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Avoid the Klingons...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 6, 2013 at 8:03am


...and the Daleks, Sith Lords, Romulans, etc.


Researchers at The University of Auckland have proposed a new method for finding Earth-like planets and they anticipate that the number will be in the order of 100 billion using gravitational microlensing, currently used by a Japan-New Zealand collaboration called MOA (Microlensing Observations in Astrophysics) at New Zealand's Mt John Observatory. Their work will appear in the Oxford University Press journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.



Lead author Dr Phil Yock from the University of Auckland's Department of Physics explains that the work will require a combination of data from microlensing and the NASA Kepler space telescope. *"Kepler finds Earth-sized planets that are quite close to parent stars, and it estimates that there are 17 billion such planets in the Milky Way. These planets are generally hotter than Earth, although some could be of a similar temperature (and therefore habitable) if they're orbiting a cool star called a red dwarf."

"Our proposal is to measure the number of Earth-mass planets orbiting stars at distances typically twice the Sun-Earth distance. Our planets will therefore be cooler than the Earth. By interpolating between the Kepler and MOA results, we should get a good estimate of the number of Earth-like, habitable planets in the Galaxy. We anticipate a number in the order of 100 billion."

 

Daily Galaxy: Earth-Like Planets in Universe Now Estimated at 100 Billion

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Two Cultures...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 5, 2013 at 8:00pm


The Two Cultures is the title of an influential 1959 Rede Lecture by British scientist and novelist C. P. Snow. Its thesis was that "the intellectual life of the whole of western society" was split into the titular two cultures — namely the sciences and the humanities — and that this was a major hindrance to solving the world's problems.

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity at the illiteracy of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?

I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question — such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read? — not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. (Wikipedia)

I'm afraid little has changed. Our pursuit and fear to avoid the "military-industrial-complex" as warned of by President Eisenhower, has evolved into a cottage industry of conspiracy theorists (that don't have to actually prove their musings; just muse and say them), because myriad of the bewildered herd will purchase their books; attend their seminars; hit their blogs/web sites. We pontificate "Big Bang" and "Evolution" in quotes, and add "theory" as if that disqualifies anything in science (Pythagoras and your geometry teacher would be amused), adding to it machinate controversies from creative, magical thinkers. Must be quite a rush to be an official part of the "dumbing down" of a country.

Sadly, it's not just avoidance of science and/or the conclusions of science: in Snow's day, neither the twain met, and both disdained one another as being without value. His third culture: a merger of science and humanities in the human species, and an appreciation for both (pulled off quite well in Star Trek - take your pick of which version), never materialized.

 

In the chapter titled "The Rich and the Poor," he couldn't be more blunt:

 

"Nevertheless, that isn't the main issue of the scientific revolution. The main issue is that the people in the industrialized countries are getting richer, and those in the non-industrialized countries are at best standing still: so that the gap between the industrialized countries and the rest is widening every day. On the world scale this is the gap between the rich and the poor."

 

University of Colorado: The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution

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life is in the cracks

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on April 5, 2013 at 9:28am

We call them the lucky ones. They seem to go through life without a hitch. They have perfect attendance and teeth. They do 4 years of college without diversion or perversion or depravity, get a nice job and a house and 2.5 kids, a dog and a ritzy car. How in the heck do you get a .5 kid I don't know. There is something about statistical average persons, the real super humans we all are striving to match up to.

Me, I envy them and sneer at them. I live in the cracks between dreams, with allowances, exceptions, quick fixes, rescues, interventions, set asides, and wits. I use my wits and survival skills. That is when I'm made aware by the statistical average man I'm in a rut. A crack, a crack I have slipped through to where my head is no longer visible to the general public. That is, the paper trail they use to keep tabs on us and the pedigree of the super human race the statistical average man. Oh he is real, he exists alright. When they do the numbers he stands up tall as big as life. He is the conglomerate of every positive thing in our society. He is admired by every seeking forward reaching creature on the planet. Damned be you if you diss them. 

