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Yin and yang are actually complementary, not opposing, forces, interacting to form a whole greater than either separate part; in effect, a dynamic system. Everything has both yin and yang aspects, (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the criterion of the observation. The concept of yin and yang is often symbolized by various forms of the Taijitu symbol, for which it is probably best known in Western cultures. (Wikipedia)
Star Trek Blog: Star Trek’s replicator is an amazing technology concept that has fascinated us for decades. Working at the molecular level to synthesize materials, the replicator is able to instantly produce nearly any object, food or medicine on demand. It is easy to imagine how the replicator would quickly change the world. Such a device could dramatically reduce or even eliminate the cost of most products. Hunger and poverty would be stamped out worldwide, and much of the time and energy spent working for a living could be used instead for pursuits of education, exploration and the advancement of society.
Star Trek envisions the future of humanity to be one of incredible achievements made possible by evolved philosophies as well as technologies. This hopeful view of tomorrow is perhaps the reason so many have dreamed of inventing real-life versions of Star Trek tech -- from the transporter to the tricorder -- and the replicator is one of the most coveted.
A process called “additive manufacturing,” or its more popular nickname, “3D Printing,” has captured the imagination of the tech industry. These machines work much like the two-dimensional printer you may have on your desk, but instead of printing a layer of ink, a 3D printer extrudes many layers of melted plastic to form a physical object. You can imagine this as similar to a hot glue gun, where the heated glue stick is carefully extruded from a nozzle. In the case of a 3D printer, that nozzle is controlled by software and digital design files that tells it how to form a shape.
The comparisons between 3D Printing and the Star Trek replicator don’t end with plastic. Other materials like wood, metal and even some foods are now being extruded in similar ways to make on-demand creations. This has led to excited speculation that soon we may see the beginnings of a new era of manufacturing in America and around the world, where small-scale production is possible at very low costs. We may even “print” biotechnologies and human organs one day.
Gene Roddenberry's underlying message of the future: eternal optimism. As much as I am a fan, I'm afraid I possess a healthy dose of skepticism. Even the Star Trek Memory Alpha Wiki mentions some rough roads prior to 1st Contact with Vulcan. I sincerely hope "life does [not] imitate art" in this case (the "rough road" part; 1st Contact would be OK).
The last five mass extinction events were completely involuntary; unassisted since we hadn't showed up just yet. I end below the embed with two quotes from Einstein:
“I don't know what weapons will be used in world war three, but in world war four people will use sticks and stones.”
"We cannot dispair of humanity, since we ourselves are human beings."
Yin...Yang...
Researchers can learn a lot from a lizard scampering across the hot desert sand or an insect crawling atop a pile of plant litter. Chen Li and colleagues from the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta took cues from such creatures and designed a robot that uses six legs to traverse a bed of dry, loose grains.
The robotic design isn't as effective as a lizard's but it can move through sand at a reasonable pace without getting stuck, and it may help to boost the performance of roving and walking robots, such as the Mars rovers, the researchers said. They noted that previous studies of objects moving through air and water have led to improvements of industrial products such as aircraft wings and underwater robots.
"There's only going to be an increasing number of robots running around our planet and others," said Daniel Goldman, a co-author of the report that appears in the 22 March issue of Science. "We'd like to identify principles that allow devices to move effectively under diverse conditions."
I am a researcher, not because I am doing a college thesis or a gov job, but because I have a need to know. The problem is that the things we have been called and are called do not fully disclose a remedy to our plight. Not as the overall group we are associated with, not as the various camps within the group. Thus we have no rights or privileges other than what we are allowed by the powers that be (over us as a group).
OK, putting all the recent marbles on the table and keeping it brief:
We got off the boat that came from Africa.
We were here in America already.
We are Africans, Egyptians, Hebrew Israelites, native but Black Indians, Moors, Jewish, Muslim, Christian, others and because each designation has their own myth stories that may or may not link us altogether, we can't agree. Why?
