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We are living in the future when live broadcasts are being censored by AI programs in real-time. I'm sure dictators everywhere are looking forward for these technologies to mature. Having a firewall over reality is so convenient.

Oh, and look - the copyright AI doesn't likes Democrats as well: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/09/youtube-flags-democrats-convention-video-on-copyright-grounds/

What this tells is that we should not take AI seriously until smart Luis's (or his son) managed to make something decent out of it ... "This was, of course, absurd. First of all, the clips had been provided by the studios to be shown during the award ceremony. The Hugo Awards had explicit permission to broadcast them. But even if they hadn't, it is absolutely fair use to broadcast clips of copyrighted material during an award ceremony. Unfortunately, the digital restriction management (DRM) robots on Ustream had not been programmed with these basic contours of copyright law. And then, it got worse. Amid more cries of dismay on Twitter, Reddit, and elsewhere, the official Worldcon Twitter announced: Chicon 7@chicon_7 We are sorry to report that #Ustream will not resume the video feed. #chicon7 #hugos #worldcon 3 Sep 12 ReplyRetweetFavorite And with that, the broadcast was officially cut off. Dumb robots, programmed to kill any broadcast containing copyrighted material, had destroyed the only live broadcast of the Hugo Awards. Sure, we could read what was happening on Twitter, or get the official winner announcement on the Hugo website, but that is hardly the same. We wanted to see our heroes and friends on that stage, and share the event with them. In the world of science fiction writing, the Hugo Awards are kind of like the Academy Awards. Careers are made; people get dressed up and give speeches; and celebrities rub shoulders with (admittedly geeky) paparazzi. You want to see and hear it if you can. But Ustream's incorrectly programmed copyright enforcement squad had destroyed our only access. It was like a Cory Doctorow story crossed with RoboCop 2, with DRM robots going crazy and shooting indiscriminately into a crowd of perfectly innocent broadcasts."

The linked queen Mary report is the actual interesting part of this post ...

Just over six years ago, we reported that Nissan had developed a "Scratch Guard Coat" paint designed to repair scratches on not only cars, but on painted surfaces in general. ... The Scratch Shield paint is made from polyrotaxane, which has a chemical structure that is able to react and change back to its original shape and fill the gap that results from a fine scratch.

For all the AI guys (Christos, Marek, Ed, Markus and co ...) and of course Luiz, Sante ... You will like this one :-)

Quite a lot of blabla, some usual misconceptions (like QT the source of randomness in nature), but a -- from my point of view -- very true (though in the text somehow hidden) conclusion: Free will, creativity etc. from the point of view of fundamental physics are just randomness! Many physicists won't like this conclusion, though, and in this respect also the title is rather misleading!

he drone of speakers who won't stop is an inevitable experience at conferences, meetings, cinemas and public libraries.  Today, Kazutaka Kurihara at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology in Tskuba and Koji Tsukada at Ochanomizu University, both in Japan, present a radical solution: a speech jamming device that forces recalcitrant speakers into submission. 

...must...not...make...the...obvious...ACT...meeting...joke...

Unfortunately it won't work when it is most needed .... Read this: "Their tests also identify some curious phenomena. They say the gun is more effective when the delay varies in time and more effective against speech that involves reading aloud than against spontaneous monologue. Sadly, they report that it has no effect on meaningless sound sequences such as "aaaaarghhh".

The ASACUSA experiment at CERN has succeeded for the first time in producing a beam of antihydrogen atoms. The ASACUSA collaboration reports the unambiguous detection of 80 antihydrogen atoms 2.7 metres downstream of their production, where the perturbing influence of the magnetic fields used initially to produce the antiatoms is small. http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2014/140121/ncomms4089/full/ncomms4089.html

Interesting report on water transport in deep see fault lines. Subduction can suck huge quantities of water of water underground where friction and pressure heat it up causing the mantle to partly melt which leads to volcanic activities around the fault zones. Not all the water would make it back up, leading to the possibility that there might be large quantities of water stored within the earths crust.

Among other things reporters say that bathroom facilities are terrible in Sochi. But according to the Deputy Prime Minister guest in hotels are on purpose using shower facilities incorrectly, as surveillance videos show. :-D

Artificial and natural knowledge researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago have IQ-tested one of the best available artificial intelligence systems to see how intelligent it really is. Turns out it's about as smart as the average 4-year-old, they will report July 17 at the U.S. Artificial Intelligence Conference in Bellevue, Wash.

Scientists have fabricated a portable data storage system based on nanostructured glass that seems to be much more stable than current disks. I wonder if it can survive that long in space?

What synthetic biology can offer to AI... 

