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Another Shark in the Water

Posted by Gerald Dean Rice on October 30, 2013 at 6:30pm

It’s been a while since I found one of these guys who promise to take your manuscript and publish it in eBook form.

 

X Publishing is requesting proposals for books to be published on iPad, Kindle, and Nook. eBook technology is changing the publishing world. iPad, Amazon Kindle, Barnes and Noble Nook, and Sony Reader created profitable mass markets for eBooks. We at X Publishing are here to help you take advantage of that.

We invite you to submit a query letter or manuscript for consideration.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I retain the rights to my book?
Yes. You retain all print rights, which means that when your eBook gets discovered by a big publishing company, you’ll receive 100% of those royalties.

How much will you edit my manuscript?
Not too much. If your manuscript needs major edits, it probably will be rejected. We will edit for clarity and concision. You will have the opportunity to approve or reject all edits.

Do I have to pay anything?
No. If your manuscript is selected, you will pay nothing to have your book published.

How much do you sell your eBooks for?
We prefer to sell eBooks at low prices with the goal of stimulating more sales volume, profits, and royalties. We default to charging $2.99 per eBook, but are open to your preferences on pricing, especially if you have already built a target audience with which you are familiar.

How much will I earn in royalties?
The fortunate few chosen to write for traditional publishers receive around $2 in royalties for each $20 hardcover book sold, according to the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency, an agent that represents writers. Your royalties will be 230% higher than that. You’ll receive $1 for each $2.99 eBook sold.

I’m not sure if my manuscript is good enough. Should I submit?
If you’re on the fence, we suggest submitting. X Publishing can often say yes to manuscripts that traditional publishers will reject because our costs are lower.

I took out the name because I don’t want to give these guys any more press than this. Let’s break this down piece by piece. Notice at the very beginning how they are only publishing your manuscript as an eBook? That should be a warning flag right there. ePublishing is something that is super easy that anyone can do. I even wrote a book about it that retails for $2.99. Now that’s not just a plug (well, it is a plug, but I’ll come back to it in a moment).

You might be saying at this point, ‘hey, so what it’s only electronic where they publish, they’re not charging me anything’. This is very true if you mean there’s no upfront cost. But what they are charging you on the back end. Their price-point is $2.99. Now on Amazon (just about everyone follows closely what Amazon pays) the publisher will earn $2.05 per unit sold. They are pocketing 51% of that and paying you a buck. Now you may be thinking, hey, that’s actually a pretty good deal, if my book were published by a traditional publisher, I’d be making way less than that (which is true and is pointed out by these guys). But what a real publisher is giving you outweighs anything these guys have said they’d do for you.

Notice nothing is said about the creation of a cover, extensive editing services, advertising of your book, book tours, etc. All these things are what the big boys do to promote your book so it can sell. So what you are giving up in royalty percentage, you are more than gaining in units sold (ideally). But these guys are getting you on the cheap. They make no mention of promoting you, which means you are left to promote yourself. They make no mention of creating a cover for you, which means you either are going to create your own cover, pay them to create your cover, or pay someone else to create your cover. Now, there are some places you can have a cover made without spending a lot of dough (again, you can read about that in my $2.99 book) or you can wait until you’ve signed the bottom line with these guys to see which option you are left with.

Next! You do retain the rights to your work. Of course you do. You just are signing away your right to publish it yourself for a term of service. Something between 3 to 5 years. And by them saying they’ll be your publisher until an actual publisher comes along to buy the rights, that big publisher is buying the rights from them, not you. You’ve already handed over the rights to publish (you can never surrender ownership of your story–it’s a semantics trick).

The reason they don’t want to edit your manuscript is because they are looking for people to hand over their work so they can publish right now. They herd you in the right direction to get  cover created and they can have your book on e-shelves in a few days time with little to no financial investment on their part.

Again, self-publishing an eBook is very simple and super-easy. I take you through the whole process in my book, and instead of paying them $1.05 per book, you can buy mine for a one-time charge of $2.99. But you can always buy anyone’s book on self-publishing in the digital age and come out way cheaper than anything these guys can do for you.

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Another Review for "The Best Night of the Year"

Posted by Gerald Dean Rice on October 30, 2013 at 8:47am

I’ll let this one speak for itself. Download a copy if you’re looking for a good #Halloween read.

 I stumbled onto Gerald Dean Rice on Facebook and saw the new cover for this book and thought I’d give it a shot. Three stories just 37 pages and it’s less than a dollar.

This is a very short collection but it does make for a good introduction to Rice’s work. Each story is solid and while they aren’t gory they are in a style that reminds me of The Twilight Zone, or even Night Gallery. This is classic horror and done well.

