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The Drumbeat of New Genes...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 19, 2015 at 7:02am
Skip Sterling for Quanta Magazine


Topics: Biology, Diversity, Diversity in Science, DNA, Women in Science


Note: I'm in a process integration class for work, August 20 and 21st. I will also take some time offline to celebrate my youngest son's 23rd birthday. Taking a "human" break celebrating my own version of new genes; resuming Monday.

Emerging data suggests the seemingly impossible — that mysterious new genes arise from “junk” DNA.

Genes, like people, have families — lineages that stretch back through time, all the way to a founding member. That ancestor multiplied and spread, morphing a bit with each new iteration.

For most of the last 40 years, scientists thought that this was the primary way new genes were born — they simply arose from copies of existing genes. The old version went on doing its job, and the new copy became free to evolve novel functions.
Olena Shmahalo/Quanta Magazine; source: Tautz and Domazet-Lošo, _Nature Reviews Genetics_, 2011.
New genes appear to burst into existence at various points along the evolutionary history of the mouse lineage (red line). The surge around 800 million years ago corresponds to the time when earth emerged from its “snowball” phase, when the planet was almost completely frozen. The very recent peak represents newly born genes, many of which will subsequently be lost. If all genes arose via duplication, they all would have been generated soon after the origins of life, roughly 3.8 billion years ago (green line).

Certain genes, however, seem to defy that origin story. They have no known relatives, and they bear no resemblance to any other gene. They’re the molecular equivalent of a mysterious beast discovered in the depths of a remote rainforest, a biological enigma seemingly unrelated to anything else on earth.

Quanta Magazine: A Surprise Source of Life’s Code, Emily Singer

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“The Boy is Gone: Conversations with a Mau Mau General” - A Miami Beach woman wrote a book about a Kenyan freedom fighter

Posted by MOSHE PRIGAN on August 18, 2015 at 4:47pm

When I was 5 I remember myself listening to the news, and the fight of the oppressed Kenyans for freedom impressed me.  I was 5-6 years old, a nerdy boy. 

Today I received this email highlighting this historic moments. 

http://www.naplesnews.com/entertainment/books/miami-beach-woman-writes-book-about-a-kenyan-freedom-fighter_95969465

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Finding Neutrinos...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 18, 2015 at 6:23am
Physicists installing the Borexino detector. Some of the detector's many photomultiplier tubes are visible in the cupola above the workers. These detect the flashes of light created when antineutrinos collide with the detector. (Courtesy: INFN)


Topics: High Energy Physics, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, STEM, Theoretical Physics


The first confirmed sightings of antineutrinos produced by radioactive decay in the Earth's mantle have been made by researchers at the Borexino detector in Italy. While such "geoneutrinos" have been detected before, it is the first time that physicists can say with confidence that about half of the antineutrinos they measured came from the Earth's mantle, with the rest coming from the crust. The Borexino team has also been able to make a new calculation of how much heat is produced in the Earth by radioactive decay, finding it to be greater than previously thought. The researchers say that in the future, the experiment should be able to measure the quantities of radioactive elements in the mantle as well.

According to the bulk silicate Earth (BSE) model, most of the radioactive uranium, thorium and potassium in our planet's interior lies in the crust and mantle. Accounting for about 84% of our planet's total volume, the mantle is the large rocky layer sandwiched between the crust and the Earth's core. Heat flows from the interior of the Earth into space at a rate of about 47 TW, but one of the big mysteries of geophysics is how much of this heat is left over from when the Earth formed, and how much comes from the radioactive decay chains of uranium-238, thorium-232 and potassium-40.

Physics World:
Physicists isolate neutrinos from Earth's mantle for first time, Hamish Johnston

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Supersonic Buckyballs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 17, 2015 at 7:10am


Fig 2: a) C60 impinging on Cu (111). b) Excited electronic states visited during a TD-DFT simulation of C20 final configuration after cage breaking on Cu (111) surface at 14 eV (Corresponding to C60 at 42 eV). c) C20 final configuration after cage breaking on Cu (111) surface. d) Total electronic energy of the system during a metadynamics simulation starting from the configuration of a broken C60 cage on Cu (111) surface. e) Final configuration on the metadynamics-DFT simulation.

Topics: Buckminsterfullerene, C60, Condensed Matter Physics, Graphene, Electrical Engineering, Materials Science, Nanotechnology


TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Graphene is one of the wonder materials of our age. It is some 200 times stronger than steel, it is an extraordinary conductor of heat and electricity, and it is almost transparent. And yet making graphene is still tricky, particularly when it needs to sit on a substrate for applications such as electronics.

