Many authors create video trailers to promote their books. I created a trailer to spread the word about "The Baartman Bag," a short story I'm offering as a free download. I want to engage as many readers as possible about the issues black women face -- invisibility, hair, rage, identity, shadism. Because speculative fiction is my thing, the video embodies the creepy, the bizarre and the provocative. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
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With the advent of the Internet of things, potentially billions of devices will report data about themselves, making it possible to create new applications in areas as diverse as factory optimization, car maintenance, or simply keeping track of your stuff online. But doing this today requires at least some degree of programming knowledge. Now Bug Labs, a New York City company, is trying to make it as easy to create an Internet of things application as it is to put a file into Dropbox.
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| Source: Solid State Technology |
With a new service called Freeboard, Bug Labs is giving people a simple one-click way to publish data from a “thing” to its own Web page (Bug Labs calls this “dweeting”). To get a sense of this, visit Dweet.io with your computer or mobile phone, click “try it now,” and you’ll see raw data from your device itself: its GPS coordinates and even the position of your computer mouse. The data is now on a public Web page and available for analysis and aggregation; another click stops this sharing.
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| Satlz TPM |
Freeboard, expected to be launched Tuesday, makes sense of such streams of data. A few more clicks create quick graphical displays of the shared information, such as location, temperature, motor speed, or simply whether a device is on or off. “We are trying to make the Internet of things far simpler, and far more accessible, to anybody,” says Peter Semmelhack, CEO of Bug Labs, a business that initially focused on the development of open-source modular hardware (see “Bug Labs Adds New Modules”), but which now develops software platforms.
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| Ibid |
MIT Technology Review: A Dropbox for the Internet of Things, David Talbot
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| Kepler-186f, shown in this artist’s concept, is the first Earth-sized planet discovered in its star’s habitable zone. Credit: NASA Ames/SETI Institute/JPL-Caltech |
From a comic book nerd perspective, it's neat they found a planet in the possible "Goldilocks habitable zone." It is however, 500 light years away, meaning that even if we had rocket ships that could get to 99.9999% of c (speed of light), it would take several human lifetimes to get there. If we had the propulsion systems of SyFy lore, the important point would be the "when" in its planetary development we arrive - dinosaurs or primitive hominoids - and whether we'd treat them like H.G. Wells' Martians in "War of the Worlds" (he gleaned from the real events of the British crown's expansion and the subjugation of Aborigines) or a more contemporary comparison - Native Americans. A prime directive assumes we evolve beyond our current brutality.
Exoplanets are fun and all, but those hot Jupiters and super Neptunes and such are kind of beside the point. Everyone knows the real search is for a planet like ours: rocky, smallish, and capable of hosting liquid water. And now scientists have found one, named Kepler-186f — an Earth-sized planet in its star’s habitable zone, the area where conditions aren’t too hot or too cold, but just right, for liquid water to be possible.
Planet Profile
The planet orbits a star about 500 light-years away called Kepler-186 and was discovered by the Kepler telescope (and then confirmed at the Keck and Gemini Observatories). The discovery technically includes four other exoplanets found around the star, but Kepler-186f is the only one in the habitable zone. Scientists found them all using the “transit method,” which is just basically looking at stars and waiting for planets to pass in front, dimming the star’s light a little bit.
Discovery: Possibly Habitable Earth-Sized Planet Discovered, Bill Andrews
The Baartman Bag is a serial short story told in four parts. In a futuristic society, black teen girls are abducted, taken to a slaughterhouse and skinned to make couture purses. One young woman decides to fight back.
First, they lop off your head. Then they saw off your arms and legs – body parts as valuable as dust – until only your naked torso remains. While you are still warm, before your blood knows it’s dead, they shear the skin from your back, breasts and belly with a great whirring blade, careful to preserve your flesh in whole swathes.
Or so the story goes. I have never witnessed the actual process for transforming a black girl into a couture bag.
I was brought to the slaughterhouse, a place my pen-mate Grace calls “the Carvery,” in May. It’s August now. From the outside, the worn aluminum building resembles a post-modern dorm. But only from the outside. Dusty sunlight streams through the small windows that span the length of the great room where about two hundred girls dress, eat and sleep. The slaughterhouse was once a guitar factory. Sometimes when I’m sweeping around our pallets, running my broom along the baseboards, a long-forgotten string or tuning peg gets entangled in the straws.
