TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: In recent years, engineers have begun to design and test thermal transistors with some success. Their goal is to exercise the same control over heat that they already have over electric current–the ability to switch it on and off, to modulate it and even to amplify it.
That would be hugely useful for managing heat dissipation but also for creating thermal logic gates that can process information in the form of heat.
The thermal transistors built so far all work by modulating the flow of phonons, or thermal vibrations, from one material to another. For this to work, materials must be in physical contact with one another.
But there is another way for heat to flow–by radiative transfer. In this case, heat flows with the passage of thermal photons from one material to another. In this case, the materials do not need to be in physical contact.
Today, Philippe Ben-Abdallah at the Université Paris-Sud in France and Svend-Age Biehs at Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Germany, unveil the first thermal transistor to operate on thermal photons. The big advantage of this device is that it works at much higher speed than phonon transistors, potentially at light speed.
The design is simple. The transistor consists of three parts, which Ben-Abdallah and Biehs call the source, drain and gate, in analogy to a conventional transistor. The source and drain are made of silica and held at different temperatures to create a temperature gradient.
The source, which is hotter than the drain, emits thermal photons which transfer heat to the drain.
Sadly, it's happened again. And each time it happens, I am diminished in the spirit of John Donne's Meditation 17; we are diminished as a nation because brilliance that shouldn't die so young, a candle that should illuminate the darkness...is extinguished.
It's not the first time I've discussed bullying. Scientists get bullied too, many are the survivors of some pretty awful bullying for just being curious; just being different than the "cool, accepted norms." Now, the bullies are young earth advocates, climate change deniers, museums that have Fred and Barney; dragons and zip lines (see Sunday's rant). Lately, the bullies staged a "Seinfeld shutdown" and come out of it in the spirit of Macbeth: "like sound and fury, signifying nothing!"
The dark side of technology is it empowers narcissistic psychopaths. Those are the only words that come to mind when disengagement, transfer to another school only intensifies pursuit for the perverse pleasure of causing harm to a fellow human being. Then when the unthinkable happens and that person takes their own life, the Facebook post is "IDGAF" with 30 likes? Of course now, the account was hacked. That remains to be proven. I sincerely hope if true, they do. It does not absolve them from the physical abuse Rebecca Ann Sedwick received from them offline; I can only imagine the hateful name-calling; the social ostracizing. If they were truly innocent, when she left their school, they should have left her alone.
The narcissists are not all young, as former NY congressman Anthony Weiner lived long enough to see himself become a byword. Internet addiction disorder seems to suggest stereotypical nerds, but I think it is the act of esteeming something that amounts to ones and zeros; mean girls and idols; more important than yourself feeds into a pathology that previously might have in other times made someone a successful "Type A."
I personally witnessed a brouhaha almost ignite in a 4th period physics class...over Facebook...on what one of the young ladies said about themselves to others. This is a generation that compared to previous ones - coming through segregation, poll taxes, Jim Crow and Civil Rights; The Vietnam War; the draft; the Cuban Missile Crisis; The Korean War; The Cold War; WWII and "meatless Tuesdays" have more privilege and less sacrifice than previous ones; their only crisis growing up in the shadows of 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq...and bullies.
I've recently experienced similar treatment from a religious zealot. A year older than I from the same high school, I don't have much of a recollection of him. I've blocked him, and liberally block anyone else that I think not worth my time. Life is too precious and short. As a survivor of old-school, offline bullying, I relate too well, too personally with each of these stories.
Our minds were made for reason and real problems, reading literature, campfires and conversations. I will finish this post, as I do others in about 20 Terran minutes. I'll then go read an assignment and do problems in solid state electronics. I'll look at my Kindle and laugh. I'll talk to people and treat them with respect.
This is an essay I wrote regarding a young lady that took her life in NY earlier this year.
This, along with gun violence, is becoming a dark national addiction for which we need a Betty Ford intervention.
This is a repost with a bit of editing I think you'll find useful.
I've long championed what I like to term "conversational physics concepts," as well as diversity on this blog, particularly gender ascendancy in science, technology, engineering and math. Thus, my concentration this month wasn't all physics (though, I'm admittedly partial). For the nation to advance in the future, we need every one of us.
