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Posted by JC Henry on October 12, 2015 at 10:00am

This is a one-word prompt 

Elevator

 

“Penthouse,”

The operator nodded then stepped aside, away from the doors.  Allowing the passengers more room to settle themselves. 

The operator inhaled deeply pressed the key on the control panel and began to recite the Lord’s Prayer in his head.

While the car moves up the grand hotel, a spectacular sight of the city came into view.

The passengers cooed in awe.  The operator pressed himself in the corner, his hands gripped the bars attached to the glass wall.  

The ping heralded the penthouse.  The doors quietly open the couple exit without a thank you, never realizing the operator’s courage.

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Breasts: the ultimate weapons (the views expressed are not those of the poster)

Posted by William Hayashi on October 9, 2015 at 9:10am

Forget guns. Forget nukes. The real ultimate weapon? Breasts.

Exposed breasts are a significant tactical advantage. In pop culture, large-breasted women fighters invariably wear very revealing, breast-emphasising outfits. There are numerous examples in comics (Wonder Woman, Power Girl, Psylocke, Emma Frost, Zatanna, Black Cat, She Hulk etc.) and video games (Lara Croft, Bayonetta, Blaze, Ivy, Rayne, Mai etc.) Presumably such capable individuals would be able to wear what they like, so why would they choose to expose so much skin to danger?

You might think it’s just a cheap and crude tactic by male-dominated industries to get more attention from what they assume to be their young heterosexual male audience. But you’d be wrong. The creators of these scantily-clad protagonists are aware of a greater truth; breasts are actually the most awesome weapons a human can possess, and to cover them up limits their effectiveness. No wonder there are games dedicated to women increasing their breast size. This may all seem far-fetched, but the science backs it up.

Click here for the full story

This explains the artistic obsession I see here all-to-often...

WmH

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Space Faring Species...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 9, 2015 at 6:44am
CGI by XIXO


Topics: International Space Station, Moon Base, NASA, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Space Junk, Tribalism


In no particular order - inspired by both Interstellar and The Martian - this is a purely speculative post regarding becoming a space faring species, i.e. no longer confined to Earth and what that could possibly mean. A math nerd note: Jessica Chastain and Matt Damon are the Venn diagram intersection points of both space opera features. I have no qualifications other than a STEM background, enthusiasm, imagination and wonder.

International Space Station: Some projections have it going beyond 2020, and it is international with 15 member nations participating. It's not only the longest-running science experiment on human endurance, it's the best thing we have so far of mutual cooperation, the UN notwithstanding.

Moon Base: This is a possibility, only in the fact the moon has far less gravity than on Earth, therefore it would be easier to launch vehicles into space from here. The caveat is radiation from the sun and far-away sources in the form of cosmic rays and meteors - some really big, and others the size of boulders. A sturdy, 3-D printed domicile for mostly surface sensors would have to be piezoelectric - perhaps a combination of lead zirconate titanate and titanium. The humans could use volcanic caverns underneath that could be made reasonably habitable. Launches from platforms beneath the surface would be just as easy as on the surface with bay doors made of the same previously speculated material.

NASA: The agency and its viability will last as long as we have the vision to fund it. The spin off technologies fuel economies, and if the United States didn't do that, European or Asian countries are more than poised to take the lead in that sphere, and profit from the venture. This will create jobs for their fellow countrymen in an ever-changing employment landscape.

Space Exploration: A lot is made of Exoplanets in the Goldilocks habitable zone, but not much regarding Exomoons: like our own companion, a moon or moons in orbit would stabilize a planet's climate, giving it predictable seasons that are hopefully suitable for us as well. In the movies Interstellar and The Martian, since we can't create artificial gravity like Star Trek, parts of our spacecraft (as each illustrated quite well) will have to rotate, using centrifugal force to create surfaces on a rotating ring, or in a Bernal Sphere in a planet's geosynchronous orbit so we can stand up and bear our own weight. Experiment Example: Take a bucket of water with a wire handle and attach the handle to a rope. Fill it halfway with water and swing it above your head by the rope - I promise as long as you're swinging it, you won't get wet (that will likely happen when and how you stop). This of course, eliminates the great space battles we've come to thrill to in the movies - in light of our aggressive tendencies, I don't think this is a bad idea, really. Part of what we've learned so far is that in a weightless environment, astronauts loose bone density and muscle mass very rapidly. It is also a good thing if you're going to have deep space missions whereby it may take a few lifetimes to get to say, Alpha Centauri. Newton's Third Law of motion is the likely reason despite attractions astronauts in weightless environments have never been as "frisky" as Captain Kirk or Commander Riker. It would be...awkward.

