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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 ;-)

Like it! Can you do an initial assessment on space applications Jojo?

Guinness World Record breaking, "first radio amplifier operating at terahertz frequencies could lead to communications systems with much higher data rates, better radar, high-resolution imaging that could penetrate smoke and fog, and better ways of identifying dangerous substances, say the researchers who built it". Built from HEMTs (High Electron Mobility Transistors) made of InP (Indium Phosphide), this is a new milestone on the road to the THz applications.

An oldie but a goodie, " As you will never be sure which are the right problems to work on, most of the time that you spend in the laboratory or at your desk will be wasted. If you want to be creative, then you will have to get used to spending most of your time not being creative, to being becalmed on the ocean of scientific knowledge"

already forwarded it to other researchers in desperation phase :-D :-D

Let an AI develop your magic tricks! (The one with the smart phone is actually neat)

They published it in Frontiers of Psychology...?

"The irony is that a personality disposition normally seen as antisocial - disagreeableness - may actually be linked to 'pro-social' behavior ..."

anybody has access to the pdf of the original article? http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jopy.12104/abstract

have it ....

Technology/Robotics Scientists have developed an octopus-like robot, which can zoom through water with ultra-fast propulsion and acceleration never before seen in man-made underwater vehicles. Most fast aquatic animals are sleek and slender to help them move easily through the water but cephalopods, such as the octopus, are capable of high-speed escapes by filling their bodies with water and then quickly expelling it to dart away.

Taking images through opaque, light-scattering layers is a vital capability and essential diagnostic tool in many applications. The research group of Prof. Mosk of U. Twente have started doing experiments shooting optical lasers into opaque materials in 2007, and for surprise of everyone, it turn out the light intensity after the opaque material in their experiments was orders of magnitude bigger than expected. Following these results they succeeded in taking non-invasive sharp pictures of objects hidden behind a screen of opaqueness, the so referred Super Vision in this Nature overview article.

very nice!!!

Mining the moon - now we know that the Moon's poles hold millions of tonnes of water ice, firms in the US as well as the Indian and Chinese space agencies are planning to mine this resource and sell it to space missions as fuel.

Several new components for biological circuits have been developed by researchers. These components are key building blocks for constructing precisely functioning and programmable bio-computers. "The ability to combine biological components at will in a modular, plug-and-play fashion means that we now approach the stage when the concept of programming as we know it from software engineering can be applied to biological computers.

Scientific proof, shotgun on the red couch!

this really only works if you can fall asleep instantly. If it takes you at least 10mins to sleep the whole procedure fails miserably.

"Collider is an arty audiovisual experience that provides a first-person perspective of a particle hurtling through the Large Hadron Collider"... with the use of the Leapmotion sensor and Oculus Rift hmd. Come to my desk if you wanna try it :) (not that fun actually)

we will come when you figure out how to capture a particle!!! or a dragonball, is the same

First peer review study about he criticality of rare-earth metals. it can be read "They found that supply limits for many metals critical in the emerging electronics sector (including gallium and selenium) are the result of supply risks. The environmental implications of mining and processing present the greatest challenges with platinum-group metals, gold, and mercury. For steel alloying elements (including chromium and niobium) and elements used in high-temperature alloys (tungsten and molybdenum), the greatest vulnerabilities are associated with supply restrictions" Questions about estimation apart, this can be a valuable market for asteroid mining.. (ot just more market for Infinium-like companies http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527526/a-cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-metals/).

Researchers have proposed a new "acoustic topological insulator" that could help alleviate sound scattering problems by transmitting sound in certain directions without any backscattering.

If I understood correctly the triangular structure would channel the incident sound wave to a unique direction between two options, according to the rotation direction of the cylinders included in its mesh. So, one (possibly two) directions left to detect the hypothetical submarines? Very interesting though, I hope no oceanographers take measurements simultaneously to the signals as climate models will get even more wrong...!

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?)

CSI writers will have to up the ante now.

it was probably already done... by the NSA

Here we explore the electrochemical performance of pyrolyzed skins from the species A. bisporus, also known as the Portobello mushroom, as free-standing, binder-free, and current collector-free Li-ion battery anodes. At temperatures above 900 °C, the biomass-derived carbon nanoribbon-like architectures undergo unique processes to become hierarchically porous. Basically they burned a Portobello mushroom and used it as a battery... now thats an multidisciplinary advanced concept

Network scientists have discovered how social networks can create the illusion that something is common when it is actually rare. One of the curious things about social networks is the way that some messages, pictures, or ideas can spread like wildfire while others that seem just as catchy or interesting barely register at all.

"The effect is largest in the political blogs network, where as many as 60%-70% of nodes will have a majority active neighbours, even when only 20% of the nodes are active." How convenient :-)

The blockchain technology behind bitcoin has been gaining traction. This article makes a good job of describing it, and the different (not-bitcoin) ways in which it's being adopted. Worth reading, even if only for the funny bit about self-driving self-owning cars who pay themselves for fuel, parking and repairs.

Engineer Roger Shawyer's controversial EM Drive thruster jets back into relevancy this week, as a team of researchers at NASA's Eagleworks Laboratories recently completed yet another round of testing on the seemingly impossible tech.

I like this just because it will end up on Thijs' desk :D

Interesting that the new comes in... Yahoo Finance :). Another more complete article http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/11/nasa-eagleworks-has-tested-upgraded.html

See title...