Advanced Concepts Team

Droplets can be made to chase each other around a track and even self-assemble into devices, simply by mixing two everyday liquids. This remarkable discovery made by scientists in the US has already been used to create beautiful shapes and patterns, and could also be exploited to create optical components that assemble themselves and even to clean surfaces. It looks very like Jojo's self-assembling balls :p

A system of nine quantum bits (qubits) that is robust to errors that would normally destroy a quantum computation has been created by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) and Google. The device relies on a quantum error-correction protocol, which the team says could be deployed in practical quantum computers of the future.

As Stevens says in the new article, researchers now know that increased nighttime light exposure tracks with increased rates of breast cancer, obesity and depression. Correlation isn't causation, of course, and it's easy to imagine all the ways researchers might mistake those findings. The easy availability of electric lighting almost certainly tracks with various disease-causing factors: bad diets, sedentary lifestyles, exposure to they array of chemicals that come along with modernity. Very difficult to prove causation I would think, but there are known relationships between hormone levels and light.

There is actually a windows program called flux, that changes the temperature on your screen to match normal light cycles. When the sun sets it switches to a "warmer" more reddish tint on your screen to promote sleepiness. The typically bright blue/neon white settings of most pc settings is quite "awakening" and keeps your brain running for longer. This impacts your sleeping patterns and all the consequences of that. Amazingly, this flux thing does have an effect. That being said, I wouldn't be too quick to blame it all on PC/artificial lighting time. Sedentary lifestyles, etc can very well place one in a position of long term pc/phone usage so it's quite hard to draw a causal link.

nice - also exists for MAC btw: https://justgetflux.com/news/pages/mac/

looks like an application of laser filamentation ...

"Today, I'm excited to share that we've successfully completed our first test flight of these aircraft in the U.K.," 

Researchers have proposed a new "acoustic topological insulator" that could help alleviate sound scattering problems by transmitting sound in certain directions without any backscattering.

If I understood correctly the triangular structure would channel the incident sound wave to a unique direction between two options, according to the rotation direction of the cylinders included in its mesh. So, one (possibly two) directions left to detect the hypothetical submarines? Very interesting though, I hope no oceanographers take measurements simultaneously to the signals as climate models will get even more wrong...!

NASA Releases Tool Enabling Citizen Scientists to Examine Asteroid Vesta Vesta Trek is a free, web-based application that provides detailed visualizations of Vesta, one of the largest asteroids in our solar system. NASA's Dawn spacecraft studied Vesta from July 2011 to September 2012. Data gathered from multiple instruments aboard Dawn have been compiled into Vesta Trek's user-friendly set of tools, enabling citizen scientists and students to study the asteroid's features. The application includes: -- Interactive maps with the ability to overlay a growing range of data sets including topography, mineralogy, abundance of elements and geology, as well as analysis tools for measuring the diameters, heights and depths of surface features and more. -- 3-D printer-exportable topography so users can print physical models of Vesta's surface. -- Standard keyboard gaming controls to manoever a first-person visualization of "flying" across the surface of the asteroid. "There's nothing like seeing something with your own eyes, but these types of detailed data-visualizations are the next best thing," said Kristen Erickson, Director, Science Engagement and Partnerships at NASA Headquarters in Washington DC.

Stacking laser printed supercapacitors (no clean room required btw) has lead to about 1100F/g and thus about 20-40Wh/L. For supercapacitors thats pretty damn good. For reference, Li-ion recently reached 650Wh/L. The gap is closing, although for supercaps of this type the theoretical maximum is 1400F/g.

First peer review study about he criticality of rare-earth metals. It can be read "They found that supply limits for many metals critical in the emerging electronics sector (including gallium and selenium) are the result of supply risks. The environmental implications of mining and processing present the greatest challenges with platinum-group metals, gold, and mercury. For steel alloying elements (including chromium and niobium) and elements used in high-temperature alloys (tungsten and molybdenum), the greatest vulnerabilities are associated with supply restrictions" Questions about estimation apart, this can be a valuable market for asteroid mining.. (ot just more market for Infinium-like companies http://www.technologyreview.com/news/527526/a-cleaner-cheaper-way-to-make-metals/).

This is too funny...

How I wish I would have been tougher with the guy when he showed up here ....

you should have told him that we're very into it, if they could only make a small deposit in our account and we'll send them a lot of money later

Following a discussion with Kzrystof, where he came up with gravity anomaly reasons for why Dutch people are so tall. Funny to see this fact gathers scientific attention as well.

We solved this darwinian riddle years ago. They must be tall in order to find their partners above the fog and thus reproduce in the dutch weather.

Using dielectric materials as efficient EM radiators and receivers can scale down these antenna's to the chip level, reducing both weight and power consumption. The infamous internet-of-things one step closer. But could we also transmit power this way?? "In dielectric aerials, the medium has high permittivity, meaning that the velocity of the radio wave decreases as it enters the medium," said Dr Dhiraj Sinha, the paper's lead author. "What hasn't been known is how the dielectric medium results in emission of electromagnetic waves. This mystery has puzzled scientists and engineers for more than 60 years." The researchers determined that the reason for this phenomenon is due to symmetry breaking of the electric field associated with the electron acceleration The researchers found that by subjecting the piezoelectric thin films to an asymmetric excitation, the symmetry of the system is similarly broken, resulting in a corresponding symmetry breaking of the electric field, and the generation of electromagnetic radiation.

Researchers in Bangalore, India together with the Indian Space Research organization come up with an intelligent self-healing algorithm that can locate open-circuits faults and repair them in real-time. They used an insulating silicon oil containing conductive particles. Whenever a fault happens, an electric field develops there, causing the fluid to move in a 'thermodynamic automaton' way repairing the fault. The researchers make clear it could be one advantage for electronics in harsh environments, such as in space satellites.

A common data hub that allows the representation and comparison of data from numerous space missions. "The IMPEx portal offers tools for the visualization and analysis of datasets from different space missions. Furthermore, several computational model databases are feeding into the environment." As they say, with its massive 3D-visualization capabilities it offers the possibility of displaying spacecraft trajectories, planetary ephemerides as well as scientific representations of observational and simulation datasets.

Anna will rule the world!!!!

So... start preparing to be required to attach your brain scan along with your job application...

Does any of you know this Berlin based Design Research Lab - they seem to do some interesting "stuff"

Instant offices for rent .... a good way to have the required dynamic set-up

"Is music simply a pleasant accompaniment to thought, or a driving force behind it? This show examines music's influence on the development of modern science and the foundations of acoustics." See also http://www.nature.com/news/strike-a-chord-1.17127