Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Robert L. Curbeam, Jr....

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 19, 2014 at 4:36pm

ROBERT L. CURBEAM, JR., (CAPTAIN, USN, RET.)

NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)

PERSONAL DATA: Born March 5, 1962, in Baltimore, Maryland. Two children. He enjoys weightlifting, backpacking and sports.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Woodlawn High School, Baltimore County, Maryland, 1980. Bachelor of science degree in aerospace engineering from the United States Naval Academy, 1984. Master of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, 1990. Degree of aeronautical & astronautical engineering from the Naval Postgraduate School, 1991.

ORGANIZATIONS: Member of the U.S. Naval Academy Alumni Association and the Association of Old Crows.

SPECIAL HONORS: Fighter Wing One Radar Intercept Officer of the Year for 1989, U.S. Naval Test Pilot School Best Developmental Thesis (DT-II) Award.

EXPERIENCE: Upon graduation from the U.S. Naval Academy, Curbeam commenced Naval Flight Officer training in 1984. In 1986 he reported to Fighter Squadron 11 (VF-11) and made overseas deployments to the Mediterranean and Caribbean Seas, and the Arctic and Indian Oceans on board the USS Forrestal (CV-59). During his tour in VF-11, he also attended Navy Fighter Weapons School (Topgun). Upon completion of Test Pilot School in December 1991, he reported to the Strike Aircraft Test Directorate where he was the project officer for the F-14A/B Air-to-Ground Weapons Separation Program. In August 1994, he returned to the U.S. Naval Academy as an instructor in the Weapons and Systems Engineering Department.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in December 1994, Curbeam reported to the Johnson Space Center in March 1995. After completing a year of training and evaluation, he was assigned to the Computer Support Branch in the Astronaut Office. He is a veteran of two space flights, STS-85 in 1997 and STS-98 in 2001, and has logged over 593 hours in space, including over 19 EVA hours during three spacewalks.

NASA: Robert L. Curbeam, Jr., Captain, US Navy (RET)

Entropy and Life...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 19, 2014 at 4:29pm

Why does life exist?

Popular hypotheses credit a primordial soup, a bolt of lightning and a colossal stroke of luck. But if a provocative new theory is correct, luck may have little to do with it. Instead, according to the physicist proposing the idea, the origin and subsequent evolution of life follow from the fundamental laws of nature and “should be as unsurprising as rocks rolling downhill.”

From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be much better at capturing energy from their environment and dissipating that energy as heat. Jeremy England, a 31-year-old assistant professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has derived a mathematical formula that he believes explains this capacity. The formula, based on established physics, indicates that when a group of atoms is driven by an external source of energy (like the sun or chemical fuel) and surrounded by a heat bath (like the ocean or atmosphere), it will often gradually restructure itself in order to dissipate increasingly more energy. This could mean that under certain conditions, matter inexorably acquires the key physical attribute associated with life.

“You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant,” England said.

England’s theory is meant to underlie, rather than replace, Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which provides a powerful description of life at the level of genes and populations. “I am certainly not saying that Darwinian ideas are wrong,” he explained. “On the contrary, I am just saying that from the perspective of the physics, you might call Darwinian evolution a special case of a more general phenomenon.”

His idea, detailed in a recent paper and further elaborated in a talk he is delivering at universities around the world, has sparked controversy among his colleagues, who see it as either tenuous or a potential breakthrough, or both.

Quanta Magazine: A New Physics Theory of Life, Natalie Wolchover
AIP Paper: Statistical physics of self-replication
Jeremy L. England
Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Charles F. Bolden, Jr....

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 18, 2014 at 4:20pm

CHARLES F. BOLDEN, JR. (MAJOR GENERAL, USMC RET.)

NASA ADMINISTRATOR

Nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the U.S. Senate, retired Marine Corps Major General Charles Frank Bolden, Jr., began his duties as the twelfth Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on July 17, 2009. As Administrator, he leads the NASA team and manages its resources to advance the agency's missions and goals.

Bolden's confirmation marks the beginning of his second stint with the nation's space agency. His 34-year career with the Marine Corps included 14 years as a member of NASA's Astronaut Office. After joining the office in 1980, he traveled to orbit four times aboard the space shuttle between 1986 and 1994, commanding two of the missions. His flights included deployment of the Hubble Space Telescope and the first joint U.S.-Russian shuttle mission, which featured a cosmonaut as a member of his crew. Prior to Bolden's nomination for the NASA Administrator's job, he was employed as the Chief Executive Officer of JACK and PANTHER LLC, a small business enterprise providing leadership, military and aerospace consulting, and motivational speaking.

