Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts (3117)

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Earth Two...

Kepler-186f, shown in this artist’s concept, is the first Earth-sized planet discovered in its star’s habitable zone. Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech

From a comic book nerd perspective, it's neat they found a planet in the possible "Goldilocks habitable zone." It is however, 500 light years away, meaning that even if we had rocket ships that could get to 99.9999% of c (speed of light), it would take several human lifetimes to get there. If we had the propulsion systems of SyFy lore, the important point would be the "when" in its planetary development we arrive - dinosaurs or primitive hominoids - and whether we'd treat them like H.G. Wells' Martians in "War of the Worlds" (he gleaned from the real events of the British crown's expansion and the subjugation of Aborigines) or a more contemporary comparison - Native Americans. A prime directive assumes we evolve beyond our current brutality.



Exoplanets are fun and all, but those hot Jupiters and super Neptunes and such are kind of beside the point. Everyone knows the real search is for a planet like ours: rocky, smallish, and capable of hosting liquid water. And now scientists have found one, named Kepler-186f — an Earth-sized planet in its star’s habitable zone, the area where conditions aren’t too hot or too cold, but just right, for liquid water to be possible.



Planet Profile



The planet orbits a star about 500 light-years away called Kepler-186 and was discovered by the Kepler telescope (and then confirmed at the Keck and Gemini Observatories). The discovery technically includes four other exoplanets found around the star, but Kepler-186f is the only one in the habitable zone. Scientists found them all using the “transit method,” which is just basically looking at stars and waiting for planets to pass in front, dimming the star’s light a little bit.



Discovery: Possibly Habitable Earth-Sized Planet Discovered, Bill Andrews

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No Compromises on AFM...

JILA's modified AFM probes measuring DNA molecules. The older mod (long cantilever, right) eliminated the usual gold coating to enhance long-term stability. The latest version (left) retains the gold coating where needed to reflect light but maintains excellent stability. Researchers also removed a large section to reduce stiffness and friction near surfaces. The new probe provides precise results much faster than before, while reducing “noise” (colored squiggles).
Credit: Baxley/JILA

JILA researchers have engineered a short, flexible, reusable probe for the atomic force microscope (AFM) that enables state-of-the-art precision and stability in picoscale force measurements. Shorter, softer and more agile than standard and recently enhanced AFM probes, the JILA tips will benefit nanotechnology and studies of folding and stretching in biomolecules such as proteins and DNA.



An AFM probe is a cantilever, shaped like a tiny diving board with a small, atomic-scale point on the free end. To measure forces at the molecular scale in a liquid, the probe attaches its tip to a molecule such as a protein and pulls; the resulting deflection of the cantilever is measured. The forces are in the realm of piconewtons, or trillionths of a newton. One newton is roughly the weight of a small apple.



The new probe design, described in ACS Nano,* is the JILA research group's third recent advance in AFM technology. JILA is jointly operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder.


NIST:
No Compromises: JILA’s Short, Flexible, Reusable AFM Probe, Laura Ost
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A Nation of Warring Tribes...


See previous: "Weaponized Pseudoscience" yesterday. Quoting part of the post: "we're in the aftermath of 'created realities,' and I fear this self-willed ignorance of science is slowly unraveling our nation." We are the sum of the stories we tell of ourselves, some noble; some salacious; some shameful. Some of them are best left unsaid...
Post 2012 election tweets



This is the eventual culmination of pseudoscience run amok - it metastasizes as a weapon: societal instability reaching for an "ideal" that never existed. The rude, reintroduction of  pseudo social science hack Charles Murray as adviser to Gregg Abbott in Texas politics; the so-called "debate" on climate change; the age of the universe (6,000 versus 13.8 billion) and evolution versus "intelligent design" are not designed to enlighten: they are to evade, obfuscate inducing ignorance, an effective method of control. When science and critical thinking skills are properly taught, you ask questions of authority, and authoritarians don't want that. They'd rather you memorize a Bible verse (many they've never read, but their marketing departments find useful in their machinations); they'd rather you repeat a Jingoism/slogan/talking points - thinking is out of the question since it will begat questions. This is no better than the "conspiracy theories" that bloviators use to whip their audiences on right-leaning AM talk radio to frenzied mania, high profits and a spot on network news.