At eighteen, I’m older than most of the other girls, who range in age from thirteen to nineteen. Our skin tones span the dusky rainbow – from rose brown to plum black. Kunteé believed wealthy patrons of the Baartman bag would be charmed if the purse were available in exotic shades. He labels our complexions Sienna Madre, Tawny Hubris, Modern Coffee and Ghana. The darker the girl, the more premium the purse.
Yandi, a sullen nineteen-year-old, has been here the longest. She’s a Ghana. She likes to whisper about the horrors involved in manufacturing a human bag, blood-soaked tales of skinning and curing that make the younger girls cry. “They drug you first,” Yandi assures the wide-eyed captives as she walks through the great room handing out bedding. “You won’t feel a thing when they chop your head off. Then they soak your skin in salt water to keep it fresh.”
With her dark complexion, the color of mulberries wilting on the vine, Yandi’s bag would have fetched a high price had she not developed a severe case of eczema during her second month at the Carvery. Instead of hanging her in the yard, as they did to ruined inventory, our captors kept her on. She now serves as a warden.
We never know when our time is coming, when we’ll be sent to the blades. Most of us aren’t here longer than three or four months. One day, you’ll see a girl talking in the yard or strapped down in the oil bath and then you’ll wake up to an empty pallet next to yours. Then more girls are brought in to take their place. I’m number 1815. I have never seen the four numerals seared into the skin behind my ear but I trace the keloid every day with my fingers, rubbing its raised permanence.
Click here to download your free copy of Part I of The Baartman Bag!
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| JILA's modified AFM probes measuring DNA molecules. The older mod (long cantilever, right) eliminated the usual gold coating to enhance long-term stability. The latest version (left) retains the gold coating where needed to reflect light but maintains excellent stability. Researchers also removed a large section to reduce stiffness and friction near surfaces. The new probe provides precise results much faster than before, while reducing “noise” (colored squiggles). Credit: Baxley/JILA |
JILA researchers have engineered a short, flexible, reusable probe for the atomic force microscope (AFM) that enables state-of-the-art precision and stability in picoscale force measurements. Shorter, softer and more agile than standard and recently enhanced AFM probes, the JILA tips will benefit nanotechnology and studies of folding and stretching in biomolecules such as proteins and DNA.
An AFM probe is a cantilever, shaped like a tiny diving board with a small, atomic-scale point on the free end. To measure forces at the molecular scale in a liquid, the probe attaches its tip to a molecule such as a protein and pulls; the resulting deflection of the cantilever is measured. The forces are in the realm of piconewtons, or trillionths of a newton. One newton is roughly the weight of a small apple.
The new probe design, described in ACS Nano,* is the JILA research group's third recent advance in AFM technology. JILA is jointly operated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and University of Colorado Boulder.
NIST:
No Compromises: JILA’s Short, Flexible, Reusable AFM Probe, Laura Ost
As I read the agreeable and insightful blog by Bro. Clifton McMillan Jr. some thoughts came to mind.
The show Revolution deals with this, as well as, many other media presentations. I am very much into technology, but I have been knowing what he writes for decades.
One of the things that I promote is everyone having a frame of reference from which to understand/overstand reality. Mine is a Afrocentric one-a balance of old and new, past-present and future being cyclical, logic and intuition in harmony and a dissertation worth of many other ideologies.
With that being said, it gives me a different view of things. People's reliance on technology to the point of forgetting basic survival and trade skills is by design. We were mostly rural folks in our beginnings here. We knew about bartering, trade crafts and the whole. We were lured into cities by promises of an easier life for our children and ourselves.
Families in rural areas could support themselves because they controlled their own means of food production. You could have large families of 10-20 people and get by. You could barter for goods and service you did not produce with neighbors. We built our own homes. I remember my mom telling me how my grandmother added a room to her house by herself.
It was much more limited living in cities. Whites controlled food production, most of the jobs and we paid rent for substandard living conditions. Those were some of the major things that facilitated the break down of Black families. After making it more and more difficult for Black men to make livable wage they offered Black women monetary support, if they got rid of the Black men. Hence the welfare system. Welfare was already in place for White women who lost their husbands to war and other misfortunes. Our caveat was to break up with each other in order to survive. Always different rules for us having access to that which was available to them.