NASA: Charles F. Bolden, Jr., Major General, USMC (RET)

Liquid Battery Electrodes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 18, 2014 at 4:17pm

Battery tester: Argonne National Laboratory chemist Elena Timofeeva sets up an experiment to test a liquid electrode (seen inside the IV bag).

A new kind of battery stores energy in what researchers are calling “rechargeable fuel”—electrodes in liquid form. The result can be either recharged like a conventional battery or replaced by pumping in new fuel like gasoline.

The materials could theoretically allow an electric car to travel 500 miles on a charge, five times farther than most electric vehicles can now, say the researchers developing the technology, who are based at Argonne National Laboratory and the Illinois Institute of Technology. Replacing them at a fueling station would take just a few minutes. In contrast, even the fastest charging stations for conventional batteries take an hour to provide a full charge.

Limited driving range and long recharging times are two of the biggest challenges for electric cars. Liquid battery electrodes could allow longer range by increasing the amount of energy battery packs can store, and because fewer non-energy-storing components would be needed, it could also make them cheaper.

Technology Review:
A Battery With Liquid Electrodes Can Be Recharged or Refilled, by Kevin Bullis

Michael P. Anderson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 17, 2014 at 7:19am

MICHAEL P. ANDERSON (LIEUTENANT COLONEL, USAF)

ASTRONAUT (DECEASED)

PERSONAL DATA: Born December 25, 1959, in Plattsburgh, New York, but considered Spokane, Washington, to be his hometown. Died on February 1, 2003 over the southern United States when Space Shuttle Columbia and her crew perished during entry, 16 minutes prior to scheduled landing. He is survived by his wife and children. Michael enjoyed photography, chess, computers, and tennis.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Cheney High School in Cheney, Washington, in 1977. Bachelor of science degree in physics/astronomy from University of Washington, 1981. Master of science degree in physics from Creighton University, 1990.

AWARDS: Posthumously awarded the Congressional Space Medal of Honor, the NASA Space Flight Medal, the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, and the Defense Distinguished Service Medal (DDSM).

SPECIAL HONORS: Distinguished graduate USAF Communication Electronics Officers course. Recipient of the Armed Forces Communication Electronics Associations Academic Excellence Award 1983. Received the USAF Undergraduate Pilot Training Academic Achievement Award for Class 87-08 Vance AFB. Awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, the USAF Meritorious Service Medal, and the USAF Achievement Medal with one oak leaf cluster.

EXPERIENCE: Anderson graduated form the University of Washington in 1981 and was commissioned a second lieutenant. After completing a year of technical training at Keesler AFB Mississippi he was assigned to Randolph AFB Texas. At Randolph he served as Chief of Communication Maintenance for the 2015 Communication Squadron and later as Director of Information System Maintenance for the 1920 Information System Group. In 1986 he was selected to attend Undergraduate Pilot Training at Vance AFB, Oklahoma. Upon graduation he was assigned to the 2nd Airborne Command and Control Squadron, Offutt AFB Nebraska as an EC 135 pilot, flying the Strategic Air Commands airborne command post code-named “Looking Glass”. From January 1991 to September 1992 he served as an aircraft commander and instructor pilot in the 920th Air Refueling Squadron, Wurtsmith AFB Michigan. From September 1992 to February 1995 he was assigned as an instructor pilot and tactics officer in the 380 Air Refueling Wing, Plattsburgh AFB New York. Anderson logged over 3000 hours in various models of the KC-135 and the T-38A aircraft.

NASA: Michael P. Anderson, Lieutenant Colonel, USAF

As Wells Might Have Envisioned...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 17, 2014 at 7:14am

H.G. Wells, "The Time Machine" and Michael Crichton's "Timeline" both completely violate the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics. It is fun to suspend belief and just "go with the bit" as it were. Interesting, most Sci Fi plot devices start by breaking this rule.

Here's a simulated version of what such a journey might look like. It probably takes a certain type/mind not to go insane...

Stephanie D. Wilson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 16, 2014 at 6:55am

STEPHANIE D. WILSON

NASA ASTRONAUT

PERSONAL DATA: Born in 1966 in Boston, Massachusetts. Enjoys snow skiing, music, stamp collecting and traveling.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Taconic High School, Pittsfield, Massachusetts, in 1984; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering Science from Harvard University in 1988 and a Master of Science degree in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Texas in 1992.

