Reginald L. Goodwin's Posts

Quvenzhané...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 3, 2013 at 5:28pm

If I had a daughter, she’d look like Quvenzhané Wallis.
And her name would be the combination of my wife’s, Qulyndreia, a teacher, and my own, Venjie Wallis, Sr., a truck driver.
And we’d anoint the creation of the third syllable of her name with the Swahili word for “fairy.”
Flitting like one, eyes beaming, pearly-white teeth, dress of royal hue; rocking the toy "pooch pouch."

And we,
The descendants of diaspora
Ripped from the shores of Eden
Through Gorée Island gates
To Atlantic Oceans vast
Sleeping in bile and filth
Separated from families, children, tribes, language
Piled up end-to-end like logs and shipping crates
Endure captivity, Civil War, lynching and Jim Crow
Repeated in Louisiana
Near the French Quarter where slave Sundays birthed Jazz, Gospel, Blues, Ragtime
During Hurricane’s Katrina and Rita
Tossed over like so much trash
And fish food to “Jaws”...

And we,
Creators of algebra, astronomy,
Architects of pyramids,
Taken to Rome to engineer the aqueducts, buildings, obelisks and modern plumbing
The descendants of 3/5th humanity
Teeth examined like livestock,
Skin lightened by forced miscegenation,
The first thing post emancipation…we went looking for wives, husbands…children.
So, we weren’t looking for disrespect
To our young queen on her night,
From Seth “American Dad,” “Family Guy” McFarlane
Insulting her and George Clooney
Or, the self-important Onion

Of which,

You don’t have to peel too many layers

To see three important things:
1. You entered this life from a woman’s womb!
2. Nine-year-old children are not “small adults” you can insult.
3. It’s never a joke in this American rape-celebrating culture…to insult a woman!

What Lies Beneath...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 3, 2013 at 5:08pm

This image shows a computer simulation of the polarized electron-spin density on a plane that contains the Earth's rotational axis and Amherst, Massachusetts. (Courtesy: Daniel Ang and Larry Hunter of Amherst College, more info @ link)

Evidence of a minuscule force that could exist between two particle spins over long distances could be lurking in magnetized iron under the Earth's surface. That is the conclusion of a new study by physicists in the US, who have used our planet's vast stores of polarized spin to place exacting limits on the existence of interactions mediated by unusual entities such as "unparticles".

The intrinsic angular momentum, or "spin", of a particle gives that particle a magnetic moment, and the interaction between spins generates magnetism. A ferromagnet, such as iron, becomes magnetized when the spins of some of the electrons in its constituent atoms line up, while quantum mechanics tells us that the magnetic force between spins results from the electrons exchanging "virtual" photons.

Some theoretical physicists have suggested that other, as-yet-undiscovered particles might be exchanged virtually and so give rise to new types of spin–spin interaction. In 2007, for example, Howard Georgi of Harvard University proposed the existence of unparticles, which would have the unusual property that their masses would scale with energy or momentum.

Physics World: Search for 'unparticles' focuses on Earth's crust

A fun, loosely-related embed from "minute physics":

The Mother of Invention...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 2, 2013 at 3:29pm

(CNN) -- Richard Turere, 13, doesn't like lions. In fact, he hates them. Yet this bright Maasai boy has devised an innovative solution that's helping the survival of these magnificent beasts -- by keeping them away from humans.

Living on the edge of Nairobi National Park, in Kenya, Turere first became responsible for herding and safeguarding his family's cattle when he was just nine. But often, his valuable livestock would be raided by the lions roaming the park's sweet savannah grasses, leaving him to count the losses.

So, at the age of 11, Turere decided it was time to find a way of protecting his family's cows, goats and sheep from falling prey to hungry lions.

"One day, when I was walking around," he says, "I discovered that the lions were scared of the moving light."

