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WMD and Proxies...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 4, 2016 at 6:49am
Image Source: Link below


Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Internet of Things, Jobs, Mathematical Models


Data science in our interconnected world is beyond big, and becoming more so with the advent of the Internet of Things in consumer electronics.

However, it would be remiss to not know the genesis of big data in a 50s innovation by the banking industry: credit cards. They are the status symbols of "success," in reality just another bill to pay.

They are also a means companies use to screen potential hires despite their resumes, experience or in-person interview performance. It likely exacerbates the growing gap in income inequality. If some want to take us metaphorically back to the days of misogynistic Madmen, Fonzie and Chachi (Emmett Till and pre Rosa Parks), in many ways we're already there.

Credit scores are one of the formulas that determine our world. They often work against us, from job prospects to how long we’re on hold.

When I was little, I used to gaze at the traffic out the car window and study license plate numbers. I would reduce each one to its basic elements — the prime numbers that made it up. 45 = 3 x 3 x 5. That’s called factoring, and it was my favorite investigative pastime.

My love for math eventually became a passion. I went to math camp when I was 14 and came home clutching a Rubik’s Cube to my chest. Math provided a neat refuge from the messiness of the real world. It marched forward, its field of knowledge expanding relentlessly, proof by proof. And I could add to it. I majored in math in college and went on to get my Ph.D. Eventually, I became a tenure-track professor at Barnard College, which had a combined math department with Columbia College.

And then I made a big change. I quit my job and went to work as a quantitative analyst for D. E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund. In leaving academia for finance, I carried mathematics from abstract theory into practice. The operations we performed on numbers translated into trillions of dollars sloshing from one account to another. At first I was excited and amazed by working in this new laboratory, the global economy. But in the autumn of 2008, after I’d been there for a bit more than a year, it came crashing down.

The crash made it all too clear that mathematics, once my refuge, was not only deeply entangled in the world’s problems, but also fueling many of them. The housing crisis, the collapse of major financial institutions, the rise of unemployment — all aided and abetted by mathematicians wielding magic formulas. What’s more, thanks to the extraordinary powers I loved so much, math combined with technology to multiply the chaos and misfortune, adding efficiency and scale to systems that I now recognized as flawed.

If we had been clear-headed, we all would have taken a step back to figure out how math had been misused and how we could prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. But instead, in the wake of the crisis, new mathematical techniques were hotter than ever, and expanding into still more domains. They churned 24/7 through petabytes of information, much of it scraped from social media or e-commerce websites. And increasingly, they focused not on the movements of global financial markets but on human beings — on us. Mathematicians and statisticians were studying our desires, movements and spending power. They were predicting our trustworthiness and calculating our potential as students, workers, lovers, criminals.


Discovery Magazine: Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neill

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IoT and Security...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 3, 2016 at 6:25am
Credit: Courtesy of BRAND X PICTURES


Topics: Computer Science, Consumer Electronics, Internet, Internet of Things


As someone who saw DARPANET evolve from a simple text only communication, to its first commercial applications in AOL,  Netscape to now, I've been a little worried that such gadgets would only give a pathway to hackers into our homes. One likely and sad scenario could be (out of spite and pure evil), some sociopath with a keyboard could set your thermostat to 100 degrees, whether or not realizing you have pets that could be compromised under such conditions the hours you're away from them at work. Not trying to depress holiday sales, but we really need to think this one through before the inevitable flurry of patches that will be pushed out in response to attacks.

With this year’s approaching holiday gift season the rapidly growing “Internet of Things” or IoT—which was exploited to help shut down parts of the Web this past Friday—is about to get a lot bigger, and fast. Christmas and Hanukkah wish lists are sure to be filled with smartwatches, fitness trackers, home-monitoring cameras and other wi-fi–connected gadgets that connect to the internet to upload photos, videos and workout details to the cloud. Unfortunately these devices are also vulnerable to viruses and other malicious software (malware) that can be used to turn them into virtual weapons without their owners’ consent or knowledge.