You can not put all of us into the same box if only some of us have that particular history. The group who did come from Africa can not claim oneness with the group that were indigenous Black Americans and so on.
We don't all have the same story and so our masters to keep it simple called us slave names from their property ownership titles to derogatory names. We keep looking for a lumped together name with a common history attached. Slavery is the common experience no matter where we came from. History is most always to make political or religious control or to recover from it. Once written history is not removed. False history is not deleted, just challenged by another perspective. You could be teaching/spreading a lie or a spin-off.
Today we are schooled in all the master's arts and sciences and law. None of this has provided a remedy for us in this country. It should be noted that the main problem is not what we call ourselves among ourselves, but how we are defined in the legal system of the country in the constitutional documents (contracts). Forget about the local law stuff, look at the law that governs the country. As I am not trained in those things I don't have the language skills to comprehend well myself but you lawyers of hue do.
It seems that the American Moorish Movement is heading in this direction. I don't agree with being a Muslim as I am a so-called Christian (don't like that either). I also know these are referring to a more esoteric (cosmic understanding and application) knowledge and not the secular perspective. But, you can't get past names and events attached to names (our slavery started with Muslims, converted Jews and Christians). All the major religions say esoteric knowledge are witchcraft, magic and devil worship. There is much evil in the common religions too! Secret societies had hoarded knowledge, thus inviting corruption and decay of the truth and have abused application. While dispersion of knowledge is not a fruit to the masses, a guiding by wisdom is ignored completely, which is why the whole nation is crumbling.
So what I see is that no matter how we name ourselves we are listed in constitutional documents as property in a corporate institution. That is the problem and we need to see what we need to be to secure our rights under the constitutional contract. That might be the missing 2/5. Today the corporation is restructuring. We might be written out of the new plan or assimilated into the matrix. All us old farts are being put aside because we still remember. Or what if the foreign investment is a guardian, we being the perpetual underage ward (via lame schooling, social confusion, financial disenfranchisement, etc), never realizing this is our country. The renters are tearing up the house we own, we think we are from Europe (we learned (slum-lordism) from them their thoughts). This is our home!?
Lots to sort out, but look at the legal first, the constitutional stuff that established this mess.
There is a new documentary on Angela Davis called “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” see https://www.facebook.com/freeangelafilm and http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2350432/. Black Bloggers Connect (see http://blog.blackbloggersconnect.com/2013/03/black-bloggers-connect-presents-free.html) invited people to blog about why such a film is necessary. The question can be asked, “Do African and African American astrophysicists need to know about Angela Davis?” My answer is “Yes!”
I had the pleasure of meeting Professor Angela Davis PhD when I was a graduate student at the University of California, Santa Cruz (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Davis). At the time I was playing my role as the first African American graduate student in the Astronomy & Astrophysics department. I was slowly being worn down by the petty discrimination, insults, and slights that I had to face on a daily basis with no one available within the department with which to decompress. Enter meeting Dr. Angela Davis and her graduate students. She and her students helped me put my negative experiences into the context of the USA incarnations of racism, sexism, and who has the right to make new knowledge. In effect, I learned that what I was experiencing was not specific to just me, UCSC, or to astrophysics.
Dr. Angela Davis is an icon of the Black Power movement in the United States, however when you spend your life studying physics and astrophysics...that part of my education was neglected. All I knew was the outline of who she was, what she had done, and in the mid-1990s when I met her that she had one of the best jobs in the University of California system: an endowed chair. What I did not understand at the time that became important to me later was that before she became an internationally recognized political figure, she was already a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles; she was already Dr. Angela Davis with a doctorate in philosophy (see
http://histcon.ucsc.edu/faculty/singleton.php?&singleton=true&cruz_id=aydavis). This point is important enough that I am going to refer to her as Dr. Davis throughout this blog.
