Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

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

Once Upon A Time...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 9, 2014 at 7:03am

Post 9/11/2001 to encourage national unity:

Super Bowl commercial celebrating our changing demographics and diversity (E Pluribus Unum):

The obligatory troll responses...

More Neanderthal/Troglodyte musings here

Acts 17:26 "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,"...(I doubt they've read this one)

BTW: as complained, American The Beautiful penned by Katharine Lee Bates is not the national anthem. That distinction belongs to the Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key. Civics is lacking, as ignorance is glorified and abounds...

New Colossus (The "Statue of Liberty poem")

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus

Sochi...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 9, 2014 at 6:58am

Kathleen Jay's travel blog

Saw this, and became a little more than just casually concerned...

If increased realistic fears of suicide conventional bombing at Sochi were not enough, the Chechen connection is troubling when considering whether any of these groups might attempt to use radioactive materials to disrupt the Olympics. Chechens have been responsible for some of the earliest uses of radioactive material, starting from the placement of a small cesium 137 source in a Moscow park in the mid-1990s and there have been repeated threats and reports of Chechen groups intent to use radioactive material in a Radioactive Dispersal Device (RDD), particularly the threat to use explosives to carry out the dispersal, creating a “Dirty Bomb.”

Since various sorts of radioactive material has been out of control in Chechnya since the Soviet Union collapsed it is certainly possible that militant groups might possess small amounts of radioactive material. Obviously explosives are readily available. Would any of these groups use radioactive material against the Olympics if they possessed it? Unfortunately the answer may be that they would. Not only is it an extremely visible target, but Russian President Putin has made his personal prestige an issue, which may be viewed as too tempting a challenge for some of these groups to forego.

Federation of American Scientists: A Credible Radioactive Threat to the Sochi Olympics?

Plasma Etching...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 8, 2014 at 9:01am

Image from Black Inventors

Plasma etching utilizes a gas excited/ionized in an electromagnetic field into a plasma - the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Etching is how the semiconductor industry transfers a pattern in a photomask (a designed chrome mask) using UV light and photoresist. The resist captures the pattern, and is developed like photos (in old-style film and a camera). The plasma uses physical as well as chemical processes that react with the film to remove it leaving the exposed pattern. The resist is usually stripped away before subsequent processing in the wafer fab.

Plasma etch is used to transfer that pattern (s) becoming the integrated circuits in your cell phone; remote control; your thermostat in your home; your security system; your laptop; its mouse, servers for banks and the Internet: basically everything electronic you can think of.

You have the genius of this man to thank for it:

Physicist George Edward Alcorn, Jr. is best known for his development of the imaging x-ray spectrometer. Born on March 22, 1940 to working class parents, Alcorn was an excellent student and star athlete. He was awarded an academic scholarship to Occidental College in Pasadena, California, where he completed his B.A. in Physics in 1962. From there, Alcorn pursued graduate studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963, and his Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967.

At NASA Alcorn developed the imaging x-ray spectrometer. An x-ray spectrometer assists scientists in identifying a material by producing an x-ray spectrum of it, allowing it to be examined visually. This is especially advantageous when the material is not able to be broken down physically. Alcorn patented his “method for fabricating an imaging x-ray spectrometer” in 1984. He was cited for his method’s innovative use of the thermomigration of aluminum. For this achievement he was recognized with the NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Inventor of the Year Award.

Alcorn is credited with more than 20 inventions, and holds at least eight U.S. and international patents, many of these related to the semiconductor industry. For instance, he developed an improved method of fabrication employing laser drilling, and a process for improving the process of plasma etching.

MIT Inventors of the week: George Edward Alcorn, Jr. PhD
Plasma Etching: Dr. Lynn Fuller, RIT

Lighter Than Water, Stronger Than Steel...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 8, 2014 at 8:57am

Source: Link below

Materials shape human progress—think Stone Age or Bronze Age. The 21st century has been referred to as the molecular age, a time when scientists are beginning to manipulate materials at the atomic level to create new substances with astounding properties.

Taking a step in that direction, Jens Bauer, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and his colleagues have developed a bone-like material that is less dense than water but as strong as some forms of steel. "This is the first experimental proof that such materials can exist," Bauer said.

Ars Technica: New laser-printed material is lighter than water, as strong as steel

Diaspora, 7 February 2014 (Repost)

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 7, 2014 at 10:16am

I've discussed my own past before, and on a recent visit to South Carolina, I found out how things haven't much changed. My cousin and our family historian were granted a tour of the plantation that my Great-Grandfather Julius and his wife Epsy lived. They toured the grounds and the slave quarters. They were then told they (and by extension, any other family member) were "invited to never come again." Sad...