He fitted a series of flashing LED bulbs onto poles around the livestock enclosure, facing outward. The lights were wired to a box with switches and to an old car battery powered by a solar panel. They were designed to flicker on and off intermittently, thus tricking the lions into believing that someone was moving around carrying a flashlight.

And it worked. Since Turere rigged up his "Lion Lights," his family has not lost any livestock to the wild beasts, to the great delight of his father and astonishment of his neighbors.

What's even more impressive is that Turere devised and installed the whole system by himself, without ever receiving any training in electronics or engineering.

The 13-year-old's remarkable ingenuity has been recognized with an invitation to the TED 2013 conference, being held this week in California, where he'll share the stage with some of the world's greatest thinkers, innovators and scientists.

CNN Inside Africa: Boy scares off lions with flashy invention

Nerd Love...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 1, 2013 at 7:06pm

A bit of humor post sequestration...

WHEN Sydney physicist Brendan McMonigal got down on one knee to propose to his partner of seven years, Christie Nelan, he pulled out a physics paper, not a ring.

His paper, Two Body Interactions: A Longitudinal Study, (link below), is laden with science geek speak and tracks the couple's relationship, including a graph (''happiness over time'') and the all important question.

Fellow physics major Ms Nelan - who said yes - published a link to a digital copy of the proposal on social news site Reddit this week and it went viral, viewed over 1.7 million times with tens of thousands of Facebook shares and dozens of news articles.

''I guess we won the internet,'' said Ms Nelan.

The article: With this physics paper I thee...

The paper: Two Body Interactions

Open Letter...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2013 at 7:46am

Chapter 19 - Open Letter by Reginald L. Goodwin

Wolf at the Door

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 28, 2013 at 7:30am

Wolf tumblr blog

“My testimony today makes clear that sequestration, especially if accompanied by a year-long CR [continuing resolution], would be devastating to DoD -- just as it would to every other affected Federal agency. The difference is that, today, these devastating events are no longer distant problems. The wolf is at the door.” So warned Deputy Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter at a recent Senate Appropriations Committee hearing focusing on the impacts of automatic budget reductions on civilian and defense departments and agencies. Unless Congress and the Administration reach a new agreement the cuts will occur on March 1.

The following is what is now known:

National Science Foundation:
In a February 4 letter to Mikulski, NSF Director Subra Suresh wrote:

“The required levels of cuts to our programmatic investments would cause a reduction of nearly 1,000 research grants, impacting nearly 12,000 people supported by NSF, including professors, K-12 teachers, graduate students, undergraduates, K-12 students, and technicians.”

“Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction funding at $160 million or less in FY 2013 will result in the termination of approximately $35 million in contracts and agreements to industry for work in progress on major facilities for environmental and oceanographic research. This would directly lead to layoffs of dozens of direct scientific and technical staff, with larger impacts at supplier companies. In addition, out year costs of these projects would increase by tens of millions because of delays in the construction schedule.” [Note that the current and requested budget for this program is approximately $196 million.]

American Institute of Physics: The Wolf is at the Door

I Audes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 27, 2013 at 8:00pm

Probably as Brigade Commander of my hometown and county, I was given the "I Dare You" Award. Inspired by William H. Danforth, founder of the Ralston, Purina Company, it was given to students to inspire "responsibility and leadership." The award was a handsomely bound leather book. After reading it, I was supposed to give it away.

So, I Dare You:

