Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Meanwhile We Are Here...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 18, 2017 at 4:56am

Topics: Commentary, Politics, Science

A search term "war on science" will bring up several posts (this one now included) that predate our current epoch. We have a chief executive that used to be a reality show host, insisting on meting out his brand of "diplomacy" at 140-character increments - some misspelled. It like many social platforms was created by science, the very science his administration has decided must kowtow to "alternative facts" and unicorns.

The meme seemed apropos the day after "The Handmaid's Tale" won an Emmy for Best Drama series on Hulu (having read the novel, the reason why I purchased a subscription). Again, a venue we all take for granted on our laptops and Amazon fire sticks, also created by science.

An exhaustive list by Science Blogs follows. My Monday gallows humor, but don't lose heart or get exhausted.

The last one of these was in mid-June, so we’re picking up all the summer stories of scientific mayhem in the Trump era. The last couple of months have seemed especially apocalyptic, with Nazis marching in the streets and nuclear war suddenly not so distant a possibility. But along with those macro-level issues, Trump and his cronies are still hammering away at climate change denial, environmental protection, research funding and public health issues. As exhausting as it seems — and this is part of the plan — amongst all of us opposed to Trump, we need to keep track of a wide range of issues.

If I’m missing anything important, please let me know either in the comments or at my email jdupuis at yorku dot ca. If you want to use a non-work email for me, it’s dupuisj at gmail dot com.

The selections are by no means meant to represent a comprehensive account of everything written about science and science-related over the last few months. I’m not aiming for anything than complete or comprehensive. For example, there are probably hundreds of articles written about climate-change related issues over that period, but I’m just picking up what I hope is a representative sample.

Science Blogs: Confessions of a Science Librarian, John Dupuis

Dénouement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 15, 2017 at 5:51am

NASA's Cassini spacecraft flew through the plumes of Enceladus' geysers several times and gathered information about the particles that may foster life on Saturn's small frigid moon. Credit: NASA/JPL

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cassini, NASA, Space Exploration

For Mildred D. Goodwin, September 15, 1925 - May 7, 2009. Happy birthday, mom. As far as this serendipity, I'd like to think she would have enjoyed it.

Friday morning (Sept. 15), Cassini will complete the orbital pirouettes of its seven-year Solstice Mission and complete a self-destructing descent into Saturn's atmosphere. This fierce ending is dramatic for a purpose: It will prevent Earth microbes from contaminating Saturn's nearby moons.

When NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed its first tour of Saturn in 2008, the mission team had to decide what would come next. [Cassini's Saturn Crash 2017: How to Watch Its 'Grand Finale']

Cassini could have parted ways with the ringed planet. In 2009, studies showed that Cassini had enough fuel to reach Uranus or Neptune. Cassini could have traveled in the other direction, toward Jupiter, or it could have been sent to visit an assembly of asteroids known as the Centaurs in the outer limits of the solar system.

Instead, scientists chose to continue making discoveries about Saturn and its moons — first through a two-year extended mission known as the Cassini Equinox Mission, and then with a second extension in 2010 that would bring the spacecraft to the very limit of the fuel it carried. That made it clear that Cassini's third mission, the Solstice Mission, would be how the spacecraft would end its career. It was during these missions that scientists discovered that two of Saturn's moons, Titan and Enceladus, showed signs that they were well suited to life. But why the fiery plummet?

"The spacecraft will burn up and disintegrate like a meteor in the upper atmosphere of Saturn," Preston Dyches, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), told Space.com via email. "This was determined to be the best way to ensure the safe disposal of the spacecraft, so that there would be no chance of future contamination of Enceladus by any hardy microbes that might have stowed away on board all these years."

Why the Cassini Mission to Saturn Must End in a Fiery Dive, Doris Elin Salazar, Space.com Staff Writer

Jupiter's Northern Lights...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 14, 2017 at 7:31am

A complete reconstruction of what the northern and southern auroras looked like to the Juno Ultraviolet Spectograph (UVS) as Juno approached Jupiter, passed over the north pole, rapidly traveled to the southern hemisphere to pass over the southern pole, and receded from Jupiter. Credit: BERTRAND BONFOND.

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Space Exploration

Evidence from the Juno probe’s close flights past Jupiter indicate that the gas giant’s dazzling polar light shows are caused by a mysterious mechanism different from the one responsible for intense auroras here on Earth.