Today, Simone Taioli at the Trento Institute for Fundamental Physics and Applications in Italy and a few pals say they’ve worked out how to do it starting with the famous football-shaped molecule buckminsterfullerene.

Their idea is remarkably simple: bombard the substrate with buckyballs travelling at supersonic speeds. That’s fast enough to crack them open when they hit, and the resulting unzipped cages then bond together to form a graphene film.

Researchers have long thought of using buckyballs as a precursor for graphene. But the only way to get them to unzip and bind together is to heat them to temperatures in excess of around 600 °C.

Physics arXiv:
Towards room-temperature single-layer graphene synthesis by C60 Supersonic Molecular Beam Epitaxy
Roberta Tatti, Lucrezia Aversa, Roberto Verucchi, Emanuele Cavaliere, Giovanni Garberoglio, Nicola M. Pugno, Giorgio Speranza, Simone Taioli

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Slow-Walking Wakanda...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 16, 2015 at 7:11am
Source: Kotaku.com

Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Commentary, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Science Fiction


The Black Panther – apart from the armed activist group of the 1960’s, and its most recent modern incarnation – was literally the first non-white superhero brought out in 1966 via The Fantastic Four (issue #52) and other clones were pursued thereafter by Marvel and DC: Black Lightning; Luke Cage: Hero for Hire; Cyborg; Static Shock; John Stewart/Green Lantern (not the recently retired comedian). I started a Facebook group almost as an electronic vigil to the movie, its release well past the retirement of the first African American president with paternal ties to the mother continent. Pity...

I've been reading through a lot of essays online about the meaning of the character and what could (or could not) happen with him in a movie with Chadwick Boseman (Jackie Robinson in “42” and James Brown in “Get on Up”). I say “slow-walking” because the project has been on-the-books since Wesley Snipes in the “Blade” heyday (note: Chris Evans was the Human Torch before he became Captain America, so an actor playing two fantasy superheroes apparently isn’t much of an issue). This was of course, before Wes’ incursion with the law for NOT paying $12 million in taxes. He’s back out and on television now in a series: “The Player” about high-stakes gambling. I have nothing against Boseman as an actor, and I think he’ll likely do a fine job at it. I wouldn't even mind Wesley playing the role of T’Chaka (T’Challa’s father) as that plays an important role in the story’s arc. What concerns me is essentially, Hollywood getting the meaning of the character in proper context, and if they themselves are comfortable with that meaning.

“Wakanda is a small country in Africa notable for never having been conquered in its entire history. When you consider the history of the region, the fact that the French, the English, the Belgians or any number of Christian or Islamic invaders were never able to defeat them in battle…well it’s unprecedented.”

That quote was from the movie “Marvel Knights: The Black Panther.” You can see the story board I transcribed those words from here; the movie if you want to purchase it at this link here. Note: I will get no royalties or gratuities. It's purely on you.

Those words: “…never having been conquered in its entire history.” Whether you hear them on the DVD, or read them, they are jarring; damning in its great and deliberate descriptions of colonial conquerors and the subtle delineation of the means a people are conquered: removal of history (a knowledge of self); language (forced to speak that of your conquerors); culture and religion (forced to absorb, or appropriate the dominate culture’s). The director – Mark Brooks – was deliberate in his wordings, to set the scene. I literally saw it late at night on cable and knew I HAD to have a copy.

Will that be the case with the upcoming movie?

“Never having been conquered” is unprecedented; it means their people were left alone with their language, culture, history and religion intact. Right there: it’s a nod to African animism, which predated any influences of the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity or Islam. The Black Panther, as many online sources explain, is the ceremonial title of the ruler of Wakanda. Right there: it’s NOT a democratic republic; it’s autocratic, like Pharaohs in Egypt. They developed advanced technology free of western influence (like the pyramids of Egypt, NOT “ancient aliens” or Apocalypse mutants!). Right there: Vibranium allowed them a freedom no other than a small few of African nations on the continent possesses, making them the envy of covetous, greedy operators. The fact they’ve “never been conquered” means they weren’t made an extension of Belgium, England, France, Ireland, Italy, Spain or “Americanized” and frankly didn’t care to be. That T’Challa can trace his ancestry back 10,000 years to the first Black Panther makes me jealous: I trace mine to my great-grandmother and great-grandfather, freed slaves in 1865. 400 generations versus 6 generations makes me feel “puny” by comparison. Many African and Asian cultures have the same strong reference; the same intact sense of self and culture.