Spaceflight: Voyager leaving our solar system (or, at least the heliosphere of the sun) actually made us officially an interstellar space faring species! I don't think the transition was appreciated much by the media. I know EVERY Trekkie wants to go warp drive! However, we're not even at the level as a species just yet to generate a craft going at 0.10 c (one-tenth the speed of light) that would have us to Alpha Centauri - if it has habitable planets - in about 40 years. Hence the need for using Newton's Third Law to our advantage! This star ship would have to be shielded from cosmic radiation and meteorites (tricks we'd have learned from our Moon Base). Either fission, fusion or a very large solar powered sail would propel our craft. The sail would have to be propelled by lasers or masers we'd bring with us. For those of you that are interested, the 100 Year Star Ship project by former NASA astronaut Dr. Mae C. Jemison may give you vision for at least our great-grandchildren making the journey.
Popular Mechanics - How To Build a Starship

Space Junk: Not a sexy topic, but we've been chucking things to the Clarke Orbit since Sputnik. There's a lot of debris floating above us, and with the right training, the opportunity to employ people and possibly recycle the metals and materials used to build probes that outlive their usefulness and technology. Subset: We have a lot of Earth junk we need to clean up, both physical and atmospheric. I've often said, before we attempt Terraforming another planet, we ought to try Terraforming Earth.

Tribalism: We're in a special time in human history I kind of talked about in Terms of Indifference. This is the basis of our historic and current woes; geopolitics has always balanced on a knife's edge, especially as many of us long for a nostalgic utopia (literally "nowhere place") that never was, fearing constantly what's ahead. Many are resorting to either political fiat or violence to realize their vision on their respective populations using authoritarian means that inevitably restrict the rights of certain groups. The past cannot change, nor is time travel (except in certain relativistic cases) possible, but the future - relentlessly coming - we can plan for. "Failure to plan is planning to fail."

 As things come to light, now briny water on Mars may point to a life form: a closer microscopic analysis of the Martian salt water might have a Tardigrade/Water Bear staring back at us! Such a discovery would change our collective history, our culture, our poetry and literature; our sense of ourselves. Part of being a space faring species would hopefully break down the artificial barriers we've erected separating us from our fellow humans. On a Martian or Moon Base - I've wondered - if you're an Imam conducting prayers: what then would be your reference to Mecca? Or, for any of the various human faiths, a large part of their identity is "where" they began, as then the humans there said: "we are the people of"... As more of us experience the Overview Effect, like our astronauts - a very limited group for now - more of us (I hope) will view the whole Earth as our home; ourselves as Earthlings.
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CV Nation Season 3 Indiegogo campaign

Posted by scott f evans on October 8, 2015 at 9:32pm

What's up fam? CV Nation has been a passion project of mine for the past few years. Producing and growing this show has been my constant focus. I believe in it, it has value and in my humble opinion, shows like ours are necessary. We all know that the best way to move forward is together and co--creator DeWayne Copeland and I have reached a point in the series development where we understand that to take the Nation to that next level, we're going to need your help. So click that link below and come along with us on this journey!

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cv-nation-season-three#/

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SOS...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 8, 2015 at 7:03am
Image Source: Support Our Science [1]


Topics: Economy, Education, Science, STEM


A play on the maritime acronym: in this case, it's Support Our Science, though with the tremendous outside pressures to muddy the waters of K-12 with pseudoscience, Save Our Souls is also quite descriptive. Another gem from the Science Channel, and this technically at the commercial breaks, mind you! I plan to help as much as possible, I hope I've inspired you to do the same.
The Science Channel, along with Discovery Communications, recently announced their Support Our Science initiative which seeks to bring innovative science programming and educational tools to get kids interested in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
(Photo : Lars Plougmann) [2]

Science is everywhere. It’s the DNA for progress and possibility. Support Our Science is committed to igniting students’ passion for science, technology, engineering and math on-air, online, in the classroom and in local communities. Science Channel and Discovery Education, together with partners, The Planetary Society, Girls Inc, and Maker Ed will ensure our kids are the next generation of innovators, problem solvers, and game changers.