On Jupiter, as on Earth, the northern and southern lights are produced by charged particles from the Sun colliding with gas atoms in the atmosphere and releasing energy in flashes of light.

Jupiter’s aurora is the brightest in the solar system, so planetary scientists assumed it was produced by the discrete process.

However, a paper in Nature analyzing data from Juno’s low-altitude passes over Jupiter’s poles shows that, while there are extremely intense electric fields aligned with the magnetic field and signs that electrons are being accelerated downwards, the resulting auroras were much dimmer than those produced by the broadband process.

Why? The authors don’t know, though they speculate that Jupiter’s intense auroras may be started by a discrete process creating a stream of electrons that is then disrupted and diffused by the magnetic field fluctuations that produce the broadband process.

Power supply for Jupiter’s aurora puzzles scientists, Michael Lucy, COSMOS magazine

NanoVelcro...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 13, 2017 at 5:49am

Courtesy: ACS Nano DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b03073

Topics: Biology, Bioengineering, Nanotechnology

For any couple who has witnessed an amniocentesis with WIDE eyes (as I did), this advance should be a welcome relief.

Circulating fetal nucleated cells (CFNCs) in the blood of pregnant women is an ideal source of fetal genomic DNA that can be used for prenatal diagnostics. However, the problem is that there are only a very small number of CFNCs in maternal blood. A team of researchers in the US, China and Taiwan has now developed nanoVelcro microchips that can effectively enrich a subcategory of CFNCs, namely circulating trophoblasts (cTBs) in blood samples. These cTBs can then be isolated using a laser microdissection technique for subsequent genetic testing.

Current prenatal tests for diagnosing foetal genetic abnormalities rely on invasive, “harvesting” procedures, such as amniocentesis and chorionic villus sampling. Although highly valuable, they can increase the risk of miscarriage. Whole foetal cells circulating in an expectant mother’s blood could also provide important information on foetal DNA since they contain entire genomes, but until now it has been very challenging to capture these cells because they are only present in small quantities.

The new nanoVelcro microchips developed by Hsian-Rong Tsung of the California NanoSystems Institute at the University of California at Los Angeles and colleagues can effectively enrich cTBs from blood samples. These cells can then be isolated using a technique called laser capture microdissection (LCM) for subsequent genetic testing.

The researchers (who initially developed their microchips for detecting low concentrations of tumour cells circulating in blood) made their devices by nano-imprinting them on a spin-coated PLGA substrate (see image). To enrich the cTBs, they grafted a biotinylated anti-EpCAM (which is a trophoblast surface marker) onto the imprinted nanoVelcro.

For the genetic characterization, they isolated at least three individual cTBs and pooled these together in a 0.5 mL polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tube for whole genome amplification (WGA). They then subjected the resulting amplified DNA to so-called array comparative genomic hybridization (array CGH) and short tandem repeat (STR) assays.

NanoVelcro microchips for prenatal testing, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

Magnetic Reconnection...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 12, 2017 at 5:34am

Northern lights as seen over Norway. Credit: Jan R. Olsen

Topics: Electromagnetism, Plasma Physics, Solar Flares

Jonathan Ng, a Princeton University graduate student at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL), has for the first time applied a fluid simulation to the space plasma process behind solar flares northern lights and space storms. The model could lead to improved forecasts of space weather that can shut down cell phone service and damage power grids, as well as to better understanding of the hot, charged plasma gas that fuels fusion reactions.

The new simulation captures the physics of magnetic reconnection, the breaking apart and snapping together of the magnetic field lines in plasma that occurs throughout the universe. The simulations approximate kinetic effects in a fluid code, which treats plasma as a flowing liquid, to create a more detailed picture of the reconnection process.

Previous simulations used fluid codes to produce simplified descriptions of reconnection that takes place in the vastness of space, where widely separated plasma particles rarely collide. However, this collisionless environment gives rise to kinetic effects on plasma behavior that fluid models cannot normally capture.

Team produces unique simulation of magnetic reconnectionMore information: Jonathan Ng et al, Simulations of anti-parallel reconnection using a nonlocal heat flux closure, Physics of Plasmas (2017). DOI: 10.1063/1.4993195

Minuscule to Immense...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 11, 2017 at 4:29am

Artwork by Ana Kova

Topics: Astrophysics, Big Bang, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics

In particle physics, scientists study the properties of the smallest bits of matter and how they interact. Another branch of physics—astrophysics—creates and tests theories about what’s happening across our vast universe.

