An artist's impression of a Bessel beam emerging from the acousto-optic device built by researchers at the University of Bristol and the University of Dundee. (Courtesy: Universities of Bristol and Dundee)
A new way to create and guide beams of "twisted light" has been created by researchers in the UK. The team used a cylindrical array of ultrasound loudspeakers to create a pattern of density waves in a fluid through which a laser beam is shone. The system creates twisted "Bessel beams" that can be reconfigured at a rate of about 150 kHz and shows promise for use in a wide range of applications including optical tweezers, high-speed data transmission and aberration correction for microscopes.
Twisted light refers to a beam with a wavefront that rotates around its direction of propagation with a corkscrew-like motion – and therefore carries orbital angular momentum. Bessel beams are a type of twisted light that have been created in the lab using special lenses and have been used in optical tweezers. An important feature of Bessel beams is that they do not diverge as they propagate, which makes them well-suited for optical tweezers.
Indie publishers need transparency and support from online companies that sell their books. Amazon fails such publishers on both counts. Ostensibly, it offers two ways of selling, but only one – the costly Amazon Advantage – does the job. So, in effect, Amazon offers no choice at all, since the successful sales method is financially prohibitive. The cheaper, more confusing marketing option disadvantages small publishers by making them less visible on Amazon and landing them with hidden problems and costs.
In honor of Women’s History Month, The Root pays tribute to African-American women working in the fastest growing field around the globe. While their numbers may be relatively few (pdf), they are making great strides, using their science, math and engineering degrees to amass impressive digital portfolios. Jobs in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) are projected to expand at more than double the rate of the entire U.S. labor force through 2018, according to a recent STEMconnector report
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Christina Lewis Halpern (Courtesy Christina Lewis Halper); Laura Weidman Powers (Courtesy of Stanford University); Angela Benton (Courtesy of Angela Benton)
How soon we forget this was once all theoretical, now it's how we play our CDs and DVDs, programming our electronic devices...those were lofty days, when we looked forward to the future and the hope in science. Dr. Townes' light has dimmed, but not his lasting impact, a kind of immortality that is worth striving for. As a nation, we cow in fear of the light science brings to our previous ignorance; we're always longing for the past; looking ever backwards to a utopia that never was, simultaneously ignoring a future that we could create.
The US physicist Charles Townes, who shared the 1964 Nobel Prize for Physics for his work that led to the development of the laser, has died at the age of 99. Townes played an integral part in the race to make the first laser by developing its forerunner – the "maser" – which could produce and amplify electromagnetic radiation in the microwave region of the spectrum.
Townes' key work began while he was at Columbia University in the early 1950s, when he proposed a device that could produce coherent electromagnetic waves through amplification by stimulated emission. He coined the term "microwave amplification by stimulated emission of radiation" – or maser – although Townes was not the only person to have the idea. Independently, and at a similar time, Nikolay Basov and Alexander Prokhorov of the Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, and Joseph Weber of the Catholic University of America, had also been working on the theoretical framework behind the maser.
Didn't matter where I was, I kept rubbing my eyes. I thought a space capsule had landed. Simple and intriguing form, round, squat, cone for a roof and a dome or chimney vent. A fabric weather wrap secured by bands around it's waist and a single door. Like an African mud hut but portable, durable and movable. I thought of Indian Tee-pees, Bedouin tents and the tin shacks of South Africa or any other place where the nomad life was a necessity.
Nah, this is romance, you walk thru the door of the space capsule into a world of carpeted floors, wall hangings, incense, a small stove fire, coffee, a stew, sitting on pillows, heads and bodies wrapped in colors, words of gracious hospitality and a respect of boundaries inferred yet seduced by the mystery of desires' expectation.
A house is like entering a mind, world as it is on the outside, inside a place of limitless measure contained in it's confines. In Central Asia the 'Yurt' is like that and it doesn't matter if made from sticks and animal hides or the most high tech materials from NASA, it evokes an air of transportable roots yet a solid stay. I consider the humble yurt the tent of tents, the hut of huts. I've seen them on desert plains, snow tundras, wood clearings, lake decks and on the flat roofs of buildings that scrape the sky...............!