The super ones aren't perfect or so it is said, 99.999% pure + or -.001%. I am always confronted with the plus side one who is a little more than perfect. I just have to ask why. Why are the ruts, the cracks so crowded. Why so few of us stay on top. Momentary elevation of persons become the idol of us all. So and so made it. Then in retrospect, where is so and so today? Did they become one with the super humans of the statistical average? Or did they fall back through the cracks, or into the ruts where the rest of us live?

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KEEPING UP WITH STAR TREK: RENEGADES and ITS BLACK DIRECTOR!

Posted by Penelope on April 4, 2013 at 8:00am

As a member of BSFS and a self-proclaimed Scifi fan and writer I would encourage everyone to keep their eyes focused on Star Trek: Renegades. The production is moving forward and being produced as a pilot for a web series which seeks to explore the more complex motivations of a renegade Star Fleet crew that will be compelled to take unorthodox and possibly unethical actions to preserve an under attack  Federation. (http://startrekrenegades.com/home/).

Star Trek:Renegade is directed by (one of my personal favorites) Tim Russ, who also directed Star Trek: Of Gods and Men (http://startrekofgodsandmen.com/main/) and who the viewing audience will recognize as Lt. Commander Tuvok from the Star Trek: Voyager series. Opportunities for black individuals in the director's chair don't come along as often as we would like, so when they do we should take note, and if the project appeals to us - we should give it our support, not simply in kickstarter funds but also by being as vocal as we can in sharing information about the project is as many venues as we can conceive of! 

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ATRAP for Antiprotons...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 4, 2013 at 6:17am
Figure 1: (a) The CPT symmetry can be likened to a mirror that reflects spatial coordinates, flips charge and other additive quantum numbers, and reverses time. To test for cracks in this CPT mirror, physicists check whether the magnetic moment of the proton (left) has the same magnitude as that of the antiproton (right). (Technically, the moments have opposite signs due to the way magnetic moment is defined relative to the spin.) (b) To measure the antiproton’s magnetic moment, the ATRAP Collaboration measures the cyclotron and spin-flip frequencies, fc and fs, respectively. The ratio of these frequencies gives the antiproton’s magnetic moment, μp¯=-fsfcμN, in terms of the nuclear magneton μN.

The ATRAP Collaboration has measured the magnetic moment of the antiproton more precisely than ever before, allowing a new test of CPT symmetry.



Many physical laws are indifferent to distinctions such as left or right and forwards or backwards. On rare occasions, though, a discrepancy shows up, and we say that a symmetry is broken. One symmetry that has so far avoided any signs of breaking is the so-called CPT symmetry, which equates matter and antimatter at a fundamental level. A new test of CPT symmetry involves antiprotons. Specifically, Jack DiSciacca of Harvard University and his colleagues (the ATRAP Collaboration) present the most precise measurement to date of the antiproton magnetic moment [1]. As reported in Physical Review Letters, the results match data on the proton, thus extending CPT ’s shatterproof status for the time being.



Look into a mirror and imagine the world on the other side is not just a reflection, but instead a real physical world. Should nature behave differently in this mirrored world? For decades, most physicists believed the answer was “no.” They assumed that nature was the same in a coordinate system and its mirror image, and they even gave this supposition a name: parity reversal symmetry or P symmetry. However, in 1957, the nuclear physics world was rocked when two back-to-back articles in Physical Review revealed that P symmetry was violated by nature [2, 3]. This discovery revolutionized the understanding of the weak interaction.
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Mini Supernovae...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 3, 2013 at 6:00am

This artist's concept shows the suspected progenitor of a new kind of supernova called type Iax. Material from a hot, blue helium star on the right is funnelling toward a carbon/oxygen white-dwarf star on the left, which is embedded in an accretion disc. (Courtesy: Christine Pulliam, CfA)

A new type of supernova has been defined by researchers from the US. Designated type Iax, this new class is seen to be less energetic and fainter than previously defined and similar type Ia events – and may even leave behind part of its originating star.



