First Light Fusion - great stuff or fake?

Nuclear fusion is coming... or not?! :/

- A positive view (video):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1RsHQCMRTw



- And a negative view (article):

First Light Fusion's Fake | New Energy Times - LENR News and Scientific Reference



"... Hakwer’s “energy gain” would not be a reactor gain; it would be a relative gain between the power that hits the fuel and the power that is emitted from the fusion particles. Because the company has published such a misleading public claim, it has almost certainly communicated the same to its investors, as well.


The best result so far in the inertial confinement fusion field is the National Ignition Facility. Philip Ball, writing for Nature on Feb. 12, 2014, reported the grim facts. Buried at the very bottom of the article, where few readers would notice, Ball quoted a Lawrence Livermore researcher who revealed that the ratio of fusion-produced power to the power injected to the fuel was 1%. The efficiency of the entire system, accounting for all the power required to operate and produce the reaction, would bring the overall efficiency of the system to a fraction of 1%. ..."

Jack Cough on Software: Teaching Functional Programming To Kids

Jack Cough on Software: Teaching Functional Programming To Kids



Nice idea... and it can directly be implemented as a patch programming environment!

I wonder what is the equivalent of

 

-----------
 7   --->  |           |  
           |     +     | ---> 19
 12  --->  |           |
            -----------

 

in Blockly notation... ?!

Japan landing more robots on Ryugu asteroid!

Go Japan! Landing more small robots on the asteroid "Ryugu" (162173 Ryugu). The asteroid is 1 km in diameter and the probe will eventually land, collect materials and bring them back to Earth! Fantastic times for space exploration :)

Actual footage of the approach to the asteroid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yVgYC5B5L10

More info: here.

The Geometry of Plants

The Geometry of Plants | Amusing Planet



 '' The Fibonacci sequence is so persistent in nature that it’s a challenge to find a plant or fruit structure that does not conform to it. For instance, the placement of leaves along a stem is governed by the Fibonacci sequence, ensuring that each leaf has maximum access to sunlight and rain.  ''

The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells (and more)

The Algorithmic Beauty of Sea Shells | Hans Meinhardt | Springer [source]










And

Turing's theory of morphogenesis of 1952 and the subsequent discovery of the crucial role of local self-enhancement and long-range inhibition [source]

Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond [from WIRED]

Alan Turing’s Patterns in Nature, and Beyond | WIRED

 '' Turing patterns can involve not just chemicals, but large, complex systems in which each unit — for example, a cell — is distributed like molecules of pigment. ...A basic step towards proving the existence of these three-dimensional Turing patterns is demonstrating a three-dimensional pattern in the lab. In a paper published Feb. 11 in Science, researchers led by Brandeis University chemist Irving Epstein do precisely this.'' [source]

Calculating π by hand: the Chudnovsky algorithm

Calculating π by hand: the Chudnovsky algorithm - YouTube



Terrific video...

A fraction that does a decent approximation of PI is: 355/113 (see here)

Generate cat images with neural networks

GitHub - aleju/cat-generator: Generate cat images with neural networks

<<This script generates new images of cats using the technique of generative adversarial networks (GAN), as described in the paper by Goodfellow et al.

The images are enhanced with the laplacian pyramid technique from Denton and Soumith Chintala et. al., implemented as a single G (generator) as described in the blog post by Anders Boesen Lindbo Larsen and Søren Kaae Sønderby.

Most of the code is based on facebook's eyescream project.

The script also uses code from other repositories for spatial transformers, weight initialization and LeakyReLUs. >>



Source: https://github.com/aleju/cat-generator



256 randomly generated 32x32 cat images

ARCA's revolutionary aerospike engine completed and ready for testing

ARCA's revolutionary aerospike engine completed and ready for testing

 '' ARCA Space Corporation has announced its linear aerospike engine is ready to start ground tests as the company moves towards installing the engine in its Demonstrator 3 rocket. Designed to power the world's first operational Single-Stage-To-Orbit (SSTO) satellite launcher, the engine took only 60 days to complete from when fabrication began. 



...

The aerospike engine is different because it basically works by cutting a rocket engine's bell, which directs the exhaust of a rocket engine in one direction, in half, then placing the two halves back to back to form a tapering spike. This means the air itself acts as the missing half of the rocket bell, containing the hot gases as they leave the combustion chamber. ''

LOOP programming language

Having a lot of fun with the LOOP language.
The language (see here) is simple:

Variables: x0,x1,x2,x3,x4,...
Constants: 0,1,2,3,4,...
Operators: + and -
Separators: ; and :=
Keywords: LOOP,DO and END

And if you let xi and xj be variables and let c be a constant. Then
   xi := xj + c
and
   xi := xj - c
are correct programs.

Let P1 and P2 be LOOP programs. Then
   P1; P2
is a LOOP Program.
Let P be a LOOP program and let xi be a variable. Then
   LOOP xi DO P END
is a LOOP Program.