I’m glad I stumbled onto Rice and plan on reading as much as I can from this guy. He knows how to craft a story and after I read the last one in this collection I was upset because it was over. If you love classic horror that relies more on story telling than violence and gore pick this up. You won’t be dissapointed

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Repost and #GHOE Note...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 29, 2013 at 5:07am

Originally, this appeared one year ago as "This Is What It Looks Like." Europe just got a taste of it recently. Sandy occurred one year ago today.

Sadly, our political leaders figuratively whistle in the dark; play mythological fiddles while Rome burns (Nero never did it). Congressman Joe Barton believes "wind is a finite resource," and harnessing it would RESULT in global warming. Hill Heat reports Congressman Kevin Cramer believes "global warming is fraudulent science to promote wind farms." It would be laughable if only these men didn't have the levers of government behind their lack of training in STEM fields. The fact Cramer's name correlates well with the "Seinfeld shutdown" is pure irony. Life and physics are not a "multiple choice exams": you can't make it up as you go for very long. Laws of nature have abrupt ways of asserting themselves, and it doesn't grade on a curve.

What is not fraudulent: I opted not to go to my college homecoming last year due to Hurricane Sandy careening towards the eastern seaboard last year. What was not fraudulent is how many people went "Lord of the Flies" over gasoline: driving up from NYC and New Jersey; police called to break up fights at gas stations. What was sadly not fraudulent is these and other elected officials not voting for emergency relief since it didn't affect their constituents.

I am going to #GHOE this year, and taking a week off from posting. I am grateful for the training my university gave me in laws of physics, chemistry, Calculus, engineering, to make a real difference in the world. It all started with a chemistry set; it lifted a child from a sometimes violent existence to something wondrous. It is this wonder I'll pay homage to in Greensboro, NC. See you in a week...

In Austin, Texas I witnessed the caravans from Hurricanes Katrina and Rita: Interstates 10 and 45 packed headed towards Austin and Dallas respectively.


Houston received the first wave of fleeing masses of humanity from Louisiana. Churches and shelters in the three cities put up cots and sleeping bags as fast as they could; clothing and canned foods were donated; homes opened. We were brothers, sisters, cousins, friends: suddenly any differences were rendered utterly meaningless: "Vanity of vanities" said Solomon. I became used to life in "tornado alley," and the Texas colloquial phrase of "hunkering down," but nothing like shelves emptied at the grocery stores; sudden influxes of students from 9th Ward NOLA.

Moving from Texas to New York last year, my wife and I experienced Hurricane Irene, which was described at the time a once-in-a-lifetime event as far as its power (hurricanes and tropical storms have affected NY before). Sandy has now proven that comforting logic wrong, coupling winds, flooding, rain, and possibly tornadoes and snowstorms. Last year, the one and only snowstorm happened on Halloween, downing power lines made heavy by wet snow caught on autumn leaves and tree branches that snapped under the great unexpected weight, leaving families without lights; heat. We took in friends that lived in Hyde Park due to that: their children had an increased commute to school when it started again. In Irene's aftermath: Insect populations flourished that in times past should have passed on in seasonal death. Our power blinked in and out before it settled then, but I'm not so sure we'll be as lucky. I hope we are.

WE WILL HAVE TO DEAL WITH THIS: soberly using critical thinking skills, (which, as a nation we show ourselves remarkably bereft), not sound bites and slogans. We have lawyers as administrators of the republic: lawyers argue. Eight of the top nine government posts in China are held by engineers and scientists according to Forbes. Accordingly, they will move to economic prominence, no dominance in 2016, or at least by the 2020s. Narry a tax exempt creation museum on the Sino land mass.

Perhaps it's too late to solve it, and the carbon producers can revel in their profits merrily, having obfuscated truth and fact in our elected officials on science committees; literally running out the clock until...we are here.

And, great wealth only matters: when you have a functional planet to spend it on.

Site: Climate Change Refugees
You Tube: Real Time With Bill Maher
Do the Math: 350.org

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Gigayear Memories...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 28, 2013 at 5:02am


Your memories will truly outlive you by eons...


TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Back in 1956, IBM introduced the world’s first commercial computer capable of storing data on a magnetic disk drive. The IBM 305 RAMAC used fifty 24-inch discs to store up to 5 MB, an impressive feat in those days. Today, however, it’s not difficult to find hard drives that can store 1 TB of data on a single 3.5-inch disk.



But despite this huge increase in storage density and a similarly impressive improvement in power efficiency, one thing hasn’t changed. The lifetime over which data can be stored on magnetic discs is still about a decade.



That raises an interesting problem. How are we to preserve information about our civilisation on a timescale that outlasts it? In other words, what technology can reliably store information for 1 million years or more?



