Cool write up on Comics Alliance. Check out part one on the website as well!
http://comicsalliance.com/black-comic-book-creators-part-two/
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| Image Source: Science Mag [2] |
Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
STEAM: science, technology, engineering, art, mathematics recognizes that creative expression expands the intellect and learning. It allows us to be more than "left-brained" or "right-brained" and increases the faculties of individuals in science-related fields.
I of course applaud this and the emphasis on diversity, but forgive me if I'm a bit cynical. Our American Society sadly, is rooted in a structure of divide and conquer: even the SAT, which has no bearing on a student's aptitude or motivation in college, is more of a gatekeeper than an accurate predictor of educational success.
We've foisted this global economy on ourselves without thinking of the consequences. Our children are literally competing with the planet, where creationism and science denial has no place. We'd better get in the business of ensuring all levels of our society have a chance at trade school, community programs and four year colleges, along with the associated employment for them when they need it to start families, and the elimination of loan debt. The current formula will not make us "great again": it will likely lead to modern feudalism, a system inherently undemocratic and non republic.
The National Science Foundation (NSF) wants to make the U.S. scientific community more inclusive. And the more ideas, the better.
This week NSF announced its intention to hand out small grants later this year to dozens of institutions to test novel ways of broadening participation in science and engineering. Winners of the 2-year, $300,000 pilot grants will be eligible to compete next year for up to five, $12.5 million awards over 5 years. NSF is calling the program INCLUDES. (The acronym stands for a real jaw-breaker: inclusion across the nation of communities of learners of underrepresented discoverers in engineering and science.)
The underrepresentation of women and minorities in the scientific workforce is a problem that has persisted for decades despite many well-meaning federal initiatives. NSF Director France Cordova has spoken repeatedly about her intention of moving the needle on the issue since taking office in March 2014. And this initiative, totaling roughly $75 million, could well be the signature program of her 6-year term. [1]
Our culture has drawn an artificial line between art and science, one that did not exist for innovators like Leonardo da Vinci and Steve Jobs. Leonardo’s curiosity and passion for painting, writing, engineering and biology helped him triumph in both art and science; his study of anatomy and dissections of corpses enabled his incredible drawings of the human figure. When introducing the iPad 2, Jobs, who dropped out of college but continued to audit calligraphy classes, declared: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough — it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our heart sing.” (Indeed, one of Apple’s scientists, Steve Perlman, was inspired to invent the QuickTime multimedia program by an episode of “Star Trek.”) [2]
1. We don’t need more STEM majors. We need more STEM majors with liberal arts training.
Dr. Loretta Jackson-Hayes
2. NSF launches long-awaited diversity initiative, Jeffery Mervis
This image shows the field of view of the Parkes radio telescope on the left. On the right are successive zoom-ins in on the area where the signal came from (cyan circular region). The image at the bottom right shows the Subaru image of the FRB galaxy, with the superimposed elliptical regions showing the location of the fading 6-day afterglow seen with ATCA. Image Credit: D. Kaplan (UWM), E. F. Keane (SKAO).
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Radio Astronomy
An international team of scientists using a combination of radio and optical telescopes has for the first time managed to identify the location of a fast radio burst, allowing them to confirm the current cosmological model of the distribution of matter in the universe.
On April 18, 2015, a fast radio burst (FRB) was detected by the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO)'s 64-m Parkes radio telescope in Australia. An international alert was triggered to follow it up with other telescopes and within a few hours, a number of telescopes around the world were looking for the signal, including CSIRO's Australian Telescope Compact Array (ATCA).
FRBs are mysterious bright radio flashes generally lasting only a few milliseconds. Their origin is still unknown, with a long list of potential phenomena associated with them. FRBs are very difficult to detect; before this discovery only 16 had been detected.
"In the past FRBs have been found by sifting through data months or even years later. By that time it is too late to do follow up observations." says Dr Evan Keane, Project Scientist at the Square Kilometre Array Organisation and the lead scientist behind the study. To remedy this, the team developed their own observing system to detect FRBs within seconds, and to immediately alert other telescopes, when there is still time to search for more evidence in the aftermath of the initial flash.
Phys.org: New fast radio burst discovery finds 'missing matter' in the universe
Published in Nature
#P4TC: FRBs...