The amount vagrancy laws and such that they created just for us and other well known injustices made it possible for us to adopt an unofficial slogan in our communities as stated by Papa Pope in the TV show Scandal, " We must work twice as hard to accomplish half as much as White folks"(paraphrase).
My point is this, Yes we can accomplish whatever we desire, but we have to be ever mindful that out sense of time, production schedule, resources and delays cannot ever be compared to Whites and Asians. They do not operate with the level of intentional distractions - both internal and external - that we operate with, so we cannot place ourselves within their frame of reference when plotting our goals . We have a different view of fairness, work ethic, spirituality and logic. It is imperative that we start to overstand that being "different" is not a four letter word(profane). There IS such a thing as "acting Black" just as there is such a thing as "acting White" that is devoid of the narrowly analyzed, conditioned, negative, Pavlovian responses we spout out when we hear those terms.
Fact, billions of dollars are spent researching, categorizing and exploiting African culture. IF we were all the same, then there would be no reason for the Europeans here and in Europe and the Chinese/Japansese to spend such large sums of money. They would already know because it would a part of their way of thinking.
We have unique gifts that we use daily, but don't see them as such, because we think it is a part of everyone's way of thinking, despite the "others" only giving lip service to it and we being the only ones living by them.
Arabs in control of the regions of Egypt do not know how the pyramids were built. Europeans have sent their best and brightest and most advanced equipment and could not figure it out. So have the so-called smartest folks in the world, the Asians. That leaves us.
Within our physical, mental and spiritual DNA are the origins of civilization and the still labelled mysteries of the ancient world. Info that Whites and Asians, again by spending what could amount to billions of dollars, will use to advance their future. They study and exploit our past for their future progress while conditioning us to "forget the past and look to the future" All of the present and future is a modification of the past.
If we are spending our waking days trying to imitate and assimilate then we will never be able to BE ourselves, just a poor imitation of "others".
Despite us thinking we need to get with their program to progress, we are literally holding ourselves back and limiting ourselves by working within their box. Even outside their box is still using their box as a frame of reference.
We have a cirlce. Our own circle, from which to overstand reality. One that is filled with the solutions to our problems of self-hatred, economic, political and social stagnation and psychotic reliance on peoples that will never appreciate who we are because doing so will jeopardize their power.
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.”
Kujichagulia (Self-Determination)
To define ourselves, name ourselves, create for ourselves and speak for ourselves, instead of being defined, named, created and spoken for by "others".
Unconditional Love to my Sisters and Brothers always and forever,
...the Calm before the Storm
See previous: "Weaponized Pseudoscience" yesterday. Quoting part of the post: "we're in the aftermath of 'created realities,' and I fear this self-willed ignorance of science is slowly unraveling our nation." We are the sum of the stories we tell of ourselves, some noble; some salacious; some shameful. Some of them are best left unsaid...
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| Post 2012 election tweets |
This is the eventual culmination of pseudoscience run amok - it metastasizes as a weapon: societal instability reaching for an "ideal" that never existed. The rude, reintroduction of pseudo social science hack Charles Murray as adviser to Gregg Abbott in Texas politics; the so-called "debate" on climate change; the age of the universe (6,000 versus 13.8 billion) and evolution versus "intelligent design" are not designed to enlighten: they are to evade, obfuscate inducing ignorance, an effective method of control. When science and critical thinking skills are properly taught, you ask questions of authority, and authoritarians don't want that. They'd rather you memorize a Bible verse (many they've never read, but their marketing departments find useful in their machinations); they'd rather you repeat a Jingoism/slogan/talking points - thinking is out of the question since it will begat questions. This is no better than the "conspiracy theories" that bloviators use to whip their audiences on right-leaning AM talk radio to frenzied mania, high profits and a spot on network news.
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| PoliticusUSA.com |
These are the "chickens coming home to roost" of the "Southern Strategy," this is what dog-whistle politics reaps after it's sown in the wind. This is when your ratings are dependent on making everyone afraid of "the other," and that larger-than-life other happens to occupy 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. "I want my country back": the 'good old days' for some; the bad ones for everyone else that they don't give a damn about. Meanwhile, we have two years to obsolescence on the global stage when "Made in America" becomes a rarefied artifact.