Hispanic Americans have contributed to our country in measurable ways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Knowledge is power: a cliche to be sure, but a commanding statement. Its corollary leads to poverty and personal powerlessness. Carl Sagan said: Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it (although too many have been systematically prevented from doing so). Resist that systematic effort when you detect it with all your might. Get help and study; form groups; connect to local chapters of NSHP and SHPE; invite speakers. Too many ethnic minorities drop out of STEM because it is difficult. Anything worth mastering is. Think of the other things in your life that were hard, and you didn't give up. That is the determination I'd like you to bring to this fight. It's more than just a career in science: it is literally learning how to think, and you can apply that in any area of your lives. For a democracy to function, we need an electorate with critical thinking skills. The cost you pay in this challenge I offer to you will be evident and measurable; the cost of the loss of your genius to this country is frightening and incalculable.
It is my hope one or several posts during the month informed, entertained and inspired. I started these posts with something that struck me as wrong: that due to someone's name and attending a historically black college and university as an undergrad, they would most likely not get a grant from the National Institute of Health. It affected me because I know and have taught one such young man that in his future, this impediment will affect him: he currently attends Howard University in Biology Pre Med, and plans to research in Ear, Nose and Throat ailments. Something that because of my own struggles with Sinusitis, I sincerely HOPE he's successful in getting research dollars!
I post this as a father, with two young men with dreams, hopes and futures in Education and Civil Engineering. I have watched over Robert and Mildred Goodwin's grandsons. As they did for me, I hope and work for a future that they can contribute to positively.
For students, your futures lie not just in sports or rap music; a future in science, technology, engineering and math is not only possible: it is "what you can do for your country" (John F. Kennedy)...and for yourselves.
...or at least found on the former planets around them.
Most stars (including, in about 4 billion years, our sun) end their lives as white dwarfs, after they have burned all their nuclear fuel. These super dense stellar embers exert such strong gravity that any element heavier than helium will immediately sink to the dwarf’s core. So imagine astronomers’ surprise when they discovered that some white dwarfs are cloaked in layers of “pollution” made up of silicon, oxygen, and other elements much higher up on the periodic table.
This pollution is made up of “pieces of planetary systems that are falling into their central stars,” explains Jay Farihi, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. By measuring the pollution’s constituent elements, scientists can peer back in time and discover what the original solar system’s asteroids, comets, and planets were made of. “It’s a wonderful technique for doing planetary forensics,” says Michael Jura, a white dwarf expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the current research.
In GD 61’s pollution, Farihi and his colleagues noticed a curious abundance of oxygen. Their first thought was that the original asteroid must have been encrusted with carbon dioxide in the form of dry ice. Trouble is, there was no carbon anywhere to be found around GD 61. So in order to account for the extra oxygen, “the only chemically viable substance left is water,” Farihi says.
If humanity does it, it will not be the fictionalDr. Zephram Cochrane of Star Trek folklore...
Miguel Alcubierre Moya (born 1964, Mexico City) is a Mexican theoretical physicist.[1] He obtained a degree in physics, and a Master of Science in theoretical physics at the School of Science of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM).
At the end of 1990, Alcubierre moved to Wales to attend graduate school at the University of Wales, Cardiff, receiving his doctorate through study of numerical general relativity.[1][2][3] After 1996 he worked at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics in Potsdam, Germany, developing new numerical techniques used in the description of black holes. Since 2002, he has worked at the Nuclear Sciences Institute of the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), where he conducts research in numerical relativity, employing computers to formulate and solve the physical equations first proposed by Albert Einstein.[4] The solitary wave solutions proposed by Alcubierre for the Einsteinian field equations may possibly prove general relativity consistent with the experimentally verified non-locality of quantum mechanics. This work militates against the idea that quantum non-locality would ultimately require abandoning the mathematical structure of general relativity.
