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Annus Mirabilis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 15, 2015 at 8:20am
Source of Quote: Brain Quotes

Topic: Einstein

History note: Today is the actual birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. More on that Monday.

Einstein's first paper on the photoelectric effect was received March 18 and published June 9. He proposed, inspired by Max Planck, the idea of light energy in packets, or "quanta."

The Latin phrase annus mirabilis is rightly translated "year of wonders" as well as "year of miracles." 1492 saw the discovery of the West Indies by Columbus and the birth of grammar construction for modern language. 1543: the scientific revolution with Andreas Vesalius, "De humani corporis fabrica" (On the Fabric of the Human Body), and Nicolaus Copernicus "De revolutionibus orbium coelestium" (On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres) in Nuremberg, Germany. It was applied to a poem written in 1667 by John Dryden, commenting on the Battle of Lowestoft fought by English and Dutch ships in 1665; the Four Days Battle of June 1666, and finally the victory of the St. James's Day Battle a month later. The second part of the poem deals with the Great Fire of London that ran from September 2–7, 1666. He wrote this escaping the Great Plague of London at Charlton in Wiltshire. The poem contains 1216 lines of verse, arranged in 304 quatrains. The reference has had many iterations and uses up to and since Einstein. Source: Wikipedia


We are now 110 years from the event that birthed the modern age of physics and technology we now find commonplace enough to take for granted by a guy in a patent office that at the time, didn't feel he was too successful. He would thankfully be proven in this instance quite wrong in his self-assessment.

"Do not worry about your difficulties in mathematics, I assure you that mine are greater."

"It is the supreme art of the teacher to awaken joy in creative expression and knowledge."
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Black Phosphorous...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 14, 2015 at 8:02am
Image Source: Technology Review

Topics: Field-Effect Transistors, Materials Science, Nanotechnology

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: In the last few years, two-dimensional crystals have emerged as some of the most exciting new materials to play with. Consequently, materials scientists have been falling over themselves to discover the extraordinary properties of graphene, boron nitride, molybdenum disulphide, and so on.


A late-comer to this group is black phosphorus, in which phosphorus atoms join together to form a two-dimensional puckered sheet. Last year, researchers built a field-effect transistor out of black phosphorus and showed that it performed remarkably well. This research suggested that black phosphorous could have a bright future in nanoelectronic devices.

But there is a problem. Black phosphorus is difficult to make in large quantities. Today, Damien Hanlon at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland, and a number of pals, say they have solved this problem.

These guys have perfected a way of making large quantities of black phosphorus nanosheets with dimensions that they can control. And they have used this newfound ability to test black phosphorus in a number of new applications, such as a gas sensor, an optical switch, and even to reinforce composite materials to make them stronger.

In bulk form, black phosphorus is made of many layers, like graphite. So one way to separate single sheets is by exfoliation, simply peeling off layers using Scotch tape or other materials. That is a time-consuming task that severely limits potential applications.

So Hanlon and co have been toying with another approach. Their method is to place the black phosphorus lump in a liquid solvent and then bombard it with acoustic waves that shake the material apart.

The result is that the bulk mass separates into a large number of nanosheets that the team filters for size using a centrifuge. That leaves high-quality nanosheets consisting of only a few layers. “Liquid phase exfoliation is a powerful technique to produce nanosheets in very large quantities,” they say.

One potential problem with black phosphorus nanosheets is that they degrade rapidly when in contact with water or oxygen. So one of the advances the team has made is to predict that certain solvents should form a solvation shell around the sheet, which prevents oxygen or other oxidative species from reaching the phosphorus.