PoliticusUSA.com


These are the "chickens coming home to roost" of the "Southern Strategy," this is what dog-whistle politics reaps after it's sown in the wind. This is when your ratings are dependent on making everyone afraid of "the other," and that larger-than-life other happens to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "I want my country back": the 'good old days' for some; the bad ones for everyone else that they don't give a damn about. Meanwhile, we have two years to obsolescence on the global stage when "Made in America" becomes a rarefied artifact.

Never mind that human life originated in Africa; that the oldest known footprints of Homo Erectus happens to have been found in Kenya. It makes us all African, this expressed malady over class, place and pigmentation a form of melanin-envy and self-loathing.

Never mind that hate is not an election-winning strategy and that Karl Rove waisted a lot of billionaire's money trying to throw the election from "We the People" to the oligarchs.

We worship money as a national deity, and no other god really. We're supposedly divided between "makers and takers" and the self-labeled makers seem to have no problem taking another tax cut. Their recipe for job creation has so far equaled Marie Antoinette's famously attributed comment (actually by Maria Theresa 100 years before in Spain): "let them eat cake." There is no room at the oligarch's Inns, mansions, wealth seminars or dinner tables.

Princeton and Northwestern now says the previous experiment in self-governance is over, and is at its inevitable conclusion: we are an oligarchy, well before Putin could reestablish it in Russia. It explains why the authoritarians here so admire his veracity; his bare-shirted cowboy diplomacy - to hell he might cause World War III:

Cliches like, "itchy trigger finger" and "tall in the saddle" and "riding off or on into the sunset." Cliches like, "Get off of my planet by sundown!" More so than cliches like, "he died with his boots on." Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo's substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece ? a miracle ? a cotton-candy politician...Presto! Macho! (Gil-Scott Heron, "B Movie")

THIS IS A MENTAL DISORDER and psychological warfare foisted writ large on the American public through echo chambers and so-called "think tanks" under the clever auspices of "maintaining traditional values" while in the full spirit of Orwellian doublespeak, annihilating  them. On the day Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences plus 140 years (gees), we'd be mindful that this information age may be overloading weaker minds (he was told "don't retreat: reload" and that he did to disastrous effect). Thus, birth certificates in short or long form; Harvard transcripts and passports demanded by bloviating reality-show hosts that could spend $50 on a good toupee versus 5 million on an empty stunt are irrelevant when you've already a made-up mind that what facts don't agree with your skewed worldview will be judged false. Fear is a political motivator, but moribund when you actually try to run a country on it as well as magical thinking. It worked really well up to 2008 (being facetious), and I'm not inclined to see if repeated, it will self-correct in 2014 or 2016. I end paraphrasing Albert Einstein's observations on the nature of insanity, and quoting verbatim Nietzsche:

“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”

― Friedrich Nietzsche

TPM: Harder to Handle; More on the Fox Effect, Josh Marshall

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Weaponized Pseudoscience...

TeachTheFacts.org

I've used this photo on a previous post. However, we're in the aftermath of "created realities," and I fear this self-willed ignorance of science is slowly unraveling our nation.

Weaponize (n): to adapt for use as a weapon of war; first known use of Weaponize: 1957 (Merriam-Webster)



A pseudoscience is a belief or process which masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms; it is often known as fringe- or alternative science. The most important of its defects is usually the lack of the carefully controlled and thoughtfully interpreted experiments which provide the foundation of the natural sciences and which contribute to their advancement.



Reference: Pseudoscience: What is it? How can I recognize it?

In "Ode to a Distant Prospect of Eton College," Thomas Gray says a great many things that if you can decipher the old English and British countryside references, (the Thames is mentioned twice), the beginning is essentially the plot of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."

The ending is the origin of "ignorance is bliss":

Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.

