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Pouring Milk All Over Yourself: The Next Extremely Bizarre Trend? - 1 views

www.theatlanticcities.com/...4030 fun
shared by Marcus Maertens on 23 May 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 23 May 13
     
    So... who is in?
  • ...1 more comment...
  • johannessimon81 on 24 May 13
     
    I thought you were supposed to do this with petrol... |:-[ It's by the way cool to see how the milk seems to flow very differently from what one might expect from water: it seems to flow in a few thick streams instead of wetting the whole person... Since the surface tension of milk seems to be lower than that of water (http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract;jsessionid=908B02C3825E97162B9D60DA615EAC96.journals?fromPage=online&aid=5146540) this is surprising. It might very well be an effect of the colloidal nature of milk as it is water in which semi-solid fat particles are suspended. So like the cornstarch mix that we have seen in the office there might be some dynamic jamming going on leading to a higher viscosity (at high shear rates). After all they might be doing science...
  • LeopoldS on 28 May 13
     
    nice comment Johannes ... if you add a bit of Kleopatre, e.g. why bathing in milk helped her fool Marcus Antonius, your comment would be fully interdisciplinary :-)
  • johannessimon81 on 28 May 13
     
    you mean it would include History or Psychology? I would understand why Marcus Antonius might get fooled by a bathing beauty - but milk? DONKEY MILK?!? That's just wrong... :-[
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CubeSat Ambipolar Thruster - 2 views

www.kickstarter.com/...er-for-interplanetary-cubesats space technology
shared by Daniel Hennes on 04 Jul 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Daniel Hennes on 04 Jul 13
     
    "Cast your name into deep space in style!"
  • dejanpetkow on 04 Jul 13
     
    Interesting approach, but with 99.9% probability they will miserably fail (at least in terms of their time schedule) simply because the technology is untested. I haven't read the refs (which miss by the way important works of E. Ahedo et al. on magnetic nozzle acceleration by ambipolar effects), but 1. using water means that you produce oxygen radicals which will erode chamber walls (ionisation efficiency is not 100% and experimental tests haven't been performed yet). 2. Electronic excitation (and radiation), rotational excitation, vibrational excitation, and dissociation are all processes which consume energy and reduce ionisation efficiency drastically. 3. It is a miniaturised Helicon thruster. Theoretical analysis probably does not consider near field effects. Far field models are probably not applicable due to the size of the thruster. I expect some surprises during thruster testing. In any case - good luck!
  • dejanpetkow on 05 Jul 13
     
    Apparently, there is only one qualification constraint regarding CubeSat propulsion which is related to volatile propellant. Since they use water as propellant and are also the owner of the CubeSat it is actually up to them how they qualify their thruster. Given that it is also possible to qualify the thruster within 18 months - since they define what "qualification" means.
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[1610.08323] Evidence for vacuum birefringence from the first optical polarimetry measu... - 3 views

arxiv.org/1610.08323
shared by fichbio on 02 Dec 16 - No Cached
  • fichbio on 02 Dec 16
     
    Abstract: The "Magnificent Seven" (M7) are a group of radio-quiet Isolated Neutron Stars (INSs) discovered in the soft X-rays through their purely thermal surface emission. Owing to the large inferred magnetic fields ($B\approx 10^{13}$ G), radiation from these sources is expected to be substantially polarised, independently on the mechanism actually responsible for the thermal emission.
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Accelerated search for materials with targeted properties by adaptive design - 0 views

www.nature.com/...ncomms11241.html technology machine learning PHY materials
shared by jcunha on 10 May 16 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 10 May 16
     
    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.
  • jcunha on 11 May 16
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Not a scratch - 7 views

www.economist.com/21545971 BIO
shared by pandomilla on 12 Apr 12 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • pandomilla on 12 Apr 12
     
    I hate scorpions, but this could be a nice subject for a future Ariadna study! This north African desert scorpion, doesn't dig burrows to protect itself from the sand-laden wind (as the other scorpions do). When the sand whips by at speeds that would strip paint away from steel, the scorpion is able to scurry off without apparent damage.
  • LeopoldS on 13 Apr 12
     