“Never having been conquered,” the fictional element Vibranium is brought up first in “Captain America: The First Avenger” (it’s the metal in Cap’s shield), “The Avengers” and “Avengers: Age of Ultron” (part of the action takes place in Wakanda). Unlike other parts of Africa with oil, diamonds and other mineral wealth that due to colonialism and greed, the people living ABOVE it can never benefit from the wealth on the open market. Hell, Wakanda kicked the Skrulls OFF THE PLANET, and sent them packing back to outer space! Oh, and T’Challa has a PhD in Physics from Oxford; a scientific genius on par with Reed Richards and physical skills equal or superior to Cap's: what does THAT mean in the continued age of emulating professional athletes and rappers ad nauseum?

So again, I point to the nature of fiction: comic book fiction, heroic fiction, fantasy fiction, science fiction and the tendency to only think the verisimilitude of even fantastic stories “believable” if they are led by an all-white cast. The same Hollywood where Oscar voters are 94% white; 76% male and the average age is 63 years are trusted to tell a story that could have ramifications beyond the screen life of Black Panther. For example, the reboot of the Fantastic Four included Michael B. Jordan (“Fruitvale Station”) as Johnny Storm, and some were livid from online commentary about “authenticity” of the character. Granted, I liked the first "Four" because it was as close to the original story as I’ve seen, Chris Evans as The Torch and Mike Chiklis as The Thing were hilarious; Kerry Washington as Alicia Masters was a change almost ignored. I know Iris West, her TV father Joe and Wally West on the Flash Season 2 are reworked as African Americans a story line borrowed from The New 52. I’m betting since Grant Gustin isn’t reprising the role in the movies, they’ll somehow rediscover the original hue of all the characters.

For another earlier example, fan boys lost their collective minds when Heimdall in “Thor” was played by Idris Elba and Hogun the Grim was played by Japanese actor Tadanobu Asano. Okay, Heimdall in traditional Norse mythology is supposed to be the brother of Lady Sif, and with Idris’ tan, that looked highly unlikely. In traditional Norse mythology, Thor had red hair, a beard, two wives, a goat drawn chariot and required a power belt and gloves to lift Mjolnir! There are at least 13 variants across the globe of the thunder god: Set (Egypt again) and Shango (Yoruba: Nigeria) noted examples from Africa. In most mythologies, the gods tend to look like its authors. Thor looked Scandinavian for the Vikings; Nigerian for the Yoruba. That’s the point - the stories start from mythology: someone made them up, recently or a long time ago.

Getting back to Idris, him as James Bond would be awkward and negative stereotyping for a black male: The Bond character represents hedonism, misogyny and the extension of “politics by other means” vis-à-vis the British Empire, which started the global slave trade. Hollywood decided to go with the diversity angle not because they joined hands singing Kumbaya and “We Shall Overcome,” but they wanted more ticket sales/revenue. Part of this again is not Hollywood trying to right some social wrong: it is profit, box office, pure and simple. Instead of Norse gods, they were long living aliens taken as gods by our primitive ancestors and an Einstein-Rosen Bridge – Wormhole – Bifrost (“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Sir Arthur C. Clarke, of “2001: A Space Odyssey”). I’ll grant you this: a “white” Black Panther would be oxymoronic and just as hard a story to tell as a black James Bond! However, I don’t expect a Harlem high school doing Macbeth to ship in kids from Westchester, or vice-versa for The Lion King (both cities in New York)! As science-friendly nerd culture is supposed to be, there are still a few areas of social change some of us need to evolve on.

“Never having been conquered” means a culture and civilization that doesn't have to define or redefine itself. They are not arguing for reparations as they have no need for them (nothing was stolen from them): they have resources and wealth they can protect and trade as equals; they have nothing to prove to anyone. (Black lives probably matter a lot more in Wakanda than Ferguson.) If the story is told right, it should be jarring to the senses and spark conversations, all be any fleeting. Any dialogue will likely be brief as we tend to be tribal despite our advanced technology and cling to our own and its illusions. What I remember in middle school during the seventies when “Roots” first aired as a miniseries. It was the first time anyone had heard of Alex Haley, or associated him with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X.” Some of my white classmates at the time came up to me and apologized for slavery. It was a noble gesture, but I often wonder in the online forums I see many comments on things like the Battle Flag of Robert E. Lee’s North Virginia Regiment (mistaken by many through historical misappropriation as the Flag of the Confederacy), if my former classmates' gracious mea culpa has reversed, and ossified?