1. Site: Support Our Science
2. Tech Times:
Science Channel Launches 'Support Our Science' Initiative, Robert Burks

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Moogega...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 7, 2015 at 6:18am
Image Source: LA Weekly (link below)


Topics: African Americans, Diversity, Diversity in Science, HBCU, NASA, Women in Science


If you watch How The Universe Works on the Science Channel (as I'm apt to), you might have caught a glimpse of this young lady doing several monologues in the series. She was pretty easy to find with such a unique spelling (and apropos meaning) of her name. The pronunciation of the same is below, phonetically and brilliantly explained by the article's writer (likely with Moogega's help). She is the picture of the strength of diversity, and the talent Historically Black Colleges and Universities can produce.

Somewhere on Mars, the initials of NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, J-P-L, are written in Morse code spanning hundreds of meters across the red planet. It's this kind of detail that thrills JPL scientist Moogega Cooper - especially since JPL, considered NASA's little brother, accomplished this on the sly.

"Initially, for the robotics missions, we had JPL [stamped] on the wheels so that as it rolls along Mars it would tag Mars: JPL, JPL, JPL. And NASA stepped in and said, 'No, you can't do that,'?" Cooper explains. "So JPL said, 'OK, sure, we'll take that off.' And instead they put it in Morse code."

Cooper, named rainbow or "moo-jee-gae" by her Korean mother and raised by her African-American World War II veteran father, is a human comet of beauty, intelligence and creativity. The scientist graduated from high school at 16, and at 24 earned her Ph.D., then launched her NASA career.

Now 28, she is a planetary protection engineer at JPL. A big part of her job is making sure that NASA doesn't contaminate other planets with terrestrial microorganisms or any other Earth life, and vice versa - bacteria from, say, Mars, that could potentially harm humans.

She's currently working on a 2020 Mars mission, which involves drilling core samples from the planet, and contamination prevention during NASA's orbit of Jupiter's icy moon, Europa. "It's so great! We recently saw that there are geysers on the surface of Europa and that means it's much more active than we thought," Cooper says. [1]

Moogega Cooper: You know, I say Pasadena is my hometown but I actually grew up in Beverly, New Jersey until I was 11 when we moved to Hampton, VA. I was pretty sheltered growing up so I spent most of my time playing with my siblings or by myself. I attended college at Hampton University where I majored in Physics and minored in Space, Earth, and Atmospheric Sciences. The program was beyond amazing and that is where I learned my first programming language and worked with real NASA satellite data at 16 years of age. I have so many people to thank at Hampton who significantly contributed to where I am today (Including my main mentor, Dr. James Russell III). [2]

1. LA Weekly: Moogega Cooper: The JPL's Space Engineer, Sophia Kercher
2. Madame Moire: College At 16, NASA Career, & Reality TV: Moogega Cooper Is A NERD And PROUD Of It, Lauren DeLisa Coleman

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Finally

Posted by Leah Ashton on October 6, 2015 at 2:29pm

I finally did something about going to school for writing. I am now a student in Full Sail University.  I am enrolled in their Creative writing for entertainment program.

I'm excited. I really think this school will help me develop the talent i already have. I have passed my first two classes. When I pass the first four, they will send me a fully loaded Mac book Pro. it will be loaded with all the software i will need for a career in the entertainment industry.

This means a lot to me so I want to do my best, and grow with this chance. I have always wanted to be an author. I just have to make sure my stories are ones that haven't been told already. That much i think will work. I love the supernatural and anything dealing with it.  I get a lot of flack from my church for some of the things i write about.

See because I am Christian, I'm not supposed to believe in the supernatural. My pastor told me something that made me glad I spoke to him about it. He told me, "How can you believe in Jesus and the miracles he did and not believe in the supernatural?"

with that, he helped me get over my fear of being judged by members in my church. Writing is my god given talent and if I don't try and use it, I just might wake up to find, this gift was taken back.

I know there are a lot of books about witches and wizards, so it might be good for me to write about something else. As long as its supernatural, I will be just fine.

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2015 Nobel Prize in Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 6, 2015 at 5:24am


Topics: Neutrinos, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Physics


The IB Times prediction:

There are no betting lines for the Nobel Prize in physics, but there's plenty of speculation about the award. Many believe, based on perceived patterns of voting, that a cosmology discovery will be awarded the prize. Ben Stein, director of the American Institute of Physics' Inside Science who correctly guessed the 2014 Nobel Prize in physics, believes Vera Rubin and Kent Ford will win for establishing the presence of dark matter.

