Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Cause and Effect...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 11, 2017 at 6:30am

Image Source: NASA.gov

Topics: Climate Change, Commentary, Ecology, Politics, Research

Also:

In Photos: The Southern California Wildfires of 2017 Seen from Space, Christine Lunsford, Space.com Contributor

Assuredly climate change has something to do with the California fires, but TIME lists it last as one of a number of causes; CNN says "we don't know," but mention several factors like the Santa Ana winds that can spread it in the years-long dry conditions that preceded this tragedy. There's a tendency to leap to the "aha" and go with what happens to be the proclivities of your particular tribal group. Unfortunately, these tend to be the ones that appreciate and understand science, and those that consider it something to fear when it challenges the other tribe's dogma.

We've had fires with lightening strikes since humanity was comprised of hunter-gatherer migrating groups. We've had fires with the advent of agriculture, cities and civilization. What matters is whether we believe in a collective effort to write policies that will protect life and property - now derisively known as government, that some in the human tribe run for, then put themselves in a position to thwart any solutions from it. "Pluck" alone will not solve our problems. We lack, as I've said on posts previous to this one, a depth of understanding in the following:

Civics - the study of the rights and duties of citizens and of how government works,

Source: Merriam-Webster

Epistemology - Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.

Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Science - a systematic and logical approach to discovering how things in the universe work. It is also the body of knowledge accumulated through the discoveries about all the things in the universe.

The word "science" is derived from the Latin word scientia, which is knowledge based on demonstrable and reproducible data, according to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. True to this definition, science aims for measurable results through testing and analysis. Science is based on fact, not opinion or preferences.

Scientific Method - When conducting research, scientists use the scientific method to collect measurable, empirical evidence in an experiment related to a hypothesis (often in the form of an if/then statement), the results aiming to support or contradict a theory.

The steps of the scientific method go something like this:

1. Make an observation or observations.

2. Ask questions about the observations and gather information.

3. Form a hypothesis — a tentative description of what's been observed, and make predictions based on that hypothesis.

4. Test the hypothesis and predictions in an experiment that can be reproduced.

5. Analyze the data and draw conclusions; accept or reject the hypothesis or modify the hypothesis if necessary.

6. Reproduce the experiment until there are no discrepancies between observations and theory. "

Source: Live Science - Science & the Scientific Method

Science along with its subset engineering deals in the natural sciences, i.e. those things that relate to nature or phenomena that can be observed, defined, measured, calculated, or quantized (quantum mechanics I'm alluding to here). Once the subject goes into the supernatural, whatever the argument, it is no longer science.

That does not mean science is incompatible with wonder:

“Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality. When we recognize our place in an immensity of light‐years and in the passage of ages, when we grasp the intricacy, beauty, and subtlety of life, then that soaring feeling, that sense of elation and humility combined, is surely spiritual. So are our emotions in the presence of great art or music or literature, or acts of exemplary selfless courage such as those of Mohandas Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.”

― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

Thomas Jefferson fashioned our federal republic after Sir Isaac Newton, Sir Francis Bacon and Sir John Locke—the creators of physics, inductive reasoning and empiricism. We have to decide as a species what path we're going to follow - belief or rationality. One is a function of culture, and a source of comfort to many in particular groups; the other the natural outcome of our previous hunter-gatherer ancestors. It is a matter of survival. It would be culturally arrogant and supremely stupid to consider after 5 mass extinction events, we could not hurry the next one. As matter-of-fact, we're within and on track for the sixth. It is a dark poetry that lead (Pb) in-then modern plumbing had previously been suspected as ending the world empire of Rome (it didn't). The current one appears being scuttled by enabled Silicon transistors, transmitting 140 (now 280) characters. Little did we know our future epitaph - that will be unearthed by any curious alien archaeologists, assuming they will have survived their own intelligence Entropy for deep space travel - is being written in this daily inanity of "alternative facts."

Juxtapositions...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on December 1, 2017 at 5:45pm

Image Source: LinkedIn Slide Share

Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Education, Existentialism, Politics

Finals are scheduled next week, so this will be my second announced break before my final year-end break during Christmas-Hanuka-Holidays-Kwanzaa-Saturnalia et al, etc. A few thoughts in alphabetical order:

Alabama

Birmingham had the euphemism "Bombing-ham" during the spate of 50 dynamite attacks of domestic terrorism that eventually killed 4 black girls at the 16th Street Baptist Church in 1963. It is no causal observation in this special election power, pedophilia and white supremacy seem the only family values that apparently matter. It also shows the Klan who performed this terrorist act are more revered than the lawyer who held them accountable. I gave $25 to the guy our racist Twitter-in-chief said was "weak" on crime. We'll either find out if the state of "thicket-clearers" is either a sane political actor, or a morally failed one.

Britain First

When you re-tweet a right-wing racist Britain group that BRITAIN says is right wing and racist - on the heels of calling tiki torch carrying, small penis Neo-Nazis in Charlottesville "fine people," you don't get to call yourself "the least racist person you'll ever know." The manufacturer of the torches got this right. Britain is considering charging him for inciting violence - this is tribalism on racist steroids. Government-of-the-tweet-by-the-tweet has international implications. I just didn't think it would be the fuse that lights Armageddon.