Again, any dialogue will be fleeting at best. But flit chatter is better than shouted insult; choked-to-death adults; bullets in worshipers at churches and teenagers due to rap music, cigarillos, ice tea and skittles any day. We might actually get somewhere with opening a dialogue long overdue. For this being the 21st Century, we owe it to ourselves and our progeny to get it right this time.

Reference links:

http://www.comicbookmovie.com/black_panther/news/?a=123396
http://blogs.indiewire.com/shadowandact/are-these-set-photos-of-what-wakanda-will-look-like-in-marvels-black-panther-movie-20150512
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G1Hu6yXLjEc

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Down by the River ~ Two more covers for the Spirit Waters Trilogy by Lucretia T Knight (@Irina_Mknight)

Posted by Aidana WillowRaven on August 15, 2015 at 9:30pm
Down by the River is the next soon-to-be-released volume of Lucretia T. Knight's Spirit AWaters Trilogy. And to take advantage of an available discount, we went ahead and readied the cover for book three, still to be written at the time of this post.
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The unique challenge with this project was to utilize the same central graphic for each new volume while still making each unique to that particular book's plot needs and giving each one it's own look. Each cover has to 'work' on its own while remaining cohesive as a set. I am so not a fan of using the same exact image for each new volume, and just changing the text or color scheme. I find it lazy and potentially confusing to the readers. 
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It would so aggravate me to grab the wrong book at a glance and have to go back and grab the right one. I image it would annoy book buyers, too. Or even worse, buyers not noticing the too slight variation, and not buying the sequels because they don't realize they are different books. We only have a click of the mouse to grab buyer attention. Why making harder for your book to sell?
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But let me stop ranting and give you the blurb for Down by the River:
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The ocean filled him, nearly killing him, and then released him. The experience of drowning when he was eight has haunted Drew ever since. Now at thirty-two, he has returned home to his cloying family in the small town of Demetra. He’s jobless, loveless, and searching. His family forces him into a baptismal immersion that triggers his childhood drowning and sends him spiraling toward an incomprehensible journey filled with terrifying and prophetic visions. Along the way he finds an unlikely love, the courage to release his deepest fears, and ultimately the strength to embrace his sublime destiny.
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For those that want more information about book one, A Witch's Tale, here's a recap:
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Amy’s life is a numb existence of work and home, until strange dreams of the moon and waves sweep her into a dark place within herself. Her mundane world begins to spin into exciting, erotic adventures. But, who is really in control? Disjointed memories of the day rattle Amy’s mind and she begins to question her sanity. She discovers an old familial connection to witchcraft. A journey into her mind and soul lead her to a place where she will have to battle for the right to her own existence. Converging blood lines will either destroy her, or liberate her.
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Personally, I am most excited about the Luna's Tide volume. Lucretia has only told me a little bit about it, but I can't imagine not loving it.  
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Be sure to connect with Lucretia online:
Twitter       Website
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Onto wrapping up the next book :-D
Until next time ...
This post edited by Grammarly* ~ NOW FREE FOR CHROME USERS!
*Blurbs and quotes provided are not edited by WillowRaven, but posted as provided by author/publisher. 
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Agents of BMRLA

Posted by Soyinka I. Ogunbusola on August 15, 2015 at 12:07pm

The Bureau of Metaphysical Research and Logistics Agency a covert, clandestine agency operates outside and beyond the authority of shadow governments around the world in complete secrecy with total autonomy.  Their area of expertise includes all phenomena associated with the occult, including but not limited to the paranormal, extraterrestrial and intra-terrestrial, time paradoxes, astral projection, mind manipulation, remote viewing, and reanimation. The world’s foremost experts of their fields have been contracted and deployed for their expertise in the fields of Fringe science, and Occult studies.  Agents of BMRLA are scattered around the globe like cells waiting to be activated for their assignments.  These covert agents operate with clandestine objectives and agendas. Dorian Grey child prodigy born in Ethiopia of Egyptian parents protects the world from occult and supernatural threats; threats that do not come from technology against man but the unseen world around man.  Affectionately called D.G. she is the director of field operations, and the liaison between government agencies such as the FBI, NSA, KGB, Interpol, the CIA, and the DOD under the guise of Vatican archive curator. Her knowledge of ancient artifacts scrolls and numerous antiquities gained her complete autonomy.  Dr. Grey raised in Britain educated in Oxford holds PhDs in Forensic Anthropology, Archeology, Astral physics, and a world renowned linguist of ancient languages.  Dr. Grey recreated BMRLA in complete confidentiality and utilizes the Vatican’s resources. She protects the benevolent magic in the so called third world countries with Africa as her main objective. The agency’s primary purpose is to maintain balance on the planet, and return stolen artifacts to their ancestral homeland.  This particular  organization has existed for centuries under various names and titles eradicating the planet of malevolent forces keeping the balance between light and dark; however upon every encounter of evil  a trail  leads back to Rome, hence an agent infiltrates the Vatican with the help of a centuries old secret society to right the wrongs of the past. 

