In the space industry, concurrent design is frequently implemented as requirements are frequently not set but developed along the design process. In many cases this is due to the interconnection between (sub)systems. In the industry however, this is hardly done, but it is becoming more relevant as lead times and innovation speed needs to increase.
There is a webinar tomorrow 10 december from Agile on this topic regarding the semiconductor industry
"Hbar Technologies plans a Kickstarter effort to raise US $200,000 for the next phase design of an antimatter-propelled spaceship. The two scientists behind this design effort are a veteran Fermilab particle accelerator scientist and a former Los Alamos National Laboratory physicist and founding director of the U.S. Center for Space Nuclear Research. They originally developed it for NASA at the turn of the millennium."
On the basis of molecular dynamics simulations, we propose a design for a molecular water pump. The design uses a combination of charges positioned adjacent to a nanopore and is inspired by the structure of channels in the cellular membrane that conduct w
I just like this phrase: "It is remarkable that two designers working on their own could create gloves that meet the requirements for spaceflight - a task that normally requires a large team of experts,"
"Her goal was to design and synthesise a super capacitor with increased energy density while maintaining power density and long cycle life.
She designed, synthesised and characterised a novel core-shell nanorod electrode with hydrogemated TiO2(H-TiO2) core and polyaniline shell. H-TiO2 acts as the double layer electrostatic core.
Good conductivity of H-TiO2 combined with the high pseudo capacitance of polyaniline results in significantly higher overall capacitance and energy density while retaining good power density and cycle life.
This new electrode was fabricated into a flexible solid-state device to light an LED to test it in a practical application.
Khare then evaluated the structural and electrochemical properties of the new electrode. It demonstrated high capacitance of 203.3 mF/cm2 (238.5 F/g) compared to the next best alternative super capacitor in previous research of 80 F/g, due to the design of the core-shell structure.
This resulted in excellent energy density of 20.1 Wh/kg, comparable to batteries, while maintaining a high power density of 20540 W/kg. It also demonstrated a much higher cycle life compared to batteries, with a low 32.5% capacitance loss over 10,000 cycles at a high scan rate of 200 mV/s."
Starting with a commercial micro-fluidics polymer prototyping kit (from ThinXXS), the project successfully developed a 'template' polymer system into which silicon components can be simply 'plugged in'.
.... ""It will be functional, natural, designed food," Mironov said. "How do you want it to taste? You want a little bit of fat, you want pork, you want lamb? We design exactly what you want. We can design texture.""
sure ....
A free software tool that could revolutionize the drone industry to design and build your own drone/aircraft/fighter with a 3-D online software that generates aerodynamic information (maybe optimization also) about your own design.
... "gamification is really a cover for cynically exploiting human psychology for profit"
--> "Why Are Half a Million People Poking This Giant Cube?"
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2012/11/curiosity/
I love the linked article provided by Johannes! It expresses very elegantly why I still fail to understand even extremely smart and busy people in my view apparently waiting their time in playing computer games - but I recognise that there is something in games that we apparently need / gives us something we cherish ....
"In fact, half a million players so far have registered to help destroy the 64 billion tiny blocks that compose that one gigantic cube, all working in tandem toward a singular goal: discovering the secret that Curiosity's creator says awaits one lucky player inside. That's right: After millions of man-hours of work, only one player will ever see the center of the cube.
Curiosity is the first release from 22Cans, an independent game studio founded earlier this year by Peter Molyneux, a longtime game designer known for ambitious projects like Populous, Black & White and Fable.
Players can carve important messages (or shameless self-promotion) onto the face of the cube as they whittle it to nothing. Image: Wired
Molyneux is equally famous for his tendency to overpromise and under-deliver on his games.
In 2008, he said that his upcoming game would be "such a significant scientific achievement that it will be on the cover of Wired." That game turned out to be Milo & Kate, a Kinect tech demo that went nowhere and was canceled. Following this, Molyneux left Microsoft to go indie and form 22Cans.
Not held back by the past, the Molyneux hype train is going full speed ahead with Curiosity, which the studio grandiosely promises will be merely the first of 22 similar "experiments."
Somehow, it is wildly popular. The biggest challenge facing players of Curiosity isn't how to blast through the 2,000 layers of the cube, but rather successfully connecting to 22Cans' servers. So many players are attempting to log in that the server cannot handle it.
Some players go for utter efficiency, tapping rapidly to rack up combo multipliers and get more
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.
Get cracking, ACT AI team ;)
A new X prize designed to advance artificial intelligence has been announced at the TED (Technology, Entertainment and design) conference. The X Prize was set up to push the boundaries of technology to solve issues such as climate change. The winner, which will be announced at TED in 2020, will win $5m (£3.4m).
The way that Mexican jumping beans move by detecting temperature gradients could be applied to designing robotic beans. Most animals move around by using their appendages, such as legs, wings, or fins. But a few exceptional creatures employ rolling as a mode of locomotion.
A new type of structure for converting red light into blue has been unveiled by researchers in the US. Known as frequency doubling or second-harmonic generation (SHG), the conversion involves "nanocups", which are tiny, artificially designed 3D structures. SHG is used in light sources and in metrology applications - and the researchers believe that the new structures could be adapted to achieve frequency doubling in parts of the electromagnetic spectrum where it is currently not possible.
not much new that has not been shared here before ... BUT: we have done relativley little on any of them. for good reasons?? don't know - maybe time to look into some of these again more closely
Energy Efficiency(
Termite mounds inspired regulated airflow for temperature control of large structures, preventing wasteful air conditioning and saving 10% energy.[1]
Whale fins shapes informed the design of new-age wind turbine blades, with bumps/tubercles reducing drag by 30% and boosting power by 20%.[2][3][4]
Stingray motion has motivated studies on this type of low-effort flapping glide, which takes advantage of the leading edge vortex, for new-age underwater robots and submarines.[5][6]
Studies of microstructures found on shark skin that decrease drag and prevent accumulation of algae, barnacles, and mussels attached to their body have led to "anti-biofouling" technologies meant to address the 15% of marine vessel fuel use due to drag.[7][8][9][10]
Energy Generation(
Passive heliotropism exhibited by sunflowers has inspired research on a liquid crystalline elastomer and carbon nanotube system that improves the efficiency of solar panels by 10%, without using GPS and active repositioning panels to track the sun.[11][12][13]
Mimicking the fluid dynamics principles utilized by schools of fish could help to optimize the arrangement of individual wind turbines in wind farms.[14]
The nanoscale anti-reflection structures found on certain butterfly wings has led to a model to effectively harness solar energy.[15][16][17]
Energy Storage(
Inspired by the sunlight-to-energy conversion in plants, researchers are utilizing a protein in spinach to create a sort of photovoltaic cell that generates hydrogen from water (i.e. hydrogen fuel cell).[18][19]
Utilizing a property of genetically-engineered viruses, specifically their ability to recognize and bind to certain materials (carbon nanotubes in this case), researchers have developed virus-based "scaffolds" that
A 7x7x3m large unfolding structure from the car trunk.
"Before the design is ready to roll, the team still needs to tune up the solar components, a challenge made more difficult by the pavilion's inherent mobility, making it impossible to gauge how sunlight will fall on it."