On 11 June 2012, Miguel Alcubierre was appointed Director of the Nuclear Sciences Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
Alcubierre is best known for the proposal of "The Warp Drive: Hyper-fast travel within general relativity" which appeared in the science journal Classical and Quantum Gravity.[5] In this, he describes the Alcubierre drive, a theoretical means of traveling faster than light that does not violate the physical principle that nothing can locally travel faster than light. In this paper, he constructed a model that might transport a volume of flat space inside a "bubble" of curved space. This bubble, named as Hyper-relativistic local-dynamic space, is driven forward by a local expansion of space-time behind it, and an opposite contraction in front of it, so that theoretically a spaceship would be placed in motion by forces generated in the change made by space-time.
It is shown how, within the framework of general relativity and without the introduction of wormholes, it is possible to modify a spacetime in a way that allows a spaceship to travel with an arbitrarily large speed. By a purely local expansion of spacetime behind the spaceship and an opposite contraction in front of it, motion faster than the speed of light as seen by observers outside the disturbed region is possible. The resulting distortion is reminiscent of the "warp drive" of science fiction. However, just as it happens with wormholes, exotic matter will be needed in order to generate a distortion of spacetime like the one discussed here.
The 2013 Nobel Prize for Chemistry has been awarded to Martin Karplus, Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel for their development of computer models of complex chemical systems. All three researchers have close links to physics. Karplus, who is a US and Austrian citizen, originally studied physics and chemistry at Harvard University and is now based there and at the University of Strasbourg. Levitt, who has a physics degree from King's College London, is a US and UK citizen working at Stanford University, while Warshel is a US and Israeli citizen based at the University of Southern California. The trio will share the SEK 8m (£775,000) and will receive their medals at a ceremony in Stockholm on 10 December.
Karplus, Levitt and Warshel won the prize for developing computational techniques that use both classical and quantum physics to describe complex chemical processes. Chemical models based on classical physics are relatively easy to compute and can therefore be used to simulate some aspects of the behaviour of large molecules such as proteins. The problem, however, is that these classical models cannot describe crucial aspects of chemistry such as how reactions proceed. To do so requires models based on quantum mechanics, which in turn need huge amounts of computing power. Quantum simulations can therefore only be applied to relatively small molecules.
As the Hispanic population grows, such students are increasingly a linchpin in state and federal plans to get more students trained in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. But Hispanic students are also heavily underrepresented among degree recipients in those so-called STEM fields—and a new report from the Center for Urban Education provides some recommendations for changing that.
The report, "Tapping HSI-STEM Funds to Improve Latina and Latino Access to STEM Professions," argues that the Hispanic achievement gaps at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels exist in large part because of finances. "A lot of discussion about participation hasn't acknowledged that fact," said Lindsey E. Malcom, one of the co-authors and an assistant professor at the University of California at Riverside.
Hispanic students are more likely than their peers to come from low-income families—and that affects not only the competing demands on their time and money but also the types of institutions they are most likely to attend. Such students disproportionately start their college educations at community colleges and Hispanic-serving four-year colleges, which typically have lower costs. In turn, the researchers say, those institutions tend to have fewer resources, often leaving them less equipped to support students and to prepare them for graduate work.
The report recommends that colleges, particularly those with large Hispanic populations, work to better inform students of their full range of financial-aid options. It also pushes colleges to recognize that many Hispanic undergraduates are supporting themselves and are more likely to work and to put in longer hours than their peers.
PERSONAL DATA: Born April 5, 1950, in San José, Costa Rica, to the late Mr. Ramón A. Chang-Morales and Mrs. María Eugenia Díaz De Chang. Married to the former Peggy Marguerite Doncaster of Alexandria, Louisiana. Four children. He enjoys music, glider planes, soccer, scuba diving and hiking. His mother, brothers and sisters still reside in Costa Rica.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Colegio De La Salle in San José, Costa Rica, in November 1967 and from Hartford High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1969; received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1973 and a Doctorate in Applied Plasma Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977.