=)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(==)(=


This program for example:

x3 := x1 + 0;
LOOP x2 DO
  x3 := x3 + 1
END;
x0 := x3 + 0

shows that f(x1+x2) = x1+x2 is LOOP-computable (with strict LOOP).
If you give input parameters like: 5,3
the output will be: 8

Lasers, nano-scale materials, and hologram generation

Semiconductors for moving holograms twist like fusilli - Futurity



A tiny device that creates the highest quality holographic images ever achieved - Innovation Toronto

[with video]



Creating high-resolution full-color moving holograms in 3-D






The future of holographic video








And finally:


Cheap, color, holographic video: Better holographic video displays

[video]

DNA could store all of the world's data in one room

DNA could store all of the world's data in one room | Science | AAAS





'' Now, researchers report that they’ve come up with a new way to encode digital data in DNA to create the highest-density large-scale data storage scheme ever invented. Capable of storing 215 petabytes (215 million gigabytes) in a single gram of DNA, the system could, in principle, store every bit of datum ever recorded by humans in a container about the size and weight of a couple of pickup trucks. But whether the technology takes off may depend on its cost. '' [source]

Skulpt

Skulpt a Python interpreter running in the browser! :)

Fast Pathfinding via Symmetry Breaking

Fast Pathfinding via Symmetry Breaking | AiGameDev.com







My question is: can I avoid A* and have a simpler approach to path-finding, especially on simple 2D grids? Something more like an animal-inspired heuristic than a correct algorithm?



For example: can a simple AI start exploring a grid, remember/learn where obstacles are as it progresses, and navigate wrt that knowledge instead of using A*?





This article seems like a good starting point to find an answer ;)

Textile muscles could find use in a literal "power suit"

"There are many people who could use a bit of help moving their limbs, but they don't necessarily need a full-on exoskeleton."

Programming | STEM Hacks

A great blog with lots of great ideas [source]



E.g here -> HopScotch Turing Machine

Never-married demographics in history

 I wanted to find some data about marriage statistics, possibly historical. I found these interesting data from USA, about percentage of never-married people from 1890 to 2010 (at age 35)

and at age 45:

source: https://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/marriage/data/acs/ElliottetalPAA2012presentation.pdf

 I even found data about Roman Census (reconstructed with modern statistics in the best way possible...)
"Demographically, the Roman Empire was an ordinary premodern state.
It had high infant mortality, a low marriage age, and high fertility within marriage.
Perhaps half of Roman subjects died by the age of 5.
Of those still alive at age 10, half would die by the age of 50.
Roman women could expect to bear on average 6 to 9 children."
source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_Roman_Empire 

Cool Hunting Rough Cut: Drawing Machine

Cool Hunting Rough Cut: Drawing Machine - Cool Hunting

Printing machines

Lego Polargraph | Qbotics

Piccolo, the tiny CNC-bot

How to make a Lego Drawbot

How to Make a Lego Drawbot - Planet Smarty Pants

Creation & Computation (blog)

'' OCAD University Blogs is a web publishing service primarily serving the academic and curricular needs of the student and faculty community at OCAD University, in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. '' [source]

Lcar screensaver for Windows "System47"

Totally cool!
System47 - download

Augmented Reality (mobile)

Augmented Natural Shapes - YouTube



And



Augmented Hand Sketching Games - YouTube

Fusion - fusion - fusion

MIT's Fusion Reactor Broke a World Record Right Before the Feds Shut It Off

 '' The fusion reactor hit this milestone near midnight on September 30th, the very last day of its operation. “We were pushing parameters purposefully at the end, to see if we could exceed the value we’d achieved in the past,” Martin Greenwald, the deputy director of MIT’s Plasma Science and Fusion Center told Gizmodo. “It was pretty exciting.” ''



China's Experimental Fusion Reactor Hits Major Milestone | Popular Science

"A Chinese fusion reactor managed to sustain plasma at temperatures of over 90 million degrees for 102 seconds ...

This achievement at the Experimental Advanced Superconducting Tokamak (EAST) in Heifi, China, comes just days after German chancellor Angela Merkel inaugurated the Wendelstein 7-X, another experimental fusion reactor.

...

EAST is a tokamak, a doughnut shaped device originally designed by the Soviets. It holds the plasma in place using magnetic fields, and operates in pulses. The Wendelstein 7-X, in contrast, is a stellarator, a similar design but one that can theoretically operate continuously, like an artificial sun. "

Who really believes in Human-caused global warming?

Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis [2013]



 '' 

Only 36 percent of geoscientists and engineers believe that humans are creating a global warming crisis, according to a survey reported in the peer-reviewed Organization Studies. By contrast, a strong majority of the 1,077 respondents believe that nature is the primary cause of recent global warming and/or that future global warming will not be a very serious problem.

...

Taken together, these four skeptical groups numerically blow away the 36 percent of scientists who believe global warming is human caused and a serious concern.

''



Interesting data and discussion. However, there is this article which reads the cited study exactly reversed!
"

In a Forbes op-ed, James Taylor takes a study that prominently reveals the anti-science influence of oil and gas companies, and spins it to suggest that serious, substantive disagreement exists among relevant scientists on climate change. This could not be further from the truth, as evidenced by the very study he cites, as well as numerous other studies that have surveyed climate scientists.

"

So according to this second article, the wrong interpretation in the Forbes article is basically due to the influence of oil and gas companies.





How am I going to know what is really happening?
I still believe that Science is a way to get to the truth and it should not be a matter of majority...