Physics arXiv:
Liquid exfoliation of solvent-stabilised black phosphorus: applications beyond electronics
Damien Hanlon, Claudia Backes, Evie Doherty, Clotilde S. Cucinotta, Nina C. Berner, Conor Boland, Kangho Lee, Peter Lynch, Zahra Gholamvand, Andrew Harvey, Saifeng Zhang, Kangpeng Wang, Glenn Moynihan, Anuj Pokle, Quentin M. Ramasse, Niall McEvoy, Werner J. Blau, Jun Wang, Stefano Sanvito, David D. ORegan, Georg S. Duesberg, Valeria Nicolosi, Jonathan N. Coleman

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Colloidal Quantum Dots and Solar...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 13, 2015 at 7:26am
PbS/Cd3P2 quantum heterojunction colloidal quantum dot solar cells. Source: Link Below

PbS = lead sulfide, Cd3P2 = cadmium phosphide

Colloidal quantum dots (CQDs) provide a tunable bandgap via the quantum size effect. They are solution-synthesized and -processed semiconductor nanocrystals. They are very attractive for application in low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells capable of harvesting the broad solar spectrum beyond the Shockley-Queisser limit. This is a result of the tandem or multi-junction strategy and their promise in multiple exciton generation. Reporting in Nanotechnology, researchers demonstrate quantum heterojunction CQD solar cells and explore the versatility of the concept.

Researchers from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Soochow University in China synthesize well crystallized and nearly monodisperse tetragonal Cd3P2 CQDs. They demonstrate the quantum heterojunction solar cells employing the PbS CQDs/Cd3P2 CQDs architecture. Here, both the p-type PbS and n-type Cd3P2 CQD layers are quantum-tunable and solution-processed light absorbers.

Nanotechweb.org: Colloidal quantum dots: solar applications

#P4TC: Related articles on quantum dots

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Diverse Web Series All on One Website-Black, Latino, Asian and More

Posted by Christopher Love on January 12, 2015 at 2:51pm
Welcome to Heroes Like Me! .
"Where YOU are the Star. 
Here you can find a selection of diverse content and original material created by people like you all in one place. Whether it's Drama, Sci-Fi, Action, Comedy, Superheroes, and MORE we have it right here waiting for you. 
"Everyone should have heroes that look like them"
ENJOY
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NZERTF...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 12, 2015 at 7:46am
Image Source: NIST

Topic: Net Zero Buildings

The Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility (NZERTF) is a unique laboratory at the National Institute of Standards (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md. A net-zero energy home produces at least as much energy as it consumes over the course of a year.


Both a laboratory and a house, the two-story, four bedrooms, three-bath NZERTF would blend in nicely in a new suburban subdivision. It was designed and built to be approximately 60 percent more energy efficient than homes built to meet the requirements of the 2012 International Energy Conservation Code.

I've discussed Net Zero Buildings in a previous post. But...if you knew there was an engineering solution that could benefit the middle class; more about such homes existing, you might demand it, and affect the "free market," currently deciding the price of fuel at the pump; groceries (grocers paying the shippers by raising our food costs); clothing, plastic, consumer products (ditto reasons) and generally dealing in parts of the world that clearly don't want us in their back yards. You're not supposed to know it exists, so shh!

NIST:
Net-Zero Energy Residential Test Facility

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Terms of Indifference...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 11, 2015 at 6:28am
Image: Gall Source

"The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent, but if we can come to terms with this indifference, then our existence as a species can have genuine meaning. However vast the darkness, we must supply our own light." Stanley Kubrick, Wired Magazine - "Beyond" issue, December 2014, on the last page.

 Topic: existentialism

Before we can exhale from the violence of 2012 and Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis and Sandy Hook; 2013 and Renisha McBride; 2014: Michael Brown, Eric Garner and Tamir Rice, we barely breathe the air of a new year without the reminder of violence we visit towards one another.

I could only offer my condolences to two coworkers - one, a French teacher I met at my last high school, the other a current industry colleague. My fellow teacher had just celebrated a birthday. Me to her: " ____, I'm so sorry. I mourn for the loss of your countrymen." Her only reply: "It's a shame...:'(" I only studied French in high school and college; I am not French, but I am human. We are...ALL...human.

 I can only offer my condolences to the affected families now in Paris. On 9/11/2001 the world became Americans for a brief, fleeting instant of solidarity. Tragedy should not be the glue of humanity, but it often is.

