Perpetual pursuit

Technology, robotics, science , art , philosophy and miscellaneous. Non copyrighted material , please contact me if any of these material belongs to you.

[446i]

Shibuya Crossing

[engineeringisawesome]

These life lessons are from retired astronaut Chris Hadfield who has a degree in mechanical engineering.  These are some of the lessons that he learned while training and being an astronaut.  You should check out his book "An Astronaut’s guide to life on Earth".

1. Have an attitude In NASA terminology, your attitude is your orientation relative to two positions, for example your spaceship relative to the Earth and a satellite. Losing your attitude is bad, because you could end up drifting, lost and alone in outer space.

Chris Hadfield also thinks of life trajectory like attitude control – you need to stay on the right path to achieve your goals. It’s always not in your control whether you get there or not, but you can do everything in your power to make it happen. In life, losing your attitude – drifting from your path – is way worse than not reaching your destination.

2. Aim for zero In any given situation, according to Hadfield, you’re either a ‘plus-one’, a ‘zero’ or a ‘minus-one’. If you’re a plus-one, you’re actively adding value. If you’re a zero, you’re generally competent and don’t get in the way. Being a minus-one sucks, because you’re a liability and actively cause problems.

However, if you’re a plus-one and you walk into a situation trying to prove how great you are, you can go from a plus one to a minus one – your ‘I got this’ mentality might easily irritate and prove detrimental to the dynamic.

So the best thing to do in a new situation? Aim for zero. Listen. Observe. Offer advice. Don’t try to take control of everything. If you know what you’re doing, you won’t need to tell people you’re a plus one. They’ll know it.

3. Utilize the power of negative thinking ‘Negative thinking’ sounds pessimistic. Defeatist. But when you think about it, planning for the worst can actually be energizing and confidence-boosting. How? Well, if you always prepare a contingency for every scenario you’ll never be caught off-guard.

Chris Hadfield’s approach is to ask: “What’s the next thing that could kill me?” It sounds exhausting and masochistic. But actually, it isn’t. By thinking about what could go wrong in any specific situation, you preempt problems with your own solutions.

And that means you can actually relax and enjoy life, knowing you’re ready to act if things go wrong.

4. Sweat the small stuff “An astronaut who doesn’t sweat the small stuff is a dead astronaut,” says Hadfield. The lesson: averting disaster isn’t about making one-off life-or-death decisions – it’s about learning and understanding all the little things that develop into a bigger issue. An example of astronaut small stuff is knowing the ‘boldface’ – the tried-and-tested instructions that make up NASA’s Flight Rules manual.

Not sweating the small stuff runs counter to conventional wisdom, yet there’s truth in it. Yes, an astronaut’s work environment is radically more hostile and dangerous than most people’s. But the point is that paying attention to the granular details – like physical health symptoms or signs of car trouble – makes you incrementally safer.

5. Do care what others think It’s hard to accept we’re not in control of our own destiny. But the fact is other people have more influence over the course of our careers and lives than we do. Chris Hadfield has been to space three times – in 1995 and 2001 on the Space Shuttle and 2013 on the ISS. Yet no matter how hard he worked, it was always someone else’s decision to put him on a mission.

Which means it makes sense to care what people think about you and your performance. So get feedback. Learn from it. Improve. If the only opinion you’re worried about is your own, you’re probably going to limit your progress.

6. When the stakes are high, preparation is everything We can’t always control what happens to us in life when big moments come around. But we can control how prepared we are. It might seem obvious to prepare if you’re planning to pilot a Soyuz rocket to the ISS, but many of us fail to prepare for normal stuff in life – even if we know there are big moments are coming up.

So whether it’s a big exam, a job interview or sports final, when the high-stakes situations arise planning for success is key. In most scenarios, Hadfield argues that you’ve passed or failed before you even begin, depending on your level of preparation.