To think. Critical thinking is defined as "the intellectually disciplined process of actively and skillfully conceptualizing, applying, analyzing, synthesizing, and/or evaluating information gathered from, or generated by, observation, experience, reflection, reasoning, or communication, as a guide to belief and action. In its exemplary form, it is based on universal intellectual values that transcend subject matter divisions: clarity, accuracy, precision, consistency, relevance, sound evidence, good reasons, depth, breadth, and fairness."
To help your teachers. Lord knows, they're trying to help you, they're literally betting many times, putting their faces on Facebook, Twitter feeds, news sites and blogs that their districts can't fire all of them at once, and pass assigned standardized tests. Frankly, the standardized tests they drill you on isn't what they went to school for, or qualified to do: they want to teach their subjects. That's why they studied them; qualified to teach them.
To help yourselves. Every generation has a symbol of rebellion: pomade grease and leather jackets (50's); Afros, bell bottoms, hippy style and mini skirts (60's); more minis, leotards, wide collared polyester suits, disco (70's); more leotards, leggings, and dance wear, valley girl, preppy, Miami Vice, big jewelry, track suits and heavy metal (80's), more preppy, more hippy, more leggings, grunge look, punk, pastel and hip hop (90's)...you get the idea. This is not an inclusive list, by far. Like your parents and grandparents before you, this too shall pass. You'll get older, get responsible, get hopefully a child when you and your mate are ready by mature age, financially, emotionally...and, you'll have to go to work.
To educate yourselves. That seems a restatement of #1, but it's not. Education is: "the act, or process of educating"; "the knowledge and development resulting from an education process." It is sharpened with critical thinking, as you might ask: "how does all this standardized testing eventually get me a job?" "Where are the jobs?" "Are they coming back?" "What kind of citizen is this curriculum preparing me to be?"

Eventually, I'll stop blogging. I'll either be too old, or too dead (and Zombies usually don't blog). This world will be yours, and STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - will be central to your lives in ways I can only imagine. For time and giants before you have tackled mountains like the Civil War, Women's Suffrage, Women's Rights, Voting Rights et al. Time's arrow goes ever forward. And our survival as a species will depend of a diverse group, and that group is you, if you're younger than my 1/2 Century in age, and reading this.

You'll have to define what it means to be human - literally, as the economies of the 50's, 60's, 70's, 80's, 90's are in our past, and entropy prevents backwards time travel, sadly. There will be new problems of climate, food supply, economics, politics, wars and rumors of wars. They will not be insurmountable: you can solve them.

I audes...I dare you...for you.

Chelyabinsk...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 27, 2013 at 5:38pm

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: On 15 February at 0920 local time, a huge fireball raced across the skies above the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. This meteorite then exploded creating a shock wave that injured more than 1000 people.

Today, Jorge Zuluaga and Ignacio Ferrin at the University of Antioquia in Medellin, Colombia, take this approach a step further by reconstructing the meteorite’s original orbit around the Sun.

Calculating the rock’s orbit around the Sun is a more complicated affair. This depends on six critical parameters which must all be estimated from the data. Most of these are related to the point at which the meteorite becomes bright enough to cast a noticeable shadow in the videos, its ‘brightening point’. They include the meteorite’s height, elevation and azimuth at this point as well as the longitude and latitude on the Earth’s surface below. The velocity is also crucial.

“According to our estimations, the Chelyabinski meteor started to brighten up when it was between 32 and 47 km up in the atmosphere,” say Zuluaga and Ferrin, who estimate the velocity at between 13 km/s and 19 km/s relative to Earth.

Their conclusion is that the Chelyabinsk meteorite is from a family of rocks that cross Earth’s orbit called Apollo asteroids.

These are well known Earth-crossers. Astronomers have seen over 240 that are larger than 1 km but believe there must be more than 2000 others of similar size out there.

Smaller Earth crossers are even more common. The sobering news is that astronomers think there are some 80 million about the same size as the one that hit Russia.

Physics arXiv: A preliminary reconstruction of the orbit of the Chelyabinsk Meteoroid

Dr. Barry C. Johnson, PhD...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 26, 2013 at 10:30am

IDEXX

Dr. Johnson worked in Austin, Texas for a time, and I had the distinct honor of meeting him. He was one of nine African American Vice Presidents I featured during Motorola's Black History Month celebrations. He used one of my products - D54H - as test vehicle for something that's now quite common in the industry: manufacture on 300mm (12") wafers. At the time, standard was 4 - 8" wafers. That was in the microelectronics era, or when gate feature sizes were measured in micrometers or microns in measure. I was not on that high-powered team (PhDs only), but they showed that boules could be pulled, sliced and processed in that circumference. Nanotechnology is acknowledgement of the current feature size in nanometers (10^-9 meters) in direct adherence to the predictions of Moore's Law, and the multi-functionality we enjoy one cell phones, flat screens, etc.