    Nice research, though they have done almost all the work that we could do in an Ariadna, didnt they? "To check, they took further photographs. In particular, they used a laser scanning system to make a three-dimensional map of the armour and then plugged the result into a computer program that blasted the virtual armour with virtual sand grains at various angles of attack. This process revealed that the granules were disturbing the air flow near the skeleton's surface in ways that appeared to be reducing the erosion rate. Their model suggested that if scorpion exoskeletons were smooth, they would experience almost twice the erosion rate that they actually do. Having tried things out in a computer, the team then tried them for real. They placed samples of steel in a wind tunnel and fired grains of sand at them using compressed air. One piece of steel was smooth, but the others had grooves of different heights, widths and separations, inspired by scorpion exoskeleton, etched onto their surfaces. Each sample was exposed to the lab-generated sandstorm for five minutes and then weighed to find out how badly it had been eroded. The upshot was that the pattern most resembling scorpion armour-with grooves that were 2mm apart, 5mm wide and 4mm high-proved best able to withstand the assault. Though not as good as the computer model suggested real scorpion geometry is, such grooving nevertheless cut erosion by a fifth, compared with a smooth steel surface. The lesson for aircraft makers, Dr Han suggests, is that a little surface irregularity might help to prolong the active lives of planes and helicopters, as well as those of scorpions."
  • Ma Ru on 13 Apr 12
     
    What bugs me (pardon the pun) is that the dimensions of the pattern they used were scaled up by many orders of magnitude, while "grains of sand" with which the surface was bombarded apparently were not... Not being a specialist in the field, I would nevertheless expect that the size of the surface pattern *in relation to* to size of particles used for bombarding would be crucial.
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Cosmic-ray theory gets the cold shoulder - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...-theory-gets-the-cold-shoulder phy science Space
shared by Lionel Jacques on 24 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Lionel Jacques on 24 Apr 12
     
    "One of the leading theories describing how the most energetic cosmic rays are produced may need a rethink in light of a new study by physicists at the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. The team had set out to detect the extremely energetic neutrinos that are expected to be produced alongside high-energy cosmic rays in the violent explosions that mark the deaths of massive stars - but after looking at hundreds of these explosions, no such neutrinos have been found. "
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International Space Apps Challenge - 3 views

spaceappschallenge.org/solutions INF technology innovation
shared by Joris _ on 24 Apr 12 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 24 Apr 12
     
    The International Space Apps Challenge is now over, it is interesting to have a look at the solutions ...
  • ...1 more comment...
  • LeopoldS on 25 Apr 12
     
    can't find much interesting in the list ...
  • LeopoldS on 25 Apr 12
     
    what sort of "app" is this e.g. http://spaceappschallenge.org/challenge/brightest-night/solution/132 "We started of by trying to set our camera in raw mode, howsoever this can't be done for current logitech modules and without a high risk of permanently destroying the camera (reflashing the EEPROM). we use a logitech c920 and captured a raw image from it using guvcview on ArchLinux we then wrote some python code to calculate the average BGR value of our Image. We are currently workin on automiztion, but this will take much longer as there will be a lot of reverse engineering of the USB-Protocol needed."
  • Joris _ on 26 Apr 12
     
    c'mon really! To name a few: - Tour of the Solar System ... that is one of the numerous specialities of the ACT. - Satellite data correlation tool ... solution is flawed, but I really like the idea. Lot of added value. I definitely think are interestung stuffs to do there for cheap. - Aurora project: Model & Data ... space weather not interesting?! - Kepler ... a classic Do not expect the solutions to be tremendous just after 3 days of work, but the proposed list of challenges are "seeds" for innovation to me.
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South Africa wins science panel's backing to host SKA telescope : Nature News & Comment - 0 views

www.nature.com/...-to-host-ska-telescope-1.10205 Science space south africa telescope
shared by santecarloni on 12 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Final decision on Square Kilometer Array's location not expected before April.
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http://envisioningtech.com/envisioningtech.pdf - 3 views

envisioningtech.com/envisioningtech.pdf future technology expectation
shared by LeopoldS on 22 Aug 12 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 22 Aug 12
     
    and what is your take?
  • Luís F. Simões on 23 Aug 12
     
    As William Gibson famously said "The future is already here - it's just not very evenly distributed." Many of the listed technologies are already here, in one way or another, the authors are just putting dates on when they think they'll achieve greater consumer impact. I have issues with many of those dates. I think there are a lot of under- and overestimations. Also, what a bleak future for AI it that's all it'll give the world in the next 30 years!
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CERN to announce Higgs boson observation at LHC - 1 views

www.extremetech.com/...higgs-boson-observation-at-lhc PHY science
shared by Lionel Jacques on 12 Dec 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Lionel Jacques on 12 Dec 11
     
