Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Video. Show all posts

June 5, 2016

Sea lice mob devours pig from the inside out

Finding a dead body in the ocean may be gruesome, but for forensic scientists it can also be perplexing. Although the way a body decomposes on land is well understood, little is known about how human remains fare underwater.

Now a pioneering experiment lead by forensic scientist Gail Anderson from Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, is using dead pigs as a model for humans to gain insight. In this video, a pig carcass is tracked as it turns to bones in the ocean, capturing the scavengers that visit the body. Sharks are unable to tuck in since it's enclosed, giving sea lice exclusive access to the remains. They enter orifices in droves to feast on the animal from the inside out and congregate on the cage bars to prevent other arthropods, like shrimp, from getting a bite. "By the end of the fourth day, the sea lice had left and the pigs were reduced to bones," says Anderson.

Shrimp arrive to pick at the skeleton, eventually removing all the cartilage. The team then recovered the bones which, strangely, were jet black for a period of 48 hours. "This is something that has never been seen before," says Lynne Bell, a member of the team. "Colleagues are working to identify the micro-organisms collected close to the bone, which may help to identify the unique chemistry of the change."

Stick around till the end for a surprise visitor. :)

Interested in the science behind decay? Check this out;
After Life: The Science of Decay

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/nstv/2012/10/sea-lice-mob-devours-pig-from-the-inside-out.html

Evolution on Acid

Nudibranchs or sea slugs come in a truly stupendous amount of shapes, sizes and colors.

50 Shades of Nudibranch

The Three Laws of Robotics

The three laws form an organizing principle and unifying theme for Asimov's robotic-based fiction, appearing in his Robot series and the stories linked to it. The Laws are incorporated into almost all of the positronic robots appearing in his fiction, and cannot be bypassed, being intended as a safety feature. Many of Asimov's robot-focused stories involve robots behaving in unusual and counter-intuitive ways as an unintended consequence of how the robot applies the Three Laws to the situation in which it finds itself. Other authors working in Asimov's fictional universe have adopted them and references, often parodic, appear throughout science fiction as well as in other genres.

The original laws have been altered and elaborated on by Asimov and other authors. Asimov himself made slight modifications to the first three in various books and short stories to further develop how robots would interact with humans and each other. In later fiction where robots had taken responsibility for government of whole planets and human civilizations, Asimov also added a fourth, or zeroth law, to precede the others:

0. A robot may not harm humanity, or, by inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics

Here they are, straight from Asimov himself.

Let's crack open a bottle

"A popular party trick is to fill a glass bottle with water and hit the top of the bottle with an open hand, causing the bottom of the bottle to break open. We investigate the source of the catastrophic cracking through the use of high-speed video and an accelerometer attached to the bottom of a glass bottle.

Upon closer inspection, it is obvious that the acceleration caused by hitting the top of the bottle is followed by the formation of bubbles near the bottom. The nearly instantaneous acceleration creates an area of low pressure on the bottom of the bottle where cavitation bubbles form. Moments later, the cavitation bubbles collapse at roughly 10 times the speed of formation, causing the bottle to break. The accelerometer data shows that the bottle is broken after the bubbles collapse and that the magnitude of the bubble collapse is greater than the initial impact. The fluid dynamics video highlights that this trick will not work if the bottle is empty nor if it is filled with a carbonated fluid because the vapor bubbles fill with the CO2 dissolved in the liquid, preventing the bubbles from collapsing.

A modified cavitation number, including the acceleration of the fluid (a), vapor pressure (Pv), and depth of the fluid column (h), is derived to determine when cavity inception occurs such that Ca =(Patm − Pv)/(ρh(a − g)). Through experimentation, visible cavitation bubbles form when Ca ≤ 0.5. The experiments, based on the modified cavitation number, reveal that the easiest way to break a glass bottle with your bare hands is to fill it with a non-carbonated, high vapor pressure fluid, and strike it hard."

We are the borrowers

For two months in summer 2011, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, presenter Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which moulds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old.

Lots of jaw dropping footage! They even track individual nitrogen atoms as they get passed along between organisms!

"When we die, our bodies become the grass, and the antelope eat the grass. And so we are all connnected in the great Circle of Life." -Mufasa, The Lion King

The Inheritors

William Golding, best known for Lord of the Flies, considers his 1955 novel - The Inheritors, to be his best. It follows one of the last remaining tribes of Neanderthals as they make first contact with strange, godlike beings... homo sapiens.

Now, more than 50 years later, this classic piece of work is finally getting a soundtrack! It took James Holden 7 years to deliver this groundbreaking record that fearlessly pushes into new territory but it has been worth the wait. It's hard to describe but it sounds a bit like a mix of krautrock & shoegaze mixed together with techno ideas and a rave ethos. He crafted The Inheritors using his extensive analogue modular system and hand-coded computer programs, which he used to build a series of unique analogue-digital machines. The result is something far removed from the clean overly produced dance music of today.

Hypnotic. Raw. Tribal. Powerful.
Struggle. Life at its peak. Beautiful.

