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Modular Mobile Phones (big G + Motorola behind this): Same idea applicable to satellite... - 1 views

www.engadget.com/...project-ara-modular-smartphone PHY space fun technology
shared by Dario Izzo on 30 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Dario Izzo on 30 Oct 13
     
    We thought about a modular SAT concept in tahe past (looking to the second issue of Acta Futura its already there) .... but never made concrete steps ....
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The Wisdom of (Little) Crowds - 1 views

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/...the-wisdom-of-little-crowds BIO science math groups
shared by Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
Dario Izzo liked it
  • Beniamino Abis on 30 Apr 14
     
    What is the best (wisest) size for a group of individuals? Couzin and Kao put together a series of mathematical models that included correlation and several cues. In one model, for example, a group of animals had to choose between two options-think of two places to find food. But the cues for each choice were not equally reliable, nor were they equally correlated. The scientists found that in these models, a group was more likely to choose the superior option than an individual. Common experience will make us expect that the bigger the group got, the wiser it would become. But they found something very different. Small groups did better than individuals. But bigger groups did not do better than small groups. In fact, they did worse. A group of 5 to 20 individuals made better decisions than an infinitely large crowd. The problem with big groups is this: a faction of the group will follow correlated cues-in other words, the cues that look the same to many individuals. If a correlated cue is misleading, it may cause the whole faction to cast the wrong vote. Couzin and Kao found that this faction can drown out the diversity of information coming from the uncorrelated cue. And this problem only gets worse as the group gets bigger.
  • Dario Izzo on 02 May 14
     
    Couzin research was the starting point that co-inspired PaGMO from the very beginning. We invited him (and he came) at a formation flying conference for a plenary here in ESTEC. You can see PaGMO as a collective problem solving simulation. In that respect, we learned already that the size of the group and its internal structure (topology) counts and cannot be too large or too random. One of the project the ACT is running (and currently seeking for new ideas/actors) is briefly described here (http://esa.github.io/pygmo/examples/example2.html) and attempts answering the question :"How is collective decision making influenced by the information flow through the group?" by looking at complex simulations of large 'archipelagos'.
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Lunecase - Bring the back of your iPhone to life! by Concepter - Kickstarter - 6 views

www.kickstarter.com/...he-back-of-your-iphone-to-life wireless power transfer WPT SPS
shared by LeopoldS on 30 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 30 Apr 14
     
    wireless power transmission made useful ? this application did certainly not come to my mind when Guy Pignolet showed me 12 years ago how his handy would lid up a small diode after our first SPS meeting in Paris ...
  • Thijs Versloot on 02 May 14
     
    Great idea to use either unused/wasted energy. Then again, the signal power (receiver floor) is steadily going down going from 3G to 5G, yet there might be more use of bandwidth to compensate this. It is funny though that you buy a device which could have the function build in it on the back from the start, yet you put a shell around it and then harness wireless power to give it that add-on functionality.
  • Isabelle Dicaire on 02 May 14
     
    Recently I came across this article in a Japanese newspaper about wireless power transmission applications in the women beauty business. It's probably not as useful as an iPhone cover but apparently there is a market for such things! http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/04/18/business/led-nails-light-up-when-calling/#.U2OcWV7v2X8
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10 Business Models That Rocked 2010 - 11 views

techcrunch.com/...siness-models-that-rocked-2010 business web technology
shared by Joris _ on 09 Jan 11 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 09 Jan 11
     
    What did work in 2010. The Quirky model might be of interest to ACT...
  • Luís F. Simões on 09 Jan 11
     
    Some great ideas in there. I particularly like the Flattr micropayments system, and find the concept of PayWithaTweet a bit disturbing.
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Deep Learning, an Overview - 2 views

www.idsia.ch/...DeepLearning30April2014.pdf AI
shared by Paul N on 07 May 14 - No Cached
  • Paul N on 07 May 14
     
    For those interested in AI, a good idea to keep track of what's recently been put out there
  • Ma Ru on 07 May 14
     