Previously, only two classes of supernovae were recognized – core-collapse events, the explosion of stars 10–100 times as massive as our Sun, and type Ia supernovae, which involve the complete destruction of a white dwarf. Now, a team led by Ryan Foley at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has identified 25 members of the new type Iax class based on optical spectroscopic and photometric studies. Its work has shown these stars to be less energetic and with a lower absolute magnitude than would be expected with their type Ia cousin. The team believes that the supernovae of this new class originate from a binary star system comprised of a white dwarf that gathers helium from a companion star, which has lost its outer hydrogen.
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Campbell's Law...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 2, 2013 at 7:24am
Credit: Heart of the Matter Online

"Campbell's Law: The more any quantitative social indicator is used for social decision-making, the more subject it will be to corruption pressures and the more apt it will be to distort and corrupt the social processes it is intended to monitor."

Atlanta has been a slow-moving train wreck for a while. But it's not just Atlanta. It's the natural and national consequence of trying to run education like a business; the academic equivalent of "thieves [selling] in the temple."

New math

Not that I saw, or participated in a 'standardized testing scandal,' but I recall at my first campus a curve proposed that left me numb...seated at my desk; staring into space in my windowless room. My colleague walked into my room after school:

Him: "You know about the curve."

Me: "Curve? What curve?"

(Goes to my dry erase board): "Take the number of correct answers; divide by the total number of answers, take the square root and multiply by 100...that's the curve." He left.

I walked into the men's rest room. I stared at the toilet, contemplating the efficacy of shoving my finger down my throat. A student interrupted my dark meditations. I went home.

An actual example:



√ 13/20 x 100 = 81%



Hence, my nausea.

I heard young people exclaiming: "I'm a math beast," and I wanted to shout "no, you're NOT!" I was angry, and ashamed that I felt as though I was in some parallel universe where education didn't mean what it meant four years before my birth: it was literally a matter of national security.

The National Defense Education Act (NDEA), signed into law on September 2, 1958, provided funding to United States education institutions at all levels. It was one of a suite of science initiatives inaugurated by President Eisenhower in 1958, motivated to increase the technological sophistication and power of the US alongside, for instance DARPA and NASA. It followed a growing national sense that U.S. scientists were falling behind scientists in the Soviet Union, catalyzed, arguably, by early Soviet success in the Space Race, notably the launch of the first-ever satellite, Sputnik, the year before.

And, I felt myself - post end of the Cold War, duck-and-cover drills and Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) - missing the "Ruskies"...
National Education Association
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Guest Blog: Alien Star Books has a Multicultural Mission

Posted by Alicia McCalla on April 2, 2013 at 4:24am
Published on Monday, April 01, 2013

Terrence adult league hockey 10-28-2012Alicia kindly asked me to come and talk about my website, Alien Star Books, how it all came about, and what I’m doing with my vast proceeds of 54 cents for the past year. (Ummm, nothing, they don’t pay out until you’ve reached $10!)

 

Let me start at the beginning. A little over a year ago, my son needed a book to read for his English class. He’s a hockey player, not a reader, so he really doesn’t have any books that he’ll willingly read. He hates reading. Painful to me as a writer, yes, but I can’t cram the books down his throat, so I keep coughing up the cash for hockey.

Anyway, I found him perusing my bookcases looking for a book. I suggested several and he said no, no and no yet again. Finally, after I told him that the main character in Robert Heinlein’s book “Tunnel in the Sky” was Black, but you have to figure it out for yourself, he gave a heavy sigh and said he’d take that one.

I was excited! Having found something, anything, that the boy would read, I started a search for age appropriate science fiction and fantasy books that featured main characters of Color.