Today, we get an answer thanks to the work of Jeroen de Vries at the University of Twente in the Netherlands and a few pals. These guys have designed and built a disk capable of storing data over this timescale. And they’ve performed accelerated ageing tests which show it should be able to store data for 1 million years and possibly longer.



These guys start with some theory about ageing. Clearly, it’s impractical to conduct an ageing experiment in real time, particularly when the periods involved are measured in millions of years. But there is a way to accelerate the process of ageing.



This is based on the idea that data must be stored in an energy minimum that is separated from other minima by an energy barrier. So to corrupt data by converting a 0 to a 1, for example, requires enough energy to overcome this barrier.



The probability that the system will jump in this way is governed by an idea known as Arrhenius law. This relates the probability of jumping the barrier to factors such as its temperature, the Boltzmann constant and how often a jump can be attempted, which is related to the level of atomic vibrations.



Some straightforward calculations reveal that to last a million years, the required energy barrier is 63 KBT or 70 KBT to last a billion years. “These values are well within the range of today’s technology,” say de Vries and co.

Physics arXiv:
Towards Gigayear Storage Using a Silicon-Nitride/Tungsten Based Medium

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Defining Down Expertise...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 27, 2013 at 7:13am
Source


expert


1. somebody skilled or knowledgeable: somebody with a great deal of knowledge about, or skill, training, or experience in, a particular field or activity
2. highest rank of marksmanship: in shooting, the highest grade of marksmanship
3. highest-ranked shooter: in shooting, somebody who has achieved the grade of expert
Synonyms: skilled, skillful, practiced, proficient, professional, knowledgeable, adept

It started right before the dawn of the 21st Century, the hand-wringing with regards to the "information superhighway" and access to it by minorities, or the fear of lack of access to what was then essentially emerging as a global database. Knowledge is power, advantage; hope.

Expertise, as the definition above suggests, can be acquired from skilled practice; repetition its mother; skill its patriarch. What is now understood as muscle memory, ancients mystified as "no mind." Expertise suggests a teacher-disciple relationship, tutelage and qualification from some combination of observation and tasks performed. It used to be an earned credential that qualified for a specific line of work endeavor.


C Everett Koop, MD was US Surgeon General under the Reagan Administration - known for infuriating gay and conservative activists alike - targeting the former for AIDS, and advising sex education as early as the 3rd grade with instruction on the proper use of condoms to prevent disease - lent his name to a business and a web site: DrKoop.com. It's headquarters I passed often in Austin, Texas on the MOPAC expressway, also known as Loop 1; also derided as "segment 1," since a true loop around the city has been thus far impossible to achieve. It was not a successful venture according to the Texas Tribune (June 2000): In mid-March the financial newsweekly Barrons gave the company just three months to live based on its rapidly dwindling supply of cash, and a report by drkoop.com’s auditors to the Securities and Exchange Commission similarly called its long-term survival into question, noting that it had “sustained losses and negative cash flows from operation since its inception.” Twice before, the auditors had warned about the company’s financial health, but investors paid no attention. This time, however, they did: The dire news slashed the price of drkoop.com’s already depressed shares another 43 percent to $3.56 on March 31. On April 29 the stock was trading at $2.75.

The site now reflects to Health Central, may Dr. Koop rest in peace. Hopefully, their financial situation is not as dire as reported in 2000. However, one of the causes of the dot com bubble bursting was the notion of assumed expertise and viability because of the existence of a web site. Venture capitalists threw money at start ups with abandon and aplomb, knowing how to make money in the old world; arrogantly not perceiving or researching the viability of their gambits in the cyberspace of the then emerging new one. They fed and inflated the bubble.

I say assumed because pre-Google, one had to study for and pass a test administered by most librarians on the Dewey Decimal System. Knowledge was and is precious, as well as the development of basic research and critical thinking skills. With the diminishing importance of Dewey Decimal and the perceived public lack of Boolean logic in search engine queries, we have collectively lost our curiosity; our ability to separate the biblical "wheat from chaff"; to discern facts from loudly declared opinions. We are thus participant in inflating a bubble of dangerous ignorance.

The democratization of information has meant we have access to a global database: true. Teenagers as a demographic however, tend to use it to keep up with one another, bored with any other application; knowledgeable with regards to the opinions of other peers versus laws of nature, mathematics or critical thinking. Pundits have become entertainers, the lines blurred utterly between Comedy Central and so-called Cable News. Networks have sued for the right at the very least, to not run a story unfavorable to a major sponsor; many hired to disseminate information or disinformation in prime time are not educated nor trained in journalism, nor increasingly do actual journalists feel it is their duty to hold power accountable in a democratic republic.