The industry is now currently working on 450mm (18"), or "pizza sized" wafers. As we shrink smaller, the increase in area allows more product to be shipped and purchased, thereby increasing profitability.

BUSINESSWEEK: Dr. Barry C. Johnson, Ph.D. served as the Dean of the College of Engineering for Villanova University from August 2002 to March 2006. Dr. Johnson served as Senior Vice President and Chief Technology Officer of Honeywell International Inc. in Morristown, NJ. from July 2000 to April 2002. He served as a Corporate Vice President of Motorola, Inc. and Chief Technology Officer for its Semiconductor Product Sector in Tempe, AZ. He joined Motorola in 1976 and held a variety ... of technology, product development and operations leadership positions during his 16 year career with Motorola, Inc. Dr. Johnson served as a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Arizona, and serve a three-year stint as a Senior Research Fellow at E. I. DuPont & Co. He serves as the Chairman of the Board of Verisae, Inc. He has been a Director of Rockwell Automation Inc., since September 7, 2005. Dr. Johnson has been a Director of Cytec Industries Inc. since August 13, 2003. He has been a Director of Idexx Laboratories Inc., since March 2006. He serves as a Director of Cytec Engineered Materials Inc. He served as a Member of Advisory Board at Plextronics, Inc. He serves as a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2000 and the first U.S. citizen to be elected to the Fraunhofer Society in 1999, Germany's prestigious applied research organization in 1999. He is an inventor named on seven U.S. Patents. He is the recipient of numerous professional honors. He has been awarded eight patents and has authored over sixty technical papers. Dr. Johnson studied Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in metallurgical engineering and materials science from Carnegie-Mellon University and a B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering from Villanova University.

About That Death Star...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 26, 2013 at 10:27am

The proposal, which was announced by press release and press conference, comes from cosmologist Philip Lubin of the University of California at Santa Barbara and engineer Gary Hughes of California Polytechnic State University. Calling it a Death Star immediately makes the idea sound both sexy and goofy. The researchers use the term Directed Energy Solar Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation (DE-STAR), which isn’t much better. Setting aside the name, though, the idea is interesting.

Lubin and Hughes envision building a scalable, phased array, space-based laser system, powered by large solar panels. Solar power is abundant and uninterrupted in space; developing large, lightweight photovoltaic arrays would be a useful technology for future space stations or power-hungry scientific experiments. Laser beams could be useful for characterizing the composition of near-earth asteroids, and for conducting experiments on how laser heating or laser vaporization could alter an asteroid’s orbit. And phased arrays are an intriguing way to create a steerable light beam from a flat surface without turning it.

Discovery: The Case for Building a Death Star

Free Within Ourselves...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 25, 2013 at 8:37pm

One of the most promising of the young Negro poets said to me once, "I want to be a poet--not a Negro poet," meaning, I believe, "I want to write like a white poet"; meaning subconsciously, "I would like to be a white poet"; meaning behind that, "I would like to be white." And I was sorry the young man said that, for no great poet has ever been afraid of being himself. And I doubted then that, with his desire to run away spiritually from his race, this boy would ever be a great poet. But this is the mountain standing in the way of any true Negro art in America--this urge within the race toward whiteness, the desire to pour racial individuality into the mold of American standardization, and to be as little Negro and as much American as possible.

[Last sentence]: We build our temples for tomorrow, as strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, 'free within ourselves.'

More at: The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain, Langston Hughes
1926, The Nation, Courtesy of University of Illinois English Department

Tommie Smith, John Carlos, '68 Olympic Games

We will remember the humanity, glory and suffering of our ancestors, and honor the struggle of our elders. We will strive to bring new values and new life to our people.

