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3More

coming back to the Moon - 2 views

www.googlelunarxprize.org/...about-the-prize
shared by Giusi Schiavone on 28 Feb 11 - Cached
  • Giusi Schiavone on 28 Feb 11
     
    The $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE will be awarded to the first privately funded teams to build robots that successfully land on the lunar surface, explore the Moon by moving at least 500 meters (~1/3 of a mile), and return high definition video and imagery. The Google Lunar X PRIZE expires whenever all prizes are claimed, or at the end of 2015. As of midnight on December 31st, 2010, the team registration for the Google Lunar X PRIZE is closed. No additional applicants will be accepted to join the competition. ...too late
  • LeopoldS on 02 Mar 11
     
    please see the act report on this from a few years ago - its on the wiki - should we maybe make an update analysis? any volunteers? Giusi?
  • Giusi Schiavone on 02 Mar 11
     
    I'll have a look
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Behavioural Economics? Try Biological Economics - 2 views

ipezone.blogspot.com/...-economics-try-biological.html science fun
shared by Loretta Latronico Poulain on 08 Mar 11 - No Cached
  • Luís F. Simões on 08 Mar 11
     
    The "Biological Economics" thing is a hyping (or misunderstanding) of the BBC article. The work it refers to seems to be an application of Complex Networks theory to financial networks. I found what appear to be some of the related publications: Andrew G. Haldane (April 2009) Rethinking the financial network (further references in the footnote to page 10) Erlend Nier, Jing Yang, Tanju Yorulmazer and Amadeo Alentorn (April 2008) Network models and financial stability Funny how these issues have been repeatedly popping up at the ACT in recent weeks. This connects both with the discussions on information spreading in networks, and with roadmaps' robustness.
1More

iphone application FP7 - Let's embrace space - 1 views

itunes.apple.com/...id438683645 iphone app ARIADNA space
shared by Christos Ampatzis on 30 May 11 - No Cached
  • Christos Ampatzis on 30 May 11
     
    pretty cool - Couldnt the ACT do sth similar with the ARIADNA projects?!
7More

Prof. Markrams Hirnmaschine (Startseite, NZZ Online) - 2 views

www.nzz.ch/...s_hirnmaschine_1.10736223.html AI neuroscience SciFi
shared by Luzi Bergamin on 29 May 11 - No Cached
  • Luzi Bergamin on 29 May 11
     
    A critical view on Prof. Markram's Blue Brain project (in German).
  • ...4 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 29 May 11
     
    A critical view on Prof. Markram's Blue Brain project (in German).
  • LeopoldS on 30 May 11
     
    so critical that the comment needed to be posted twice :-) ?
  • Luzi Bergamin on 30 May 11
     
    Yes, I know; I still don't know how to deal with this f.... Diigo Toolbar! Shame on me!!!
  • dejanpetkow on 30 May 11
     
    Would be nice to read something about the modelling, but it appears that there is nothing published in detail. Following the article, the main approach is to model each(!) neuron taking into account the spatial structure of the neurons positions. Once achieved they expect intelligent behaviour. And they need a (type of) supercomputer which does not exist yet.
  • Ma Ru on 31 May 11
     
    As far as I know it's sort of like "Let's construct an enormous dynamical system and see what happens"... i.e. a waste of taxpayer's money... Able to heal Alzheimer... Yeah... Actually I was on the conference the author is mentioning (FET 2011) and I have seen the presentations of all 6 flagship proposals. Following that I had a discussion with one of my colleagues about the existence of limits of the amount of bullshit politicians are willing to buy from scientists. Will there be a point at which politicians, despite their total ignorance, will realise that scientists simply don't deliver anything they promise? How long will we (scientists) be stuck in the viscous circle of have-to-promise-more-than-predecessors in order to get money? Will we face a situation when we'll be forced to revert to promises which are realistic? To be honest none of the 6 presentations convinced me of their scientific merit (apart from the one on graphene where I have absolutely no expertise to tell). Apparently a huge amount of money is about to be wasted.
  • Luzi Bergamin on 01 Jun 11
     
