Advanced Concepts Team

En-route to metallic hydrogen, which would be superconductive at room temperature. Catch? Need a pressure that it beyond 10 million bar... good luck :)

Built in Silicon technology (Samsung's 28 nm process), its power is measured as one million neurons and 256 million synapses. It contains 5.4 million transistor being the largest IBM chip in these terms. All this said, it consumes less than 100 mW!! "These systems can efficiently process high-dimensional, noisy sensory data in real time, while consuming orders of magnitude less power than conventional computer architectures." IBM is working with initLabs to integrate the DVS retinal camera with these chips = real time image neuro-like image processing. In what seems to be a very successful project hugely funded by DARPA, "Our sights are now set high on the ambitious goal of integrating 4,096 chips in a single rack with 4 billion neurons and 1 trillion synapses while consuming ~4kW of power."

It may be feasible to use this in the Marsian atmosphere (9mbar CO2) to directly grow Carbon Nanofibres for infrastructural needs

nice!

gave it to Hanna, she is looking into it now. Manchester and Ghent University could be potential collaborators.

In case you are looking for inspiration for a new piece of ACT's meeting room furniture... "This is almost an example, not of mathematics but how mathematics changes when it becomes physics"

When submerged, water tends to cling to the top of the spikes, while air and water vapor accrue in the pores between them. The combination of trapped air and water vapor within these cavities forms a gaseous layer that deters moisture from seeping into the surface below. More materials with amazing properties. Might even be usefull for liquid fuel tanks?

I don't quite see how the trapped water vapor keeps the water out of the cavities... since the vapor is at the same low temperature as the water it should hardly exert any pressure at all. One would expect though that surface tension keeps water out of smaller cavities because it tries to minimize surface area. If the water would enter the cavities it would need increase its surface area dramatically which in turn is energetically unfavorable. Interesting application would also be in non-wetting electronics which might make cooling of circuitry a lot easier: you just sink your data center.

The sound track of Apolo mission. They have a full album devoted to the space race.

Research on new working methods? - another interesting application of the Oculus!

Seems a little speculative but pretty interesting thoughts. In regards to terraforming Mars this might be of interest: "During the daytime, plant-like microorganisms on a Martian-like surface could photosynthesize hydrogen peroxide. At night, when the atmosphere is relatively humid, they could use their stored hydrogen peroxide to scavenge water from the atmosphere, similar to how microbial communities in the Atacama use the moisture that salt brine extracts from the air to stay alive."

Useful for space exploration, e.g. subsurface water reservoirs such as Europa or Enceladus? Nanoengineers at the University of California, San Diego used an innovative 3-D printing technology they developed to manufacture multipurpose fish-shaped microrobots -- called microfish -- that swim around efficiently in liquids, are chemically powered by hydrogen peroxide and magnetically controlled.

New method for geoengineering? New insight into methanotrophs, bacteria that can oxidise methane, may help us develop an array of biotechnological applications that exploit methane and protect our environment from this potent greenhouse gas. Publishing in Nature, scientists led by Newcastle University have provided new understanding of how methanotrophs are able to use large quantities of copper for methane oxidation.

Good news for the imaging community: simpler and smaller x-ray sources are on the way.

Apparently, between 33 to 50%. But I'm not convinced the results are reproducible...

In this article the authors describe an improvement of their optical microscope techniques for which some of the received a Nobel prize in the past. They achieve resolutions far beyond the optical diffraction limit which is supposed to limit detail resolution due to quantum-mechanical effects. Their techniques include structured illuminiation (producing interference patterns), switchable fluorescent markers as well as multi-frame super resolution enhancement. Authors are able to take a single image in about 0.3 seconds which allows the study of protein processes in the cell: http://spon.de/vgTb7 . Although it is hard to imagine the application of many of these techniques for telescopes (except for super resolution), I am wondering if any of this could help building telescopes with increased optical power or reduced weight. Any ideas..?

Physicists have found a radical new way to confine electromagnetic energy without it leaking away, akin to throwing a pebble into a pond with no splash. The theory could have broad ranging applications from explaining dark matter to combating energy losses in future technologies.

I think (but am not sure) that is related to a topic that Dirk Bouwmeester's group at Leiden University works on for a while now: "Linked and knotted beams of light" http://irvinelab.uchicago.edu/papers/nphys1056.pdf

Really interesting bit hidden in the last paragraph: Monitoring coral bleaching from space with Envisat penetrating down to a depth of 10 m "[...] Envisat's Medium Resolution Imaging Spectrometer sensor can detect coral bleaching down to depths of ten metres, meaning Envisat could potentially map coral bleaching on a global scale."

No, it can't :-) Since 8 April 2012 Envisat is a proud holder of the title of one of the biggest pieces of space junk out there in LEO...

admittedly correct, so the past tense would have been a more appropriate choice... Nevertheless, plenty of data to look back at and Sentinel-3 will launch eventually! ;)

After this lunch lecture probably not as ground breaking as I thought earlier but still an interesting read... "The new solution involves supertranslations, something that I have yet to get my head properly around. But it seems to rely on the well known fact that an "image" of infalling matter seems to get imprinted onto the "surface" of a black hole."

Inspired by biology, chemists have created a cornucopia of molecular parts that act as switches, motors and ratchets. Now it is time to do something useful with them.

"V3Solar has developed a cone-shaped solar energy harvester that is claimed to generate over 20 times more electricity than a flat panel thanks to a combination of concentrating lenses, dynamic spin, conical shape, and advanced electronics."

Hmm.. that seems counter intuitive... how would it ever be that much better than a flat panel? Rotating the PV will only make sure only parts are illuminated. Operating temperature is a better argument, but that comes at the cost of exposure. Came across this little gem of a webpage, maybe we should outsource our impossibility EM drive work next time? :) https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-v3solars-spinning-solar-panel-cone-spin-cell-coolspin.t1166/

A neuronal network trained to paint the scene of a given photograph in the style of Kandinsky, van Gogh, or Munch. Their results look quite impressive. Unfortunately the article is in German, but the English paper (with plenty of pictures) is here: http://arxiv.org/pdf/1508.06576v2.pdf Malen wie Kandinsky, wie van Gogh, wie Munch nur auf Basis einer Fotovorlage? Natürlich gibt es begabte Kunstfälscher, die das können. Jetzt aber gelingt es auch Computern, und zwar auf höchst eindrucksvolle Weise. Drei Forscher von der Universität Tübingen haben es geschafft, einem sogenannten künstlichen neuronalen Netzwerk das Malen beizubringen.

Impressive stuff indeed. Paper came out one week ago. Multiple independent implementations have popped out since then: * https://github.com/Lasagne/Recipes/blob/master/examples/styletransfer/Art%20Style%20Transfer.ipynb * https://github.com/jcjohnson/neural-style * https://github.com/kaishengtai/neuralart

Cool study about measuring antineutrino emissions in order to prospect composition of Earth's crust and mantle.