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These are lasers whose lasing mode exhibits topologically-protected transport without magnetic fields. The underlying topological properties lead to a highly efficient laser, robust to defects and disorder, with single mode lasing even at very high gain values.

Random branches are collected, scanned to 3D, and connected with servos. Then a neural network is trained to control this "robot".

An interesting project that can teach you something about AI training bias. While the system can generate marvelous portraits, it was trained on images displaying not a smiling expression, so it will most likely fail on smiling photos.

Collecting space rocks.

if a geologist hears you calling them rocks they will curse you collectively. I am in a workshop where some of those are present and I constantly remind myself to call them "minerals".

minerals sound much better indeed ... but what is wrong with rocks ? :-)

one of these again. french illustrations from 1910 of life in the year 2000. some pleasingly close. a lot of flying and robots. some inexplicable (bunch of people staring at a horse). some bmi.

No idea... another one I don't get is the one with the waiter presenting some small black-white thing to the white hair guy on a chair.

love the clockwork orange one

serious gaming came back!

Prince Rupert's drops (PRDs), also known as Batavian tears, have been in existence since the early 17th century. They are made of a silicate glass of a high thermal expansion coefficient and have the shape of a tadpole. Typically, the diameter of the head of a PRD is in the range of 5-15 mm and that of the tail is 0.5 to 3.0 mm. PRDs have exceptional strength properties: the head of a PRD can withstand impact with a small hammer, or compression between tungsten carbide platens to high loads of ∼15 000 N, but the tail can be broken with just finger pressure leading to catastrophic disintegration of the PRD. We show here that the high strength of a PRD comes from large surface compressive stresses in the range of 400-700 MPa, determined using techniques of integrated photoelasticity. The surface compressive stresses can suppress Hertzian cone cracking during impact with a small hammer or compression between platens. Finally, it is argued that when the compressive force on a PRD is very high, plasticity in the PRD occurs, which leads to its eventual destruction with increasing load.

How do humans construct their mental representations of the passage of time? The universalist account claims that abstract concepts like time are universal across humans. In contrast, the linguistic relativity hypothesis holds that speakers of different languages represent duration differently. The precise impact of language on duration representation is, however, unknown. Here, we show that language can have a powerful role in transforming humans' psychophysical experience of time. Contrary to the universalist account, we found language-specific interference in a duration reproduction task, where stimulus duration conflicted with its physical growth. When reproducing duration, Swedish speakers were misled by stimulus length, and Spanish speakers were misled by stimulus size/quantity. These patterns conform to preferred expressions of duration magnitude in these languages (Swedish: long/short time; Spanish: much/small time). Critically, Spanish-Swedish bilinguals performing the task in both languages showed different interference depending on language context. Such shifting behavior within the same individual reveals hitherto undocumented levels of flexibility in time representation. Finally, contrary to the linguistic relativity hypothesis, language interference was confined to difficult discriminations (i.e., when stimuli varied only subtly in duration and growth), and was eliminated when linguistic cues were removed from the task. These results reveal the malleable nature of human time representation as part of a highly adaptive information processing system.

OHB and Luxspace venture to ensure human life on the Moon! Research on O2 production and others.....

Has BH at least completed an orbit yet? Or are they still at 10mins in microgravity?

" The goal of the APT program is to control and direct plant physiology to detect chemical, biological, radiological, and/or nuclear threats, as well as electromagnetic signals. " Now that is an advanced concept...

and look at this exceptional insight: "plants are easily deployed, self-powering, and ubiquitous in the environment, and the combination of these native abilities with specifically engineered sense-and-report traits will produce sensors occupying new and unique operational spaces" :-)

The generated inputs are quite strange, I wonder where else something like this occurs.

I agree soooo very much. An increasing number of journal and scientists are finally coming on board with this open science philosophy and I bet we will soon see a radical change of the whole peer review process and publication business

Let's keep a eye on this... Animals use odor cues to navigate through their environments, helping them locate targets and assess danger. Much of how animal brains organize, read out, and respond to odor stimuli across spatial and temporal scales is not well understood. To tackle these questions, Odor2Action uses a highly interdisciplinary team science approach. Our work uses fruit fly, honeybee, and mouse models to determine how neural representations of odor are generated, reformatted, and translated to generate useful behaviors that guide how animals interact with their environment.

reminds me of the methan smelling source finding study we did ...

I had missed this project somehow :)

Seems to be a fun playground for Spiking Neural Networks right (from my newbie PoV)?

About "Papers and patents are becoming less disruptive over time" https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05543-x. "Overall, our results deepen understanding of the evolution of knowledge and may guide career planning and science policy. To promote disruptive science and technology, scholars may be encouraged to read widely and given time to keep up with the rapidly expanding knowledge frontier. Universities may forgo the focus on quantity, and more strongly reward research quality56, and perhaps more fully subsidize year-long sabbaticals. Federal agencies may invest in the riskier and longer-term individual awards that support careers and not simply specific projects57, giving scholars the gift of time needed to step outside the fray, inoculate themselves from the publish or perish culture, and produce truly consequential work. Understanding the decline in disruptive science and technology more fully permits a much-needed rethinking of strategies for organizing the production of science and technology in the future."