    From a quick glance, a serious contender to the most unreadable article ever. 60% of the pages of this document are references... Still, in the use of abbreviations doesn't even come close to aerospace...
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The Universe Is Programmable. We Need an API for Everything - 3 views

www.wired.com/...the-universe-is-programmable programming science efficiency
shared by johannessimon81 on 02 May 14 - No Cached
  • johannessimon81 on 02 May 14
     
    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... :-)
  • Dario Izzo on 02 May 14
     
    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.
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Dolphin inspired radar #biomimicry - 2 views

phys.org/...-10-dolphins-radar-device.html tech bio radar
shared by Thijs Versloot on 23 Oct 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 23 Oct 13
     
    The device, like dolphins, sends out two pulses in quick succession to allow for a targeted search for semiconductor devices, cancelling any background "noise",
  • ...1 more comment...
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 30 Oct 13
     
    and it sends out two pulses of opposite polarity, in succession, such that a semiconductor changes the negative to a positive one, amplifying the returning signal. Very interesting. Maybe we can combine different frequencies for identifying a single variable in earth observation. We already use more that one frequencies but for identifying one variable each.
  • Thijs Versloot on 31 Oct 13
     
    Could it be used to measure ocean acidification? I found a study that links sound wave propagation with ocean acidity. Maybe we are able to do such measurement from space even? "Their paper, "Unanticipated consequences of ocean acidification: A noisier ocean at lower pH," published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, found that fossil fuels are turning up the ocean's volume. Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, the overall pH of the world's oceans has dropped by about 0.1 units, with more of the changes concentrated closer to the poles. The authors found that sound absorption has decreased by 15 percent in parts of the North Atlantic and by 10 percent throughout the Atlantic and Pacific"
  • Athanasia Nikolaou on 31 Oct 13
     
    The last time I asked an oceanographer for the use of acoustic waves, she said it is still a bit problematic method to take into account its data, but we were referring to measuring ocean circulation. It may be more conclusive for PH measurements, though. The truth is that there is a whole underwater network with pulse emmitters/receivers covering the North Atlantic basin, remnant infrastructure for spying activities in the WW2 and in the cold war, that stays unexploited. We should look more into this idea
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Corkscrew planets spiral back and forth between two stars - 1 views

www.newscientist.com/...d-forth-between-two-stars.html
shared by Thijs Versloot on 14 May 15 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 14 May 15
     
    Maybe an idea for the next GTOC? :)
  • Paul N on 17 May 15
     
    It would be brilliant if an LBA twinsun kind of planet would be found. http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/1468/180227-lba1twinsun.gif
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The 50 Worst Inventions - TIME - 9 views

www.time.com/...0,29569,1991915,00.html innovation ideas fun inventions
shared by Dario Izzo on 21 Jun 13 - Cached
Ma Ru and johannessimon81 liked it
  • Dario Izzo on 21 Jun 13
     
    innovating has its risks :)
  • Ma Ru on 24 Jun 13
     
    They forgot to mention that Jimi Heselden, the owner of Segway Inc., died by falling of the cliff... of course while riding a Segway.
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Graphene coated silicon super-capacitors for energy storage - 1 views

news.vanderbilt.edu/...vice-electricity-silicon-chips technology supercapacitor
shared by Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Thijs Versloot on 25 Oct 13
     
    Recharge in seconds and efficiently store power for weeks between charges. Added bonus is the cheap and abundant components needed. One of the applications they foresee is to attach such a super-capacitor to the back of solar panels to store the power and discharge this during the night
  • LeopoldS on 27 Oct 13
     