The artificial barriers we've erected for ourselves - ethnicity, language, Melanin, neighborhoods, politics, power, religion, wealth - all are centered in terms of grappling with that indifference, and for some it is terrifying enough to do violence. The aforementioned barriers are what made many of us "anointed, chosen, set apart; special." It is how we've defined ourselves in our villages and valleys until encounters with other tribes over the hill; in other valleys or on other continents made us question our own uniqueness. It is the first thing that comes to mind when we say: "I/We am/are FILL IN THE BLANK." Because of this terror of cosmic indifference, we seek after something I've heard referred tongue-in-cheek in urban slang as the "Nirvana complex" (more formally, the Nirvana fallacy), which is on a subconscious level, and socially quite ecumenical. I personify it and construct its sentence:

"The world would be perfect, if everyone was just like 'us': FILL IN THE  BLANK."

The Earth was once thought flat...until it was found it was not. The Earth was thought the center of the universe...until Galileo peered through a telescope and became a heretic with his church. Melanin was the arbiter of all things superior deciding laws and living spaces, until science - with the breathtaking exception of even Nobel laureates mistaken promotion of the pseudoscience Eugenics - found "we are all Africans" (more correctly: former residents of Pangaea; more precisely: Earthlings), thoroughly discrediting lynching, slavery, racist coded laws, segregation, Jim Crow, red lining; xenophobia. Yes, African and Arab tribes sold fellow tribesmen; Aristotle had views pro-slavery of Greeks owning other Greeks, as well as many philosophers through the ages: that does not justify the ownership of another human being; nor (admittedly, bigoted) satire justify the murder of 12 fellow humans or speaking for an entire religion's adherents. Je suis humain...nous sommes humains.

"The world would be perfect, if everyone was just like 'us': FILL IN THE  BLANK."

Note the Drake Equation from the SETI institute and its namesake Dr. Frank Drake, is the method radio astronomers use to peruse the heavens for intelligent extraterrestrial life. The last factor, L = the length of time such (intelligent) civilizations release detectable signals into space - for the Planet Earth, that is under question and debatable.

The "Internet of Things" is quickly becoming reality as is the terrifying fact with some any change, any technological or social advancement, there is a seismic, regressive reaction from those who peer into the vast darkness and find their worlds getting smaller. We need a global conversation about our genuine meaning, before our brief light is dimmed to an indifferent universe that will not mourn our species' self-destructive passing. It will just be forever...silent.

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” Jiddu Krishnamurti
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The Mirror Up To Nature...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 10, 2015 at 7:59am
Image Source: World Science Festival, Bill Blakemore


Be not too tame neither, but let your own discretion
be your tutor: suit the action to the word, the
word to the action; with this special o'erstep not
the modesty of nature: for any thing so overdone is
from the purpose of playing, whose end, both at the
first and now, was and is, to hold, as 'twere, the
mirror up to nature; to show virtue her own feature,
scorn her own image, and the very age and body of
the time his form and pressure. Now this overdone,
or come tardy off, though it make the unskilful
laugh, cannot but make the judicious grieve; the
censure of the which one must in your allowance
o'erweigh a whole theatre of others. O, there be
players that I have seen play, and heard others
praise, and that highly, not to speak it profanely,
that, neither having the accent of Christians nor
the gait of Christian, pagan, nor man, have so
strutted and bellowed that I have thought some of
nature's journeymen had made men and not made them
well, they imitated humanity so abominably.

Hamlet, Act 3, Scene II, A hall in the castle


Again, quoting Carl Sagan: "We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." And sadly, as demonstrated recently in the US and the "land down under," some of the aforementioned get elected to public office.

 Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming

Is Hollywood Our “Collective Unconscious”?

It has often been suggested that Hollywood, and popular arts in general, may be something like a Jungian “collective unconscious” responding to deep underlying worries of the time – to the time’s ”form and pressure”, to use Hamlet’s phrase.