Never mind that human life originated in Africa; that the oldest known footprints of Homo Erectus happens to have been found in Kenya. It makes us all African, this expressed malady over class, place and pigmentation a form of melanin-envy and self-loathing.
Never mind that hate is not an election-winning strategy and that Karl Rove waisted a lot of billionaire's money trying to throw the election from "We the People" to the oligarchs.
We worship money as a national deity, and no other god really. We're supposedly divided between "makers and takers" and the self-labeled makers seem to have no problem taking another tax cut. Their recipe for job creation has so far equaled Marie Antoinette's famously attributed comment (actually by Maria Theresa 100 years before in Spain): "let them eat cake." There is no room at the oligarch's Inns, mansions, wealth seminars or dinner tables.
Princeton and Northwestern now says the previous experiment in self-governance is over, and is at its inevitable conclusion: we are an oligarchy, well before Putin could reestablish it in Russia. It explains why the authoritarians here so admire his veracity; his bare-shirted cowboy diplomacy - to hell he might cause World War III:
Cliches like, "itchy trigger finger" and "tall in the saddle" and "riding off or on into the sunset." Cliches like, "Get off of my planet by sundown!" More so than cliches like, "he died with his boots on." Marine tough the man is. Bogart tough the man is. Cagney tough the man is. Hollywood tough the man is. Cheap steak tough. And Bonzo's substantial. The ultimate in synthetic selling: A Madison Avenue masterpiece ? a miracle ? a cotton-candy politician...Presto! Macho! (Gil-Scott Heron, "B Movie")
THIS IS A MENTAL DISORDER and psychological warfare foisted writ large on the American public through echo chambers and so-called "think tanks" under the clever auspices of "maintaining traditional values" while in the full spirit of Orwellian doublespeak, annihilating them. On the day Jared Lee Loughner was sentenced to 7 consecutive life sentences plus 140 years (gees), we'd be mindful that this information age may be overloading weaker minds (he was told "don't retreat: reload" and that he did to disastrous effect). Thus, birth certificates in short or long form; Harvard transcripts and passports demanded by bloviating reality-show hosts that could spend $50 on a good toupee versus 5 million on an empty stunt are irrelevant when you've already a made-up mind that what facts don't agree with your skewed worldview will be judged false. Fear is a political motivator, but moribund when you actually try to run a country on it as well as magical thinking. It worked really well up to 2008 (being facetious), and I'm not inclined to see if repeated, it will self-correct in 2014 or 2016. I end paraphrasing Albert Einstein's observations on the nature of insanity, and quoting verbatim Nietzsche:
“Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
TPM: Harder to Handle; More on the Fox Effect, Josh Marshall
https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v=10203527247562219&set=vb.1245249671&type=2&theater¬if_t=like
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| TeachTheFacts.org |
I've used this photo on a previous post. However, we're in the aftermath of "created realities," and I fear this self-willed ignorance of science is slowly unraveling our nation.
Weaponize (n): to adapt for use as a weapon of war; first known use of Weaponize: 1957 (Merriam-Webster)
A pseudoscience is a belief or process which masquerades as science in an attempt to claim a legitimacy which it would not otherwise be able to achieve on its own terms; it is often known as fringe- or alternative science. The most important of its defects is usually the lack of the carefully controlled and thoughtfully interpreted experiments which provide the foundation of the natural sciences and which contribute to their advancement.
Reference: Pseudoscience: What is it? How can I recognize it?
In "Ode to a Distant Prospect of Eton College," Thomas Gray says a great many things that if you can decipher the old English and British countryside references, (the Thames is mentioned twice), the beginning is essentially the plot of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off."
The ending is the origin of "ignorance is bliss":
Yet ah! why should they know their fate?
Since sorrow never comes too late,
And happiness too swiftly flies.
Thought would destroy their paradise.
No more; where ignorance is bliss,
'Tis folly to be wise.
The blissful ignorance is their eventual fate with entropy: aging with associated pains and eventual demise. Ignorance is not a way to run a republic.
Yet lately, I've seen ignorance forged into the weapon of pseudoscience on the anvil of suspicion, anger, rage, huckster-foisted conspiracy theories, division and racial animus.