    very nice indeed - is this already at a stage where we should have a closer look at it? what you think? With experience in growing carbon nanostructures, Pint's group decided to try to coat the porous silicon surface with carbon. "We had no idea what would happen," said Pint. "Typically, researchers grow graphene from silicon-carbide materials at temperatures in excess of 1400 degrees Celsius. But at lower temperatures - 600 to 700 degrees Celsius - we certainly didn't expect graphene-like material growth." When the researchers pulled the porous silicon out of the furnace, they found that it had turned from orange to purple or black. When they inspected it under a powerful scanning electron microscope they found that it looked nearly identical to the original material but it was coated by a layer of graphene a few nanometers thick. When the researchers tested the coated material they found that it had chemically stabilized the silicon surface. When they used it to make supercapacitors, they found that the graphene coating improved energy densities by over two orders of magnitude compared to those made from uncoated porous silicon and significantly better than commercial supercapacitors. Transmission electron microscope image of the surface of porous silicon coated with graphene. The coating consists of a thin layer of 5-10 layers of graphene which filled pores with diameters less than 2-3 nanometers and so did not alter the nanoscale architecture of the underlying silicon. (Cary Pint / Vanderbilt) The graphene layer acts as an atomically thin protective coating. Pint and his group argue that this approach isn't limited to graphene. "The ability to engineer surfaces with atomically thin layers of materials combined with the control achieved in designing porous materials opens opportunities for a number of different applications beyond energy storage," he said.
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Black Hole Analogue Discovered in South Atlantic Ocean - 0 views

www.technologyreview.com/...overed-in-south-atlantic-ocean science physics
shared by Thijs Versloot on 23 Aug 13 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 23 Aug 13
     
    Vortices in the South Atlantic are mathematically equivalent to black holes, say physicists, an idea that could lead to new ways of understanding how currents transport oil and garbage across oceans Black holes are regions of spacetime in which gravity is strong enough to prevent anything escaping, even light.
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How Einstein Thought: Why "Combinatory Play" Is the Secret of Genius - 0 views

www.brainpickings.org/...ought-combinatorial-creativity
shared by Thijs Versloot on 30 Jun 15 - No Cached
  • Thijs Versloot on 30 Jun 15
     
    by Maria Popova "Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought." For as long as I can remember - and certainly long before I had the term for it - I've believed that creativity is combinatorial: Alive and awake to the world, we amass a collection of cross-disciplinary building blocks - knowledge, memories, bits of information, sparks of inspiration, and other existing ideas - that we then combine and recombine, mostly unconsciously, into something "new."
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Testing shows using microwaves to propel a craft into space might work - 4 views

phys.org/...owaves-propel-craft-space.html technology propulsion microwaves science
shared by Nina Nadine Ridder on 23 Jul 15 - No Cached
Thijs Versloot and jcunha liked it
  • Nina Nadine Ridder on 23 Jul 15
     
    A team of researchers at Colorado based Escape Dynamics is reporting that initial tests indicate that it might really be possible to launch space-planes into space using microwaves sent from the ground, to allow for a single stage spacecraft. If the idea pans out, the cost savings for sending satellites (or perhaps humans) into orbit could be considerable.
  • Thijs Versloot on 27 Jul 15
     
    Not very new, but a very slick video nonetheless! Will it work? I am not so sure whether "just engineering" applies in this case. The array of antenna's required is quite significant to compensate for beam losses. Wall plug efficiency is not that high therefore, then again.. solar energy is for free almost in the future so who cares.. let's go for it! :)
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Picture This: NVIDIA GPUs Sort Through Tens of Millions of Flickr Photos - 2 views

blogs.nvidia.com/...flickr AI
shared by Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Alexander Wittig on 21 Jul 15
     
    Strange and exotic cityscapes. Desolate wilderness areas. Dogs that look like wookies. Flickr, one of the world's largest photo sharing services, sees it all. And, now, Flickr's image recognition technology can categorize more than 11 billion photos like these. And it does it automatically. It's called "Magic View." Magical deep learning! Buzzword attack!
  • ...4 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 21 Jul 15
     
    and here comes my standard question: how can we use this for space? fast detection of natural disasters onboard?
  • Alexander Wittig on 22 Jul 15
     
    Even on ground. You could for example teach it what nuclear reactors or missiles or other weapons you don't want look like on satellite pictures and automatically scan the world for them (basically replacing intelligence analysts).
  • Alexander Wittig on 23 Jul 15
     