The blissful ignorance is their eventual fate with entropy: aging with associated pains and eventual demise. Ignorance is not a way to run a republic.

Yet lately, I've seen ignorance forged into the weapon of pseudoscience on the anvil of suspicion, anger, rage, huckster-foisted conspiracy theories, division and racial animus.

Bill O'Reilly tried an "old shtick" (quoting Joan Walsh, see Salon link) with basketball coach John Calipari: “I mean, you are a good guy, coach, but, hey, now the culture has coarsened,” said O’Reilly. “I don’t know if you listen to this rap stuff and the hip-hop stuff. Has that changed their attitude? I mean, how do you impose discipline on kids who are pretty much gonna do what they want to do?” (Salon.com) Coach was there to discuss his book; O'Reilly was riling up his base of older, whiter viewers that feel their country slipping away in a deluge of demographics and diversity. If the big-O and the fogies stopped and did the math, most won't be around in 2042 when it does occur. The question is, will the country still be?

Cliven Bundy hasn't paid his cattle grazing fees in 21 years, or $1.2 million dollars of tax payer money. He's lost every court case he's tried to defend himself, saying he doesn't "recognize the sovereignty of the federal government." He just uses their/our land; their/our roads to get his product to market; their/our electricity; their/our power; their/our computer systems to balance his books, in essence: Cliven Bundy is a "taker" supported by the echo chamber that birthed the Tea Party April 15, 2009.

Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, founder of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three fellow humans opening fire outside a Jewish Community Center and a nearby retirement community. He managed to kill two Methodists: a doctor and his fourteen-year-old grandson and a woman visiting her aged mother.


Tomorrow: "A Nation of Warring Tribes"

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Micro Robotics...

Building big: A team of three small, magnetically steered robots worked together to build this structure from toothpick-sized carbon rods.

Someone glancing through the door of Annjoe Wong-Foy’s lab at SRI International might think his equipment is infested by ants. Dark shapes about a centimeter across move to and fro over elevated walkways: they weave around obstacles and carry small sticks.



A closer look makes it clear that these busy critters are in fact man-made. Wong-Foy, a senior research engineer at SRI, has built an army of magnetically steered workers to test the idea that “microrobots” could be a better way to assemble electronics components, or to build other small structures.



Wong-Foy’s robotic workers have already proved capable of building towers 30 centimeters (two feet) long from carbon rods, and other platforms able to support a kilogram of weight. The robots can work with glass, metal, wood, and electronic components. In one demonstration, they made a carbon truss structure with wires and colored LEDs mixed in to serve as the lab’s Christmas tree.



“We can scale to many more robots at low cost,” says Wong-Foy, who thinks his system could develop into a new approach to manufacturing. Many electronic components are the right size to be handled by his microrobots, he says, and teams of them might prove a good way to lay them out onto circuit boards.



MIT Technology Review:

Tiny robots that work together like ants could lead to a new way to manufacture complex structures and electronics, by Tom Simonite
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Proto Tony Stark...

Robot suit: An exoskeleton on display in Brazil is designed to be worn, and controlled, by a paralyzed person.

I cautiously wish him good luck...



In less than 60 days, Brazil will begin hosting soccer’s 2014 World Cup, even though workers are still hurrying to pour concrete at three unfinished stadiums. At a laboratory in São Paulo, a Duke University neuroscientist is in his own race with the World Cup clock. He is rushing to finish work on a mind-controlled exoskeleton that he says a paralyzed Brazilian volunteer will don, navigate across a soccer pitch using his or her thoughts, and use to make the ceremonial opening kick of the tournament on June 12.



The project, called Walk Again, is led by Miguel Nicolelis, a 53-year-old native of Brazil and one of the biggest names in neuroscience. If it goes as planned, the kick will be a highly public display of research into brain-machine interfaces, a technology that aims to help paralyzed people control machines with their thoughts and restore their ability to get around.