Bill O'Reilly tried an "old shtick" (quoting Joan Walsh, see Salon link) with basketball coach John Calipari: “I mean, you are a good guy, coach, but, hey, now the culture has coarsened,” said O’Reilly. “I don’t know if you listen to this rap stuff and the hip-hop stuff. Has that changed their attitude? I mean, how do you impose discipline on kids who are pretty much gonna do what they want to do?” (Salon.com) Coach was there to discuss his book; O'Reilly was riling up his base of older, whiter viewers that feel their country slipping away in a deluge of demographics and diversity. If the big-O and the fogies stopped and did the math, most won't be around in 2042 when it does occur. The question is, will the country still be?
Cliven Bundy hasn't paid his cattle grazing fees in 21 years, or $1.2 million dollars of tax payer money. He's lost every court case he's tried to defend himself, saying he doesn't "recognize the sovereignty of the federal government." He just uses their/our land; their/our roads to get his product to market; their/our electricity; their/our power; their/our computer systems to balance his books, in essence: Cliven Bundy is a "taker" supported by the echo chamber that birthed the Tea Party April 15, 2009.
Frazier Glenn Miller, 73, founder of the Carolina Knights of the Ku Klux Klan murdered three fellow humans opening fire outside a Jewish Community Center and a nearby retirement community. He managed to kill two Methodists: a doctor and his fourteen-year-old grandson and a woman visiting her aged mother.
Tomorrow: "A Nation of Warring Tribes"
I am offering a special rate for all authors this weekend, with an added discount for all steampunk genres.
I wish to incorporate more punk in my portfolio. I have a good bit of fantasy, and a sprinkling of sci-fi, but I want more period and 'Punk' inspired pieces. Not just steampunk, but cyberpunk, dieselpunk, clockwork punk, and all of the sub-genres often grouped with steampunk.
It's a dilemma because many authors won't hire me if they think I can't successfully portray this amazing genre, and all of it's sub-genres, only because there are so few, if any, in my folio.
Since I can't justify taking time away from paid projects to just build my folio, I am offering an automatic 30% off, on top of all of my regular discount incentives to authors specializing in punk.
Along side punk, I also need more ethnic diversity (which will get you an added discount), so why not combine the two needs into some great book cover art at a great discount?
While looking at my VidFolio, keep in mind that I am painfully aware that very little of it could be interpreted as punk.
If you have a project in mind, let's talk about your book cover needs via Live Chat on my website, so we don't need to stress over that little window below, lol.
Onto wrapping up the next book :D
Until next time ...
This post edited by*:
*Blurbs and quotes provided are not edited by WillowRaven, but posted as provided by author/publisher.
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| Building big: A team of three small, magnetically steered robots worked together to build this structure from toothpick-sized carbon rods. |
Someone glancing through the door of Annjoe Wong-Foy’s lab at SRI International might think his equipment is infested by ants. Dark shapes about a centimeter across move to and fro over elevated walkways: they weave around obstacles and carry small sticks.
A closer look makes it clear that these busy critters are in fact man-made. Wong-Foy, a senior research engineer at SRI, has built an army of magnetically steered workers to test the idea that “microrobots” could be a better way to assemble electronics components, or to build other small structures.
Wong-Foy’s robotic workers have already proved capable of building towers 30 centimeters (two feet) long from carbon rods, and other platforms able to support a kilogram of weight. The robots can work with glass, metal, wood, and electronic components. In one demonstration, they made a carbon truss structure with wires and colored LEDs mixed in to serve as the lab’s Christmas tree.
“We can scale to many more robots at low cost,” says Wong-Foy, who thinks his system could develop into a new approach to manufacturing. Many electronic components are the right size to be handled by his microrobots, he says, and teams of them might prove a good way to lay them out onto circuit boards.
MIT Technology Review:
Tiny robots that work together like ants could lead to a new way to manufacture complex structures and electronics, by Tom Simonite
Words, I swear to god the trouble they've caused. I awake every morning with questions that torment me. The who, why, how, when of everything unanswered. They taught me to read and write but were more interested in content and context, what I read or didn't read. They taught me to recognize what the marks on paper meant, actually it was an initiation into the foolishness of words. Starting with children's books I learned to open my mind to the foolishness to come. I didn't know words could lie so unashamedly. Behind the mask of ego and motive, like a magicians slight of hand, the amusing joke, I'm doubled-over in laughter while going to my slaughter. Words can kill, damn, I thought words were innocent, some fool said "if".
