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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...

ever heard of the Erdős-Bacon number? :-)

and actors probably ask who cares about Erdős :) The network of actors who co-star in movies is a famous one among networks people. Kevin Bacon became famous in that network because of fans of his who could from memory trace the paths of a large number of actors back to him :) see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Degrees_of_Kevin_Bacon#History If you have you publications in http://academic.research.microsoft.com/, it gives you a nice tool to visualize your graph up to Erdős. Apparently I have a path of length 4, and several of length 5: http://academic.research.microsoft.com/VisualExplorer#36695545&1112639

and for the actors http://oracleofbacon.org/

A "four-wheel drive car" less than one billionth the length of an average SUV has been built and operated by researchers in the Netherlands and Switzerland.

"Molecular machines are common in nature. Motor proteins, for example, can move along a surface to transport molecular-sized cargo and are often used to build structures within living cells. " reminds me of the fantastic movie on what happens inside a cell ...

Event Horizon - a modern myth?

GR is valid on large scales and is, therefore, a simplification of the unknown GUT. As such, the mathematical solutions obtained in GR are strictly speaking valid only within GR. Certainly, the solution called black hole is an extremely heavy object and at the same time extremely small - a point without geometrical extension. The latter is heavily in conflict with the validity range of the underlying theory and, hence, makes lots of people (including experts unlike me) question the concept of black holes despite the fact that something has been "observed" which fits into this concept. Regarding the movie: Event Horizon might be a myth but it emphasizes what Sante said in on of his presentations: Don't use a black hole for travelling, take the worm hole instead. The constructor of Event Horizon created a black hole not considering that the damn thing has no exit...where did he think the Event Horizon would end?

... and on students as well, who should actually know better!

For me it is not a surprising result at all that criminals cooperate more than students. The former are partners in crime, united by being "against the system". The latter are nothing more than competitors of each other at the job market. On a side note, the majority of the students doesn't *know*, they *memorise*. There is a difference. I recommend "Celda 211". Good movie on the topic.

Did the theoretical payoff matrix take into account what happens when you next encounter the person you cheated out of their coffee/cigarettes?

Zivile can you order this for me?

I will get one as soon as they put it in a spherical dome like that of Darth Vader's...

@Johannes: The Japanese version will definitely have a toilet included, of course with health analysis, automatic appointment making with the doctors, life time estimation, diet planning, etc.

Let's start betting which party Aliens vote: GREEN, BLUE, RED, BLACK?

http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/ for the moment is down. My bet, the microbe they found notified its cousins and they are currently invading the US

you can still see the rest of it here: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html a good link with a summary and discussion on the announcement is here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2010/dec/02/nasa-life-form-bacteria-arsenic

tried to find the original science paper but could not .... the only one I found was this one: http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/1210/2

"Plan 9 from outer space" quote confirmed : atmospheric conditions in outer space stall communications! Wonder how many more facts of the movie will prove right in the end...

very interesting study. Although it is not so much a surprise, they cite many papers on planetary formation that predicted this, and the only paper on degassing they cite is from our rather unpopular french ex-minister of research c. allegre, who refuses the fact that humans have an impact on climate...

Another great presentation at this conference!! Plus I always wanted to enter the numerical computations of orbit around black holes.... with Luzi we had a project on formation flying around black holes .... revolutionary idea (of course we did not do it!!!)

nice movie, and song :) we should definitely implement GR orbits in pagmo !

I agree Marek, yet was it practical for Apollonio to study conic sections more than 1500 years before Kepler found his three laws? And here is a good paper to start with: http://prd.aps.org/abstract/PRD/v77/i10/e103005, making an analogy between the periodic table and the taxomony of all orbits around a black hole.

A collection of crazy scientific ideas.

The experiment

swarm intelligence very impressive ...

yep ... fantastic ...

impressive, particularly the two last videos where u can see the structure growing !

Today we released the Astro Drone app. People that have the Parrot AR drone can freely download the game. While they fly their drone in the real world, they are trying to dock to the ISS in the virtual world. But the app is more than a game. Players can choose to participate in a scientific crowd sourcing experiment that aims to improve autonomous capabilities of space probes, such as landing, obstacle avoidance, and docking. If participating, the app extracts visually salient features from the images made by the drone's camera. The features are then combined with the estimates of the drone's state and uploaded. The data is then used in a research aiming to improve robot navigation.

Visit the main ESA website and you'll be greeted with a 6-minute Rosetta promo movie by a kickass Polish artist... P.S. You can also find the video here. P.P.S It seems I've just discovered a way to hijack old diigo entries ;-)

"As you read this, your neurons are firing - that brain activity can now be decoded to reveal the silent words in your head TALKING to yourself used to be a strictly private pastime. That's no longer the case - researchers have eavesdropped on our internal monologue for the first time. The achievement is a step towards helping people who cannot physically speak communicate with the outside world." Or alternatively, a step towards snooping into individuals' privacy.

Soon we'll be able to see movies about our dreams!

Only if you are willing to have a chip implanted into/onto your brain though ^^

Simulating the economic state of the Galaxy after the resistance has blown up the Death Stars. See the paper here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1511.09054.pdf

Love this type of friday afternoon research questions. There is also a now famous scene in the movie Clerks discussing the loss of independent contractors lives as the Death Star was being build.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQdDRrcAOjA

That analysis is quite crappy and is easily demolished in the video's comments.

They are developing so-called "Avatar" technology which will allow people to control robots remotely, as in the movie "Avatar." With Avatar X, they hope to revolutionize space exploration, resource extraction, and other space-based activities. On the Avatar X website, it says, "AVATAR X aims to capitalize on the growing space-based economy by accelerating development of real-world Avatars that will enable humans to remotely build camps on the Moon, support long-term space missions and further explore space from afar."