That was when I slammed into the brick wall. The classic stereotypical White male hero -- think John Carter of Mars -- is alive and well in my favorite genres.

Where are the swashbuckling, action-adventure, space opera heroes? Alas, they’re awash in a sea of White testosterone. Oh, there’s a sidekick here and there and the occasional exotic female alien, but sci-fi is filled with stereotypical “White guy saves the universe” tales. Fantasy, while it does incorporate non-human heroes, including elves, is all too often based in the mythology of one tiny island off the coast of England. There’s nothing wrong with Irish legends and the Fae, but dang, there’s a whole world out there! Why are 99 percent of fantasy stories based on Irish mythology? There’s nothing wrong with featuring red-headed, green-eyed, magic-wielding men and women, but where are the People of Color? Where are the magical tales of Egypt and Africa and Asia and the Americas? Where are my ancestors, my mythologies, my heritage? Where does my son’s mixed heritage fit in?

How is this boy of mine, a child of the new century, a young man of Black/Mexican/Italian/Welsh/Cherokee/White/mixed heritage supposed to relate to a constant parade of White-makes-Right heroes of the future? The answer is: he can’t. He can’t relate to John Carter because no matter how fair his skin, no matter how mixed his heritage is, when he steps outside the door of his home and into the view of strangers, he’s a 6 foot tall Black man. Dark, medium, light, so bright he’s darn near White, it doesn’t matter -- he’s still Black.

As I wrote in one of my blogs a while back, there is a deep scar, a chasm across the consciousness of this country. The deeply held pain of the Trail of Tears, the many trails of tears, manifest destiny, slavery and the Civil War, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1880, the Mexican Repatriation of the 30s, the Japanese internment and so many more acts against People of Color, lead directly to the policies of exclusion that affect the United States to this very day. Racism hasn’t gone away. It’s still here, just clothed in a suit and tie and smiling mask that hides that bitter truth.

Still, just because the ugly past has shaped our nation and our peoples in so many ways, and few of them good, we don’t have to be held to that path forever. We can move past it and into a better future that includes all of my Brothers and Sisters of Color.

We have to live in the present, but our imaginations can soar to a new level of understanding. We can look forward, even as the ground-breaking TV show Star Trek looked forward, and give our kids a dream of a different future, where the color of a man or woman’s skin is not the defining factor in their lives. Where a young man can guide a spaceship to Mars or where a woman can lead a rebellion against alien oppressors and his/her Color is just a part of who he/she is, accepted and cherished as a part of a unique Terran or Martian or far future culture. A future where our skills and talents are the most important factors in our lives -- not the color of our skin, the texture of our hair, our Faith or the birthplace of our forefathers.

Thus Alien Star Books was born. I am determined to find books that feature protagonists that my son can relate to while he enjoys good stories and shares my own vision of a diverse future. This website is a labor of love, to help not only my own child, but also the teens, young adults and their parents, guardians, caregivers and teachers find good books with main characters of Color that can inspire our children to reach for the stars.

It’s a continuing process, to find new as well as classic books that will inspire our kids to read and look past the ugly realities of the present and into a new and exciting future, full of possibilities. Science fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy, paranormal romance, steamfunk -- all fill a void in our kids’ lives. There is a whole universe out there, ready for our youth of all races, colors, ethnicities, creeds, sexualities, human, non-human and alien to reach out and claim the future as their own.

Please feel free to come by, check out the titles and send me great suggestions. I’m always open to a referral, a review or a fabulous new author. And remember, Alien Star Books is all about INCLUSION, not EXCLUSION, so there is a place for everyone.

Well, OK, maybe not KKK members, neo-Nazis, racists, terrorists or other “not nice” people -- unless they’re the bad guys. LOL!