In recent years, Hollywood has poured out a growing number of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic movies, as if responding to our gathering collective anxiety about global warming and the related destruction of species and ecosystems. There’s even a new sub-category of such films, coined in 2007 by blogger Danny Bloom: “Cli-fi” is science fiction set in worlds disrupted by manmade climate change.

In 2004, The Day After Tomorrow showed us a world suddenly thrown into a severe ice age when global warming melted so much heavy fresh water from the Greenland ice sheet into the Atlantic Ocean’s Gulf Stream that its circulating current shut down and stopped carrying tropical heat to the northern latitudes as it does today. In 2014, Interstellar gave us a parched and blighted earth unable to provide food for its starving inhabitants – and the fantasy that humanity would somehow even have time to find a home on another planet, though none alive today might make it that far.




Nor do today’s actual climate scientists and world leaders, working hard on the climate crisis, give any thought to such escape. They are working with reports that global warming is already killing many (who would not die if there were no manmade climate crisis), is bearing down fast, and is already showing early signs of the sort of economic disruption which, amplified, could make the expense of any space efforts unconscionable here on our only home. The planet’s leaders tell us we’re not there yet—life still goes on fairly normally, pleasant or not, for most people, but not all—and that we’re all headed that way.

World Science Festival:
Climate Change What Will The Humans Do? (Part 3), Bill Blakemore

Related Link
MIT Technology Review:
How Much Fossil Fuel Should Be Left in the Ground? Mike Orcutt

Tomorrow: Terms of Indifference

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Nada Mucho...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 9, 2015 at 6:24am
Image Source: See Link [2] below

Some levity in light of current events that I will address in an essay on Sunday. RG

The number zero as we know it arrived in the West circa 1200, most famously delivered by Italian mathematician Fibonacci (aka Leonardo of Pisa), who brought it, along with the rest of the Arabic numerals, back from his travels to north Africa. But the history of zero, both as a concept and a number, stretches far deeper into history—so deep, in fact, that its provenance is difficult to nail down.


"There are at least two discoveries, or inventions, of zero," says Charles Seife, author of Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea (Viking, 2000). "The one that we got the zero from came from the Fertile Crescent." It first came to be between 400 and 300 B.C. in Babylon, Seife says, before developing in India, wending its way through northern Africa and, in Fibonacci's hands, crossing into Europe via Italy. [1]

To mathematician Amir Aczel the most important number of all might just be zero. Zero—nothing—may sound boring, but without it our entire number system and the world of mathematics it enables could not exist. In his new book, Finding Zero: A Mathematician’s Odyssey to Uncover the Origins of Numbers (St. Martin’s Press, Palgrave Macmillan Trade, 2015), Aczel searches for, and finds, the earliest known artifact bearing a representation of zero.

The object, an inscription on a stone slab, was originally found in the 1930s in the ruins of a seventh-century temple in Cambodia. It was lost over the years and scholars feared it was destroyed during the 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge. But Aczel finally tracked it down and reintroduced this important milestone into the historical record. [2]

Zero as concept can be credited to Ancient Babylon (nowadays Iraq), India and appeared in the New World with the Mayans [2]. This got us thinking about "big" numbers, changing our concept of things large, such as architecture, the cosmos and wealth; and things long, like time.

It's also a good excuse to embed a true "infomercial" from my youth, when kids had cartoons and an education in the advertisements:

Scientific American:

1. The Origin of Zero, Much ado about nothing: First a placeholder and then a full-fledged number, zero had many inventors, John Matson
2. This Mathematician Figured Out How to Solve for Zero [Q&A], Amir Aczel explored jungles and ancient temples to trace the history of the number zero, Clara Moskowitz

#P4TC Related Link

Zilch...Nada...and a little more..., November 28, 2011

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"The Book of Negroes"....

Posted by H. Wolfgang Porter on January 9, 2015 at 3:38am

While many were watching the premiere of 'Empire', I caught the premiere of the Canadian series based upon Lawrence Hill's Novel, "The Book of Negroes". Off the top here at a sci-fi social networking site, that may sound like a racist fantasy-adventure tome. But it isn't. Rather TBN is the account of an African Woman named Aminata taken from her homeland by African Slavers and her life as a slave in the 'new world' during the late 18th and early 19th Century.