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| Illustration: Takashi Takahashi/Tohoku University |
Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Graphene, Materials Science, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, Superconductors, Solid State Physics, Quantum Mechanics
Graphene is an amazing conductor. The transport of electrons through graphene nanoribbons has even surpassed what scientists thought were the theoretical limits for the material—so much so that electrons moving through it seem to behave almost like photons.
Graphene’s amazing properties as a conductor has inspired some researchers to explore whether the single-atom-thick sheets of carbon could also be made into superconductors. Last year, an international research team from Canada and Germany was able to demonstrate that graphene can be made to behave that way when it’s doped with lithium atoms.
Now researchers in Japan (from Tohoku University and the University of Tokyo) have developed a new method for coaxing graphene to behave as a superconductor that has some important and distinctive differences from the previous research by the Canadian and German researchers.
IEEE: Graphene's Role as a Superconductor Just Got Better, Dexter Johnson
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| The circular dichroism spectra for short spirals (red) and long spirals (blue). For longer spirals there is a red shift in the mode in the visible regime but not for the mode in the UV. Courtesy Nanotechnology. |
Topics: Biology, Chemistry, Materials Science, Nanotechnology
The chirality of molecular structures can significantly affect a substance’s effect on biological systems, but the low signal means distinguishing chiral signals can be challenging. Fledgling studies in chiral plasmonics hope to exploit the resulting enhancements in chiral detection, just as molecular sensing has benefited from techniques like surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Now researchers have extended the understanding of chiral plasmonics by identifying how structural parameters affect the chiral plasmon signals from silver nanospirals.
"This is like where we were in the 1990s with plasmons," says Zhifeng Huang, associate professor in the Physics Department at Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), who led this latest research. "People have been wondering whether it is possible to use chiral plasmons to amplify the signal of chiral molecules, but first we need to understand chiral plasmons." The stakes are high for enhancing chiral signal detection and differentiation, since it has an impact on pharmaceuticals, agriculture, food quality monitoring and control, disease diagnosis and treatment, and environmental protection and sustainable development.
Chirality refers to a property of structures that exist in two versions - "enantiomers" - that are mirror images of each other but cannot be superimposed. Examples of chiral molecules include penicillamine, where the right-handed version is effective for rheumatoid arthritis therapy, whereas the left-handed version is toxic, or aspartame, where the left-handed version tastes sweet and has been patented in the food industry, whereas the right-handed version is tasteless.
Nanotechweb: Helical structures affect chiral plasmons, Anna Demming
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| NASA/ESA/ESO |
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Cosmology, Exoplanets, SETI, Theoretical Physics
A new tally proposes that roughly 700 quintillion (1018) terrestrial exoplanets are likely to exist across the observable universe—most vastly different from Earth
More than 400 years ago Renaissance scientist Nicolaus Copernicus reduced us to near nothingness by showing that our planet is not the center of the solar system. With every subsequent scientific revolution, most other privileged positions in the universe humans might have held dear have been further degraded, revealing the cold truth that our species is the smallest of specks on a speck of a planet, cosmologically speaking. A new calculation of exoplanets suggests that Earth is just one out of a likely 700 million trillion terrestrial planets in the entire observable universe. But the average age of these planets—well above Earth’s age—and their typical locations—in galaxies vastly unlike the Milky Way—just might turn the Copernican principle on its head.
Astronomer Erik Zackrisson from Uppsala University and his colleagues created a cosmic compendium of all the terrestrial exoplanets likely to exist throughout the observable universe, based on the rocky worlds astronomers have found so far. In a powerful computer simulation, they first created their own mini universe containing models of the earliest galaxies. Then they unleashed the laws of physics—as close as scientists understand them—that describe how galaxies grow, how stars evolve and how planets come to be. Finally, they fast-forwarded through 13.8 billion years of cosmic history. Their results, published to the preprint server arXiv (pdf) and submitted to The Astrophysical Journal, provide a tantalizing trove of probable exoplanet statistics that helps astronomers understand our place in the universe. “It's kind of mind-boggling that we're actually at a point where we can begin to do this,” says co-author Andrew Benson from the Carnegie Observatories in California. Until recently, he says, so few exoplanets were known that reasonable extrapolations to the rest of the universe were impossible. Still, his team’s findings are a preliminary guess at what the cosmos might hold. “It's certainly the case that there are a lot of uncertainties in a calculation like this. Our knowledge of all of these pieces is imperfect,” he adds.