Conspiracy theories used to be passed around on pamphlets by fringe groups whose meeting places you had to seek out and find on your own. Now: you may join a chat room, and become angry about anything fed you via cookies after a few search engine queries. The fringe are not only mainstream; they are AstroTurf movement, wielding power in principalities and higher offices of gerrymandered localities; temporarily shutting down democratic republics.

It is a power reinforced by uniform resource locator, the digital equivalent of preaching to a choir of the already convinced; similar to teens online - tweeting during the State of the Union; playing poker during senate hearings on Syria - our political leaders seem only interested in the echos within their own bubble chambers, reinforcing unyielding opinions. And like some pundits and most developing teenagers, they do not have to be skilled in governance to win higher office. Thomas Gray said "ignorance is bliss"; George Orwell "ignorance is strength." And when this bubble pops, there will be massive casualties.

Related links:

Successful Workplace: Is social BPM the end of focused expertise?
The Atlantic: The End Of Expertise?
Forbes:
The End of the Expert: Why No One in Marketing Knows What They're Doing

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Cancer Fighting Nanoparticles...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 26, 2013 at 8:57am
Source: link below

Mesoporous silica (mSiO2) can be used to carry anti-cancer drugs to tumour sites in mice. So say researchers at the University of Wisconsin−Madison in the US who have succeeded in making TRC105-conjugated mSiO2 labelled with radioactive copper for the first time. TRC105 is a chimeric monoclonal antibody that binds to both human and mouse endoglin, or CD105 (a type I membrane glycoprotein found on endothelial cell surfaces).



mSiO2 nanoparticles are a promising new category of drug delivery vehicle because they are biocompatible and non-toxic. Their surfaces can also be easily modified and their mesopores (which are around 2–3 nm across) can hold a significant amount of therapeutic molecules.



Successful anti-cancer drug delivery

In vivo tumour targeting experiments by Cai and colleagues clearly show that the 64Cu-NOTA-mSiO2-PEG-TRC105 accumulates at mouse breast tumour sites (known as "4T1") thanks to TRC105-mediated binding to CD105 in tumour blood vessels. As a proof of concept, they also demonstrated that they could successfully deliver the anti-cancer drug doxorubicin (DOX) in mice with 4T1 tumours by injecting DOX-loaded 64Cu-NOTA-mSiO2-PEG-TRC105 into the animals.

Nanotech Web: Silica nanoparticles deliver anti-cancer drugs

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Higgs MOOC...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 25, 2013 at 6:34am


ABOUT THE COURSE

The discovery of a new fundamental particle at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), CERN is the latest step in a long quest seeking to answer one of physics’ most enduring questions: why do particles have mass? The experiments’ much anticipated success confirms predictions made decades earlier by Peter Higgs and others, and offers a glimpse into a universe of physics beyond the Standard Model.



As Professor Peter Higgs continues his inspiring role at Edinburgh University’s School of Physics & Astronomy, the experiments at the LHC continue.



This MOOC introduces the theoretic tools needed to appreciate the discovery, and presents the elementary particles at the tiniest scales ever explored. Beginning with basic concepts in classical mechanics, the story unfolds through relativity and quantum mechanics, describing forces, matter and the unification of theories with an understanding driven by the tools of mathematics.



Narrating the journey through experimental results which led to the discovery in 2012, the course invites you to learn from a team of world-class physicists at Edinburgh University. Learners participate in discussion of the consequences of the Higgs boson, to physics and cosmology, and towards a stronger understanding and new description of the universe.



REQUIREMENTS

The course requires a basic level of mathematical skills, at the level of a final-year school pupil. A basic knowledge of physics is helpful, but not required.

University of Edinburgh: The Discovery of the Higgs Boson (click "Join this course")

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Time and Entanglement...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 24, 2013 at 5:58am
Credit: Physics arXiv Blog; paper link below


Physics arXiv Blog: When the new ideas of quantum mechanics spread through science like wildfire in the first half of the 20th century, one of the first things physicists did was to apply them to gravity and general relativity. The result were not pretty.


It immediately became clear that these two foundations of modern physics were entirely incompatible. When physicists attempted to meld the approaches, the resulting equations were bedeviled with infinities making it impossible to make sense of the results.

Then in the mid-1960s, there was a breakthrough. The physicists John Wheeler and Bryce DeWitt successfully combined the previously incompatible ideas in a key result that has since become known as the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. This is important because it avoids the troublesome infinites—a huge advance.

But it didn't take physicists long to realise that while the Wheeler-DeWitt equation solved one significant problem, it introduced another. The new problem was that time played no role in this equation. In effect, it says that nothing ever happens in the universe, a prediction that is clearly at odds with the observational evidence.