    Tomorrow, at 9am EST, scientists at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Switzerland are expected to announce, with fairly strong certainty, that they have observed the Higgs boson "God" particle at a mass-energy of 125 GeV. For just over a week, rumors have been rife that observations with 2.5 to 3.5 sigma certainty (96% to 99.9%) have been made.
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American Innovation Losing its Shine? - 4 views

freepress.intel.com/...an-innovation-losing-its-shine technology INF science
shared by LeopoldS on 18 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 18 Nov 11
     
    interesting reflections by MIT head on innovation in US
  • Christos Ampatzis on 20 Nov 11
     
    interesting, especially since in all COmmission papers US innovation is praised and changes expected are only related to China/India (for the better)... Article mixes a lot talk on innovation with numbers that I do not see necessarily connected (trade deficit, GDP growth etc.). Seems to me the real problematique behind the article is only the next planned distribution of federal funds and where they should cut...
  • Joris _ on 22 Nov 11
     
    well I understand her point. Spending cuts are only vicious short term solutions against economical downturn since growth (GDP is an interesting measure indeed) comes from innovation, research and production. Nonetheless, what she is describing is happening in EU too. So who will take the lead? I am not certain China is the one. In my view, it has not yet solved its domestic issues... and US still has more Nobel Prize than China. One thing for sure, the way it is EU is only a "wagon" of the train...
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Big data, bigger expectations? - 1 views

blogs.computerworld.com/...2013-review-big-data-cfbdcw technology AI
shared by johannessimon81 on 07 Feb 14 - No Cached
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The big data brain drain - 3 views

jakevdp.github.io/...big-data-brain-drain big data
shared by Thijs Versloot on 04 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 04 Mar 14
     
    Echoing this, in 2009 Google researchers Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig, and Fernando Pereira penned an article under the title The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data. In it, they describe the surprising insight that given enough data, often the choice of mathematical model stops being as important - that particularly for their task of automated language translation, "simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models based on less data." If we make the leap and assume that this insight can be at least partially extended to fields beyond natural language processing, what we can expect is a situation in which domain knowledge is increasingly trumped by "mere" data-mining skills. I would argue that this prediction has already begun to pan-out: in a wide array of academic fields, the ability to effectively process data is superseding other more classical modes of research.
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Mars Code | Communications of the ACM - 1 views

cacm.acm.org/...fulltext INF software redundancy fault detection model checking Curiosity Mars
shared by Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • As can be expected, all functions on the rover, and on the spacecraft that brought it to its destination 350 million miles from Earth, are controlled by software. This article discusses some of the precautions the JPL flight software team took to improve its reliability.
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    Interesting read if you're interested on the kind of coding that goes into something like the Curiosity rover. :) btw.. nice fill-packet being sent by Curiosity: "Elvis has Spirit. The answer is 42....END\r\n"
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Will robots be smarter than humans by 2029? - 2 views

robohub.org/be-smarter-than-humans-by-2029 AI
shared by Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Guido de Croon on 10 Mar 14
     
    Nice discussion about the singularity. Made me think of drinking coffee with Luis... It raises some issues such as the necessity of embodiment, etc.
  • ...9 more comments...
  • Luís F. Simões on 12 Mar 14
     
    "Kurzweilians"... LOL. Still not sold on embodiment, btw.
  • Ma Ru on 12 Mar 14
     
    The biggest problem with embodiment is that, since the passive walkers (with which it all started), it hasn't delivered anything really interesting...
  • Paul N on 13 Mar 14
     
    The problem with embodiment is that it's done wrong. Embodiment needs to be treated like big data. More sensors, more data, more processing. Just putting a computer in a robot with a camera and microphone is not embodiment.
  • Marcus Maertens on 14 Mar 14
     
    I like how he attacks Moore's Law. It always looks a bit naive to me if people start to (ab)use it to make their point. No strong opinion about embodiment.
  • johannessimon81 on 14 Mar 14
     
    @Paul: How would embodiment be done RIGHT?
  • Guido de Croon on 16 Mar 14
     
    Embodiment has some obvious advantages. For example, in the vision domain many hard problems become easy when you have a body with which you can take actions (like looking at an object you don't immediately recognize from a different angle) - a point already made by researchers such as Aloimonos.and Ballard in the end 80s / beginning 90s. However, embodiment goes further than gathering information and "mental" recognition. In this respect, the evolutionary robotics work by for example Beer is interesting, where an agent discriminates between diamonds and circles by avoiding one and catching the other, without there being a clear "moment" in which the recognition takes place. "Recognition" is a behavioral property there, for which embodiment is obviously important. With embodiment the effort for recognizing an object behaviorally can be divided between the brain and the body, resulting in less computation for the brain. Also the article "Behavioural Categorisation: Behaviour makes up for bad vision" is interesting in this respect. In the field of embodied cognitive science, some say that recognition is constituted by the activation of sensorimotor correlations. I wonder to which extent this is true, and if it is valid for extremely simple creatures to more advanced ones, but it is an interesting idea nonetheless. This being said, if "embodiment" implies having a physical body, then I would argue that it is not a necessary requirement for intelligence. "Situatedness", being able to take (virtual or real) "actions" that influence the "inputs", may be.
  • Ma Ru on 17 Mar 14
     
