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So... basically they are the only guys who now do human spaceflight?

and 2nd failed launch for Russian in 10 days. http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2011/08/proton-m-launches-russias-ekspress-am4-communications-satellite/ although this one is a giant space debris stuck on the GTO.

ESA's article on the consequences for ISS: http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM6GJUTTRG_index_0.html What is not clear is if the rocket that failed is the same variant as used in manned missions. [Edit] According to this article: http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?pg=3&id=268437 "The first and second stages of the Soyuz-FG space rocket used for manned launches differ from those of the Soyuz-U, but the third stage [the one that failed - MR] is identical in both rockets". Thus the stay of astronauts currently at ISS may prolong a little bit.

if you liked the stratos jump you will like this one :-) (apparently it costed them 1100€ to realise)

There can only be one answer to that... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGGxHs02zSs&feature=related [Edit] P.S. No info on how much the production costed...

Great work from my former colleagues in Montreal. For more information (in french, sorry) please click on: http://www.nouvelles.umontreal.ca/recherche/sciences-technologies/20121114-perdue-dans-lespace-des-astronomes-lont-enfin-trouvee.html

Nice! How much dark matter still left to find?

And thats why we do what we do :) Enjoy!!

and to poison the waters of an amazing performance, here's the relevant(?) copyright law: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/05/economist-explains-12?fsrc=scn/tw_ec/how_does_copyright_work_in_space_

And in case you wonder, this is *not* the most expensive music video ever made. Also, launching his guitar to the orbit was still far cheaper than the cost of some guitars sold on earth. Where else can this info come from if not http://what-if.xkcd.com/45/

Really? Is this what we were all waiting for?

to be honest, while the alien megastructure is a cookie idea, I highly doubt that those aliens woke up one day and thought: "hm, let's send laser pulses at this particular random spot in space sometime in the next 6 days".

There has been much recent interest in accelerating materials discovery. High-throughput calculations and combinatorial experiments have been the approaches of choice to narrow the search space. The emphasis has largely been on feature or descriptor selection or the use of regression tools, such as least squares, to predict properties. The regression studies have been hampered by small data sets, large model or prediction uncertainties and extrapolation to a vast unexplored chemical space with little or no experimental feedback to validate the predictions. Thus, they are prone to be suboptimal. Here an adaptive design approach is used that provides a robust, guided basis for the selection of the next material for experimental measurements by using uncertainties and maximizing the 'expected improvement' from the best-so-far material in an iterative loop with feedback from experiments. It balances the goal of searching materials likely to have the best property (exploitation) with the need to explore parts of the search space with fewer sampling points and greater uncertainty.

Can AI create the next wonder material? http://www.nature.com/news/can-artificial-intelligence-create-the-next-wonder-material-1.19850?WT.ec_id=NATURE-20160505&spMailingID=51301208&spUserID=MTEzODM0NjYzMzgS1&spJobID=920498312&spReportId=OTIwNDk4MzEyS0

crowdsourcing science funding ...

there have been a few of these popping out lately, thanks to Kickstarter's incredible success. This one http://www.petridish.org/ launched last month, and has a lot of projects already, including a fully funded one (219 backers, $12,247 raised) to "find the first exomoon": http://www.petridish.org/projects/help-us-find-the-first-exomoon

... 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.

related: Raspberry Pi Computer To Cross The Atlantic Ocean In Autonomous Boat

slashdot describes the drill as "a self-driving mole developed by the German space agency (DLR)". This seems to be the drill: GEMS - a mole to explore the interior of Mars, http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/OCEANSE.2009.5278132. Interesting news for all the roots people :)

CubeSats + 3D printing... for space. I'm surprised this isn't an ACT project :) more info: SpiderFab: Process for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures

$100,000 from NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program to hammer out a design and figure out whether spacecraft self-construction makes business sense .... I can answer for 0$ ..... NO Infact the question is just stupid: a) spacecraft self-construction exist: then it is a no brainer to decide wether it makes business sense b) it does not: then there is no business

And http://www.diyspaceexploration.com/what-are-cubesats/ Do It Yourself satellites!

Think it's a really interesting project!

There's also http://www.nanosatisfi.com started by some Austrian guy it seems

We discussed this today during coffee. The inventor claims that he claims that a pressure differential can push hydrogen through a proton conductive membrane (thereby stripping off the electrons) which flow through an electric circuit and provide electric power. The type of membrane is fairly similar to that found in a hydrogen fuel cell. If the pressure differential is cause by selective heating this is in essence a heat engine that directly produces electricity. The inventor claims that this could be a high efficiency alternative to thermoelectric devices and could even outperform PV and Sterling engines with an efficiency close to that of fuel cells (e.g., ~60% @ dT=600K). I could not find any scientific publications as the inventor is not affiliated to any University - he has however an impressive number of patents from a very wide field (e.g., the "Super Soaker" squirt gun) and has worked on several NASA and US military projects. His current research seams to be funded by the latter as well. Here are some more links that I found: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/shooting-for-the-sun/308268/ http://www.johnsonems.com/?q=node/13 http://scholar.google.nl/scholar?q=%22lonnie+g+johnson%22+&btnG=&hl=nl&as_sdt=0%2C5

