P4_4 Planet Kayakers

During this paper we investigate how the different surface gravity [1] present on other bodies within our solar system affects the size and shape of hydraulic jumps in rivers. We find that the ratio of height to length of the hydraulic jump is a constant, to 3 significant figures. This is due to the fact that on bodies with low surface gravity the wave is taller but longer and for high surface gravity the wave is lower in height but shorter in length. We conclude that any body, apart from Jupiter as it violates the initial conditions needed to form a hydraulic jump, would create waves that could be surfed by kayakers and surfers

P4_3 Spaceball

In this paper, we investigated the amount of energy and force an oncoming piece of debris the size and mass of a baseball would have on the International Space Station (ISS), and the effects of a collision between the two. It was found that the energy of the baseball is 4.4x10^6 J, meaning the force it exerts as it penetrates a window on the ISS is 5.5x10^7 N. This is shown to have the equivalent force to a collision between two cars if their impact velocity is 1303 ms^−1 . We concluded that the ISS collision would cause serious damage to its protective shielding and modules and would be by far the largest collision to date

P4_7 It's a Man Eat Man World

In this paper we calculated how long the human race would last if it resorted to cannibalism andonly cannibalism. We took into account how many calories a human is comprised of, using thevalue for an average human male, and that each human will consume exactly 2500 kcal a day in accordance with the recommended calorie intake for men. Using a decay model, we found that 1 person would be left alive after 1149 days

The active inference approach to ecological perception: general information dynamics for natural and artificial embodied cognition

The emerging neurocomputational vision of humans as embodied, ecologically embedded, social agents—who shape and are shaped by their environment—offers a golden opportunity to revisit and revise ideas about the physical and information-theoretic underpinnings of life, mind, and consciousness itself. In particular, the active inference framework (AIF) makes it possible to bridge connections from computational neuroscience and robotics/AI to ecological psychology and phenomenology, revealing common underpinnings and overcoming key limitations. AIF opposes the mechanistic to the reductive, while staying fully grounded in a naturalistic and information-theoretic foundation, using the principle of free energy minimization. The latter provides a theoretical basis for a unified treatment of particles, organisms, and interactive machines, spanning from the inorganic to organic, non-life to life, and natural to artificial agents. We provide a brief introduction to AIF, then explore its implications for evolutionary theory, ecological psychology, embodied phenomenology, and robotics/AI research. We conclude the paper by considering implications for machine consciousness

US Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter 2017: Community Report

This white paper summarizes the workshop "U.S. Cosmic Visions: New Ideas in Dark Matter" held at University of Maryland on March 23-25, 2017.Comment: 102 pages + reference