More details in the linked pdf file.. a low pressurized tube with pods floating on air cushions together with EM propulsion and braking.. cool, but probably not going to be build any day soon

It would be great indeed, but even though the cost of the high speed train is a factor 10x higher, the prototype nature and hence relatively lower TRL of this system will probably not have it favoured. Best chance is that he develops a working prototype, one that might not even transport humans at the moment and for short distances, then maybe the project can take off

Actually, he was talking about a prototype: "I am somewhat tempted to at least make a demonstration prototype," Musk said in a conference call with reporters on Monday. "Perhaps I'll create a sub-scale version that's operating, and then hand it over to somebody else." "I think I'll probably end up doing that," he said. http://allthingsd.com/20130812/elon-musk-will-likely-build-his-own-hyperloop-prototype/

Researchers report a new way to use X-rays to probe the properties of solid materials.

Seems we have 1.7 billion years before we need to find a new place to live, when Earth's 'property value' is reduced to zero.

Another underestimated source of CO2, are turbulent waters. "The stronger the turbulences at the water's surface, the more CO2 is released into the atmosphere. The combination of maps and data revealed that, while the CO2 emissions from lakes and reservoirs are lower than assumed, those from rivers and streams are three times as high as previously believed." Alltogether the emitted CO2 equates to roughly one-fifth of the emissions caused by humans. Yet more stuff to model...

Nasia, I thought about your statement carefully - and I cannot agree with you. Water is not a greenhouse gas. It is instead a liquid. Also, I can't believe you keep feeding the troll! :-P But on a more topical note: I think it is an over-simplification to call water a greenhouse gas - water is one of the most important mechanisms in the way Earth handles heat input from the sun. The latent heat that you mention actually cools Earth: solar energy that would otherwise heat Earth's surface is ABSORBED as latent heat by water which consequently evaporates - the same water condenses into rain drops at high altitudes and releases this stored heat. In effect the water cycle is a mechanism of heat transport from low altitude to high altitude where the chance of infrared radiation escaping into space is much higher due to the much thinner layer of atmosphere above (including the smaller abundance of greenhouse gasses). Also, as I know you are well aware, the cloud cover that results from water condensation in the troposphere dramatically increases albedo which has a cooling effect on climate. Furthermore the heat capacity of wet air ("humid heat") is much larger than that of dry air - so any advective heat transfer due to air currents is more efficient in wet air - transporting heat from warm areas to a natural heat sink e.g. polar regions. Of course there are also climate heating effects of water like the absorption of IR radiation. But I stand by my statement (as defended in the above) that rain cools the atmosphere. Oh and also some nice reading material on the complexities related to climate feedback due to sea surface temperature: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/abs/10.1175/1520-0442(1993)006%3C2049%3ALSEOTR%3E2.0.CO%3B2

I enjoy trolling conversations when there is a gain for both sides at the end :-) . I had to check upon some of the facts in order to explain my self properly. The IPCC report states the greenhouse gases here, and water vapour is included: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/faq-2-1.html Honestly, I read only the abstract of the article you posted, which is a very interesting hypothesis on the mechanism of regulating sea surface temperature, but it is very localized to the tropics (vivid convection, storms) a region of which I have very little expertise, and is difficult to study because it has non-hydrostatic dynamics. The only thing I can comment there is that the authors define constant relative humidity for the bottom layer, supplied by the oceanic surface, which limits the implementation of the concept on other earth regions. Also, we may confuse during the conversation the greenhouse gas with the Radiative Forcing of each greenhouse gas: I see your point of the latent heat trapped in the water vapour, and I agree, but the effect of the water is that it traps even as latent heat an amount of LR that would otherwise escape back to space. That is the greenhouse gas identity and an image to see the absorption bands in the atmosphere and how important the water is, without vain authority-based arguments that miss the explanation in the end: http://www.google.nl/imgres?imgurl=http://www.solarchords.com/uploaded/82/87-33833-450015_44absorbspec.gif&imgrefurl=http://www.solarchords.com/agw-science/4/greenhouse--1-radiation/33784/&h=468&w=458&sz=28&tbnid=x2NtfKh5OPM7lM:&tbnh=98&tbnw=96&zoom=1&usg=__KldteWbV19nVPbbsC4jsOgzCK6E=&docid=cMRZ9f22jbtYPM&sa=X&ei=SwynUq2TMqiS0QXVq4C4Aw&ved=0CDkQ9QEwAw

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."

The catalog, a master list organized into 15 categories, is intended for industry, academia, other government agencies, and general public. The catalog covers technology topics ranging from project management systems, design tools, data handling, image processing, solutions for life support functions, aeronautics, structural analysis, and robotic and autonomous systems. NASA said the codes represent NASA's best solutions to an array of complex mission requirements. McMillan reported that "Within a few weeks of publishing the list, NASA says, it will also offer a searchable database of projects, and then, by next year, it will host the actual software code in its own online repository, a kind of GitHub for astronauts."

CliSAP: Mr. Held, several hundred researchers worked for several years on preparing the recently published third part of the Assessment Report, without pay and on top of their normal duties. The result was a work over two thousand pages long. Was it worth it? An overview of the uncertainties when it comes to estimating investments in low carbon. Maybe there is room for computational management projects in there?