ORGANIZATIONS: Member of The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, The Association of Space Explorers and The Harvard University Board of Overseers.

SPECIAL HONORS: NASA Distinguished Service Medal (2009, 2011); NASA Space Flight Medal (2006, 2007, 2010); Honorary Doctorate of Science from Williams College (2011); Harvard College Women’s Professional Achievement Award (2008); Harvard Foundation Scientist of the Year Award (2008); Young Outstanding Texas Exes Award (2005) and several group achievement and performance awards (1992 to 2008).

EXPERIENCE: After graduating from Harvard in 1988, Wilson worked for two years for the former Martin Marietta Astronautics Group in Denver, Colorado. As a Loads and Dynamics Engineer for Titan IV, Wilson was responsible for performing coupled loads analyses for the launch vehicle and payloads during flight events. Wilson left Martin Marietta in 1990 to attend graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research, sponsored by NASA Langley Research Center through a NASA Graduate Student Researchers Fellowship, focused on the control and modeling of large, flexible space structures, ultimately culminating in a thesis comparing structural dynamics methodologies and controller designs. Following the completion of her graduate work, she began working for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, in 1992. As a member of the Attitude and Articulation Control Subsystem for the Galileo spacecraft, Wilson was responsible for assessing attitude controller performance, science platform pointing accuracy, antenna pointing accuracy and spin rate accuracy. She worked in the areas of sequence development and testing as well. While at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Wilson also supported the Interferometery Technology Program as a member of the Integrated Modeling team, which was responsible for finite element modeling, controller design and software development.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected by NASA in April 1996, Wilson reported to the Johnson Space Center in August 1996. She completed two years of training and evaluation and became qualified for flight assignment as a Mission Specialist. Wilson was initially assigned technical duties in the Astronaut Office Space Station Operations Branch to develop requirements for space station payload displays and procedures and to evaluate their user interfaces. She then served as a Capsule Communicator (CAPCOM) in the Astronaut Office CAPCOM Branch, working in Mission Control as a prime communicator with several space shuttle and space station crews.

NASA: Stephanie D. Wilson, Mission Specialist

Retooled Usage...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 16, 2014 at 6:45am

"If we're to be anything other than smooth dinosaurs who evolve, specialize and die, we need the stars" ... Octavia Butler, Parable of the Talents, 1998

Yesterday's anniversary:

On Feb. 15, 2013, a 65-foot-wide (20 meters) asteroid detonated in the skies over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, causing millions of dollars of damage and injuring 1,500 people. The dramatic event served as a wake-up call, many scientists say, alerting the world to the dangers posed by the millions of space rocks that reside in Earth's neck of the cosmic woods.

"These types of events are no longer hypothetical," David Kring, of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, said in December at the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) in San Francisco. "We've been up here talking about these types of things for years, but now the entire world understands that they can be real."

Russian Meteor Blast Thrust Asteroid Danger into Spotlight 1 Year Ago Today

Mike Wall, Senior Writer, Space.com

Being a veteran of the era of "duck and cover" (and, the complete knowledge of its uselessness), I am pleased some are thinking at least instead of "Mutually Assured Destruction" (M.A.D.): Mutually Assured Survival.

A possible way to address via retooling:

The most destructive weapon humanity has ever developed could help our species avoid going the way of the dinosaurs.

Pretty much any asteroid that poses a threat to Earth can be blasted out of the heavens using a nuclear bomb, even with warning times of a week or less, say a team of scientists who have been developing the idea.

"We have the solution, using our baseline concept, to be able to mitigate the asteroid-impact threat, with any range of warning," Bong Wie, of Iowa State University, said Feb. 6 at the 2014 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) meeting at Stanford University.

A very real threat

Wie presented his team's latest findings nearly a year to the day after a previously undetected 65-foot-wide (20 meters) space rock detonated in the skies above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,500 people.

He and many other researchers regard the Feb. 15, 2013 Russian meteor explosion— which took locals and scientists alike by surprise — as a wake-up call about the threat Earth faces from incoming space rocks.

"A couple of years ago, I had to use the dinosaur example to justify our research," he said, referring to the asteroid impact that wiped out the giant reptiles 65 million years ago. "Now, that's no more — we had this major event."