Scientific American: Exoplanet Census Suggests Earth Is Special after All
Shannon Hall
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| Image Source: Tokyo Tech |
Topics: 3D Printing, Humor, NASA, Science Fiction, Space Exploration, Star Trek, STEM
I kind of tackled this in the posts Tea, Earl Grey and Kardashev Scales, essentially we're likely not to achieve the clearly miracle technologies that would violate the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle (I'm pretty certain about that!).
However, the closest approximation to replicators are the 3D printing systems that are becoming almost routine; some mentioned even in the same breath as the 2nd Amendment strangely enough.
It is good, with Star Trek due in 2017 to start now to engage the young in STEM activities that will lead ultimately to the next generation of scientists and engineers that will get us to Mars and beyond.
And, for that consequential and monumentally long journey (barring we survive our own hubris to make the actual trek): we shall have to EAT.
NASA, ASME, Star Trek Challenge Future Engineers to Turn Science Fiction into Science Fact
Future Engineers: Star Trek Replicator Challenge
The one scribing these words falsely believes that it is she who created me. On the contrary, it was by my choosing that she came to know of my existence, and to experience one of my tales. I’ve walked with her for many years. My very existence is a driving force in your world. And when your time is spent, and the last grain floats towards eternity, it is I who comes to collect.
I have many names, San le Muerte, Reaper, Death. Though I’ve grown fond of the monnicer this scribe thrust upon me. She calls me Nero. Fitting I suppose considering the years of death and destruction my Namesake cast upon Europe so many years ago. But I am older than he, as old as time itself and your world. Oh, and the whole scythe thing, while I am the keeper of such device, it is far from the obligatory ever present thir appendage mortals tend to depict in the pictorial representation of my one of my many chosen forms. And don’t get me started on the black billowing cloak thing.
My skin is pale, by choice of course for I am an master of disguise capable of taking any form of my choosing as the situation dictates. My eyes are not empty, rather they change depending upon my mood, my purpose, and the charge I am faced with. They may be as dark as night, speckles of white flickering as my power seeps through. Typically, they appear nearly devoid of color, just a hint of divide between the iris and pupil, a condition mortals call heterochromia iridum. When angered, they burn red, orange, and yellow like the sun. And when I’m with my dear Lavenia, the hues of the Caribbean sea dance in my eyes.
An outsider looking in sees me as the one who steals their loved ones away. And in some cases, the sick beg for my visit to end their suffering. My name is spoken with disdain. All tremble in fear when my icy presence descends upon them. No matter that they summoned me. No matter that I am only doing what I was created to do. No matter I too have a master I serve.
But none of your world know my truth. For it was my hand that thrust the world into utter chaos. My hand that tapped the dominoes starting the chain reaction that lead to the need for Wraiths. It was my decision that tore apart two worlds. All because I broke the rules.
It haunts me still. The sacrifice made by the one I am now bound to, in order to restore the balance, albeit temporarily. I do now understand what before I could not. And I do what I can to correct my mistake even when others wish differently.
Hi BSFS, this is Ricardo H, creator of the animated series Kollege Kids. I been away for some time to focus and now I am back. Kollege Kids is better than ever now. This will be a 2D/3D cartoon show and I developed my technique of 2D/3D blending while I was away. In addition I been character writing for the main Kollege Kids and their supporting characters. In this new Kollege Kids; there will be fully expansive worlds and cities where the characters live. Think of Sims 3 when you think of the new Kollege Kids format.
We plan on doing a show called Professor Holmes which with be the backstory of the main characters and the world they live in. This will take place in the land of Chessman/Africa America where you will get African and American history in one place. You will get to see a family oriented show with an epic action empire feel. I had to go and write for the Kollege Kids parents since they will be the orators of this show.
It has been two years and that is a long time. However good things take time. New revelations come to at a certain period in my life. In those years when I faced trials and tribulation; I kept investing and typing when I did not see the vision. I had to start from scratch going from one paragraph to two pages. It takes hard work to manage an animated series. Constantly learning new formats and staying current & trending. The creative differences with your team can cause you to fight and split for a certain amount of time.