 Her colleague Dr. Courtney Uganda is a mathematician and social scientist who teaches in the Department of Political Science at the University in South Africa. Independent of her work at the university, she is also the leading scholar on the subject of "remote viewing" as it is done using procedures that were developed by the United States military and used for espionage purposes, with procedures that are derivative of those methodologies of a phenomenon of nonlocal consciousness known as "remote viewing" which they will need to locate a mysterious artifact locked in an underground bunker beneath the Vatican that has somehow gained consciousness as members of the Papal office mysteriously disappear.

 Meanwhile in another part of the world Leila Ali an agent of BMRLA must make her way to the city of Djenne to the great mosque and retrieve the ancient scrolls of Orion and replace them with duplicates before a faction of priest called the Legionnaires of Christ. They are tasked with pillaging the great mosque and destroying Mali’s most religious treasures. She must intercept the scrolls before her nemesis execute their objective of destruction. However caught in the middle of a U.S. drone strike gone horribly wrong a desperate race now ensues through the Sahara one of the world’s most inhospitable environments. 

You've just experienced a taste of "The Dorian Grey Files Womb of Darkness" books one & two 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwKntSgXgMI

available at amazon

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TED and Drake...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 14, 2015 at 6:34am
The Drake Equation


Topics: Astrobiology, Astronomy, Astrophysics, Drake Equation, SETI, TED


Note: today is my birthday. This blog auto posts, and I'm not doing anything special, as I'll be at work through Sunday. I haven't celebrated my birthday since the age of seven (or, as my mother said: "this kid is weird!"). Enjoy your weekend as well.

The Drake equation quantifies the probabilistic argument that gives the approximate number of active extraterrestrial civilizations in our galaxy or the whole Universe. At its original form Drake equation has 7 factors, including the average star formation rate, the fraction of stars that have planets, the number of planets per star and others. Even though the equation seems extremely simple at the first glance, coming up with sensible values for the factors is much harder than one might think.

In this recent TEDx video Fred Crawford, who has been teaching physics for over 30 years, discusses the main factors of Drake’s equation and describes how we arrive to sensible values of each of them. For more similar videos use the links below.
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Fifth Giant Planet...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 13, 2015 at 2:21pm
NASA, ESA, AND G. BACON (STSCI)
An artist's impression of an object in the Kuiper belt at the outer edge of the solar system.


Topics: Astronomy, Planetary Science, Space Exploration


A cluster of icy bodies in the same region as Pluto could be proof that our early solar system was home to a fifth giant planet, according to new research. That planet may have “bumped” Neptune during its migration away from the sun 4 billion years ago, causing the ice giant to jump into its current orbit and scattering a cluster of its satellites into the Kuiper belt in the outer solar system.

The cluster—a grouping of about a thousand icy rocks called the “kernel”—has long been a mystery to astronomers. The rocks stick close together and never veer from the same orbital plane as the planets, unlike the other icy bodies that inhabit the belt. Previous studies proposed that the tightly bound objects formed from violent collisions of larger parent bodies, but that hypothesis fell apart as soon as scientists realized these collisional families would have to be stretched across the Kuiper belt.

Science:
Our early solar system may have been home to a fifth giant planet, Nola Taylor Redd

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Connecting the Spots...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 12, 2015 at 7:07am
Sunspots on the solar surface, September 2011. (Courtesy: NASA/SDO/HMI)


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Global Warming, Heliophysics


With respect to climate change, the activity of sunspots has been a red herring to deflect from the actual data that points in our direction. I saw that there were 11 comments, most of the troll variety; most likely without a background in STEM, Environmental Engineering or Heliophysics. The disdain for expertise expressed on a platform that they likely could never design is simultaneously amusing and saddening. It's like having a "better opinion" you can deliver a baby over a gynecologist.