An analogue|organic machine is dying, crying for help cause it doesn't want to lose what it loves but it's doing so triumphantly because it believes its love was great and will not be replicated. Holden desperately tries to keep it alive, infusing it with digital space magic. Life is always more beautiful on the edge of death and here Holden nudges us beyond that edge. Frankenstein's monster was misunderstood. Welcome to the war between organic chaos and digital structure... or are they making love? What will the inheritors make of the past that brought them to be?

It's definitely something to be experienced. The album comes in at 75 minutes and is designed to take you on a trip.

Some more background on how he arrived here; he's approaching the creation of trance from a scientific perspective.

"The driving factor behind being in a “trance state” (that is, transcending your standard conception of “the self”) is thought to be a universal property of the brain. Brainwave entrainment is the act of causing various body systems to synchronise by altering the frequency of brainwaves. “Entrainment” is a physics term, referring to the fact that two vibrating bodies will synchronise if exposed to one another for long enough – it’s what makes two people walk in step, it’s what makes an audience applaud in time and it’s what makes a couple fall asleep at the same moment.

It’s thought that this effect can also be achieved with an audio stimulus. In preparation for his performance at the Barbican, James Holden researched some of the science behind altered states and found correlations between playing music and different states of mind that, in his own words, blew his mind. The theory of sonic entrainment suggests that the brain will synchronize to an external rhythm – it means that two musicians playing music at the same time are actually synchronising brainwaves. Whilst the normal, alert brain’s frequencies are usually between 14 and 22Hz, they’re slightly slower whilst playing music – around 8-14Hz. Crucially, the brain is in a similar state whilst meditating, or, indeed in a trance.

If everybody in a room is focused on one audio source, then brainwaves are synchronising, putting everybody into a similar state of mind, creating a collective consciousness. Ensuring that everybody is (literally) on the same wavelength is important if the state is to be maintained. “We’re naturally sensitive to those around us,” says Holden, “In the same way that if someone near you isn’t into it, it can ruin the effect.” This might go some way to explaining the almost instinctive annoyance that comes with seeing people who are glued to their smartphones or bringing up Shazam at a gig – it’s not just distracting, it’s literally putting you into a more alert brain state.

This isn’t to imply that the entire phenomenon is down to suggestion. Particular frequencies often recur in religious and ritual music – Indonesian gamelan music, for example, uses ultra high frequencies that are nearly impossible to record, and these are allegedly what create the trance phenomena. In Yoruba-derived drumming, it’s the tiny delays in timing that create miniature moments of tension and release in the deeper drum tones. Ultra low frequencies are attributed to having strong psychic effects, something that experimental art groups like Throbbing Gristle experimented with.

Besides, there isn’t really one golden recipe to achieving this state – tastes vary and people perceive things in different ways. “The event’s producer set up a meeting for me with Vincent Walsh, a cognitive neuroscientist at UCL.” Holden says, “It was near the start of my research, and what I was basically asking him was: is there anything in the science that I can take to make more effective hypnotic music? His response nailed it: he told me to go with my instincts. Music has had thousands of years evolution towards this purpose, musicians spend a lifetime intuiting how to achieve these results.”

“And that’s the take-home fact,” Holden says, hitting the nail on the head: “Our subconscious intuition is the best bit of our brains. I couldn’t do the maths to tell you where a thrown ball would intersect my arm’s reach, but I could probably catch it.”


Renata - a girl's name of Latin origin, meaning "reborn".
http://pitchfork.com/advance/136-the-inheritors/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Inheritors_(William_Golding)

Dynamic target tracking & projection

Hundreds of broadcasters are set to cover the Olympic action starting next week, but even the most dedicated camera operators can't always keep up with sports that move at lightning speed. Now, researchers at Tokyo University in Japan have built a camera that can perfectly track fast-moving objects like a ping-pong ball mid-flight.

Rather than moving the device itself, the camera's gaze is controlled by two mirrors attached to high-speed motors which can readjust in a fraction of a second, much faster than adjusting a bulky recording device. These rapidly moving mirrors combined with a filming speed of 1000 frames per second allow the camera to keep the ping-pong ball dead centre.

Oku Ishikawa Lab Professor Masatoshi Ishikawa says: "I hope the technology will be applied to various fields in robotics, medical/bio operation, scientific observation, as well as judgement or analysis in sports at the Olympic Games."

The researchers say the camera could also record close-up views of flying birds or insects.

http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/onepercent/2012/07/superfast-mirrors-track-a-ping.html


R.I.P. Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013)

Sad news, stop-motion effects pioneer Ray Harryhausen died today. The filmmaker, who retired from features in 1981, leaves behind a relatively small but incalculably influential body of work. His stop-motion animated skeletons, dinosaurs, and other beasts almost universally became icons of sci-fi and fantasy filmmaking.

Ray Harryhausen; "I'm another snowball. Willis H. O'Brien* started the snowball, then I picked it up, then ILM picked it up and now the computer generation is picking it up. Where it will end, I don't know. Maybe in holography, although I'm not sure I'd like a grotesque monster appearing in 3-D in my living room."