But the Walk Again project is drawing doubters. Saying the demonstration is as much publicity stunt as science, they question whether it will illustrate any real degree of thought control. That’s because it relies on a fairly old, imprecise brain-recording technology called EEG, or electroencephalography.



At least three other research groups have recently published reports of EEG-controlled exoskeletons. Yet so far, none have managed to do much more than send a start or stop signal. They let the robotic harness do the rest of the work on a preset trajectory, with plenty of outside assistance in balancing.



MIT Technology Review:
World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics
A Brazilian neuroscientist says brain-controlled robotics will let the paralyzed walk again. By Antonio Regalado

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Translocation of Nanoparticles...

Left: Snapshot of the simulation system. The (20, 20) type carbon nanotube (CNT) combined with two graphite sheets (cyan) solved in a periodic water box represents a nanometre water channel, and a polymer-functionalized nanoparticle (NP) is driven through it by an external electric field.
Right: The NP structures with different polymer length and number, and the polymer terminal is charged (green).

As carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are excellent water transporters, the researchers use all-atom molecular dynamics simulations to study the translocation of charged NPs through a fluidic CNT. A series of simulations are conducted for NPs with different polymer length, polymer number, charge amount and charge position. With the increase in polymer length, the NP flux decreases as a whole due to the increase in NP size. The negatively charged NP translocation fails at the smallest polymer length because of the strong binding of Na+.



Nanotech Web: Determining the translocation of nanoparticles

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Problems and Solutions...


Ahem: #9 is kind of big, so be careful!

Source: Physics Database (10 Free Physics Problem Books)

Direct link to books:

  1. Problems and Solutions in Elementary Physics
  2. Review Problems for Introductory Physics
  3. 1000 Solved Problems in Modern Physics
  4. Problems and Solutions in Statistical Physics
  5. International Physics Olympiad Problems and Solutions
  6. Problems in General Physics
  7. Mechanics Revision: Problems and Solutions
  8. Problems and Solutions: Statistical Physics of Particles
  9. Quantum Mechanics: Problems and Solutions
  10. Problems and Solutions on Solid State Physics, Relativity and Miscellaneous Topics
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Single-Atom Gates...

Quantum computers could benefit from the latest breakthrough in atomic physics. (Courtesy: Shutterstock)

A quantum-information analogue of the transistor has been unveiled by two independent groups in Germany and the US. Both devices comprise a single atom that can switch the quantum state of a single photon. The results are a major step towards the development of practical quantum computers.



Unlike conventional computers, which store bits of information in definite values of 0 or 1, quantum computers store information in qubits, which are a superposition of both values. When qubits are entangled, any change in one immediately affects changes in the others. Qubits can therefore work in unison to solve certain complex problems much faster than their classical counterparts.



Qubits can be created from either light or matter, but many researchers believe that the practical quantum computers of the future will have to rely on interactions between both. Unfortunately, light tends only to interact with matter when the light is very intense and the matter is very dense. To make a single photon and a single atom interact is a challenge because the two are much more likely to pass straight through each other.



Physics World: Single-atom gates open the door to quantum computing

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Percy Julian, PhD...



Google is honoring chemist Percy Julian with a homepage doodle that celebrates his contributions to the field, particularly his synthesis of a compound found in the African Calabar bean, which was used to treat glaucoma.


The doodle, which celebrates Julian's 115th birthday, features him surrounded by beakers, mathematical equations, and that famous bean.



Julian was born in 1899 in Alabama. As an African-American, segregation laws prevented him from pursuing an education beyond eighth grade, particularly one that was heavy in the sciences. But with some persistence, he was admitted into DePauw University in Indiana, where he graduated with honors in 1920, according to a PBS biography.



Though his white classmates were awarded placement in master's or Ph.D. programs, Julian was not and instead became a chemistry professor at Fisk University in Nashville. Eventually, he secured a fellowship at Harvard, and earned a master's degree in 1923, according to the Chemical Heritage Foundation.