Though there have been other series and recently the film '12 Years a Slave', TBN in many ways is a chronicle like the original Roots from the perspective of an enslaved woman.

Like with 'Amistad', few punches are pulled with how conditions were aboard a slave ship despite it being a network show. They also showed how many captured slaves plotted and fought to keep from being carried off to who-knew-where for who-knew-what. What I like about the show so far is how they portrayed African people as having perfectly good and reasonable lives without the 'help' of the white man. Even showed how African lives began to suck because of the white man's influence.

So far, they haven't 'romanticized' the situation and I look forward to seeing how they handle Aminata's life as an adult among the whims of her Southern white master and whether the story turns to romanticized mush or if they stay the course and keep it real....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/arts/the-book-of-negroes-makes-tv-debut-wednesday-on-cbc-tv-1.2891161

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HDI...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 8, 2015 at 6:30am
Figure 1. Human-Data Interaction. Our personal data feeds black-box analytics algorithms. These output inferences driving actions whose effects may or may not be visible to us, and which may include changes in our behaviour and the data generated about and by us subsequently.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The rapidly evolving ecosystems associated with personal data is creating an entirely new field of scientific study, say computer scientists. And this requires a much more powerful ethics-based infrastructure.

Back in 2013, the UK supermarket giant, Tesco, announced that it was installing face recognition software in 450 of its stores that would identify customers as male or female, guess their age and measure how long they looked at an ad displayed on a screen below the camera. Tesco would then give the data to advertisers to show them how well their advertising worked and allow them to target their ads more carefully.

Many commentators pointed out the similarity between this system and the sci-fi film Minority Report in which people are bombarded by personalised ads which detect who they are and where they are looking.

It also raised important questions about data collection and privacy. How would customers understand the potential uses of this kind of data, how would they agree to these uses and how could they control the data after it was collected?


Abstract

The increasing generation and collection of personal data has created a complex ecosystem, often collaborative but sometimes combative, around companies and individuals engaging in the use of these data. We propose that the interactions between these agents warrants a new topic of study: Human-Data Interaction (HDI). In this paper we discuss how HDI sits at the intersection of various disciplines, including computer science, statistics, sociology, psychology and behavioural economics. We expose the challenges that HDI raises, organised into three core themes of legibility, agency and negotiability, and we present the HDI agenda to open up a dialogue amongst interested parties in the personal and big data ecosystems.



Physics arXiv: Human-Data Interaction: The Human Face of the Data-Driven Society
Richard Mortier, Hamed Haddadi, Tristan Henderson, Derek McAuley, Jon Crowcroft

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Einstein's Impossible Measurement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 7, 2015 at 7:04am

Figure 1. Brownian motion trajectories. When examined at modest measurement rates (a), the observed positions (red dots) of particles executing Brownian motion appear to lie on the jerky trajectory illustrated in red. The black curve shows the underlying particle path. (b) Measurements at finer time scales reveal that the particle path is in fact built from short bursts of constant velocity motion.

Citation: Phys. Today 68, 1, 56 (2015); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2665



It's always exciting when I recognize and actually know the authors!

 Dr. Mark G. Raizen is the Sid W. Richardson Foundation Regents Chair of Physics and Professor of Physics at the University of Texas, Austin.

 Dr. Tongcang Li received his PhD under Mark's guidance and is now Assistant Professor of Physics and Astronomy/Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University. They were both kind enough when Dr. Li was completing his graduate degree to give Cassandra and I a tour of their lab and impressive work at UT.