Graduate education

Proto the apocalypse, the first semester was rigorous. There is nothing that quite prepares you for it - undergraduate preparation either months or decades ago. I equated it to "drinking from a fire hose" this summer, and that analogy didn't let up once. You really can't do it alone. You have to form friendships across cultures, ages and literally time zones. I downloaded the book "How to Study" to my Kindle just to have it. It is something I found invaluable when I was an undergraduate, and I found the skills are just how - once I read the analog version 25 editions ago - I take and organize notes. I think it should be a precollege course, but a few of our fellow citizens don't value education in this country. I recommended it to some that liked my class notes. Instead of Xeroxing and producing PDFs for days, I thought it better to teach trawling than feeding small multitudes with loaves and fishes.

#MeToo

This has the budding signs of a movement beyond a hash tag, which seems to be the means any movement starts now in the Social Media age. Icons of entertainment, news and government are either stepping down or getting pressured to step down. It's causing men to introspect, and think over times we've been far too aggressive on past dates. It's triggering survivors of sexual assault, whether at sixteen, adult or our past five-years-old selves (like me). For this to be a pivotal societal change, it has to go from #MeToo to #WhatNow? A generation from now should look better than the patriarchal darkness we've endured so long. Frederick Douglass said "Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.” Prior to 2008, the federal republic could only be occupied by white male "father figures" and ONLY white male father figures. Trolling in the Internet age became a thing as many expressed their bigotry (eventually, their misogyny) in the previous 140-character limit of lunacy. For those insecure with their future and envisioning dystopian annihilation, last year's election was less a repudiation by Russian interference as it was a backlash, racially and sexually. #WhyNot matriarchy? God knows testosterone has screwed the species long enough (pun intended). Emily's List is calling...

Oumuamua...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 30, 2017 at 5:39am

Illustration of `Oumuamua, the first-known interstellar asteroid. Its unusual shape and color offer cryptic clues about the nature of objects from other solar systems. The challenge now is to find more of these messengers from the stars. (Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Space Exploration

It isn't aliens. It’s never aliens.

That’s the only sensible answer whenever astronomers spot something truly weird in space. That unusual radio blip from the planet Ross 128b? Not aliens. Potential SETI signal SHGb02+14a? Not aliens. The mysterious ‘alien megastructure’ star? Probably not aliens, either. There are so many unexplored natural explanations for unusual phenomena, and so many ways to make errors, that the starting assumption has to be no, no, a thousand times no, it is not aliens.

Then astronomers observed `Oumuamua, the first known interstellar asteroid, as it raced out of the solar system. Its wildly elongated shape resembles that of a rocket stage or–even more enticingly–the interstellar ship from Arthur C. Clarke’s science-fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama. Soon sober-minded reporters (including this one) were exchanging curious messages: Could this ‘asteroid’ actually be an alien artifact? How would we know?

Deep breath. Let’s take this one step at a time. On October 19, the automated Pan-STARRS 1 telescope (which is primarily intended to scan the sky for potentially hazardous, Earth-approaching asteroids) detected an unusual object. It was originally regarded as a possible comet, catalogued as C/2017 U1. By the end of the month, though, astronomers could clearly see that it was something much more remarkable.

First, the ‘comet’ had no fuzz; it was clearly not a comet but rather a fast-moving asteroid. It got a new designation, A/2017 U1 (A for asteroid). Much more intriguing, though, was its orbit. It was moving past the sun on a hyperbolic path, a trajectory indicating that it originated from beyond our solar system. It got another new designation, introducing a naming scheme never used before: 1I/2017 U1 (I for interstellar).

The Pan-STARRS team quickly picked a more apt name for such an important object. It’s now known as `Oumuamua (pronounced ‘oh-oo-moo-ah-moo-a’), a Hawaiian word that translates roughly as ‘messenger from the distant past.’

That Interstellar Asteroid is Pretty Strange. Could It Be…? Corey S. Powell, Discover Magazine

Proto Bang...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 29, 2017 at 7:00am

and before the beginning...Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, General Relativity

Although for five decades, the Big Bang theory has been the best known and most accepted explanation for the beginning and evolution of the Universe, it is hardly a consensus among scientists.

Brazilian physicist Juliano Cesar Silva Neves part of a group of researchers who dare to imagine a different origin. In a study recently published in the journal General Relativity and Gravitation, Neves suggests the elimination of a key aspect of the standard cosmological model: the need for a spacetime singularity known as the Big Bang.

In raising this possibility, Neves challenges the idea that time had a beginning and reintroduces the possibility that the current expansion was preceded by contraction. "I believe the Big Bang never happened," the physician said, who Works as a researcher at the University of Campinas's Mathematics, Statistics and Scientific Computation Institute (IMECC-UNICAMP) in Sao Paulo State, Brazil.

For Neves, the fast spacetime expansion stage does not exclude the possibility of a prior contraction phase. Moreover, the switch from contraction to expansion may not have destroyed all traces of the preceding phase.

Physicist assumes the possibility of vestiges of an Universe previous to the Big Bang Staff Writers, Space Daily

Quantum Neural Network...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 28, 2017 at 5:40am

The Quantum Neural Network comprises a 1 km loop of optical fibre, a phase-sensitive amplifier (PSA) and a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) (Courtesy: QNNcloud)

Topics: Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

An optical system for solving combinatorial optimization problems has been made available for use online, say its creators in Japan. Called the Quantum Neural Network (QNN), the system has been developed by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT), Japan’s National Institute of Informatics, and the University of Tokyo.