The major thing I want to give advice is if you don't have infrastructure to handle what you doing. You will fall down and be fragile like Fine China. You need equipment, computer insurance plan, an office, TV for productivity, and money to keep investing. Kollege Kids two years did not have a solid infrastructure. Now it is getting to a solid infrastructure. Here is an update on Kollege Kids and thanks for being concerned and patient. It will be worth your wait.
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| Image Source: NOAA |
Topics: Climate Change, Computer Science, Global Warming, Research, STEM, Stochastic Modeling
Whenever news breaks about what Earth's climate is expected to be like decades into the future or how much rainfall various regions around the country or the world are likely to receive, those educated estimates are generated by a global climate model.
But what exactly is a climate model? And how does it work?
At its most basic, a global climate model (GCM) is a computer software program that solves complex equations that mathematically describe how Earth's various systems, processes and cycles work, interact and react under certain conditions. It's math in action.
A global model depends on submodels
Submodels can be broken into two classes: dynamics and physics. Dynamics refers to fluid dynamics. The atmosphere and the ocean are both treated mathematically as fluids. The physics class includes natural processes such as the carbon organic soil respiration cycle and sunlight as it passes though and heats the atmosphere.
Just as Earth's major systems and spheres — the atmosphere, the biosphere, the hydrosphere and the cryosphere — interact with and influence each other, so too must the subprograms in a climate model that represents them. This is accomplished through a technique called coupling, in which scientists develop additional equations and subprograms that knit together divergent submodels. That's what climate researcher Rob Jacob does at the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory.
Argonne National Laboratory:
Scientists compose complex math equations to replicate behaviors of Earth systems
Angela Hardin
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| Image Source: MIT Technology Review |
Topics: Consumer Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Economy, Nanotechnology, Optics, STEM
This caught my eye working in the industry, especially since the doping of silicon or germanium substrates requires the introduction of impurities at high energies and many of them poisonous to humans, hence the great control we use in manufacture. My guess (or, my hope) is this will in some extent prove cleaner as well as cheaper to produce.
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The field effect transistor is the workhorse of the consumer electronics industry. Carved into microchips in the billions, these devices beaver away, more or less unnoticed, in practically every home, office, and laboratory in the developed world.
And yet there is a perennial problem with field effect transistors that keeps chip designers awake at night—how to make them ever smaller and thereby keep up the relentless pace of Moore’s Law.
These silicon layers have to be doped with other atoms—just a handful will do the trick in such small components. And therein lies the problem. Even small random variation in the number of dopant atoms in semiconductor components can have a huge effect on the behavior of the transistor. How to control these variations during manufacture is by no means clear. Then there is the physical problem of making a device with three terminals even smaller.
Today, Jason Marmon at University of North Carolina in Charlotte and a few pals unveil just such a device in the form of a light effect transistor. This is essentially a wire that conducts when it is bathed in light and insulates when it is dark. In other words, it is a switch modulated by light. The team says its new device is simpler than a field effect transistor and does not rely on dopant atoms, so it can be made smaller and thereby continue Moore’s law.
Abstract
Modern electronics are developing electronic-optical integrated circuits, while their electronic backbone, e.g. field-effect transistors (FETs), remains the same. However, further FET down scaling is facing physical and technical challenges. A light-effect transistor (LET) offers electronic-optical hybridization at the component level, which can continue Moore's law to the quantum region without requiring a FET's fabrication complexity, e.g. a physical gate and doping, by employing optical gating and photoconductivity. Multiple independent gates are therefore readily realized to achieve unique functionalities without increasing chip space. Here we report LET device characteristics and novel digital and analog applications, such as optical logic gates and optical amplification. Prototype CdSe-nanowire-based LETs show output and transfer characteristics resembling advanced FETs, e.g. on/off ratios up to ~1.0x10^6 with a source-drain voltage of ~1.43 V, gate-power of ~260 nW, and subthreshold swing of ~0.3 nW/decade (excluding losses). Our work offers new electronic-optical integration strategies and electronic and optical computing approaches.
