Bridget Underwood, graduate Savannah College of Art & Design today; Sci-Fi author David Brin tomorrow. 
Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts (3130)
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Essentially, how my crown (# 20) was designed, manufactured and replaced yesterday (minus the music score), in the office! The dentist also gave me shades because he used a laser to smooth out the base before forming and cementing my crown. It was quite amazing, since my last crown involved "silly putty," a temporary and waiting for the permanent ~ 3 weeks. I'm a little late on the new tech.
Yes...physics everywhere.
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| Credit: NobelPrizedotorg |
Few Pakistanis know what the Higgs boson is and even fewer realise that some of the earliest theoretical groundwork that led to this discovery was laid by Pakistan’s only Nobel laureate, Dr Abdus Salam.
The Higgs boson is a subatomic particle whose existence was confirmed by the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (known by its French acronym, CERN) on July 4. The discovery of the particle provides the last remaining bit of empirical evidence necessary for the Standard Model of physics, which seeks to explain the existence of all forces in the universe except gravity.
From "The First Three Minutes-The First One-Hundredth Second, page 148: Despite the weakness of the weak interactions, it has long been thought that there might be a deep relation between the weak and electromagnetic forces. A field theory which unifies these two forces was proposed in 1967 by myself (Weinberg), and independently in 1968 by Abdus Salam.
International Herald Tribune:
Higg's boson: Pakistan's contribution to a major breakthrough
Nobel Prize in Physics, '79: Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, Steven Weinberg
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| Credit: NPR |
I thought about this report, listening to it on NPR as I drove to work. It speaks of stereotype threat as a gender-bias issue only, but it tends to go (as far as gender):
1. I see less women in STEM careers;
2. I receive no support as far as STEM career ambitions;
3. I am steered into other non-STEM careers;
4. Due to a lack of representation, I don't feel I "fit" in this STEM career, and tend in time to "drop out."
5. I will gravitate towards career choices where there's a more representative number of myself, and therefore comfort in relating to other professionals within said career.
As the article alludes, it applies to any "outside" groups. It explains why (to me), there are fewer minorities in STEM careers as well, why we tend to gravitate to support structures like NSBP, NSHP, NSBE, NABA et al if in the fields at all, or ubiquitously, sports and rap music. Reminds me at my high school, my so-called guidance counselor didn't encourage me to major in Engineering Mathematics (I changed after my freshman year to Engineering Physics). I enjoyed visiting North Forsyth High School in my junior year ('83), telling her I was a year away from obtaining my degree. Some less evolved of us tend to exist as the gatekeepers of what is "proper." They are sadlymistaken.
"Living well is the best revenge." George Herbert, English clergyman & metaphysical poet (1593 - 1633).
When there's a stereotype in the air and people are worried they might confirm the stereotype by performing poorly, their fears can inadvertently make the stereotype become self-fulfilling.
Steele and his colleagues found that when women were reminded — even subtly — of the stereotype that men were better than women at math, the performance of women in math tests measurably declined. Since the reduction in performance came about because women were threatened by the stereotype, the psychologists called the phenomenon "stereotype threat."
Stereotype threat isn't limited to women or ethnic minorities, Steele wrote elsewhere. "Everyone experiences stereotype threat. We are all members of some group about which negative stereotypes exist, from white males and Methodists to women and the elderly. And in a situation where one of those stereotypes applies — a man talking to women about pay equity, for example, or an aging faculty member trying to remember a number sequence in the middle of a lecture — we know that we may be judged by it."
The clock in the gym at my apartment complex is a SkyScan ®. The diagram on the clock face - in my case, analog - suggests a satellite. I think it's a marketing gimmick!
The actual clock is controlled from Fort Collins, Colorado by old-fashioned Marconi radio waves (Radio-Controlled Clock) from WWVB, a radio station operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
This reality became obvious between grunts as the clock's minute hand started progressing forward - FAST, as it had been behind several hours/days and was trying to sync with the central control signal in Colorado. Still speeding clockwise as my wife and I left, it will progress until it matches the exact day/time. Nerdier, more detailed description here.