This conundrum, which physicists call ‘the problem of time’, has proved to be thorn in flesh of modern physicists, who have tried to ignore it but with little success.

Then in 1983, the theorists Don Page and William Wooters came up with a novel solution based on the quantum phenomenon of entanglement. This is the exotic property in which two quantum particles share the same existence, even though they are physically separated.

Entanglement is a deep and powerful link and Page and Wooters showed how it can be used to measure time. Their idea was that the way a pair of entangled particles evolve is a kind of clock that can be used to measure change.

But the results depend on how the observation is made. One way to do this is to compare the change in the entangled particles with an external clock that is entirely independent of the universe. This is equivalent to god-like observer outside the universe measuring the evolution of the particles using an external clock.

In this case, Page and Wooters showed that the particles would appear entirely unchanging—that time would not exist in this scenario.

But there is another way to do it that gives a different result. This is for an observer inside the universe to compare the evolution of the particles with the rest of the universe. In this case, the internal observer would see a change and this difference in the evolution of entangled particles compared with everything else is an important a measure of time.

This is an elegant and powerful idea. It suggests that time is an emergent phenomenon that comes about because of the nature of entanglement. And it exists only for observers inside the universe. Any god-like observer outside sees a static, unchanging universe, just as the Wheeler-DeWitt equations predict.


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Antagonist Frequency analysis

Posted by Moorsgate Media on October 23, 2013 at 9:53am


During the discussion of high-quality and low quality fiction, a argument is usually made concerning antagonistic frequency rates. Simplified, this argument goes something like this:

Book proponent: "Sexy Vampires IV is the best Historical Slash-Vamp Dom Fiction out there!" 


Book Detractor: "Man! Slash-Vamp fiction is totally played, everyone is doing that these days." 


Insert you proposed antagonist into that conversation and you will get someone who will tell you that the Genre is over done, played out, or no longer interesting.  Additionally, any conversation of reasonable length with agents, publishers and marketers will eventually result in them telling you which particular genera of fiction they are tired of seeing.

The rise of self-publishing has pushed this situation into overdrive. Where originally, you had maybe a half-dozen entries in a particular genera a year from major and minor publishers, you now have hundreds, if not thousands, of attempts to tell a particular story.

What is lacking is historical perspective. Google's Ngram viewer gives some imperfect, but interesting, historical context to the antagonistic frequency debate.

(the charts here are pngs, check the Moorsgate Media Blog for interactive charts)

As shown above, the frequency of various antagonist (this is current through 2009) in English fiction is charted. Generally, in current fiction debates, Vampires and Zombies are singled out as being over-done in terms of genera.  However, Aliens as a concept has held a pretty consistent lead, and it currently, even though there has been some decline,is at a historically above average position.  Interestingly, the concept of plagues, which can be related to Zombies, has been on a historical downward slop ever since a peak some time in the 1810's.

Robots, the term being unknown prior to Capek's seminal work, takes off after the publication of R.U.R., and hits a peak in the mid eighties (think original Terminator, transformers, etc.) that surpasses the popularity of vampires today. Sadly, we appear to be living in a world of "Peak Robot", due possibility in part to the rise of non-fictional robots in our everyday lives (e.g murderous drones, vacuum cleaners).

As a point of comparison, the next chart looks at the frequency of some events in fiction (we use aliens as the cross reference to the above chart)



As shown, the concept of the Rapture is down from its historical heights, but has recently made a resurgence, and appears to be on track to overtake Aliens in frequency.  However, from a Genera standpoint, no one argues if Rapture based fiction has reached "peak rapture". [ed. This chart only goes to 2009, it is goes to 2012, it might be that there was a serious crash after the Mayan Calendar failed to turn us into orbs of pure something.]

The point here is that Genera antagonist come and go, but without data, it is difficult to determine if present, or short term historical bias is altering peoples' perception of what is or is not a popular genera. Having some data is always a good rule of thumb changing behavior, concepts or positions.

moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com

Twitter: Moorsgate

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Stereotype Threat...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 22, 2013 at 5:00am
Scientific American, see [2] below

Stereotype threat refers to being at risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group (Steele & Aronson, 1995). This term was first used by Steele and Aronson (1995) who showed in several experiments that Black college freshmen and sophomores performed more poorly on standardized tests than White students when their race was emphasized. When race was not emphasized, however, Black students performed better and equivalently with White students. The results showed that performance in academic contexts can be harmed by the awareness that one's behavior might be viewed through the lens of racial stereotypes. [1]

Scott Barry Kaufman seems to refer to this in his Scientific American article "The Need for Belonging in Math and Science" [2]:

From her earliest memories, Catherine Good was good at math. By second grade she was performing at the fourth grade level, sometimes even helping the teacher grade other students’ work. She was praised constantly for her “gift”, often overhearing her mother tell anyone who would listen that she was a “sponge” for anything mathematical.

