loads of nice passwords - should we have a closer look at it? anybody volunteering? e.g. Anna and Daniel?

Artes-20 embracing crowdsourcing and putting substantial money into it - at least its first step

interesting collaboration ... unfortunately no prices yet available

israeli startup betting on an orbital tug to put telecom sats into graveyard orbit ...

instead of using the solar generated steam to generate electricity, it seems to make economic sense to use it to pump more oil out of the ground ...

skype alternative - open source, no central server, encryption built in ....

its open source - go check it :-)

my ID: 7C53B574D888EE0E2A97FCD62B144DD14730E45C1B7158D4ED3EBCCB920CB93A68C62E6C9385

Here we go: we might not need liquid water after all on mars to get some nice flowering plants there! ... and terraform ? :-) Thirsty plants can extract water from the crystalline structure of gypsum, a rock-forming mineral found in soil on Earth and Mars.

Some plants grow on gypsum outcrops and remain active even during dry summer months, despite having shallow roots that cannot reach the water table. Sara Palacio of the Pyrenean Institute of Ecology in Jaca, Spain, and her colleagues compared the isotopic composition of sap from one such plant, called Helianthemum squamatum (pictured), with gypsum crystallization water and water found free in the soil. The team found that up to 90% of the plant's summer water supply came from gypsum.

The study has implications for the search for life in extreme environments on this planet and others.

Nature Commun 5, 4660 (2014)

nice video and nice story, no revolution in physics and somehow surprising that not done/tried earlier (maybe just again good MIT public relations work?)

encrypted phone calls on android and now also ios devices? here we go, from the programmer of PGP

ever wanted to feel an important extremist to be of interest to big brother - just google for tor :-) it was never easier to be come an "extremist" what are the consequences of this? new opportunities for secure space-based communication services?

interesting report on the cost of climate change for the US ... coming from Bloomberg and financed by him might not give it its utmost credibility but still

good news for x-ray astronomers

nice research - almost like a follow-up to our BMI work some time ago

nice story ...

research paper on ... football (I hope that my Mr Random selections did not choose england ...)

12 new NIAC 1 studies - many topics familiar to us ... please have a look at those closest to your expertise to see if there is anything new/worth investigating (and in general to be knowledgeable on them since we will get questions sooner or later on them)
Principal Investigator Proposal Title Organization City, State, Zip Code
Atchison, Justin Swarm Flyby Gravimetry Johns Hopkins University Baltimore, MD 21218-2680
Boland, Eugene Mars Ecopoiesis Test Bed Techshot, Inc. Greenville, IN 47124-9515
Cash, Webster The Aragoscope: Ultra-High Resolution Optics at Low Cost University of Colorado Boulder, CO 80309-0389
Chen, Bin 3D Photocatalytic Air Processor for Dramatic Reduction of Life Support Mass & Complexity NASA ARC Moffett Field, CA 94035-0000
Hoyt, Robert WRANGLER: Capture and De-Spin of Asteroids and Space Debris Tethers Unlimited Bothel, WA 98011-8808
Matthies, Larry Titan Aerial Daughtercraft NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Miller, Timothy Using the Hottest Particles in the Universe to Probe Icy Solar System Worlds John Hopkins University Laurel, MD 20723-6005
Nosanov, Jeffrey PERISCOPE: PERIapsis Subsurface Cave OPtical Explorer NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Oleson, Steven Titan Submarine: Exploring the Depths of Kraken NASA GRC Cleveland, OH 44135-3127
Ono, Masahiro Comet Hitchhiker: Harvesting Kinetic Energy from Small Bodies to Enable Fast and Low-Cost Deep Space Exploration NASA JPL Pasadena, CA 91109-8001
Streetman, Brett Exploration Architecture with Quantum Inertial Gravimetry and In Situ ChipSat Sensors Draper Laboratory Cambridge, MA 02139-3539
Wiegmann, Bruce Heliopause Electrostatic Rapid Transit System (HERTS) NASA MSFC Huntsville, AL 35812-0000

next step ... almost as predicted ....

Whether society embraces face recognition on a larger scale will ultimately depend on how legislators, companies and consumers resolve the argument about its singularity. Is faceprinting as innocuous as photography, an activity that people may freely perform? Or is a faceprint a unique indicator, like a fingerprint or a DNA sequence, that should require a person's active consent before it can be collected, matched, shared or sold?

Dr. Atick is firmly in the second camp.

I saw so many bin laden t-shirts already ... they must have better filters than this

unfortunately we have to wait until december - for new levels of astrodrone!