Words are coined for schools of thought. The more immersed in the school the more serious the words. For a truth, I tell you this surely must be the truth because I so thoroughly believe it to be true. Others from the first written to the contemporary have verified it to be so and all other words are incarnations of evil set to confuse or destroy the believers of the truth. Why isn't the truth itself is destroyed, why the believers of the truth are destroyed? It is because words for and against must occupy the same space. We don't care about the question in question, we care about the words. Oh, how we revere words.
Words are a formula expressed to convey and communicate to others but in the fact that a person can communicate one thing and think another, words are highly suspect. The alien with a big zipper on his forehead, unzipped to reveal a big honking eye, his jaw automatically locked, the full spectrum of his data stream into my mind and I knew his intent, motive and reason, not a word was spoken. I felt like god had descended and swept away years of nonsense, the years of interpretive equations for every occasion and defensive quips to hide my fears. Oh the elation of pure knowledge that stopped all the human foolishness that has enveloped me. I am sure I must tell others.
Words, just words, like other words. My cousin James was abducted by aliens, he said. Oh, they had something about that on TV the other night. What you been smok'n mon? I am a _______________ and we don't believe in that, if you read the _____________you'd know god's word. God's got a mouth now, has lips, speaks words. His words, even if you repeat them are powerful words.
The mind is powerful in how it perceives and believes, conceives and receives, can also deceive and be deceived. Words themselves are the power. They strike the mind through the eye ports, the ear port, the mouth port. Thus we are mostly blind, deaf and dumb by reason of all the words we are bombarded with and the constructs of their definitions we exist in.
He's well read, is a man of letters, has a way with words, is a word mister, a word smith, is a walking lexicon and a con-artist. He is who said it first, coined the word, defined the word and redefined the expression. It's all about the words. Words are the real weapon. Like in Star Wars and every street fight, you play the dozens, can't settle it, then break out the fisticuffs or light sabers or guns. I see we can't settle this with our knowledge of the force (words), have to use the elegant weapons of a more civil time, bashing with stones, swords, throwing bullets, arrows, rockets, packets of erroneous data and viruses, sanctions, all the other things we do to each other because our words have less power that another's words. And it is because our words do not match our reasons and motives. The same is true for both sides. How in the heck can we move forward if our words were true? Both sides ask the same question. On this planet, words are the problem.
A picture speaks a thousand words. We should all be artist. There would be less need to speak. Oh, I forgot, we don't see eye to eye either.
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| Robot suit: An exoskeleton on display in Brazil is designed to be worn, and controlled, by a paralyzed person. |
I cautiously wish him good luck...
In less than 60 days, Brazil will begin hosting soccer’s 2014 World Cup, even though workers are still hurrying to pour concrete at three unfinished stadiums. At a laboratory in São Paulo, a Duke University neuroscientist is in his own race with the World Cup clock. He is rushing to finish work on a mind-controlled exoskeleton that he says a paralyzed Brazilian volunteer will don, navigate across a soccer pitch using his or her thoughts, and use to make the ceremonial opening kick of the tournament on June 12.
The project, called Walk Again, is led by Miguel Nicolelis, a 53-year-old native of Brazil and one of the biggest names in neuroscience. If it goes as planned, the kick will be a highly public display of research into brain-machine interfaces, a technology that aims to help paralyzed people control machines with their thoughts and restore their ability to get around.
But the Walk Again project is drawing doubters. Saying the demonstration is as much publicity stunt as science, they question whether it will illustrate any real degree of thought control. That’s because it relies on a fairly old, imprecise brain-recording technology called EEG, or electroencephalography.
At least three other research groups have recently published reports of EEG-controlled exoskeletons. Yet so far, none have managed to do much more than send a start or stop signal. They let the robotic harness do the rest of the work on a preset trajectory, with plenty of outside assistance in balancing.
MIT Technology Review:
World Cup Mind-Control Demo Faces Deadlines, Critics
A Brazilian neuroscientist says brain-controlled robotics will let the paralyzed walk again. By Antonio Regalado
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| Left: Snapshot of the simulation system. The (20, 20) type carbon nanotube (CNT) combined with two graphite sheets (cyan) solved in a periodic water box represents a nanometre water channel, and a polymer-functionalized nanoparticle (NP) is driven through it by an external electric field. Right: The NP structures with different polymer length and number, and the polymer terminal is charged (green). |
As carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are excellent water transporters, the researchers use all-atom molecular dynamics simulations to study the translocation of charged NPs through a fluidic CNT. A series of simulations are conducted for NPs with different polymer length, polymer number, charge amount and charge position. With the increase in polymer length, the NP flux decreases as a whole due to the increase in NP size. The negatively charged NP translocation fails at the smallest polymer length because of the strong binding of Na+.