How Nuclear Bombs Could Save Earth from Killer Asteroids
Mike Wall, Senior Writer, Space.com

Mae C. Jemison...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 15, 2014 at 10:01am

MAE C. JEMISON (M.D.)

NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)

PERSONAL DATA: Born October 17, 1956, in Decatur, Alabama, but considers Chicago, Illinois, to be her hometown. Recreational interests include traveling, graphic arts, photography, sewing, skiing, collecting African Art, languages (Russian, Swahili, Japanese), weight training, has an extensive dance and exercise background and is an avid reader. Her parents, Charlie & Dorothy Jemison, reside in Chicago.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Morgan Park High School, Chicago, Illinois, in 1973; received a bachelor of science degree in chemical engineering (and fulfilled the requirements for a B.A. in African and Afro-American Studies) from Stanford University in 1977, and a doctorate degree in medicine from Cornell University in 1981.

ORGANIZATIONS: Member, American Chemical Society, Association for the Advancement of Science, Association of Space Explorers. Honorary Member, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority. Board Member, World Sickle Cell Foundation, American Express Geography Competition. Honorary Board Member, Center for the Prevention of Childhood Malnutrition. Clinical Teaching Associate, University of Texas Medical Center.

SPECIAL HONORS: National Achievement Scholarship (1973-1977); Stanford representative to Carifesta '76 in Jamaica; 1979 CIBA Award for Student Involvement; American Medical Student Association (AMSA) study group to Cuba; grant from International Travelers Institute for health studies in rural Kenya (1979); organized New York city-wide health and law fair for National Student Medical Association (1979); worked refugee camp in Thailand (1980). Recipient of Essence Award (1988), and Gamma Sigma Gamma Woman of the Year (1989). Honorary Doctorate of Sciences, Lincoln College, Pennsylvania (1991). Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Winston Salem College, North Carolina (1991). DuSable Museum Award (1992). The Mae C. Jemison Academy, an alternate public school established in 1992 in Detroit, Michigan. Montgomery Fellow 1993 Dartmouth College.

EXPERIENCE: Dr. Jemison has a background in both engineering and medical research. She has worked in the areas of computer programming, printed wiring board materials, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, computer magnetic disc production, and reproductive biology.

Dr. Jemison completed her internship at Los Angeles County/USC Medical Center in July 1982 and worked as a General Practitioner with INA/Ross Loos Medical Group in Los Angeles until December 1982.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Dr. Jemison was selected for the astronaut program in June 1987. Her technical assignments since then have included: launch support activities at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida; verification of Shuttle computer software in the Shuttle Avionics Integration Laboratory (SAIL); Science Support Group activities.

Dr. Jemison is also a principle on the 100 Year Starship initiative, with the stated goal to make "human travel beyond our solar system a reality within the next 100 years." (A direct quote from the site.)

NASA: Mae C. Jemison, M.D.

Entanglement Microscope...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 15, 2014 at 9:53am

Figure 1, page 2 of paper at Physics arXiv link below

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: One of the exciting possibilities of quantum mechanics is the ability to measure the world far more precisely than with classical tools. Today, Takafumi Ono and pals at Hokkaido University in Japan say they’ve exploited this to create the world’s first entanglement-enhanced microscope. Their new toy produces images with entangled photons that are significantly sharper than those possible with ordinary light alone.

Entanglement is the strange quantum property in which two particles share the same existence, even though they may be far apart. Ono and co say this is particularly useful for a type of imaging known as differential interference contrast microscopy.

This works by focusing two beams of photons into spots next to each other on a flat sample and measuring the interference pattern they create after they have been reflected. When both spots hit a flat part of the sample, they travel the same path length and create a corresponding interference pattern. But when the spots hit areas of different heights, the interference pattern changes.

It is then possible to work out the shape of the surface by analysing the change in the interference pattern as the spots move across it.

The difference in phase of photons can be measured with huge accuracy, but even this has a limit, known as the standard quantum limit. However, physicists have known for some time that it’s possible to improve on this by using entangled photons rather than independent ones.

That’s because a measurement on one entangled photon gives you information about the other, so together they provide more information than independent photons.

Ono and co demonstrate this using entangled photons to image a flat glass plate with a Q-shaped pattern carved in relief on the surface. This pattern is just 17 nanometres higher than the rest of the plate and so tricky to resolve with ordinary optical techniques.