*creator of the monsters in The Lost World (1925) & King Kong (1933)
http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0366063/
http://www.slashfilm.com/visual-effects-master-ray-harryhausen-has-died-at-92/

This Robot Renaissance ≠ The Second Renaissance

After almost 20 years of killer drone dominated robot headlines, it seems the world's robots have finally had enough and have decided to collectively launch a full scale PR offensive to improve their image. December has truly been an amazing month for robot enthusiasts. First we had Amazon unveiling their delivery by air plans, then we got news that along with 7 other companies google had just bought Boston Dynamics and yesterday we saw NASAs Valkyrie and many other bots compete at the DARPA Robotics Challenge! The challenge was a phenomenal success and was won by SCHAFT, which you can see in action in the video below. This month also saw Europe launch Gaia & Swarm, we saw China land a Jade rabbit on the moon and two days ago we were allowed to eavesdrop on the conversation between Japanese robot Kirobo and an astronaut aboard the ISS. With TU Delft unveiling its DelFly; the first fully autonomous robot dragonfly, and yesterday's introduction to cubli; a walking and jumping self balancing cube, robot news shows no signs of slowing down. When you see robonaut stretching its new legs in the links below, you can only wonder where they will take us.

From a simple Roomba to Google's selfdriving cars, from Matternet's quadcopter delivery vehicles to robot seals for the elderly and robot dinosaurs that teach kids to code,... Robots are finally helping us rediscover that they have other uses besides spying and bombing people. After 40 years of hiding in space, in the military, in darkened manufacturing plants and only recently showing up in healthcare and search and rescue, increasingly advanced robots and drones are finally beginning to show up in the more traditional consumer market.

More and more we see robots that support us, not just literally as is the case with exoskleletons, or physically when they replace broken limbs and organs, but also mentally. A computer, when given input (keyboard, mouse, camera) can mine, gather, assemble, transform, inspect and distribute data. If a computer has an eye, it can see you fall. A robot is all that with the added benefit that it can actually catch you. A robot is what happens when you stick any combination of wings, arms, eyes, ears and/or noses onto a computer. We love to play with these machines because humans crave data. It's what allows us to improve our understanding of the world and our quality of life and these new toys are helping us generate mountains of it. Even excavating it from places we never would have thought possible, places inaccessible to ourselves.

This week Europe launched Gaia, last week China's rover started roaming the surface of the moon, last month India sent a probe on its way to orbit Mars and last year the US's massive Curiosity gently touched down on Mars. We've got robots keeping an eye on places as remote as Titan and even Pluto and this year, for the first time in our history, we've managed to guide one of our envoys, Voyager 1, out of our solar system and into the the void between the stars. If there is a race between man and machine, we fleshlings just got beaten to interstellar space. These days, robots are literally everywhere.

Have you seen the many Robot spiders, fish, snakes, flies and dragonflies, humming-bees and -birds, apes, mules, dogs, lizards, jellyfish & octopi crawl around on youtube? During my travels I've even made some rare sightings of various room sized robot scientists, puking and farting humanoids and even many armed surgeons and organ growers. Robotics is undergoing its own Cambrian explosion. Robots are beginning to take on a stupendous amount of shapes and sizes, their form and function radiating outwards filling niches as fast as we can think of them. If something can be done, we either already have or are about to. The human spirit in action!

Anyone can visit any place anywhere from wherever they are by sending or unlocking a robotic representation of themselves. Robots giving keynote speeches are kind of cool but how would you feel about a robot boss? You can ask Siri, Google or WolframAlpha anything and they will be able to answer many of your questions. You can play a game with Watson or Deep Blue and lose. You can have sex with a realdoll or a real far-away person through teledildonics. Could chatterbot, when he recognizes you and can recall your past conversations, become your friend? Another celebration of the human spirit or the loss of our human touch?

Right now people can perform a 9 to 5 drone flight over Afghanistan and not miss their family dinner in the US... How much longer before we'll be able to do 9 to 5 shifts as astronaut miners? Robotic avatars that respond 1:1 to your movements and virtual reality gear that allows you to put yourself in the robot's position will no doubt find use in various branches of our emerging space industry. Besides exploration, mining and construction, they might even find use in tourism. I can imagine many being too afraid to strap themselves to the top of a rocket but I think A LOT of people would pay to experience space through an avatar.

> Apple, Amazon & Google getting into robotics
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/industrial-robots/apple-amazon-and-now-google-an-exciting-time-for-robotics
> Google adds to its menagerie of robots
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/technology/google-adds-to-its-menagerie-of-robots.html
> Boston Dynamic showcase
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/dec/17/google-boston-dynamics-robots-atlas-bigdog-cheetah
> Meet the DRC teams
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/video-friday-darpa-robotics-challenge-trials-meet-the-teams
> DRC trials wrap-up
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/humanoids/darpa-robotics-challenge-trials-results
> Matternet's package delivery drones
http://spectrum.ieee.org/podcast/aerospace/aviation/matternets-package-delivery-drones
> Amazon Testing Drone Delivery System
> Gaia Space Telescope Soon to Map the Milky Way [HD]
> Swarm; orbiting magnetism to light converter maps earths magnetic field
http://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/at-work/test-and-measurement/orbiting-magnetism-to-light-converter-maps-earths-magnetic-field
> China's Jade Rabbit Moon rover sends back first photos
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25393826
> Astronaut chats with Kirobo
http://www.universetoday.com/107382/this-hilarious-conversation-with-a-space-robot-makes-kirobo-seem-almost-human/
> Robot dragonfly DelFly Explorer flies autonomously
> NASA Unveils Valkyrie
http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/military-robots/nasa-jsc-unveils-valkyrie-drc-robot
> Robonaut Legs In Motion
> The Cubli: a cube that can jump up, balance, and 'walk'
> BBC/NHK docu; Robot Revolution, will machines surpass humans (2013-05-04) Full HD 1080P

We have a liftoff and are on our way to Mars! *Big cheers!