Last week’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks—in which tens of millions of hacked devices were exploited to jam and take down internet computer servers—is an ominous sign for the Internet of Things. A DDoS is a cyber attack in which large numbers of devices are programmed to request access to the same Web site at the same time, creating data traffic bottlenecks that cut off access to the site. In this case the still-unknown attackers used malware known as “Mirai” to hack into devices whose passwords they could guess, because the owners either could not or did not change the devices’ default passwords.

The IoT is a vast and growing virtual universe that includes automobiles, medical devices, industrial systems and a growing number of consumer electronics devices. These include video game consoles, smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and connected thermostats like the Nest, not to mention the smart home hubs and network routers that connect those devices to the internet and one another. Technology items have accounted for more than 73 percent of holiday gift spending in the U.S. each year for the past 15 years, according to the Consumer Technology Association. This year the CTA expects about 170 million people to buy presents that contribute to the IoT, and research and consulting firm Gartner predicts these networks will grow to encompass 50 billion devices worldwide by 2020. With Black Friday less than one month away it is unlikely makers of these devices will be able to patch the security flaws that opened the door to last week’s attack.

Scientific American: IoT Growing Faster Than the Ability to Defend It
Larry Greenemeier

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3D Acoustic Holograms...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 3, 2016 at 6:22am
The researchers designed a hologram that projects sound waves with an amplitude pattern shaped like the letter "A". The top images show the simulated field patterns of the amplitude of sound waves at three representative depths. The bottom row shows the actual experimental amplitudes recorded in an anechoic chamber. (Courtesy: Scientific Reports 6 35437)

Topics: Acoustic Physics, Electromagnetism, Holograms, Metamaterials

Researchers in the US have created a printed array of metamaterials that can produce passive 3D acoustic holograms from a simple sound source, such as a single speaker. The device is made up of 3D-printed Lego-like blocks that can be put together in different configurations. The researchers say that their method is cheaper and simpler than other techniques and that they expect it to "open a new realm of holographic acoustic wave manipulation".

A visual hologram manipulates electromagnetic waves in the visible part of the spectrum to create a 3D image. Because sound also travels in waves, it should be possible to create complex 3D fields of sound – acoustic holograms – in a similar way. While visual holograms can be made with physical structures that diffract light, it isn't so easy with sound due to a lack of materials with the required acoustic properties. Generally, acoustic holograms use a transducer array controlled by complex phase shifting electronics.

Physics World: Building-block metamaterials shape 3D acoustic holograms
Michael Allen is a science writer based in Bristol, UK
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Proxima Centauri b...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 1, 2016 at 5:42am
Breakthrough Starshot concept would use a giant Earth-based laser array to accelerate a space sail to a significant fraction of the speed of light. Destination: Proxima Centauri b? (Credit: Breakthrough Initiatives)
Image Source: Astronomy Magazine


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Solar Sail, Space Exploration


The hunt for exoplanets has, in some ways, been about the hunt for an Earth-like planet - something warm where water could exist. Headlines tout each discovery as "the most Earth-like planet yet." Many of these planets are far away.

But a new discovery published August 24 in Nature hits closer to home, with an Earth-like planet in the habitable zone of a star. Whats more, that star is Proxima Centauri, only 4.24 light-years away. That means that there is no solar system that will be closer to Earth in our lifetimes.

And so far, the exoplanet, named Proxima Centauri b, is shaping up to be quite Earth-like, roughly the mass of our planet and in just the right place where, if it has an atmosphere, liquid water could exist on the surface.

This is as in our backyard as it gets.

Astronomy: The exoplanet next door
John Wenz is an associate editor at Astronomy magazine

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Happy Hallowing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 31, 2016 at 5:00am
Mutant flies are scary things, as victims of The Fly can attest. Happy Hallowing!
20th Century Fox/The Kobal Collection at Art Resource, NY


Topics: Biology, Humor, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Science Fiction


During the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens and the shades of evening drew on, a sense of insufferable gloom fell on geneticist Michael O’Connor. He was looking at decaying embryos of fruit flies in his lab that had mutations in genes known as disembodiment and ghost, mummy and haunted, shroud and phantom, spook and shadow. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime, when it came to him with a power that lies beyond our depth. “These are Halloween genes!” he declared, trembling at the realization that he had coined a catchy scientific phrase. And from that shadowy day forward in the late 1990s, so they have been known far and wide.

