-generation technologies that efficiently convert waste heat into electrical current according to new research. Both the exotic materials and the means by which they generate electricity rely on a hybrid of advanced concepts-including string theory combined with black holes combined with cutting-edge condensed matter physics.

Sounds spooky

Random branches are collected, scanned to 3D, and connected with servos. Then a neural network is trained to control this "robot".

"Hbar Technologies plans a Kickstarter effort to raise US $200,000 for the next phase design of an antimatter-propelled spaceship. The two scientists behind this design effort are a veteran Fermilab particle accelerator scientist and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and founding director of the U.S. Center for Space Nuclear Research. They originally developed it for NASA at the turn of the millennium."

The best robot prototype videos in ICRA conference. Nice whiskered robots and "self-supervised" self learning robot hands using CNNs.

In case you are interested in Martin's past project, this article covers his master thesis. Potential for space? One of the biggest challenges with swarms of robots is manufacturing and deploying the swarm itself. Even if the robots are relatively small and relatively simple, you're still dealing with a whole bunch of them, and every step in building the robots or letting them loose is multiplied over the entire number of bots in the swarm.

Yesterday [11th May], the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) held a Demo Day for the Department of Defense in the courtyard at the center of the Pentagon to give the defense community "an up-close look at the Agency's diverse portfolio of innovative technologies and military systems at various stages of development and readiness."

Self-destruct options from the Mission: Impossible movies could become a reality for even the most common smartphones and laptops used by government officials or corporate employees. A new self-destruct mechanism can destroy electronics within 10 seconds through wireless commands or the triggering of certain sensors. Just don't leave your computer sitting in the sun for long...

The WorldView2 satellite has a maximum 50 cm resolution and a water penetrating coastal band in the far-blue part of the spectrum that allows it to see deeper into the water column. Using an image covering 113 km2, we identified 55 probable whales and 23 other features that are possibly whales, with a further 13 objects that are only detected by the coastal band.

Using random nanostructuring highly absorptive materials were made which are of interest for photovoltaic or thermovoltaic applications

Yes! Black Metal... definitely something the ACT should look into

Black Metal...sounds like something for the ACT Magic Cards. But apart from that - is it possible to shift the PV type of absorption into gamma ray spectrum?

More information on the future of UAVs and the space industry.

Jeff Garzik wants to make satellites part of the Bitcoin network to help secure the currency against attacks.

remember the discussion we had about space being used as a safe network for this type of stuff ....?

really interesting new project over at Kickstarter. Fully funded within 2 days of being announced. This one will probably get into the millions.

Finally the thing will have a little more artificial intelligence than just "bump into wall, turn a bit, repeat". We've known for a while now that iRobot has been developing robots with wireless integration along with intelligent navigation capability based on VSLAM (Vision Simultaneous Localization and Mapping). We've know this for enough of a while that it's been a little bit frustrating to see iRobot's most recent Roomba upgrades come out without those neat features.

Quantum Cascade Lasers are rising in the mid-infrared region, the so-called fingerprint zone of the electromagnetic spectrum for a whole bunch of chemical species that we are most of times interested in sensing. One more sign of the underlying importance of this technology comes just by seeing NSF, USHS, Naval Air Command and NASA as the main monetary contributors to this research.

antihydrogen propulsion...?

didn't roger write an assessment of antimatter propulsion when he was in the ACT?

yeah the problem is the amount of antimatter you can get and more specifically how to trap it. I found that you would need around one gram to go to the outer Solar System. So we are far from that, but finding an efficient way to trap it, with an electromagnetic trap rather than solid walls is a first step !

nice conclusion! Published paper: "Statistical method for classifying cries of baby based on pattern recognition of power spectrum" in Int. J. Biometrics, 2010, 2, 113-123

This must have been a hot topic is space research during last months... well, at least within the ESA's Advanced Concepts Team ;-)

Amazing "to look deep into space and time". What a nice pun!

Coooool!