Let's hope he has a nice trip and gets there in one piece. The landing will be quite a nerve wrecking moment as well, but I am really looking forward to it. HD footage from Mars! We will be hearing a lot more from Curioisity in 8 and a half months.

PS: I can't reach mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ at the moment which is good! There seems to be a lot of interest!

NASA's Huge Nuclear Powered Mars Rover and its bag of tricks

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission with the aim to land and operate a rover named Curiosity on the surface of Mars. The MSL is scheduled to launch between November 25 and December 18, 2011 and to land on Mars at Gale Crater between August 6 and August 20, 2012.

MastCam: HD video (This is going to be a real treat!)
Hand Lens Imager: Color pictures of features as tiny as 12.5 microns
SAM: A mass spectrometer, a gas chromatograph and a laser spectrometer.
MARDI: Camera located on Curiosity's main body, will record video of the rover's descent.
CheMin: Identifies different types of minerals.
ChemCam: Fires a laser at Martian rocks and analyze the composition of the vaporized bits.
APX: Shoots out X-rays and helium nuclei to identify elements.
DAN: Fires beams of neutrons at the ground in search of ice and water-logged minerals.
RAD: Helps prepare for future human exploration of Mars. The instrument will measure and identify high-energy radiation of all types on the Red Planet, from fast-moving protons to gamma rays.
REMS: Measures atmospheric pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, air temperature, ground temperature and ultraviolet radiation.
MEDLI: Measures the temperatures and pressures the heat shield experiences as the MSL spacecraft streaks through the Martian sky. (installed on the shield and not on the rover)

http://www.space.com/13689-nasa-amazing-mars-rover-curiosity-science.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory

Mars, The Red Planet

I have a feeling I am not the only one interested in Curiosity's imminent touchdown on Mars later tonight! I was worried that people might not even notice because of the enormous spotlight on the olympics but in reality the world seems to be waiting with bathed breath. There is still hope for our species! ;)

So what's the deal? What's so interesting about a rusty ball of rock floating through space? Fool! Would you say earth is just a watery rock floating through space? Have some respect would you! ;) Mars is another world, an entire planet waiting for exploration. Large parts of its history have yet to be uncovered and its future will intertwine with that of mankind. Mars is the scene for one of the greatest genuine adventure stories in mankind's future history. Another great leap waiting to happen.

Martian Geology
Mars is a terrestrial planet that consists of minerals containing silicon and oxygen, metals, and other elements that typically make up rock. Like Earth, this planet has undergone differentiation, resulting in a dense, metallic core region overlaid by less dense materials. Current models of the planet's interior imply a core region about 1790 km in radius, consisting primarily of iron, nickel and sulfur. Two of its most striking geological features are the Valles Marineris, a 4,000 km long, 200 km wide and 7 km deep system of canyons that runs along the Martian surface east of the Tharsis region and the Olympus Mons, a towering shield volcano that reaches a mind boggling 27 km into the sky, more than 3 times the height of Mt Everest. It is the highest known mountain on any planet within our Solar System.

Although Mars has no evidence of a current structured global magnetic field, observations show that parts of the planet's crust have been magnetized, and that alternating polarity reversals of its dipole field have occurred in the past. This paleomagnetism of magnetically susceptible minerals has properties that are very similar to the alternating bands found on the ocean floors of Earth. One theory, published in 1999 and re-examined in October 2005 (with the help of the Mars Global Surveyor), is that these bands demonstrate plate tectonics on Mars four billion years ago, before the planetary dynamo ceased to function and the planet's magnetic field faded away.

Martian History

During the Solar System's formation, Mars was created as the result of a stochastic process of run-away accretion out of the protoplanetary disk that orbited the Sun. Mars has many distinctive chemical features caused by its position in the Solar System. Elements with comparatively low boiling points such as chlorine, phosphorus and sulphur are much more common on Mars than Earth; these elements were probably removed from areas closer to the Sun by the young star's energetic solar wind.
After the formation of the planets, all were subjected to the so-called "Late Heavy Bombardment". About 60% of the surface of Mars shows a record of impacts from that era, while much of the remaining surface is probably underlain by immense impact basins caused by those events. There is evidence of an enormous impact basin in the northern hemisphere of Mars, spanning 10,600 km by 8,500 km, the largest impact basin yet discovered. This suggests that Mars was struck by a Pluto-sized body about four billion years ago. The event created the smooth Borealis basin that covers 40% of the planet.