OK, that’s not exactly what happened, and apologies to Edgar Allan Poe. But O’Connor, who heads the genetics department at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis did dub disembodiment, ghost, and their creepy, ghoulish kin “Halloween genes.” In what became an iconic image—in his lab at least—one of the postdocs, Marcela Chavez, drew a fly on a witch’s broom. A native Spanish speaker, Chavez remembers cracking everyone up at one lab meeting when a misspelling in her presentation read “Hallowing” genes.

The identification and naming of the genes themselves came out of a massive screen for mutants in the fly embryonic genome that led to the Nobel Prize in 1995. One of the winners, Ed Lewis, was a friend of O’Connor’s. “Ed was a big Halloween person,” O’Connor says. “He’d spend all year making his Halloween costumes.” A fan of Belgian surrealist René Magritte, Lewis would dress as characters from his paintings, including the man in a leopard print caveman garb holding a barbell in Perpetual Motion and the man with a birdcage chest and straw hat in The Therapist.

Science: A gory tale behind the origin of ‘Halloween genes’, Jon Cohen

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Stillness...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 28, 2016 at 4:44am
Alien robot Gort from The Day the Earth Stood Still


Topics: Astrobiology, Astronomy, Existentialism, Exoplanets, Politics, SETI


"Gort" is the robot above from the 1951 movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still." We've been fascinated as a species by the visitation of gods, goblins, demons, fairies and off-world entities since I can remember. "Chariots of the Gods" was a bestseller until the science by its author was proven speculative farce. Erich von Däniken has managed to live on on the History 2 channel: "Ancient Aliens," which is always the only conclusion so much so it like the historian with the frizzy hairdo is cliche.

Even our popular comic fiction speculates on the weirdness such an encounter would be; mind and societal-altering. In the fictional Marvel world of The Avengers, their advent is known to the non-powered humans as "the incident" in disturbing, ominous tones. The thought of being surrounded by super powered beings wouldn't likely be reassuring as they were in the 50's and 60's. What if instead of being benevolent do-gooders, they imposed a fascist order with martial law? What indeed would stop them? Thankfully, it's all wildly speculative fiction from the fertile minds of us mere mortals.



For those of us who believe in Close Encounters of the Third and Fourth Kind (contact, abduction): 1. What makes our planet in parsecs of other candidates so special? 2. If they are that advanced, we're kind of like worms or piglets in a biology class - if it's happening, that's more than a bit disturbing.

Even if we got a chance radio transmission following up the "WOW" signal, we probably couldn't stop talking about it. And if the aliens were to actually pay us a visit, our self-concept would be jolted; holy writ would be reexamined to see how the existence of intelligence obviously beyond us on our "0.7 Kardashev Scale" would make us feel puny and...threatened.

Still, 13.6 billion years is a long time and a lot of still, silent space to be alone in. I think I prefer to think (and hope) someone else is out there. That's a lot of real estate to go extinct in by our own hubris - climate or nuclear, and if we did the point of existence - our discoveries, literature, art, music theater, dance, and languages - would have been sadly moot.

In Preparing for Contact George Michael has given us a tour de force exploration of the thinking, issues, and dilemmas surrounding the search for extraterrestrial life in the universe.

Those familiar with Professor Michael’s other books and articles—on a wide variety of critical topics including politics, nuclear proliferation, science, and terrorism—know that he conducts rigorous research and major scholarly inventories before completing a manuscript. Preparing for Contact clearly represents years of thinking and research on the subject. Michael’s approach is meticulous, objective, and fearless in examining every relevant aspect—historical, current, and futuristic—of the alien civilization question. The book dives into fundamental questions. First, what have been the scientific (or otherwise) endeavors to consider if intelligent life might exist elsewhere in the universe? Second, if we do make contact with an alien civilization, how should we respond, and what might be the larger implications for our civilization