Physics arXiv: World First Entanglement-Enhanced Microscope

Joan E. Higginbotham...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2014 at 8:19am

JOAN E. HIGGINBOTHAM

NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)

PERSONAL DATA: Born in Chicago, Illinois. She enjoys body building (weightlifting), cycling, music, motivational speaking.

EDUCATION: Graduated from Whitney M. Young Magnet High School, Chicago, Illinois, in 1982; received a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, in 1987, a Masters of Management from Florida Institute of Technology in 1992, and a Masters in Space Systems from Florida Institute of Technology in 1996.

ORGANIZATIONS: Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., The Gulf Coast Apollo Chapter of the Links, Inc., Association of Space Explorers ( ASE), and Sickle Cell Association of the Texas Gulf Coast, Board Member.

AWARDS: NASA Exceptional Service Medal; Keys to the Cities of Cocoa and Rockledge, Florida; Group Achievement Award for STS-26 Return to Flight; Kennedy Space Center Public Affairs Certificate of Appreciation for Service; Commendation of Merit for Service to the Department of Defense (DOD) Missions; Presidential Sports Award in bicycling and weight training; Outstanding Woman of the Year Award; Outstanding Performance 1992, 1993, 1995; National Technical Association’s 50 Distinguished Scientists and Engineers; Florida Institute of Technology’s Distinguished Alumni for 1997; Southern Illinois University’s Distinguished Alumni; Essence Magazine’s Top 50 Women of 2004; National Technical Association’s 2007 Technical Achiever (Engineer); League of Black Women Black Rose Award Recipient 2007; Women of Color in Technology Career Achievement Award Recipient 2007.

NASA EXPERIENCE: Joan Higginbotham began her career in 1987 at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC), Florida, as a Payload Electrical Engineer in the Electrical and Telecommunications Systems Division. Within six months she became the lead for the Orbiter Experiments (OEX) on OV-102, the Space Shuttle Columbia. She later worked on the Shuttle payload bay reconfiguration for all Shuttle missions and conducted electrical compatibility tests for all payloads flown aboard the Shuttle. She was also tasked by KSC management to undertake several special assignments where she served as the Executive Staff Assistant to the Director of Shuttle Operations and Management, led a team of engineers in performing critical analysis for the Space Shuttle flow in support of a simulation model tool, and worked on an interactive display detailing the Space Shuttle processing procedures at Spaceport USA (Kennedy Space Center’s Visitors Center). Higginbotham then served as backup orbiter project engineer for OV-104, Space Shuttle Atlantis, where she participated in the integration of the orbiter docking station (ODS) into the space shuttle used during Shuttle/Mir docking missions. Two years later, she was promoted to lead orbiter project engineer for OV-102, Space Shuttle Columbia. In this position, she held the technical lead government engineering position in the firing room where she supported and managed the integration of vehicle testing and troubleshooting. She actively participated in 53 space shuttle launches during her 9-year tenure at Kennedy Space Center.

NASA: Joan E. Higgenbotham, Mission Specialist

Interstellar Communications...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2014 at 8:15am

Figure 2, page 3 of the paper (arXiv link below)

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Here’s an interesting question. If we ever want to communicate with civilisations around other stars, what will be the best way to send a message, given that we will know nothing about how they intend to receive it?

That’s the question considered today by David Messerschmitt at the University of California, Berkeley. It turns out that the laws of physics, the nature of interstellar space and a little common sense place surprisingly strict bounds on how communication can take place. So if extraterrestrials think in a way that is anything like us, communication of one kind or another is distinctly possible.

Messerschmitt begins by listing the way in which any form of communication is likely to be limited. To begin with, he says that the power of any signal falls with the square of the distance traveled. Assuming that energy is likely to be a limiting factor for a civilisation, an important property of any interstellar transmitter will be to minimise the energy per bit in any signal–while still allowing the reliable extraction of the information it contains, of course.

One potential shortcoming is that the science and technologies that Messerschmitt invokes were all developed on Earth within the last century. That’s a blink of an eye in cosmological terms.

Back in the 1970s, the American astronomer Carl Sagan pointed out that any alien civilisation is likely to be at a very different stage in its evolution. Should it be less mature than us, however, this civilisation will not have developed radio technology in the first place.

That means that our potential contacts are likely to be much more advanced, probably centuries or millennia ahead of us. Sagan asked whether it is possible that these civilisations will have stumbled across a better form of interstellar communication technology, one that seems like magic to us.