The actual winners (can't win em all, Ben):

A classic, obviously before the Internet in 1921 (but he had something to do with it):

Presentation Speech by Professor S. Arrhenius, Chairman of the Nobel Committee for Physics of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, on December 10, 1922*

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Ladies and Gentlemen.

There is probably no physicist living today whose name has become so widely known as that of Albert Einstein. Most discussion centres on his theory of relativity. This pertains essentially to epistemology and has therefore been the subject of lively debate in philosophical circles. It will be no secret that the famous philosopher Bergson in Paris has challenged this theory, while other philosophers have acclaimed it wholeheartedly. The theory in question also has astrophysical implications which are being rigorously examined at the present time.**

NobelPrize.org: Albert Einstein's Nobel Prize Speech
(**Being too remote from Sweden, Professor Einstein could not attend the ceremony)

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Nobel Immigrants...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 5, 2015 at 6:47am
Image Source: Physics World


Topics: Immigration, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Physics


Tomorrow, they'll announce the Nobel Prize in Physics. I have someone I'm always rooting for, he himself the son of immigrants to New York by a few generations at least.

I'm sure "The Donald" crowd will ignore this and its significance. The closest scientists get to anything as poorly descriptive (and political) as "race" is the more accurate continental ancestry, based on genome type and genetic markers. We are all from somewhere else.

Next Tuesday [tomorrow] the Nobel Prize for Physics will be announced at 11:45 CEST and I am making the bold prediction that the winner – or one of the winners – will be an immigrant. Why? Because this year’s Physics World Nobel-prize infographics show that of the 198 people who have won the prize, 51 are immigrants – so I reckon there is a reasonable chance that I will be right.

What do we mean by an immigrant? This is a tough question, especially in science, where people tend to move around a lot and don’t always settle in one place. For the purposes of these infographics, we have used a rather crude definition of an immigrant laureate: someone who died or currently lives in a country other than that of their birth. There is more about how we made the infographics later in this post – but first, what do they tell us?

Physics World:
New infographics show that more than one-quarter of physics Nobel laureates are immigrants
Hamish Johnston

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Fait Accompli...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 3, 2015 at 6:00am
Image source (sigh): here


Topics: Commentary, Fait Accompli, Politics


Thursday night I was at work, numb from the news of yet another shooting. I remember an essay I wrote titled "I'll be famous," a sentiment from the perpetrator of a mall shooting in Utah (apparently, a breakup with his girlfriend sparked it). I repent of blaming mental illness in this and related cases, the go-to knee jerk shtick of every pundit and schlock spouting psycho-babble on flat screens for ratings. I recall the graph I pulled from NASDAQ data on Smith and Wesson (the only publicly traded stock of a weapons manufacturer I could find), and correlated it to an apparent increase in value after every significant, newsworthy shooting. The president's remarks were emotional, genuine and probably a few outlets took him up on his challenge of comparing ten years worth of public shootings to terrorist attacks. My guess is a few affiliates, likely after their statisticians compiled the data, opted not to broadcast it as it went against their stated dogma.

I live in upstate New York, and visited Newtown, Connecticut Christmas Day in 2012 with my family - my wife, my daughter-in-law; my sons to pay our respects. The emotions we encountered were still raw and dour; variations of twenty-six angels erected as we slowly drove or walked through; the flowers and teddy bears fresh. Alex Jones suspected a "false flag operation," which supports he knows little to nothing of the term's origin by his overuse of it to everything of evidence he won't accept. Despite our current naval-gazing and "soul searching," I sadly have come to a dark conclusion:

When twenty children and six educators could be gunned down in their own school and our lawmakers did absolutely NOTHING, it was pretty much a wrap after that!

We...are...nothing...to them.

We are of no importance to elected officials that are behind metal detectors; bomb shelters and have their own armed congressional security - and equally impressive at their progeny's private schools; we are nothing to 47% of legislatures who are themselves millionaires or multimillionaires: how does a body like THAT raise taxes on THEMSELVES? We are especially gnats compared to pachyderms when we cannot write checks in the thousands of dollars to fund their next election to keep their jobs (with taxpayer subsidized health benefits and a really GOOD retirement) for 20, 30, 40, 50 years! In the case of the presidency, both major candidates must raise close to a BILLION dollars for a job that pays $400,000.00. Let that irony sink in.