Preparing for Contact has a logical chapter progression. From early speculation about extraterrestrial life, including Egyptian, Roman, Hindu, and Central American civilizations’ speculations to the recent findings of astrobiology and astronomy, to the UFO phenomenon, and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) project, Michael proceeds in systematic fashion. Regarding possible life on Mars, for example, the Swiss author Erich von Däniken’s wildly popular book, Chariots of the Gods, became a US television film. However, its assumptions of alien life on Mars were disproven after successive probes of Mars found only natural structures, not artificial ones. Additional space probes make us confident that we are the only intelligent life in this solar system. But what about farther out in the Milky Way galaxy, among the thousands of exoplanets which are being discovered at a rate of about two a week?

Skeptic: Meeting ET, Lawrence E. Grinter

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Magnetic Monopoles...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 27, 2016 at 6:45am
HEIKKA VALJA/MoEDAL COLLABORATION
Citation: Phys. Today 69, 10, 40 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3328


Topics: Electromagnetism, James Clerk Maxwell, Materials Science


The discovery of the mysterious hypothetical particles would provide a tantalizing glimpse of new laws of nature beyond the standard model.

Electricity and magnetism appear everywhere in the modern world and form the basis of most of our technology. Therefore, it would be natural to assume that they are already fully understood and no longer pose unanswered fundamental physics questions. Indeed, for most practical purposes they are perfectly well described by classical electrodynamics, as formulated by James Clerk Maxwell in 1864. At a deeper level, a consistent quantum mechanical account is given by quantum electrodynamics, part of the standard model of particle physics. The theory works so well that it predicts the magnetic dipole moment of the electron accurately to 10 significant figures. Nevertheless, there is still an elementary aspect of electromagnetism that we do not understand: the question of magnetic monopoles.1

That magnets always have two poles—north and south—seems like an obvious empirical fact. Yet we do not know any theoretical reason why magnetic monopoles, magnets with a single north or south pole, could not exist. Are we still missing some crucial fundamental aspect of the theory? Or do magnetic monopoles exist and we simply have not managed to find them yet?

Nothing in classical electrodynamics prohibits magnetic monopoles; in fact, they would make the theory more symmetric. As Maxwell noted, the laws governing electricity and magnetism are identical. That can be seen in the Maxwell equations of electrodynamics, which in vacuum have a duality symmetry—the electric terms can be replaced with magnetic terms, and vice versa, in such a way that the equations are left unchanged. That symmetry is broken only in the presence of electric charges and currents, which have no magnetic counterparts. If magnetic monopoles existed, they would carry the magnetic equivalent of an electric charge, and they would restore the duality symmetry (see figure 1). On aesthetic grounds, one would therefore expect their existence.

Physics Today: The search for magnetic monopoles, Arttu Rajantie

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Neutron Holography...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 26, 2016 at 6:02am
Interference pattern created by neutron holography.
Credit: NIST


Topics: Holograms, Neutrons, NIST, Research


For the first time, a team including scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have used neutron beams to create holograms of large solid objects, revealing details about their interiors in ways that ordinary laser light-based visual holograms cannot.

Holograms—flat images that change depending on the viewer’s perspective, giving the sense that they are three-dimensional objects—owe their striking capability to what’s called an interference pattern. All matter, such as neutrons and photons of light, has the ability to act like rippling waves with peaks and valleys. Like a water wave hitting a gap between the two rocks, a wave can split up and then re-combine to create information-rich interference patterns.

An optical hologram is made by shining a laser at an object. Instead of merely photographing the light reflected from the object, a hologram is formed by recording how the reflected laser light waves interfere with each other. The resulting patterns, based on the waves’ phase differences (link is external), or relative positions of their peaks and valleys, contain far more information about an object’s appearance than a simple photo does, though they don’t generally tell us much about its hidden interior.

Hidden interiors, however, are just what neutron scientists explore. Neutrons are great at penetrating metals and many other solid things, making neutron beams useful for scientists who create a new substance and want to investigate its properties. But neutrons have limitations, too. They aren’t very good for creating visual images; neutron experiment data is usually expressed as graphs that would look at home in a high school algebra textbook. And this data typically tells them about how a substance is made on average—fine if they want to know broadly about an object built from a bunch of repeating structures like a crystal (link is external), but not so good if they want to know the details about one specific bit of it.