SPECIAL HONORS: Recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Outstanding Alumni Award (1980); seven NASA Space Flight Medals (1986, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2002); two NASA Distinguished Service Medals (1995, 1997) and three NASA Exceptional Service Medals (1988, 1990, 1993). In 1986, he received the Liberty Medal from President Ronald Reagan at the Statue of Liberty Centennial Celebration in New York City and, in 1987, the Medal of Excellence from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He received the Cross of the Venezuelan Air Force from President Jaime Lusinchi during the 68th Anniversary of the Venezuelan Air Force in Caracas, Venezuela (1988), and the Flight Achievement Award from the American Astronautical Society (1989). Recipient of four Doctorates “Honoris Causa” (Doctor of Science from the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, Doctor of Science from the University of Connecticut, Doctor of Law from Babson College and Doctor of Science from the Universidade de Santiago de Chile. He is honorary faculty at the College of Engineering, University of Costa Rica. In April 1995, the government of Costa Rica conferred on him the title of “Honorary Citizen.” This is the highest honor Costa Rica confers to a foreign citizen, making him the first such honoree who was actually born there. Recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2001 Wyld Propulsion Award for his 21 years of research on the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine.
KANSAS CITY: TOPEKA, Kan. — An anti-evolution group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block Kansas from using new, multistate science standards in its public schools, arguing the guidelines promote atheism and violate students' and parents' religious freedom.
The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007.
The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established. Most board members believed the guidelines will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in science classes to doing hands-on projects and experiments.
Chris Hedges, TRUTH DIG: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
When our public officials can accuse the president of collusion with Al Qaeda (not acknowledging he ordered that hydra's former head slain), and close to the same breath say these are "signs of the end times"; when truckers ride to the capital to perform citizens' arrests (in a moribund protest) inevitably against their own best interests, goaded by talk show pundits collectively with less education than fruit flies; when the same group that denies climate science and its latest dire conclusions can also deny the global, catastrophic effects of hitting next Thursday's default (even the Koch brothers have pulled back from the brink of this Pokemon-AstroTurf-fully-metastasized-Godzilla they've created); when it is clear that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a living "Deja Vu" of fictional Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret in Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Talents", we can not only not govern, we cannot sustain a republic that denies governance, denies science, denies engineering, denies math, denies environmental conservation, denies climate change, denies market regulation, denies civics, denies governance, denies economics, denies facts and reality with such impunity, and calls the child abuse of not teaching science in its proper context a "parental right."
We The People have a global economy built on science. No other nation has tax exempt "creation museums," and the nucleus mother-of-all-creation-museums is currently in financial trouble, as science denial in the long run is an obviously bankrupt strategy. Their solution: add dragons and zip lines (I'm not kidding). I'm sure Europe and Asia - devastating us in PISA results and STEM graduates - will be on board soon.
We have to decide if, as a country, we're going to prepare our youth to compete for jobs in the 21st and 22nd Century, or confuse the hell out of them with "teaching [made up] controversies" leaving them poor, uneducated, desperate and destitute with no hope of a future. This is not science, religion nor is it charity: it is authoritarianism, the societal mid misstep prior to fascism; it is a disservice to both science and faith from a faction of humanity whereby the fundamental known fact about nature - change - is a byword. We have to decide to prepare them for jobs in a middle class that will understandably require more hard skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or leave them defenseless and exacerbate the wealth gap between rich and poor, and the obvious societal instability that will follow. We have to stop parroting the talking points that debt is the only thing we don't want to pass on to our children: ignorance is even more devastating. We have to decide in the next and ongoing elections in a future more technical and challenging, to hear what our candidates - at all competitive levels of governance - have to say about science in an actual public debate, instead of the call-and-response sermon talking points they cynically memorize for a base. We have to decide to educate ourselves enough in science to call their bluff/BS when they are lying.
This status quo of stupidity is untenable; possessing a prayer cloth is not solving real or political Calculus. Your next I-phone or AIDS vaccine is not going to drop out of the sky from magical thinking. We have to decide if we're going to compete globally in the arena of ideas, or sit helplessly on the sidelines, and turn the opening lines of the Science Fiction comedy "Idiocracy" into prophesy:
Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction; a dumbing-down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
PERSONAL DATA: Born October 8, 1959, in Lima, Peru. Considers Santa Clara, California, to be his hometown. Married to the former Wendy L. Thatcher. They have five children. He enjoys flying, running, snow skiing, racquetball and spending time with his children. His parents, Rodolfo and Nora Noriega, reside in Gilbert, Arizona. Her parents, John and Elizabeth Thatcher, reside in Honolulu, Hawaii.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Wilcox High School, Santa Clara, California, in 1977. Bachelor of Science degree in computer science from the University of Southern California, 1981. Master of Science degree in computer science and Master of Science degree in space systems operations from the Naval Postgraduate School, 1990.