As time went on:

Achieve she did. Good did so well as an undergraduate, that she decided to pursue a Ph.D. in mathematics. Again, she wasn't driven by the sheer joy, but by other forces:

“My counter-stereotypical achievement, coupled with my belief that those successes were rooted in an innate gift, not only fueled my academic pursuits, but also formed the basis for my academic identity.”

For awhile, Good performed as usual in her graduate program. But then something happened that would change the course of her career: her identity became threatened. As Good puts it, “the identity as a mathematician that I thought was so well-entrenched and established came crashing down, leaving me in a professional crisis.”

Despite her good grades, a flood of self-doubt crept in. She suddenly wondered: Was I simply no longer inspired by the level of rigor and originality necessary for graduate level mathematics? Was it the fact that for the first time in my academic life, I had to work, really work, at my studies?

And, finally...

Whatever the cause(s), one thing was certain: she no longer felt a sense of belonging in mathematics. As a result, she left mathematics.

I have had to come to grips with this in myself, having tried masters programs in physics at Texas State and Astrophysics at UT: certain things stick out to you.

1. You're the only "one." The cartoon above pertaining to the difference for women in STEM could also be of the one African American, Hispanic/Latino/Native American; the Asian that HAS to be good at math as a matter of genetics, so any questions for clarification and understanding means you're a defect somehow.

2. Some indication of that in my offspring. He's performing quite well in Civil Engineering, yet he often feels like "the one." I'm sure if he asked around campus, he'd find it not so unique.

Ironically, the strength of my taking a masters online is I am "one" of many "ones" online. We don't see each other; we only interact/question via email. I send homework in PDF. If I experience some form of stereotype threat, it is in my own self-doubt, which are many: am I too old to do this; will I be the only "one" in the room? There is a freedom and a loneliness in online anonymity, the only brief camaraderie I experienced when I inquired last year how they weathered Hurricane Sandy: Stevens University is in Hoboken, NJ.

I recall once that observation being made by someone I worked with at Motorola: "we're the 'only black engineers' in the room," my fellow alumni said. "And, we're the best damn engineers IN the room" I shot back. Despite that bravado, I wish I had Dr. JC Holbrook's paper on survival strategies [3] in many instances I felt the pressure of stereotype threat. Religion and spirituality - as she mentions - are forms of mental survival strategies (go see 12 Years a Slave) and cultural expression that if not abused by charlatans, pundits, lying politicians and political machinations spewing manipulative talking points, propels individuals and groups forward despite near insurmountable obstacles. Think of the Civil Rights movement. Unless society were to make a massive, herculean change towards eliminating inequality, this will remain necessary.


To go further beyond a masters, I'll have to emerge from online anonymity, even with my company behind me (as they enthusiastically are), I'll have to use survival strategies and fight within myself this "stereotype threat" that morphs into self-fulfilling prophecy for many of us. One is a promise I made to my parents. My journey in science started with a chemistry set and my first almost fatal experiment. Instead of discouraging me, they just barred me from repeating THAT particular one. As science lifts countries out of poverty, it has lifted me twice: once post the US Air Force; second eight years after a lay off from that same company where we were the "best damn engineers in the room." And I have obligated myself to finish what they planted in me and seed it forward to their grandchildren, and any other youth I can influence.

It is an important, internal and external struggle we ultimately must win. This country is bereft of a prosperous future without our triumph and our inputs.

1. Reducing Stereotype Threat: What is 'Stereotype Threat'?
2. SciAm Beautiful Minds: The Need for Belonging in Math and Science
3. P4TC: Survival Strategies

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And On The Eighth Day...

Posted by Don Perry on October 20, 2013 at 6:51pm

It is well known by those of the Christian Faith that the Lord God created the Earth, the Heavens and their Multitudes in six days...and He rested on the seventh day.

But what I'm interested in is what happens on the Eighth Day...after Creation has been lived in awhile...after the end of the Millennium and Satan is once more allowed to run free...after the Four Horsemen have mounted their steeds...after the spawn of Hell rises up from the Dark Realms and invades the Realms of the Living?

What happens on that day?

That is precisely the focus of the next exciting chapter in The Soul Eater Chronicles!

Chapter One has just been put to bed and we're already on to the next installment.

I can't wait to see how it all turns out!

I'm also playing around with possible artwork for the new eBook cover...check out this comp image...neat, huh?!  I'm definitely feeling this one!