    It's not just "Let's construct an enormous dynamical system and see what happens", it's worse! Also the simulation of the cosmological evolution is/was a little bit of this type, still the results are very interesting and useful. Why? Neither the whole cosmos nor the human brain at the level of single neurons can be modelled on a computer, that would last aeons on a "yet-to-be-invented-extra-super-computer". Thus one has to make assumptions and simplifications. In cosmology we have working theories of gravitation, thermodynamics, electrodynamics etc. at hand; starting from these theories we can make reasonable assumptions and (more or less) justified simplifications. The result is valuable since it provides insight into a complex system under given, explicit and understood assumptions. Nothing similar seems to exist in neuroscience. There is no theory of the human brain and apparently nobody has the slightest idea which simplifications can be made without harm. Of course, Mr. Markram remains completely unaffected of ''details'' like this. Finally, Marek, money is not wasted, we ''build networks of excellence'' and ''select the brightest of the brightest'' to make them study and work at our ''elite institutions'' :-). I lively remember the stage of one of these "bestofthebest" from Ivy League at the ACT...
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http://arxiv.org/pdf/1103.0274v3 - 6 views

arxiv.org/1103.0274v3 phy science
shared by LeopoldS on 12 Jun 11 - No Cached
  • LeopoldS on 12 Jun 11
     
    here comes Sante's paper .... 
  • ...3 more comments...
  • Luzi Bergamin on 13 Jun 11
     
    Dario, do you have the "ACT certified bullshit" stamp ready?? :-) And did you see our old friend in the acknowledgments?
  • LeopoldS on 13 Jun 11
     
    Now I am curious Please elaborate
  • LeopoldS on 13 Jun 11
     
    Just saw that I am in the acknowledgements, your comment must thus refer to me
  • Luzi Bergamin on 13 Jun 11
     
    There is another very special old friend of Dario and myself, Lorenzo Iorio...
  • LeopoldS on 13 Jun 11
1More

Earth's two moons? It's not lunacy, but new theory - Yahoo! News - 6 views

news.yahoo.com/t-lunacy-theory-170156181.html PHY science moon
shared by Joris _ on 04 Aug 11 - No Cached
  • Joris _ on 04 Aug 11
     
    It seems a bit far-fetched, but ACT' adepts of planets and moons destruction may get inspired :p
1More

They got it -> Monopoles. - 1 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8307804.stm PHY NRG NAN technology
shared by Ma Ru on 14 Oct 09 - Cached
  • pacome delva on 19 Oct 09
     
    very interesting. Quasi-particles acting as magnetic monopoles.
2More

Geo-Engineering - Giving us time to act? - 0 views

www.imeche.org/...Geoeng geoengineering GEO report
shared by Ma Ru on 27 Aug 09 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Ma Ru on 27 Aug 09
     
    May be of interest for Friederike and Nina... Link to the full report at the bottom of the page.
  • LeopoldS on 28 Aug 09
     
    thanks Marek! hope that you are doing fine!!!
3More

Frozen cells are more likely to survive with the help of microfluidic technology - 0 views

www.rsc.org/...microfluidics_shock.asp phy chemistry microfluidics cryopreservation
shared by pacome delva on 01 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Scientists have used microfluidic technology to improve the survival rates of frozen cells.
  • Utkan Demirci, at Harvard Medical School, Cambridge, US, and colleagues have increased the chance of cell survival by 25 per cent over standard cryopreservation methods.
    • pacome delva
      pacome delva on 01 Sep 09
       
      there was a project on cryopreservation in the ACT no ?
3More

Better world: Take Friday off… forever - 15 September 2009 - New Scientist - 0 views

www.newscientist.com/...d-take-friday-off-forever.html social engineering
shared by Juxi Leitner on 16 Sep 09 - Cached
  • According to Facer, it was the crash of 1929 that led to the five-day week. "Before that it was common to work six-day weeks with 12 to 14-hour days. When the Great Depression hit, the idea was to share work around to get more people into employment." During the next big financial crisis in the 1970s, there was much talk of moving to a four-day week, but for a variety of reasons that didn't pan out. "Things are different now," says Facer. "I wouldn't be surprised if we could get 50 per cent or more of the workforce working four-day weeks in the next few years." Next up: the three-day week.
  • Ma Ru on 16 Sep 09
     
    As ACT is tasked to investigate innovative working methods... DO IT!!! :)
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 18 Sep 09
     
    but then we also have to ask who is willing to work on saturdays one day more for an extra 20% ...
3More

What it takes to be a team player - 2 views

physics.aps.org/...PhysRevE.79.066117 diigo
shared by Christos Ampatzis on 18 Sep 09 - Cached
  • Christos Ampatzis on 23 Oct 09
     
    PD's article presented to the idea storm: "They find the data can best be explained using a model that says an individual can join a team if she/he can bring some new, complementary skills to the group. This interpretation goes against the idea that an individual will tend to mainly join-and remain comfortable in-groups of "like-minded" people."
  • LeopoldS on 25 Oct 09
     
    nice article according to the abstract but can't download the paper (can we from within ESA? do you have it already downloaded - would be interested in reading the full paper - can we apply this to behaviour and size of the act?
  • Christos Ampatzis on 26 Oct 09
     