But what if we could have the best of both worlds? The research team has found a way.

NIST:
Move Over, Lasers: Scientists Can Now Create Holograms from Neutrons, Too
Chad T. Boutin

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Graphene and Green Cars...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 25, 2016 at 6:00am
Simulations by Rice University scientists show that pillared graphene boron nitride may be a suitable storage medium for hydrogen-powered vehicles. Above, the pink (boron) and blue (nitrogen) pillars serve as spacers for carbon graphene sheets (gray). The researchers showed the material worked best when doped with oxygen atoms (red), which enhanced its ability to adsorb and desorb hydrogen (white). Credit: Lei Tao/Rice University


Topics: Climate Change, Graphene, Green Tech, Nanotechnology


Layers of graphene separated by nanotube pillars of boron nitride may be a suitable material to store hydrogen fuel in cars, according to Rice University scientists.

The Department of Energy has set benchmarks for storage materials that would make hydrogen a practical fuel for light-duty vehicles. The Rice lab of materials scientist Rouzbeh Shahsavari determined in a new computational study that pillared boron nitride and graphene could be a candidate.

The study by Shahsavari and Farzaneh Shayeganfar appears in the American Chemical Society journal Langmuir.

Shahsavari's lab had already determined through computer models how tough and resilient pillared graphene structures would be, and later worked boron nitride nanotubes into the mix to model a unique three-dimensional architecture. (Samples of boron nitride nanotubes seamlessly bonded to graphene have been made.)

Just as pillars in a building make space between floors for people, pillars in boron nitride graphene make space for hydrogen atoms. The challenge is to make them enter and stay in sufficient numbers and exit upon demand.

Phys.org: Scientists say boron nitride-graphene hybrid may be right for next-gen green cars

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2D Materials...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 24, 2016 at 6:00am
Strange electron orbits form on the surface of a crystal in this image created using a theoretical data model. These orbits correspond to the electrons being in different 'valleys' of states, yielding new insights into an area of research called 'vallytronics,' which seeks alternative ways to manipulate electrons for future electronic applications. Credit: Ali Yazdani, Department of Physics, Princeton University

Topics: Materials Science, Moore's Law, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology

For the first time, an experiment has directly imaged electron orbits in a high-magnetic field, illuminating an unusual collective behavior in electrons and suggesting new ways of manipulating the charged particles.

The study, conducted by researchers at Princeton University and the University of Texas-Austin was published Oct. 21, in the journal Science. The study demonstrates that the electrons, when kept at very low temperatures where their quantum behaviors emerge, can spontaneously begin to travel in identical elliptical paths on the surface of a crystal of bismuth, forming a quantum fluid state. This behavior was anticipated theoretically during the past two decades by researchers from Princeton and other universities.

"This is the first visualization of a quantum fluid of electrons in which interactions between the electrons make them collectively choose orbits with these unusual shapes," said Ali Yazdani, the Class of 1909 Professor of Physics at Princeton, who led the research.

"The other big finding is that this is the first time the orbits of electrons moving in a magnetic field have been directly visualized," Yazdani said. "In fact, it is our ability to image these orbits that allowed us to detect the formation of this strange quantum liquid."

Fundamental explorations of materials may provide the basis for faster and more efficient electronic technologies. Today's electronic devices, from computers to cellphones, use processors made from silicon. With silicon reaching its maximum capacity for information processing, researchers are looking to other materials and mechanisms.

One area of progress has been in two-dimensional materials, which allow control of electron motion by breaking the particles away from the constraints of the underlying crystal lattice. This involves moving electrons among "pockets" or "valleys" of possible states created by the crystal. Some researchers are working on ways to apply this process in an emerging field of research known as "valleytronics."



 Phys.org: Unusual quantum liquid on crystal surface could inspire future electronics

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Commissions

Posted by Mecanical Pencils on October 22, 2016 at 2:00am

I'm open for commission work. Here are the styles that i can produce.

