Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Photoresist-Free...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 1, 2017 at 7:43am

A true-colour image containing around 8 × 10⁵ RGB subpixels directly photopatterned using Cs₂N₃– capped quantum dots. Scale bar, 5 mm. Courtesy: D Talapin

Topics: Applied Physics, Nanotechnology, Optical Physics, Semiconductor Technology, Quantum Dots, Quantum Mechanics

Photolithography is an important manufacturing process widely used in the semiconductor industry that employs photoresists (usually made from polymers) whose solubility change when illuminated with ultraviolet light. Although it is precise and can generate patterns with nanoscale resolution, it is limited in that it cannot easily pattern nanomaterials such as quantum dots (which are increasingly being used in flat-panel displays, for example). A new photoresist-free technique, developed by researchers at the University of Chicago and the Argonne National Laboratory, both in Illinois in the US, could help overcome this problem.

“Our new technique, dubbed DOLFIN (for Direct Optical Lithography of Functional Inorganic Nanomaterials) can be used to optically pattern a variety of inorganic materials, including metals, semiconductors, catalysts and magnetic materials without using photoresists,” explains team leader Dmitri Talapin. “No residual polymer-based impurities are present in the patterned layers, which means that they have good electronic and optical properties. Indeed, their conductivity, carrier mobility, dielectric and luminescence properties are on a par with those of state-of-the-art solution-processed materials.”

DOLFIN involves first preparing patternable materials in the form of nanoparticles with the desired size and shape. Next, the surface of these nanoparticles is decorated with special molecules designed to decompose when they are illuminated with UV light.

Optical lithography goes photoresist-free, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

Aiming at Einstein...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 31, 2017 at 6:00am

Images Source: Link below

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Einstein, General Relativity, Diversity in Science, Women in Science

If you cast an observational lasso into the center of the Milky Way galaxy and pull it closed, you will find a dense, dark lump: a mass totaling some four million suns, crammed into a space no wider than twice Pluto’s orbit in our solar system.

In recent years, astronomers have come to agree that inside this region is a supermassive black hole, and that similar black holes lurk at the cores of nearly all other galaxies as well. And for those revelations, they give a lot of credit to Andrea Ghez.

Since 1995, Ghez, an astrophysicist at the University of California, Los Angeles, has used the W.M. Keck telescope on Mauna Kea in Hawaii to see fine details at the center of the galaxy. The observations that Ghez has made of stars racing around the Milky Way’s core (alongside those of rival Reinhard Genzel, an astrophysicist at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany) have proven to most astronomers that the central object can be nothing but a black hole. But to be able to see these fine details, Ghez had to become a pioneering user of adaptive optics, a technology that measures distortions in the atmosphere and then adjusts the telescope in real time to cancel out those fluctuations. The technique produces images that look as if they were taken under the calmest possible skies.

In Ghez’s mind, new discoveries require that scientists take risks. “If you have a new idea, the thing you are going to encounter first and foremost is ‘no, you can’t do it,’” she said. “I can’t tell you how many times in the course of this project I have been told ‘this won’t work.’” Her first proposal to image the galactic center was turned down; two decades later, Ghez, now 52, has received a MacArthur Fellowship, among other awards, and was the first woman to receive a Crafoord Prize from the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.

Black-Hole Hunter Takes Aim at Einstein, Joshua Sokol, Quanta Magazine

Workplace Bias...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 28, 2017 at 6:23am

The Women in Astronomy IV conference was held in Austin, Texas, following the American Astronomical Society meeting in June. Credit: J. Hellerman, NRAO/AUI/NSF

Topics: Astronomy, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Women in Science

Unfortunately, even in STEM fields you primarily run into two types of individuals: assholes and servants.

The assholes are driven and cutthroat. They'll promote in industry and likely discover a few things of wide commercial use. They also don't lend much in light of human interactions as to its efficacy (meeting a few, you'd rather NOT). A few of them being selfish and self-serving become Ayn Rand wealthy (their patron saint), feeling their callousness and viciousness rewarded.

The servants title is not meant as a pejorative: they are both "in the world and of the world" and look at ways for their love of STEM to be spread beyond themselves to improve it - a kind of tech evangelism. Many are active in outside organizations* that share that passion. Unlike the former, you won't feel soiled after meeting us, and you might want to contact us again.

I'd seen this guy (before his self-destructed demise) in specials on the Science Channel:

One of the biggest names in astronomy resigned his professorship at the University of California at Berkeley on Wednesday over the fallout from a damning investigation into his conduct with female students. The news demonstrates that not even star scholars enjoy impunity when it comes to sexual harassment, but in the end it was Geoff Marcy’s fellow scientists -- not the Berkeley administration -- who forced him out. Source: Inside Higher Education

What I'm about to describe I call the "Jedi mind trick": the best way to keep a particular group out of a STEM field and keep it predominately privileged is to make conditions uncomfortable for others the majority consider "outside." One direct way is propositioning for a date or physical contact without consent. A few snide remarks (e.g. under the breath into their collar - "black lives matter" when the conversation was on a work-related technical problem - they shrink when challenged with simply "what did you mean by that?"); quiet when someone walks in a room (for no reason), an overly aggressive challenge to the results of an experiment or research proposal can make anyone doubt their ability to complete the dream of a PhD.