    Yes it is available within ESA's network - I have it anyway
1More

BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft unveils new controller - 0 views

news.bbc.co.uk/...8077369.stm no_idea_what_tag_to_give
shared by Ma Ru on 02 Jun 09 - Cached
  • Ma Ru on 02 Jun 09
     
    Looks like the next new ACT member?
1More

Postit :: Firefox Add-ons - 0 views

addons.mozilla.org/...3157 Tag discussion act management knowledge
shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - No Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Wasn't that what we actually wanted??? (del.icio.us + comments)
1More

03b Networks : Satellite based internet for Africa et al. - 0 views

www.o3bnetworks.com/index.html Africa act internet satellite
shared by ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09 - Cached
  • ESA ACT on 24 Apr 09
     
    Space and africa - some other people also though about it..
9More

Global Innovation Commons - 4 views

www.globalinnovationcommons.org innovation open IP
shared by LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09 - Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • LeopoldS on 31 Oct 09
     
    nice initiative!
  • ...6 more comments...
  • Ma Ru on 31 Oct 09
     
    Any viral licence is a bad license...
  • Francesco Biscani on 31 Oct 09
     
    I'm pretty confident I'm about to open a can of worms, but mind explaining why? :)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    I am less worried about the can of worms ... actually eager to open it ... so why????
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, the topic GPL vs other open-source licenses (e.g., BSD, MIT, etc.) is old as the internet and it has provided material for long and glorious flame wars. The executive summary is that the GPL license (the one used by Linux) is a license which imposes some restrictions on the way you are allowed to (re)use the code. Specifically, if you re-use or modify GPL code and re-distribute it, you are required to make it available again under the GPL license. It is called "viral" because once you use a bit of GPL code, you are required to make the whole application GPL - so in this sense GPL code replicates like a virus. On the other side of the spectrum, there are the so-called BSD-like licenses which have more relaxed requirements. Usually, the only obligation they impose is to acknowledge somewhere (e.g., in a README file) that you have used some BSD code and who wrote it (this is called "attribution clause"), but they do not require to re-distribute the whole application under the same license. GPL critics usually claim that the license is not really "free" because it does not allow you to do whatever you want with the code without restrictions. GPL proponents claim that the requirements imposed by the GPL are necessary to safeguard the freedom of the code, in order to avoid being able to re-use GPL code without giving anything back to the community (which the BSD license allow: early versions of Microsoft Windows, for instance, had the networking code basically copy-pasted from BSD-licensed versions of Unix). In my opinion (and this point is often brought up in the debates) the division pro/against GPL mirrors somehow the division between anti/pro anarchism. Anarchists claim that the only way to be really free is the absence of laws, while non-anarchist maintain that the only practical way to be free is to have laws (which by definition limit certain freedoms). So you can see how the topic can quickly become inflammatory :) GPL at the current time is used by aro
  • Francesco Biscani on 01 Nov 09
     
    whoa, the comment got cut off. Anyway, I was just saying that at the present time the GPL license is used by around 65% of open source projects, including the Linux kernel, KDE, Samba, GCC, all the GNU utils, etc. The topic is much deeper than this brief summary, so if you are interested in it, Leopold, we can discuss it at length in another place.
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    Thanks for the record long comment - am sure that this is longest ever made to an ACT diigo post! On the topic, I would rather lean for the GPL license (which I also advocated for the Marek viewer programme we put on source forge btw), mainly because I don't trust that open source is by nature delivering a better product and thus will prevail but I still would like to succeed, which I am not sure it would if there were mainly BSD like licenses around. ... but clearly, this is an outsider talking :-)
  • LeopoldS on 01 Nov 09
     
    btw: did not know the anarchist penchant of Marek :-)
  • Ma Ru on 01 Nov 09
     
    Well, not going into the discussion about GPL/BSD, the viral license in this particular case in my view simply undermines the "clean and clear" motivations of the initiative authors - why should *they* be credited for using something they have no rights for? And I don't like viral licences because they prevent using things released under this licence to all those people who want to release their stuff under a different licence, thus limiting the usefulness of the stuff released on that licence :) BSD is not a perfect license too, it also had major flaws And I'm not an anarchist, lol
3More

The Cathedral and the Bazaar - 7 views

catb.org/...cathedral-bazaar open source
shared by Francesco Biscani on 15 Nov 09 - Cached
  • Francesco Biscani on 15 Nov 09
     
    Albeit a bit dated, this is the classical Eric Raymond paper about the self-organizing open source model (the bazaar) compared to the usual closed software development model (the cathedral). Is science today more a bazaar or a cathedral?
  • LeopoldS on 16 Nov 09
     
    funny .... this is exactly the book that Franco mentioned during one of the first meetings I had with him on the act, our research, how to organise, the potential of new ways of cooperating etc ...
  • tvinko on 16 Nov 09
     