We will have peace and harmony among us. We will be loving; sharing, and creative. We will work, study and listen so we may learn; so we may teach.

We will cultivate self-reliance. We will struggle to resurrect and unify our homeland. We will raise many children for our nation. We will have discipline, patience, devotion and courage.

We will live as models to provide new direction for our people. We will be free and self-determining.

We are African People…We will win!!!

The African Pledge and photo from: Black Science Fiction Society

The Makers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 25, 2013 at 7:00pm

Benjamin Banneker was born in 1731 just outside of Baltimore, Maryland, the son of a slave. His grandfather had been a member of a royal family in Africa and was wise in agricultural endeavors.His father, Robert, was an African slave who purchased his freedom and his mother, Mary, was the daughter of a freed African slave and an English woman. As a young man, he was allowed to enroll in a school run by Quakers and excelled in his studies, particularly in mathematics. Soon, he had progressed beyond the capabilities of his teacher and would often make up his own math problems in order to solve them.

One day his family was introduced to a man named Josef Levi who owned a watch. Young Benjamin was so fascinated by the object that Mr. Levi gave it to him to keep, explaining how it worked. Over the course of the next few days, Benjamin repeatedly took the watch apart and then put it back together. After borrowing a book on geometry and another on Isaac Newton's Principia (laws of motion) he made plans to build a larger version of the watch, mimicking a picture he had seen of a clock. After two years of designing the clock and carving each piece by hand, including the gears, Banneker had successfully created the first clock ever built in the United States. For the next thirty years, the clock kept perfect time.

Thomas Jennings was the first African American to receive a patent, on March 3, 1821 (U.S. patent3306x). Thomas Jennings' patent was for a dry-cleaning process called "dry scouring". The first money Thomas Jennings earned from his patent was spent on the legal fees (my polite way of saying enough money to purchase) necessary to liberate his family out of slavery and support the abolitionist cause.

Inventor, electrical engineer, and business executive Jesse E. Russell, Sr. was born on April 26, 1948 in Nolensville, Tennessee to Mary Louise Russell and Charles Albert Russell. He was raised in inner-city Nashville along with his ten siblings. In 1972, Russell received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Tennessee State University. As a top honor student, Russell became the first African American to be hired directly from a Historically Black College and University (HBCU) by AT&T Bell Laboratories. The following year, he earned his M. S. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University.

After the completion of his education, Russell continued to work at Bell Laboratories as a pioneer in the field of cellular and wireless communications. In 1988, Russell led the first team from Bell Laboratories to introduce digital cellular technology in the United States. He was a leader in communication technology in cellular devices and some of his patents include the “Base Station for Mobile Radio Telecommunications Systems,” (1992), the “Mobile Data Telephone,” (1993), and the “Wireless Communication Base Station” (1998). Russell held numerous posts while employed at AT&T, including director of the AT&T Cellular Telecommunication Laboratory and chief technical officer for the Network Wireless Systems Business Unit.

Site: Black Inventor Museum Online

LEED and Green...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 25, 2013 at 7:00pm

The Precision Measurement Laboratory at the NIST facility in Boulder, Colo., has been awarded LEED Gold certification.

Credit: Copyright Christina Kiffney Photography

The new Precision Measurement Laboratory (PML) at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campus in Boulder, Colo., has received LEED Gold certification.

LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) provides third-party verification of green buildings. Among their benefits, LEED-certified buildings are designed to lower operating costs, reduce waste, conserve energy and water and reduce 'greenhouse gas' emissions.

The PML, which opened last year,* achieved this distinction despite the need to meet many special requirements for its research mission. Stringent controls of the internal environment are required for precision measurements with lasers, atomic clocks and nanotechnology. For instance, mechanical equipment takes in outdoor air and provides filtration, heating and cooling, and humidity control. Air quality is maintained through the use of low-odor adhesives, sealants and paints, and carpet and floor materials that minimize release of chemicals and gases.