It is ironic that feelings that I've experienced now has data behind it, and workplace bias extends to an area society has deemed too "Spock-like" to have systemic issues. Over time, you develop coping mechanisms and support systems* outside of your work that makes it more endurable. One of the things you realize quickly as a person of color is the world is full of assholes. Love what you do, take DEEP breaths and power through the bullshit. Most importantly, above all: DON'T QUIT. That's what they want you to do.

“Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. Don't let the bastards grind you down.” Margaret Atwood, "The Handmaid's Tale."

Further inaction on bias can only be seen clearly under one glaring banner: cowardice.

*****

Christina Richey is not a crier. But she went home and sobbed when she saw the results of an online survey she had co-organized on workplace harassment. For the astrophysicist and past chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Committee on the Status of Women in Astronomy, the data put numbers on the stories she’d been hearing for years. And the numbers revealed that harassment in her field was even more prevalent than she had realized.

“I’d heard about issues, mostly gender based, and also race based,” says Richey. But, she adds, the members and leaders of the astronomy and planetary science community would often brush off the stories as anecdotal. That led her and colleagues to run an online survey in early 2015—months before the Geoffrey Marcy harassment scandal broke. Their results appear in the July issue of the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.

In their survey, the researchers posed 39 questions about verbal and physical harassment, including sexual harassment and comments about ability, masculinity, femininity, race, and religion. Volunteers reported their observations and experiences from the preceding five years. A total of 474 people took part in the survey. The researchers analyzed the responses by gender, race, and career stage.

A whopping 88% of respondents reported hearing negative language from peers, and about 52% had heard such language from their supervisors. Some 39% reported experiencing verbal harassment, and 9% said they had been physically harassed. “It doesn’t have to be directed at you,” Richey says. “Just hearing comments can be isolating.”

White women and women of color experienced verbal harassment related to gender nearly equally (43% and 44%, respectively). In addition, 35% of women of color experienced verbal harassment related to their race. The report says women of color are at “double jeopardy” for harassment.

Both white women and women of color reported higher frequencies (about 13% and 18%, respectively) than did men of skipping classes, meetings, fieldwork, or other professional events because of feeling unsafe. Men of color (6%) skipped such events for that reason more often than did white men (1%).

Widespread harassment reported in astronomer survey, Toni Felder, Physics Today

HTS...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 27, 2017 at 9:26am

Image Source: Aventurine

Topics: Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science, Superconductors

The perfect performance of superconductors could revolutionize everything from grid-scale power infrastructure to consumer electronics, if only they could be coerced into operating above frigid temperatures. Even so-called high-temperature superconductors (HTS) must be chilled to hundreds of degrees Fahrenheit below zero.

Now, scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory and Yale University have discovered new, surprising behavior by electrons in a HTS material. The results, published July 27 in the journal Nature, describe the symmetry-breaking flow of electrons through copper-oxide (cuprate) superconductors. The behavior may be linked to the ever-elusive mechanism behind HTS.

"Our discovery challenges a cornerstone of condensed matter physics," said lead author and Brookhaven Lab physicist Jie Wu. "These electrons seem to spontaneously 'choose' their own paths through the material—a phenomenon in direct opposition to expectations."

Strange electrons break the crystal symmetry of high-temperature superconductors, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Phys.org

Snapped...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 26, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: NYT

Topics: Climate Change, Environment, Geophysics, Weather

Note: The climate that has changed is that of Antarctica, at least in the physical sense.

"Antarctica Animals -South Polar. Antarctic animals - The most abundant and best known animals from the southern continent. Penguins, whales seals, albatrosses, other seabirds and a range of invertebrates you may have not heard of such as krill which form the basis of the Antarctic food web." Source: Cool Antarctica.

As in the Arctic, the loss of essentially land mass cannot be good for hunting and spawning patterns, thus the normal continuation of species that would inevitably affect the food chain, that we are inexorably a part of. The nominal excuse of using the warmed climate as "good sea lanes" for shipping fossil fuels doesn't hold water here, as far as I know. A Native American proverb (attributed to many Nations) comes to mind:

"Canada, the most affluent of countries, operates on a depletion economy which leaves destruction in its wake. Your people are driven by a terrible sense of deficiency. When the last tree is cut, the last fish is caught, and the last river is polluted; when to breathe the air is sickening, you will realize, too late, that wealth is not in bank accounts and that you can’t eat money."

Alanis Obomsawin (born 31 August 1932) is a Canadian filmmaker of Abenaki descent born in New Hampshire, and raised primarily in Quebec; she has produced and directed many National Film Board of Canada documentaries on First Nations culture and history. Source: Wikiquote

A chunk of floating ice that weighs more than a trillion metric tons broke away from the Antarctic Peninsula, producing one of the largest icebergs ever recorded and providing a glimpse of how the Antarctic ice sheet might ultimately start to fall apart.