Topics: Diversity, Langston Hughes, Martin Luther King, Speculative Fiction
Of late, I have been thinking of stories and diverted eyes. This is an encore as I've used a form of the title before in a similar post.
We've told stories for our own entertainment and for the dispensation of knowledge of our culture. We've told stories in poetry, prose and fiction: classical and science fiction. We've told stories as many people - the sea of humanity that we all belong to - have told stories in the past: to preserve histories; to teach lessons; to make people love us as us; more importantly, to uplift and love ourselves.
The physics and science posts will occur at their usual time: 7:00 AM EST; 4:00 AM PST. I actually have enough STEM material for February 2016! It will be hard and tempting to not publish it before then.
The posts for the month will be on the Diaspora's contributions to STEM as well as speculative fiction, A.K.A. science fiction. I will start with someone you may or may not know and intersperse that person with persons you also may or may not know. The Internet has freed many to not seek the approval of mainstream publishers, though many who started their literary journey as independent have; some stayed entrepreneurs and prefer it. As I said, I've been thinking about stories, self-images and stereotype threat.
Carter G. Woodson had a whole other purpose for what was then known as Negro History Week, then Negro History Month, now African American/Black History Month:
"If you can control a man's thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one."
I prepared this post 20 January and scheduled it to appear on 1 February. All the other posts regarding the month were so pre-planned in a similar fashion. It allows me to then read physics/STEM posts; keep up with my own studies and speak on hopefully up-to-date topics as I celebrate the month. It is also frankly, a pacing that keeps me from getting too exhausted.
For those that must believe in Bigfoot, fairies, pixie dust, racism, unicorns and xenophobia, please feel free to carry on personal delusions. You are free to divert your eyes elsewhere this month: I won't be talking to you, straightening your backs or changing your minds. I will be telling of triumphs and stories in science and modern myth for the interested, the intelligent, and those that want to stretch their knowledge of their fellow humanity, but more particularly as a group: the young, our collective futures in this country and world.
Just as (Dr. King and Langston both say below), we are free...within ourselves to straighten our own.
"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr - and, a seldom-quoted riff (embed) below...
Let the blare of Negro jazz bands and the bellowing voice of Bessie Smith singing the Blues penetrate the closed ears of the colored near intellectuals until they listen and perhaps understand. Let Paul Robeson singing "Water Boy," and Rudolph Fisher writing about the streets of Harlem, and Jean Toomer holding the heart of Georgia in his hands, and Aaron Douglas's drawing strange black fantasies cause the smug Negro middle class to turn from their white, respectable, ordinary books and papers to catch a glimmer of their own beauty. We younger Negro artists who create now intend to express our individual dark-skinned selves without fear or shame. If white people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, it doesn't matter. We know we are beautiful. And ugly too. The tom-tom cries and the tom-tom laughs. If colored people are pleased we are glad. If they are not, their displeasure doesn't matter either. We build our temples for tomorrow, strong as we know how, and we stand on top of the mountain, free within ourselves.
I've watched the armchair meteorologists inveigh that politicians have seen their "Napoleonic Waterloo" with regards to how they respond (or, don't respond) to storms predicted to be dangerous to the public.
Also dangerous to the public is the sensationalism storms have taken for the Neanderthal Nielsen Ratings - created when we only had ABC, CBS, NBC and a few UHF channels, not Amazon, Netflix and Hulu. We are all taking in information - some of it, vital to our survival - in myriad ways via the Internet and the aforementioned technologies it empowers, plus the thousand of distracting channels, many of which you can listen to music exclusively.