A recalibration of data describing the number of sunspots and groups of sunspots on the surface of the Sun shows that there is no significant long-term upward trend in solar activity since 1700, contrary to what was previously thought. Indeed, the corrected numbers now point towards a consistent history of solar activity over the past few centuries, according to an international team of researchers. Its results suggest that rising global temperatures since the industrial revolution cannot be attributed to increased solar activity. The analysis, its results and its implications for climate research were discussed today at a press briefing at the IAU XXIX General Assembly currently taking place in Honolulu, Hawaii.

Measuring the sunspot number – or Wolf number – is one of the longest running scientific experiments in the world today, and provides crucial information to those studying the solar dynamo, space weather and climate change. Scientists have been observing and documenting sunspots – cool, dark regions of strong magnetism on the solar surface – for more than 400 years, ever since Galileo first pointed his telescope at the Sun in 1610. Scientists have also known about the solar cycle – an approximately 11-year period during which the Sun's magnetic activity oscillates from low to high strength, and then back again – since the mid-18th century, and they have been able to reconstruct solar cycles back to the beginning of the 17th century based on historic observations of sunspot numbers.

Physics World:
New sunspot analysis shows rising global temperatures not linked to solar activity
Tushna Commissariat

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Telling Our Stories...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 11, 2015 at 8:03am
Image Source: Science Diversity Group, USC Berkley

Topics: American Association of Physics Teachers, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Economy, Education, STEM, Women in Science

It's usually left to women teachers and people of color: African American, Asians, Hispanic/Latino to publicize or relate any information about specific characters or celebration months. I would have loved to participate in the American Association of Physics Teachers/AIP’s Teaching Guides on Women and Minorities in the Physical Sciences and participate in giving them feedback.

This blog started when I was employed as a physics and math teacher. It was a convenience to pull something up and project it on the screen in class, especially if it related to diversity. Some of my former students have found me on the Internet and in this format, I still "teach" them. I continue it universally for kids curious about science; adults that want to learn about STEM fields and teachers that can use my posts during African American History Month, Women's History Month and Hispanic Heritage Month as material or as a warm-up "hook" (it's kind of important for teenagers).

Our stories are the stories of this country; the inventions contributed by those who were deemed not worthy to produce anything at all contributed impacting, ground-breaking discoveries. They are under assault by the homophobic; racist; the sexist the xenophobic that would divide us and make "United States" an oxymoron. Ignoring our diversity will NOT bring us together as I've heard someone emphasize on the campaign trail: learning accurate histories eliminates ignorance, and ignorance is the father of intolerance.

We've come a long way, and we still have much further to go if we possess the courage for the journey. As a nation, we're in this together. Concrete, real world solutions, not soundbites and sloganeering - are what we need.

Nine teachers from California, Texas, Wisconsin, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Virginia, Maryland, and Massachusetts participated, representing public and private elementary, middle, and high schools. They critiqued AIP’s Teaching Guides, digging deeply into some of the lesson plans, and offered ideas for how to include the stories of female and African American role models in a hands-on classroom. During the workshop, the teachers learned many things, including:
  • Students should know about several influential scientists such as Jocelyn Bell Burnell, Inge Lehmann, Mildred Dresselhaus, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
  • Antinepotism laws kept women with PhDs from working at the same institutions as their husbands until the mid-20th century.
  • Women astronomers observed at Harvard Observatory before 1900.
  • Women worked on the Manhattan Project, at NASA, and in computing.
  • The first African American to obtain a PhD in physics was in 1876 (Edward Bouchet, Yale).
  • African-American physicists first found employment outside of historically Black colleges and universities with the US military, with NASA, and in other government scientific agencies.

American Institute of Physics:
Telling the stories of women and African Americans in the physical sciences
Scientific American:
Diversity in Science: Why It Is Essential for Excellence, Fred Guterl

Read more…

Behemoths and First Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 10, 2015 at 6:23pm
The European Extremely Large Telescope is under construction on Cerro Armazones, Chile. (Artist’s conception courtesy of ESO/L. Calçada.)
Citation: Phys. Today 68, 8, 24 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2875


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Research, SETI, Telescopes


Among the science goals for three 30-m-scale telescopes is to seek signs of extraterrestrial life. But the big projects must first overcome big hurdles.

In what seems akin to winning the lottery, astronomers are moving ahead with not one, but three gigantic optical-IR telescopes, each with a price tag upwards of a billion dollars. The European Extremely Large Telescope (E-ELT) and the Giant Magellan Telescope (GMT) are both sited in Chile, and the Thirty Meter Telescope (TMT) is to be built on Mauna Kea in Hawaii.