7. Good leadership means leading the way, not bullying other people to do things your way Some people are very successful at intimidating people into going along with their plans. It’s the brute force approach to getting things done. But leading through coercion and bullying others means you’re building your leadership credentials on very weak foundations.

Chris Hadfield reckons the better way to lead is by proving the best course of action. Setting an example. It’s the consensus-building approach. By showing people the right path, you’re creating a stronger platform for teamwork and leadership. People will follow you because they want to, not because they have to.

8. Put groupthink at the core of your teamwork For Hadfield, the key question to ask when you’re part of a team is: “How can I help get us to where we need to go?” It’s beautifully simple: put the team before yourself, and you’re more likely to win.

Hadfield argues that you really don’t need to be a superhero to be a valuable member of a team – empathy and a sense of humor are often more important. He also suggests that searching for ways to lighten the mood is never a waste of time, because it encourages expeditionary spirit – everyone pulling together in extraordinary circumstances to collectively accomplish a shared goal.

Conversely, while sharing common gripes can create a bond between team mates, excessive whining is corrosive and the antithesis of expeditionary behavior.

9. Criticize the problem, never the person Chris Hadfield believes that if you need to make a strong criticism, it’s better to pinpoint the problem rather than attack the person. Yes, it can be frustrating when you suffer for someone’s mistake, but ridiculing or berating a colleague is counter-productive. ‘Work the problem’ is a core mantra of NASA culture. It’s not about ego.

In fact, Hadfield advocates going out of your way to help colleagues improve in all areas. This seems strange coming from the hyper-competitive world of NASA, but Hadfield argues that promoting colleagues’ interests helps you stay competitive. Plus you have a vested interest in your colleagues’ success – the better they are, the more they can help you succeed.

10. Be ready. Work Hard. Enjoy it! Ultimately, Chris Hadfield’s life lessons boil down to being the best that you can be through hard work and preparation. This approach has taken him from being a fighter pilot and test pilot right through to a 20-year astronaut career. It’s not a ground-breaking philosophy, admittedly, but then how often do we truly earn the things we want by working for them? How often do we just wish or hope they’d happen?

Source: 10 Inspiring Life Lessons from Astronaut Chris Hadfield

PS:  Sorry for the lack of posting lately!  - Justin

[emergentfutures]

The Chairless Chair, an invisible chair that you can wear

- It’s like a chair that isn’t there, but magically appears whenever you need it. It’s called the Chairless Chair and you wear it on your legs like an exoskeleton: when it’s not activated, you can walk normally or even run. And then, at the touch of a button, it locks into place and you can sit down on it. Like a chair that is now there.

"The idea came from wanting to sit anywhere and everywhere, and from working in a UK packaging factory when I was 17," says Keith Gunura, the 29-year old CEO and co-founder of noonee, the Zurich-based startup behind the device, “standing for hours on end causes a lot of distress to lower limbs, but most workers get very few breaks and chairs are rarely provided, because they take up too much space. So I thought that the best idea was to strap an unobtrusive chair directly to myself.”

Full Story: CNN

[sizvideos]

[pursuitofvirtue]

sv gravity 100

[sagansense]

“Don’t let anyone fool you. Curiosity never killed the cat. It revealed how to ask the right questions.” • Rich (sagansense)

[adamjk]

[theverge]

SpaceX’s first manned spacecraft can carry seven passengers to the ISS and back) Elon Musk thinks the vessel will be ready by 2016

[skepticalavenger]

A Rough Guide to Spotting Good & Bad Science

Note: a lot of this applies to bad science reporting, which is much different that badly conducted scientific experiments.

(enlarge)

via Compound Interest

[pursuitofvirtue]

SON LOS RÍOS Somos el tiempo. Somos la famosa parábola de Heráclito el Oscuro. Somos el agua, no el diamante duro, la que se pierde, no la que reposa. Somos el río y somos aquel griego que se mira en el río. Su reflejo cambia en el agua del cambiante espejo, en el cristal que cambia como el fuego. Somos el vano río prefijado, rumbo a su mar. La sombra lo ha cercado. Todo nos dijo adiós, todo se aleja. La memoria no acuña su moneda. Y sin embargo hay algo que se queda y sin embargo hay algo que se queja.

