Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

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

Freedom and Responsibility...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 30, 2017 at 5:14am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Science, Research

As a no-knock raid (s) may be going on in Washington, DC or surrounding suburbs, this is a follow-up from the piece "The Right to Science," the material sourced from the American Association for the Advancement of Science as is this post.

In the era of "doubling down" on inanity at 140 characters in wee hours of the mornings (paired with septuagenarian bowel movements), AAAS is being very explicit and direct with reality, not "alternative facts," lies and propaganda.

A quote from my professor in Nano Safety:

"All science and engineering has a moral and philosophical component. It is imperative that as future scientists you pursue your research ethically, thinking also of your impact on society going forward." (I have omitted his name for his privacy)

BTW: The interpolation homework wasn't that bad, and we finished the project report. On to the others in Nano Physics and Safety. I will hibernate after finals.

The freedom to pursue science, apply its findings and share its discoveries is linked to the obligation of the scientific community to conduct its work with integrity and keep the interest of humanity as a core tenet, according to a new statement adopted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Board of Directors.

The AAAS Board of Directors adopted the “Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility” on Oct. 12 to govern the organization, its members and guide scientists across the globe – the first known such position adopted by a scientific organization, according to members of the AAAS committee that developed the statement.

“Scientific freedom and scientific responsibility are essential to the advancement of human knowledge for the benefit of all. Scientific freedom is the freedom to engage in scientific inquiry, pursue and apply knowledge, and communicate openly,” the statement says. “This freedom is inextricably linked to and must be exercised in accordance with scientific responsibility. Scientific responsibility is the duty to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, in a spirit of stewardship for the environment, and with respect for human rights.”

The four-line statement is meant to be a lasting and widely applicable affirmation, recognizing that freedom necessary to extend the global scientific enterprise requires the scientific community to adhere to and apply high ethical standards, interlocking two longstanding pillars of science.

AAAS Adopts Statement Binding Scientific Freedom with Responsibility Anne Q. Hoy, AAAS

Possible Go Wrongs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 24, 2017 at 9:00pm

Image Source: TV Tropes: The All-Devouring Pop Culture Wiki

Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming

Note: I'm writing a report and Power Point presentation on a project in MATLAB on Numerical Methods (Trapezoid Rule, Simpson's Rule and Gauss Quadrature, not that you asked), AND a homework on interpolation (joy). I will resume next Monday on All Hallow's Eve, for no particular superstitious or zombie apocalypse reason.

Tomorrow (October 7th, so this is long past), the EPA is expected to take a first formal step in repealing the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), a regulation designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by approximately 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a terribly irresponsible decision. Recent ferocious storms, intensified by warming oceans and air, remind us of the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is a sensible, flexible, cost-effective rule addressing one of one of the biggest sources of US carbon emissions, and one of the least expensive sources to control.

Notably, it appears from a leaked draft that the EPA does not base its proposed repeal on a change in policy goals, or on any of the usual considerations such as the rule’s costs, feasibility, or impacts. Rather, the EPA hangs its repeal hat entirely on a legal hook—the EPA now claims that the Clean Power Plan violated the law because it regulates “beyond the fenceline” of individual power plants—a claim that is directly contrary to what the EPA and the Department of Justice argued in court just last fall. With this legal sleight of hand, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once again forsakes the mission of the agency he heads—to safeguard human health and the environment—to pander to fossil fuel interests.

As I've stated before: N = N₀ * e^rt is the exponential growth formula. N₀ = initial number; N = final number; r = 0.02 (growth rate for humans); t = years. With a little algebra, you can solve for t and find the population doubles in roughly 35 years, our current world population estimate at 7.6 billion. N = 15,256,782,730 (roughly) in 35 years. The problem with climate change and population is our politics like our enterprise are both myopically focused on business quarters and the next election cycle, not mid or the next century. More people simply mean more competition for limited resources, one of which - for LIFE and social stability - is potable water.