For a given wavelength, the diffraction limit, which sets a telescope’s maximum possible resolution, shrinks as the primary mirror grows. “We will be able to take exquisitely sensitive images back to the beginning of the observable universe,” says TMT board member Michael Bolte of the University of California, Santa Cruz. With adaptive optics, the ground-based telescopes will have spatial resolution exceeding that of the Hubble Space Telescope by at least a factor of 10 and topping that of the 6.5-m James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), scheduled to launch in 2018.

The billion-dollar scale raises questions, says Matt Mountain, president of the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy. “What are the appropriate funding models? It’s fair to ask if we have enough resources globally to build, operate, and adequately instrument three of these as completely independent entities.”

The science goals are similar for the three telescopes: They will be used to search for biomarkers in the atmospheres of extrasolar planets and to study black holes, dark matter, dark energy, star and galaxy formation, the era of re-ionization, and more. But the telescopes differ in design, instrumentation, approaches to adaptive optics, and funding and organizational structures.

Each project faces its own technical, financial, and social hurdles; in particular, the GMT still has half a billion dollars to raise, and some native Hawaiians strongly oppose the building of the TMT on a mountain they hold sacred. But to first order, says Jochen Liske, acting program scientist for the E-ELT, “The challenge for all three projects is getting things right and producing a telescope that works.” They all aim to have first light in the early to mid 2020s.

Physics Today: Behemoth telescopes build toward first light, Tom Feder

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#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter

Posted by William Hayashi on August 9, 2015 at 10:33am

#TenThingsNotToSayToAWriter is a trending hashtag on the internet and one which Jodi Picoult, Amy Tan and others are having fun with...so I thought I'd chime in. After three decades of living the writer's life, I have many more than ten juicy possibilities for this list. But here is my all-time personal favorite:

"I found your book at a garage sale! In the Free Box!"

Click here for the full story

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Buzz and Teaching...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 7, 2015 at 6:11am
Image Source: Technology Review


Topics: Artificial Intelligence, Computer Science, Humor, Robotics, Science Fiction


I thought these articles were related, and I admit somewhat intriguing. The first regards Buzz, which is described in the paper's abstract as "a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms," though I'm not sure if "swarm" is the operative word they should have had in their description. The second is a post on Technology Review titled: "Teaching Machines to Understand Us." [Ahem] We have a few that can - well, extrapolate to some extreme thought processes - I'm thinking of the recent shots fired in the Jade Helm 15 military exercises [1], and outrageous behavior encouraged by conspiracy provocateurs (that haven't participated). It doesn't help that some very good science fiction has speculated on this quite a bit, and a few of my fellow humans can't delineate between fantasy and reality. [2]

Abstract

We present Buzz, a novel programming language for heterogeneous robot swarms. Buzz advocates a compositional approach, offering primitives to define swarm behaviors both from the perspective of the single robot and of the overall swarm. Single-robot primitives include robot-specific instructions and manipulation of neighborhood data. Swarm-based primitives allow for the dynamic management of robot teams, and for sharing information globally across the swarm. Self-organization stems from the completely decentralized mechanisms upon which the Buzz run-time platform is based. The language can be extended to add new primitives (thus supporting heterogeneous robot swarms), and its run-time platform is designed to be laid on top of other frameworks, such as Robot Operating System. We showcase the capabilities of Buzz by providing code examples, and analyze scalability and robustness of the run-time platform through realistic simulated experiments with representative swarm algorithms. [3]

The first time Yann LeCun revolutionized artificial intelligence, it was a false dawn. It was 1995, and for almost a decade, the young Frenchman had been dedicated to what many computer scientists considered a bad idea: that crudely mimicking certain features of the brain was the best way to bring about intelligent machines. But LeCun had shown that this approach could produce something strikingly smart—and useful. Working at Bell Labs, he made software that roughly simulated neurons and learned to read handwritten text by looking at many different examples. Bell Labs’ corporate parent, AT&T, used it to sell the first machines capable of reading the handwriting on checks and written forms. To LeCun and a few fellow believers in artificial neural networks, it seemed to mark the beginning of an era in which machines could learn many other skills previously limited to humans. It wasn’t. [4]