Still, prejudice prevented him from landing a teaching assistant position at Harvard so he left for the West Virginia Collegiate Institute and was later made head of the chemistry department at Howard University, the CHF said. By the 1930s, he relocated to Vienna and earned a Ph.D. in chemistry, only the third to be awarded to an African American at the time.



It was then that his work truly started to pick up. Working with Josef Pikl, Julian synthesized physostigmine within the African Calabar bean, which was used to treat glaucoma. But after a string of racially motivated rejections in academia, Julian made the leap to the private sector and joined The Glidden Paint Company, the CHF noted, to find new uses for soy beans. He excelled, coming up with - among other things - a food supplement, a fire-retardant used during World War II, and a cheap way to produce a substance that allowed for affordable production of human hormones like progesterone. Other accomplishments include a synthetic, and more affordable, version of cortisone.



PBS.org: Forgotten Genius - Percy Julian, PhD
PC Magazine: Chemist Percy Julian Honored With Google Doodle, Chloe Albanesius

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Tipping the Scales on Antimatter...

Holger Müller's interferometry technique will soon join the ALPHA experiment, pictured, at CERN. (Courtesy: Maximilien Brice/CERN)

A new technique for measuring how antimatter falls under gravity has been proposed by researchers in the US. The team says that its device – based on cooling atoms of antimatter and making them interfere – could also help to test Einstein's equivalence principle with antihydrogen – something that could have far-reaching consequences for cosmology. Finding even the smallest of differences between the behaviour of matter and antimatter could shine a light on why there is more matter than antimatter in the universe today, as well as help us to better understand the nature of the dark universe.



Up or down?



First detected at CERN in 1995, physicists have long wondered how antimatter is affected by gravity – does it fall up or down? Most theoretical and experimental work suggests that gravity probably acts in exactly the same way on antimatter as it does on matter. The problem is that antimatter is difficult to produce and study, meaning that no direct experimental measurements of its behaviour under gravity have been made to date.



One big step forward took place last year, when researchers at the ALPHA experiment at CERN measured how long it takes atoms of antihydrogen – made up of a positron surrounding an antiproton – to reach the edges of a magnetic trap after it is switched off. Although ALPHA did not find any evidence of the antihydrogen responding differently to gravity, the team was able to rule out the possibility that antimatter responds much more strongly to gravity than matter.


Physics World: Interferometry tips the scales on antimatter
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Graphene One Step Closer...

Samsung potentially has a head-start in next-gen mobile technology, thanks to its development of a new way of synthesizing graphene.

(CNN) -- No one ever expected the humble pencil to kickstart a revolution. But, by peeling apart pencil graphite into atom-thick layers using regular adhesive tape, two Russian-born scientists, Andre Geim and Konstantin Novoselov, earned a Nobel Prize in 2010. With it, they sparked the beginnings of a material that could change the world.



It is no exaggeration to say that graphene, the substance that the two scientists -- along with others -- discovered in 2004, is a miracle material. Now a Korean research lab may have made the leap from theoretical to practical with the development of a new way to synthesize it, potentially on a commercial scale.


The substance, "the perfect atomic lattice," boasts a number of hugely attractive properties, meaning it has the potential to be used in myriad industries, and for a huge range of purposes.



Attractive properties



As well as being super-strong -- 20 times stronger than diamond, 200 stronger than steel and six times lighter -- it is also remarkably conductive, both electrically and thermally.



Graphene: The strongest material on earth



If that wasn't enough, it is also almost perfectly transparent, impermeable to gas, and its properties are, scientists say, easily alterable.


Graphene is one form -- an allotrope -- of carbon, the basis of all life on earth. More familiar carbon allotropes include diamonds and graphite. What makes it unique is its thinness -- at one atom thick it is as good as two-dimensional. Its flexibility means that it could potentially be used for flexible or wearable devices.



"Graphene has a lot of potential, especially in terms of industrial applications for optical and electronic devices," says Ping Sheng, a Professor of Nanoscience at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology.



"The caveat is really in the quality of the graphene that can be produced on a large scale ... If they can overcome that then it will be a big breakthrough."