Meeting Dr. Davis and her intellectual community personally helped me endure a difficult situation long enough to complete my doctorate degree; however, knowing her story is important for our collective Black peers in astrophysics for many reasons, but one stands out. Mentoring students of astrophysics, the fear emerges of being transformed during the PhD process into someone unrecognizable. This issue touches on the imposture syndrome (see astrophysicist Dr. John Johnson’s blog on this at http://mahalonottrash.blogspot.com/2012/09/impostor-syndrome.html) which arises from not seeing people like yourself in your profession as well as touches on the fear that in order to succeed in astrophysics you have to ‘whitewash’ yourself. This whitewashing may include extraction and disassociation from family and community, adopting the value system of the majority, self-imposed silencing on certain topics, and in the extreme the adoption of majority fashion, speaking, and interaction style. Dr. Davis is our peer in that she earned a doctorate and her working world is academia. The process of earning a doctorate did not sever her connection to the African American community and did not change her values. She was and is brave and courageous and willing to stand up for what she believes in and willing to sacrifice a comfortable academic lifestyle in the process.
Dr. Davis is an example for us Black astrophysicists to emulate. Our cause is that we want more diversity in astrophysics. Then we have to bring our values with us and we have to not be silent. We have to insist that our colleagues create an environment that supports all students especially those we are trying to attract to astrophysics. Dr. Davis had the California government standing against her (and she was on the FBIs Most wanted list!) and she won. We simply have to stand our ground to our academic colleagues and dare to forego the comfort of our fairly prestigious positions. I plan to see “Free Angela and All Political Prisoners” when it comes to my town and I know that I will be better educated for it and I will be inspired. I think that the same will be true of the other African and African American astrophysicists if they make the time to see this film.
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| Philip Phillips, a professor of physics and of chemistry at Illinois, and colleagues found that something other than electrons carries the current in copper-containing superconductors known as cuprates. |
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — To engineers, it’s a tale as old as time: Electrical current is carried through materials by flowing electrons. But physicists at the University of Illinois and the University of Pennsylvania found that for copper-containing superconductors, known as cuprates, electrons are not enough to carry the current.
“The story of electrical conduction in metals is told entirely in terms of electrons. The cuprates show that there is something completely new to be understood beyond what electrons are doing,” said Philip Phillips, a professor of physics and of chemistry at the U. of I.
In physics, Luttinger’s theorem states that the number of electrons in a material is the same as the number of electrons in all of its atoms added together. Electrons are the sub-atomic particles that carry the current in a conductive material. Much-studied conducting materials, such as metals and semiconductors, hold true to the theorem.
Phillips’ group works on the theory behind high-temperature superconductors. In superconductors, current flows freely without resistance. Cuprate superconductors have puzzled physicists with their superconducting ability since their discovery in 1987.
The researchers developed a model outlining the breakdown of Luttinger’s theorem that is applicable to cuprate superconductors, since the hypotheses that the theorem is built on are violated at certain energies in these materials. The group tested it and indeed found discrepancies between the measured charge and the number of mobile electrons in cuprate superconductors, defying Luttinger.
News Bureau, Illinois:
Electrons are not enough: Cuprate superconductors defy convention
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Lopsided universe: Planck’s new skymap shows that one half of the microwave background is brighter than the other, and the universe has a large cold spot. Credit: ESA and the Planck Collaboration |
By now you've probably heard about the amazing new cosmic snapshot from the European Space Agency’s Planck spacecraft. It is one of those scientific achievements so mind-boggling that you have to spend a bit of time with it to truly appreciate what you are seeing. This is relic radiation from when the universe was 370,000 years old, still all aglow from the Big Bang. The radiation has been traveling 13.8 billion years since then, across ever-expanding stretches of space, before landing in Planck’s detectors. Then it took a tremendous feat of imagination and insight to translate that noisy signal into a comprehensible map of what the universe looked like in its infancy.
So let’s step back for a moment, look at how this image came to be, and consider some of the more surprising details hidden within it. [Headers lead into the topics]
The map started out as static.
Human brains cannot make sense of all the data from Planck.
The universe is darker, lighter, slower, and older than we thought.