1. Jade Helm: The Insanity that Ate Texas, Jim Wright, Stonekettle Station
2. Why Operation Jade Helm 15 is freaking out the Internet — and why it shouldn’t be, Dan Lamothe, Washington Post
3. Physics arXiv:
Buzz: An Extensible Programming Language for Self-Organizing Heterogeneous Robot Swarms, Carlo Pinciroli, Adam Lee-Brown, Giovanni Beltrame
4. Teaching Machines to Understand Us, Tom Simonite

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Diverse Storytelling with a Great Soundtrack

Posted by Christopher Love on August 6, 2015 at 11:44am

Diverse Heroes are Here Ready to Read

Along with Marvel/Disney, DC Entertainment, Dark Horse, Image and more; now Heroes Like Me Entertainment enters the field with diverse Heroes and a new form of storytelling.  In an environment where comic book heroes are majority Caucasian males. Now their will come MONTHLY stories like The Human Pearl, Bass Reeves - Deputy Marshal, The Flying Bullet, Shining Star and The Fiery Furnace and The Black Dove.
These stories will encourage reading for school age kids and for those who have graduated. Reading is Fundamental.
You can read these stories now with  musical soundtrack, sound effects and ambience audio.
Heroes Like Me will use the E-reader platform of Booktrack.
Dive into these stories with rich stereo sounds and finally become apart of the adventure.
What are you waiting for?
Come back each month for more.
Shining Star and The Fiery Furnace - what happens when a Black male and Latino go thru the struggles of everyday . And they have superpowers. The sparks fly monthly in this tale of adventure.
The Flying Bullet - All Curt Masters wanted to do was to defend his country against the Nazis as a Tuskegee Airman. That all  when he was kidnapped by an UFO and has to make a difficult choice billions of  away from home.

The Human Pearl- Fairy tales do come true in the story of a 300 year old lost african princess. Now she is forced to face the modern world. Is she a mermaid or something far more dangerous.
The Black Dove - She is a bounty hunter who has the tracking  of a wolverine. But skills are not enough when her greatest threat is her own body.
Bass Reeves- If you haven't heard of the greatest lawman of the old west, then you are not alone. In his 30+ year career, he has captured over 3000 criminals and shot 14 dead in self defense. His hat and belt was  off. He is the basis to the Lone Ranger character. Now he returns in monthly adventures.
Christopher Love is the Chief Creative Officer of Heroes Like Me Entertainment.  A website that catalogs diverse content from other creators along with its own material.
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Twittersphere and Fireworks...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on August 6, 2015 at 8:04am
Figure 2: Sample conversation graphs with retweet (top) and follow (bottom) features (visualized using the force directed layout algorithm in Gephi). The left side is controversial, (a,e) #beefban, (b,f) #russia march, while the right side is non-controversial, (c,g) #sxsw, (d,h) #germanwings.


Topics: Computer Science, History, Humor, Internet, Politics, Social Media


Poignantly, today is the 70th anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima; as a species we entered the era where mass extinction became a troubling, crystallized thought. The BBC has a short presentation on their web site commemorating this history.

Equally significant and jarring: The first presidential debates are tonight from a party on the 50th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, that has made disenfranchising minorities from the voting booths for a non-existent problem a political tactic. That, thanks to 5 justices on the Supreme Court (ONE which I can arguably say left the African American community despite his physical attributes decades ago), gutting the provision that covered nine states, eight of which in the old Confederacy. A conservative circuit court with clearer legal vision saw through the canard in Texas and put full stop to that dark procedure in the Lone Star State.

I will fortunately be at work during this "debate." I can only stomach so much bombast and hyperbolic over-the-top rhetoric. I'll likely look at the analysis, soundbites and yes: Tweets.

Sadly, like most of us, I'll be looking for the "fireworks."

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Many a controversy has raged on social media platforms such as Twitter. Some last for weeks or months, others blow themselves in an afternoon. And yet most go unnoticed by most people. That would change if there was a reliable way of spotting controversies in the Twitterstream in real time.

That could happen thanks to the work of Kiran Garimella and pals at Aalto University in Finland. These guys have found a way to spot the characteristics of a controversy in a collection of tweets and distinguish this from a noncontroversial conversation.

Various researchers have studied controversies on Twitter but these have all focused on preidentified arguments, whereas Garimella and co want to spot them in the first place. Their key idea is that the structure of conversations that involve controversy are different from those that are benign.

Physics arXiv: Quantifying Controversy in Social Media
Kiran Garimella, Gianmarco De Francisci Morales, Aristides Gionis, Michael Mathioudakis

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