Physics arXiv:
Light-effect transistor (LET) with multiple independent gating controls for optical logic gates and optical amplification
Jason K. Marmon, Satish C. Rai, Kai Wang, Weilie Zhou, Yong Zhang
I like filmed Science Fiction. At some point in those stories, that cool Sci-Fi blue (I, ROBOT poster) will emerge onto the screen and man, I just settle back and enjoy the show. It's not often that African-Americans get to battle the forces of the unknown not just in Sci-Fi, but Fantasy and Horror as well. Combining those two threads and in my mind's eye, that wonderful entity called, imagination, I wrote a screenplay based on a concept that was originally set in the 1800s. I wanted to juxtapose two elements or genres that rarely merge with one another: Science Fiction and the Western. Now, the mix appeared in the past with more notable films such as the Wild, Wild, West, Jonah Hex and Cowboys & Aliens. The mix hasn't worked very well at the box office or in critical review. After reworking the concept to present day, I re-titled the script, NEMESIS.
After some time of working on it, I thought better of it and decided to adapt it into a book, which is another post in itself. I don't feel any writing is a waste of time and if the film rights ever interested the authorities in Hollywood, at least, I'd have the first opportunity at the screenplay adaptation. In addition, writing such a tight-paged project like a movie script taught me about pace in my novel work. NEMESIS was an acronym as well, but I researched and found several uses of the name in other creative projects. I changed the title to S.Y.P.H.E.N. for more originality and found an appropriate acronym for it as well. I've always been entertained with science fiction/fantasy whether in film, TV or comics. The comics-to-film blockbusters like The Avengers and their spinoffs (you know the names) the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Spider-Man all in the Marvel Universe. Then add Batman, Superman, Green Lantern, Flash and Green Arrow from the DC Comics world not to mention the villains in both company's properties. The film series of movies like Star Wars, Star Trek, ALIEN and Predator, etc. Television programs like the recently relaunched X-Files (can you hear the music?), GRIMM, Sleepy Hollow, Falling Skies, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Fringe, Profiler and many other shows from the 60s through the 2000s. If those types of movies and TV shows captivate you, then I hope you'll give S.Y.P.H.E.N. a chance as well. Hey, if enough of you around the world do so, S.Y.P.H.E.N. could play in a theater near you in future. That’s as cool as the Sci-Fi blue, baby.
In the full darkness of the Great Gulf between Galaxies a presence stirs, something that has not been seen for an age. Its disruptive entrance into our reality does not go unnoticed. In the Majestic Galaxy sentients observe this event, powers are alerted, and great fleets are on the move.
The appearance of this presence, The Kha’ahmpion, can tilt the scales of power in the Great Majestic. On one side the Zradgen Empire. On the other, The Majestic Alliance. They will seek this power, wherever it may go.
On Earth, a young Joshua Champion self-proclaimed nerd is just now coming into the world of high school pop life, by way of a love for football.
From the stars in a far off galaxy all the way to a vibrant American city, forces that stride the cosmos with power beyond reckoning are converging on Atlanta, all to shatter the stability and safety of Joshua’s life, changing him into something he could scarcely imagine beyond his comics. He must take up this mantle of responsibility and defend all that we know, if we are to survive. Joshua, must become more than just a hero. He must become CHAMPION.
GET THE BOOK TODAY: http://www.dsauthorverse.com/products/champion-a-novel
Figure 1. Superresolution ultrasound image of the blood vessels in the cortex of a rat’s brain. The colors represent velocity: Dark and light blue indicate blood flow in the direction of the skull (toward the top of the image), and red and yellow indicate flow away from the skull. (Courtesy of Mickael Tanter.)
Citation: Phys. Today 69, 2, 14 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3069
Topics: Acoustic Physics, Applied Physics, Biology, Cancer, Nobel Prize, Research
With an acoustic analogue of a Nobel Prize–winning optical technique, researchers can acquire detailed images quickly.
In many ways, ultrasound waves are ideally suited to noninvasive biomedical imaging. They’re easy and inexpensive to produce and detect, and they can penetrate deep into tissue without losing their coherence or causing damage. But because of diffraction, conventional ultrasound imaging—like conventional optical microscopy—is limited in resolution to about half a wavelength. In clinical ultrasound applications, which use wavelengths between 200 µm and 1 mm, that limit precludes the imaging of many important structures, including small blood vessels. Shorter wavelengths yield better resolution, but they also penetrate less deeply into tissue.