Martian Water

geological evidence gathered by unmanned missions suggest that Mars once had large-scale water coverage on its surface. In 2005, radar data revealed the presence of large quantities of water ice at the poles, and at mid-latitudes. The Mars rover Spirit sampled chemical compounds containing water molecules in March 2007 and the Phoenix lander directly sampled water ice in shallow Martian soil on July 31, 2008. Liquid water cannot exist on the surface of Mars due to low atmospheric pressure, except at the lowest elevations for short periods. The two polar ice caps appear to be made largely of water. The volume of water ice in the south polar ice cap, if melted, would be sufficient to cover the entire planetary surface to a depth of 11 meters.

Martian Atmosphere
The atmosphere of Mars consists of about 95% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, 1.6% argon and contains traces of oxygen and water. The atmosphere is quite dusty, containing particulates about 1.5 µm in diameter which give the Martian sky a tawny color when seen from the surface. Methane has been detected in the Martian atmosphere with a mole fraction of about 30 ppb. It occurs in extended plumes, and the profiles imply that the methane was released from discrete regions. In northern midsummer, the principal plume contained 19,000 metric tons of methane, with an estimated source strength of 0.6 kilogram per second. The implied methane destruction lifetime may be as long as about 4 Earth years and as short as about 0.6 Earth years. This rapid turnover would indicate an active source of the gas on the planet. Volcanic activity, cometary impacts, and the presence of methanogenic microbial life forms are among possible sources.

Of all the planets in the Solar System, the seasons of Mars are the most Earth-like, due to the similar tilts of the two planets' rotational axes. The lengths of the Martian seasons are about twice those of Earth's, as Mars's greater distance from the Sun leads to the Martian year being about two Earth years long. Mars also has the largest dust storms in our Solar System. These can vary from a storm over a small area, to gigantic storms that cover the entire planet. They tend to occur when Mars is closest to the Sun, and have been shown to increase the global temperature.

Martian Moons
Mars has two moons, Phobos and Deimos, which are small and irregularly shaped. From the surface of Mars, the motions of Phobos and Deimos appear very different from that of our own moon. Phobos rises in the west, sets in the east, and rises again in just 11 hours. Deimos, being only just outside synchronous orbit—where the orbital period would match the planet's period of rotation—rises as expected in the east but very slowly. Despite the 30 hour orbit of Deimos, it takes 2.7 days to set in the west as it slowly falls behind the rotation of Mars, then just as long again to rise.
Because the orbit of Phobos is below synchronous altitude, the tidal forces from the planet Mars are gradually lowering its orbit. In about 50 million years it could either crash into Mars's surface or break up into a ring structure around the planet

Missions to Mars
Mars is currently host to three functional orbiting spacecraft: Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and one on the surface, the Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity. Defunct spacecraft on the surface include MER-A Spirit, and several other inert landers and rovers, both successful and unsuccessful such as the Phoenix lander, which completed its mission in 2008. Observations by NASA's now-defunct Mars Global Surveyor show evidence that parts of the southern polar ice cap have been receding. Observations by the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed possible flowing water during the warmest months on Mars.

Curiosity
Now that we've established that Mars is both pretty and interesting, what exactly will curiosity be up to when he arrives? First and foremost it will try to get an answer to one of the BIG questions; find out whether Mars could ever have supported life. Its official name is MSL, Mars Science Laboratory for a reason. It carries lots of interesting tools that allow it to run its own experiments. It will study both climate and geology as well collect data that will allow us to plan for future human missions to Mars.

Curiosity takes off - http://goo.gl/09wD2 .
Curiosity's bag of tricks - http://goo.gl/8LkoV
7 minutes of terror before touchdown


BBC Horizon: Mission to Mars


Live Coverage
http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/
http://www.ustream.tv/NASAJPL

Future
The Red Planet's is our closest neighbor. Both its proximity and status as a prime target for future human colonization ensure our continued interest and help drive more robotic missions to the Red Planet. There will come a time when we, bags of meat, will want to explore it ourselves and that time may almost be at hand. Initiatives like Mars One - http://mars-one.com/en/ - have a real chance of success. They managed to get a lot of respected individuals and companies on board and their timeline looks realistic. Perhaps they will be the ones who translate the dream into reality?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Science_Laboratory
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_missions_to_Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manned_mission_to_Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colonization_of_Mars
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terraforming_of_Mars

Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World

Werner Herzog's new documentary is an exploration of the Internet and the connected world in his usual unusual style.

The Future Markets Making up the Market of the Future

Exponential Finance, an intensive 2-day conference, hosted by Singularity University in partnership with CNBC, brought together top experts to inform financial services leaders how technologies—such as artificial intelligence, synthetic biology, quantum computing, crowdfunding, digital currencies and robotics—are impacting business.

Want to find out what Wall street got to hear? You are in luck because all talks have been made available online for free. There are quite a lot of them but you can check the short descriptions to figure out which ones might tickle your fancy.