The universe is lopsided.
...the prevailing theory:
Current theory:
The rocky object that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago may have been a comet, rather than an asteroid, scientists say.
The 112-mile (180 kilometers) Chicxulub crater in Mexico was made by the impact that caused the extinction of dinosaurs and about 70 percent of all species on Earth, many scientists believe. A new study suggests the crater was probably blasted out by a faster, smaller object than previously thought, according to research presented this week at the 44th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in The Woodlands, Texas.
Evidence of the space rock's impact comes from a worldwide layer of sediments containing high levels of the element iridium, dubbed the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) boundary, which could not have occurred on Earth naturally.
The new research suggests the often-cited iridium values are incorrect, however. The scientists compared these values with levels of osmium, another element delivered by the impact.
Their calculations suggested the space rock generated less debris than previously thought, implying the space rock was a smaller object. In order for the smaller rock to have created the giant Chicxulub crater, it had to have been going exceedingly fast, the researchers concluded.
Huffington Science: New Study Suggests Comet Instead Caused Extinction Event
Flash Fiction is gaining popularity at the speed of light on the Internet. FF is more than simply creating a story with a beginning, middle and end in less than 1000 words. There should be a plot twist and moral. This is a thin slice from the thick juicy part of a much bigger story; the reader may have to fill in the blanks.
The BSFS has presented Flash Fiction on its website -- in many excepts or stand alone pieces. This is good. We need to encourage more writers and webmasters to offer AFRO Flash Fiction to readers.
I have posted AFRO Flash Fiction on my new website: http://www.afroflash.com
As always, I post a link back to BSFS to encourage us all to reach out and let others know that African Diaspora Speculative Fiction is trending upwards.
(Image from Black Flash by Caesarium on Deviant Art -- it is not necessarily AfroCentric, but it is cool.)
...as explained by one of the smartest physicists I know!
James Clerk Maxwell formulated the equations that describe electricity and magnetism. He was Einstein's hero! Both are the reason why we're in the age of laptops and I-phones.
Physics Colloquium, University of Texas Physics Department. Mark has a process that's a little more efficient than Steven Chu's (yes, THAT Steven Chu). It's worth your time to watch this presentation, and seek out colloquium wherever you are. Science is open and a social endeavor.
Something I used to enjoy in Texas, that I admittedly miss...
NOTHING IS MORE IMPORTANT TO A NATION'S PROSPERITY, THAN THE SAFETY OF ITS WOMEN!!!
L.I.A. #8 - Spring Call for Violence Against Women
http://www.myspace.com/drocksouljah/blog/546788112
Contents for L.I.A. #8
I. Questioned Effectiveness of VAWA 2013
II. Sequestered Spring Flicks
III. 12-Step Program for Foul Foot Freaks
IV. TMSP Products & Services Wrap-up
MAY WE ALL ENACT CALLS TO BETTER SECURE OUR WOMEN & SELVES FROM ABUSE!!!
AL Bey
Author of Tainted Saint: The Autobiography of D-Rock SOUL-Jah
Owner, Tribal Metal Spear-it Publishing, LLC (TMSP)
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| Electrons traveling through two slits and a single slit |
Physicists in the US and Canada say that they have done the best job yet of realizing Richard Feynman's famous thought experiment about how single electrons pass through two slits. Although the researchers are not the first to recreate the experiment in the lab, they say that their incarnation best captures the essence of the original exercise.
Feynman originally outlined his thought experiment in volume three of his famous series The Feynman Lectures on Physics as a way of illustrating wave–particle duality in quantum mechanics. In the book, he invites the reader to imagine firing individual electrons through two slits and then marking the position where each electron strikes a screen behind the slits.
After many electrons have passed through the slits, the marks on the screen will comprise a diffraction pattern – illustrating the wave-like behaviour of each electron. But if one were to cover up one of the slits so that each electron could only pass through the other slit, the diffraction pattern would not appear – showing that each electron does indeed travel through both slits.