Nanotech Web: Determining the translocation of nanoparticles
List your name here to win a FREE signed copy of American Specter!
Five winners will be chosen at random on May 1, 2014.
Ahem: #9 is kind of big, so be careful!
Source: Physics Database (10 Free Physics Problem Books)
Direct link to books:
- Problems and Solutions in Elementary Physics
- Review Problems for Introductory Physics
- 1000 Solved Problems in Modern Physics
- Problems and Solutions in Statistical Physics
- International Physics Olympiad Problems and Solutions
- Problems in General Physics
- Mechanics Revision: Problems and Solutions
- Problems and Solutions: Statistical Physics of Particles
- Quantum Mechanics: Problems and Solutions
- Problems and Solutions on Solid State Physics, Relativity and Miscellaneous Topics
Gravitational Waves Mystery May Be Solved Using Powerful Lasers
The ripples from violent cosmic collisions can be felt far across the universe, and thanks to a new, sensitive detector expected to start collecting data next year, scientists might be able to see evidence of those gravitational waves from Earth for the first time.
When two neutron stars (remnants of supernova explosions) merge or when a black hole merges with a neutron star, the reverberations of the merger can extend throughout the cosmos. Light, however, only tells us so much. To learn more about the mass and motion of the collision, astronomers want to use gravitational waves, ripples in space-time created during these massive crashes.
Next year, astrophysicists are set to switch on one of the most sensitive gravitational-wave detectors ever created. The observatory is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO, for short). It originally had six observing runs between 2004 and 2010, and has been offline for half a decade to make upgrades. The return, its backers say, will be worth it. [Photos: Hunting Gravitational Waves with LIGO]
"It opens us up to [viewing] a larger number of astrophysical events," said David Reitze, the LIGO Laboratory's principal investigator and director. One improvement will be better sensitivity in lower frequencies, which will let astronomers look for black holes of between 100 and 500 times the mass of the sun if they exist.
A new documentary about LIGO, titled "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding," is set to premiere on Space.com April 15. You can watch it on Space.com or directly from the filmmaker Kai Staats here: http://www.kaistaats.com/film/ligo/.
From the Big Bang to big star explosions
Gravitational waves hit the headlines in March when the scientific instrument BICEP2 (short for Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization) found the first direct evidence of cosmic inflation, or the huge expansion of the cosmos that happened shortly after the Big Bang.
LIGO, however, searches for waves at higher frequencies, in the 10 hertz to 10 kilohertz band. The primordial waves discovered by BICEP2, Reitze said, are 20 orders of magnitude lower in frequency.
While LIGO was not really designed to look for primordial waves, scientists did search for them. Researchers described what was then the most accurate upper limit on the primary gravitational- wave background in high frequencies. The results were published in a 2009 issue of the journal Nature in 2009 (and have since been superseded by BICEP2, Reitze said.)
Another prominent result came when scientists measured how round pulsars — super-dense, tiny, spinning remnants of supernovas — are by tracking asymmetries on their surfaces. "If it has a bump and the bump is big enough, it will generate a gravitational wave," Reitze said.
Measurements of the Crab Nebula's pulsar by LIGO yielded no "mountains" higher than one meter (3.4 feet). "Certain pulsars, are even better, with less than a millimeter high," Reitze added.
Stopping for trains and earthquakes
LIGO originally consisted of two interferometers (telescope receivers that work together) at Hanford (near Richland, Wash.) and one in Livingston, La. The $205 million advanced LIGO has one interferometer in each location, with the third one going somewhere off continent — likely India. The government there is calling this project "one of the hallmark science detectors," Reitze said, and site evaluation is underway.
Wherever the interferometer goes, it has to be a region that is not too prone to earthquakes, lest the sensor get mixed up. Despite advanced stabilization technology, shaking does happen. "And we monitor the shaking to make sure it doesn't corrupt the data," Reitze said. [Watch the trailer for "LIGO, A Passion for Understanding"]
There's a procedure at Hanford and Livingston to stop science work when earthquakes occur. Observations at Livingston also must stop temporarily if a 50-car cargo train rumbles by on a track about 1.5 miles (2.4 kilometers) away.