"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Physics arXiv: How to Design an Interstellar Communications System

Yvonne D. Cagle...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 13, 2014 at 6:48am

Source: NASA link below

YVONNE DARLENE CAGLE, M.D. (COLONEL, USAF)

SPACE AND LIFE SCIENCES DIRECTORATE

JOHNSON SPACE CENTER

PERSONAL DATA: Born in West Point, New York, but considers Novato, California, to be her hometown. Enjoys jigsaw puzzles, juggling, skating, hiking, music, writing, public speaking, historical novels.

EDUCATION: Novato High School Novato, California, in 1977; received a bachelor of arts degree in biochemistry from San Francisco State University in 1981, and a doctorate in medicine from the University of Washington in 1985. Transitional internship at Highland General Hospital, Oakland, California, in 1985. Received certification in Aerospace Medicine from the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas, in 1988. Completed residency in family practice at Ghent FP at Eastern Virginia Medical School in 1992. Received certification as a senior aviation medical examiner from the Federal Aviation Administration in 1995.

ORGANIZATIONS: Boys and Girls Club; Aerospace Medical Association; Third Baptist Church. American Academy of Family Physicians.

AWARDS: Outstanding Young Women of America; National Defense Service Medal; Air Force Achievement Medal; United States Air Force (USAF) Air Staff Exceptional Physician Commendation; National Technical Association Distinguished Scientist Award; Commendation Marin County Board of Supervisors; Commendation Novato School Board.

EXPERIENCE: Dr. Cagle’s medical training was sponsored by the Health Professions Scholarship Program, through which she received her commission as an officer with the United States Air Force, and subsequently was awarded her board certification in family practice. During her initial active duty tour at Royal Air Force Lakenheath, United Kingdom, she was selected to attend the School of Aerospace Medicine at Brooks Air Force Base, Texas. In April 1988, she became certified as a flight surgeon logging numerous hours in a diversity of aircraft. She was actively involved in mission support of aircraft providing medical support and rescue in a variety of aeromedical missions.

NASA EXPERIENCE: During May 1989, while a flight surgeon assigned to the 48th Tactical Hospital, United Kingdom, Dr. Cagle volunteered to serve as the Air Force Medical Liaison Officer for the STS-30 Atlantis Shuttle Mission to test the Magellan Spacecraft. She was assigned to the Trans Atlantic (TAL) Landing site at Banjul, West Africa, to provide emergency rescue and evacuation of the shuttle crew should it have been required. Dr. Cagle has contributed on-going data to the Longitudinal Study on Astronaut Health, and served as a consultant for space telemedicine. She was a member of the NASA Working Group and traveled to Russia to establish international medical standards and procedures for astronauts. She also conducted health screenings of Mir-18 consultants from the Russian Federation.

NASAL Yvonne D. Cagle, M.D. (Colonel, USAF)

Milestone Achieved...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 13, 2014 at 6:44am

Fuel capsule as seen through a cutaway of the hohlraum wall. (Courtesy: Eddie Dewald, LLNL)

Scientists at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have achieved a "fuel gain" of greater than one at the National Ignition Facility (NIF). Using NIF's ultra-powerful laser to crush tiny pellets of deuterium–tritium fuel, they have produced more energy from fusion reactions than was deposited in the fuel. Although still far from the long-sought-after goal of "ignition", the latest results are nevertheless an important step on the road to realizing fusion energy, say researchers.

NIF was completed in 2009 at a cost of $3.5bn and uses 192 laser beams to deliver 1.8 MJ of energy to a tiny target over a period of just a few billionths of a second. The target consists of a hollow gold cylinder a few centimetres long, known as a hohlraum. At its centre sits a peppercorn-sized sphere of frozen deuterium and tritium encased inside a plastic shell. Laser pulses heat the inside of the hohlraum thereby generating X-rays that rapidly remove or "ablate" material from the outside of the shell, so causing the fuel to implode. This implosion creates a shock wave that heats up the fuel to temperatures of about 50 million degrees Celsius, causing the nuclei to overcome their mutual repulsion and fuse, producing alpha particles (helium nuclei) and neutrons.

Between 2009 and 2012, researchers at NIF worked on a project designed explicitly to achieve ignition, the point at which heat provided by alpha particles increases the rate of fusion reactions such that they release more energy than is supplied by the laser. However, that work proved to be disappointing, leading to energy outputs about 1000 times smaller than the input. After scrutiny by Congress, the National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees NIF, announced a new, more deliberative strategy designed to work out what went wrong. The strategy also emphasized the importance of alternative approaches to "inertial-confinement fusion", such as "fast ignition" and "Z-pinch".