Combinatorial optimization problems involve evaluating large numbers of possible solutions to a problem and identifying the best one. A familiar example is the "travelling salesman problem" whereby a person wishes to visit several different destinations by the shortest possible route. Such problems can be found in a wide range of human endeavour from scheduling medical procedures in a hospital to maximizing the performance of a complex system like an aircraft.

Observation/Comment: In a paraphrase to "they are laughing at us," the rest of the world seems to be lapping us, technologically.

Open-access quantum computer goes live in Japan, Hamish Johnston, Physicsworld.com

Excitons and Bilayer Graphene...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 27, 2017 at 7:24am

The band structure of a bandgap-opened bilayer graphene is shown in the upper left corner, where the trigonal warping effect results in three pockets near the edge of conduction and valence bands. Infrared light illuminates bilayer graphene and creates an exciton (a bound state of an electron and an electron hole), located mostly in the top and bottom layer of carbon atoms respectively. Courtesy: Long Ju and Enrique Sahagún Alonso (Scixel)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Graphene, Particle Physics, Nanotechnology

Researchers in the US have succeeded in observing excitons in bilayer graphene for the first time using photocurrent spectroscopy and modified Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy techniques. The new result could help in the development of next-generation optoelectronics instruments, such as tunable infrared detectors, light-emitting diodes and lasers for molecular spectroscopy, thermal imaging and astronomy applications.

“The excitons we observed can be tuned using an electrical field, have a high quality factor, strongly absorb light and lie in the technologically important mid-infrared to terahertz wavelength range,” explains team member and lead author of the study Long Ju, who is at Cornell University. “No other conventional semiconductor contains such excitons.”

Graphene is a sheet of carbon atoms just one atom thick arranged in a honeycomb lattice. It is a semi-metal and does not contain a bandgap in its pristine state. Bilayer graphene is different, however, in that a large and tunable bandgap can be induced in it using an applied electric field – something that cannot be done for single-layer graphene.

Researchers theorize that bilayer graphene also supports tunable excitons (electron-hole pairs) but these had never been actually observed in an experiment until now.

Excitons seen in bilayer graphene, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

Slaying Pollyanna...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 17, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: IMDB.com

Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Humor, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Women in Science

I finally used my Fire Stick - post the Kodi "jail break" for watching some well-deserved (and on-demand) escapist TV, especially appreciated while doing graduate school.

I'm glad the producers ignored the misogynist/racist rabid puppies/sad puppies/pound puppies (my add) with regards to a female Captain Philippa Georgiou, played by Michelle Yeoh and a female first officer that's the main focus of the series - Michael Burnham, played by Sonequa Martin-Green. I guess the need-of-neutering crowd missed all those female admirals in TNG, DS9 as well as Captain Katherine Janeway that probably rose up the ranks on their command and management skills* as well as knowing a few things theoretical and practical about their respective (fictional) warp cores. It's annoying that as a person of color, I cannot see or watch a science fiction (the operative word is "fiction") without commentary when the genre has been diversified and some get their panties in a wad. It's as if we're invisible and not credible (at least in their mindsets) in technical realms. Also note Thor: Ragnarök - Tessa Thompson; NK Jemisin (Google rabid puppies/sad puppies - they're a hoot!).

Klingons: uglier. Some have compared them to fans of our current POTUS (for however long that, or the species lasts). I'm not sure about the 24 houses thing, but I'm a little concerned in a hundred years, we're supposed to get Worf out of these guys! They remarkably improve their looks, apparently.

Vulcans: snootier. I mean we got they didn't like Sarek, his human wife Amanda (Pon Farr, dude?) and his half breed son Spock, but they threw a sister in the mix of an already unique family to reveal other than Sarek, Vulcans are xenophobic pricks! And isn't "logic extremist" an oxymoron? We're a far cry from T'Pring, Stan and the whole Pon Farr ritual mating, as in this reboot time line, Spock gave the middle finger to the Vulcan Science Academy and apparently has a ("it's complicated") thing with Uhura.

Humans: PTSD. That was a shocker, since Roddenberry left us with the impression science cured everything from the common cold to world hunger. Although, Captain Lorca sauntering about with a phaser in his back hip to his door is probably NOT a good look! (If he has an accident, you KNOW someone's going to post it on Galactic Facebook.) With the reintroduction of Harry Mudd, they obviously didn't eliminate money either, else the character has no motivation to be a smuggler and all-around jerk.

The Trek series are always influenced by the time periods the respective series are produced in. In the 1960s you had miniskirts, The Cold War (that's lately gotten chummy, picking our president for us and all); Sean Connery's James Bond, so William Shatner's James T. Kirk had to be his space cowboy equivalent (with the exception of green alien women). Worf on board the Enterprise and the United Federation of Planets' allegiance to the Klingon empire preceded the Berlin Wall coming down by four television years. TNG discovered quite late in the maturity of the series that Jean Luc Picard - a faux Frenchman who rarely spoke French, drank Earl Grey and said English colloquialisms like "shed-yule" - might have sex once in a while (can't let William T. Riker have all the fun). Avery Brooks as Benjamin Sisko on Deep Space Nine was during both terms of the Bill Clinton presidency (per Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, our "first black president" before we actually had one). Captain Janeway led Voyager through the Delta quadrant between an infamous blue dress and hanging chads with three powerful women that seemed clones of Hillary Clinton: Janeway, B'Elanna Torres (half Klingon) and former Borg 7 of 9. Enterprise brought up the rear with a short series that matched our shortened attention spans post 9/11, plus the future was here and our infatuation with it waned as we worried about explosive shoes and dwindling civil liberties in the War on Terror. This new series has an openly gay couple - a scientist, Lt. Stamets - played by Anthony Rapp - responsible for "spore drive" (using a macro-ripper, souped up five-dimensional tardigrade, because speeds > c on fungal power is so plausible) and the ship's doctor played by Wilson Cruz, something that would have gotten Roddenberry and company canceled in a fortnight (Exhibit A: the kiss between Kirk and Uhura wasn't broadcast in southern markets for years). Times have truly changed.