The poet T.S. Elliot is the author of the famous poem "The Hollow Men." How apropos a title to relate to this subject. You owe yourselves beyond my meager excerpts to read the full text here, Source: AllPoetry.com, other sources: Biography, Wikipedia

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

(Elliot's last, most quoted stanza)

V

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Scott Pruitt’s Cynical Move to Rescind the Clean Power Plan Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientist, President, Oct 9, 2017, 12:47 PM EDT

Atoms and Josephson Junctions...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 23, 2017 at 5:15am

An electron microscope image of a quantum simulator made from a 1D array of Josephson junctions (light dots). (Courtesy: Philip Krantz, Krantz NanoArt, adapted by APS / Alan Stonebraker)

Topics: Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductors

A theory that describes how quantum particles interact with each other in 1D has been put to the test by two independent teams of physicists. In one experiment, aspects of the Tomonaga–Luttinger theory were verified using laser-trapped ultracold atoms. The other study made use of superconducting devices. Confirmation of the theory could lead to the development of new technologies based on nanowires and other 1D systems. Applications include electronics, sensing, energy harvesting and quantum information.

Tomonaga–Luttinger theory describes a 1D ensemble of interacting quantum particles in terms of a Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL). It predicts properties of 1D quantum systems such as how electrons behave in a nanowire. Testing these predictions in a systematic way has not been possible, however, because it is very difficult to control how particles interact in 1D systems such as nanowires.

Atoms and Josephson junctions simulate 1D quantum liquid, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Oligarchy...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 20, 2017 at 5:24am

Image Source: Foundations of Government, Slide Player, Slide 5

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, History, Politics

I let the previous post last Friday stand without any other comment. I'm also working on reports for three projects in graduate school. I have a limited amount of hope that things will change. It is partly the subject of today's commentary.

I read "Letters at 3 AM: 'O' is for Oligarchy" in the print version of The Austin Chronicle when I lived in Austin, Texas. As in the date in the online version, I remember reading it in 2010. The premises it raised have aged very well, unfortunately.

*****

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. Source: BBC News, Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy, 17 April 2014

*****

The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded.

The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite. Source: Business Insider, Zachary Davies Boren, The Telegraph, April 16, 2014

*****

Ganesh Sitaraman carried on this traditional observation of the obvious in The Guardian:

While the ruling class must remain united for an oligarchy to remain in power, the people must also be divided so they cannot overthrow their oppressors. Oligarchs in ancient Greece thus used a combination of coercion and co-optation to keep democracy at bay. They gave rewards to informants and found pliable citizens to take positions in the government.

These collaborators legitimized the regime and gave oligarchs beachheads into the people. In addition, oligarchs controlled public spaces and livelihoods to prevent the people from organizing. They would expel people from town squares: a diffuse population in the countryside would be unable to protest and overthrow government as effectively as a concentrated group in the city.

They also tried to keep ordinary people dependent on individual oligarchs for their economic survival, similar to how mob bosses in the movies have paternalistic relationships in their neighborhoods. Reading Simonton’s account, it is hard not to think about how the fragmentation of our media platforms is a modern instantiation of dividing the public sphere, or how employees and workers are sometimes chilled from speaking out.

Greece, the birthplace of our ideas on democracy as Rome was our ideals of a republic is an apropos historic comparison.

In my March 31 post, The Shattering, oligarchy wasn't mentioned, but implied. I observe the former head of the KGB, he and the other former members of the Politburo have abandoned the ideals of the Communist Manifesto. They don't appear at all interested in "sharing their wealth," but in its avaricious accumulation.

Perhaps their American counterparts have left the "quaint" notion of a federal republic.

Ventrella Quest Cartoon - Free Speech

"We have 'given them the store' of white supremacist bigotry, and our republic. I'm concerned apathy, racism, stupidity and tribalism may well not allow us... to get it back." The Shattering, March 31, 2017

*****

“The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

~quoted in the New York Times, April 9, 1944, Vice President Henry Wallace, Good Reads

Polite Society...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 13, 2017 at 6:30am

Image Source: Cap Times, Amy Goodman, Dennis Moynihan related article

Topics: Commentary, Politics, Research

"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." Robert A. Heinlein

"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre

On the night of October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a large crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in the State of Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 489 injured. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel. About an hour after Paddock fired his last shot, he was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive is unknown.

