Dylan Thomas

My palindrome post: 868.

A fathom (abbreviation: ftm) = 1.8288 meters, is a unit of length in the imperial and the U.S. customary systems, used especially for measuring the depth of water.

So in celebration of living half a century in reasonably good health, I depart from physics ever so slightly. Mark Twain apparently loved science and technology, balancing friendships with both Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison (the AC/DC war rivals).

Living half a century does give one the licence to look back on the achievements and mistakes of one's life, and consider the lessons learned.

Plus, as I age, I am using the licence to not care what others think about how I apply those lessons...

Vicomte de Valvert: Such arrogance, this scarecrow. Look at him! No ribbons, no lace, not even gloves!

Cyrano de Bergerac: True! I carry my adornments only on my soul, decked with deeds instead of ribbons. Manful in my good name, and crowned with the white plume of freedom.

"The soul that is within me, no man can degrade." Frederick Douglass

The growth of crops in 2012 has been badly affected by drought in the US and Russia and prices have risen 50% since June.

According to a report about the hike in food prices, from the international agency Oxfam, 40% of US corn stocks are currently being used to produce fuel.

The US Renewable Fuel Standard mandate requires that up to 15 billion gallons of domestic corn ethanol be blended into the US fuel supply by 2022.

The chairman of the world's largest food producer is highly critical of the rise in bio-diesel.

Peter Brabeck-Letmathe of Nestle says crops produced for biofuel use land and water which would otherwise be used to grow crops for human or animal consumption.

His comments have ignited discussion about the second generation of biofuels.

Previous work in this field has largely focused on using electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS) to detect single lanthanide metal atoms and light atoms like carbon. However, EELS can only be applied to certain elements thanks to the high-energy beams used in this method that can damage samples. Nobel metals, such as gold and platinum, are also difficult to detect with high sensitivity using EELS – a major drawback when it comes to investigating meteorites, catalytic clusters or anticancer drugs, where only a very small number of noble metals are looked at in any given sample.

But there's a problem because at the nanometre scale, the electronic properties of silicon can depend on the precise location of only a few dopants. That's difficult to control and causes wide variation in device performance.

Consequently, nobody has been able to make reliable diodes, transistors or logic gates out of silicon nanowires.

Today, Massimo Mongillo et amis at the Universite Joseph Fourier, Grenoble, in France demonstrate a way out of this conundrum. These guys show how to fabricate diodes and transistors from undoped silicon nanowires and how how such devices can be wired together to make logic gates.

2) Equality
All human beings are equal
People of all religions and races are welcome in Sikh Gurdwaras.
Women have equal status with men in religious services and ceremonies.

3) Human Life Precious Above Other Life
The human life is supreme and it is through this life that we can achieve oneness with God's will. Finding God in this life and living by his commands helps us to attain God's mercy.

4) Defending Against Injustice
Sikhs are a peace loving people and stand for Truth and Justice Guru Gobind Singh Ji said, "It is right to use force as a last resort when all other peaceful means fail."

Peter Higgs will likely get the Nobel Prize as will the researchers that confirmed his theories; Europe will become a Mecca of particle physics and science research. That will impact their educational curriculum, pedagogy and how they prepare their students to meet the demand of a complex world, learning how to problem solve, a skill becoming bereft in the US relegating evolution to "just [a] theory," the earth to 6,000 years old and the universe much younger despite the knowledge of light speed and the time it takes images to travel vast distances.

Unlike Star Trek, we won't evolve to just do science research for the greater good.

Such fantasies will be the providence of poets...and Trekkies.

Technology Review asked the prominent climate scientist, Thomas Karl, director of the National Climatic Data Centerin Asheville, North Carolina, to weigh in.

1. What's causing the recent heat waves and droughts?

This heat wave has a contribution from human activities, and you can expect these kinds of things to become even more extreme during both your and my lifetimes as we continue to increase greenhouse gases. As temperatures warm, they affect extreme weather events. It's quite clear that we're seeing, not only here in the U.S., but across the globe, events that we've never before witnessed in our instrumental record, and it's quite apparent there's a human contribution.

This was the second hearing that has been held this year on the nation’s supply of helium, driven by the very real concern that a legislative mandate will worsen already significant supply and price fluctuations. In May, the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources held a hearing on S. 2374, the Helium Stewardship Act of 2012. This 15-page bill, introduced by Senator Jeff Bingaman (D-NM) would require changes in the management of the nation’s federal helium reserve in Texas. Indicative of the interest there is in this problem are the nineteen Democratic and Republican senators, with a wide range of political philosophies, who have cosponsored this bill.

The July 20 House hearing demonstrated similar bipartisan concern. In his opening comments, Subcommittee Chairman Doug Lamborn (R-CO) spoke of the Bureau of Land Management’s (BLM) helium reserve and its impending closure, calling helium “vital to national security,” and warning of the “significant economic disruption” there will be to American manufacturers. Of note, he spoke of a global shortage of Helium-3. “The impending shortage of helium and H-3 could have disastrous consequences for U.S. industries that are dependent on helium to innovate, manufacture, and provide jobs for Americans,” Lamborn said. “Having identified these issues, the question is what is the solution? Clearly, Congress cannot simply allow this huge economic dislocation and national security threat, when action can be taken on alternatives. However, neither can Congress simply continue along in the process that has resulted in this critical juncture.”

Scientists have suggested that it might be possible to improve this ratio by exploiting Mott insulators in transistors. Mott insulators are materials that should behave as metals according to conventional band theories but that act as insulators under certain conditions owing to quantum-mechanical correlations between neighbouring electrons. For reasons that are complex and not entirely understood, however, sudden phase transitions can be induced between the insulating state and the metallic state. Among other things, this metal–insulator transition can be induced by an electric field. While the gate voltage in an ordinary transistor simply modulates the resistance of a semiconductor, the gate voltage in a Mott transistor could turn an insulator into a metal.