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| Department of Energy |
A new approach to an established fuel will be the focus of research, development and maybe production with the help of NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The company, based in Britain, has formulated a way to store hydrogen safely in tiny pellets that still allow the fuel to be burned in an engine. [NASA] Kennedy, which handles huge amounts of the explosive gas regularly as part of its rocket work, is being enlisted to help the company overcome a couple technological hurdles.
If the work pays off, engines all over the world could run on hydrogen, which burns clean, producing no greenhouse gases.
Funny extra...Happy Friday the 13th!
WIKIPEDIA: Satyendra Nath Bose FRS[1] (Bengali: সত্যেন্দ্র নাথ বসু Shottendronath Boshū, IPA: [ʃot̪ːend̪ronat̪ʰ boʃu]; 1 January 1894 – 4 February 1974) was an Indian physicist specializing in mathematical physics. He was born in Kolkata, then spelt Calcutta. He is best known for his work on quantum mechanics in the early 1920s, providing the foundation for Bose–Einstein statistics and the theory of the Bose–Einstein condensate. A Fellow of the Royal Society, he was awarded India's second highest civilian award, the Padma Vibhushan in 1954 by the Government of India.
The class of particles that obey Bose-Einstein statistics, bosons, was named after him by Paul Dirac.
A self-taught scholar and a polyglot (mastery of multiple languages), he had a wide range of interests in varied fields including physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, mineralogy, philosophy, arts, literature and music. He served on many research and development committees in independent India.
A "mistake" leading to Bose-Einstein Statistics:
The reason Bose's "mistake" produced accurate results was that since photons are indistinguishable from each other, one cannot treat any two photons having equal energy as being two distinct identifiable photons. By analogy, if in an alternate universe coins were to behave like photons and other bosons, the probability of producing two heads would indeed be one-third (tail-head = head-tail). Bose's "error" is now called Bose–Einstein statistics. This result derived by Bose laid the foundation of quantum statistics, as acknowledged by Einstein and Dirac.
Velocity-distribution data of a gas of rubidium atoms, confirming the discovery of a new phase of matter, the Bose–Einstein condensate... Einstein adopted the idea and extended it to atoms. This led to the prediction of the existence of phenomena which became known as Bose-Einstein condensate, a dense collection of bosons (which are particles with integer spin, named after Bose), which was demonstrated to exist by experiment in 1995.
Heroes should be recognized, and acknowledged.
Wikipedia: Satyendra Nath Bose
University of Colorado: Bose-Einstein Condensate Homepage (links below)
Chem4kids: Bose-Einstein Condensate
Enjoying rereading "The God Particle" by Leon Lederman. Had it since '93.
Sadly, it was in it the Superconducting Supercollider in Waxahatchie, Texas (there is such a place), where Lederman suggested as "the mother of all colliders" where we were supposed to discover the Higgs...oh, well! 
In all fairness: Peter Higgs is a theoretical physicist from England.
R&D: Media covering the story gave lots of credit to British physicist Peter Higgs for theorizing the elusive subatomic "God particle," but little was said about Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named.
"He is a forgotten hero," the government lamented in a lengthy statement, noting that Bose was never awarded a Nobel Prize though "at least 10 scientists have been awarded the Nobel" in the same field.
The gentleman you see removing his glasses (expressing a lot of emotion for a theoretical physicist), is none other than Peter Higgs himself (~0:51 into the announcement). A primer on the Higgs Boson (the Boson we have Satyendranath Bose to thank for) will post tomorrow...
Why are we placing emphasis on standardized testing as our educational panacea, when the countries that are beating us globally use it as an evaluation tool to assist students (only)?
Does "teaching to the test" increase student capabilities and knowledge?