[skunkbear]

A couple months ago I shared some GIFs of invisible things, and I finally got around to putting them together in this video:

When light travels through areas of different air density, it bends. You’ve probably noticed the way distant pavement seems to shimmer on a hot day, or the way stars appear to twinkle. You’re seeing light that has been distorted as it passes through varying air densities, which are in turn created by varying temperatures and pressures.

Schlieren Flow Visualization can be used to visually capture these changes in density: the rising heat from a candle, the turbulence around an airplane wing, the plume of a sneeze … even sound.  Special thanks to Mike Hargather, a professor of mechanical engineering at New Mexico Tech, who kindly provided a lot of these videos.

[pursuitofvirtue]

Before all things reborn again You learn the painful breath of time

Cold mourning stretches out your arms To the mighty warmth of the golden sun

Seem all have gone insane for gold All was created out of the night We're all born from the burst of a star...

The day you'll come to life you'll realize Expanding force to life where you belong And in the winter cold, with opened eyes You'll find the strength to fight and stand upright One day you'll walk the world and keep in mind The heart you've been given in winter time And through the bitter cold, with opened eyes You'll find the strength to fight and stand upright

[micdotcom]

Engineering Company Festo Is Creating Robots Based On Nature

German engineering firm Festo is creating a robot army. Sounds scary, right? But there’s no need to fear a “Skynet”-type apocalypse quite yet, because these robots want to do good by making laborious tasks easier in the factories of the future. And they’re using nature as their inspiration.

Festo summarizes the motivation behind their research on their website: “Gripping, moving, controlling and measuring – nature performs all of these tasks instinctively, easily and efficiently. What could be more logical than to examine these natural phenomena and learn from them?”

Read more | Follow policymic

[appliedtechnotopia-consulting]

A quick look at some of the wondrous work in robotics done by Festo.

[pursuitofvirtue]

Arduino project. DIY monitoring station for air quality testing. Some ideas to get started with monitoring at home, although is not the cheapest project to start with.

[discoverynews]

BREAKING: Small World Discovered Beyond Pluto

After a decade of searching, astronomers have found a second dwarf-like planet far beyond Pluto and its Kuiper Belt cousins, a presumed no-man’s land that may turn out to be anything but. Read more

[futurescope]

AI X Prize

Chris Anderson and Peter Diamandis announced at the TED conference in Vancouver a new contest for AI. Although everything seems to be pretty unspecified (rules are tbd via the crowd) but the idea of a modern day Turing Test is exciting.

Sample of the Prize Rules:

DRAFT PRIZE Concept: This is for example purposes. Elements of this concept may or may not be used. We’d like to hear your ideas.

In advance of the TED Conference, a group of judges develop 100 different TED Talk subjects.

During the TED Conference, the TED Audience chooses one of these subjects (or the subject is randomly chosen) and then the competing A.I. is given 30 minutes to prepare a compelling 3 min TED Talk.

The Team could decide how their A.I. would present on stage – would it be a physical robot that walks out to present? Or a disembodied voice?

After the talk, the audience would vote with their applause and, if appropriate, with a standing ovation.

Next, the A.I. would need to answer two questions from Chris Anderson, the host of the conference, and then a panel of experts would also add their votes.

Each year at the TED Conference, an interim prize would be offered for the best A.I. presentation until such time that an A.I. truly delivers a spectacular TED Talk, and the A.I. XPRIZE presented by TED winner is crowned.

[submit idea] [read more]

[neilcicierega]

[pursuitofvirtue]

Troll mode on.

[pursuitofvirtue]

Silicon chips .. how they do it ? Preparing a paper for materials science about semiconductors and the relation with the diffusion phenomena.