So, as much as I agree with the president's statements, I am both a rationalist and realist. Like the mythical Chris Kringle, I no longer believe in jolly old elves sliding down chimneys; nor unicorns; Bigfoot; UFOs or Loch Ness Monsters. There are however, monsters, and I'm not talking the "lone wolf"/individual psychopath trooped out to steer the conversation toward a faux angst about "mental health"...it is US.

Like Texas textbooks, we can classify Africans as "workers" as if they willingly boarded the "Good Ship Jesus" to the New World seeking opportunity: the word "slave" or slavery appears at least 21 times in the official articles of secession, just not in these textbooks. We can say "all men are created equal," ignoring 3/5th a person; lynchings, castrations, burning crosses; burning people at stakes (usually after lynchings and castrations); voter suppression, poll taxes and personhood conferred to corporations not by Citizen's United, but the 14th Amendment during Robber Baron days. We can say "remember the Alamo," and forget the entire state that legally CAN'T secede used to be the territory of Mexico. We can dismiss the thousands of Asians that built the railroads for those barons, losing their lives and the Japanese Americans like George Takei's family (Mr. Sulu of Star Trek) interned on suspicion based on their appearance. We can call it "western expansion" and "Manifest Destiny" and completely ignore the indigenous people whose land was taken; populations wiped out, "Trail of Tears" in Oklahoma, and their only compensation thus far has been "reservations." We can bury recent history under a dark carpet - Iraq had no "weapons of mass destruction"; was not affiliated with Al Qaeda, but we invaded it anyway and stayed for longer than WWII, after two tax cuts for the wealthy; an unfunded Medicare Part D, and loosened financial regulations that caused our economy to go into free fall before the 2008 elections. Hell, if we can ignore all that, climate change denial is a snap!

If "corporations are people," then America is a psychopath. It at least explains a lot regarding our current political morass and ineptitude, and maybe that it's always been.

The last paragraph of Tim Kreider's superb essay in The Week, May 29, 2014 brings it home with a punch. I invite you to read it in its entirety:

If we're not going to do anything again, I'd just like to make one request: given that we've all agreed, if only by our passive acquiescence, not to keep this from happening, can we please quit pretending to care? Let's just skip the histrionics this time: no pro forma shock, condolence photo ops, somber speeches, flags at half-mast, meaningless noises from liberals about legislation, meaningless counter-noises from the NRA about armed guards in elementary schools. Why bother going through the motions of soul-searching when we know very well there's nothing to search? If we can't be brave we might at least be honest: when we see the familiar helicopter shots of ambulances outside a school, the clusters of classmates hugging, the sobbing parents being led away, the makeshift shrines of candles and plush toys, instead of looking stricken or covering our mouths or saying "Oh my God" or "How horrible," let's just all look each other in the eye and say: "Shit happens." Jeb cleaned it up.

If that is to be all our fates, let that be our epitaphs without further pretense, or delay!
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The Martian...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 2, 2015 at 6:37am
Image Source: Link Below


Topics: Astronaut, Astronomy, Mars, NASA, Science Fiction, Space Exploration


The Martian is a geek's dream: blogging a story, self-publishing it and seeing your creation on the big screen! Kudos to Andy Weir. I look forward to his future creations and success.

Matt Damon has had a few rough days opening his mouth and inserting his foot quite deeply. To prop up his street creds post-Bourne Trilogy, Interstellar and embarrassing serial Tourette's syndrome, he kind of needs this distraction.


Seriously though: Mr. Weir got a lot of help with the science from other experts specializing outside of his area of Computer Science that perused his prose, correcting some plot lines. There are inevitably going to be random conspiracy provocateurs that ties this movie's release to who-knows-what, though I'm sure we'll be impressed by their chutzpah and hubris - the Jade Helm 15 hysteria comes to mind.

For humanity to even try a voyage to Mars, we're going to need [from the Astronomy article] "a surge" of interest beyond our social media distractions. Ironically, the things that are the core of our distractions - integrated circuits - were developed by industry and MIT for NASA to design a new guidance system and reduce rocket payloads. First the explorers are financed by governments; then the entrepreneurs and spin offs follow. This was during the Cold War with the former Soviet Union, so the government in this case was the United States almost exclusively. As we venture forth into the "final frontier," we're going to need to cooperate beyond borders. When Apollo happened - and we actually saw a man on the moon - we started briefly (ever so briefly), seeing ourselves as a species, devoid of imagined boundaries, creeds and nationalities. It was during the sixties, near the end of the Civil Rights era; many of us reeling from the death of Dr. King. As a country; as humanity, we needed such a boost - and still do.