"There are automatic protocols (using sensors and software) which monitor earthquakes and take the interferometers out of 'science mode' during seismic disturbances from earthquakes," Reitze said.
Each interferometer works by injecting a laser into a vacuum system, which splits the beam in half to put the resulting beams at right angles to each other. Each beam goes to mirrors about 2.5 miles (4 kilometers) away, which reflect back.
The gravitational waves cause tiny but measurable distortions in the laser beams that cause a "changing interference pattern" in the photosensors that read the laser reflections, Reitze said. "In comparative scale, if you take the nucleus of an atom and take its diameter and divide that by 10,000, that's the type of a distance change we're looking at."
LIGO's capabilities will be 10 times more sensitive than before in searching for binary neutron star mergers, and it will be better able to pick up on many other cosmic phenomena as well – such as black holes and supernovas. The principal funder was the National Science Foundation, and the California Institute of Technology leads laboratory operations.
Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.
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| Quantum computers could benefit from the latest breakthrough in atomic physics. (Courtesy: Shutterstock) |
A quantum-information analogue of the transistor has been unveiled by two independent groups in Germany and the US. Both devices comprise a single atom that can switch the quantum state of a single photon. The results are a major step towards the development of practical quantum computers.
Unlike conventional computers, which store bits of information in definite values of 0 or 1, quantum computers store information in qubits, which are a superposition of both values. When qubits are entangled, any change in one immediately affects changes in the others. Qubits can therefore work in unison to solve certain complex problems much faster than their classical counterparts.
Qubits can be created from either light or matter, but many researchers believe that the practical quantum computers of the future will have to rely on interactions between both. Unfortunately, light tends only to interact with matter when the light is very intense and the matter is very dense. To make a single photon and a single atom interact is a challenge because the two are much more likely to pass straight through each other.
Physics World: Single-atom gates open the door to quantum computing
Universal Greetings to everyone on this site:
I watched the brother's rant just now, and my first issue is "Why does it sound like he is stuck on discussing what Hollywood isn't doing and on certain Black characters from the mainstream comics industry?" This topic goes around in circles every day, month, year, whatever. I've been on different sites and I see and read about this same issue. I've made it plain when I respond to these posts: I do not care what Hollywood is or is not doing with their Black characters! I mean c'mon, its been obvious since the beginning of the American film industry in this country that they do not nor have they ever cared about our culture.
We need to do for self as the great Marcus Garvey kept on emphazising during his time in the early 1900s, and we had our own small, yet creative "Black Hollywood" in those times (and I'm talking about more than the great Oscar Micheaux). We already have a large group of Black superheroes of African culture, science fiction, etc. that we can research and get together to collaborate on to produce them. I don't care if it comes out on NetFlix streaming service, straight to DVD, Video on Demand (VOD), whatever format would be viable for folks to view it. You want the best deliverable format with the lowest cost of distribution so that you are not overextending your overall budget. Go to the (small, yet entertaining) various Black comic conventions in this country and meet the creators, talk about their characters, and other future projects or ideas with them.
I am tired of reading posts about only Luke Cage, Black Panther, Storm, etc. My second issue is why do we have to dream cast the same person (s) for a role (I.e. Michael Jai White as either the Black Panther or Luke Cage)? He is not the only male Black actor out there, people! What about Morris Chestnut or Henry Simmons? We have more than Zoe Saldana to act as a comic book-based character, right? It seems to me that television gives more interesting role choices than film is doing. ECBACC, Black Age in Chicago, Motor City in Detroit, etc. are great places to discover our characters and creators. I have a friend and creative partner based in Los Angeles, and for example, he would love to do a massive possibly animated film featuring if not all but those who are willing to contribute based on using the Black Superhero Montage characters. Now wouldn't that be something spectacular? Now maybe folks who are stuck on Hollywood would shut the hell up finally?
It takes a lot of people, a whole lot of money, a definite whole lot of commitment to do for self. Lets stop complaining, stop bringing up racism as a blockade, stop dream casting, lets get off our collective asses and go learn whatever skills we need to have to make these projects become reality. To be continued...