For optical applications, innovative fluorescence techniques have been devised to overcome the diffraction limit, as recognized by the 2014 Nobel Prize in Chemistry (see Physics Today, December 2014, page 18). Inspired by that work, Mickael Tanter and his colleagues at the Langevin Institute (affiliated with ESPCI, Inserm, and CNRS) in Paris have now developed a superresolution ultrasound technique,1 which they’ve used to image the blood vessels in a rat’s brain with 10-µm resolution, as shown in figure 1. Applying the technique in humans could help to detect cancer and other diseases that alter blood-flow patterns.
Physics Today: Ultrasound resolution beats the diffraction limit, Johanna L. Miller
Season 4 of the Priestess begins as a vision of things to come disturbs the Priestess. Once more the tiny threads of fate are weaving together to form a tapestry that will cover all who live and prosper in the Valley Realm! The time has come once more when those who journeyed forth to save the Valley must gather their wits and weapons to do so again. However, with Little Fish missing, how will the brave warriors of the Valley travel to far off realms? The 'Second Saga' begins in part one of 'The Priestess: An Invitation Accepted"!
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| Climate Action Reserve: Environmental Cartoons by Joel Pett |
Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Greenhouse Gases, Politics
This post appears on President's Day. I started it last Wednesday. I say this to respect the family of Justice Antonin Scalia in their time of loss.
We have three co-equal branches of government: the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. It is the "check-and-balance," purposely designed to be slow and plodding; arduous to not make changes quickly as would a despot subjecting a population to h/er will.
It is the judiciary - the Supreme Court - that blocked the Clean Power Plan.
"The Clean Power Plan is based on a strong legal and technical foundation, gives states the time and flexibility they need to develop tailored, cost-effective plans to reduce their emissions, and will deliver better air quality, improved public health, clean energy investment and jobs across the country, and major progress in our efforts to confront the risks posed by climate change," Earnest said. "We remain confident that we will prevail on the merits." *
As I said in Umbilical Cord, old money is inexorably addicted to making its wealth the way it wants to. Mayan pyramids aren't even safe. That means broadcasting counter propaganda that casts doubt (as they did for the cigarette industry); purchasing politicians both locally and nationally; influencing presidential elections because presidents appoint supreme court justices.
Clarence Thomas was appointed in 1991 by George Herbert Walker Bush, post the infamous Willie Horton adds in 1988. During his contentious confirmation hearings, accusations of sexual harassment came in sworn testimony by his former employee Anita Hill. His artful dodge and use of the term "high-tech lynching," made his enemies back off and cleared his confirmation to the Supreme Court. He's apparently been quiet as a church mouse ever since. His first major decision was finalized December 12, 2000, deciding the Florida "hanging chads" fiasco by a 5-4 vote:
- The same 5-4 vote that decided the Hobby Lobby decision;
- The same 5-4 vote that gutted the Voting Rights Act.
He has so far served six times the president that appointed him: 1991 - 2016 is 25 years, a generation. He may be silent, but he's darkly effective in forwarding a regressive, authoritarian agenda that will outlive him.
Do not fall in love with the person on the top of presidential tickets. I cannot get emotional about people I'll likely never meet. Don't get excited for the top ticket major elections and neglect the midterms. It is a failure to teach Civics that we have citizens so caught up in the hype of inflated campaigns that we forget we're not electing "kings": we're electing representatives of our will ["We The People"], not the moneyed few; the function and genius of a democratic republic.
However, what lives beyond any administration is who is appointed to the court and if fairly young, how LONG they serve.
A generation is an incredibly long time...to do lasting damage. The damage in this case can be the environment for generations the families of the justices are also subject to:
“Only when the last tree has been cut down, the last fish been caught, and the last stream poisoned, will we realize we cannot eat money.”
Cree Indian Prophecy, GoodReads
* CNN: Supreme Court blocks Obama climate change rules
Ariane de Vogue, Dan Berman and Kevin Liptak
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| Image Source: Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) |
Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Gravitational Waves, Einstein, General Relativity, Theoretical Physics
Before now, the strongest evidence of gravitational waves came indirectly from observations of superdense, spinning neutron stars called pulsars. In 1974 Joseph Taylor, Jr., and Russell Hulse discovered a pulsar circling a neutron star, and later observations showed that the pulsar’s orbit was shrinking. Scientists concluded that the pulsar must be losing energy in the form of gravitational waves—a discovery that won Taylor and Hulse the 1993 Nobel Prize in Physics. Ever since this clue, astronomers have been hoping to detect the waves themselves. “I've certainly been looking forward to this event for a long time,” Taylor says. “There is a long history, and I think projects that take this long to bear fruit require an awful lot of patience. It's about time.”