Astronomy: Behind the science of The Martian, Eric Betz
NPR: How 'The Martian' Became A Science Love Story, Geoff Brumfiel

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Everlasting: Da Eb’Bulastin A Gullah Horror Story- Blog Tour!

Posted by Administrator: Jarvis Sheffield on October 1, 2015 at 10:37am

Blog Stops:

October 1 – Black Science Fiction Society

  

Everlasting: Da Eb’Bulastin

A Gullah Horror Story

 

 

Title: Everlasting: Da Eb'Bulastin (Sa’Fyre Island Series Book 1)

Author: Rasheedah Prioleau

Self Published Horror

Release Date: 10/31/2014

Pages 177

Format – eBook (mobi or epub) or Paperback

 

Buy Here:      Amazon                     Barnes & Noble                    CreateSpace

 

Synopsis:

After another incident of sleepwalking, Aiyana Gamelle wakes up lying under the stars on the Beach of Sa'Fyre Island, an island off the cost of South Carolina with a rich Gullah and Native American history. 

Knowing these incidents of sleepwalking have something to do with her long awaited transition into queen of the island, Aiyana shrugs them off as little more than a nuisance to be expected since her lineage leads to a mysterious African goddess. 

Aiyana moves forward with plans to host a week long festival that will end with her succession to the island throne, but the murder of an important guest and the passing of her grandmother bring the festivities to a screeching halt.   Aiyana learns that the transition involves an unwanted possession and the revelation of a dark family curse.

 

Rasheedah Prioleau

  

Rasheedah Prioleau is a Southern African American writer with an eclectic range of writing and ghostwriting credits.  After an unfulfilling stent in the corporate world she started over from the bottom as an unpaid intern at the age of twenty-six and never looked back. 

 

“I love to write because there are no limits. All it takes is a finite space of time and I can create a story from infinite possibilities.”

Writers who have influenced her include: Judy Bloom, Jude Deveraux, V.C. Andrews, Octavia Butler, Stephanie Meyer, Charlaine Harris, Joss Whedon, William Nicholson, Shonda Rhimes, Quentin Tarantino, Tyler Perry, Mike Kelley, and J.J. Abrams... just to name a few.

 

Rasheedah Prioleau currently resides in her hometown of Washington, Georgia.

Blog Tour Page:

http://www.rasheedahprioleau.com/#!large-grid/ct7q

 

 

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Charlotte's Web...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 1, 2015 at 6:09am
Figure 3. A snapshot from a cosmological simulation shows relatively cool gas flowing into two rotating protogalactic disks (magenta) from filaments (gray-green) of the cosmic web. Hot ionized gas at temperatures greater than 106 K is shown in red. (Courtesy of Philip Hopkins/Caltech.)


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Cosmology, Early Universe


A strand of the web appears to be conducting gas into the protogalaxy.

The clumpy universe we see today can be traced back to quantum fluctuations during the period of inflation, just after the Big Bang. Cosmologists think that as the universe cooled, the fluctuations seeded emerging matter that then collapsed into giant walls, and within those walls it collapsed further into filaments separated by great voids. The network of filaments, dubbed the cosmic web, is revealed—if indirectly—by astronomical surveys that show galaxies strung across the presumed filaments, with bigger galaxies and galaxy clusters at nodes where filaments intersect.

Direct observation of the filaments themselves is difficult because their constituents, mostly dark matter and cold gas, are either invisible or too faint. But with help from a quasar 10 billion light-years from Earth, Christopher Martin of Caltech and his colleagues have been able to take a close look at a strand of the cosmic web.1 The astronomers trained the Palomar Observatory’s 200-inch (5.1-meter) Hale Telescope on the neighborhood of quasar QSO UM287 and observed, illuminated by the quasar’s intense UV radiation, a cosmic-web filament attached to a rotating, actively forming galaxy.

1. D. C. Martin et al., Nature 524, 192 (2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nature14616

Physics Today:
Astronomers observe a nascent galaxy stuck to the cosmic web, Sung Chang

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Wearing Well...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 30, 2015 at 8:34am
The world’s first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles developed by Holst Centre, imec and CSMT.