Tongue-in-cheek commentary: I'm taking umbrage with the openers for TOS and TNG:

(TOS) Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

(TNG) Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.

Sounds regal...noble, almost altruistic. I'm here to say it's pure hokum and futuristic political posturing. I'll explain.

Remember the growth formula?

N = N₀e^rt, where N₀ = initial number, r = 0.02 (for humans) and t = time.

As of 2017, we're roughly 7.6 billion people on the planet.

The fictional World War III on the Trek time line takes place in 2026 (eek) to 2053, shaving off 37 million souls - a lot, but assuming this subtraction is calculated AFTER the fictional war (27 years duration):

2026 - 2017 = 9 years, so that increases us to 9,098,851,960 at the beginning.

9,098,851,960*e^0.02*27 - 37,000,000 = 1.55766924 x 10¹⁰, or 15.6 BILLION people, presumably after nuclear war, nuclear winter, eugenics, famine, drugs, etc before "first contact" with what we'd soon discover as Vulcan snobbery.

To get to Kirk's time 110 years later: 1.55766924 x 10¹⁰*e^0.02*110 = 1.405798592 x 10¹¹, or 140.6 BILLION people. I leave it to you to calculate the 24th century's burst at the seams. All it requires is a calculator with a "ln" (natural logarithm) function key. e^x is usually the second function key option, or close by. It also requires places for all these people, who are being "fruitful and multiplying" to go, and a means to get there for cities, schools, industry, potable water, food, video games and procreation.

See how our future descendants' motivations might be a little less than altruistic?

You just might need force fields, phasers and photon torpedoes as you "boldy go" and "explore" real estate in somebody else's parsec. Humans - gotta love us - can get downright pushy when we colonize anything!

We've also got a history where that didn't work out well for the natives encountered.

And other sentient beings - Klingons, Vulcans, Romulans, Borg, et al despite space being the "final frontier" and a lot of it, might they consider our encroachment - and our prodigious human reproductive powers - at sub light (most likely) or warp speed - rude?

It boils down to the admitted grit and tensions designed in Star Trek: Discovery are simply the same we're experiencing over resources and politics on Terra Firma. It is the Trek for these times, and the most realistic thing about the fantasy franchise.

Thanksgiving next week. Blog vegging till the 27th. "Dif-tor heh smusma." \\//_

Through a Glass, Darkly...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 16, 2017 at 7:08am

A simulation of the dark matter distribution in the universe 13.6 billion years ago. ILLUSTRATION COURTESY VOLKER SPRINGEL, MAX PLANCK INSTITUTE FOR ASTROPHYSICS, ET AL, NatGeo

Topics: Astrophysics, Dark Matter, Neutrons, Research, Theoretical Physics

Alliteration source: "For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known." 1 Corinthians 13:12

Scientists at the University of Sussex have disproved the existence of a specific type of axion - an important candidate 'dark matter' particle - across a wide range of its possible masses.

The data were collected by an international consortium, the Neutron Electric Dipole Moment (nEDM) Collaboration, whose experiment is based at the Paul Scherrer Institut in Switzerland. Data were taken there and, earlier, at the Institut Laue-Langevin in Grenoble.

Professor Philip Harris, Head of Mathematical and Physical Sciences at the University of Sussex, and head of the nEDM group there, said:

"Experts largely agree that a major portion of the mass in the universe consists of 'dark matter'. Its nature, however, remains completely obscure. One kind of hypothetical elementary particle that might make up the dark matter is the so-called axion. If axions with the right properties exist it would be possible to detect their presence through this entirely novel analysis of our data.

"We've analyzed the measurements we took in France and Switzerland and they provide evidence that axions – at least the kind that would have been observable in the experiment – do not exist. These results are a thousand times more sensitive than previous ones and they are based on laboratory measurements rather than astronomical observations. This does not fundamentally rule out the existence of axions, but the scope of characteristics that these particles could have is now distinctly limited.

"The results essentially send physicists back to the drawing board in our hunt for dark matter."

Hunt for dark matter is narrowed by new research, Phys.org More information: C. Abel et al. Search for Axionlike Dark Matter through Nuclear Spin Precession in Electric and Magnetic Fields, Physical Review X (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevX.7.041034

10-Qubit Entanglement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 15, 2017 at 3:30pm

Illustration of the ten-qubit processor (Courtesy: Chao Song et al/ Physical Review Letters)

Topics: Nanotechnology, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductors

Physicists in China and the US have built a 10-qubit superconducting quantum processor that could be scaled up to tackle problems not solvable by classical computers. The performance of the device was verified using quantum tomography, which showed that the new approach can generate a true 10-partite Greenberger–Horne–Zeilinger (GHZ) state – the largest yet achieved in a solid-state system.