This depends on whether the test is good. For multiple-choice tests, "teaching to the test" means focusing on the content that will be on the test, sometimes even drilling on test items, and using the format of the test as a basis for teaching. Since this kind of teaching to the test leads primarily to improved test-taking skills, increases in test scores do not necessarily mean improvement in real academic performance.
Teaching to the test also narrows the curriculum, forcing teachers and students to concentrate on memorization of isolated facts, instead of developing fundamental and higher order abilities. Washington Post
We've had fires and record heat waves; mild winters; hurricanes in New York and freak snowstorms on Halloween in New England (both resulting in power outages). Parts of the Midwest, Maryland and the eastern seaboard has for the most part been without power after freak violent storms. Yet, we question climate change as a result of a warming globe. More than a few Americans don't know what the decision by the Supreme Court on the Affordable Care Act means to them; that the origination of a mandate (for which derisive humor has been spun ad nauseum), came from former Republican Senator Bob Bennett and championed by Former Speaker Newt Gingrich.
Teaching to the test also narrows the curriculum, forcing teachers and students to concentrate on memorization of isolated facts, instead of developing fundamental and higher order abilities.
Like the higher order ability of governing a democracy. It's a bit of a stretch, linking climate change to education and governance, but not much.
We need reason and legislation that will create jobs, and an educational system that will prepare kids for future careers requiring skillsets to repair robots, not a high school diploma/GED to drill widgets on a production floor. We're fast becoming a nation predicted by James Boggs: automation and (his word) "cybernation" rules.
We need an educated electorate for this country to be successful, not a bewildered herd.
Oligarchy/Plutocracy are false equivalencies to democracy.
"By their votes, the people exercise their sovereignty." Thomas Jefferson
Hmm...dead space from 2:43 - 3:31, then silent slide show. As a baby boomer, I'm seeing talent exit the stage all too often, and a modern reference to a sensationalized culture what that actually means...
R.I.P. Andy Griffith...
The 'other' fireworks 4 July 2012...
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| Dark-matter filaments, such as the one bridging the galaxy clusters Abell 222 and Abell 223, are predicted to contain more than half of all matter in the Universe. Jörg Dietrich, University of Michigan/University Observatory Munich |
A ‘finger’ of the Universe’s dark-matter skeleton, which ultimately dictates where galaxies form, has been observed for the first time. Researchers have directly detected a slim bridge of dark matter joining two clusters of galaxies, using a technique that could eventually help astrophysicists to understand the structure of the Universe and identify what makes up the mysterious invisible substance known as dark matter.
According to the standard model of cosmology, visible stars and galaxies trace a pattern across the sky known as the cosmic web, which was originally etched out by dark matter — the substance thought to account for almost 80% of the Universe’s matter. Soon after the Big Bang, regions that were slightly denser than others pulled in dark matter, which clumped together and eventually collapsed into flat ‘pancakes’. “Where these pancakes intersect, you get long strands of dark matter, or filaments,” explains Jörg Dietrich, a cosmologist at the University Observatory Munich in Germany. Clusters of galaxies then formed at the nodes of the cosmic web, where these filaments crossed.
Nature: Dark matter’s tendrils revealed
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| Higgs Announcement at CERN |
We have found it – now we have to work out exactly what "it" is. That neatly sums up the thoughts of many physicists at CERN yesterday as they began to absorb the announcement that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) had discovered a Higgs boson – or at least something like a Higgs. CERN's director general Rolf-Dieter Heuer was very careful to describe the new particle, which has a mass of about 125 GeV/c2, as a "fundamental scalar boson". However, even the scalar part of that description – which indicates that the particle has zero spin – has not been completely nailed down.