While particle physics and astrophysics appear to focus on opposite ends of a spectrum, scientists in the two fields actually depend on one another. Several current lines of inquiry link the very large to the very small.

The seeds of cosmic structure

For one, particle physicists and astrophysicists both ask questions about the growth of the early universe.

In her office at Stanford University, Eva Silverstein explains her work parsing the mathematical details of the fastest period of that growth, called cosmic inflation.

“To me, the subject is particularly interesting because you can understand the origin of structure in the universe,” says Silverstein, a professor of physics at Stanford and the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology. “This paradigm known as inflation accounts for the origin of structure in the most simple and beautiful way a physicist can imagine.”

Scientists think that after the Big Bang, the universe cooled, and particles began to combine into hydrogen atoms. This process released previously trapped photons—elementary particles of light.

The glow from that light, called the cosmic microwave background, lingers in the sky today. Scientists measure different characteristics of the cosmic microwave background to learn more about what happened in those first moments after the Big Bang.

According to scientists’ models, a pattern that first formed on the subatomic level eventually became the underpinning of the structure of the entire universe. Places that were dense with subatomic particles—or even just virtual fluctuations of subatomic particles—attracted more and more matter. As the universe grew, these areas of density became the locations where galaxies and galaxy clusters formed. The very small grew up to be the very large.

Scientists studying the cosmic microwave background hope to learn about more than just how the universe grew—it could also offer insight into dark matter, dark energy and the mass of the neutrino.

What can particles tell us about the cosmos?The minuscule and the immense can reveal quite a bit about each other.Amanda Solliday, Symmetry Magazine

Almost Cliché...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 8, 2017 at 5:39am

Satellite Image of Hurricane Irma from Space, Space.com

Topics: Climate Change, Economy, Green Tech

I saw "An Inconvenient Sequel" about a month ago. It's almost cliché to use the term "super storm," or in our case of so soon on the heels of Harvey in Texas with Irma in Florida, plural. I blogged about it. I ate popcorn. I conveniently compartmentalized its warnings until now. My apathy is we haven't changed one iota since Katrina or Rita. Cliché storms, starving polar bears, the Antarctic glacial sheet melting...we appear to be ready for football and the next chapter of the Kardashians. I am as concerned for family and friends in Florida as I was in Texas, bracing for the next cliché; before the end of hurricane season and the beginning of the winter ahead. Whether bitter or mild, it will not be "normal."

As with my advocacy of green tech (and anything tech), I can see one clear benefit for fighting climate change: employment. It more than incarceration tends to guarantee stable societies. The coal jobs that used to sacrifice human life and limb as well as a few drilling jobs for the most part are now done by robots. Europe and other countries are not letting "grass grow under their feet" technologically speaking. Chancellor Angela Merkel seems determined for Germany to occupy that well-deserved space as (now) leader of the free world will indeed be a woman...just not an American.

I follow many blogs, Stone Kettle Station being a gem. I almost titled this post with a cliché/expression Jim Wright used in this posting: "Creationists don't build starships." Neither will we, at this point in our technologically lazy history. I say lazy in the sense one does not fabricate a "science" out of whole cloth when the results of observation and experiment reported by the actual subject makes you uneasy. Advocating for it to be taught next to actual science K-12 is galling. It propels us from Democracy to Idiocracy, no suspended animation required.

We're already on a spaceship called Earth without the need to create fantastic engine drives or exotic technologies. It's power source is a fusion reactor at the center of our solar system, it likely forming some distance from here in a star cluster (and a twin sister), along with the precious metals we esteem so highly. Our ship travels space in 365.25 day increments as the system travels the Milky Way as the Milky Way traverses the existing stars, many we have not observed and only discover as we meander the Cosmos. In this sense, we're all astronauts. As such, we're on a ship with a volume, mass and density. It can only give limited supplies of fuel, food and resources. Some of us hoard resources and abuse ship supplies. To compartmentalize those resources, we demarcate ourselves as rich, poor, black, white, makers, takers, winners, losers, deserving, not deserving; human...NOT human. Eventually vessels give way to the wear-tear of Entropy. As one of the lessons of the Titanic attests, even the strongest of bows will break on blunt and obvious icebergs. Captain Ahab is cultural metaphor, known without reading Melville's long novel, a byword and proverb of obsession leading to destruction by relentless natural forces, the leviathan a phallic symbol.