SPECIAL HONORS: Defense Superior Service Medal, two Defense Meritorious Service Medals, Air Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device, Air Medal (Strike Flight Award), Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal, two NASA Space Flight Medals and the NASA Exceptional Service Medal.
EXPERIENCE: Noriega was a member of the Navy ROTC unit and received his commission in the United States Marine Corps at the University of Southern California in 1981. Following graduation from flight school, he flew CH-46 Sea Knight helicopters with HMM-165 from 1983 to 1985 at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii. Noriega made two 6-month shipboard deployments in the West Pacific/Indian Ocean, including operations in support of the Multi-National Peacekeeping Force in Beirut, Lebanon. In 1986, he was transferred to MCAS Tustin, California, where he served as the aviation safety officer and instructor pilot with HMT-301. In 1988, Noriega was selected to attend the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California. Upon graduation in September 1990, he was assigned to United States Space Command in Colorado Springs, Colorado. In addition to serving as a Space Surveillance Center Commander, he was responsible for several software development projects and was ultimately the command representative for the development and integration of the major space and missile warning computer system upgrades for Cheyenne Mountain Air Force Base. At the time of his selection, he was serving on the staff of the First Marine Aircraft Wing in Okinawa, Japan. Noriega retired from the Marine Corps in January 2003.
Besides many great free textbooks that you can find online, the internet offers a variety of free science tutorials, videos and other resources. These are great to study individually or to assist you during revision. So today let’s take a look at some of the best links for science students.
Noches de Ciencias –Science Nights – is a national initiative established in 2008 by the SHPE Foundation to promote knowledge and interest in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) among the Hispanic community. SHPE professional and student chapters conduct Noches de Ciencias around the country.
The goal of Noches de Ciencias is to inform K-12 students and their families about STEM education and college options through interactive workshops and activities.
SHPE professional and student chapters can fund Noches de Ciencias through their own fundraising efforts or the funding options below:
SHPE Foundation General Funding
Naval Sea Systems Command (NAVSEA) Contract
Alcoa Foundation
SHPE Foundation - Advancing Hispanic Excellence in Technology, Engineering, Math and Science
Previous related link: Malala Day. I of course, think she got robbed for the Nobel Prize again. Dean Kaman says "you get what you celebrate." I celebrate Malala.
LISTEN to what this amazing young woman says about education; the passion in her voice. See her link below. This is what lifts all boats. Ms. Yousafzai is an impressive advocate.
Or, as the Taliban will one day call her: Madam President.
Two independent teams of physicists have used small pieces of glass etched with tiny gratings to accelerate electrons through enormous electric-field gradients. One team boosted the kinetic energy of the electrons at about the same rate as a conventional particle accelerator, while the other achieved 10 times that speed. The technology could one day be used to build table-top accelerators that are much smaller than conventional devices, bringing the benefits of particle-beam therapy to a wider range of cancer patients.
Laser-driven particle acceleration has been the subject of intense research over the past two decades, having been used to accelerate electrons, protons and other charged particles. Although several different techniques can be used, they all involve firing an intense pulse of laser light at a target. The intense electric field of the pulse separates electrons from the positively charged nuclei, creating a very strong electric field that can then be used to accelerate charged particles.
This latest breakthrough was made independently by two groups: one in the US and the other in Germany. The US team was led by Robert Byer of Stanford University and included physicists at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory, the University of California, Los Angeles and the Tech-X Corporation. In their set-up, a beam of electrons is first accelerated to a kinetic energy of about 60 MeV moving at near to the speed of light using the Next Linear Collider Test Accelerator Facility at SLAC. The other team was led by John Breuer and Peter Hommelhoff of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics in Garching, whose device works for much less energetic 28 keV electrons travelling at about one-third the speed of light.