The field of quantum computing is in its infancy, and a genuinely useful, practical device that outperforms classical computers has not yet been built. At this stage of development, researchers do not even agree on the basics of implementation, but techniques employing superconducting circuits have an advantage over some other designs in that they are based on established and scalable microfabrication processes.

Superconducting quantum computer achieves 10-qubit entanglement

Marric Stephens, Physics World

Gag Orders...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 14, 2017 at 7:53am

Credit: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Southeast Region Flickr (CC BY 2.0)

Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism

A U.S. Forest Service scientist who was scheduled to talk about the role that climate change plays in wildfire conditions was denied approval to attend the conference featuring fire experts from around the country.

William Jolly, a research ecologist with the agency's Rocky Mountain Research Station in Missoula, Mont., was supposed to give a 30-minute presentation titled "Climate-Induced Variations in Global Severe Fire Weather Conditions" at the International Fire Congress in Orlando, Fla., next month. The event is hosted by the Association for Fire Ecology (AFE).

The travel denial follows reports last week that U.S. EPA blocked three scientists from making presentations at a conference in Rhode Island featuring climate change. Critics accused the Trump administration of stifling the dissemination of taxpayer-funded science.

"It's kind of weird that they would make it hard for a government scientist to take part in this because managing wildfire is a huge challenge logistically and financially on a vast array of federal lands," he said. "These scientists, by participating in these kinds of society meetings, share their thoughts and hear other people's thoughts, which is important because their work is supposed to form how these lands are managed and how we prepare for and adapt under climate change."

Government Scientist Blocked from Talking About Climate and Wildfires Brittany Patterson, Scientific American, ClimateWire

Clams and Biofuels...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 13, 2017 at 5:51am

Penn researchers are collaborating to study how giant clams convert sunlight into energy, which could lead to more efficient production of biofuel. Photo credit: Malcolm Browne

Topics: Biochemistry, Green Energy, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Physics, Solar Power

Alison Sweeney of the University of Pennsylvania has been studying giant clams since she was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Santa Barbara. These large mollusks, which anchor themselves to coral reefs in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans, can grow to up to three-feet long and weigh hundreds of pounds. But their size isn’t the only thing that makes them unique. Anyone who has ever gone snorkeling in Australia or the western tropical Pacific Ocean, Sweeney says, may have noticed that the surfaces of giant clams are iridescent, appearing to sparkle before the naked eye. The lustrous cells on the surface of the clam scatter bright sunlight, which typically runs the risk of causing fatal damage to the cell, but the clams efficiently convert the sunlight into fuel. Using what they learn from these giant clams, the researchers hope to improve the process of producing biofuel.

Sweeney, an assistant professor of physics in the Penn School of Arts and Sciences, and her collaborator Shu Yang, a professor of materials science and engineering in the School of Engineering and Applied Science, refer to the clams as “solar transformers” because they are capable of absorbing bright sunlight at a very high rate and scattering it over a large surface area. When the light is distributed evenly among the thick layer of algae living inside the clam, the algae quickly converts the light into energy.

“What those sparkly cells are doing,” Sweeney says, “is causing light to propagate very deeply into the clam tissue and spread out.”

After coming across Sweeney’s work, Yang struck up a collaboration to see if they could mimic the system by abstracting the principles of the clam’s process to create a material that works similarly. She and Ph.D. student Hye-Na Kim devised a method of synthesizing nanoparticles and adding them to an emulsion — a mixture of water, oil, and soapy molecules called surfactants — to form microbeads mimicking the iridocytes, the cells in giant clams responsible for solar transforming. Their paper has been published in Advanced Materials.

Penn Researchers Working to Mimic Giant Clams to Enhance the Production of Biofuel Ali Sundermier, Evan Lerner, University of Pennsylvania News

Caveats and Exodus...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 10, 2017 at 1:23pm

Image Source: Education Exodus: Students are Fleeing the U.S. for Free Higher Education Abroad

Topics: Civics, Education, Existentialism, Politics

My wife and I exercised our right to vote in the Greensboro municipal elections. Our impact wasn't as sweeping as seen across the United States, nor was it a referendum/check on power to the current 140-character president.

As a graduate student, I do have my concerns on how politics affects personal outcomes:

The sweeping tax overhaul released by House Republicans Thursday would kill or limit key benefits for many colleges, students and borrowers paying off student loans.

House GOP leaders released this plan about half a year after President Trump issued a set of broad but vague principles for tax reform legislation. The proposal released Thursday slashes corporate tax rates, reduces the number of income tax brackets and repeals taxes on large estates.

To pay for revenue that would be lost, the plan would kill many tax breaks, some of them popular in higher education.

The plan would impose a 1.4 percent excise tax on college endowments at private universities valued at $100,000 or more per full-time student. The National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities said Friday it estimated more than 150 institutions would be affected by the proposed tax based on 2014-15 endowment values.

The bill would double the standard individual tax deduction, meaning much weaker incentives for charitable contributions to colleges, higher education groups say. Phasing out the estate tax, they say, would also have a negative impact on charitable contributions.

The GOP plan would end student loan interest rate deductions and eliminate state and local income tax deductions, potentially encouraging spending cuts in states that are among the biggest supporters of public higher education.. 1

*****

Graduate students and their professors say their careers and programs are threatened by a provision of the House Republican tax bill that proposes tens of thousands of dollars in higher income taxes on American doctoral students.