To quote President Bush verbatim: "we're addicted to oil." Our world economy became global on the gold of cotton picked by slaves. Now we're beholden to the value of the dollar and OPEC futures. We would have to halt production full-stop and leave current fossil fuels in the ground, according to The Guardian: our gasoline, Vaseline, plastics, mobile phones, automotive and apparel industries aren't about to let that happen. Controlling the media to the point that an Australian billionaire and a Saudi Prince dictate the thoughts of ditto heads on a media conglomerate 21 years old such that denialism has an obvious profit motive. "Good to the last drop" was a Maxwell House tag line, and may well be our epitaph.

The passengers of the Arbella who left England in 1630 with their new charter had a great vision. They were to be an example for the rest of the world in rightful living. Future governor JOHN WINTHROP stated their purpose quite clearly: "We shall be as a city upon a hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." Source: US History

That famous line has been quoted and paraphrased by President Reagan and recently former FBI Director James Comey. Rather than that puritan and idealistic view of our percentage of humanity and rose-colored view of history, we currently behave metaphorically like the survivors of a shipwreck... on a dung heap.

Project 2061...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 7, 2017 at 4:19am

TEACHERS INVOLVED IN THE TESTING OF THE NEW CURRICULUM SAID THAT ITS USE OF MODELS PROVIDED STUDENTS WITH TANGIBLE EXAMPLES OF MICROSCOPIC SCIENTIFIC PROCESSES. | JO ELLEN ROSEMAN/AAAS

Topics: Diversity, Education, STEM, Women in Science

I don't plan on being here, seeing I'd be 99. I wish them the best of luck.

As summer draws to a close, participating middle school students will begin tackling chemistry concepts to prepare them for the rigor of high school biology courses.

Students will engage with scientific ideas and practices through hands-on activities and learn to write clear and concise explanations of real-world phenomena as part of a novel curriculum that the National Science Teachers Association Press is slated to publish in mid-September. The collection of 19 lesson plans, titled Toward High School Biology, will be available for purchase and use by teachers in the United States and abroad.

The emphasis the unit places on writing is particularly appealing to Leah Donovan, a science teacher at Oakland Mills Middle School in Columbia, Md., who participated in early tests of the curriculum and has been using the lesson plans in her classroom ever since.

Donovan said her students’ writing skills have improved as a result of the curriculum’s emphasis on teaching them to explain scientific concepts. Her favorite example of how such skills are built relates to the chemical makeup of the Statue of Liberty.

Students study images of the Statue of Liberty, paying particular attention to the 31 tons of copper sheeting that covers its surface and taking note that it is green instead of brown. They are told that, after years of exposure to the air’s oxygen and carbon dioxide, a layer of green copper carbonate has formed on the statue. Students then explain how the chemical reaction responsible for the statue’s green hue takes place.

Project 2061 Curriculum Takes Holistic Approach to Middle School Science, Stephen Waldron, American Association for the Advancement of Science

Quantum Light on a Chip...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 6, 2017 at 5:29am

A laser (green) excites the quantum dot (red) in this diagram of the chip. The ring, which is tuned via applying voltage to the yellow contacts, manipulates the characteristics of individual photons (ellipsoids).

Topics: Laser, Nanotechnology, Photonics, Quantum Dots, Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics

Ideally, optical circuits would generate and shuttle light so well that researchers could use them to transmit encoded information, sense chemical species, and perform quantum computations. But because the components for each circuit—light sources, mirrors, splitters, filters, and waveguides—occupy several feet of table space, they cannot manipulate light down to the nanoscale. In an effort to downsize components and produce practical quantum photonic devices, researchers have been tinkering with nonlinear materials, atomic defects, and traditional semiconductors at the nanoscale.