Chris Hernandez, vice president of Advanced Systems at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems received the 2013 HENAAC Engineer of the Year Award.
October 7: Northrop Grumman Corporation employee Chris Hernandez was honored last Friday as the Engineer of the Year at the 25th anniversary HENAAC conference put on by Great Minds in STEM(TM). The conference recognizes the best and brightest science, technology, engineering, and math professionals on a national level who serve as role models to inspire young people to pursue technical careers with a focus on the Hispanic community.
He earned a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from California State University, Long Beach and a master's degree in management from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan Fellows program. Hernandez is on the board of directors of the Mexican American Opportunity Foundation and is active with the Boy Scouts of America.
Theodore Brewster Taylor (July 11, 1925 – October 28, 2004) was a Mexican-born, American theoretical physicist and prominent nuclear weapon designer who later in life became a nuclear disarmament advocate.
Taylor was born in Mexico City, Mexico, the son of a daughter of a congregationalist missionary and a director of the YMCA. He spent much of his childhood in Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City. From 1943 to 1946 he served on active duty in the United States Navy. He graduated with a bachelor's degree from the California Institute of Technology, pursued graduate studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and received a PhD in theoretical physics from Cornell University in 1954.
From 1948 to 1956 he worked at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he gained some fame as a designer of small, efficient nuclear weapons. He was assigned to explore the bounds of fission weapons in an era when most weapons designers were focused on fusion. In 1956 he moved to General Atomics, where he directed Project Orion, with his friend Lew Allen as contract manager. He also was involved in the design of small nuclear reactors to produce radioactive isotopes for medical use, the TRIGA reactors. He led the team that designed the largest pure fission bomb ever detonated, the Super Oralloy Bomb ("SOB"), which had a yield of 500 kilotons in its only test (Ivy King). He similarly designed the small "Scorpion" on the small end of the scale which is documented in John McPhee's The Curve of Binding Energy. This knowledge of bombs requiring minimal amounts of fissile material contributed to his concerns about nuclear terrorism.
After the end of Project Orion, he worked for the Defense Atomic Support Agency, involved with controlling the US stockpile of nuclear weapons. Beginning in 1966 he advocated nuclear disarmament, and worked as a consultant to the United States Atomic Energy Commission from 1966 to 1968 evaluating the International Atomic Energy Agency in regard to nuclear non-proliferation. He worked as a visiting professor at University of California, Santa Cruz and Princeton University; in addition to nuclear proliferation, a topic on which he wrote several books, he studied renewable energy and energy conservation, including ice pond technology. Taylor was featured in the 1984 PBS series, The Voyage of the Mimi, starring a young Ben Affleck.
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2013 was awarded jointly to François Englert and Peter W. Higgs "for the theoretical discovery of a mechanism that contributes to our understanding of the origin of mass of subatomic particles, and which recently was confirmed through the discovery of the predicted fundamental particle, by the ATLAS and CMS experiments at CERN's Large Hadron Collider"
And we have Satyendranath Bose, the Indian after whom the boson is named.
Nanos gigantium humeris insidentes...I can't describe the feeling. The Nobel is more than a noble endeavor: it is the culmination of a lifetime of adhering to and triumph of the Scientific Method, testing and retesting hypotheses; weathering the withering criticism (and in many cases, wagers) against your theories being incorrect, and finding out in the lab that they are correct, unique and novel. I am astonishingly happy for these men, their work and the work they're sure to inspire; physicists working in labs and researchers yet born. It is emotional, not unlike witnessing a birth of a new chapter in our understanding of the universe.
PERSONAL DATA: Born June 27, 1951, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Married to the former Marianne Sue Cremer of Jefferson City, Missouri. They have three children. Recreational interests include camping, woodworking, and racquetball.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Valley High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1969; received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1973, and a master of arts degree in management from Webster College in 1977.
ORGANIZATIONS: Member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the Air Force Association, the U.S. Air Force Academy Association of Graduates, and the Society of Space Explorers.
