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very nice work indeed. Here's Slashdot's summary, with additional links: Physicists Discover Evolutionary Laws of Language

this is the study I was talking about over lunch ...

... each act member should have one, together with the mug... :) Se also http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=y3sHTKrGdKI

I want one too! On a side note, his story about transformers is a nice illustration that being able to express something in a mathematical equation is not equivalent to understanding something.

waderoush writes "The San Diego Zoo has built a world famous reputation as a tourist destination, for helping to rescue the California Condor, and maybe (if you're old enough) for Joan Embery's appearances with Johnny Carson. Now the zoo is using its expertise to drive innovation by establishing a n...

We are living in the future when live broadcasts are being censored by AI programs in real-time. I'm sure dictators everywhere are looking forward for these technologies to mature. Having a firewall over reality is so convenient.

Oh, and look - the copyright AI doesn't likes Democrats as well: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/youtube-flags-democrats-convention-video-on-copyright-grounds/

What this tells is that we should not take AI seriously until smart Luis's (or his son) managed to make something decent out of it ... "This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn't, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law. And then, it got worse. Amid more cries of dismay on Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, the official Worldcon Twitter announced: Chicon 7@chicon_7 We are sorry to report that #Ustream will not resume the video feed. #chicon7 #hugos #worldcon 3 Sep 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite And with that, the broadcast was officially cut off. Dumb robots, programmed to kill any broadcast containing copyrighted material, had destroyed the only live broadcast of the Hugo Awards. Sure, we could read what was happening on Twitter, or get the official winner announcement on the Hugo website, but that is hardly the same. We wanted to see our heroes and friends on that stage, and share the event with them. In the world of science fiction writing, the Hugo Awards are kind of like the Academy Awards. Careers are made; people get dressed up and give speeches; and celebrities rub shoulders with (admittedly geeky) paparazzi. You want to see and hear it if you can. But Ustream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access. It was like a Cory Doctorow story crossed with RoboCop 2, with DRM robots going crazy and shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of perfectly innocent broadcasts."

spaceship1 on steroids ...

Looks slightly fragile in the middle...

I like this one "The kind of idle pastime that might amuse physicists is to imagine drafting Einstein's grant applications in 1905. "I propose to investigate the idea that light travels in little bits," one might say. "I will explore the possibility that time slows down as things speed up," goes another. Imagine what comments these would have elicited from reviewers for the German Science Funding Agency, had such a thing existed. Instead, Einstein just did the work anyway while drawing his wages as a technical expert third-class at the Bern patent office. And that is how he invented quantum physics and relativity." There is an even more pointer example of the Prussian academy of sciences reviewing the Dr. application of Hertz ...

Shocking. What is federal research funding for? No, wrong question. Instead maybe: What is federally funded review for?

from Andrés (don't ask my why he is not putting it directly on diigo ....) quite an old issue, though still of high actuality ... and a nice summary in my view ...

A new discovery from a chemist at the University of Texas at Austin may allow photovoltaic solar cells to double their efficiency, thus providing loads more electrical power from regular sunlight.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1206.6389v2 for Guido; an interesting example of "takeover" research

Google subsidiary Google Fiber, Inc. is seeking permission to place satellite antennas on land near its data center in Council Bluffs, Iowa. The antennas could be used to receive content feeds from broadcast networks that could be bundled with a high-speed fiber service.

an oddly similar story http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/20/apple-is-solar-friendly/ apple to build largest solar array in US

:-)

Well, it's not yet confirmed... That error would be worse than the magnetic moment of the muon about 10 years ago. There, it was "at least" a conflict of conventions used in the computer codes!

In a statement based on an earlier press release from the OPERA collaboration, CERN said two possible "effects" may have influenced the anomalous measurements. One of them, due to a possible faulty connection between the fiber-optic cable bringing the GPS signals to OPERA and the detector's master clock, would have caused the experiment to underestimate the neutrinos' flight time, as described in the original story. The other effect concerns an oscillator, part of OPERA's particle detector that gives its readings time stamps synchronized to GPS signals. Researchers think correcting for an error in this device would actually increase the anomaly in neutrino velocity, making the particles even speedier than the earlier measurements seemed to show. CERN's statement says OPERA scientists are studying the "potential extent of these two effects" but doesn't indicate which source of error (if either) is likely to outweigh the other. However, Lucia Votano, director of the Gran Sasso laboratory, says the "main suspicion" focuses on the optical-fiber connection. She adds that OPERA researchers deserve credit for "having tenaciously followed this particular evidence via checks completed in the last few days." The two effects will get a new round of tests in May, when the two labs are scheduled to make velocity measurements with short-pulsed beams designed to give readings much more precise than scientists have achieved so far.

Challenge for PyGMO

'Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom has argued that we are more likely to be in such a simulation than not,' writes Frenkel. 'If such simulations are possible in theory, he reasons, then eventually humans will create them - presumably many of them. If this is so, in time there will be many more simulated worlds than nonsimulated ones. Statistically speaking, therefore, we are more likely to be living in a simulated world than the real one.'... right...

Despite the benefits of low-temperature fuel cell technologies, they cannot directly use biomass as a fuel because of the lack of an effective catalyst system. However, Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have developed a low-temperature fuel cell that directly converts a wide variety of biomass sources to electricity. Possible application areas are local electricity supply in developing countries

throwing empty spacesuits out of the ISS, converted into improvised satellites... now there's something I'd expect to see coming out of an ACT brainstorming session :)

Here's the video of the satellite's "launch": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vPx-KNTHGCA

Sounds relevant. Does ESA need to have a position on this question?

This was on Slashdot now, with a link to the paper. It quite an iteresting study actually. "The scenarios most closely reflecting the reality of our world today are found in the third group of experiments (see section 5.3), where we introduced economic stratification. Under such conditions, we find that collapse is difficult to avoid."

Interesting, but is it new? In general, I would say that history has shown us that it is inevitable that civilisations get replaced by new concepts (much is published about this, read eg Fog of War by Jona Lendering on the struggles between civilisations in ancient history, which have remarkably similar issues as today, yet on a different scale of course). "While some members of society might raise the alarm that the system is moving towards an impending collapse and therefore advocate structural changes to society in order to avoid it, Elites and their supporters, who opposed making these changes, could point to the long sustainable trajectory 'so far' in support of doing nothing." I guess this bang on it, the ones that can change the system, are not benefitted by doing so, hence enrichment, depletion, short term gain remain and might even accelerate to compensate for the loss in the rest of the system.

We made it to Slashdot's frontpage !!! :)

Congratulations, gentlemen!