Now Ali Elshaari at KTH Stockholm and his colleagues have taken a major stride by embedding circuit components on a CMOS-compatible chip that takes up a millionth the area of a tabletop apparatus. The key innovation was implementing precise control over quantum dot light sources, which emit photons in specific quantum states, including entangled ones, when excited by lasers. Scientists had struggled to control the dots’ emission and integrate the dots with waveguides for on-chip applications. Elshaari’s team devised a special geometry that optimized the alignment of the dots’ light emission with the fundamental waveguide mode, which resulted in high coupling efficiencies. To control the emission, an electrically tunable device acted as a spectral filter that could fine-tune the photon characteristics.

Manipulating quantum light on a chip, Katyayani Seal, Physics Today

Nanoscale Quantum Memory...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 5, 2017 at 6:10am

Electron microscope image of the optical cavity used to make a quantum memory. Each segment in the cavity has a vertical dimension of about 690 nm (Courtesy: Tian Zhong et al / Science)

Topics: Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A new type of optical quantum memory that could be integrated with other components on a chip has been unveiled by physicists in the US. The device overcomes an important challenge facing researchers trying to make quantum computers based on light – how to efficiently capture a photon within a sub-micron-sized structure.

From sending messages that could never be bugged to linking together quantum computers in a "quantum Internet", the ability to exchange quantum information may be vital to the future of technology. This will not be possible, however, without quantum memories to store quantum states and release them when needed.

In the Internet of today, information is sent between computers through a distributed series of nodes called routers. "Packets [of information] are maybe stored for some time and then they are sent," says Andrei Faraon of the California Institute of Technology, "There is some control over the timing of the packet." An optical network that uses photons to carry quantum information would require analogous nodes to store not strings of ones and zeroes (bits) but the full quantum states of individual photons (quantum bits or qubits).

There are currently several different quantum memories under development – some storing qubits as collective excitations in ensembles of atoms, others using solid-state crystals. Among the second group, crystals doped with ions of rare-earth metals have proved successful because rare-earth ions have sharp, stable electronic transitions that can couple to photons and preserve their quantum states. However, absorbing a photon generally requires millimetre- to centimetre-thicknesses of material, making quantum memories rather large.

Optical quantum memory shrinks to the nanoscale, Tim Wogan, Physics World

Hacking Rosie...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 31, 2017 at 6:30am

Lucas Apa, senior security consultant at cybersecurity company IOActive, handles robots by UBTech and SoftBank Robotics during a demonstration in Singapore August 21, 2017. Picture taken August 21, 2017. Jeremy Wagstaff

Topics: Commentary, Computer Science, Consumer Electronics, Robotics

My fond childhood memories of "The Jetsons" didn't include the possibility she could have been hacked or weaponized, but such is the world we share with sociopaths. I assume this might be a plot for the proposed live action reboot if it survives its pilot episode (it might be intriguing, but I don't expect Astro to do anything but bark, unlike his pre-Scooby-Doo dialogue). As robots become ubiquitous in our lives, along with the Internet of Things, this becomes a more likely possibility.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.

The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cybersecurity firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.

While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers’ lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.

“Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponized to cause harm,” Apa said in an interview.

“These robots don’t use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it’s too late.”

Labor Day Weekend in the US. It's also celebration my group got in our first Matlab program with no errors. Resuming blogging on Tuesday.

Robot makers slow to address cyber risk: researchers, Jeremy Wagstaff, Reuters Science

Flexible Crystal...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 30, 2017 at 4:59am

Credit: University of Queensland

Topics: Consumer Electronics, Materials Science, Solid State Physics, Quasicrystal

Queensland researchers have shown that single crystals, typically thought of as brittle and inelastic, are flexible enough to be bent repeatedly and even tied in a knot.

Researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and The University of Queensland (UQ) determined and measured the structural mechanism behind the elasticity of the crystals down to the atomic level.

Their work, published in Nature Chemistry, opens the door for the use of flexible crystals in applications in industry and technology.

The research was led by ARC Future Fellows Associate Professor Jack Clegg in UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences and Associate Professor John McMurtrie in QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty.

Associate Professor McMurtrie said the results challenged conventional thinking about crystalline structures.

"Crystals are something we work with a lot – they're typically grown in small blocks, are hard and brittle, and when struck or bent they crack or shatter," he said.

"While it has previously been observed that some crystals could bend, this is the first study to examine the process in detail.

"We found that the crystals exhibit traditional characteristics of not only hard matter, but soft matter like nylon."