This is becoming a mess :)

I see your point, and I agree that funding was also promoted through the energy players and their political influence. A coincident parallel interest which is irrelevant to the fact that the question remains vital. How do we affect climate and how does it respond. Huge complex system to analyse which responds in various time scales which could obscure the trend. What if we made a conceptual parallelism with the L Ácquila case : Is the scientific method guilty or the interpretation of uncertainty in terms of societal mobilization? Should we leave the humanitarian aspect outside any scientific activity?

I do not think there is anyone arguing that the question is not interesting and complex. The debate, instead, addresses the predictive value of the models produced so far. Are they good enough to be used outside of the scientific process aimed at improving them? Or should one wait for "the scientific method" to bring forth substantial improvements to the current understanding and only then start using its results? One can take both stand points, but some recent developments will bring many towards the second approach.

To follow up our discussio at breakfast

For all your statistics needs. The "Plastic Debris in the World's Oceans Report - UNEP" www.unep.org/regionalseas/marinelitter/.../docs/plastic_ocean_report.pdf‎ "Densities of plastic debris (Moore et al. 2001). Using nets to collect debris, the abundance of floating plastic averaged 334,271 pieces/km2" More worrying maybe is (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22610295) "Our oceans eventually serve as a sink for these small plastic particles ("UV degraded surface plastic") and in one estimate, it is thought that 200,000 microplastics per km(2) of the ocean's surface commonly exist."

wireless power transmission made useful ? this application did certainly not come to my mind when Guy Pignolet showed me 12 years ago how his handy would lid up a small diode after our first SPS meeting in Paris ...

Great idea to use either unused/wasted energy. Then again, the signal power (receiver floor) is steadily going down going from 3G to 5G, yet there might be more use of bandwidth to compensate this. It is funny though that you buy a device which could have the function build in it on the back from the start, yet you put a shell around it and then harness wireless power to give it that add-on functionality.

Recently I came across this article in a Japanese newspaper about wireless power transmission applications in the women beauty business. It's probably not as useful as an iPhone cover but apparently there is a market for such things! http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/18/business/led-nails-light-up-when-calling/#.U2OcWV7v2X8

At the link below you find additional information about the projects: Education: Ten weeks to save the world http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100915/full/467266a.html

well, most good ideas probably take only a second to be formulated, it's the details that take years :-)

I do not think the point of the SU is to formulate new ideas (infact there is nothing new in the projects chosen). Their mission is to build and maintain a network of contacts among who they believe will be the 'future leaders' of space ... very similar to our beloved ISU.

Nice video featuring the technology. Plus it comes with a good soundtrack! Google's project wing uses a lifting wing concept (more fuel efficient than normal airplane layouts and MUCH more efficient than quadrocopters) but it equips the plane with engines strong enough to hover in a nose up position, allowing vertical landing and takeoff. For the delivery of packages the drone does not even need to land - it can lower them on a wire - much like the skycrane concept used to deliver the Curiosity rover on Mars. Not sure if the skycrane is really necessary but it is certainly cool. Anyways, the video is great for its soundtrack alone! ;-P

Fair enough, but even if you consider advanced/robust/efficient AI, why would you use a drone? Do we envision hundreds of drones above our heads in the street instead of UPS vans, or postmen, considering delivers letters might be more easily achievable. I am not so sure if personal delivery will take this route. On the other hand, if the system would work smoothly, I can image that I'm send a mail with the question whether I'm home (or they might know already from my personal GPS tracker) and then notify me that they are launching my DVD and it will come crashing into my door in 5min.

I'm more curios how they're planning to keep people from stealing the drones. I could do with a drone army myself and having cheap amazon or google drones flying about sounds like a decent source.

Interesting ideas - though some metaphors are a bit far fetched. Personally, I think it could be interesting if every scientific article would also have a how-to or tutorial section that gives a recipe of how to apply the newly gained knowledge. Of course, that might be tough to do... :-)

The API of the world is already there (a bit), it is the previous knowledge developed by others. Open Source projects such as the wheel or the brick, allow everyday amazing new APPs to be build such as buildings and cars .... There still is merit, though, in learning from software developments techniques in the everyday world projects. This is indeed the motivation for the ACT to do work in open source (SOCIS, GSoC) and push its members to use stuff like wiki, svn, github, jenkins, and alike. This way we are performing and fostering (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/foster) research into working methods in the hope we will be able to export some of its benefit to the larger ESA.

Evolutionary Robotics, as practised by biologists. Here's the link to John Long's book, mentioned in the article: Darwin's Devices: What Evolving Robots Can Teach Us About the History of Life and the Future of Technology http://www.amazon.com/dp/B007QXVRZG/