Topics: Consumer Electronics, Humor, Materials Science, Metamaterials, Thin Films


Okay, I've got a wearable device on my wrist that's synced to my smart phone. I often forget to put it on. I input my mass; it monitors the steps I take per day (goal of 10,000) and how long and how "deep" my sleep was. I'm often disappointed.

I could see this catching on with the young initially. As with Facebook and all other social media platforms, they'll exit as soon as the "oldsters" start wearing their favorite duds. Youngsters really should calm down...you're sounding like us.

Researchers from Holst Centre (set up by TNO and imec), imec and CMST, imec’s associated lab at Ghent University, have demonstrated the world’s first stretchable and conformable thin-film transistor (TFT) driven LED display laminated into textiles. This paves the way to wearable displays in clothing providing users with feedback.

Wearable devices such as healthcare monitors and activity trackers are now a part of everyday life for many people. Today’s wearables are separate devices that users must remember to wear. The next step forward will be to integrate these devices into our clothing. Doing so will make wearable devices less obtrusive and more comfortable, encouraging people to use them more regularly and, hence, increasing the quality of data collected. A key step towards realizing wearable devices in clothing is creating displays that can be integrated into textiles to allow interaction with the wearer.

Solid State Technology: Turning clothing into information displays

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The Trouble With Time Travel

Posted by Tonya R. Moore on September 30, 2015 at 5:58am

Time travel is what we call the notion of moving from one point in time to another, by means other than simply existing throughout the passage of time. If my present self were to somehow physically visit the past or the future, I would have achieved time travel.

Popular science suggests that time travel should be possible in some way, shape or form but the truth is, humans know too little about time itself to claim with much confidence that time travel is either possible or impossible.

We have a general idea of how time behaves, based on how we perceive events unfolding in the universe around us. We can clearly distinguish between points in time. We distinguish things that have happened (the past) from things that are happening (the present) and we can speculate about or anticipate the future–things that have not happened yet. Our understanding of what time is depends upon the manner in which we experience the passage of time.

What if everything we think we know about time is wrong?

Scholars once assumed all time is linear (flows in on direction: past to present to future) and an inflexible constant, based upon the way we observe events unfolding in the universe around us and the effects that the progression of time has on our minds, bodies and environment.

Learning more about our cosmic neighborhood and the way celestial bodies interact with each other has lead academics to believe that time is not so simplistic in nature. Now, mathematicians and physicists have come to regard time as more of a fluid and complex entity.

In his article “IS TIME TRAVEL POSSIBLE?” Dr. Michio Kaku, Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City University of New York explains how Albert Einstein’s Relativity Theory led him to reject the notion of past, present and future as anything more than illusions invented to satisfy the human mind.

Instead, he suggested that what we call time is something like a river with currents that slow or speed up depending on velocity and proximity to certain celestial bodies. Kurt Gödel had also previously suggested this theory, further stating that this “river” would be populated by “whirlpools” that bend time into a sort of circle and traveling along the curve of this circle would ultimately make going backward in time possible.

The notion of traveling backwards in time presents a very popular set of problems though. The Grandfather Paradox, for example, presents the following question: if I were to travel back in time and change my own past in a way that would cause my present self to not have ever been born, how could I have ever existed to travel back in time in the first place? Not to mention, if humans in the future will achieve the capability to travel back in time, where are all the time travelers?

Quantum Physics presents an elegant solution to the above problems via Multiverse Theory which says there may be multiple universes existing in parallel. So, there would be a universe for every single possible event and outcome—a universe for everything that has ever happened and will happen, and universes for everything else that ever could have happened and might happen in the future.

In this case, some multiverse denizen travels back into the past and changes the future. History as we know it continues as we’ve always known it but the time traveler has shifted to a new timeline and now exists in a universe in which a time traveler journeyed to the past and committed whatever act created that universe’s particular outcome of that event.

If anything, these clashing arguments serve to drive home the point that what we know of the universe is extremely limited. We can only interpret the function of a universal mechanism such as time based on our limited understanding and capabilities. Our current knowledge of quantum physics and cosmology only allows us to theorize that time travel might be achievable.

Whether or not humans have the wherewithal to accomplish it someday is something that will have to be left to the imagination, for the time being. Sadly, most time travel stories hit that wall of causality and wind up detouring to that sad, sad place where TV tropes go to die.

As a speculative fiction writer, I WANT to believe in the possibility. As a sci-fi fan, I long to read a truly interesting time travel story that chucks out all the old cliches and gives voice to a truly entertaining, yet plausible tale. Is there a writer out there who can satisfy this desire?

