These are the articles and videos from the previous week I found most interesting.
- Runaway Glaciers in West Antarctica
- What Is Vertigo?
- Free is a Lie
- Atomic Legos: Building and Investigating Quantum Materials One Atom at a Time
- Solve for X – A recap of our 2014 event; Google’s moonshot projects
- MMS Mission’s Unique Orbit – NASA
- Cryptography: Primes, Elliptic Curves, & Lattices
- Compressive Light Field Projection: MIT Media Lab, Camera Culture Group
- Can we see the motion of electrons on the atomic scale?
Runaway Glaciers in West Antarctica
Glaciologist Eric Rignot of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of California, Irvine, narrates this animation depicting the processes leading to the decline of six rapidly melting glaciers in West Antarctica. A new study by Rignot and others finds the rapidly melting section of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet appears to be in an irreversible state of decline, with nothing to stop the glaciers in this area from melting into the sea. Full press release at: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php…
What Is Vertigo?
Is the world spinning, and you don’t know why? Scientific American MIND editor Ingrid Wickelgren explains how your inner ear can throw you off balance.
Free is a Lie
Aral Balkan
RSA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YwWMrDbvpzE&feature=share
Terms and Conditions May Apply Official Trailer #1 (2013) – Documentary Movie HD
Terms And Conditions May Apply (2013) – Vimeo
Terms and Conditions May Apply Documentary with Cullen Hoback – YouTube
The age of features is dead. We are living in the age of experiences.
Designer and social entrepreneur Aral Balkan believes it is time to build an alternate future where we own our own tools, services, and data. And to do this we must create a new category of design-led, experience-driven ‘technology’.
Atomic Legos: Building and Investigating Quantum Materials One Atom at a Time
Harvard
May 12, 2014
Ultracold atoms offer a fascinating view of the quantum world. With the quantum gas microscope, invented here at Harvard, we take pictures of individual atoms dancing to the rules of quantum mechanics. For example, quantum mechanics allows a single atom to exist in many locations at once. This so-called “quantum superposition” can be directly observed with our microscope. By looking at just one or two atoms, we can gain intuition about this bizarre quantum world. We can then use our ultracold atoms as building blocks to assemble synthetic quantum materials and to explore new states of matter.
Solve for X – A recap of our 2014 event
Google’s moonshot projects
Solve for X: People working to accelerate progress on technology moonshots.
MMS Mission’s Unique Orbit
NASA
Scientist John Dorelli explains the MMS mission’s orbit and why the four spacecraft fly in a tetrahedron formation. This complex arrangement enables scientists to gather data about magnetic reconnection in 3D.
On its journey, MMS will observe a little-understood, but universal phenomenon called magnetic reconnection, responsible for dramatic re-shaping of the magnetic environment near Earth, often sending intense amounts of energy and fast-moving particles off in a new direction. Not only is this a fundamental physical process that occurs throughout the universe, it is also one of the drivers of space weather events at Earth. Truly understanding the process requires four identical spacecraft to track how such reconnection events move across and through any given space.
This video is public domain and can be downloaded at: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/goto?11485
Cryptography: Primes, Elliptic Curves, & Lattices
http://research.microsoft.com/apps/video/default.aspx?id=216781
This will be the fourth of six cryptography primer sessions exploring the basics of modern cryptography. In this session, we’ll explore primality testing, elliptic curve cryptosystems, and lattice-based cryptosystems. Subsequent sessions (on alternating Fridays) are expected to include the following topics. Depending on the interests of the participants, other topics may be included or substituted. Attacks, vulnerabilities, and practical considerations Applications including zero-knowledge, secret sharing, homomorphic encryption, and election protocols.
Stanford engineer invents safe way to transfer energy to medical chips in the body
Electrical engineer Ada Poon has invented a way to wirelessly transfer power deep inside the body. The technology could provide a path toward new medical devices.
Compressive Light Field Projection: MIT Media Lab, Camera Culture Group
A compressive approach to light field synthesis with projection devices. We propose a novel, passive screen design that is combined with high-speed light field projection and nonnegative light field factorization. We demonstrate that the projector can alternatively achieve super-resolved and high dynamic range 2D image display when used with a conventional screen.
Can we see the motion of electrons on the atomic scale?
In less than 100 seconds, Amelle Zair explains how ultrafast flashes of lights are revealing the atomic world.
Alan Tatourian 