CNN: 'Miracle material' graphene one step closer to commercial use, Euan McKirdy
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Pest Problems...



A security bug uncovered this week affects an estimated two-thirds of websites and has Internet users scrambling to understand the problem and update their online passwords. But many systems vulnerable to the flaw are out of public view and are unlikely to get fixed.



OpenSSL, in which the bug, known as Heartbleed, was found, is widely used in software that connects devices in homes, offices, and industrial settings to the Internet. The Heartbleed flaw could live on for years in devices like networking hardware, home automation systems, and even critical industrial-control systems, because they are infrequently updated.



Network-connected devices often run a basic Web server to let an administrator access online control panels. In many cases, these servers are secured using OpenSSL and their software will need updating, says Philip Lieberman, president of security company Lieberman Software. However, this is unlikely to be a priority. “The manufacturers of these devices will not release patches for the vast majority of their devices, and consumers will patch an insignificant number of devices.”



Cable boxes and home Internet routers are just two of the major classes of devices likely to be affected, says Lieberman. “ISPs now have millions of these devices with this bug in them,” he says.



MIT Technology Review:
Widespread Bug Will Linger On in Unpatched Devices
Money.CNN.com: Heartbleed bug: What you need to know

LA Times: 'Heartbleed' bug could undermine years of work to build public trust

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Ibn al-Haytham...

Ibn al-Haytham. (Image by Guérin nicolas, GFDL)


Post inspired by COSMOS episode this past Sunday (full episode at link).


al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham


The Arabian physicist, astronomer, and mathematician al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca. 966-1039), or Alhazen, established the theory of vision that prevailed till the 17th century. He also defended a theory of the physical reality of Ptolemy's planetary models.



Al-Hasan was born at Basra in southern Iraq, where he must have received all his education. He gained sufficient fame for his knowledge of physics in his youth that he was called to Egypt by the Fatimid ruler al-Hakim to attempt to regulate the flow of the Nile. Failing in this effort, he was disgraced and established himself as a copyist of mathematical manuscripts; there still exists in Istanbul a manuscript of the Banu Musa's version of Apollonius's Conics copied by him in 1024. He continued to practice the scribal art in Cairo for the remainder of his life.




He did not cease to pursue his scientific studies, however, and published a large number of highly original works. He produced two catalogs of his own work, which are preserved by Ibn abi Usaybia. The first of these, compiled in 1027, comprises 25 books on mathematics and 44 on physics and metaphysics, including On the Structure of the World. The second, supplementary catalog was complied in 1028.




Al-Hasan's greatest scientific achievements were in the field of optics. In the discussion of the nature of vision at the beginning of Optics, he argues that light physically affects the eye, citing the pain experienced by looking directly at the Sun and the afterimage experienced by staring at fire and then looking into a weakly illuminated place. From this he argues that the assumption of emission of visual rays from the eye utilized by mathematical opticians, though convenient for their geometric analysis, must be physically wrong. Light rays rather proceed from the visible object to the eye and are always accompanied by color.

 

"al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham.Encyclopedia of World Biography. 2004. Encyclopedia.com. 9 Apr. 2014<http://www.encyclopedia.com>.
Islam Wikia: Ibn al-Haytham
Wikipedia: History of the Scientific Method/Ibin al-Haytham

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The Opposition of Mars...


There are two dates of special significance:



April 8th (TODAY) is the date of opposition, when Mars, Earth, and the sun are arranged in a nearly-straight line.


If the orbits of Mars and Earth were perfectly circular, April 8th would also be the date of closest approach. However, planetary orbits are elliptical--that is, slightly egg-shaped--so the actual date of closest approach doesn't come until almost a week later.



On April 14th, Earth and Mars are at their minimum distance: 92 million km, a 6+ month flight for NASA's speediest rockets. You won't have any trouble finding Mars on this night. The full Moon will be gliding by the Red Planet in the constellation Virgo, providing a can't-miss "landmark" in the midnight sky.


Remarkably, on the same night that Mars is closest to Earth, there will be a total lunar eclipse. The full Moon of April 14-15 will turn as red as the Red Planet itself.