Prices are as follows:

Bust : Inks: $5                          Head to waist: Inks:$10              Full body: Inks:$15

          Colored: $8                                            colored:$ $15                       colored$20

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Little Girl Lost...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 21, 2016 at 6:12am
Image Source: Pinterest - The Twilight Zone


Topics: Commentary, Politics, Science Fiction


I miss television shows like this. Television - before the special effects and hyped violence - was an introspective experience, plots took time to develop because people actually read more for enjoyment and expected a similar pacing. Things like horror and thrills weren't created for voyeuristic consumption: most of the greatest thrills were completely fabricated in your mind. I missed this quite literally and existentially by five months (and perhaps a few years to develop language and comprehension), gestating in my mother's womb. I would see it much later in syndication.



"Little Girl Lost": the video has a weird blue background on YouTube, so I just give the link. A fourth dimension seemed exotic then, well after Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity established spacetime as four dimensions, the fourth being time. The notion of other dimensions beyond even these was at least thought of philosophically well before anyone thought of String Theory and multiple dimensions as is now theorized. It was an age where the United States was in a pitched battle called the Space Race, an extension of the Cold War with the USSR. It was an age of dichotomy - fear and suspicion; wonder and adventure: The Invaders, Lost in Space, Star Trek, The Time Tunnel were actual prime time popular science fiction shows along with The Twilight Zone.

Here we are: in the 21st Century, the notion of reasoned, scientific inquiry is suspect to manipulation, politicization, "conspiracy" allegations and charges of fraud. Whole screeds are posted to the Internet on the "folly" of climate science in particular or science in general without the slightest notion of the powerful irony of their actions.

In the American Physical Society article by James Kakalios (that inspired this post):

The March 1962 episode “Little Girl Lost” of the television anthology program The Twilight Zone added some speculative inter-dimensional physics to a suspenseful science fiction tale.[1] In this story a small child rolls out of her bed in the middle of the night and disappears. Her parents become frantic when they can hear her calls for help, but cannot see or touch her. Fortunately they know what to do in just such an emergency — they call for their neighbor Bill, who is a physicist. He determines that the girl has accidentally fallen through a portal into another dimension. With his aid, and the help of the family dog, they manage to retrieve their daughter. Whether this portal was to one of the extra dimensions predicted by String Theory is open to interpretation, but the show clearly demonstrated the utility of a friendly neighborhood physicist.

Indeed, in the early 1960’s, the U.S. Government had similarly concluded that it was worthwhile to have physicists and other scientists on call. Following the Manhattan Project; the development of radar; and the proximity fuse in World War II the value of scientists and engineers to national security was accepted by the general public. In 1942 West Virginia Senator Harley Kilgore had proposed legislation calling for federal support of scientific research and in 1945 Vannevar Bush’s report Science, The Endless Frontier, [2] forcefully argued that it was in the nation’s best interest to develop and maintain strength in what we now would refer to as STEM fields. In 1950 Congress responded with the establishment of the National Science Foundation.

The situation today is very different. There is no longer broad agreement among the public of the value of scientific research.[3] Which is ironic, for this same public has enthusiastically embraced personal electronics and technology that is enabled, in part, through federally funded research. As expressed a few years ago by a Dean at M.I.T., never before in human history have so many become so wealthy solely through education. [4].

Metaphorically, we are nationally that little lost girl, or more gender-neutral: children. The world is as it has always been. There weren't transistor tubes before semiconductors; there weren't transistor radios before boom boxes, walk-men, CD players or cell phones with apps. The Internet wasn't a concept by ARPA/DARPA in 1964 before it became DARPANET soon after 1984 when I was a commissioned Communications Officer in the Air Force. There was no file transfer protocol (FTP); or hypertext markup language (HTML): we've always had Dreamweaver. We will always have fossil fuels as long as we have drills, liquid and fracking to force them from their depths. We will never as a planetary system - Earth - be subject to the Second Law of Thermodynamics as over time other systems (like our bodies) go from order to chaos.