Bendable crystals tie current thinking in knots, Phys.org

Diabolo...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 29, 2017 at 6:16am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Geometry, Mathematics, Optical Physics

A ring-shaped optical cavity has degenerate resonant modes, because clockwise and anticlockwise waves resonate at the same frequencies. The degeneracy can be lifted, and the frequencies split, by a perturbation such as a physical rotation or the presence of a molecule or nanoparticle. Typically, the frequency splitting is proportional to the perturbation’s magnitude, as illustrated in the top panel of the figure for a hypothetical complex-valued perturbation ε (that is, one that can affect both the light’s frequency and its phase). Because the plot’s shape resembles a yo-yo-like toy called a diabolo, the degeneracy has been dubbed a diabolic point. The mode splitting around a diabolic point is the basis for optical gyroscopes, and it’s been explored for other sensing applications.

There’s another type of degeneracy, called an exceptional point, where not only do resonant frequencies coincide but their resonant modes do too. In the case of the ring resonator, inserting reflectors to scatter light from the anticlockwise mode into the clockwise mode (but not vice versa) creates an exceptional point with a single resonant mode, the clockwise-traveling wave. Perturbing the system splits that mode into two resonances, each with a small admixture of the anticlockwise wave, and the frequency splitting scales with the square root of the perturbation magnitude, as shown in the bottom panel.

Exceptional points make for exceptional sensorsAt just the right locations in parameter space, resonant frequencies are ultrasensitive to tiny changes.Johanna L. Miller, Physics Today

Phase II Transitions...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 25, 2017 at 5:36am

Image Source: An article on LinkedIn by Linda Morales

Topics: Commentary, Education, Nanotechnology, STEM

In the post Transitions, I alluded to I might not be posting as regularly due to the rigors of graduate school. Well that rigor came last week and this week. I'm getting my footing on homework, collaboration and time management. The faculty, staff and student body here are the picture of diversity. I've literally met people from around the globe and not once have I repeated a country on our introductions. Ghana...Korea...Iran...Saudi Arabia...Sudan...Sweden...et al and each when I said I grew up in Winston-Salem (30 minutes west on I-40) and I'm an alumni of the university, they have without fail stated: "you came home."

I re-acclimated myself to the new F.D. Bluford Library. It's much larger with three floors, the top being the quietest place to study in. The librarians said I'd be there a lot, reading the papers my professors published in journals, of which they have a lot of from American, Indian, Chinese journals as well as from professional technical societies if memory serves. The old Bluford was renamed in honor of my Chancellor Edward Fort as a research and grant center. He's still around, and teaching as well as Dr. Casterlow (my karate and calculus instructor - retired) and Dr. Sandin, who's taught at A&T since 1968. He taught Dr. Ron McNair his first physics class, as he had taught mine. After 50 years of honorable and distinguished service, he'll retire next year.

One of the things I got over quickly was being an older graduate student. I saw some during graduate orientation that at least looked distinctly older than me. No one has made me feel uncomfortable, and the chair of the Nanoengineering Department said I wasn't his oldest student (I asked). He graduated a PhD last year at the ripe young age of 63. He's working as a director in industry. There's hope.

I've joined the Nano Energy group as my research area of concentration. I interviewed the principle investigators in that and the nano-wire/photonics group before I made my decision, both areas tempting and equally interesting. I felt energy was a good fit for my industry experience, science and social interests and my inclinations to do something that makes the world a better place.

I also share Dr. Cho's ambition of getting more African Americans into batteries and by extension STEM fields: the New York Times published an article stating even with Affirmative Action, African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos lag behind all other groups since I was an undergrad. I recall 1980 was supposedly the largest number of African American males attending colleges and universities, noted again by the New York Times in a 2002 related article, observing more sadly are inmates. I speculate the impacts of globalization, adolescent pregnancies and inadequate educational resources (see NYT article, second link) keeps societal stratification darkly and remarkably intact.

The JSNN (Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering) has a "nano-bus" they use to do K-12 outreach. It's a teaching requirement for PhD students (that can also be fulfilled by grading papers or teaching a class or lab), so I volunteered. I was respectfully declined as this is my first semester, and the graduate coordinator wants us to focus on setting a good foundation to be successful. After my fire hose days, I can see the importance. When it's appropriate (i.e., I've successfully managed time and the fire hose), and for reasons I hope I've made you understand, I'll be getting on that bus.