Exponential Thinking (Peter Diamandis) - Exponential Finance 2014
Opening talk from Peter Diamandis, the Greek-American engineer, physician, and entrepreneur best known for being the founder and chairman of the X PRIZE Foundation. He's also the co-founder and chairman of Singularity University, CEO and co-founder of the Zero-Gravity Corporation, the co-founder of Planetary Resources, vice-chairman & co-founder of Human Longevity, Inc and the co-author of the New York Times bestseller Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think.


> Artificial Intelligence <
Understanding the AI Landscape (Neil Jacobstein) - Exponential Finance 2014
Neil Jacobstein will discuss how businesses, financial institutions and individuals are utilizing AI to address credit risk analysis, investment decisions, sentiment analysis, high frequency trading and avoiding corporate/market flash crashes. Neil will also provide an overview of AI—from 50 years of successful AI applications to augmenting humans with AI—and what this means for the world at large.

Will IBM's Watson and Other AI's Overtaketake Wall Street (Rhodin) - Exponential Finance 2014
Michael Rhodin of IBM will explain how Watson has moved beyond Jeopardy into finance, and what this and other AI solutions mean for Wall Street. Specifics include: The Watson Applications Ecosystem; Automating finance sector jobs; Role of AI on global financial centers; and the future of Watson.

Is AI Your Enemy or New Best Friend? (Daniel Nadler) - Exponential Finance 2014
Daniel Nadler describes the virtual artificially intelligent, financial industry-focused assistant that his company, Kensho, is creating. Why is this possible now for the first time, and what will this mean for the playing field in five years’ time? This high-level conversation will cover the implications of these Virtual AI Assistants—from the labor market to risk management to financial advisors.


> Data Science & Analytics <
The Data Science Revolution (Jeremy Howard) - Exponential Finance 2014
Data Science (Big Data, Data Analysis, Machine Learning) is said to represent a larger potential disruption than the industrial revolution. This session will address the impact on the financial world by data driven decision-making, predictive modeling, machine learning, intelligent computing and more.

Harvesting Gold from Your Data - Finally! (Collins, Caruso-Cabrera) - Exponential Finance 2014
Keith Collins, CIO of SAS, takes a look at the applications available now and those of tomorrow that will assist you in making the most of your data. How do you differentiate between relevant/representative data and “big” data?

Disruptive Tools In The Data Science Toolkit (Dr. Gurjeet Singh) - Exponential Finance 2014
Gurjeet Singh of Ayasdi, named Fast Company’s 2014 Most Innovative Company in Big Data, addresses the cutting edge of big data and how machine learning/big data is and will be used in business going forward.

Will The Robo-Advisors Take Your Job? (Diamandis, Edelman) - Exponential Finance 2014
A conversation between Peter Diamandis and acclaimed financial advisor Ric Edelman. The discussion will focus on the future of the financial advisory business and how Ric sees exponential technology changing his business and the overall landscape.


> Networks and Computing Systems <
The Global Evolution of Networks and Computing Systems (Brad Templeton) - Exponential Finance 2014
As processing power continues to grow exponentially, as trillions of devices and sensors come online, and as technology costs continue to decrease dramatically, we are entering an era of new possibilities. In this session, Board Member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), founder of the first internet-based business, Brad Templeton will dive into Moore’s Law, abundant bandwidth, the trillion-dollar impact of autonomous vehicles, the network of everything, and more.

Living In A Virtual World (Philip Rosedale) - Exponential Finance 2014
As we saw with the recent $2B acquisition of Oculus Rift, virtual reality (VR) is big business. In this session, Philip Rosedale, one of the pioneers of VR, as well as the creator of Second Life and CEO of his latest venture, High Fidelity, will take us through why VR has the potential to have such an outsized impact over the coming decade. Learn how virtual reality will change almost every aspect of our life, such as: how we interact with others, how we learn, how we conduct business, who we are friends with, and where we spend our free time.


> Quantum Computing <
Quantum Computing: A Threat to Leading Financial Players (Vern Brownell) - Exponential Finance 2014
As the former CTO of Goldman Sachs, Vern Brownell understands the technical challenges facing large financial institutions. He’ll share his unique perspective as the head of the leading quantum computer manufacturer, D-Wave, to provide an understanding of quantum computing and its radical impact on present and future computing.

Insights from the World's First Quantum Computer Software Company (Dr. Phil Goddard)
By harnessing the power of quantum mechanics, quantum computers offer the potential to solve extremely large- scale optimization problems faster than traditional computers. Dr. Goddard will provide us with insight into some of these problems that are now becoming addressable with a particular emphasis on the financial world.


> 3D Printing <
The Imminent Disruption of the $10T Manufacturing Industry (Reichental) - Exponential Finance 2014
With applications ranging from cars, décor and consumer products to custom implants, jet engines and hearing aids—3D printing is revolutionizing product design and supply chain management, and opening a world of possibilities for creatives. This talk will also touch on the potential unintended consequences of 3D manufacturing technology, such as fraud and 3D printed weapons.


> Synthetic Biology and Digital Medicine <
Digital/Synthetic Biology (Raymond McCauley) - Exponential Finance 2014
The digitization of biology is driving massive disruption in the life sciences field. Human genome sequencing is the single best example of faster, better, cheaper. Previously confined to research tools, these new solutions are now entering the clinical and consumer markets. This session will shine light on the drivers in this field, new business models, where technology costs are trending, and innovative startups that have the potential to be significant disruptors.