A fuel gain means nuclear power utilized safely in the United States without the nasty byproduct of waste with half-lives of tens of thousands of years, and the subsequent facilities to store it: they wouldn't be needed. A fuel gain means one step closer to getting off fossil fuels, which would mean less wars in the Near East and jobs here. It would positively stress education again to prepare operators, technicians, engineers and scientists for the plants that could only exist here in the US to power the grid (that is sorely in need of update - more jobs). Food prices would no longer be as tied to fuel costs paid by grocers to shipment companies. Our lives could change drastically, and for the better when this becomes reality. We are inching ever closer to energy independence and geopolitical freedom.

Physics World: Laser fusion passes milestone
#P4TC: Game Changer

1968...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 12, 2014 at 7:32am

“It has been a long time since anyone believed that the Olympics operated without regard to international politics. Whether it was Jesse Owens showing up Hitler at the 1936 Games in Berlin or Palestinian terrorists killing 11 Israelis in Munich in 1972 or the United States boycotting the Games in Moscow in 1980 after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, the Olympics have been inextricably and uncomfortably linked with bigger issues.”

The most notable Olympic protests were those of 1936 in Berlin, 1968 in Mexico City, 1972 in Munich, 1980 in Moscow, and 1984 in Los Angeles.

The 1960s were by no means the beginning of the civil rights movement. Since emancipation a battle has been waged for equal rights. The 1960s did however mark a decidedly different approach to the movement. The spotlight that illuminated this struggle was elevated to new heights in the year 1968. The King assassination, the urban riots, and the Kennedy assassination were all widely televised and representative of the chaos that was America that year. Inevitably, that year’s Olympic competition would not be able to elude the frenzy of American politics. NPR reflected on this event,

“The Black Power demonstration on top of the victory stand in Mexico City in 1968 by several African-American athletes was one of the great political moments in the history of the Olympic movement," Hoberman says. "This was a way of saying, at the end of the 1960s ... that the African-Americans had had enough of domestic racism and that here was an opportunity to express their feelings about that.”

Blog Link: 1968 Black Power Salute

Steering Sound...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 12, 2014 at 7:28am

From the cover of "Science."

Jan. 30, 2014

AUSTIN, Texas — A team of researchers at The University of Texas at Austin’s Cockrell School of Engineering has built the first-ever circulator for sound. The team’s experiments successfully prove that the fundamental symmetry with which acoustic waves travel through air between two points in space (“if you can hear, you can also be heard”) can be broken by a compact and simple device.

“Using the proposed concept, we were able to create one-way communication for sound traveling through air,” said Andrea Alù, who led the project and is an associate professor and David & Doris Lybarger Endowed Faculty Fellow in the Cockrell School’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Imagine being able to listen without having to worry about being heard in return.”

This successful experiment is described in “Sound Isolation and Giant Linear Nonreciprocity in a Compact Acoustic Circulator,” which will be featured on the cover of Science in the Jan. 31 issue.

An electronic circulator, typically used in communication devices and radars, is a nonreciprocal three-port device in which microwaves or radio signals are transmitted from one port to the next in a sequential way. When one of the ports is not used, the circulator acts as an isolator, allowing signals to flow from one port to the other, but not back. The UT Austin team realized the same functionality is true for sound waves traveling in air, which led to the team’s building of a first-of-its-kind three-port acoustic circulator.

Romain Fleury, the paper’s first author and a Ph.D. student in Alù’s group, said the circulator “is basically a one-way road for sound. The circulator can transmit acoustic waves in one direction but block them in the other, in a linear and distortion-free way.”

UT Austin Engineers Build First Nonreciprocal Acoustic Circulator: A One-Way Sound Device

1936 Olympiad...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 11, 2014 at 6:44am

Source: Voluntary Action History Society

Pseudoscience (Meridian-Webster): a system of theories, assumptions, and methods erroneously regarded as scientific (disproved handily by Mr. Jesse Owens).