Your buddy,

Wm Kane

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Review of Jimmy Pudge's The Booty Goblin

Posted by Gerald Dean Rice on October 20, 2013 at 1:00pm

There's a new little monster everyone should be afraid of. The Booty Goblin is a little demon that has the strangest means of killing his victims. I love the mythos Pudge creates around this character. I love how the only thing it can say is 'booty booty booty'. And per usual, Pudge's easy style makes reading this story a breeze. I bought this book 2 days ago and barely read any of it the first day. One of the things I love most is the complete impossibility of predicting who is going to make it to the end of the story. Once again, I was wrong. Pudge isn't afraid to kill major characters before the third act. Ramps up the tension, leaving the reader wondering whom to hang his hopes on. I would highly recommend this story to anyone who has ever read and enjoyed a book by Jimmy Pudge. Download a copy here. Only $0.99.

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Thermomagnetism...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 19, 2013 at 7:23am
Seebeck Effect - see arXiv (1) below

EPFL scientists have provided the first evidence ever that it is possible to generate a magnetic field by using heat instead of electricity. The phenomenon is referred to as the Magnetic Seebeck effect or ‘thermomagnetism’.



A temperature difference across an electric conductor can generate an electric field. This phenomenon, called the Seebeck effect, lies at the root of thermoelectricity (heat turned into electricity), and is used to drive space probes and power thermoelectric generators, and could be implemented for heat-harvesting in power plants, wrist-watches and microelectronics. In theory, it is also possible to generate a magnetic field by using a temperature difference across an electrical insulator (‘thermomagnetism’). This has been referred to as the Magnetic Seebeck effect, and has enormous applications for future electronics such as solid-state devices and magnetic-tunnel transistors. In a breakthrough Physical Review Letters publication that has been promoted to “Editors’ Suggestion”, EPFL scientists have for the first time predicted and experimentally verified the existence of the Magnetic Seebeck effect.



Thermoelectricity and ‘thermomagnetism’



The Seebeck effect (thermoelectricity) — named after Thomas Johann Seebeck who first observed it in 1821 — is generated when electrons in an electric conductor move as a response to a temperature gradient. On average, the electrons on the hot side of the conductor have more kinetic energy and subsequently move at higher speeds than the electrons on the cold side. This causes them to diffuse from the hot to the cold side, generating an electric field that is directly proportional to the temperature gradient along the conductor.



Using an electrical insulator rather than a conductor, researchers led by Jean-Philippe Ansermet at EPFL have shown that a Magnetic Seebeck effect also exists. Because an insulator does not allow electrons to flow, a temperature gradient does not cause electrons to diffuse. Instead, it affects another property of electrons that forms the basis of magnetism and is referred to as ‘spin.’



In an insulator, a temperature gradient alters the orientation of electrons’ spin. Under certain conditions, this generates a magnetic field that is perpendicular to the direction of the temperature gradient. Similar to thermoelectricity described above, the intensity of the thermomagnetic field is directly proportional to the temperature gradient along the insulator. 2

 

1. Physics arXiv: Evidence for a Magnetic Seebeck Effect
2. Thermomagnetism: Using Heat to Make Magnets, Nik Papageorgiou, EPFL, Scientific Computing

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Thermal Transistors...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 18, 2013 at 6:34am


TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: In recent years, engineers have begun to design and test thermal transistors with some success. Their goal is to exercise the same control over heat that they already have over electric current–the ability to switch it on and off, to modulate it and even to amplify it.


That would be hugely useful for managing heat dissipation but also for creating thermal logic gates that can process information in the form of heat.

The thermal transistors built so far all work by modulating the flow of phonons, or thermal vibrations, from one material to another. For this to work, materials must be in physical contact with one another.

But there is another way for heat to flow–by radiative transfer. In this case, heat flows with the passage of thermal photons from one material to another. In this case, the materials do not need to be in physical contact.

Today, Philippe Ben-Abdallah at the Université Paris-Sud in France and Svend-Age Biehs at Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Germany, unveil the first thermal transistor to operate on thermal photons. The big advantage of this device is that it works at much higher speed than phonon transistors, potentially at light speed.

The design is simple. The transistor consists of three parts, which Ben-Abdallah and Biehs call the source, drain and gate, in analogy to a conventional transistor. The source and drain are made of silica and held at different temperatures to create a temperature gradient.

The source, which is hotter than the drain, emits thermal photons which transfer heat to the drain.

Physics arXiv: Near-field thermal transistor

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Cyber Bullying...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on October 18, 2013 at 6:30am
StopBullying.gov

Sadly, it's happened again. And each time it happens, I am diminished in the spirit of John Donne's Meditation 17; we are diminished as a nation because brilliance that shouldn't die so young, a candle that should illuminate the darkness...is extinguished.