 Mark has pioneered, in his own words, a "general methods to control the motion of atoms and molecules. This work will be used to test very basic questions in physics, and will also find real-life applications," which is a modest understatement! First to do this was former Department of Energy Secretary and Nobel Laureate Dr. Steven Chu. The process in the Raizen Group is a vast improvement on this impressive achievement. An excerpt of the article is below; explore the article at the link for "optical tweezers": think James Clerk Maxwell's "demon" thought experiment. Keep in mind real-life applications going forward. Nicely done, gentlemen: I applaud your great research and a well-written presentation. I thank you for your permission to post this.



Particles undergoing Brownian motion move with constant velocity between Brownian kicks. Albert Einstein predicted the velocity distribution, but he wrongly thought his result would never be experimentally confirmed.



Brownian motion, the seemingly random wiggle-waggle of particles suspended in a liquid or gas, was first systematically studied by Robert Brown in 1827 and described in the Philosophical Magazine the next year (volume 4, page 161). When Brown used a microscope to look at particles from pollen grains immersed in water, he “observed many of them very evidently in motion.” It looked like the particles were alive, so vigorously did they move.



The phenomenon of Brownian motion was first explained by Albert Einstein in 1905 as a consequence of the thermal motion of surrounding fluid molecules. Einstein’s theory predicts that Brownian particles diffuse; as a consequence, their mean-square displacement 〈(Δ x)2〉 = 2 Dt in each dimension is proportional to a diffusion coefficient D and the measured time interval t. As illustrated in figure 1 a, the motion of Brownian particles looks like a jerky and unpredictable dance, and the sudden changes in direction and speed seem to indicate that velocity is not defined. Moreover, the mean velocity
〈 v〉 ≡ 〈(Δ x)2〉 1/2/ t = (2 D/ t) 1/2 diverges as t approaches 0. If you think all that is strange, you are in good company: Einstein felt the same way.



 Physics Today: The measurement Einstein deemed impossible
Mark G. Raizen and Tongcang Li

 Related #P4TC Links:

Improved Isotope Enrichment, July 1, 2014
Einstein, Entropy and Information, March 23, 2013
Brownian Motion...Einstein "wrong..ish", May 16, 2011
Maxwell's Demon & information-to-energy, November 16, 2010
Comprehensive Control of Atomic and Molecular Motion, August 23, 2010

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fear of tomorrow

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on January 6, 2015 at 7:30am

Why do people who live in the here and now

long for the distant future

and people who claim a future mind

long to relive the past

Perhaps a clueless resolve of the here and now,

a fear of the next step.

The future and the past are comfortably known,

the next step is filled with anxiety and speculation

the next step is not what anyone envisions.

Will the next step produce the future we envision?

Don't know. Who will take it? Not me, what about you?

No way, I don't know how it will turn out.

We have fashion and cars that change every half year,

architecture and minds change with the glaciers.

I've always wondered why grungy apocalyptic scenes with seasoned feudal anarchy

are faithfully rendered as a hopeless future. The future is coming, we are doomed!

While one sings the Happy song, another sings Let it go or is that Let it snow?

We stand at the door tugging till the hinges are ready to bust. Salt 'n' Peppa magically appear,

Push it, push it real good! Cause that is the next step.

We've been waiting to move so long the past has caught up to us.

Time to take the next step.

The house model project is progressing, the building stage is done, next the painting.

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International Year of Light...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 6, 2015 at 6:59am
The International Year of Lightand Light-based Technologies will see hundreds of events around the world celebrating the science and applications of light.

Physicists around the world are gearing up for the International Year of Light and Light-based Technologies (IYL), which kicks off later this month at an official opening ceremony at the headquarters of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in Paris. Some 1500 delegates are set to converge on the French capital for the event, which runs from 19 to 20 January, and will include representatives from the UN and UNESCO as well as the Nobel laureates Zhores Alferov, Steven Chu, Serge Haroche and William Phillips. Designed to highlight how light and light-based technologies touch every aspect of our lives, the IYL will involve more than 100 partners from 85 countries – including the Institute of Physics (IOP), which publishes Physics World.

The UN has declared "international years" since 1959 to draw attention to topics deemed to be of worldwide importance. In recent years, there have been a number of successful science-based themes, including physics (2005), astronomy (2009), chemistry (2011) and crystallography (2014), with the idea for a celebration of light having been initiated by the European Physical Society (EPS) in 2009.