A crack more than 120 miles long had developed over several years in a floating ice shelf called Larsen C, and scientists who have been monitoring it confirmed on Wednesday that the huge iceberg had finally broken free.

There is no scientific consensus over whether global warming is to blame. But the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula has been fundamentally changed, according to Project Midas, a research team from Swansea University and Aberystwyth University in Britain that had been monitoring the rift since 2014.

“The remaining shelf will be at its smallest ever known size,” said Adrian Luckman, a lead researcher for Project Midas. “This is a big change. Maps will need to be redrawn.”

An Iceberg the Size of Delaware Just Broke Away From Antarctica, Jugal K. Patel and Justin Gillis, New York Times

Afterbirth...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 25, 2017 at 7:39am

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft captured this view of a sunspot rotating into view between July 5 and 11, 2017. (Source: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/SDO/Joy Ng, producer)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Magnetism

I figure after yesterday's "Debbie downer," something a little more uplifting and quite literally "sunny" was in order.

I guess I just can’t get enough of time-lapse animations.

Today it’s the one above, showing a sunspot group seeming to zip by as the Sun rotates on its axis. It’s actually from earlier in July, and since then, the active region on the Sun that this sunspot group is associated with has produced an explosive flare and massive of ejection of solar material out into space.

The active region — an area of intense magnetic field — rotated into view and grew quickly in this video captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory between July 5-11, 2017. The associated sunspot group was the first to appear after the Sun had gone completely spotless for two days.

The rotation of the Sun on its axis — which is obvious from the two animations above — can cause lines of magnetic force beneath the surface to become twisted over time. And that’s intimately connected to the sunspots as well as the spectacular activity that can occur in those regions.

Here’s a terrific explanation from Windows to the Universe, produced by the National Earth Science Teachers Association:

The best way to think about the very complicated process of sunspot formation is to think of magnetic “ropes” breaking through the visible surface (photosphere) of the Sun. Where the rope comes up from the solar surface is one sunspot and where the rope plunges into the photosphere is another sunspot.

Meanwhile, the Sun keeps rotating, and those ropes continue to get increasingly twisted, until… SNAAAAP!:

When the tangled fields reach a “breaking point”, like a rubber band that snaps when wound too tight, huge bursts of energy are released as the field lines reconnect. This can lead to solar flares and Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs).

Incredible video shows northern lights shining above Michigan’s Mackinac Bridge during the early morning hours. https://t.co/sroBjEAofA pic.twitter.com/9efeFd5K34
— ABC News (@ABC) July 18, 2017

The material in the coronal mass ejection was aimed toward Earth — where it triggered beautiful displays of the auroral borealis farther south than usual, including in northern Michigan, as seen in the beautiful animation above.

Watch as a lonely sunspot grows larger than our planet, turns toward Earth, and gets ready to blast hot stuff at usTom Yulsman, Discover Magazine

The Physics of Doomsday...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 24, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: Business Insider

Topics: Geophysics, Politics, Research, Science

I thought about delaying this one until Friday, but who wants to start the weekend with an image of the Grim Reaper (albeit an SNL skit)? It gets better through the week...

As of this posting, the current administration has yet to encounter a real world, geopolitical crisis (except the ones it creates on its own - I'll amend if that changes). "Wars and rumors of wars" is not simply biblical poetry and cliché, but a continuous existential threat that furrows brows and grays the manes of most normal, sane men or imaginative filmmakers. We can usually resolve our imagination-fueled angst in a few hours. Reality is not that forgiving. The Marshal Plan in Europe wasn't a microwave oven recipe we hit "start" on and walked away. The current world order - being openly defied by our current government - took seven decades to establish.

Wikipedia: Doomsday

Mother Nature is another matter. A government so dysfunctional that we're presently stressing over foreign election hacking here and abroad, that the crises involving what we cannot control - earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, tsunamis and our used-to-be usual, example-setting HUMANITARIAN response to them, typically the model of the world...before summing in all up in 140 characters of a "killer tweet."

Natural hazards threaten lives and livelihoods across the globe and can result in huge financial costs. Despite significant progress in understanding hazards, we are still feeling powerless and inadequate in the aftermath of destructive events, which can strike with little warning and often affect vulnerable communities. One of the core missions of the US Geological Survey (USGS) is to conduct research into a range of natural hazards so that the public and policymakers can be better prepared for these events.