The discovery is not just proof of gravitational waves, but the strongest confirmation yet for the existence of black holes. “We think black holes exist out there. We have very strong evidence they do but we don’t have direct evidence,” Lehner says. “Everything is indirect. Given that black holes themselves cannot give any signal other than gravitational waves, this is the most direct way to prove that a black hole exists.”
Scientific American: Gravitational Waves Discovered from Colliding Black Holes
Clara Moskowitz
Queen mother Angela Bassett is a collective community favorite on the small and silver screens, playing some of our all-time favorite characters. Thanks to Bryan Fuller’s announcement as show runner for the new Star Trek television series reboot, the esteemed actress might be the franchise’s second black woman to playa Starfleet captain. Madge Sinclair was the first woman and black actor on screen as captain of the USS Saratoga. The show will be available on CBS All Access, the network’s online streaming service, in 2017.
Fuller is no stranger to the Star Trek universe. At the beginning of his TV career, one of his first gigs was writing episodes for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. He then moved on to the Voyagerseries. A true fan of the show growing up, Fuller told EW, “My very first experience of Star Trek is my oldest brother turning off all the lights in the house and flying his model of a D7 Class Klingon Battle Cruiser through the darkened halls…It is without exaggeration a dream come true to be crafting a brand-new iteration of Star Trek with fellow franchise alum Alex Kurtzman and boldly going where no Star Trek series has gone before.”
Fuller, creator of Hannibal and Pushing Daisies, is a hire that the Trekkie community is excited about because of his passion for the show and it’s possibilities. Casting for Star Trek has not been announced, although he says Bassett would be his pick.
During an interview in 2013 he shared his idea of a dream cast for a Star Trekshow. “I want Angela Bassett to be the captain, that’s who I would love to have, you know Captain Angela Bassett and First Officer Rosario Dawson. I would love to do that version of the show but that’s in the future to be told.”
Photo: Tumblr
The blerd Trekkie community is crossing their fingers that Fuller hasn’t forgotten his dream now that he’s landed the position, starting the hashtag #CaptainAngelaBassett.
Time will only tell whether Bassett will be recording captain’s logs on her own starship in 2017. It never hurts to dream, and “fancasts” are making more of an impact than ever in the age of social media.
In 2001, I invented a method and device designed to discover gravity waves in local space/time and incorporated it in Discovery: Volume 1 of the Darkside Trilogy.
Though the exact method detailed in Discovery is a bit different than the LIGO Lab's hardware, the experimental method used to detect today's gravity waves is identical to that described in the novel.
Coincidentally, in May of 2001, a colleague of mine sent me a link to an article describing a similar "device" they were planning to deploy in Ireland, again employing the same method detailed in the Discovery manuscript.
This is not only vindication of the research used for Discovery, but for putting in the time and effort to make stories credible, seemingly real and to prevent readers from having to suspend belief because of faulty or lazy writing.
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| Image Source: See Popular Science link Simulation of Gravitational Waves NASA researchers simulated the gravitational waves that would be produced when two black holes merged. |
Topics: Gravitational Waves, Einstein, General Relativity, Theoretical Physics
A century ago, Albert Einstein hypothesized the existence of gravitational waves, small ripples in space and time that dash across the universe at the speed of light.
But scientists have been able to find only indirect evidence of their existence. On Thursday, at a news conference called by the U.S. National Science Foundation, researchers may announce at long last direct observations of the elusive waves.
Such a discovery would represent a scientific landmark, opening the door to an entirely new way to observe the cosmos and unlock secrets about the early universe and mysterious objects like black holes and neutron stars.
Scientists from the California Institute of Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the LIGO Scientific Collaboration are set to make what they bill as a "status report" on Thursday on the quest to detect gravitational waves. It is widely expected they will announce they have achieved their goal.
Related Links:
Ars Technica:
Live Blog: Scientists to announce major gravitational wave finding
(10:30 EST, 15:30 GMT, 15 minutes early suggested)
Popular Science:
What Are Gravitational Waves And Why Do They Matter?
Sophie Bushwick