It is light and its careful, focused exposure to finer details that has allowed us to shrink feature sizes and thus technologies in line with Moore's Law. Beyond light, we're looking at nanomanufacturing techniques using e-beam (electrons); nanoimprinting, nanoscratching and using AFM (atomic force microscope) and STM (scanning tunneling microscopy) for finer control still (ref: Physics Today, "Top-down Nanomanufacturing," Matthias Imboden and David Bishop, page 47). This post accompanies Monday's "Fab on a Chip" post. What we do in this industry is not trivial, but it is learn-able, doable and quite rewarding with the right dedication and discipline.

Physics World: Physicists get set for UNESCO's Year of Light

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Fab on a Chip...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 5, 2015 at 6:41am
Source: Link Below

(Nanowerk Spotlight) The difficulties associated with precisely manipulating nanomaterials to turn nanoscale structures into reliable functional devices – at a reasonable cost – is one of the key challenges that needs to be overcome in mass-manufacturing nanodevices (other than computer chips, which require massive amounts of capital investment).

One of the most restricting parameters in nanofabrication is the difficulty involved with controllably patterning materials at precise locations in a repeatable manner over relatively large areas. The traditional process of randomly placing nanomaterials on a substrate typically leads to highly variable performance of the resultant functionalized devices.

Conventional lithography methods that are used in computer chip manufacturing are not only very expensive and wasteful, they also are reaching physical limitations. To overcome these issues, researchers have been developing a range of alternative, resist-free nanopatterning techniques, among them dip pen nanolithography, oxidation nanolithography, or colloidal self-assembly (see: "3D nanolithography without the expensive hardware").

A novel microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based mask writer has now been developed by a team of researchers at Boston University. The device allows to directly write structures at the nanoscale without the need to use photoresist, lift-off techniques or other complex and expensive approaches. The technique uses a MEMS plate with apertures drilled into it and a shutter so that one can, in effect, spray paint with atoms. With the shutter, the process can be turned on and off.

Nanowerk.com:
Atomic calligraphy - using MEMS to write nanoscale structures
NIST: Building a Fab on a Chip, David Bishop

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You should try sculpture!

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on January 4, 2015 at 9:14am

Flash back, as a kid I did the family puzzles, had a room of my own dedicated to model cars. It was a plastic parts junkyard. Fred Sanford would have been happy. Even made plans to build a slot racing track to rival a model train layout.

You grow up to try new stuff and wind up with new versions of the old stuff. Yeah, you go with what you know. I got into drawing houses, was introduced to computers, CAD drawings and finally computer generated 3d drawing, modeling and rendering. I'm not that good in my drawing, definitely not a fine artist. I don't know why I envision photo perfect renderings. Mostly I care about putting down the idea, that is enough.

I keep sketchbooks. It is amazing the flow of ideas in sketches. I can recall the process path of my thoughts in each sketch. I tell myself I will take the sketch and make a finished drawing. I see the work of other conceptual artist like Syd Mead, his students, others and drool. Ok, I don't have the trained fine art thing going, do I need to get there? NO! I just need to get the idea down. The tools and skills are the ones I have. I can improve but I need to use what I have.

A paraphrased line in the movie "Encounters of the 3rd Kind", "I got the image too, painted like you, I didn't see that path". The guy said "you should try sculpture!" Making actual models brings a thing into the physical world in a way a flat drawing or movie on a video screen can not touch. A life size model might as well be the real thing. So, that is the crux of my bent. To bring the thought of the future house into form.

Whats to come? Models of future homes, not fantasy but possible today. In a world of codes and standards and compliance and uniformity and traditions, I have to try sculpture. We have lived with the Paul Revere home and garden too long, especially in the city. Don't need nothing but a city lot as most of us can afford. No need to escape to the burbs, my futuristic car can do that. Why must I come home to the past? Stay tuned..........

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