E-Fields, Nuclear Spin, Qubits, Silicon...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 22, 2017 at 5:19am

Photograph of a sapphire wafer that is patterned with the photonic bandgap resonators used in this work. It shows two full devices and parts of four others. Before using them in experiments they are cut out of the array and wired up. The devices themselves are about 1 cm long. The serpentine structures are microwave Bragg mirrors and the straight lines of varying width at the center of each device are the microwave cavities. Courtesy: A Sigillito

Topics: Electromagnetism, Solid State Physics, Quantum Dots, Quantum Mechanics

Researchers at Princeton University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have succeeded in controlling nuclear spins in silicon by purely electrical means. Until now, electronic or nuclear spins could only be manipulated through radio-frequency magnetic fields. The feat could help in the development of quantum processors based on nuclear spin qubits.

Classical computers store and process information as "bits" that can have one of two logic states ("0" or "1"), but quantum computers work on the principle that a quantum particle (such as an electron or atomic nucleus) can be in two states at the same time – "spin up" or "spin down". These two spin states represent a logical "1") or a "0", so N such particles –or quantum bits (qubits) – could be combined or "entangled" to represent 2N values simultaneously. This would lead to the parallel processing of information on a massive scale not possible with conventional computers.

In practice, it is difficult to make even the simplest quantum computer, however, because these quantum states are fragile and are easily destroyed. They are also difficult to control. For a qubit to work, it should thus be well isolated from its environment to preserve its quantum properties, and prevent "decoherence". At the same time it should be robust enough so that its state can be read out and manipulated. The intrinsic magnetic moment of an atomic core, or nuclear spin, is a good qubit candidate in this respect because it fulfills all of these criteria.

There is a problem, however, in that the magnetic moment of a nuclear spin is 10 billion times smaller than the moment of one bit of a modern hard drive, and it is almost impossible to detect, let alone manipulate, such a tiny signal.

Electric fields control nuclear spin qubits in silicon, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

Solar Eclipse 2017...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 21, 2017 at 5:30am

Image Source: NASA.gov

Topics: Eclipse, NASA, Space, Space Exploration

The good news: The eclipse glasses I ordered from Amazon are on the approved NASA list (see Friday's post).

The bad news: They're not here yet. Luckily, I'm adept at returning their merchandise when they've flubbed the ball, and unless the US Postal Service comes through with a Lynn Swann diving save, I'm likely going to be viewing it from the links I planned below. Like I said, I'd rather have what's left of my eyesight the remainder of my life. Another (partial) eclipse if I'm so inclined is a plane ticket away.

Eclipse Live Stream
NASA TV’s - Eclipse Across America: Through the Eyes of NASA

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 (today), a total eclipse will cross the entire United States, coast-to-coast, for the first time since 1918. If you can’t make it to the path of totality you can still safely view a partial eclipse and you can still enjoy totality through the eyes of NASA Television and NASA webcasts.

Viewers around the world will be provided a wealth of images captured before, during, and after the eclipse by 11 spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station – each offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.

NASA Television will air a four-hour show, Eclipse Across America: Through the Eyes of NASA, with unprecedented live video of the celestial event, along with coverage of activities in parks, libraries, stadiums, festivals and museums across the nation, and on social media.

Eclipse Caveats...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 18, 2017 at 6:30am

Image Source: See link [2] below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Eclipse, Moon, NASA

Usually I do something about current events, but I will admit to you some exhaustion since Monday's Appomattox post and Tuesday's meltdown. The covers of the New Yorker (via The Hill), Time magazine and The Economist are apropos, on point and quite sad. It's not like we didn't see this coming. Americans sadly have a long inglorious history of denying reality.

I'm frankly retreating into science, hoping the rumors the nine rallies from his knuckle-dragging Troglodytes have all been canceled this weekend "due to terrorist fears." After this blubbering fool went accidentally viral, they really need a reset on the English language (and history) to look up the definition of "supremacy."

I've ordered my own glasses from Amazon, who gave a warning some of their third party suppliers didn't give documentation guaranteeing safety standards. [1] Ahem: Luckily, the glasses I ordered from Amazon are on the approved NASA list. [2] I'm posting a live stream tracker provided by NASA Monday for safer viewing, and if you happen to not be on the viewing path where you are.