    @Paul While I completely agree about the "embodiment done wrong" (or at least "not exactly correct") part, what you say goes exactly against one of the major claims which are connected with the notion of embodiment (google for "representational bottleneck"). The fact is your brain does *not* have resources to deal with big data. The idea therefore is that it is the body what helps to deal with what to a computer scientist appears like "big data". Understanding how this happens is key. Whether it is the problem of scale or of actually understanding what happens should be quite conclusively shown by the outcomes of the Blue Brain project.
  • johannessimon81 on 17 Mar 14
     
    Wouldn't one expect that to produce consciousness (even in a lower form) an approach resembling that of nature would be essential? All animals grow from a very simple initial state (just a few cells) and have only a very limited number of sensors AND processing units. This would allow for a fairly simple way to create simple neural networks and to start up stable neural excitation patterns. Over time as complexity of the body (sensors, processors, actuators) increases the system should be able to adapt in a continuous manner and increase its degree of self-awareness and consciousness. On the other hand, building a simulated brain that resembles (parts of) the human one in its final state seems to me like taking a person who is just dead and trying to restart the brain by means of electric shocks.
  • Paul N on 17 Mar 14
     
    Actually on a neuronal level all information gets processed. Not all of it makes it into "conscious" processing or attention. Whatever makes it into conscious processing is a highly reduced representation of the data you get. However that doesn't get lost. Basic, low processed data forms the basis of proprioception and reflexes. Every step you take is a macro command your brain issues to the intricate sensory-motor system that puts your legs in motion by actuating every muscle and correcting every step deviation from its desired trajectory using the complicated system of nerve endings and motor commands. Reflexes which were build over the years, as those massive amounts of data slowly get integrated into the nervous system and the the incipient parts of the brain. But without all those sensors scattered throughout the body, all the little inputs in massive amounts that slowly get filtered through, you would not be able to experience your body, and experience the world. Every concept that you conjure up from your mind is a sort of loose association of your sensorimotor input. How can a robot understand the concept of a strawberry if all it can perceive of it is its shape and color and maybe the sound that it makes as it gets squished? How can you understand the "abstract" notion of strawberry without the incredibly sensible tactile feel, without the act of ripping off the stem, without the motor action of taking it to our mouths, without its texture and taste? When we as humans summon the strawberry thought, all of these concepts and ideas converge (distributed throughout the neurons in our minds) to form this abstract concept formed out of all of these many many correlations. A robot with no touch, no taste, no delicate articulate motions, no "serious" way to interact with and perceive its environment, no massive flow of information from which to chose and and reduce, will never attain human level intelligence. That's point 1. Point 2 is that mere pattern recogn
  • Ma Ru on 18 Mar 14
     
    All information *that gets processed* gets processed but now we arrived at a tautology. The whole problem is ultimately nobody knows what gets processed (not to mention how). In fact an absolute statement "all information" gets processed is very easy to dismiss because the characteristics of our sensors are such that a lot of information is filtered out already at the input level (e.g. eyes). I'm not saying it's not a valid and even interesting assumption, but it's still just an assumption and the next step is to explore scientifically where it leads you. And until you show its superiority experimentally it's as good as all other alternative assumptions you can make. I only wanted to point out is that "more processing" is not exactly compatible with some of the fundamental assumptions of the embodiment. I recommend Wilson, 2002 as a crash course.
  • Paul N on 24 Mar 14
     
    These deal with different things in human intelligence. One is the depth of the intelligence (how much of the bigger picture can you see, how abstract can you form concept and ideas), another is the breadth of the intelligence (how well can you actually generalize, how encompassing those concepts are and what is the level of detail in which you perceive all the information you have) and another is the relevance of the information (this is where the embodiment comes in. What you do is to a purpose, tied into the environment and ultimately linked to survival). As far as I see it, these form the pillars of human intelligence, and of the intelligence of biological beings. They are quite contradictory to each other mainly due to physical constraints (such as for example energy usage, and training time). "More processing" is not exactly compatible with some aspects of embodiment, but it is important for human level intelligence. Embodiment is necessary for establishing an environmental context of actions, a constraint space if you will, failure of human minds (i.e. schizophrenia) is ultimately a failure of perceived embodiment. What we do know is that we perform a lot of compression and a lot of integration on a lot of data in an environmental coupling. Imo, take any of these parts out, and you cannot attain human+ intelligence. Vary the quantities and you'll obtain different manifestations of intelligence, from cockroach to cat to google to random quake bot. Increase them all beyond human levels and you're on your way towards the singularity.
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They Finally Tested The 'Prisoner's Dilemma' On Actual Prisoners - And The Results Were... - 2 views