Dare I try? Dare you?

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Martian Water...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 29, 2015 at 6:16am

These dark, narrow, 100 meter-long streaks called recurring slope lineae flowing downhill on Mars are inferred to have been formed by contemporary flowing water. Recently, planetary scientists detected hydrated salts on these slopes at Hale crater, corroborating their original hypothesis that the streaks are indeed formed by liquid water. The blue color seen upslope of the dark streaks are thought not to be related to their formation, but instead are from the presence of the mineral pyroxene. The image is produced by draping an orthorectified (Infrared-Red-Blue/Green(IRB)) false color image (ESP_030570_1440) on a Digital Terrain Model (DTM) of the same site produced by High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (University of Arizona). Vertical exaggeration is 1.5.

Credits: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

Topics: Exoplanets, Humor, Mars, NASA, Space Exploration


If you do a search on this blog using Mars in the upper left-hand corner (next to the magnifying glass), you'll see a lot of posts on this site regarding past announcements from NASA regarding microbes, water and possible (previous) life on Mars.

Then there was this yesterday: the usual breathless, bloviating hyperbole from a rube that couldn't even pass ballroom dancing; that actually has a rapidly graying, dwindling audience listening to his slobbering drivel, spouting an even more warped conspiracy provocation (than usual). Mixing Oxycontin and Viagra: it's such a dangerous thing...

New findings from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) provide the strongest evidence yet that liquid water flows intermittently on present-day Mars.

Using an imaging spectrometer on MRO, researchers detected signatures of hydrated minerals on slopes where mysterious streaks are seen on the Red Planet. These darkish streaks appear to ebb and flow over time. They darken and appear to flow down steep slopes during warm seasons, and then fade in cooler seasons. They appear in several locations on Mars when temperatures are above minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 Celsius), and disappear at colder times.

“Our quest on Mars has been to ‘follow the water,’ in our search for life in the universe, and now we have convincing science that validates what we’ve long suspected,” said John Grunsfeld, astronaut and associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. “This is a significant development, as it appears to confirm that water -- albeit briny -- is flowing today on the surface of Mars.”

NASA Confirms Evidence That Liquid Water Flows on Today’s Mars
Dwayne Brown / Laurie Cantillo

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Quantum Dot Photodetector...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on September 28, 2015 at 7:40am
Andrew Fidler of Los Alamos National Laboratory examines an ultrafast photodetector used to measure quantum-dot carrier multiplication in real time. Courtesy: V Klimov


Topics: Nanotechnology, Optics, Quantum Dots, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology


Researchers at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in the US have developed the first ultrafast photodetector made from quantum dots that is capable of directly observing the extra electrons produced via “carrier multiplication” – the process by which multiple electrons are generated by a single photon. The result could help in the development of more efficient solar cells and new types of photo and radiation detectors.

When a conventional solar cell or photodetector absorbs a single photon, a single electron-hole pair (or exciton) is generated. However, in quantum dots (which are small pieces of semiconductor just several nanometres in size), electrons can efficiently interact with each other after they have absorbed light, generating multiple electrons from a single photon. This effect is known as carrier multiplication, and could help make cheaper and more efficient solar cells as well as new types of photodetectors.

Nanotechweb.org:
Ultrafast quantum-dot photodetector detects multiple electrons, Belle Dumé

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Guest Bloggers Wanted

Posted by Tonya R. Moore on September 25, 2015 at 11:34am

Calling all spec-fic writers and anime & manga bloggers:

My aim is to make my blog a great place to guest blog about anime, manga or your speculative fiction works, or just genres that you love. As for the specific topic or your post, that would be up to you. Write about what you like on your own terms. You can be as abstract or specific as you wish.

Policy

Your guest post must be genre-relevant. The themes of guest posts must be related to anime, manga/comics or speculative fiction in some way. I’d love to see people writing about awesome things like steampunk heroines, intergalactic travel, space opera, urban fantasy, horror, robots, aliens, monsters–you name it.

How to Submit a Request to Post

Send me a message with a brief introduction, your proposed topic and the date that you would like to post. You should expect a response from me within 3 days.

If you need to post to coincide with a book launch or other promo that you’re running on your own blog or website, do let me know so that we can schedule your guest post accordingly.

Questions or Suggestions?

Please post them in the comments below.

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