Why it matters: The legislation, following a series of threats by the Trump administration that could reduce the number of foreign Ph.D students and their ability to stay in the country after graduation, could be another strike at U.S. dominance of global research and invention. Claus Wilke, chairman of Integrative Biology at University of Texas at Austin, said that should the proposal become law, he "could not in good conscience recommend a Ph.D. to anybody unless they were so rich they didn't care."

"I would tell them to see if somebody can offer you a slot in Canada or Europe where they don't make you pay for your Ph.D," Wilke said. 2

No man is an island,

Entire of itself,

Every man is a piece of the continent,

A part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea,

Europe is the less.

As well as if a promontory were.

As well as if a manor of thy friend's

Or of thine own were:

Any man's death diminishes me,

Because I am involved in mankind,

And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls;

It tolls for thee.

John Donne

I am involved with mankind with regards to my family. We pursued student loans to pay for college for both of our sons. Now as I pursue a Masters and PhD in Nanoengineering, we've pursued those loans for me. It was to better myself; train in a related field and work at a higher level, hopefully in academia as an instructor and researcher. Those are two things - correct me if I'm wrong - I thought might "make America great." Apparently, exaggerating the already abysmal stratification is the only thing our legislators have in mind to make us "great"...like the 1950s, before Brown vs. Board of Education, before James Baldwin and "Giovanni's Room," before Gloria Steinem; before Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun." All dreams except the inept dreams of tiki-torch Nazis - in opposition to the eloquence and elocution of Langston Hughes - must be deferred.

Often, mostly out of frustration my wife and I postulate living in another country. One where politics isn't so polarized, consensus is pursued post election, not gridlock. We're the only nation on the planet where the election cycle starts a full 2 years before the actual elections. I believe most European countries get it done in about six weeks, but that doesn't make for good Nielsen Ratings and advertising dollars ALL the major networks pursue during presidential contests. A reality television star - clearly not in full control of his faculties, but has the nuclear keys to species extinction - is there because in the words of CBS chairman Les Moonves, he was "good for ratings."

I'm told by a friend from Denmark I study with currently I could command a good salary overseas.

Post my matriculation, I may have to consider the option.

..."good for ratings"... That will be a new Rome's epitaph.

1. Tax Benefits at Risk for Colleges, Student Borrowers, Andrew Kreighbaum, Inside Higher Education

2. The GOP tax plan could lead to a brain drain, Steve LeVine, Axios

FAST Entanglement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 9, 2017 at 7:00am

While quantum entanglement usually spreads through the atoms in an optical lattice via short-range interactions with the atoms' immediate neighbors (left), new theoretical research shows that taking advantage of long-range dipolar interactions among the atoms could enable it to spread more quickly (right), a potential advantage for quantum computing and sensing applications. Credit: Gorshkov and Hanacek/NIST

Topics: Laser, Materials Science, Optical Physics, Quantum Mechanics

“It is these long-range dipolar interactions in 3-D that enable you to create entanglement much faster than in systems with short-range interactions,” said Gorshkov, a theoretical physicist at NIST and at both the Joint Center for Quantum Information and Computer Science and the Joint Quantum Institute, which are collaborations between NIST and the University of Maryland. “Obviously, if you can throw stuff directly at people who are far away, you can spread the objects faster.”

Applying the technique would center around adjusting the timing of laser light pulses, turning the lasers on and off in particular patterns and rhythms to quick-change the suspended atoms into a coherent entangled system.

The approach also could find application in sensors, which might exploit entanglement to achieve far greater sensitivity than classical systems can. While entanglement-enhanced quantum sensing is a young field, it might allow for high-resolution scanning of tiny objects, such as distinguishing slight temperature differences among parts of an individual living cell or performing magnetic imaging of its interior.

Gorshkov said the method builds on two studies from the 1990s in which different NIST researchers considered the possibility of using a large number of tiny objects—such as a group of atom—as sensors. Atoms could measure the properties of a nearby magnetic field, for example, because the field would change their electrons’ energy levels. These earlier efforts showed that the uncertainty in these measurements would be advantageously lower if the atoms were all entangled, rather than merely a bunch of independent objects that happened to be near one another.

Need Entangled Atoms? Get 'Em FAST! With NIST’s New Patent-Pending Method

Paper: Z. Eldredge, Z.-X. Gong, J. T. Young, A.H. Moosavian, M. Foss-Feig and A.V. Gorshkov. Fast State Transfer and Entanglement Renormalization Using Long-Range Interactions. Physical Review Letters. Published 25 October 2017. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.119.170503

The Flatness of Being...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 8, 2017 at 7:00am

A snapshot of silicene (shown in yellow), a 2-D material made up of silicon atoms, as it grows on iridium substrate (shown in red). The image was taken from a molecular dynamics simulation, which Argonne researchers used to predict the growth and evolution of silicene. (Image courtesy of Joseph Insley / Argonne National Laboratory.)

Topics: Computer Science, Graphene, Materials Science, Nanotechnology

Alliteration source: "The Unbearable Lightness of Being," by Milan Kundera.

The remarkable properties of 2-D materials — made up of a single layer of atoms — have made them among the most intensely studied materials of our time. They have the potential to usher in a new generation of improved electronics, batteries and sensory devices, among other applications.