Olympic.org: Jesse Owens

RSL...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 11, 2014 at 6:40am

Dark flow like features called Recurring Slope Lineae emanating from bedrock exposures at Palikir crater on Mars during southern summer. These flows are observed to form and grow during warm seasons when surface temperature is hot enough for salty ice to melt, and fade or completely disappear in cold season. Arrows point to bright, smooth fans left behind by flows.
Credit: NASA/JPL

Martian experts have known since 2011 that mysterious, possibly water-related streaks appear and disappear on the planet's surface. Georgia Institute of Technology Ph.D. candidate Lujendra Ojha discovered them while an undergraduate at the University of Arizona. These features were given the descriptive name of recurring slope lineae (RSL) because of their shape, annual reappearance and occurrence generally on steep slopes such as crater walls. Ojha has been taking a closer look at this phenomenon, searching for minerals that RSL might leave in their wake, to try to understand the nature of these features: water-related or not?

Ojha and Georgia Tech Assistant Professor James Wray looked at 13 confirmed RSL sites using Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) images. They didn't find any spectral signature tied to water or salts. But they did find distinct and consistent spectral signatures of ferric and ferrous minerals at most of the sites. The minerals were more abundant or featured distinct grain sizes in RSL-related materials as compared to non-RSL slopes.

"We still don't have a smoking gun for existence of water in RSL, although we're not sure how this process would take place without water," said Ojha. "Just like the RSL themselves, the strength of the spectral signatures varies according to the seasons. The signatures are stronger when it's warmer and less significant when it's colder."

Science Daily: Flowing water on Mars appears likely but hard to prove

Plato's Stepchildren...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 10, 2014 at 6:59am

Image source

In an era of #Scandal, it's probably hard today for kids to imagine this was as controversial as it was. It was groundbreaking, and made room for the creative talents of Ms. Shonda Rhimes (not "her only rodeo," as they say in Texas). I know it was BANNED in North Carolina and most parts of the south in the 1960's. Wikipedia seems to show an international bias as well:

"Plato's Stepchildren" is a third season episode of the original science fiction television series Star Trek, first broadcast November 22, 1968. It is episode #65, production #67, written by Meyer Dolinsky, and directed by David Alexander. This episode is one of the first scripted American television broadcasts to depict an inter-racial kiss between a white man (Kirk) and a black woman (Uhura).[1][2] This episode was withdrawn by the BBC in the UK because of 'sadistic plot elements' during the initial run in 1971 and was not shown until a repeat run in January 1994.

Ms. Nicols describes the scene:

Future of Higgs Boson...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 10, 2014 at 6:54am

Figure 2. The Mexican-hat potential energy density considered by Jeffrey Goldstone in his seminal 1961 paper. 2 The energy density is a function of the real (Re) and imaginary (Im) values of a spinless field ϕ. In the context of the electroweak theory developed later in the decade, the yellow ball at the top of the hat would represent the symmetric solution for the potential, in which the photon, W bosons, and Z boson are all massless. The blue ball in the trough represents the solution after symmetry breaking. In that solution the W and Z bosons are massive and the photon remains massless. The steepness of the trough is related to the mass of the Higgs boson.
Citation: Phys. Today 66, 12, 28 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2212

Symmetries and other regularities of the physical world make science a useful endeavor, yet the world around us is characterized by complex mixtures of regularities with individual differences, as exemplified by the words on this page. The dialectic of simple laws accounting for a complex world was only sharpened with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics and the understanding of the subatomic laws of physics. A mathematical encapsulation of the standard model of particle physics can be written on a cocktail napkin, an economy made possible because the basic phenomena are tightly controlled by powerful symmetry principles, most especially Lorentz and gauge invariance.

How does our complex world come forth from symmetrical underpinnings? The answer is in the title of Philip Anderson’s seminal article “More is different.” 1 Many-body systems exhibit emergent phenomena that are not in any meaningful sense encoded in the laws that govern their constituents. One reason those emergent behaviors arise is that many-body systems result from symmetries being broken. Consider, for example, a glucose molecule: It will have a particular orientation even though the equations governing its atoms are rotationally symmetric. That kind of symmetry breaking is called spontaneous, to indicate that the physical system does not exhibit the symmetry present in the underlying dynamics.

It may seem that the above discussion has no relevance to particle physics in general or to the Higgs boson in particular. But in quantum field theory, the ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the Higgs boson field, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the Higgs boson (or something much like it) has been found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC; see Physics Today, September 2012, page 12), particle experimentalists are searching for more kinds of Higgs bosons and working to find out if the Higgs boson interacts with the dark matter that holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of the Higgs boson implies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe.

Physics Today: The future of the Higgs Boson