Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Percy Julian, PhD...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 13, 2014 at 7:51am

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

Tipping the Scales on Antimatter...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2014 at 8:44am

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

Graphene One Step Closer...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 12, 2014 at 8:35am

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

Pest Problems...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 10, 2014 at 7:30am

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

Ibn al-Haytham...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 9, 2014 at 7:30am

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

The Opposition of Mars...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 8, 2014 at 6:00pm

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

Robot Dawn...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 7, 2014 at 5:55pm

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

Costly Denial...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 6, 2014 at 6:16am

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

Minute Relativity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 5, 2014 at 8:33am

Blog link: Minute Labs

April 4, 1968...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 5, 2014 at 8:29am

Trek Tech...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 4, 2014 at 8:48am

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

So Much for Big Brother...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 3, 2014 at 2:27pm

"1984"

The security of a data connection protected using a flawed U.S. encryption standard promoted by the National Security Agency could be broken in under 16 seconds using a single computer processor. That’s according to the first in-depth study of how easily encryption systems that use the now deprecated Dual_EC random number generator could be defeated by an attacker that had “backdoored” the standard.

The flawed standard has never been widely used to protect Internet communications, even though the security company RSA got $10 million from the NSA to make it the default random number generator in one of its software packages. It is not known whether the NSA or anyone else knows the crucial mathematical relationship needed to exploit the flaw and undo encryption based on Dual_EC.

However, the study conclusively shows that an attacker that did know the key to the Dual_EC backdoor could put it to practical use. Not all of the six different encryption software packages tested could be defeated in seconds: half took a 16-processor cluster between 60 and 80 minutes of work to break. But a national intelligence agency could significantly improve on those times by devoting more computing power to the problem.

MIT Technology Review:
Study Shows Flawed U.S. Encryption Standard Could Be Broken in Seconds

WIMP Signals...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 2, 2014 at 5:57am

Maps of gamma rays from the center of the Milky Way galaxy, before (left) and after signals from known sources were removed, reveal an excess that is consistent with the distribution of dark matter.

Not long after the Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope took to the sky in 2008, astrophysicists noticed that it was picking up a steady rain of gamma rays pouring outward from the center of the Milky Way galaxy. This high-energy radiation was consistent with the detritus of annihilating dark matter, the unidentified particles that constitute 84 percent of the matter in the universe and that fizzle upon contact with each other, spewing other particles as they go. If the gamma rays did in fact come from dark matter, they would reveal its identity, resolving one of the biggest mysteries in physics. But some argued that the gamma rays could have originated from another source.

Now a new analysis of the signal claims to rule out all other plausible explanations and makes the case that the gamma rays trace back to a type of particle that has long been considered the leading dark matter candidate — a weakly interacting massive particle, or WIMP. Meanwhile, a more tentative X-ray signal reported in two other new studies suggests the existence of yet another kind of dark matter particle called a sterile neutrino.

In the new gamma-ray analysis, which appeared Feb. 27 on the scientific preprint site arXiv.org, Dan Hooper and his collaborators used more than five years’ worth of the cleanest Fermi data to generate a high-resolution map of the gamma-ray excess extending from the center of the galaxy outward at least 10 angular degrees, or 5,000 light-years, in all directions.

“The results are extremely interesting,” said Kevork Abazajian, an associate professor of physics and astronomy at the University of California, Irvine. “The most remarkable part of the analysis is that the signal follows the shape of the dark matter profile out to 10 degrees,” he said, explaining that it would be “very difficult to impossible” for other sources to mimic this predicted dark matter distribution over such a broad range.

The findings do not constitute a discovery of dark matter, the scientists said, but they prepare the way for an upcoming test described by many researchers as a “smoking gun”: If the gamma-ray excess comes from annihilating WIMPs, and not conventional astrophysical objects, then the signal will also be seen emanating from dwarf galaxies that orbit the Milky Way — diffuse objects that are rich in dark matter but not in other high-energy photon sources such as pulsars, rotating neutron stars that have been floated as alternative explanations for the excess.

Quanta Magazine: Case for Dark Matter Signal Strengthens

Ozge...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 1, 2014 at 5:20am

Ozgenur “Ozge” Kahvecioglu Feridun first came to Argonne in 2010, when she was as a Visiting Scientist working on a scale-up project, the Ultrafast and Large Scale Boriding project.

A visiting scientist at Argonne in 2010 and a postdoctoral research fellow since 2012, Ozgenur “Ozge” Kahvecioglu Feridun is a metallurgical and materials engineer with the Process Technology Research group in the Energy Systems division.

What do you do at Argonne?

I work on process development and scale-up of advanced cathode materials. We scale processes from bench to pilot scale, identifying and resolving process challenges when producing materials. This reduces the risks associated with the commercialization of new materials.

What made you choose Argonne as the place to continue your postdoc work?

Actually, this is my second time working at Argonne. In 2010, I was here as a Visiting Scientist working on another scale-up project, the Ultrafast and Large Scale Boriding project, under Ali Erdemir. During this project, I learned firsthand how to apply my skills to solve process scale-up problems and how working on a diverse team contributed to the overall success of the project. Everyone brought a different expertise to the table that helped us solve many difficult issues.