NIST: Green and Gold: NIST Boulder’s New Laboratory Achieves LEED Gold Certification

Stealth Nanoparticles...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 25, 2013 at 5:31pm

By binding to an immune system cell's receptor (grey), a man-made component (yellow) of a protein could prevent the body from getting rid of a therapeutic nanoparticle. DIEGO PANTANO

Small man-made peptides can help to sneak drug-bearing nanobeads past the ever-vigilant immune system, a group of US researchers has found.

To work effectively, drugs and imaging agents need to get to the diseased cells or tumours where they’re needed most. Although scientists are developing nanoparticles that help to deliver drugs to the right place, all therapeutic molecules face a deadly foe — the immune system. Its macrophages are designed to spot any intruding molecules in the blood and destroy them in a process called phagocytosis.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia have now found a way to stop macrophages from destroying drug-bearing nanoparticles. They have designed and made a small segment of a crucial membrane protein called CD47, which is recognized by macrophages as being safe. This means that molecules that contain CD47 can get past macrophages and into blood cells.

Nature: Stealth nanoparticles sneak past immune system’s defences

What You Need...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 23, 2013 at 6:44am

Students participating in the Mars Student Imaging Project work directly with data they requested from the THEMIS instrument on board NASA's Mars Odyssey satellite.
CREDIT: Arizona State University Mars Education Program

Post title inspired and courtesy of the Watts Prophets.

A project that puts middle and high school students in charge of an instrument on NASA's Mars Odyssey orbiter received a top prize from the journal Science today (Feb. 21).

The journal recognized the Mars Student Imaging Project, which allows young scientists to request time on the Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) instrument aboard the satellite after developing and proposing their own research. But the benefits go beyond learning about Mars.

"The underlying premise of what Mars Student Imaging is about is helping students to learn the process of science, the nature of science and how it works," Sheri Klug Boonstra, director of the Arizona State University Mars Education program in charge of the project, told SPACE.com.

Space.com: Students Get Satellite Time: Inside the Mars Student Imaging Project

Good Luck With That...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 23, 2013 at 6:30am

Yesterday, a mysterious group called the Inspiration Mars Foundation announced vague plans for a “historic journey to Mars and back in 501 days” scheduled for 2018. The group neglected to mention if the trip would be manned, instead directing the public to a press conference scheduled for February 27. But new information reveals that the individuals behind the Inspiration Mars Foundation plan to send two people on a flight to Mars and back—presumably in one piece.

Not that I'm a pessimist, but some facts about spaceflight seems missing from this bold endeavor:

Time and propulsion technologies: at current rates of speed, let's pick the average to obtain LEO - low earth orbit ~ 17,000 mph (27358.8 kph).
The average distance between Earth and Mars is 140 million miles (225 million km).
Thus, your trip would take roughly 8,235 hours, or 343 days. These are of course, my "back of the envelope calculations."
Human frailty: we tend to like gravity, and lose muscle mass as well as bone density just in LEO on the ISS.

According to Universe Today: "The total journey time from Earth to Mars takes between 150-300 days depending on the speed of the launch, the alignment of Earth and Mars, and the length of the journey the spacecraft takes to reach its target. It really just depends on how much fuel you’re willing to burn to get there. More fuel, shorter travel time."

So, mysterious cabal or not: it's going to take some serious engineering to get to Mars, loads of fuel and/or a very large solar sail. Unfortunately, all of that costs money that if you've noticed, we're having a bit of trouble counting...not mad at you, though.

Scientific American: Millionaire Plans Mission to Mars in 2018

Lifting All Boats...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 22, 2013 at 7:15pm

Global Integration Consulting

Defining the Challenge
Today’s world requires that all students obtain a solid foundation in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math). Gone are the days where students we deem non-college material are served best by teaching them to “work with their hands”. Virtually every job requires proficiency in applied technology and a growing number of careers involve applied math and science. Moreover, it is the integration of STEM disciplines, the ability to apply knowledge to workflow along with 21st century skills such as communication and collaboration, critical thinking and problem solving, information literacy and adaptability that are most critical to success in a fast-paced global economy.