au.businessinsider.com/rs-dilemma-in-real-life-2013-7 science fun
shared by Marcus Maertens on 26 Jul 13 - No Cached
Ma Ru liked it
  • Marcus Maertens on 26 Jul 13
     
    ... and on students as well, who should actually know better!
  • Ma Ru on 26 Jul 13
     
    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.
  • johannessimon81 on 06 Aug 13
     
    Did the theoretical payoff matrix take into account what happens when you next encounter the person you cheated out of their coffee/cigarettes?
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Accidental Discovery Dramatically Improves Electrical Conductivity - - iTech Post - 3 views

www.itechpost.com/...es-electrical-conductivity.htm PHY technology
shared by Marcus Maertens on 18 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • Marcus Maertens on 18 Nov 13
     
    Oh those bloody physicists... someone forgot to turn off the lights and now they have a 400 times better conductive crystal. If science was always that easy, I would light a candle every day.
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Thijs Versloot on 18 Nov 13
     
    One of the reason why I like science, those random things that sometimes happen with outcomes you just didn't expect
  • johannessimon81 on 18 Nov 13
     
    Apparently this was not the first discovery of this effect involving SrTiO3. In an article from 2012 a conductance increase of 5 orders in magnitude is described (http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/nn203991q). But indeed many large impact discoveries are accidental...
  • Paul N on 18 Nov 13
     
    I thought we all knew already that science is just another form of directed random search :)))
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3D Holographic Power Point Presentation at ASE 2013 - 1 views

www.youtube.com/watch technology
shared by dejanpetkow on 29 Nov 13 - No Cached
  • dejanpetkow on 29 Nov 13
     
    THIS is how the ACT should give its science coffees, and I am not referring to the fat stage or the guy's dress. Next time I'm attending this traditional ACT exercise I expect such a show!
  • Thijs Versloot on 30 Nov 13
     
    Thats pretty cool indeed! I am for it in the next budget run! :) However, its technically not holographic though as this looks like a projection on Mylar film at 45 degrees from a bottom projector. It looks 3D and holographic as the background is transparent.
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Wanted: Volunteers for Yearlong Mock Mars Mission in Canadian Arctic - 2 views

www.space.com/mission-arctic-volunteers.html
shared by Beniamino Abis on 31 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Beniamino Abis on 31 Oct 13
     
    Mars Society, which advocates for manned exploration of the Red Planet, has released its requirements for the six volunteers who will be expected to spend 12 months at the society's Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station on Canada's Devon Island, which is about 1,450 kilometers from the North Pole, beginning in July 2014. Crewmembers will spend most of their time doing science, studying things such as carbon release from the permafrost and human performance in extreme conditions. If they want to go outside their base, they'll have to wear a spacesuit. If something breaks, they're the ones who are going to have to fix it.
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Noordwijk | Space Apps Challenge - 1 views

2014.spaceappschallenge.org/...noordwijk INF NASA apps
shared by Luís F. Simões on 08 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • On the weekend of the 12 and 13 April 2014 ESA Business Incubation Centre Noordwijk and Verhaert Connect are proud to host the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in the European Space Innovation Centre Noordwijk.
  • Developers, designers, innovators all kinds of creative thinkers from all seven continents will come together for two days of creativity and computer coding to address challenges of global importance. This year we expect to have about 40 challenges that support NASA's mission directorates in five themes: Earth Watch, Technology in Space, Human Spaceflight, Robotics and Asteroids.
  • Ma Ru on 09 Apr 14
     
    "Developers, designers, innovators all kinds of creative thinkers" aka "nerd objective-C programmers with no life"?
  • johannessimon81 on 09 Apr 14
     
    Well, the ACT actually proposed a few of the topics (BEWARE, THERE BE CUCUMBERS!). Some are not necessarily software based, like creating a LEGO model of the ExoMars rover (although they stripped LEGO from the challenge description and now it just says "create an ExoMars rover from hardware" ... ). Also we had no clue that they would host part of the challenge here at ESTEC - so our 5 or 6 challenges will all be hosted in Rome... ...
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