The Scientific Method is a thought process, an accepted means of constantly questions itself in discoveries and published findings. It can be somewhat off-putting to the general public, used to definitive statements and cock-sureness (at least advertised by their political leaders). Although, I don't know if it's the scientists' fault (as Physics Today opines) more than we've become something our brains weren't designed for nor evolution intended: an entertainment culture addicted to instant gratification. What doesn't come easy to understand in seconds is quickly discarded instead of effort made to master. The Matrix was our undoing...
Physics World: It's a boson, but what sort?
So last month...but neat!
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| Credit: Technology Review |
Today, Darran Milne and Natalia Korolkova at the University of St Andrews in Scotland outline another idea. These guys have worked out how to make an optical invisibility cloak that you can turn on and off.
What makes this possible is a process known as electromagnetically induced transparency--a phenomenon in which certain materials become transparent when zapped by light from two carefully tuned lasers.
This works for materials with atoms that can exist in three different electronic states--say a, b and, the highest, c. The idea here is that the first laser beam is absorbed by the material because it excites electrons from state a to state c. The second laser is also absorbed because it excites electrons from state b to state c.
If the frequencies of the lasers are close together, they can be tuned in a way that makes them interfere destructively. And when this happens, their ability to excite electrons cancels out.
When this happens, the laser photons suddenly pass through the material unimpeded, sometimes at dramatically reduced at speeds (which is how experiments that stop light are performed).
Technology Review: An Invisibility Cloak With An On-Off Switch
Physics arXiv: Electromatically induced invisibility cloaking
Homer Hickam's Amazon page
“Bypasses are devices that allow some people to dash from point A to point B very fast while other people dash from point B to point A very fast. People living at point C, being a point directly in between, are often given to wonder what's so great about point A that so many people from point B are so keen to get there, and what's so great about point B that so many people from point A are so keen to get there. They often wish that people would just once and for all work out where the hell they wanted to be.”
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
“Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.”
“Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.”
...I did not come up with the title.
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| Credit: Rice University |
Imagine spray painting the side of your house and it not only produces power from the sun, but can store the energy for later as well. A novel approach to battery design from Rice University researchers could enable that and other types of spray-on batteries.
The research, published last week in Nature, seeks a new approach to battery fabrication by using materials that can be spray-painted onto various surfaces. Combined with flexible printed circuits and research in spray-on solar cells, the technique offers the prospect of turning common objects into smart devices with computing power and storage. Another possibility is consumer electronics, such as cell phones or cameras, with a battery coating.
Technology Review: Spray-On Batteries Could Reshape Energy Storage
BBC: At meeting today in Geneva, CERN scientists announced that the Large Hadron Collider’s two main detectors, ATLAS and CMS, had collected data that are both statistically significant and consistent with properties of the Higgs boson. ATLAS detected a signal at a mass of 126 GeV/c2 (133 times the mass of the proton). The CMS value was slightly lower at 125.3 GeV/c2. Both signals met the 5σ threshold for a detection—that is, they were at least five times stronger than background fluctuations. Although the particle’s mass is about where Peter Higgs and other theorists predicted it would be, more data are needed to determine whether the particle is fully consistent with the so-called standard model of particle physics or whether it partakes of more exotic physics. Exotic or otherwise, the Higgs is not just another particle. According to those theorists, it’s responsible for giving other particles their masses.
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| Credit: Discover Magazine-Bad Astronomy, link follows |
It’s generally said that discoveries in science tend to be at the thin hairy edge of what you can do — always at the faintest limits you can see, the furthest reaches, the lowest signals. That can be trivially true because stuff that’s easy to find has already been discovered. But many times, when you’re looking farther and fainter than you ever have, you find things that really are new… and can (maybe!) be a problem for existing models of how the Universe behaves.
Astronomers ran across just such thing recently. Hubble observations of a distant galaxy cluster revealed an arc of light above it. That’s actually the distorted image of a more distant galaxy, and it’s a common enough sight near foreground clusters. But the thing is, that galaxy shouldn’t be there.
More at: Bad Astronomy, Phil Plait