The underlying physics of natural hazards, Physics World Multimedia

Banana Republic...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 21, 2017 at 7:30am

Image Source: Cagle Comics

Topics: Civics, Existentialism, Politics

Banana Republic, Cambridge Dictionary (noun): a small country, especially in South and Central America, that is poor, corrupt, and badly ruled

Also from Cambridge Dictionary, Junta (noun): a government, especially a military one, that has taken power in a country by force and not by election

Now by the purity of the definitions, the United States is not small by a long shot and takeovers by Juntas are usually bloody and violent. With the advent of cyberwarfare and hacking attacks, we may be living through the prescient original Star Trek episode "A Taste of Armageddon." However, at the abdication of leadership on the world stage, it makes us appear "small." Diplomacy-by-tweet and not studious discipline devoted to LEARN the job can be construed as badly ruled. The United States - with little analysis and observation is approaching a stratification between classes; wages have been pretty much stagnant since the 1970s such that there is a dangerous paradigm we're approaching as a nation that we won't be able to incarcerate ourselves out of (by that I mean our fellow citizens, specifically people of color that can't afford high-price lawyers). It is a recipe for modern Eugenics.

American influence is less hard power (military, nukes) than soft power (culture, influence). Retreating from the world stage leaves us lacking in the latter and backed in a corner where the former may be our only deadly lever. Another ominous recipe for species extinction, for which there is no reset button.

*****

This is something I originally said on Facebook with reference links I've added to explain the source of my feelings at the time of the post.

To Whom it May Concern:

I share my thoughts as a US Veteran (and I sincerely hope I'm wrong).

I'm sorry, I CAN'T:

1. As someone who possessed a Top Secret Special (now called Sensitive) Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) clearance as a Communications Officer for an Intelligence Squadron, I recognized the last election as an intelligence operation, as people like Malcolm Nance et al did.

2. Chaos in our body politics on both sides only helps the interests of Putin and other oligarchs, who gave up being communists a LONG time ago for the pure pursuit of money.

3. That being said, they expertly had Paul Manafort lobby and REMOVE all language from the GOP platform hostile to Russia and their invasion of the Ukraine.

4. Their bots/hackers have been active in France, England and soon Germany's democratic elections.

5. The Russian economy only has one product and industry - oil, and no other diversification. It is the major reason the fossil fuel industry and the oligarchs are so "friendly" with one another (e.g. Ex-Exxon CEO and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson receiving the Order of Friendship directly from Putin).

6. Returning to the chaos theme of point 2, it behooves Russia to have constant infighting within both major political parties such that they are essentially nonfunctional. Third party candidates like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein are merely used as related-to major political parties tangentially (right e.g.: Ross Perot with the Reform Party as "republican-lite") as spoilers to drain votes. If an independent like Bernie Sanders were to gain traction, bots/hackers would disseminate disinformation on HIM; American political tribalism and racism (Antisemitism) would take over.

Our republic is lost. (Postscript: Only if we want it to be.)

"The supreme art of war is to subdue the enemy without fighting. Know thy self, know thy enemy. Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win. If you know the enemy and know yourself you need not fear the results of a hundred battles."

Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Big to Small...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 20, 2017 at 9:37am

The cosmos can be considered as a collider for human to access the results of particle physics experiments at ultimate high energies. Credit: Department of Physics, HKUST

Topics: Cosmology, Particle Physics, Standard Model, Theoretical Physics

Our observable universe is the largest object that physicists study: It spans a diameter of almost 100 billion light years. The density correlations in our universe, for example, correlations between numbers of galaxies at different parts of the universe, indicate that our vast universe has originated from a stage of cosmic inflation.

On the other hand, elementary particles are the smallest object that physicists study. A particle physics Standard Model (SM) was established 50 years ago, describing all known particles and their interactions.

Are density distributions of the vast universe and the nature of smallest particles related? In a recent research, scientists from HKUST and Harvard University revealed the connection between those two aspects, and argued that our universe could be used as a particle physics "collider" to study the high energy particle physics. Their findings mark the first step of cosmological collider phenomenology and pave the way for future discovery of new physics unknown yet to mankind.

The research was published in the journal Physical Review Letters on June 29, 2017 and the preprint is available online.

"Ongoing observations of cosmological microwave background and large scale structures have achieved impressive precision, from which valuable information about primordial density perturbations can be extracted, " said Yi Wang, a co-author of the paper and an assistant professor at HKUST's department of physics. "A careful study of this SM background would be the prerequisite for using the cosmological collider to explore any new physics, and any observational signal that deviates from this background would then be a sign of physics beyond the SM."

Scientist reveal new connections between small particles and the vast universe, Xingang Chen et al, Standard Model Background of the Cosmological Collider, Physical Review Letters (2017). DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.118.261302 , On Arxiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/1610.06597, Phys.org

INFO...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 19, 2017 at 8:26am

This image shows the NIST logo made from glowing nanowire LEDs. While the color of the nanowires in the image looks blue, they are actually emitting in the ultraviolet with a wavelength of approximately 380 nm. The other two images, from a scanning electron microscope, show the overall structure of the nanowires.

Topics: Atomic Force Microscopy, LEDs, Nanotechnology, Optical Physics

One of the persistent challenges in 21st century metrology is the need to measure ever-more-detailed properties of ever-smaller things, from microchip features to subcomponents of biological cells. That’s why, four years ago, a team of NIST scientists patented (link is external) the design for a nanoscale probe system that can simultaneously measure the shape, electrical characteristics, and optical response of sample regions a few tens of nanometers (nm, billionths of a meter) wide. 100 nm is about one-thousandth the width of a human hair.