    In fact, I think this could make a nice ACT project: counting seals from satellite imagery is an actual (and quite recent) thing: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0092613 In this publication they did it manually from a GeoEye 1 b/w image, which sounds quite tedious. Maybe one can train one of those image recognition algorithms to do it automatically. Or maybe it's a bit easier to count larger things, like elephants (also a thing).
  • jcunha on 23 Jul 15
     
    In HiPEAC (High Performance, embedded architecture and computation) conference I attended in the beginning of this year there was a big trend of CUDA GPU vs FPGA for hardware accelerated image processing. Most of it orbitting around discussing who was faster and cheaper with people from NVIDIA in one side and people from Xilinx and Intel in the other. I remember of talking with an IBM scientist working on hardware accelerated data processing working together with the Radio telescope institute in Netherlands about the solution where they working on (GPU CUDA). I gathered that NVIDIA GPU suits best in applications that somehow do not rely in hardware, having the advantage of being programmed in a 'easy' way accessible to a scientist. FPGA's are highly reliable components with the advantage of being available in radhard versions, but requiring specific knowledge of physical circuit design and tailored 'harsh' programming languages. I don't know what is the level of rad hardness in NVIDIA's GPUs... Therefore FPGAs are indeed the standard choice for image processing in space missions (a talk with the microelectronics department guys could expand on this), whereas GPUs are currently used in some ground based (radio astronomy or other types of telescopes). I think that on for a specific purpose as the one you mentioned, this FPGA vs GPU should be assessed first before going further.
  • Paul N on 29 Jul 15
     
    You're forgetting power usage. GPUs need 1000 hamster wheels worth of power while FPGAs can run on a potato. Since space applications are highly power limited, putting any kind of GPU monster in orbit or on a rover is failed idea from the start. Also in FPGAs if a gate burns out from radiation you can just reprogram around it. Looking for seals offline in high res images is indeed definitely a GPU task.... for now.
  • jcunha on 31 Jul 15
     
    The discussion of how to make FPGA hardware acceleration solutions easier to use for the 'layman' is starting btw http://reconfigurablecomputing4themasses.net/.
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New methods to make longer streams of plasma with greater longevity could lead to laser... - 0 views

phys.org/...er-streams-plasma-greater.html technology PHY laser filamentation space
shared by jcunha on 25 Sep 15 - No Cached
  • jcunha on 25 Sep 15
     
    More developments in the laser filamentation community. Makes me wonder again about Christophe's ideas for a space-formed filament as new and efficient microwave waveguide.
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Apple's Mistake - 5 views

www.paulgraham.com/apple.html
shared by Francesco Biscani on 16 Jun 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Francesco Biscani on 16 Jun 10
     
    Nice opinion piece.
  • LeopoldS on 16 Jun 10
     
    nice indeed .... especially like: "They make such great stuff, but they're such assholes. Do I really want to support this company? Should Apple care what people like me think? What difference does it make if they alienate a small minority of their users? There are a couple reasons they should care. One is that these users are the people they want as employees. If your company seems evil, the best programmers won't work for you. That hurt Microsoft a lot starting in the 90s. Programmers started to feel sheepish about working there. It seemed like selling out. When people from Microsoft were talking to other programmers and they mentioned where they worked, there were a lot of self-deprecating jokes about having gone over to the dark side. But the real problem for Microsoft wasn't the embarrassment of the people they hired. It was the people they never got. And you know who got them? Google and Apple. If Microsoft was the Empire, they were the Rebel Alliance. And it's largely because they got more of the best people that Google and Apple are doing so much better than Microsoft today. Why are programmers so fussy about their employers' morals? Partly because they can afford to be. The best programmers can work wherever they want. They don't have to work for a company they have qualms about. But the other reason programmers are fussy, I think, is that evil begets stupidity. An organization that wins by exercising power starts to lose the ability to win by doing better work. And it's not fun for a smart person to work in a place where the best ideas aren't the ones that win."
  • Ma Ru on 16 Jun 10
     