This is not physics obviously, but the tabulation of the cost of service - never paid, mind you - is quite accurate, and it expresses the time-worn phrase: "living well is the best revenge" (George Herbert).

Escaped slaves in Virginia, 1862, Library of Congress

Source of letter: The Freedmen's Book and Letters of Note

Dayton, Ohio,

August 7, 1865

To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee

Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.

I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.

As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.

In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.

Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.

From your old servant,

Jourdon Anderson

Jourdon: Touché!

NA62...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 7, 2014 at 10:13am

In autumn this year a brand new experiment at CERN called NA62 will start taking data and it will have the exciting goal of seeking physics beyond the Standard Model. The physicists working on it are now in the final stages of installing their 270-m-long experiment on the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) – which itself has a circumference of 7 km and feeds protons into the Large Hadron Collider. The NA62 collaboration comprises about 150 physicists at 20 institutes worldwide and its primary aim is to make an extremely precise measurement of the probability that a positively charged kaon will decay to a positively charged pion plus a neutrino/antineutrino pair.

Physics World: NA62 joins the search for new physics at CERN

Gas Masks and Stoplights...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2014 at 6:52am

Garrett Morgan

In 1912, Morgan developed another invention, much different from his hair straightener. Morgan called it a Safety Hood and patented it as a Breathing Device, but the world came to know it as a Gas Mask. The Safety Hood consisted of a hood worn over the head of a person from which emanated a tube which reached near the ground and allowed in clean air. The bottom of the tube was lined with a sponge type material that would help to filter the incoming air. Another tube existed which allowed the user to exhale air out of the device. Morgan intended the device to be used "to provide a portable attachment which will enable a fireman to enter a house filled with thick suffocating gases and smoke and to breathe freely for some time therein, and thereby enable him to perform his duties of saving life and valuables without danger to himself from suffocation. The device is also efficient and useful for protection to engineers, chemists and working men who are obliged to breathe noxious fumes or dust derived from the materials in which they are obliged to work."

The National Safety Device Company, with Morgan as its General Manager was set up to manufacture and sell the device and it was demonstrated at various exhibitions across the country. At the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation, the device won first prize and Morgan was award a gold medal. While demonstrations were good for sales, the true test of the product would come only under real life circumstances.

That opportunity arose on July 24, 1916 when an explosion occurred in a tunnel being dug under Lake Erie by the Cleveland Water Works. The tunnel quickly filled with smoke, dust and poisonous gases and trapped 32 workers underground. They were feared lost because no means of safely entering and rescuing them was known. Fortunately someone at the scene remembered about Morgan's invention and ran to call him at his home where he was relaxing. Garrett and his brother Frank quickly arrived at the scene, donned the Safety Hood and entered the tunnel. After a heart wrenching delay, Garrett appeared from the tunnel carrying a survivor on his back as did his brother seconds later. The crowd erupted in a staggering applause and Garrett and Frank reentered the tunnel, this time joined by two other men. While they were unable to save all of the workers, the were able to rescue many who would otherwise have certainly died. Reaction to Morgan's device and his heroism quickly spread across the city and the country as newspapers picked up on the story. Morgan received a gold medal from a Cleveland citizens group as well as a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which also made him an honorary member.

Although he could have relied on the income his Gas Masks generated, Morgan felt compelled to try to solve safety problems of the day. One day he witnessed a traffic accident when an automobile collided with a horse and carriage. The driver of the automobile was knocked unconscious and the horse had to be destroyed. He set out to develop a means of automatically directing traffic without the need of a policeman or worker present. He patented an automatic traffic signal which he said could be "operated for directing the flow of traffic" and providing a clear and unambiguous "visible indicator."

Satisfied with his efforts, Morgan sold the rights to his device to the General Electric Company for the astounding sum of $40,000.00 and it became the standard across the country. Today's modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan's original design.

Black Inventor: Garrett Morgan

Accelerator Science...

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

Particle accelerators are used by just about every branch of science and technology these days: from chemists studying molecules using X-ray free-electron lasers to doctors treating eye cancer using beams of protons. And, of course, there are the particle physicists, who recently used the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to find the Higgs boson.

All of these applications, and many more, are the focus of the UK's Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, which is located at Daresbury Laboratory in the Cheshire countryside, half way between Liverpool and Manchester.