Case in point: last week's Blizzard Juno, that turned out thankfully to be a bust. Comparisons to Katrina were abundant prior to the nor'easter landfall. It was also amusing that the very pundits that suggested under-reaction to the storm would be disastrous were disappointed when the storm bypassed New York, but did considerable damage to Connecticut and Massachusetts. The streets across the state of New York were sufficiently empty enough for the snow plows to do their work, and we were back up and traveling fine in about a day. I for one, was very happy with the overreaction. It's really bad when it comes down to this: on.msnbc.com/1Lj4zgy
Here's the career page of the American Meteorological Society as well as National Geographic's Education Page on Meteorology. That is related to, but completely different from climate science. It seems antithetical that you'd have devastating storms with a warming globe. The key to understanding is what would our weather be if this moisture was instead of being in the warming air, it was where it originated at the poles (Arctic and Antarctic in this case).
Science is always trying to make itself accessible to the general public. Carl Sagan opined it is imperative to the whole enterprise of a democratic republic. The reboot of COSMOS was another modern attempt and many other popular shows attempt to "crack this nut." However, the US is increasingly hostile to all science, not just climate science, but the very kind that makes us a superpower in a global society that is dependent on quickly assessing information and acting on it accordingly, decisively and correctly. Our very future could be balanced on this narrow precipice between prosperity and poverty.
We may sadly find ourselves behind in twenty to fifty years in a technological "race to the bottom" - back to the dark ages of authoritarianism, crack pots, pixie dust, rabbits' feet, snake oil salesmen, voodoo and root workers.
"We The People": it was a good idea while it lasted.
Posted by Greg Denmark on January 30, 2015 at 2:02pm
The fact that this is a Sci Fi site means that I limit my very strong and very radical African-centered ideologies to within the scope of Sci Fi and Fantasy, which is rightly so.
This video is an exception to that.
I see a lot of Black folks supporting a narrative that we are all the same as humans and that hard work and quality will trump discrimination and a host of other false opinions. Today is one of those days where it supremely annoys me to hear it, hence this video.
Ironically, I see far too many posts on Facebook that strays away from Sci Fi and I, on occasion, support those who ask the question, "What does this have to do with SciFi?"
Also, of great irony is the person in the video. But, I put this up here because these same "we are the world" folks will write it off if it does not come from a White person. Many will STILL write it off, but, oh well.
I completed my first novella which is available on Amazon Kindle Here. Please check it out and tell me what you think. This is volume 1 of a series I plan on writing, so throughout the action there's hints at other stories and characters to explore later on. Don't forget to check out the website at www.xamaica.net
While reading a work, be it short or long form, one character attribute that should become immediately apparent is the political stance of that character.
Whoa, you say, politics? I am not writing some political work, I am just telling the tale of a simple space marine who battles hyper-intelligent alien bees trying to invade our dimensions (Ed: Yes, please, tell me more...).
Authors, especially the new or under-read, have a tendency to argue the studious un-political nature of their work. The reasons may vary. Perhaps they do not want to upset potential readers and customers. And why not, Orson Scott Card went from beloved author to homophobic bigot in a lot of minds based on religious beliefs that informed his political position. (even this criticism pales in comparison to the amount of real and digital ink spent on the fascist nature of Ender's Game itself.)
Alternatively, perhaps an author has a general uncomfortableness about speaking on political issues or a genuine desire to write tales having an apolitical affect.
However, it is impossible to write good, character driven, para-fiction without having those same characters take a political position. It is impossible to build a successful world for your characters to inhabit without having a political position.
Situating a character into the world you have built requires more than just placing motivation in her head and obstacles at his feet. You have to ground your characters within the philosophical framework of the world they live and the options they have available. In the same way that it is impossible to ignore the economic standing of your character (try reading Jane Austen and not come away with a useful understanding of the rentier economy of Georgian England), it is impossible to untangle the politics of a character from their motivation.
Politics includes more than where one (the author or the character stand) stands on the hot button social issue of they day. Politics means a political outlook. A particular view of the world as it is seen through the character's eyes (if it is a first person narrative) or multiple character's experiences. The political view of the character does not need to be endorsed by the author, but the author does need to explain the political position of the characters.
