Advanced Concepts Team

study on the environmental effects of graphene. related article http://gizmodo.com/graphene-might-be-way-worse-for-the-environment-than-we-1568823876

birds in the exclusion zone around Chernobyl are adapting to -- and may even be benefiting from -- long-term exposure to radiation, ecologists have found. The study, published in the British Ecological Society's journal Functional Ecology, is the first evidence that wild animals adapt to ionizing radiation, and the first to show that birds which produce most pheomelanin, a pigment in feathers, have greatest problems coping with radiation exposure.

The habitable zones of single stars are larger and wider as the temperatures increase. Although hotter stars have the widest regions where water can lie on the surface, they also have short lifetimes that limit the ability of life to evolve. Moons in close binary solar systems have a better chance of hosting life than those in single-star systems, new research has shown.

looks like the study Aurélie wanted to do ...

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.

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'.

really interesting new project over at Kickstarter. Fully funded within 2 days of being announced. This one will probably get into the millions.

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 ...

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.

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

Apr 30, Physics/General Physics A large pile of sand accumulates in front of the sledge when this is pulled over dry sand (left). On the wet sand (right) this does not happen.

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... :-)

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.

ooops ....

Where is the sticker saying "if found, please post this item unstamped to the following address"?

Yup, it's ours... Still, better take it out of the river than in the face. Such a big one especially.

Metasurfaces have been made, but the problem is that they usually are static and for quantum optic applications the question is how to make a rapidly configurable metasurface. for this Harvard has initiated a multidisciplinary team that involves theoretical physics, metamaterials, nanophotonic circuitry, quantum devices, plasmonics, nanofabrication, and computational modeling

Reading "wavefront engineering" in the title I thought it had to do with wave manipulation in the sea. Nothing to do though. As I read further in this article, Harvard thrives in forming multidisciplinarity groups. Their practice is to call the best team in each expertise they need to merge. Not one researcher from each discipline, but teams of experienced professors and a series of graduate students. Maybe we could discuss it in the retreat!

CNES research to detect warning signs of earthquakes in the ionosphere. Jaxa is also interested in conducting such studies. To my opinion it's worth taken a closer look at what they are doing!! 

Update: it seems we are already looking into it, I found this recent call from ESRIN: IONOSPHERIC SOUNDING FOR IDENTIFICATION OF PRE-SEISMIC ACTIVITY (RE-ISSUE) ESA Open Invitation To Tender AO7548 Open Date: 08/07/2013 Closing Date: 09/09/2013

Theorists expect that positronium, a sort of 'atom' consisting of an electron and an anti-electron, can be used to make a powerful gamma-ray laser. Scientists now report detailed calculations of the dynamics of a positronium BEC. This work is the first to account for effects of collisions between different positronium species.

We must get one of these. They had a goal of 50.000$ but got, instead more than 3,000,000$ !!

Really bad market analysis on their part...

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/formlabs/form-1-an-affordable-professional-3d-printer?ref=live i think this is the one I was talking about the other day. ~3M$ from 100k$ target in 2012. I think I remembered it though cos they got sued for patent infringement and it was the first time kickstarter had been included in the lawsuit. I may even have posted the story on diigo...

With the first ever production of synthesized "solar" jet fuel, the EU-funded SOLAR-JET project has successfully demonstrated the entire production chain for renewable kerosene obtained directly from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide (CO2), therein potentially revolutionizing the future of aviation. This process has also the potential to produce any other type of fuel for transport applications, such as diesel, gasoline or pure hydrogen in a more sustainable way.

By giving old mice young fresh blood, aging in their brains and hearts can be "reversed" by triggering the mouse's stem cells.

Already published in A.D. 1489...

The novel part here is that it can be scaled down to the cubesat platform. I then wondered, could we place multiple of such Cubesats in a 'decaying orbit' around the Sun? Fractionated will give spatial and temporal information which, even with a simple langmuir probe setup, can give information on density, temperature, velocity, ion energy distribution, potential.. Of course they will be lost relatively quickly, but more could be ejected from a mother ship which is orbiting at a safer distance.

For example like the KickSat projec https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/zacinaction/kicksat-your-personal-spacecraft-in-space Although a pc-reboot due to a radiation event in the electronics has reset the deployment timeline to approximately 2 days after re-entry... http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/05/06/kicksat-satellites_n_5273821.html

Next ACT movie Pleaseeeeee

Basically neuroscientists discovered time delay neural networks. Guess we were right on track with AI back in the 70s.

I guess it might also make sense to put a camera on an extension to look around corners without having to advance the vehicle to where it can be shot at... ?: Could the Oculus be used to let humans control humanoid robots? I guess so. Could humans perform experiments using such robots? Probably. Could Oculus be used to control these robots on the ISS? I guess so. --> Finally we eliminated the last need for humans in space!!! :-D (Maybe we could replace humans on Earth with robots that control one another through Oculus Rift...)

Even cooler would be to have like a swarm of drones around the tank to act as a sensor array and look around corners for you.

Human hibernation again. A group in groningen that started 6 years ago and a study under the US army that will do some limited trials with humans apparently.