In the Planetary Science Vision 2050 Workshop a cool concept for a magnetic dipole sitting at Mars L1 with an estimated field of 1-2 Tesla was proposed to shield Mars from Solar Winds and provide an elementary magnetic shielding to Mars.

Normally we associate levitation of objects to superconducting materials. Here a new technique is shown where levitation of a whole new range of materials is shown. "The large temperature gradient leads to a force that balances gravity and results in stable levitation," said Fung, the study's lead author. "We managed to quantify the thermophoretic force and found reasonable agreement with what is predicted by theory. This will allow us to explore the possibilities of levitating different types of objects." Paper at http://aip.scitation.org/doi/10.1063/1.4974489 New microgravity experiments possibility?

Might still be OK micro to mm sized experiments. The technique seems to be reliable and cheap enough to compete with other types of microgravity approaches - more research needed to define boundaries of course.

It is typically considered that brain's process of learning is highly energy efficient. While investigating how efficiently the brain can learn new information, physicists have found that, at the neuronal level, learning efficiency is ultimately limited by the laws of thermodynamics.

A good electrical conductor is normally a good heat conductor. Vanadium dioxide however seems to not be so, by being a good electrical conductor and a poor thermal conductor. Paper at http://science.sciencemag.org/content/355/6323/371

The European Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee voted in favour of a resolution calling for new laws addressing robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) to be set out to sit alongside a new voluntary ethical conduct code that would apply to developers and designers.

A good DIY project - build a tractor beam using 3D printed parts. The 3D files and research are available for download. A new way for microgravity research @fichbio ?

Researchers at Tohoku University have, for the first time, successfully demonstrated the basic operation of spintronics-based artificial neural network.

The ALPHA collaboration reports the first ever measurement on the optical spectrum of an antimatter hydrogen atom. Optical transitions shown to be the same as for normal hydrogen. Paper at http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/vaap/ncurrent/full/nature21040.html#affil-auth

"University of Copenhagen fired seismologist Hans Thybo, president of the European Geosciences Union. The official explanation for Thybo's dismissal - his alleged use of private e-mail for work, and telling a postdoc that it is legitimate to openly criticize university management - seems petty in the extreme."

Materials exposed to a high-radiation environment such as the inside of a nuclear reactor vessel can gradually degrade and weaken. A new approach to allow assessment of radiation damage in materials, on real time!

Drones for microgravity.

Technion researchers have demonstrated, for the first time, that laser emissions can be created through the interaction of light and water waves, in practice mechanical oscillations in fluids at the nanoscale. Interesting concept on the verge of two so far different fields!

Thermoelectric paint allows for harvesting of thermal losses.

In Israel, a new way to hack by turning speakers into microphones.

Maybe of interest for the ever lasting discussion around the coffee machines of our meeting room... :) paper at http://epubs.siam.org/doi/pdf/10.1137/15M1036658

It's proven, sleepiness is genetic.

The quest for finding Planet Nine is meant to stay apparently.

Cool hologram generating tabletop. Check the videos. Would be interesting if it could be scaled down..

The Rayleigh criterion specifies the minimum separation between two incoherent point sources that may be resolved into distinct objects. Here, a strategy to break the limits of this criterion for the first time, some small allusion to telescopic systems.

A free software tool that could revolutionize the drone industry to design and build your own drone/aircraft/fighter with a 3-D online software that generates aerodynamic information (maybe optimization also) about your own design.