    Poor programmers can complain, but they will keep developing applications for iPhone as long as their bosses will tell them to do so... From my experience in mobile software development I assure you it's not the pain of the programmer that dictates what is done, but the customer's demand. Even though like this the quality of applications is somewhat worse than it could be, clients won't complain as they have no reference point. And things will stay as they are: apple censoring the applications, clients paying for stuff that "sometimes just does not work" (it's normal, isn't it??), and programmers complaining, but obediently making iPhone apps...
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Radiation fears stalk stellar mission - 0 views

physicsworld.com/...43063 space_mission GAIA solar_radiation
shared by pacome delva on 05 Jul 10 - Cached
  • Concern over ESA's handling of the radiation issue caused Michael Perryman, former GAIA project scientist, to resign from the agency in 2008. But GAIA science-team member Lennart Lindegren, an astronomer at Lund Observatory in Sweden, is confident that GAIA's unprecedented accuracy will be feasible. GAIA researchers will continue to perform tests and calibrations until at least 2011, which will include irradiating the CCDs at space-like temperatures. Lindegren admits, however, that they can never be certain of success until the spacecraft is in orbit and starts sending back data.
  • pacome delva on 05 Jul 10
     
    metamaterials to stop radiations?
  • LeopoldS on 05 Jul 10
     
    hmm ... in the optical range it is already a bit tricky .... lets brainstorm a bit about it ... anything in the literature? Luzi?
  • pacome delva on 06 Jul 10
     
    the components of the metamaterial need to have a size inversely proportional to the wavelenght, but here we are talking about high energy protons. So the idea was: is there metamaterials that change the electrical properties to solve this problem of holes in the material... but i dont have a clue !
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Physics - Electronics without solids - 0 views

physics.aps.org/...PhysRevLett.103.140405 phy atomtronics cold_atoms
shared by pacome delva on 01 Oct 09 - Cached
  • The idea is to someday use such a circuit to study basic many-body physics in a completely controlled and adjustable system, without the messiness of crystal defects or impurities found in real semiconductors.
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Forget Brainstorming - Newsweek - 6 views

www.newsweek.com/...forget-brainstorming.html
shared by Dario Izzo on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Dario Izzo on 03 Aug 10
     
    nice link from toby .... it contains some of the things that I have been saying to the wind!!
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Francesco Biscani on 03 Aug 10
     
    Oh god, this is so beautiful... I'm not even going to quote the best parts, they are so many :)
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    "employees need to be able to put their own ideas into practice" - but they also need to want to do it ....
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    "In Galinsky's lab, people were more creative after watching a slide show about China: a 45-minute session increased creativity scores for a week." Hippo: we need more pictures from you!!
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    "Do something only you would come up with-that none of your friends or family would think of." - according to them, this is one of their success recipes .... a recipe for the team?
  • Ma Ru on 04 Aug 10
     
    >Get moving. I always said that fitness test should be included in the recruitment process!!!
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Exotic matter : Insight : Nature - 5 views

www.nature.com/...index.html nan phy
shared by jmlloren on 03 Aug 10 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • jmlloren on 03 Aug 10
     
    Trends in materials and condensed matter. Check out the topological insulators. amazing field.
  • ...12 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 03 Aug 10
     