Now the researchers from NIST’s Physical Measurement Laboratory are closing in on a working prototype. The newest version of the device, which has a probe tip that functions as an ultra-tiny LED “spotlight,” holds great promise for identifying cancer-prone tissue, testing materials for improved solar cells, and providing a new way to put circuits on microchips, among other uses.

The Integrated Near-Field Optoelectronic (INFO) system has the general configuration of an atomic force microscope (AFM), in which a probe tip on the end of a tiny cantilever beam passes a few nanometers over the surface of a sample, recording exact details of its morphology. But the metal-plated INFO probe also serves as a transmitter that projects microwaves into the sample as well as a receiving antenna that detects the altered microwaves coming back out. The nature of that alteration reveals electrical and chemical properties of the material.

Sub-microscopic LEDs Shed New Light on Advanced Materials, Ben Stein, NIST

Colloidal Coulomb Transistor...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 18, 2017 at 8:00am

Thin films made of metal nanoparticles (grey spheres) are electrically contacted by gold electrodes. The current flowing through the films (in blue) is adjustable by the voltage of a local electrode located below the film. For the characterization, needle-shaped probes are applied to the electrodes, which provide the corresponding voltages and measure the current. Credit: Christian Klinke, University of Hamburg

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

Researchers at the University of Hamburg in Germany have succeeded in making the first Coulomb transistor from structured thin films of colloidal metal nanoparticles. Instead of having only two states, ON and OFF, as in classic transistors based on semiconductors, the new device has sinusoidal ON/OFF characteristics.

Modern-day transistors are based on semiconducting-type materials, usually silicon. In the quest for cheaper, less power-hungry microelectronics devices, such as those in laptops, tablets and smartphones, researchers are looking into alternatives to these materials.

A team led by Christian Klinke has now made transistors from metal nanoparticles. The small size of the particles means that they no longer show metallic characteristics under current flow but instead have an energy bandgap (akin to that in semiconductors) that arises from the Coulomb repulsion between electrons in the material. This effect is known as the Coulomb blockade, and it exists even at room temperature in the materials employed in the new devices (in this case cobalt-platinum nanoparticles).

Colloidal metal nanoparticles make Coulomb transistor, Belle Dumé, Nanotech Web

Torches and Pitchforks...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 14, 2017 at 4:30am

Image Source: Giphy.com

Topics: Existentialism, Humor, Politics

I'm 50% there after moving from New York to North Carolina, as I'm seeing more floor in the new place. Successfully registered Lowe's and Harris Teeter grocery store cards for discounts and gas points. I've humbly had to use GPS to relearn my way in my "old stomping grounds." I bought two Amazon Fire Sticks (ironically from Best Buy), and "jail broke" both to get local news and entertainment channels. It saves me $44.90 on a bundle from Spectrum/Time Warner that will likely double at the end of the year discount. I made an appointment with Dr. Zhang at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering for 11:00 am, at the very least to meet him and thank him for his assistance thus far. That will be my "formal" tour, since out of excitement and to show [to] myself I could FIND the place, I visited already on Tuesday.

Planning on posting today; next week Tuesday - Friday. I'll hopefully be back on schedule after a week of unpacking and the viewing of more floor in the new home.

I've spent a while looking at the news, aghast at how bad our dysfunctional republic is, how some of my fellow citizens are practicing cognitive dissonance on steroids:

The emails show music promoter Rob Goldstone telling the future US president's son that "the crown prosecutor of Russia" had offered "to provide the Trump campaign with some official documents and information that would incriminate Hillary and her dealings with Russia and would be very useful to your father". Goldstone adds: "This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government's support for Mr Trump." Trump Jr replies 17 minutes later and welcomes the offer. "If it's what you say, I love it, especially later in the summer."

The email chain makes clear that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government. Further, it also makes plain that not only Junior, but also Manafort and Kushner knew the campaign had done so because Junior was kind enough to forward the emails to them. He incriminated himself. He incriminated the other two. He made a lie out of practically everything that the Trump camp has said on the subject for over a year. He landed a clean shot below the waterline of his father's administration. Again, I thought of Nixon, standing behind a podium in the White House, while the tape from June 23, 1972 unspooled to an eager world, and then telling the assembled press corps, "See? It's just like I said. I'm not involved." It also was announced that Junior would appear with Sean Hannity on Tuesday night. I fully expected Junior to show up on the set dressed as an evil boyar from an Eisenstein film.

The government of the United States is a shambles. An incompetent administration headed by an unqualified buffoon is now descending into criminal comedy and maladroit backstabbing. It is an administration that not only self-destructs, but glories in the process. There seems to be no end to it, and no desire to end it by the people who actually have the power to do so. That, in itself, seems curious, and it probably should remind us all that Paul Ryan's Super PAC was hip-deep in the borscht itself. Ryan, who really is the person best situated to close the circus down, seems to be afflicted with one of his periodic bouts of invisibility, poor lad. [1]

**********

Marc Kasowitz, President Trump’s personal attorney on the Russia case, threatened a stranger in a string of profanity-laden emails Wednesday night.

