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Some sort of organic carbon has been detected by the sampling of Curiosity; the contamination source was isolated and the signal persists. The scientists suggest as a source meteorites transporting interstellar matter, or maybe some sort of ancient life whose biomass production only survived cosmic radiation as it was buried underground. a big deal: six relevant articles were published simultaneously online: http://www.sciencemag.org/site/extra/curiosity/index.xhtml?utm_content=&utm_medium=Facebook&utm_campaign=Science&utm_source=shortener

beati pauperes spiritu :-) "Political junkies might be interested to learn that conservative women are particularly blissful: about 40 percent say they are very happy. That makes them slightly happier than conservative men and significantly happier than liberal women. The unhappiest of all are liberal men; only about a fifth consider themselves very happy." I think that there are many factors missing there that are just not asked possibly such as altruism as a source for happiness ...

According to The Beatles "Happiness is a warm gun"... To each his own, I guess. :-)

It really depends on one's values really. If your values don't follow the standard vanilla flavor then it all breaks down.

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.

useful for space?

nice source of inspiration ....

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." Underoptimistic ... Excellent source of inspiration and quotation for all our reports

put them on the wiki ....

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons." Technically, this is a correct prediction :P

interesting collection / source of reports linked to space ...

Sorry for the German, but there is a link to the english paper as well: http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pbio.1000278 Following up on Martin's talk, I found that on the Austrian National Broadcaster website, well not really the top source for sound science news but anyway :)

but so far only an announcement ... they want to be ready in autumn only ... :-(

yes, but already 172000 dollars of donation (!!) and plenty of guys offered their service for the coding ! this is something a lot of people is waiting for !

Anything that can has a chance to save us from the Facebook abomination is welcome...

An open-source project to replace mendeley Anyone motivated to try it ?

Darpa going crowd-sourcing ... for 25 million ....

So, which shall it be? Are we going to increase the production of hydrogen bombs, or can we finally go back to the Moon (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3#Extraterrestrial_supplies) ?

None of these. Either you recycle, or you take it from natural sources on Earth. Although most people don't know - there is plenty of natural He3 on Earth. It's just nonsens to use it for energy production (in fusion reactors) since the energy belance for getting the He3 from these source on Earth is just negative. Or you try to substitute He3.

we can't access it from within the firewall I fear ...

Extending quantum communication to space environments would enable us to perform fundamental experiments on quantum physics as well as applications of quantum information at planetary and interplanetary scales. Here, we report on the first experimental study of the conditions for the implementation of the single-photon exchange between a satellite and an Earth-based station. We built an experiment that mimics a single photon source on a satellite, exploiting the telescope at the Matera Laser Ranging Observatory of the Italian Space Agency to detect the transmitted photons. Weak laser pulses, emitted by the ground-based station, are directed toward a satellite equipped with cube-corner retroreflectors. These reflect a small portion of the pulse, with an average of less-than-one photon per pulse directed to our receiver, as required for faint-pulse quantum communication. We were able to detect returns from satellite Ajisai, a low-Earth orbit geodetic satellite, whose orbit has a perigee height of 1485 km.

hello Jose! Interesting it was proposed to do the same with the ISS as part of the ACES experiment. I don't remember the paper but i can look if you're interested

how "large" could these distances be? - ready for SPS?

I don't think that the distance is the important criteria... It seems that the directivity is of the order of a laser one, so the divergence will be equivalent. Perhaps the important criteria is that the cost of these type of light sources could be cheaper...? and also perhaps what power transmission is achievable? It seems also that now that this concept could be used for to focus cheap lasers, instead of using complex optics in cd-rom players, etc... see http://news.softpedia.com/news/Highly-Directional-Semiconductor-Laser-Created-at-Harvard-90839.shtml

Looks really cool! And it's open source :)

Don't know if you've noticed, but the current version is becoming more and more usable... did you try it already in your collaborative work?

We've used it a bit with Juxi and Leopold for the work on the new issue of acta futura, and I think it is quite nice. The problem right now is that only a few people in the team have an account (and I have exhausted my invitations). Maybe you have one or two you are willing to share? :)

That's very interesting. The algae can be used as an absorber of CO2. The problem is that in order to be efficient it has to cover a wide surface and needs water. Would it be possible to grow algaes in the clouds...? Do you know some plants that are capable of floating in the air ?

Yes. There are some epiphytic plants who do not have roots and remove CO2 and H2O from air. Oisin is doing some calculations on it.