Phys.org July 16, 2018 Speaking at a recent conference on ethics in science and technology in Toulouse in France, researchers from the Netherlands called for a Europe-wide network of institutions that can provide a set of values, based on the EU’s Charter of Fundamental Rights, which the technology industry could operate within. Ethical issues surrounding AI – such as bias in machine learning algorithms and how to oversee the decision-making of autonomous machines – also attracted widespread discussion at the conference. In the military domain, a very important concept is meaningful human control. Good design of the interface between humans and […]
Category Archives: Science without borders
Where do ideas come from?
Arxiv June 26, 2018 Ideas are nurtured by informal dialogues in environments where mistakes are tolerated, and critical thinking is encouraged. It is therefore crucial to create a space in which challenges are discussed openly and without fear, stimulating new solutions. An excellent historic example was Bell Labs which for decades in the mid-20th century, assembled creative physicists and engineers into a single corridor, where their daily conversations led to the inventions of radio astronomy, the transistor, photovoltaic cells, CCDs and many other breakthroughs. It is essential to include young people in the conversation, since they lack baggage and are […]
Going beyond ‘human error’
Phys.org April 30, 2018 Failures in highly technological environments, such as military aircraft, can be investigated using known tools like Human Factors Analysis and Classification System (HFACS). However, because of some limitations, HFACS does not always highlight the deeper causal factors that contribute to such failures. Researchers at the Naval Safety Center in Virginia applied the Bayes’ theorem probability formula to an HFACS dataset, to examine data from 95 severe incidents to pinpoint external influences behind human error. They found sensory misperception (spatial disorientation), mental awareness (cognition, attention), and the technological environment (e.g., design of cockpit displays and controls) to […]
Asking the questions that unlock innovation
MIT News April 8, 2018 Based on research interviews with over 200 of the world’s most innovative leaders in business, technology, government, and social enterprises, MIT researcher found that great questions have a catalytic quality — that is, they dissolve barriers to creative thinking and channel the pursuit of solutions into new, accelerated pathways. To boost questioning skills, a variation on the traditional brainstorming session is called a “question burst.” Rather than proposing new ideas, participants ask questions about a challenge or opportunity. The process often produces fresh perspectives and innovative solutions…read more.
The Surprising Creativity of Digital Evolution: A Collection of Anecdotes from the Evolutionary Computation and Artificial Life Research Communities
ArXiv March 9, 2018 Biological evolution provides a creative fount of complex and subtle adaptations, often surprising the scientists who discover them. Many researchers in the field of digital evolution have observed their evolving algorithms and organisms subverting their intentions, exposing unrecognized bugs in their code, producing unexpected adaptations, or exhibiting outcomes uncannily convergent with ones in nature. Such stories rarely fit into the standard scientific narrative. This paper is the crowd-sourced product of an international team of researchers (USA, France, Canada, UK, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, Czech Republic ) in the fields of artificial life and evolutionary computation who have […]
New data helps explain recent fluctuations in Earth’s magnetic field
Science Daily February 28, 2018 Earth’s dipole magnetic field is presently undergoing a rapid decay. An international team of researchers (USA – University of Rochester, South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe) presents a new magnetic record from sites of southern Africa. The new data provides more evidence that the region may play a unique role in magnetic pole reversals. A major change in the magnetic field would have wide-reaching ramifications – cause electrical grid failures, navigation system malfunctions, and satellite breakdowns, more harmful radiation reaches Earth and trigger an increase in the incidence of skin cancer… read more. Open Access TECHNICAL ARTICLE
Major discovery in controlling quantum states of single atoms
Science Daily February 16, 2018 To protect the quantum properties of a spin, control over its local environment, including energy relaxation and decoherence processes, is crucial. An international team of researchers (South Korea, USA – industry, Germany, Switzerland, Portugal, Spain) was able to precisely image individual iron atoms and measure and control the time that the iron atom can maintain its quantum behavior. They showed that the loss in quantum state superposition is mainly caused by nearby electrons that the researchers injected with extreme control into the iron atom. Understanding these destructive interactions allows us to avoid them in future […]
Precision experiments reveal gaps in van der Waals theory
Science Daily February 16, 2018 An international team of researchers (Denmark, Japan) measured a single TiS2 crystal to show that the interlayer interactions are in fact stronger than theory indicates, and involve significant electron sharing. The outstanding agreement of the synchrotron diffraction data with theoretical calculations in describing the intralayer Ti-S interactions, supports the validity of these new-found differences for the long-range interactions across the interlayer gaps. The research contributes to the fundamental understanding of weak chemical bonding in 2D layered materials in general, and to the development of TMD materials… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE
The business of physics
Physics World February 5, 2018 In this new series of columns, the author aims to raise the profile of industrial physics and explore the value and relevance of physicists to industry. According to the author, engineering and physics have similar skill sets, yet it seems that a deeper understanding of the underlying principles, as gained through a physics training, often enables people to come up with more radical solutions to problems – to “think outside the box” in some ways. Physics-based sectors include manufacturing, energy production, the automotive industry and many others – contribute more than £177bn and €23bn to […]
What sort of stream networks do scientific ideas flow along?
Physorg January 12, 2018 Researchers in Poland have shown that tracking the dependencies between co-authors reveals not only the paths along which scientific ideas flow, but also reconstructs the structure of scientific cooperation and detects emerging communities. Interestingly, the proposed method of analysis can be an effective tool to fight terrorists and even dishonest politicians… read more. TECHNICAL ARTICLE