SPECIAL HONORS: NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, Two NASA Space Flight Medals, 1990 Congressional Hispanic Caucus Award, Awarded Aviation Week and Space Technology Aerospace Laureate in Space and Missiles for 1991, Hispanic Engineer magazine 1992 Hispanic Engineer of the Year National Achievement Award, Aviation Week and Space Technology Citation for Aerospace Laureate in Space and Missiles for 1994, 1994 selected by Hispanic Business magazine as one of the 100 most Influential Hispanics, selected by Hispanic Magazine for the 1995 Hispanic Achievement Award in Science, 1995 inductee into the International Space Hall of Fame, Distinguished Graduate of the USAF Academy; awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal with 1 Oak Leaf Cluster, National Defense Service Medal, and Air Training Command Master Instructor.
EXPERIENCE: Gutierrez was a member of the National Collegiate Championship Air Force Academy Parachute Team with over 550 jumps, and a Master Parachutist rating. After graduation from the Academy he completed undergraduate pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. He remained there as a T-38 instructor pilot from 1975 through 1977. In 1978 Gutierrez was assigned to the 7th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Hollomon Air Force Base, Alamagordo, New Mexico, where he flew the F-15 Eagle. He attended the USAF Test Pilot School in 1981 and was assigned to the F-16 Falcon Combined Test Force after graduation. While there, Gutierrez served as primary test pilot for airframe and propulsion testing on the F-16 aircraft. Test projects included the F-100 Digital Electronic Engine Control, F-16C & D Model Structural and Performance Testing, F-16 Maximum Performance Braking Tests, and F-16 Mobile Arrestment Qualification.
He has logged over 4,500 hours flying time in approximately 30 different types of airplanes, sailplanes, balloons, and rockets.
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have tripled the number of neutrons produced by fusion in tiny capsules of deuterium and tritium and thus have moved the National Ignition Facility a step closer to its goal of sustained nuclear fusion. The 13 August firing of NIF's 192-beam laser yielded 3 × 1015 neutrons, whose total energy reached 8 kilo-joules. That output was nearly twice the 5 kJ of energy that produced the plasma in the peppercorn-sized sphere of fusion fuel, says Ed Moses, the lab's principal associate director for NIF.
The result puts NIF a factor of four to five away from ignition, says Moses; last fall the Department of Energy reported that NIF was an order of magnitude away from its goal. Only a factor-of-two increase in plasma energy will be needed to attain alpha heating, an intermediate milestone at which alpha particles from fusion reactions contribute twice as much energy to the plasma as the laser does.
Note the National Ignition Facility was the "warp core" engineering for the movie "Star Trek: Into Darkness." I've mentioned this before, as not only a means of diminishing our dependence on foreign oil, and thus volatile regions of the world: it could change our whole paradigm as a country and a species - heating, energy consumption, food prices at the grocers (determined by fossil fuel prices); income inequality...if we let it.
Of course, we'll have to get through the self-immolation also known as the government shutdown (I really tried to avoid mentioning that).
PERSONAL DATA: Born August 7, 1962 in French Camp, California. Considers Stockton, California, to be his hometown.
EDUCATION: B.S., Electrical Engineering, University of the Pacific, 1984.
M.S., Electrical & Computer Engineering, University of California-Santa Barbara, 1986.
ORGANIZATIONS: Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists (MAES).
SPECIAL HONORS: Ph.D. Science, University of the Pacific (honoris causa), 2006. NASA Service Awards (2002, 2003), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory “Outstanding Engineer Award” (2001), Upward Bound National TRIO Achiever Award (2001), U.S. Department of Energy “Outstanding Performance Commendation” (2000), Society of Mexican American Engineers and Scientists (MAES) “Medalla de Oro” recipient for professional and community contributions (1999), Hispanic Engineer National Achievement Award, “Outstanding Technical Contribution” (1995), Graduate Engineering Minority Fellow (GEM) (1985), and Eta Kappa Nu Electrical Engineering Honor Society member.
This is archival information. Sadly, due to the unnecessary self-immolation AKA government shutdown, NASA.gov is currently offline.