One obstacle to realizing applications of these materials is the cost and time needed for experimental studies. However, computer simulations are helping researchers overcome this challenge in order to accurately characterize material structures and functions at an accelerated pace.

At the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have simulated the growth of silicene, a 2-D material with attractive electronic properties. Their work, published in Nanoscale, delivers new and useful insights on the material’s properties and behavior and offers a predictive model for other researchers studying 2-D materials.

The flat and the curious, Joan Koka, Argonne National Laboratories

Breadcrumbs and Evolution...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 7, 2017 at 6:49am

Schematic of the sandwich tunnelling electrode structure functionalized with RGD peptide, with a human integrin &alpha_Vβ₃ protein in the junction gap. Courtesy of Nano Futures.

Topics: Biology, Biochemistry, Chemistry, Nanotechnology

When electrochemistry, transient charging and heating effects all failed to explain the fluctuating high conductance detected in a human integrin protein, Stuart Lindsay at Arizona State University and his colleagues considered the possibility that the protein’s electronic properties teetered at a critical point between conducting and insulating states. Further analysis of the results revealed characteristics typical of a quantum critical point. While as yet unconfirmed, it is possible this "Goldilocks zone" may aid the protein’s functions, so that evolutionary advantages would have promoted the prevalence of this statistically unlikely electronic behaviour. On a more pragmatic level, the distinctive electronic signal is clearly identified against noisy backgrounds, and may have applications in single-molecule detection.

"There has long been this breadcrumb trail of evidence that proteins behave unusually electronically," explains Lindsay, director of the Biodesign Center for Single Molecule Biophysics at Arizona State University. "All the experiments you can shoot down because you don’t know the state of the protein or how many proteins you have there – here, for the first time, we trap a single protein in a well defined gap and in a condition in which the protein is native."

Lindsay worked alongside researchers at Arizona State University in the US and Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary to characterize the proteins both using a scanning tunnelling microscope (STM) similar to other groups, as well as with a "fixed-gap device" junction developed in work on DNA sequencing. Characterizing proteins by STM raises several issues because the precise chemistry and geometry of the STM tip are not known, and the native environment of these proteins differs greatly from a vacuum, where the physics is well established. However, Lindsay and his colleagues found that their less error-prone fixed-gap device also gave conductances several orders of magnitude greater than expected, and that they fluctuated.

Unexplained huge protein conductances hint at evolution, Anna Demming, Nanotechweb.org

Muons of Khufu...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 6, 2017 at 6:40am

Virtual-reality representation of the interior of Khufu's Pyramid. The small structure with the peaked roof near the bottom of the pyramid is the Queen's Chamber where the emulsion and hodoscope detectors were installed. The large inclined structure is the Great Gallery, which leads to King's Chamber. The new void is the white region above the Great Gallery. (Courtesy: ScanPyramids)

Topics: History, Modern Physics, Particle Physics

A large void hidden deep within Khufu's Pyramid at Giza in Egypt has been discovered by a team of physicists. The first-ever image of the mysterious structure was taken using muons that shower down on Earth after being created when cosmic rays collide with the atmosphere.

The measurements were done by the ScanPyramids collaboration that includes researchers from Egypt, Japan and France. The team used three different muon-imaging techniques to study the pyramid, which was built in about 2500 BCE and is also known as the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Cheops.

Called muography, the technique is similar to radiography using X-rays. Dense materials such as stone tend to absorb muons, which travel relatively unhindered through the air. If more muons than expected reach a detector within the pyramid, it means that they must have passed through an air-filled void on their way.

To verify the existence of the void, scientists from the KEK particle physics lab in Japan installed hodoscopes at a separate location within the Queen's Chamber. These comprise layers of plastic scintillator, which measure muon trajectories. Outside the pyramid, physicists from France's nuclear research agency CEA monitored the muon flux through the pyramid using micromegas detectors. These were arranged in muon "telescopes", which are also able to measure muon trajectories.

Muons reveal hidden void in Egyptian pyramid, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Filter and Subtext...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 3, 2017 at 11:41am

Chinese translations for significant, meaning, connotation, denotation, import, gist, substance, significance, signification, implication, suggestion, consequence, worth, nuance, association, subtext, sense. Image Source: Words-Chinese.com

Topics: Commentary, Internet, Politics

When I was dating my wife and living in Austin, Texas, I saw an article in the Austin American Statesman that concerned me (I think it regarded a subject in science the author was completely off-base on). I wrote them and got promptly rejected with a reply from the editor. The editor liked my reasoning and sentence structure: I was over their 130 word limit. I was invited to rewrite and resubmit my points within a 10-day window, otherwise it wouldn't be considered. I sent my edit and it was printed. It scored me bragging points with my then girlfriend (she's still with me, amazingly).

The editor was a filter, not just of grammar and syntax but what represented the Statesman as far as policy, their editorial standards and business model.

I will post on this Google/Blogger platform. Any points I make will have associated links I will give attribution to. The only editor is myself.

The Internet as we know it was a product of science and ironically (or perhaps these days, apropos) The Cold War. Leonard Kleinrock wrote a white paper in 1961 entitled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." At the link provided, there is a timeline of the Internet's evolution that preceded my awareness of it (I encountered it as DARPANET, but apparently Queen Elizabeth sent the first email when I was in high school in the seventies). It's not surprising that MIT et al universities were involved as for any Pollyannish vision of education being unfairly influenced by corporate interests, that's been around for some time as well. War fighting was on a "hub-and-spoke" configuration (think wagon wheel): the main headquarters was usually at the center of any military deployment, talking to their distant ends through microwave, troposphere scatter and satellite. As a lucky - and stressed - communications/computer systems officer, I was usually at the deployed headquarters, i.e. the "hub" where I would have likely gotten nuked.