Try to get your taxes done, so you can enjoy the show. Working on write-offs (to join you)...



NASA: The Opposition of Mars

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Robot Dawn...

Source: The Economist (link below)

ROBOTS came into the world as a literary device whereby the writers and film-makers of the early 20th century could explore their hopes and fears about technology, as the era of the automobile, telephone and aeroplane picked up its reckless jazz-age speed. From Fritz Lang’s “Metropolis” and Isaac Asimov’s “I, Robot” to “WALL-E” and the “Terminator” films, and in countless iterations in between, they have succeeded admirably in their task.



Since moving from the page and screen to real life, robots have been a mild disappointment. They do some things that humans cannot do themselves, like exploring Mars, and a host of things people do not much want to do, like dealing with unexploded bombs or vacuuming floors (there are around 10m robot vacuum cleaners wandering the carpets of the world). And they are very useful in bits of manufacturing. But reliable robots—especially ones required to work beyond the safety cages of a factory floor—have proved hard to make, and robots are still pretty stupid. So although they fascinate people, they have not yet made much of a mark on the world.



That seems about to change. The exponential growth in the power of silicon chips, digital sensors and high-bandwidth communications improves robots just as it improves all sorts of other products. And, as our special report this week explains, three other factors are at play.



One is that robotics R&D is getting easier. New shared standards make good ideas easily portable from one robot platform to another. And accumulated know-how means that building such platforms is getting a lot cheaper. A robot like Rethink Robotics’s Baxter, with two arms and a remarkably easy, intuitive programming interface, would have been barely conceivable ten years ago. Now you can buy one for $25,000.



The Economist: New roles for technology - Rise of the Robots
MIT Technology Review:
Cheaper Joints and Digits Bring the Robot Revolution Closer

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Costly Denial...


The difficulty of predicting local effects of climate change makes a compelling case for preventing it.



This week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a major report focused on what actions might or could be taken to adapt to climate change. It attempts to describe who and what is especially vulnerable to climate change, and gives an overview of ways some are adapting.



The report makes clear that specific estimates of how climate change will affect places, people, and things are very uncertain. Brought down to a local level, climate change could go in either direction—there are risks that a given area could get drier or wetter, or suffer floods or droughts, or both. This uncertainty makes efforts to prevent climate change even more important.



Specific risks to natural systems are well documented by the report. It finds, for example, the greatest risks are to those ecosystems, people, and things in low-lying coastal areas, because expected sea-level changes are in only one direction, up. This is also the case in the Arctic, where the temperature rise is expected to be much greater than the global average. There is good science and unanimous agreement among climate models behind these assertions.



But a frustrating aspect of the report—and a reflection of the difficulty of working in this line of research—is that very few specific risks to humans are quantified in a meaningful way. For example, one might ask: has my risk of death increased because of more hot days? The report says, “Local changes in temperature and rainfall have altered the distribution of some water-borne illnesses and disease vectors (medium confidence).” This seems to state the obvious, while giving no indication of whether the alterations may have increased or decreased risk or what the magnitude of the alteration might be. Given that the statement seems to say little, it is hard to imagine there is not high confidence.



MIT Technology Review (the report):
Why We Can't Just Adapt to Climate Change, John Reilly
MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change
NOLA Times Picayune: Hurricane Katrina
FEMA: Hurricane Sandy Recovery

World Bank:
What Climate Change Means for Africa, Asia and the Coastal Poor

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Trek Tech...

Source: Link below to access interactive media

For the last 50 years, Star Trek has captivated audiences as the crew of the U.S.S. Enterprise explored the galaxy using technological advances – warp drive, wormholes, beaming technology, holodecks – in order to do so. Dirk K. Morr, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, joins us to discuss the scientific ideas behind Star Trek technologies. Morr will present his findings at 6:00 pm on Wednesday at the University of Illinois at Chicago in the Behavioral Science Building.



Scientific Chicago: Real Physics Behind Star Trek

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