The sanest reason for outreach: to find and reach humanity's children guiding them en masse socially to at least technological adolescence. So we, collectively will no longer "be lost." Dr. Martin Luther King was famous for a lot of things, but this quote was the most poignant and jarring, as the latter part of it is an obvious; glaring choice:

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity."

APS Physics: Why Do Outreach? James Kakalios

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Clean Rooms...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 20, 2016 at 6:55am
Building project managers and scientific leads confer at the site of a new clean room under construction at Argonne National Laboratory. When completed, the lab will enable scientists and engineers to build extremely sensitive detectors — such as those capable of detecting light from the early days of the universe. (Image by Mark Lopez/Argonne National Laboratory.)


Topics: Applied Physics, Big Bang, Carl Sagan, Research


The clean room has an interesting history. In this recap on Space.com by Miriam Kramer (April 21, 2014, excerpt below):

The scientist who discovered the age of the Earth also helped end the use of lead in gasoline and other products in the United States.

Sunday night's episode (April 20) of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" explored the life of Clair Patterson, a geochemist who pinpointed Earth's age for the first time and also uncovered a secret: Lead contamination is a major and potentially deadly problem. The newest episode of "Cosmos," called "The Clean Room," takes viewers on a tour of Patterson's work and the industry that fought him as he tried to learn more about lead and its harmful effects.

You can see more at the link. I have an "affection" for clean rooms (obviously) due to spending a considerable amount of time in them for things like your I-Phone, your I-Pad; your game platform, your GPS...etc.
Moi...

I guess I shouldn't be amazed that a facility first built to estimate the age of the Earth, then suddenly find out about lead poisoning in gasoline could also be used in clearly more imaginative ways. Clean rooms are used by NASA and ESA to assemble spacecraft prior to launch. It's almost poetic that they would have a usage on Earth to peer at the very epoch of the universe itself.



It takes a very, very clean room to build a detector sensitive enough to see the light from the beginning of the universe.

Work is underway at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE's) Argonne National Laboratory on a new "clean room." The new lab will be specially suited for building parts for ultra-sensitive detectors — such as those to carry out improved X-ray research, or for the South Pole Telescope to search for light from the early days of the universe.

"This will be a unique facility, and a wonderful investment for the future of the laboratory," said Supratik Guha, who heads the Center for Nanoscale Materials, a DOE Office of Science User Facility adjacent to where the new space will be located.

“We are a way for the cosmos to know itself.”

― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

Argonne National Laboratories:
Building a room clean enough to make sensors to find light from the birth of the universe
Louise Lerner

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Unconventional Superconductors...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 19, 2016 at 6:24am
A crystal sample of one of the iron-based unconventional superconductors studied by Ames Laboratory scientists. Their systematic investigation ofthis class of superconductors may lead to the creation of new materials with unique superconducting properties. Credit: U.S. Department of Energy, Ames Laboratory

Topics: Applied Physics, Condensed Matter Physics, Solid State Physics, Superconductors

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory and partner institutions conducted a systematic investigation into the properties of the newest family of unconventional superconducting materials, iron-based compounds. The study may help the scientific community discover new superconducting materials with unique properties.

Researchers combined innovative crystal growth, highly sensitive magnetic measurements, and the controlled introduction of disorder through electron bombardment to create and study an entire range of compositions within a class of iron-based superconductors. They found that the key fundamental properties—transition temperature and magnetic field penetration depth—of these complex superconductors were dependent on composition and the degree of disorder in the material structure.



"This was a systematic approach to more fully understand the behavior of unconventional superconductors," said Ruslan Prozorov, Ames Laboratory faculty scientist and professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Iowa State University. "We found that some proposed models of unconventional superconductivity in these iron-based compounds were compatible with our results, and this study further limited the possible theoretical mechanisms of superconductivity."Researchers combined innovative crystal growth, highly sensitive magnetic measurements, and the controlled introduction of disorder through electron bombardment to create and study an entire range of compositions within a class of iron-based superconductors. They found that the key fundamental properties—transition temperature and magnetic field penetration depth—of these complex superconductors were dependent on composition and the degree of disorder in the material structure.