The man, a retired public relations professional in the western United States who asked not to be identified, read ProPublica’s story this week on Kasowitz and sent the lawyer an email with the subject line: “Resign Now.’’

Kasowitz replied with series of angry messages sent between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern time. One read: “I’m on you now. You are f*cking with me now Let’s see who you are Watch your back , b---h.”

In another email, Kasowitz wrote: “Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of s--t. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.” And later: “I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.” [2]

What ELSE can be said? If Putin had put in a Democrat (and for grins, he likely could in the future) we would be looking at torches, pitchforks, civil war: champaign and vodka as the Kremlin toasts our descent into dystopia; his Cheshire Cat, cheese-eating grin as he proves we were always only a nudge and a few clicks away from anarchy.

Other than...

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone. Rod Serling

1. How Much More Absurdity Can You Handle? Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Magazine
2. Trump Lawyer Marc Kasowitz Threatens Stranger in Emails: ‘Watch Your Back , B---h’, Justin Elliott, ProPublica

The Death of Expertise...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 8, 2017 at 5:00am

Image Source: PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY ELIZABETH BROCKWAY/THE DAILY BEAST

Topics: Existentialism, Politics, Science, Research

"The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt." Bertrand Russell

I've had similar posts as well as off line conversations about this theme. The unexpected caveat from the "Information Superhighway" has been the rise of know-nothings that feel search engines are a part of human DNA; that become *experts* on any subject with a few inquiries and clicks. It has extended quite contemporaneously to members of the clergy: some work in pulpits without a license to preach, ordination or degree from a divinity school. They just look and sound good, thus *anointed*, not credentialed.

From the article excerpt:

These are dangerous times. Never have so many people had so much access to so much knowledge and yet have been so resistant to learning anything. In the United States and other developed nations, otherwise intelligent people denigrate intellectual achievement and reject the advice of experts. Not only do increasing numbers of lay people lack basic knowledge, they reject fundamental rules of evidence and refuse to learn how to make a logical argument. In doing so, they risk throwing away centuries of accumulated knowledge and undermining the practices and habits that allow us to develop new knowledge.

This is more than a natural skepticism toward experts. I fear we are witnessing the death of the ideal of expertise itself, a Google-fueled, Wikipedia-based, blog-sodden collapse of any division between professionals and laypeople, students and teachers, knowers and wonderers—in other words, between those of any achievement in an area and those with none at all.

I sincerely hope to not be a part of the "blog-sodden" or contributing to the morass. I used the term Information Superhighway - as the Internet was once publicly coined - deliberately, as the concern was there would be a divide between the "haves" (those who could afford $2,500 to plop down on a home desktop computer) and the 'have-nots," i.e. the urban poor demarcated by economics, ethnicity and cultural differences.

Enter the cellular telephone, first initially called a "brick" as it was heavy, clunky and analog as in Michael Douglas in "Wall Street." The conversion from analog to digital, the merger of phone and autonomous pager (obviously, the work of the devil); the miniaturization of transistors following Moore's Law increasing speeds and features to share cat, dog, owl and most recently cute baby elephants chasing birds on phones dubbed "smart", their owners another matter.

This has so far given us an interesting social makeup of a society that thoroughly depends on science and technology*, and disdains the people most equipped to bring about new systems and designs. The intellectual student is still a "nerd," noses are still shoved into lockers (or, students stuffed in them), bullying of them is still ignored; cheerleaders and jocks worshiped as the in-crowd cool gods from Mt. Olympus.

We tweet our versions of reality (45 is particularly deft at this), we join social media groups that conform to our already dug in notions. Google driver-less cars will likely lead to more distracted humans and stupid pet videos shared before they disembark.

The causalities of such an accidental dystopia are rationality, reality, science and ultimately what in an Orwellian era of "alternate facts" seems malleable and dangerously fungible: truth.

Social changes only in the past half century finally broke down old barriers of race, class, and sex not only between Americans in general but also between uneducated citizens and elite experts in particular. A wider circle of debate meant more knowledge but more social friction. Universal education, the greater empowerment of women and minorities, the growth of a middle class, and increased social mobility all threw a minority of experts and the majority of citizens into direct contact, after nearly two centuries in which they rarely had to interact with each other.

And yet the result has not been a greater respect for knowledge, but the growth of an irrational conviction among Americans that everyone is as smart as everyone else. This is the opposite of education, which should aim to make people, no matter how smart or accomplished they are, learners for the rest of their lives. Rather, we now live in a society where the acquisition of even a little learning is the endpoint, rather than the beginning, of education. And this is a dangerous thing.

* "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan

America's Cult of Ignorance (excerpt), by Tom Nichols on The Daily Beast, author of The Death of Expertise: The Campaign Against Established Knowledge and Why It Matters.