Please look at the links below and govern yourselves accordingly and safely. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event if you're lucky to be in the path. Don't make it your last.

1. Amazon Is Warning People Not To Use Some Solar Eclipse Glasses That Were Sold On The Site, Leticia Miranda, consumer affairs reporter BuzzFeed News

2. Reputable Vendors of Solar Filters & Viewers, Solar Eclipse 2017, NASA

The Right to Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 17, 2017 at 4:26am

Image Source: European Society of International Law, Vol 4, Issue 1 Editorial board: Anne van Aaken (editor-in-chief), Jutta Brunnée, Başak Çali, Jan Klabbers

Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Science, Research

The right of all people to benefit from scientific progress is spurring new research by science and human rights practitioners and informing organizations how to secure those benefits, according to presenters at a AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition Meeting, held July 27-28 in Washington.

The right to science is enshrined not only in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, but also in Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, said Jessica Wyndham, interim director of the AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law program and a coordinator of the Science and Human Rights Coalition.

The international provision requires governments to ensure the right of everyone “to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, to conserve, develop and diffuse science, to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and to recognize the benefits of international contacts and cooperation in science,” Wyndham said. A total of 165 countries are party to the treaty, which the United States has signed but not ratified.

The right to science is the subject of a new report, “Giving Meaning to the Right to Science: A Global and Multidisciplinary Approach,” developed by AAAS’ Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program and Science and Human Rights Coalition and released in conjunction with the meeting. The report can provide “a foundation for a shared understanding of the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications,” said Margaret Weigers Vitullo, director of academic and professional affairs at the American Sociological Association.

Human Rights Coalition Deepens Understanding of the Right to Science, Andrea Korte, AAAS

3D Living Tissue...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 16, 2017 at 6:15am

Image of the 3-D droplet bioprinter, developed by the Bayley Research Group at Oxford, producing mm-sized tissues Credit: Sam Olof/ Alexander Graham

Topics: 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Biology

Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a new method to 3D-print laboratory- grown cells to form living structures.

The approach could revolutionize regenerative medicine, enabling the production of complex tissues and cartilage that would potentially support, repair or augment diseased and damaged areas of the body.

In research published in the journal Scientific Reports, an interdisciplinary team from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford and the Centre for Molecular Medicine at Bristol, demonstrated how a range of human and animal cells can be printed into high-resolution tissue constructs.

A confocal micrograph of an artificial tissue containing 2 populations human embryonic kidney cells (HEK-293T) printed in the form of an arborized structure within a cube Credit: Sam Olof / Alexander Graham

Interest in 3D printing living tissues has grown in recent years, but, developing an effective way to use the technology has been difficult, particularly since accurately controlling the position of cells in 3D is hard to do. They often move within printed structures and the soft scaffolding printed to support the cells can collapse on itself. As a result, it remains a challenge to print high-resolution living tissues.

A new method for the 3-D printing of living tissues, Alexander D. Graham et al. High-Resolution Patterned Cellular Constructs by Droplet-Based 3D Printing, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-06358-x, Phys.org

Sooner Than Expected...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 15, 2017 at 6:16am

Study: More than 6 million could die early from air pollution every year, Azadeh Ansari, CNN

Topics: Climate Change, Economy, Environment

Scientific American does give the report with some caveats, but as my title alludes, the Chinese - unlike the United States - is serious about addressing this national health issue. They will stumble, learn and eventually surpass us in a technical market we may find ourselves scrambling to catch up with them in. From the image above, I do understand Beijing's motivations.

BEIJING—As the United States reverses its climate policies, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter is in the midst of setting up a national carbon-trading system.

Chinese officials are preparing to launch an emissions market later this year that will cover roughly a quarter of the country's industrial CO2. Officials and nonprofit groups from the European Union, Australia and California have been advising the Chinese on their program design.

Expectations are tempered: Details of China's national system are still murky, but enough information has emerged that observers are skeptical it will be immediately comparable to existing programs, due to design features as well as the haste with which China is rolling it out.

"Initially, it's not going to be more robust than, say, California or RGGI or even some of the pilots," said Jeremy Schreifels, a visiting fellow at Resources for the Future who has been observing the market's evolution. He was referring to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative covering nine Northeastern states.

China Is Preparing to Launch the World’s Biggest Carbon Market, Debra Kahn, Scientific American