Physics World: Feynman's double-slit experiment gets a makeover
Feynman Physics Lectures: Site Link and You Tube Channel
"Figures often beguile me, particularly when I have the arranging of them myself; in which case the remark attributed to [19th-century British Prime Minister Benjamin] Disraeli would often apply with justice and force: 'There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.'"
Samuel Clemmons/Mark Twain, "Chapters from My Autobiography"
...Our analysis finds that the QGRE correlates with only one metric, the graduate GPA (but it is such a weak correlation the scientist in me rebels when fitting it to a line). That said, we find undergraduate GPA to be a better predictor of graduate GPA. We also find that undergraduate GPA is correlated with all three sections of the General GRE.
So why use the GRE at all? One certain answer: national rankings. Consider US News, whose rankings of graduate programs are widely influential among both prospective graduate students and administrators....
Justifying using the GRE becomes significantly more complicated, however, when the test results are dissected by race and gender. The figure plots QGRE scores by race/ethnicity and gender for US citizens whose intended graduate major was "physical sciences". The top and bottom of the lines are the 75th and 25th percentiles of the score distributions, respectively; the tick is the mean. This pattern is qualitatively unchanged when controlling for undergraduate GPA. Note the implications for diversity of using 700 as a minimum acceptable score: nearly three quarters of Hispanics would be rejected, and significantly more than this for American Indians, African Americans, and Puerto Ricans; similarly, women are filtered out at a higher rate than men. Mixing cut-off scores with these racial and gender disparities sets the foundation of a glass ceiling erected by the lopsided treatment of minorities and women before they even set foot in grad school.
The Asian > White > Hispanic > Black pattern permeates standardized testing: it is the same for the SAT, and is reflected in the recent race-based levels set by Florida and Virginia for grade schoolers' performance on state-wide standardized tests.
To be fair: there's more data and insight at the link below. The statistics (I feel), is a measure of where we've allowed ourselves as a society to get "comfortable." I have mused on this at length in the posts: "A Matter of Marketing" and "Dark Matters." Einstein is the source of the following quotes:
1. "It seems to be a universal fact that minorities--especially when the individuals composing them can be recognized by physical characteristics--are treated by the majorities among whom they live as an inferior order of beings. The tragedy of such a fate lies not merely in the unfair treatment to which these minorities are automatically subjected in social and economic matters, but also in the fact that under the suggestive influence of the majority most of the victims themselves succumb to the same prejudice and regard their kind as inferior beings. This second and greater part of the evil can be overcome by closer association and by the deliberate education of the minority, whose spiritual liberation can thus be accomplished.
"The resolute efforts of the American Negro in this direction deserve approval and assistance."
Mein Weltbild, Amsterdam: Querido Verilog, 1934, pp 117-118.
2. "Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
Bear with me...
APS Back Page: Admissions Criteria and Diversity in Graduate School, Casey W. Miller
The theoretical foundations for the laser were established in 1917, when Einstein formulated the quantum theory of radiation, describing the absorption, spontaneous emission, and stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. Its realization stayed hidden for decades, however, before it emerged in the form of masers and lasers, which emit microwave and visible radiation, respectively. The range of emitted frequencies was soon broadened to cover wavelengths from the infrared to the x-ray range, and lasing was extrapolated beyond the realm of optics. Free-electron lasers, in which the active medium is a relativistic electron beam, helped cover extreme wavelength ranges and are now the basis for a new generation of experimental facilities for x-ray experiments. Atom lasers—emitting matter waves instead of photons—have also been demonstrated. Recently, the laser idea was extended to sound waves, leading to the conceptualization of the acoustic analog of a laser, which emits phonons (lattice vibrations) instead of photons. Now, writing in Physical Review Letters, Imran Mahboob at the NTT Basic Research Laboratories, Japan, and colleagues report on the experimental demonstration of a purely mechanical counterpart of a three-level laser scheme [1]. The device, excited by acoustic vibrations, amplifies sound waves through stimulated emission of phonons and acts as a phonon laser: a spectrally pure source of phonons with a frequency of around 1.7 megahertz (MHz).