While this need is widely recognized by educators and public policy experts, solutions often miss the mark. Instead of an integrated approach focused on applied knowledge, we continue to emphasize knowledge in silos; the “s”, the “e”, the “m” - and whatever “t” exists is most often put in the hands of teachers, not students. This approach may be easiest, since it is consistent with traditional educational approaches and structures, but it does not meet the post-secondary and career readiness needs of the vast majority of our students.

Creative Learning Systems: STEM for All Students: Beyond the Silos

The Whiz Kid...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2013 at 7:30am

Who is Kelvin Doe?

Kelvin Doe, often called “The Whiz Kid,” is a 16-year-old self-taught inventor and engineer from Sierra Leone.

He has created batteries and generators from scrap parts in his community to help provide electricity for his family and friends. Doe built his first battery at the age of 13, and has since developed a local FM radio station, which runs off homemade radio transmitter and generator.

The whiz kid explained his influence for making the radio station, “if we have a radio station in my community, the people can be able to debate about issues affecting our community and Sierra Leone as a whole.”

“People normally call me DJ Focus in my community because I believe if you focus you can do invention perfectly,” he said in a video that profiled him, produced by @radical.media for the THNKR YouTube channel.

Ubuntu: I am because we are and because we are, you are. It is a statement of being.

The Grio: Kelvin Doe, the Whiz Kid from Sierra Leone

Neural Prostheses...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2013 at 7:26am

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The emerging technology of neural prostheses has the power to change what it means to be human. The ability to implant electrodes into the eyes ears, spine or even the brain has the potential to overcome degenerative disease, mend broken bodies and even enhance our senses with superhuman abilities.

But despite numerous trials of electronic devices implanted into the human body, there are still many challenges ahead. The problem is that most of these devices are based on silicon substrates which are hard, rigid and sharp. Those are not normally qualities that sit well with soft tissue.

Consequently, any small movement of these devices can damage nearby tissue and in the worst cases, form scar tissue. What’s more, the hot, wet and salty environment inside the body can damage electronic components, limiting their lifespan.

What’s needed, of course, is a flexible substrate that is also biocompatible with human tissue. Now Lucas Hess and pals at the Technische Universität München in Germany say they’ve found the ideal material–graphene. Today, they outline their plans for graphene-based neural prostheses and the experiments they’ve already done to test its biocompatibility.

Graphene is ideal because carbon “chicken wire” is only a single atom thick and therefore highly flexible. It is also held together by carbon bonds, which are among the most stable known to chemists. That means it should be relatively stable inside the human body.

Physics arXiv: Graphene transistors for bioelectronics

Braess' Paradox...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 20, 2013 at 7:00am

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: One of the increasingly famous paradoxes in science is named after the German mathematician Dietrich Braess who noted that adding extra roads to a network can lead to greater congestion. Similarly, removing roads can improve travel times.

Traffic planners have recorded many examples of Braess’ paradox in cities such as Seoul, Stuttgart, New York and London. And in recent years, physicists have begun to study how it might be applied in other areas too, such as power transmission, sporting performance where the removal of one player can sometimes improve a team’s performance and materials science where the network of forces within a material can be modified in counterintuitive ways, to make it expand under compression, for example.

Today, Krzysztof Apt at the University of Amsterdam in The Netherlands and a couple of pals reveal an entirely new version of this paradox that occurs in social networks in which people choose products based on the decisions made by their friends.

They show mathematically that adding extra products can reduce the outcome for everyone and that reducing product choice can lead to better outcomes for all. That’s a formal equivalent to Braess’ paradox for consumers.

1. Physics arXiv: Paradoxes in Social Networks With Multiple Products
2. Harvard: Virtual Cell Program