The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States. The crime reignited the debate about gun laws in the U.S., with attention focused on bump firing, a technique Paddock used to allow his semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate similar to that of a fully automatic weapon. Source: Wikipedia

The claim that gun ownership stops crime is common in the U.S., and that belief drives laws that make it easy to own and keep firearms.
But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.
Interviews with people in heavily gun-owning towns show they are not as wedded to the crime defense idea as the gun lobby claims.

Guns took more than 36,000 U.S. lives in 2015, and this and other alarming statistics have led many to ask whether our nation would be better off with firearms in fewer hands. Yet gun advocates argue exactly the opposite: that murders, crimes and mass shootings happen because there aren't enough guns in enough places. Arming more people will make our country safer and more peaceful, they say, because criminals won't cause trouble if they know they are surrounded by gun-toting good guys.

Is there truth to this claim? An ideal experiment would be an interventional study in which scientists would track what happened for several years after guns were given to gun-free communities and everything else was kept the same. But alas, there are no gun-free U.S. communities, and the ethics of doing such a study are dubious. So instead scientists compare what happens to gun-toting people, in gun-dense regions, with what happens to people and places with few firearms. They also study whether crime victims are more or less likely to own guns than others, and they track what transpires when laws make it easier for people to carry guns or use them for self-defense.

Most of this research—and there have been several dozen peer-reviewed studies—punctures the idea that guns stop violence. In a 2015 study using data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Also in 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.

This evidence has been slow to accumulate because of restrictions placed by Congress on one of the country's biggest injury research funders, the CDC. Since the mid-1990s the agency has been effectively blocked from supporting gun violence research. And the NRA and many gun owners have emphasized a small handful of studies that point the other way.

"For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things." Isaiah 59:3

More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows Melinda Wenner Moyer, Scientific American

Carbon Nanotube FET...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 11, 2017 at 2:24pm

Figure 1. A three-dimensional integrated circuit, made possible with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The circuit senses and classifies ambient gases using a multilayered stack of devices that are connected by platinum wires known as interlayer vias. In the top layer, roughly 1 million CNT field-effect transistors (FETs) register a change in electrical resistance when the gas molecules adsorb on a CNT. The second layer hosts memory cells that read and store the signals created by the FETs just above them. The third layer contains another million FETs that process the sensor data and implement a machine-learning algorithm to identify the type of gas picked up. Conventional silicon CMOS circuitry on the bottom acts as an interface to external devices. (Adapted from ref. 2.)

Topics: Carbon Nanotubes, Computer Engineering, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics

In 2013 graduate student Max Shulaker, his adviser Subhasish Mitra, Philip Wong, and their Stanford University colleagues built the first computer made entirely of carbon nanotube (CNT) field-effect transistors (FETs). ¹ The achievement was eagerly anticipated. Even before their first incorporation into FETs in 1998, CNTs had been touted as a superior substitute for the silicon channel that shuttles current between the traditional FET’s source and drain electrodes.

The intrinsic thinness of single-wall CNTs—essentially graphene sheets rolled into hollow cylinders a nanometer wide—enables superb control over power dissipation in the transistor’s off state and allows the transistor to switch off and on with much lower energy consumption than is possible with any other material. Moreover, thanks to that one-dimensionality, which suppresses scattering, charge carriers in CNTs have a much higher velocity for a given electric field than in Si. (See the article by Phaedon Avouris, Physics Today, January 2009, page 34.)

The 2013 computer was modest: It contained fewer than 200 FETs, ran at a clock speed of just 1 kHz, and implemented a single instruction. Nonetheless, the instruction was a conditional statement that qualified the computer as “Turing complete,” able to make any calculation given enough memory and time. The achievement also reassured Shulaker, now a professor at MIT, and his Stanford colleagues that CNTs could form the foundation for a much more complex system.