The first efforts amounted to text messaging on Zenith computers with HUGE deployed mainframes: things you do with your phones now. The Internet is a wonder, but unlike the Statesman's editor, it lacks a filter.

Several generations from humble beginnings, the Internet Service Providers and social media companies do not want a filter as existed (and I assume still does) for the Statesman and other like media, albeit dwindling. The flaw of an open society is the fact it is open. Vigilance bordering paranoia has to exist to protect a federal republic - the hen house - from ravenous wolves without and within.

I am not advocating a tiered Internet, a removal of net neutrality.

However, the inevitable consequences of removing the traditional filters of discourse is where two technological advances - television and Twitter - have placed our republic in the hands of a chief executive that displays Internet addiction and the impulse control of a prepubescent, our inanity personified.

LIGO 2...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 2, 2017 at 10:04pm

Artist’s rendition of colliding neutron stars creating gravitational waves and a kilonova. Image: Fermilab

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Nobel Prize, White Dwarfs

(Oct 16) A team of scientists using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the primary observing tool of the Dark Energy Survey, was among the first to observe the fiery aftermath of a recently detected burst of gravitational waves, recording images of the first confirmed explosion from two colliding neutron stars ever seen by astronomers.

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey joined forces with a team of astronomers based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) for this effort, working with observatories around the world to bolster the original data from DECam. Images taken with DECam captured the flaring-up and fading over time of a kilonova — an explosion similar to a supernova, but on a smaller scale — that occurs when collapsed stars (called neutron stars) crash into each other, creating heavy radioactive elements.

This particular violent merger, which occurred 130 million years ago in a galaxy near our own (NGC 4993), is the source of the gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo collaborations on Aug. 17. This is the fifth source of gravitational waves to be detected — the first one was discovered in September 2015, for which three founding members of the LIGO collaboration were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics two weeks ago.

Scientists spot explosive counterpart of LIGO/Virgo’s latest gravitational waves Andre Salles, Fermilab Office of Communication, asalles@fnal.gov, 630-840-6733

Molecular Machines...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 1, 2017 at 4:30am

The use of pulses of chemical fuel to directionally transport components and substrates via an energy ratchet mechanism is operationally simple, effective, generates relatively innocuous waste products, and can function in a range of rotary and linear molecular motor and pump designs. Such a universally applicable chemically-fuelled molecular motor-mechanism has the potential to find broad application in molecular nanotechnology. Courtesy: D Leigh

Topics: Brownian Motion, Chemistry, Nanotechnology, NEMS

Chemists at the University of Manchester in the UK say they have succeeded in developing a new and simple technique for powering both linear and rotary molecular motors made from catenanes. These are mechanically interlocked rings of DNA that could be used to make devices that can be switched between different states using external triggers like changes in pH. The breakthrough method – until now it was only possible to power either rotary or linear motors – might be used to power future molecular machines.

“In the molecular machines we are familiar with in the ‘big world’, the parts, such as cogs, flywheels and pistons, do not move unless a force is applied to them,” explains team leader David Leigh. “At the molecular scale, however, molecules and their parts are constantly moving through Brownian motion and we need to find ways to control the direction of this motion if we are to develop fully-functioning nanomachines.”

Last year, Leigh’s team made the first autonomous chemically-fuelled molecular motor that runs as long as a chemical fuel is present. This rotary motor relies on information transfer between the machine components: a blocking group adds as soon as the ring has moved past a certain point in a given direction and that group also prevents the ring moving backwards through Brownian motion.

The researchers use trichloroacetic acid (Cl₃CCOOH) as the fuel in their motor. Cl₃CCOOH undergoes base-catalysed decarboxylation, and by adding an excess of this acid to a solution containing the molecular motor and another chemical (triethylamine, or Et3N), they were first able to make the medium acidic and then, as the Cl₃CCOOH decomposes, basic.

Chemical fuel pulses power rotary and linear nanomotors, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

Subterranean Moon Base...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 31, 2017 at 5:48am

The Marius Hills Skylight, as observed by the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya research team. (Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

Topics: Moon, NASA, Planetary Science, Science Fiction, Space Exploration

Hm. Just in time for Halloween, though (I think) the architecture of science fiction space bases will obviously need an update. This is also the idea motivating any future Martian colonies as well.

New research published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that several pits located near the Marius Hill region of the Moon are large open lava tubes, and that these ancient caverns have the potential to offer, in the words of the researchers, a “pristine environment to conduct scientific examination of the Moon’s composition and potentially serve as secure shelters for humans and instruments.” The team, which included scientists from NASA and Japan’s space agency, JAXA, combined radar and gravity data to make the finding.

No doubt, these caverns would be perfect for aspiring lunar colonists. Inside these large holes, humans would be protected from the Sun’s dangerous rays, and other hazards. The Moon has no atmosphere to speak of, so these “instant” shelters would be extremely advantageous.

Philadelphia is shown inside a theoretical lunar lava tube. (Image: Purdue University/David Blair)

Scientists Just Found the Perfect Spot to Build an Underground Colony on the Moon George Dvorsky, Gizmodo