    Aparently very interesting, will it survive the short hype? Relevant work describing mirror charges of topological insulators and the classical boundary conditions were done by Ismo and Ari. But the two communities don't know each other and so they are never cited. Also a way to produce new things...
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    Thanks for noticing! Indeed, I had no idea that Ari (don't know Ismo) was involved in the field. Was it before Kane's proposal or more recently? What I mostly like is that semiconductors are good candidates for 3D TI, however I got lost in the quantum field jargon. Yesterday, I got a headache trying to follow the Majorana fermions, the merons, skyrnions, axions, and so on. Luzi, are all these things familiar to you?
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Ismo Lindell described in the early 90's the mirror charge of what is now called topological insulator. He says that similar results were obtained already at the beginning of the 20th century... Ismo Lindell and Ari Sihvola in the recent years discussed engineering aspects of PEMCs (perfect electro-megnetic conductors,) which are more or less classical analogues of topological insulators. Fundamental aspects of PEMCs are well knwon in high-energy physics for a long time, recent works are mainly due to Friedrich Hehl and Yuri Obukhov. All these works are purely classical, so there is no charge quantisation, no considerations of electron spin etc. About Majorana fermions: yes, I spent several years of research on that topic. Axions: a topological state, of course, trivial :-) Also merons and skyrnions are topological states, but I'm less familiar with them.
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    "Non-Abelian systems1, 2 contain composite particles that are neither fermions nor bosons and have a quantum statistics that is far richer than that offered by the fermion-boson dichotomy. The presence of such quasiparticles manifests itself in two remarkable ways. First, it leads to a degeneracy of the ground state that is not based on simple symmetry considerations and is robust against perturbations and interactions with the environment. Second, an interchange of two quasiparticles does not merely multiply the wavefunction by a sign, as is the case for fermions and bosons. Rather, it takes the system from one ground state to another. If a series of interchanges is made, the final state of the system will depend on the order in which these interchanges are being carried out, in sharp contrast to what happens when similar operations are performed on identical fermions or bosons." wow, this paper by Stern reads really weired ... any of you ever looked into this?
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    C'mon Leopold, it's as trivial as the topological states, AKA axions! Regarding the question, not me!
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    just looked up the wikipedia entry on axions .... at least they have some creativity in names giving: "In supersymmetric theories the axion has both a scalar and a fermionic superpartner. The fermionic superpartner of the axion is called the axino, the scalar superpartner is called the saxion. In some models, the saxion is the dilaton. They are all bundled up in a chiral superfield. The axino has been predicted to be the lightest supersymmetric particle in such a model.[24] In part due to this property, it is considered a candidate for the composition of dark matter.[25]"
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    Thank's Leopold. Sorry Luzi for being ironic concerning the triviality of the axions. Now, Leo confirmed me that indeed is a trivial matter. I have problems with models where EVERYTHING is involved.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Well, that's the theory of everything, isn't it?? Seriously: I don't think that theoretically there is a lot of new stuff here. Topological aspects of (non-Abelian) theories became extremely popular in the context of string theory. The reason is very simple: topological theories are much simpler than "normal" and since string theory anyway is far too complicated to be solved, people just consider purely topological theories, then claiming that this has something to do with the real world, which of course is plainly wrong. So what I think is new about these topological insulators are the claims that one can actually fabricate a material which more or less accurately mimics a topological theory and that these materials are of practical use. Still, they are a little bit the poor man's version of the topological theories fundamental physicists like to look at since electrdynamics is an Abelian theory.
  • jmlloren on 04 Aug 10
     
    I have the feeling, not the knowledge, that you are right. However, I think that the implications of this light quantum field effects are great. The fact of being able to sustain two currents polarized in spin is a technological breakthrough.
  • LeopoldS on 04 Aug 10
     
    not sure how much I can contribute to your apparently educated debate here but if I remember well from my work for the master, these non-Abelian theories were all but "simple" as Luzi puts it ... and from a different perspective: to me the whole thing of being able to describe such non-Abelian systems nicely indicates that they should in one way or another also have some appearance in Nature (would be very surprised if not) - though this is of course no argument that makes string theory any better or closer to what Luzi called reality ....
  • Luzi Bergamin on 04 Aug 10
     
    Well, electrodynamics remains an Abelian theory. From the theoretical point of view this is less interesting than non-Abelian ones, since in 4D the fibre bundle of a U(1) theory is trivial (great buzz words, eh!) But in topological insulators the point of view is slightly different since one always has the insulator (topological theory), its surrounding (propagating theory) and most importantly the interface between the two. This is a new situation that people from field and string theory were not really interested in.
  • Dario Izzo on 04 Aug 10
     
    guys... how would you explain this to your gran mothers?
  • jmlloren on 05 Aug 10
  • LeopoldS on 07 Aug 10
     
    *you* tried *your* best .... ??
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