The researchers have now built a prototype system that embodies a vision of a transformative computer architecture—one in which computing, data storage, and input and output technologies are each fabricated into two-dimensional layers that are built up into a 3D integrated circuit.² Shown schematically in figure 1, the circuit consists of more than 2 million CNT FETs and more than 1 million memory cells. The components are divided among three layers—stacked on the same chip atop a layer of Si CMOS circuitry and interconnected by a forest of fine platinum wires.

The carbon nanotube integrated circuit goes three-dimensional R. Mark Wilson, Physics Today

QuantumWise...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 10, 2017 at 2:00pm

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Education, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology

Note: This will hopefully catch up my posting hiatus this Thursday (last midterm).

QuantumWise develops commercial software for fast and reliable atomic-scale modeling of nanostructures, fully supported and delivered in an easy-to-use interface, tailored from state-of-the-art methods, and developed by experts to the specifications of our customers.

Who we are

QuantumWise is a self-funded, privately owned company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with local representation in Japan, Singapore and the United States. We sell our software products to several hundred companies, government labs, and universities around the world. QuantumWise was started in 2008, built on the company Atomistix (founded in 2003), which brought the academic transport code TranSIESTA into the commercial marketplace.

At present, QuantumWise has more than 20 employees world-wide, working with developing the code and supporting our users. Most of our employees have a Ph.D. in physics or chemistry, and/or are seasoned programmers with long experience in numerical modeling and GUI development.

QuantumWise, Physics Connect Website: QuantumWise.com

2017 Nobel Prize Economic Sciences...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 9, 2017 at 2:00pm

Image Source: Scroll.in and NobelPrize.org

Topics: Economics, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize

The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 was awarded to Richard H. Thaler "for his contributions to behavioural economics".

Integrating economics with psychology

Richard H. Thaler has incorporated psychologically realistic assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making. By exploring the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control, he has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.

Link: 2017 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel

2017 Nobel Peace Prize...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 6, 2017 at 7:30pm

Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Peace

I can't think of a more timely and apropos prize for the current zeitgeist. I hope it has impact.

The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 was awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons".

Link: Nobel Peace Prize

2017 Nobel Prize Literature...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 5, 2017 at 7:30pm

Image Link: Source below

Topics: Literature, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2017 is awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".

Link: Nobel Prize Literature

2017 Nobel Prize Chemistry...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 4, 2017 at 8:27pm

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Topics: Chemistry, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution".

Link: Nobel Prize Chemistry

2017 Nobel Prize Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 3, 2017 at 7:48am

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Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".

Link: Nobel Prize in Physics

2017 Nobel Prize Physiology or Medicine...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 2, 2017 at 6:10am

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Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".

Link: Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 29, 2017 at 6:01am

Image Source: Seminar link below

Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Education, STEM

I saw Dr. Oluseyi speak at the National Society of Black Physicists, Austin, Texas in 2011 (where I met Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg). I signed up to hear him speak again today, obviously scheduled as a pick-me-up for graduate students before midterms. We could all use it.

And there, at Tougaloo College, you had a breakthrough.

Yes.These three grad students from MIT and Harvard came to Tougaloo, where I was one of two physics students in 1986. They were all black physics students from the Cambridge area – and each of them thought they were the only one! They came to realize that kids from certain communities just have no idea that physics as a career exists. They decided they’d start the National Council of Black Physics Students, to help the most down-and-out kids in the country. So where did they go? Mississippi. They showed up on our campus.

Because of them, I ended up meeting recruiters from Stanford University that ended up accepting me to Stanford for grad school. In all of Stanford’s history, at that time, there were only two black professors in all of the six schools of natural sciences and mathematics. One was my PhD advisor, Art Walker, who was also the PhD advisor of Sally Ride. Just being in his presence showed me a different model of how I could be.

But in the end, Art’s support changed it for me. It was like two different lives. I ended up changing my name from James Edward Plummer to reflect how my life had changed so drastically. I wanted my middle name to reflect how I am. So my middle name is Muata and it means “He seeks the truth.” I wanted my first name to reflect what I want to become. My first name Hakeem means “wisdom.” And my last name is from the West African Yoruba people, and it means “God has done this.”

Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi, TED Blog

NC A&T Seminar link: NCAT.edu/oluseyi