Phys.org:
Scientists gain insight on mechanism of unconventional superconductivity
Ruslan Prozorov

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ExoMars Descent...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 19, 2016 at 6:15am
Image Source: ESA Space Science


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, ESA, Mars, Planetary Science


(Oct 16) A Mars lander left its mothership on Sunday after a seven-month journey from Earth and headed toward the red planet's surface to test technologies for Europe's planned first Mars rover, which will search for signs of past and present life.

The disc-shaped 577-kilogramme (1,272 lb) Schiaparelli lander separated from the spacecraft Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) at 1442 GMT (10:42 a.m. EDT) as expected, starting a three-day descent to the surface.

Signals received from TGO, which is to orbit Mars and sniff out gases around the planet, did not at first contain data on the lander's onboard status, but the European Space Agency (ESA) later said the link with the craft had been restored.

#P4TC: ExoMars...
Reuters: European-led Mars lander starts descent to red planet
Reporting by Maria Sheahan; Editing by Dominic Evans, Greg Mahlich

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California Style Black-eyed Peas recipe

Posted by Ruth deJauregui on October 17, 2016 at 11:39am

This is from my little cookbook. 

California Style Black-eyed Peas

Being a diverse, multi-ethnic, multi-racial family, we've added many traditions to our holiday celebrations. Black-eyed peas are a traditional African-American dish, served on New Year’s Day. We also serve black-eyed peas, along with tamales, on Christmas Day, right next to the turkey, mashed potatoes and cranberry sauce. My recipe is a bit different than the traditional recipe. I haven't had any complaints about it though!

Ingredients

1 bag of black-eyed peas

6 to 8 strips of pepper bacon

1 or 2 onions, chopped

1 can chunk tomatoes

1 small can chopped mild chiles

1/2 cup brown sugar

1 tsp crushed red peppers

2 tsp cumin

2 tsp garlic powder

Black pepper and salt to taste

 

Step 1:

Cook the black-eyed peas according to package directions. Drain.

Step 2:

While the black-eyed peas are cooking, chop the bacon into tiny pieces, add the chopped onions and fry until the bacon is almost crispy. Drain off the fat.

Step 3:

Add the bacon to the black-eyed peas, along with all the other ingredients. Do not drain off any liquids; pour all the juices into the pot. Bring to a boil, then turn the heat down and simmer for at least an hour, stirring occasionally.

Step 4:

Taste the black-eyed peas and add more sugar and/or spices if you like. Simmer another 15-20 minutes if you add more spices. Continue to simmer until the peas cook down and thicken, or serve right away.

Step 5:

Serve hot with rice, tamales or other family favorites.

Tips & Warnings

Use 4 to 6 cans of black-eyed peas if you prefer. Drain and then add all the other ingredients, following the directions from Step 2 on.

Use other leftover meats. Ham, turkey, chicken, even hamburger are all good.

If it's not hot enough for your family, use chopped jalapeños or more red peppers.

Careful with the crushed red peppers, they're hot.

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The Hunted...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 17, 2016 at 4:25am
Image Source: Link below


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

IN BRIEF

  • The combined results of several studies have narrowed the potential range where a theoretical subset of particles known as sterile neutrinos could exist.
  • The discovery of these fundamental particles could dramatically alter the Standard Model of particle physics.

THE HUNTED


Neutrinos are one of the most fascinating fundamental particles, mainly because they are so elusive. These barely detectable particles are almost massless and don’t interact with most anything. Studying neutrinos is not easy, and even less easy is studying a theoretical subset of the particles: sterile neutrinos.

Sterile neutrinos were initially proposed as a way to explain the Los Alamos National Laboratory experiments in the 1990s in which scientists discovered neutrino oscillations, the ability of neutrinos to change from one flavor to another. Based on what they expected from these potential particles, scientists determined a range of possible physical properties for sterile neutrinos, including their expected mass, but hadn’t yet actually confirmed their existence.

Futurism: The Dark Sector of Physics: The Hunt for New Fundamental Particles Is On
AUTHOR Dom Galeon, EDITOR Kristin Houser

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