On that project, we scaled an advanced heat-treating process from bench to industrial scale. It was subsequently licensed to an industrial partner and won an R&D 100 award in 2012.

Argonne National Labs: Ozgenur Kahvecioglu Feridun, by John Spizzurri

Back of the Envelop...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 31, 2014 at 6:00am

Source: Link below

After following the BICEP2 announcement via Twitter, I had to board a transcontinental flight, so I had 5 uninterrupted hours to think about what it all meant. Without Internet access or references, and having not thought seriously about inflation for decades, I wanted to reconstruct a few scraps of knowledge needed to interpret the implications of r ~ 0.2.

I did what any physicist would have done … I derived the basic equations without worrying about niceties such as factors of 3 or 2π. None of what I derived was at all original — the theory has been known for 30 years — but I’ve decided to turn my in-flight notes into a blog post. Experts may cringe at the crude approximations and overlooked conceptual nuances, not to mention the missing references. But some mathematically literate readers who are curious about the implications of the BICEP2 findings may find these notes helpful. I should emphasize that I am not an expert on this stuff (anymore), and if there are serious errors I hope better informed readers will point them out.

By tradition, careless estimates like these are called “back-of-the-envelope” calculations. There have been times when I have made notes on the back of an envelope, or a napkin or place mat. But in this case I had the presence of mind to bring a notepad with me.

Quantum Frontiers: Inflation on the back of an envelop

Ragnarok..

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 30, 2014 at 7:30am

Source: Live Science Link below

Ragnarok by Reginald L. Goodwin

Amazon.com: The Sixth Extinction - An Unnatural History, Elisabeth Kolbert
Live Science: Civilization Doomed by Over-consumption, Wealth Inequality
Live Science: Society is Doomed, Scientists Claim

Our Place in the Universe...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 29, 2014 at 9:29am

Cause It's Cap...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2014 at 6:00am

...and, it's Friday! One more week to geek on "Winter Soldier." I'd buy on Fandango: after the east coast nuclear winter, people will be stir crazy from telecommuting and need to get out...and see real people again.

The analysis below is the reason why you shouldn't take a physics person to the movies with you...just kidding, and my wife sadly has no choice in the matter. We'll behave, promise. Just don't ask questions like these.

At the end, Cap throws his shield at the Winter Soldier – because that’s what Captain America does. But wait! The Winter Soldier just catches the shield and throws it right back at Captain America. The real cool part is what happens when Cap catches the shield. The impact is strong enough to push him back a little bit. Is this enough to get an estimate for the mass of the shield? I think so.

Sliding Back

This is really a multi-part problem. First, the shield is thrown by the Winter Soldier. I don’t really care about the throwing motion. Next, the shield moves through the air to Captain America and collides with him. This gives him some recoil velocity. However, Cap is standing on the ground such that his recoiling body is slowed down to a stop by friction.

It might not seem to be the best place to start, but I am going to start backwards. Let’s look at Captain America sliding after the impact with the shield. By estimating the frictional force and the sliding distance, I can get a value for the recoil speed after the impact.

In this first problem, I can just consider Captain America as a block with some initial speed moving across the ground. Here is a force diagram while he is slowing down (after the impact).

The forces in the vertical direction must add up to zero since Cap doesn’t accelerate up or down. This means that I can find the force the ground pushes up on him:

Why do I need this force pushing up (usually called the Normal force)? If I use the typical model for sliding friction, the magnitude of the frictional force can be determined by:

Wired: How Much Does Captain America’s Shield Weigh? Rhett Allain

Alien Worlds...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2014 at 5:39am

Nano Fingerprints...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2014 at 5:00am

The process of producing anti-counterfeit nano-fingerprints based on randomly distributed silver nanowires.
[1] Silver nanowires (AgNWs) are prepared by the self-seeding method and an amorphous silica shell is coated on the surface using tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS).
[2] Fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) and rhodamine B-isothiocyanate (RITC) are attached covalently to the surface of the pre-formed silica shell by allowing the formation of covalent bonds between the silica surface and 3-aminopropyltrimethoxysilane (APTMS).
[3] A photolithographic process is used to inscribe the direction and target markers on the surface of the PET film. The orientation marker (“KAIST”) can be used to determine the correct direction of the PET film. The target marker (“X”) has an empty space in its central region where AgNWs are loaded to generate fingerprints.

Counterfeiting is a steady and increasingly important problem that occurs in nearly every trade and industry. Recognizing the difficulty in distinguishing counterfeit goods from genuine products, new nanoscale technologies are being developed to prevent and identify this illegal practice. Using dye-coated one-dimensional (1D) nanowires, researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in South Korea have demonstrated that randomly distributed nanowires can generate unique and simple barcode patterns readily applicable by many to anti-counterfeiting.

Reporting in Nanotechnology, nanoscale fingerprint patterns are generated by simply casting fluorescent dye-coated silver nanowires onto a transferrable flexible polyethylene terephthalate (PET) film. The direction and target markers ("KAIST" and "X") are patterned by a photolithographic technique to provide positional information for identification and the nanowires are cast onto it. Then, using an optical microscope, the resulting unique fingerprint patterns can be visually authenticated in a simple and straightforward manner, as shown fully in the figure above.

Nano Tech Web: Combatting counterfeit goods with nanoscale fingerprints