Selenide Vibrations...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 7, 2017 at 5:00am

In this illustration, an infrared laser beam (orange) triggers atomic vibrations in a thin layer of iron selenide, which are then recorded by ultrafast X-ray laser pulses (white) to create an ultrafast movie. The motion of the selenium atoms (red) changes the energy of the electron orbitals of the iron atoms (blue). (Courtesy: Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science, Solid State Physics, Superconductors

Two important breakthroughs in the understanding of iron-selenide superconductors have been made by two independent research groups. One team has shown that the electrons responsible for superconductivity in the material probably come from a specific atomic orbital. The other team, meanwhile, has measured the interaction between electrons and atomic vibrations in iron selenide, which is believed to be involved in its superconductivity.

The research could shed light on the mystery of why some materials based on iron selenide are superconductors at relatively high temperatures, which has puzzled physicists for more than a decade. While bulk iron selenide is a superconductor below 8.5K, this transition temperature can reach as high as 75K when an ultrathin trilayer of the material is grown on certain substrates.

Experiments shed new light on iron superconductors, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Crystal Cavitation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 6, 2017 at 5:00am

Time sequence showing the growth of a cavitation bubble. The large circle is an obstruction to the flow of a liquid crystal, which is moving from left to right. The cavitation bubble is forming at the right side of the obstruction. (Courtesy: Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Fluid Mechanics, Materials Science

The formation and subsequent collapse of bubbles has been seen for the first time in a flowing liquid crystal. This process is called cavitation and occurs when the pressure drop in a flowing fluid is large enough to allow some of the fluid to vaporize and create a bubble. Cavitation is of great interest in hydrodynamics because the collapsing bubbles can dissipate large amounts of energy in small regions and cause significant damage to machinery such as propellers.

The discovery was made by Tillmann Stieger and colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization in Göttingen, the Technical University of Berlin and the ETH Zürich. Liquid crystals are fluids that are made of rod-like molecules that tend to align under certain conditions. In its experiments, the team pumped liquid-crystal fluids through tiny channels just 0.1 mm wide. The channels contained obstructions, which increase the speed of the flow and encourage cavitation (see image).

Bubble cavitation spotted in liquid crystals, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

Star Weight...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 5, 2017 at 5:00am

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Einstein, General Relativity, Gravitational Lensing, White Dwarfs

The passage of a white dwarf almost in front of a distant background star created the conditions for gravitational lensing

Einstein’s general theory of relativity predicts that in the gravitational field of a massive body, light rays should bend by an angle that depends on the body’s mass. Researchers at the Space Telescope Science Institute have now exploited that effect, known as gravitational lensing, to determine the mass of a star. For two years, the team tracked white dwarf Stein 2051 B as it crossed in front of a distant background star. The Hubble image shows Stein 2051 B and the background star, labeled “Source,” on 1 October 2013. Overlain are the nearer star’s trajectory and dots indicating its location on seven subsequent imaging dates. (The trajectory appears curved due to parallax.) At their closest, the stars were separated by a mere 10th of an arcsecond—roughly the angle subtended in the sky by Pluto.

As the stars came into alignment, gravitational lensing by the white dwarf subtly distorted the apparent position of the background star. Specifically, the background star appeared to trace an ellipse a couple of milliarcseconds wide, even though its actual position in the sky all but remained fixed. From the ellipse’s dimensions the researchers could infer Stein 2051 B’s mass, roughly two-thirds that of the Sun.

Weighing a star with light, Ashley G. Smart, Physics Today

Electrodeposition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 3, 2017 at 8:00am

(a) Schematic depicting the experimental setup and different stages of the electrodeposition process. SEM images of (b) Ni nanoparticles (left image is a zoomed in image of the wire), (c) a Ni layer in tilt-view from the middle of the array. (d) Top-view SEM images show progressive Ni deposition over time with reductive deposition. Courtesy: Nano Letters DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.7b01950

Topics: Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology

Electrodeposition can be used to construct novel functional nanowire structures hitherto impossible. This is the new finding from researchers at Harvard University in the US who have deposited conformal layers of various materials onto high-aspect-ratio silicon and micro- and nanowire arrays of different diameters, pitch, aspect ratios, shapes, resistivity and orientation. The structures produced could find use in a wide range of technology applications in chemistry, physics and medicine as well as in energy conversion and storage, sensing and bioelectronics.

Being able to construct ever more complex nanostructures has allowed researchers to study many fundamental physics and chemistry phenomena, and to develop applications for use in a variety of different fields. For example, some 1D nanostructures can be used to manipulate light–matter interactions in novel sensing and light harvesting devices. Nanoelectronics devices based on 1D silicon nanowires can also be employed in bioelectronics and drug-delivery devices.

Further developing the architecture and compositions of such structures with metal-based and polymeric materials could lead to even more sophisticated applications. Electrodeposition could come into its own here since it has proved itself to be an efficient way to deposit films of different materials on flat materials. To date, however, it had never been used to modify nanowire structures with uniform shells or to prepare multiple coaxial shell layers.