The Technological Disruption of Healthcare (Dr. Daniel Kraft) - Exponential Finance 2014
Convergence of fast-moving technology is rapidly changing the face of health and medicine. From mobile health and wearable sensors to artificial intelligence and personal ‘omics, this talk will explore implications for personal health, workforce health and the corresponding areas of emerging investment opportunity.


> Capital Formation <
Innovations in Capital Formation (David Rose) - Exponential Finance 2014
David Rose, a serial entrepreneur and active angel investor in New York, as well as the founder and CEO of Gust, will share his insights on the rapidly evolving world of capital formation—from crowdfunding to peer-to-peer lending to the growth and rebirth of equity capital markets. David will illustrate how it’s never been easier to raise capital and why these new innovations create significant threats, as well as opportunities, for incumbents and startups alike.

Crowdfunding (Koplovitz, Barnett, Cox, Fitzgerald, Millman) - Exponential Finance 2014
Kay Koplovitz leads a panel discussion addressing how crowdsourcing models are impacting and disintermediating traditional capital sources. Participants include industry experts Chance Barnett of Crowdfunder, Luan Cox of Crowdnetic, Katie Fitzgerald of CircleUp. and Michael Millman of JP Morgan.

Innovative Regulations: Not an Oxymoron (David Weild) - Exponential Finance 2014
The “Father of the JOBS Act,” David Weild will offer insights into what Congress, the SEC and other regulatory groups are doing to keep America competitive and foster innovation.


> Robotics <
Robots: Changing Everything (Rob Nail) - Exponential Finance 2014
Rob Nail will provide an overview of robotics technology, the far-reaching impact this technology is having throughout the world, and how what is coming will change business globally. As robotics use accelerates, many branches of the financial world will change. In this session we’ll address: Why companies like Google are making massive bets on Robotics; Massive labor force implications; Machine to machine payments; and Insurance and liability issues.

Robots: Changing Everything (Scott Hassan) - Exponential Finance 2014
In this talk, Scott Hassan, CEO of Suitable Technologies, will “beam” around the world in 80 seconds, hopping between continents and traveling across time zones—instantly. Scott will demonstrate how to fulfill the need for shared awareness with other people, places and things.


> Digital Currencies & Smart Contracts <
The Transformative World of Digital Commerce and Finance (Staci Warden) - Exponential Finance 2014
Executive director of the Center for Financial Markets at the Milken Institute, Staci Warden provides an overview of digital commerce and how this emerging area has the potential to radically change how we bank, how payments are made, what a trusted transaction means, and more.

The Evolving Digital Commerce Ecosystem (Warden, Barhydt, Hill, Silbert) - Exponential Finance 2014
As Bitcoin and other alternative currencies capture our imaginations, new possibilities for digital commerce and financial services are emerging. This panel provides a glimpse into how new opportunities including digital derivatives, smart contracts, wire based settlement, cross border payments and peer to peer banking are being enabled by new technologies and gives us a glimpse of what’s next in the world of digital commerce and finance.


> Financial Futures <
Bankers Beware (Caruso-Cabrera, Lyons, Milne, Sidhu, Weissbluth) - Exponential Finance 2014
Exponential technologies are presenting a 360 degree assault on every part of the banking business. It couldn’t come at a worse time, as the industry tries to respond to regulatory pressures and rebuild trust in the wake of the financial crisis and great recession. Hear from emerging leaders— Elliot Weissbluth, CEO of Hightower; Jay Sidhu, CEO of Customers Bancorp; Ben Milne, CEO of Dwolla; and Karen Pascoe, Senior Vice President at MasterCard – Emerging Payments Group — who are all bent on transforming the banking experience by embracing accelerating technologies and new business models.

Ray Kurzweil - Exponential Finance 2014
Ray Kurzweil has been called “the restless genius” by The Wall Street Journal and “the ultimate thinking machine” by Forbes magazine. In his role as a Director of Engineering at Google, Kurzweil heads up a team developing machine intelligence and natural language understanding. During this session, renowned CNBC reporter Bob Pisani will chat with Ray about accelerating technology with a particular focus around artificial intelligence and machine understanding.

Dan Hesse (Diamandis, Caruso-Cabrera, Hesse) - Exponential Finance 2014
Large incumbents are increasingly threatened by new innovations and the quickening pace of change. Many ventures that used to require a large multinational company can now be successfully pulled off by a few individuals. In this fireside Michelle Caruso-Cabrera and Peter Diamandis will chat with Sprint CEO, Dan Hesse, on how he is building a winning organization in an era of rapid technological change.