Is your hero battling a dystopian government? Why is the government horrible? Is it the fault of the government, or some outside agent that is causing grey skies and sad people. If it is the government, why is it doing this? Sometimes in the rush to have people battle on post-apocalyptic roof-tops, authors forget to do the hard work of building the foundations of conflict. If only America has fallen into ruin, Why? What was it about the politics of America that caused this downfall? What policies does the government implement that make it evil, or good? Unelected dictator? So your hero is a pro-democracy advocate? Elected counsel of evil Corporations? Complete Anarchy and Individualism and ultra-property rights? Collective action, Forced Community? It is impossible to have your characters stand against something without also standing for something else.
To build great characters, you need to build a political dossier along with a physical and economic dossier. Once you character has a stance on the issues, not of your day, but of her day, then the conflict from those stances becomes easier to envision and capture.
Posted by Brandon Hill on January 24, 2015 at 12:46am
I am a happy human today, folks! About a week ago, I got a notification on DA (DeviantArt) that one of my pics was used in a discussion in the CR Literature Book Club. They choose a different work by a different author each month, and this month, they chose none other than Octavia E. Butler's "Dawn," the first book in her masterpiece Xenogenesis trilogy. I will be providing a link if you want to participate in the discussion (you will have to be a DA member in order to do so, though). Best of all, there is a section in the discussion that showcases DA members' art of this particular work, and she chose my pic of Nikanj, the alien companion/mate to Lilith Iyapo, the story's main protagonist. I drew this picture, because I saw very few artists' renderings of any of Ms. Butler's amazing characters, and especially her astounding alien species from her books. The Oankali from this series is one of the most fascinating species I had ever read about, and so I decided to draw my own idea of what they looked like -chiefly an ooloi, their third gender. So please go and check out this entry, here: CR Literature Book Club - Dawn and give your thoughts on her questions, and check out my drawing. Or you can just see it here: Nikanj, by Brandon Hill. Until next time, happy reading!
I find it crazy that in 2015 there still seems to be a problem with casting dark skinned woman in major roles.what's even crazier is that we're having this problem when it comes to casting Africans, especially with all the emerging talent of African descent. I mean isn't Storm an African? I get it, social engineering and euro-standard of beauty being the default, but aren't Black People sick of this ish yet? it's like we just get happy they didn't cast a white woman. I'm going to stop here before Jarvis bans me. One thing I know is I'll catch this one on bootleg. Let me know how yall feel about it.
Our brains are busier than ever before. We’re assaulted with facts, pseudo facts, jibber-jabber, and rumour, all posing as information. Trying to figure out what you need to know and what you can ignore is exhausting. At the same time, we are all doing more. Thirty years ago, travel agents made our airline and rail reservations, salespeople helped us find what we were looking for in shops, and professional typists or secretaries helped busy people with their correspondence. Now we do most of those things ourselves. We are doing the jobs of 10 different people while still trying to keep up with our lives, our children and parents, our friends, our careers, our hobbies, and our favourite TV shows.
Topics: Civil Rights, Day of Service, Four Little Girls, Martin Luther King, The Price
President Obama has signed a bill that awards the Congressional Medal of Honor to the four little girls killed in the 1963 KKK bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, AL.
The girls – Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson, and Denise McNair – were killed on Sunday morning when members of the Klan planted dynamite in the Church’s basement.
Their deaths shocked the nation and the world, and stands as one of the most violent, horrific events of the Civil Rights Movement. Info and Image Source: Black Youth Project
By 1963, homemade bombs set off in Birmingham's black homes and churches were such common occurrences that the city had earned the nickname "Bombingham."
In the spirit of a "Day of Service," I served meals to the homeless at Beulah Baptist Church in Poughkeepsie, NY with my brothers of Kappa Alpha Psi this past Saturday. We fed over 200 persons (estimated) in assembly line fashion: chicken, rice, green beans, bread and a dessert. It was a multi-ethnic group, and included many families. For the most part, they went for the meals only. It was personally rewarding (though tiring), as I will be working through the morning and evening on the official holiday today.
This occurred September 16, 1963, a day after my mother's 38th birthday. I would have been a year and a month old; a month from the missiles of October's anniversary (we had teetered on the precipice of Armageddon - that was almost 10 months shy of my ONLY year); President Kennedy's assassination in Dallas, Texas the very next month. The times probably worried her, I'm sure.