It's not the first time I've discussed bullying. Scientists get bullied too, many are the survivors of some pretty awful bullying for just being curious; just being different than the "cool, accepted norms." Now, the bullies are young earth advocates, climate change deniers, museums that have Fred and Barney; dragons and zip lines (see Sunday's rant). Lately, the bullies staged a "Seinfeld shutdown" and come out of it in the spirit of Macbeth: "like sound and fury, signifying nothing!"

The dark side of technology is it empowers narcissistic psychopaths. Those are the only words that come to mind when disengagement, transfer to another school only intensifies pursuit for the perverse pleasure of causing harm to a fellow human being. Then when the unthinkable happens and that person takes their own life, the Facebook post is "IDGAF" with 30 likes? Of course now, the account was hacked. That remains to be proven. I sincerely hope if true, they do. It does not absolve them from the physical abuse Rebecca Ann Sedwick received from them offline; I can only imagine the hateful name-calling; the social ostracizing. If they were truly innocent, when she left their school, they should have left her alone.

The narcissists are not all young, as former NY congressman Anthony Weiner lived long enough to see himself become a byword. Internet addiction disorder seems to suggest stereotypical nerds, but I think it is the act of esteeming something that amounts to ones and zeros; mean girls and idols; more important than yourself feeds into a pathology that previously might have in other times made someone a successful "Type A."

I personally witnessed a brouhaha almost ignite in a 4th period physics class...over Facebook...on what one of the young ladies said about themselves to others. This is a generation that compared to previous ones - coming through segregation, poll taxes, Jim Crow and Civil Rights; The Vietnam War; the draft; the Cuban Missile Crisis; The Korean War; The Cold War; WWII and "meatless Tuesdays" have more privilege and less sacrifice than previous ones; their only crisis growing up in the shadows of 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq...and bullies.

I've recently experienced similar treatment from a religious zealot. A year older than I from the same high school, I don't have much of a recollection of him. I've blocked him, and liberally block anyone else that I think not worth my time. Life is too precious and short. As a survivor of old-school, offline bullying, I relate too well, too personally with each of these stories.

Our minds were made for reason and real problems, reading literature, campfires and conversations. I will finish this post, as I do others in about 20 Terran minutes. I'll then go read an assignment and do problems in solid state electronics. I'll look at my Kindle and laugh. I'll talk to people and treat them with respect.

This is an essay I wrote regarding a young lady that took her life in NY earlier this year.

This, along with gun violence, is becoming a dark national addiction for which we need a Betty Ford intervention.

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A preview of both Discovery and Conception of the Darkside Trilogy

Posted by William Hayashi on October 17, 2013 at 7:24pm

For those interested in previewing the first two installments of the Darkside Trilogy, follow these links to the first four chapters of Discovery and the opening chapter of Conception:

Discovery tells the story of what happens in the United States of America when the country discovers a secret colony of African Americans living on the backside of the moon who have been there since before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.

For writers who may be interested in the construction of the story, these four chapters introduce the four main subplots of the story.

One of my main goals in writing the Darkside Trilogy was to make sure that the story was exciting, consistent and that the science and technology within the story was true-to-life. This series was written with an eye toward honoring the classic style of pioneers of the genera from the early years of the 20th Century.

Discovery - Chapter 1

Discovery - Chapter 2

Discovery - Chapter 3

Discovery - Chapter 4

Conception begins as a prequel, telling the 40-year story of how an extraordinary community of African Americans stole the world's march in the race to the moon, arriving several years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface.

And, Conception ends with the same events that conclude Discovery, however they are seen from the perspective of those who left Planet Earth for a new beginning, away from any influences of a still prejudiced United States of America.

Four high school friends, who bond over the dream of living somewhere free of the racial deprivations of America, come up with the most ambitious plan ever conceived by man.

That plan, carried out in secret, and without the influence of white America, launched an exodus from Earth that bore the most unbelievable technological, medical and scientific fruit known to man.

Conception - Chapter 1

For those here on BSFS who do purchase either or both of the installments of the Darkside Trilogy, please let me know so I may send you something by mail as a personal thank you for supporting my work.

I hope you enjoy the ride...

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The Best Night of the Year is #96 in the #Kindle Store

Posted by Gerald Dean Rice on October 16, 2013 at 7:30pm

no 96

If you haven't gotten a copy, download yours here. I would like to say thank you to everyone who already has one! I had no idea how this relaunch would go, but it has been a fantastic experience so far. A lot of people are responding to the new cover and I couldn't be happier with it. Now if we could just do something about that 47,700 number. My next goal is to crack the top 100 in Kindle sales. 

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