In this video, Cockcroft Institute co-founder and its first director, John Dainton, explains why researchers in the north of England banded together to create the facility, which first opened its doors in 2006.

Physics World: Accelerating science and technology at the Cockcroft Institute

Number 44...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:29am

Happy 80th birthday, sir! You are one of my heroes...

Biography: "Hammering" Hank Aaron

Energy Teleportation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:26am

See link below

Energy could be moved over long distances by quantum teleportation, according to calculations done by a team of physicists in Japan. While energy teleportation is not a new concept, it had been thought that the amount of energy that could be sent dropped rapidly beyond short distances. The new proposal removes this shortcoming, allowing energy to be transferred much farther. The team believes that the theory could be verified in a semiconductor device and that similar energy teleportation could have occurred in the early universe.

Quantum teleportation is a remarkable idea that was first proposed by IBM's Charles Bennett and colleagues in 1992. It involves two parties, usually called Alice and Bob, who "teleport" a quantum state between each other. The scheme allows Alice to send information about an unknown quantum state to Bob, who is then able to construct a perfect copy of that state. To do so, the pair exchange classical information while sharing particles that are entangled quantum mechanically with each other. Physicists have since been able to teleport atomic states over distances of several metres and photon states over distances greater than 100 km.

While this formulation of quantum teleportation does not provide a means to exchange energy, in 2008 Masahiro Hotta of Tohoku University unveiled a theory explaining how energy could be teleported. In Hotta's formulation, Alice sends Bob the information that he needs to extract energy from the vacuum. This extraction is possible because in quantum field theory the vacuum is not devoid of energy but contains virtual particles that continually bubble-up and then vanish.

Physics World: Energy can be teleported over long distances, say physicists

The "Jackie Robinson" of P&G...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:22am

WCPO 9, Cincinnati, Ohio

From "The African History Network":

Did you know that Crest Toothpaste, Folgers Coffee, Bounce Fabric Softener and Safeguard Soap were all created by an African-American Man? I have talked about Dr. Herbert Smitherman Sr. before on The African History Network Show before. In 2011 I spoke at an 8th grade graduation and told the audience about him to show them their potential. Most of the audience including parents had never heard of him and were amazed by his story.

Dr. Herbert Smitherman was a pioneering executive and professional chemist at Proctor & Gamble who led the way for other African-Americans at the prestigious company in the 1960s. He was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.

With a PhD in physical organic chemistry, Dr. Smitherman developed a number of incredibly popular patents, including Crest toothpaste, Safeguard soap, Bounce fabric softeners, Biz, Folgers Coffee and Crush soda, to name a few. Not only are they still on the shelves, but many of them are on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center in the featured exhibit, “America I AM: The African-American Imprint.”

Nicknamed the “Jackie Robinson of Proctor & Gamble,” Dr. Smitherman spent 29 years there before turning in his labcoat to work as a professor at Wilberforce University. But after serving at the historically black college, Smitherman turned his attention to starting a high school called the Western Hills Design Technology School to help black students perform better in math and science.

A child of the south, Dr. Smitherman’s family lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where his father served as a reverend. A young Smitherman would see his father’s church burn down twice during their push for voting registration and voting rights.

He died on Oct. 9, 2010.

Black America Web: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman Sr.
Cincinnati Herald: Dr. Herbert C Smitherman Sr broke barriers
Cincinnati NAACP: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman

1st Teleport to Solid-State Quantum Memory...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:15am

Image credit: Physics arXiv link below

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Quantum teleportation is the ability to transmit from one location to another without travelling through the space in between. Matter itself doesn't make this journey, only the information that describes it. This is transmitted to a new body that takes on the identity of the original.

But while science fiction fans have focused on body involved, quantum physicists are more interested in the information. For them, teleportation is the enabling technology behind a new generation of information processing technologies including a quantum internet that allows information to be transmitted with perfect security.

One of the building blocks of the quantum internet will be quantum routers that can receive quantum information from location and route it on to another without destroying it. So the race is on to demonstrate this kind of technology, which has the potential to revolutionise communications.

Today, Felix Bussières at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and a few pals say they’ve taken an important step towards this. These guys have teleported quantum information to a crystal doped with rare-earth ions—a kind of quantum memory. But crucially they’ve done it for the first time over the kind of ordinary optical fibre that telecommunications that are in use all over the world.

Physics arXiv:
Quantum teleportation from a telecom-wavelength photon to a solid-state quantum memory