We tend to forget the price paid by those who in an instance found themselves on the front lines of a battle for fairness over supremacy; freedom over de facto slavery via Jim Crow.
We tend to forget that soldiers aren't muscled, mighty men. Sometimes, they can be four beautiful little girls in the safest place they could possibly think to be - in their house of worship.
We also tend to forget that icons like Dr. Martin Luther King we admire now was vilified by some of his own - culture and clergy - and the extreme right of the time wore white sheets instead of (now) Armani, pin stripes and Prada.
We also forget in living rooms of complacency, flat screens, MMORPGs and comfortable backsides, only interrupted by the occasional level of violence that used to be so...commonplace, that sadly perhaps is becoming so again. It need not be someone you know to act on the behalf of others. Being human, compassionate and common decency should be more than enough.
May today be a Day of Service for you as you see fit to express it.
Topics: Apathy, Diversity, History, Oscars 2015, Selma, Voting Rights
I spent Friday watching "Selma" in tears from the haunting images, graphic displays of violence that was (is?) a part of our country on quite a regular basis in the 1960's. During the time of the Civil Rights Act (1964) and the Voting Rights Act (1965), I was 2 and 3-years-old respectively, too young to be of any good to the movement and merely a worry for my activist big sister.
I think a lot about my big sister in movies like this. She would have been one of the young people that got on "freedom ride" buses and put her life on the line for equality, or as she says now, everyone's equality, women, immigrants, LGBT. I remember her arguments with our parents about her safety. I remember praying I'd see her again. I remember crying a lot.
As I said (without giving away spoilers), my wife and I spent most of the movie in tears. I doubt if either my sister, mother-in-law or a lot of seniors in my family will want to see this movie. For them, it brings back painful memories.
If "demographics is destiny" - the mantra for the year 2042 - then, at 6,028 voters of which 94% are so-called "white"; 76% male and the average age 63 years, it's a pretty forgone conclusion that our stories were not going to get a mention above "best picture" and song; our actors were not going to get an Oscar nod. Also of note in that demographic, their sentiments of the time would have been shaped by their environments. Since we don't know where they lived before residing in "liberal" Hollywood, their view of Selma's value in lieu of #BlackLivesMatter and the recent, gut-wrenching atrocities of Boko Haram is an interesting contrast compared to how they all jumped on the #JeSuisCharlie bandwagon so quickly...and easily. A group of 5,666 and male gender of 4,581 pushing into senior citizenry don't likely have heroic memories of the 1960's since there was clearly two sides of the debate - depending on their families' politics at the time - they could have found themselves on. That makes for an academy clearly lacking diversity, either ashamed or indifferent.
What exactly is an "Oscar," and why does it matter? This is a self-contrived public pat-on-the-back by the industry itself. Whether you look at it or not, it is a vast infomercial on the movies you could have seen and didn't. You'll pay the $11.50 per person (New York prices) and the equally outrageous price for popcorn; you'll order it on pay-per-view; download it on bootleg: win-win-win-kinda-sorta (not).
These are OUR stories, and all of humanity's stories: it is not for us to make some privileged, self-mythologized group of "others love us" - it is for us to love ourselves, they are validated in the telling of them; everyone else is along for the ride and welcome. Our campfires required no feedback from the tribe other than applause; they are now clearly in the electromagnetic spectrum. We can read; we can write; we can act and direct; we can upload videos and audio; we can distribute on DVD and via Netflix. If Selma is anything more than an ironic juxtaposition regarding Civil Rights and Voting Rights fought for by young people and fifty years later, their millennial grandchildren being too apathetic to decide their own hard-fought destinies in the voting booth (but, up front in line on Black Friday), they deserve whatever bizarre legislation that is likely to come of this 114th congress. Opinions are fine, but action is far better, and revolutions have never been won in living rooms on backsides, nor freedoms for "consent of the governed" maintained without constant vigilance and participation. Voting, as Selma did, and the midterms' aftermath will show: matters.