What is the appeal of phonon lasers? One potential advantage is that their emission has smaller wavelength than that of photon lasers at the same frequency because the sound speed is much smaller than the speed of light. This could help improve the resolution of tomographic, ultrasound, and other imaging techniques. In analogy with their optical cousins, phonon lasers might deliver directional and coherent acoustic beams, which could be coupled to nanoscale mechanical engines or used in communication networks based on acoustic waves. But as the history of optical lasers suggests, most applications of future phonon lasers may be completely unexpected.
The Trekkie in me notes: from the phonon pump, the upper-to-intermediate level transition is called "Phaser Emission." Wonder if there's a stun setting?
American Physical Society: Lasers of Pure Sound
"We've seen our fair share of talented photorealist artists go viral, from Paul Cadden to Diego Fazio. But never before have we been privy to the painstaking process of creating such a detailed masterpiece. That is, until we discovered Kelvin Okafor's videos."
"The London artist's hyperrealistic graphite drawings look far more like photographs than pencil on paper. For skeptics, Okafor provides proof of his works' handmade history by posting the evolution of his pieces online, via photos on his blog and through entrancing YouTube videos."
"The artist describes himself on Twitter as "highly interested in detail and precision," and we can't help but agree."
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| Kawazulite is a natural “topological insulator" |
In a step toward understanding and exploiting an exotic form of matter that has been sparking excitement for potential applications in a new genre of supercomputers, scientists are reporting the first identification of a naturally occurring “topological insulator” (TI). Their report on discovery of the material, retrieved from an abandoned gold mine in the Czech Republic, appears in the ACS journal Nano Letters.
Pascal Gehring and colleagues point out that synthetic TIs, discovered only a decade ago, are regarded as a new horizon in materials science. Unlike conventional electrical insulators, which do not conduct electricity, TIs have the unique property of conducting electricity on their surface, while acting as an insulator inside. Although seemingly simple, this type of surface could allow manipulation of the spin of an electron, paving the way for development of a quantum computer. Such a computer would crunch data much faster than today’s best supercomputers.
American Chemical Society: First discovery of a natural topological insulator
First complete comic I've ever done that I personally acknowledge as complete. I did it for a school project and based it on old school Universal Studios Monsters, but I may either continue the story or make another story etc. I may even do one shots until I find something I want to continue. Who knows.
If you want a physical copy, let me know or email me at lateef.a.reid@gmail.com
..."just when you thought it was safe to go into the IHOP"...
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| 2D cross section through a fiber-vessel pair showing the water, ice and gas regions, the moving interfaces as well as the 1D region corresponding to simplified model geometry. Figure credit: Maurizio Ceseri and John Stockie |
Philadelphia, PA—For many of us, maple syrup is an essential part of breakfast—a staple accompaniment to pancakes and waffles—but rarely do we think about the complicated and little-understood physiological aspects of syrup production. Each spring, maple growers in temperate regions around the world collect sap from sugar maple trees, which is one of the first steps in producing this delicious condiment.
However, the mechanisms behind sap exudation—processes that trigger pressure differences causing sap to flow— in maple trees are a topic of much debate. In a paper published today in the SIAM Journal on Applied Mathematics, authors Maurizio Ceseri and John Stockie shed light on this subject by proposing a mathematical model for the essential physiological processes that drive sap flow.
Sugars are produced in the leaves of the maple tree by photosynthesis with the help of absorbed water, carbon dioxide, and sunlight, and are consumed for current growth, or stored as starch. In the cold, dormant season, some of the starch enters the sap, where it remains mostly frozen until the spring. In the period between this dormant state and the active growing season (during cold nights with below-freezing temperatures followed by mild, warm days with above-freezing conditions), the stored starch is converted into sugar and the sap pressure grows, allowing it to exude naturally from the tap hole when tapped.
Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics: Pancakes with a side of math