The Long and Short of Trading the Future (Pisani, Maguire, Ruegsegger) - Exponential Finance 2014
CNBC’s Bob Pisani talks with Ed Maguire, Senior Technology Analyst at CLSA, and Ben Ruegsegger, Senior Thematic Analyst for AllianceBernstein’s Global and Thematic Portfolios, on how investors get exposure to technology trends early in the cycle, but also the tricky business of investing in “valley stocks” – publicly traded stocks with large maturing businesses as well as small, growth businesses not yet large enough to have major impact. Key topics include how to judge the maturity of an industry, how to determine the future value of a new technology, what opportunities exist for investing now in “maturing” disruptive technologies like genomics, big data, and the internet of things, the critical importance of early legwork, and how to anticipate and judge investment “bubbles”.

Future Proof (Caruso-Cabrera, Concannon, Frank) - Exponential Finance 2014
When technological innovation moves faster than regulation infrastructure can be put in place, are some innovators at risk of missing their opportunity? This panel looks at balancing the regulatory environment as technology reinvents our financial markets. We’ll hear from Barney Frank, one of the architects of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act and Chris Concannon, President and COO of Virtu Financial, the trading firm COO whose IPO was scrapped in the wake of the negative national attention on high-frequency trading.


> Exponential Organizations <
Exponential Organizations: The New Breed of Business (Salim Ismail) - Exponential Finance 2014
Salim Ismail takes you through a new breed of organizational structure that has started to emerge over the last few years. “Exponential Organizations” leverage externalities like big data, community, crowd, user engagement, gamification and other techniques to achieve 10x performance benchmarks relative to their competitors.

Jay Rogers - Exponential Finance 2014
Crowdsourced car designs, micro factories, small batch production: Local Motors has definitely gone a very different route for a vehicle manufacturing company. In this keynote speech by Local Motors CEO Jay Rogers, we’ll hear about his journey to create this different kind of company—an exponential one. Understand how he has created this highly successful organization and utilized some of the principles that Salim Ismail touched on in the previous session.

February 17, 2016

The information density of one language compared to another

Japanese and Spanish, often described as “fast languages,” clocked the greatest number of syllables per second. The “slowest” language in the set was Mandarin, followed closely by German. An average Spanish syllable conveys only a small quantity of information, contributing just a fragment to the overall meaning of a sentence. In contrast, an individual Mandarin syllable contains a much larger quantity of information, possibly because Mandarin syllables include tones. The upshot is that Spanish and Mandarin actually convey information to listeners at about the same rate. The correlation between speech rate and information density held for five out of seven of the languages studied, and the researchers conjectured that, despite the diversity of languages in the world, over time they all deliver a constant rate of information, possibly tuned to the human perceptual system.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=fast-talkers


Refraction - The Alphabet from Jesse Zanzinger on Vimeo.

Similo

The year is 2065. Thanks to climate change the arctic is one of few places left where it's still relatively easy to live. There the ruling technology giants have built private cities in which they allow the people fortunate enough to work for them to live. It's here we meet the couple Hebe en Ciro whose relation is going through a bit of a rough patch now that Ciro's having a hard time recovering from a serious accident.



Check out the full film here: https://vimeo.com/84637610
Written & Directed by Zac&Mac
blackmilk.eu

A whole new ball game

http://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/robotics-hardware/this-is-how-close-we-are-to-a-baseball-playing-robot

"We (IEEE) 've been writing about robots from the Ishikawa Watanabe Laboratory at the University of Tokyo for years. They’ve always had very cool demos, like robots throwing balls, robots tracking balls, robots catching balls, robots hitting balls, and robots running really really fast.

I’d just sort of figured that these demos were simply fun and interesting ways of highlighting the capabilities of high-speed actuators and vision systems.

Evidently, I don’t know anything, because it’s now totally obvious that they’re working on a humanoid robot that plays baseball.

Here’s what the researchers say:

We have been developing robotic systems that individually achieve fundamental actions of baseball, such as throwing, tracking of the ball, batting, running, and catching. We achieved these tasks by controlling high-speed robots based on real-time visual feedback from high-speed cameras. Before integrating these abilities into one robot, we here summarize the technical elements of each task.

“Before integrating these abilities into one robot.” I can’t even put into words how awesome that’s going to be, and putting awesome things into words is (supposedly) my full-time job."

http://www.k2.t.u-tokyo.ac.jp/fusion/Baseball/index-e.html


On a related note, just a few days ago the IEEE published this article taking a look at some of the work that goes into creating a robotic hand. http://spectrum.ieee.org/robotics/humanoids/inexpensive-durable-plastic-hands-let-robots-get-a-grip

The Gate

That's one way to get the message across...

Alejandro Jodorowsky's Dune

Even though this film was never actually made, it's built up an impressive reputation none the less. Before the first shot made it to film Jodorowsky had already blown 2 million on its conception. That might sound like a lot but when you realize the roster of talent he had lined up to bring his phonebook sized script to life... It's peanuts. Salvador Dali, Orson Welles, Pink Floyd, Mick Jagger, HR Giger, Jean Giraud (Moebius) and yes even David Carradine were all set to contribute their specific talents. It's immensely regrettable that ultimately it all fell apart. Now, decades later, the mother of all unmade movies is getting a fascinating documentary on what was to be and what went wrong.

February 16, 2016

Sight

This disturbing short imagines a world in which Google Glass-inspired apps are everywhere.



Directe by Eran May-raz and Daniel Lazo,