omega tau science & engineering podcast

In Episode 101 spreche ich mit Prof. Dr. Thomas Schwentick über Logik. Dabei geht es um einige grundlegende Begriffe und große Wissenschaftler auf diesem Gebiet sowie um verschiedene Arten der Logik und um informationstechnische Anwendungen.

In this 100th episode of omega tau we talk to Dr. Stephen B. Johnson about system health management, a set of techniques and processes used to improve system dependability. The episode is based on a book Stephen co-edited, and as a consequence of Stephen's background, we use aerospace examples in this episode. We discuss the fundamental concepts such as functions, states and the state vector, failures and faults. We then discuss the influence of complexity on failures, as well as human involvement. We discuss means to prevent failures such as fault isolation, redundancy and model adjustment. We conclude the three-hour conversation by looking at the future of systems engineering and system health management with a particular focus on formal methods.

Episode 99 behandelt das Thema Lebensmittelchemie. Ich habe das Chemische und Veterinäruntersuchungsamt Stuttgart besucht und dort mit Dr. Carmen Breitling-Utzmann über Bestandteile von Lebensmitteln, Vorgänge bei der Lebensmittelverarbeitung, Schadstoffe und Analysemethoden gesprochen. Im Anschluss an das Gespräch durfte ich noch ein paar Labore anschauen und habe dabei insbesondere etwas über die Massenspektrometrie als Untersuchungsmethode erfahren.

This episode is a conversation about airborne wind energy. In particular, we talk to Roland Schmehl who leads a team of researchers and engineers at TU Delft who develop the Kitepower system. In this system, kites are automatically flown in a pumping pattern to extract energy from wind as an alternative to classical ground-based wind turbines. In the conversation we cover the benefits of airborne wind energy in general and of kites in particular and we cover in some detail how the Delft system works technically.

This is the long-awaited follow-up to the first Apollo episode, once again with W. David Woods, author of How Apollo Flew to the Moon. In this episode we cover that part that we omitted in the first episode: the time on the moon. We talk about life support, the various scientific instruments and experiments as well as the technology and use of the lunar rover (about which David is actually writing another book).

In this fourth (and for the time being, last) episode in the series on physics at CERN we look at the LHC from the perspective of the beam producers, and more specifically, from the perspective of the control system for the LHC. To this end, we first talk to Vito Baggiolini, a software engineer in the controls group, and then we talk to Felix Ehm, a technical engineer for the beam control system. In the episode we recap what the LHC does and how it does it (you may want to re-listen to Episode 30 on the LHC), discuss the hardware elements used for beam control, some of the safety and security systems, as well as about the software aspects of the system.

This episode is a conversation with CERN's Niels Madsen about Antimatter. We first discuss theoretical aspects about the topic, and then focus on the ALPHA Experiment. Since Niels is an experimentalist and has helped building essential parts of the experiment, we discuss the experiment in some detail.

In this episode we discuss neutrinos. In the first part we talk with CERN's Gian Giudice about the theory of neutrinos; we also discuss what it would mean if they were actually faster than light. Part two is a conversation with Edda Gschwendtner about the CERN Neutrinos to Gran Sasso experiment and the OPERA detector.

This is the first episode in a series of episodes on particle physics and related research at CERN. In this episode we are talking to John Ellis about the standard model of particle physics, which is the current "big picture" about how subatomic matter and fields work.

This episode is a conversation with ESA astronaut Paolo Nespoli about the construction of and life on the ISS. As part of the STS-120 shuttle mission, Paolo was involved in installing the Harmony Module onto ISS. Later he served as a flight engineer on board ISS, as part of Expeditions 26 and 27. In the episode we talk about his two missions and compare the experiences on the Shuttle, the ISS and the Soyuz.