    Science today is a Basilica.
4More

PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) - 0 views

www.parc.com technology research innovation lab CMS
shared by nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09 - Cached
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    An interesting research centre in California! Focus areas: Business Services Electronic Materials, Devices, & Systems Information & Communication Technologies Biomedical Systems Cleantech
  • ...1 more comment...
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    and some very ACT- like interesting internships / ideas they have Automatic summarization of related documents http://www.parc.com/job/43/automatic-summarization-of-related-documents.html (remember Kev's idea?) Bayesian diagnosis http://www.parc.com/job/34/bayesian-diagnosis---summer.html Autonomous robotics UAVs UGVs http://www.parc.com/job/36/autonomous-robotics---summer.html
  • Juxi Leitner on 03 Dec 09
     
    XEROX PARC was definitely heavily involved in computer development: eg. mouse, GUI, ethernet, OO programming, all came out of PARC, and all that without focusing on computers but printers...
  • nikolas smyrlakis on 03 Dec 09
     
    aaah its the XEROX centre, didn't know. Yep they made the mouse and then handed it over nicely to Apple after IBM thought it was useless
4More

Pioneer Anomaly Solved By 1970s Computer Graphics Technique - Technology Review - 4 views

www.technologyreview.com/...26589 pioneer anomaly PHY astrophysics
shared by Luís F. Simões on 31 Mar 11 - No Cached
Nicholas Lan liked it
  • Now Frederico Francisco at the Instituto de Plasmas e Fusao Nuclear in Lisbon Portugal, and a few pals, say they've worked out where the thermal calculations went wrong. These guys have redone the calculations using a computer model of not only how the heat is emitted but how it is reflected off the various parts of the spacecraft too. The reflections turn out to be crucial.
  • Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1103.5222: Modelling The Reflective Thermal Contribution To The Acceleration Of The Pioneer Spacecraft
  • santecarloni on 01 Apr 11
     
    This is really cool. I know one of the authors and he is a good guy... the only thing that leaves me unsatisfied is that if the whole issue is related to thermal effects one should have seen the Pioneer effect all the time and not only at about 10 AU... ...or is there some thermal process that kicked in only at this distance?
  • Luís F. Simões on 26 Jul 11
     
    Here's an update on this theory: NASA Releases New Pioneer Anomaly Analysis "The mysterious force acting on the Pioneer spacecraft seems to be falling exponentially. That's a strong clue that on-board heat is to blame, says NASA." Heat emission 'most likely cause' of pioneer anomaly "What's more interesting is that, contrary to the original analysis conducted all those years ago, the deceleration does seem to be decelerating at an exponential rate -- just as one might expect from the radioactive decay of plutonium-238, which powers the two spacecraft. Turyshev concludes, "The most likely cause of the Pioneer anomaly is the anisotropic emission of on-board heat.""
3More

An Inflationary Differential Evolution Algorithm for Space Trajectory Optimization - 7 views

ieeexplore.ieee.org/...abs_all.jsp space trajectory optimization differential evolution PaGMO INF
shared by Ma Ru on 21 Apr 11 - No Cached
LeopoldS liked it
  • Ma Ru on 21 Apr 11
     
    I was so shocked not to see Dario in the authors list!
  • LeopoldS on 22 Apr 11
     
    still practically as an act paper ... the first author was the first RF of the team and the one who suggested Dario ...
  • Ma Ru on 22 Apr 11
     
    Yeah I've figured it out from his CV at the end of the article after posting :)
6More

Greg's Cable Map - 1 views

www.cablemap.info technology PHY IT
shared by LeopoldS on 15 Jul 11 - Cached
  • LeopoldS on 15 Jul 11
     
    this is the infrastructure that satellites have to compete with ....
  • ...3 more comments...
  • LeopoldS on 15 Jul 11
     
    the largest cable into the Netherlands comes in apparently at Katwijk - we should have super fast internet!!! :-)
  • Ma Ru on 15 Jul 11
     
    You mean: "then why don't we have super fast internet?" :-) If you zoom the map in, it's actually way past Noordwijk. My quess is this could be attached somewhere near the naval radio station area? This remembered me the good old times of bike trips in the dunes, eh...
  • LeopoldS on 16 Jul 11
     
    well, the description says clearly Katwijk; am quite sure that the maps are less accurate than the description ...
  • Ma Ru on 16 Jul 11
     
    I guess you are right... Is ACT already planning a find-and-cut expedition?
  • LeopoldS on 17 Jul 11
     
    now that we have the boat and thanks to Camilla it is still floating after the deluge ....
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