Electrodeposition on silicon produces novel nanowire architectures, Belle DuméNanotechweb.org

Transitions...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 20, 2017 at 8:47am

a

Image Source: JSNN.NCAT.UNCG.edu

Topics: Education, Jobs, Nanotechnology, STEM

I shifted my posting schedule as I am currently inundated with tape, packing material and moving boxes: LOTS of moving boxes. I have 50 free boxes from the moving company my wife and I have contracted. I filled seven of my own. Several more to go...

I'm taking a blog break as we make this transition out of New York and back to North Carolina. I am both thrilled and a little nervous, looking at the impressive curriculum vitae's of the graduate faculty.

For the most part, I've updated my online profiles to reflect this change.

I am walking forward into the future, a desire that I could not subsume with substitute goals - either by myself or others. I am moving back to a city and a school I know only nostalgically as an alumni, now as a graduate student. I will now know in the stresses of graduate research, publication; eventually a position in academia the desired outcome. It is a fulfilling of this description:

I will complete my graduate studies in physics concentration: microelectronics/nanoengineering - now back in the semiconductor industry - and teach at the post secondary level at the end of my career in science.

My graduate orientation will be on my 55th birthday, reminding me why I fell into cynically not celebrating my birthday so much, starting at the ripe old age of seven. I realized then as now, school started two days later. I will be excited as well as thankful. I will be home.

This time though I will be excited, and remember the words I gave my adult sons as to why their mother and I are pursuing this goal:

Plan to live your lives. Pursue your visions with vigor. Dream your dreams with boldness. We will all come to an end eventually. Try to live this one life with as few regrets as possible.

"Education is the ‘currency’ of the 21st century." Marianas Variety, I also heard this on the Joe Madison Show, SiriusXM 126.

Moving. Will resume posting 3 July 2017. Posting in the fall and presumably the next four years or so will be understandably impacted by graduate work.

Community College Innovation Challenge...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 19, 2017 at 1:55pm

Using laboratory experiments, first place awardee, Del Mar College, Texas, demonstrated that their product, EnteroSword, could offer another solution to the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Here, team member Daniel Nasr Azadani, demonstrates how EnteroSword fights antibiotic resistant bacteria. Credit: NSF/Bill Petros Photography

Topics: Education, Jobs, STEM

Teams from Texas and Colorado received first and second place awards, respectively, in the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Community College Innovation Challenge (CCIC).

The American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) co-sponsors the annual event, which fosters students' interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) careers by asking them to offer creative solutions to real-world problems.

This year, CCIC had students propose solutions to issues focusing on three themes: Maker to Manufacturer, Energy and Environment and Security Technologies.

"Our role as an agency is to fund trailblazers with curiosity-driven ideas," said NSF acting Chief Operating Officer Joan Ferrini-Mundy at a Wednesday Capitol Hill reception, where students showcased their projects. "We know that community colleges are rich resources for the skilled technical workforce and provide an environment where bright new ideas can thrive."

A four-judge panel selected first place awardee Del Mar College for their proposed solution to a problem that affects about 2 million people each year in the United States: the spread of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Their project, called "Slowing Antibiotic Resistance with EnteroSword," promotes the use of tailor-made viruses that only infect and kill bacteria resistant to conventional antibiotic treatments.

Red Rocks Community College received second place for their project, "Cyber Lab Learning Environment," which demonstrates how students can learn without fear in the safety of student-created cyber labs and develop real-world skills in response to real-world challenges. With print and digital materials, the cyber lab provides a real-world environment for advanced learning.

Third NSF Community College Innovation Challenge rewards top entries National Science Foundation

Media Contacts Bobbie Mixon, NSF, (703) 292-8070, bmixon@nsf.gov Martha Parham, American Association of Community Colleges, mparham@aacc.nche.edu

Jackpot...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 16, 2017 at 6:49am

Six different images from the Hubble Space Telescope have been magnified by a cosmic effect called gravitational lensing. The images were taken in infrared light by Hubble's Wide Field Camera 3. Color has been added to highlight details in the galaxies. Credit: NASA/ESA/J. Lowenthal (Smith College)

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Gravitational Lensing, NASA, Space

A glittering jackpot of ultrabright galaxies bursting with star formation has been revealed in a series of stunning images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.

The galaxies captured in these images sparkle like jewels of cosmic light. These massive collections of stars are each as much as 10,000 times more luminous than the Milky Way in the infrared range, or 10 trillion to 100 trillion times the brightness of the sun. They are also forming about 10,000 new stars each year, according to a statement from NASA. (By comparison, it is estimated that fewer than 10 stars form in the Milky Way each year.)

Viewers may also notice strange shapes, including rings and arcs of light. Those are mostly the result of a cosmic phenomenon known as gravitational lensing, in which a foreground galaxy acts as a lens, warping and magnifying the light from a more distant galaxy.

This lensing has magnified the light from these very distant galaxies, giving scientists the opportunity to study in them in much finer detail than would be otherwise possible.

Hubble Hits Jackpot: Images Capture Ultrabright Galaxies via Cosmic Magnification, Calla Cofield, Space.com