Ruth2 headshotVisit Ruth DeJauregui @ Alien Star Bookshttp://www.alienstarbooks.com

Historical Links:

Chinese Exclusion Act -http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/immigration/exclusion.html

Civil War -http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2967.html

Japanese Internment -http://www.pbs.org/childofcamp/history/index.html andhttp://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h1679.html

manifest destiny - http://www.ushistory.org/us/29.asp

Mexican Repatriation of the 30s - http://public.csusm.edu/frame004/history.html

Trail of Tears -http://www.cherokee.org/AboutTheNation/History/TrailOfTears/Default.aspx andhttp://www.history.com/topics/trail-of-tears

 (Oh, and just for your own info, this was my family, my ggggrandpa William Shelton was among those murdered in the massacre -http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shelton_Laurel_Massacre)

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Atlanta Speculative Fiction Events in 2013

Posted by NettieB on April 1, 2013 at 9:29pm

My recent coverage of 

Minister Faust's presentation at Georgia Tech on April 1, 2013:
Coverage of Black to the Future: the Octavia E. Butler Celebration of the Fantastic Arts at Spelman College:
Coverage of Alien Bodies: Race, Space, and Sex in the African Diaspora at Emory:
More to come...
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Positive Possibilities...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on April 1, 2013 at 6:00pm

The irony is this post appears on the traditional "April Fool's Day." This however, is not a joke.

The following is a quote I read in the book "Fool Me Twice: Fighting the Assault on Science in America," by Shawn Lawrence Otto. After reading the indictment of Galileo for "proposing the sun was the center of the world [and the earth was not]," this hit me like a thunderbolt:

"...Science is a reliable method for creating knowledge, and thus power...science constantly disrupts hierarchical power structures and vested interests in a long drive [my add: by science] to give knowledge, and thus power, to the individual, and that process is also political."

It would appear School House Rock was correct: knowledge is power. Currently in North Carolina, several university institutions are on the chopping block for possible closure, including my Alma mater, North Carolina A&T State University. I no longer believe in accidents of history.

Part of my admiration for Dr. King and everyone of my instructors at A&T that were a part of the movement in one way or another was they all seemed so smart, so well-informed, innately curious about the world around them, and active participants in it through scholarship and the citizenship act of voting for representative government.

These students are articulate, smart, and positive possibilities that you won't see on the "boob tube" flat screen. Forwarded 24/7 are the glorified images of rappers, athletes, entertainers, etc. that of course, doesn't threaten anyone in positions of power: just quaint little minstrel shows; death by a thousand warped cultural knives. I'd rather see more of this kind of "reality show" than the negativity we all seemed to be programmed to accept as our "normal." Of this long list of reality shows, "Myth Busters" is the only one I bothered to watch.

No mention of NSBE, SHPE, NSBP, NSHP, or what the acronyms mean (see the links). Urban youth in particular are conditioned almost from birth and circumstance to think math and science are "too hard," yet when I taught high school, I'd hear of, or see the same youth spend hours on a joystick mastering "the next level" on a video game. I witnessed the glorification of "flashing sets," "tagging graffiti" and sagging britches to parallel sagging grades: minstrelsy in the hallway. I recall, in all fairness, a staged walkout of Atkins High School because they wouldn't let us wear shorts - that wasn't important either.

We are all part of a "bewildered herd," prodded by the rod and staff of what our socially acceptable stalls are on the "Animal Farm." What we should be teaching is STEM can be as significant as a pillar of fire by night and smoke by day; it can split a sea of reeds and be the modern underground railroad to emancipation. Instead of mastering levels and cypher, we need to master Calculus and Physics!


It makes education...a revolutionary act.

School Page: Virginia State University

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Catharsis...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 31, 2013 at 6:56am


TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The Doomsday Argument is the idea that we can estimate the total number of humans that will ever exist, given the number that have lived so far. This in turn tells us how likely it is that human civilisation will survive far into the future.

The numbers are not optimistic. Anthropologists think some 70 billion humans have so far lived on Earth. If we assume that we have no special status in human history, then simple probabilistic arguments suggest that there is a 95 per cent chance that we are among the last 95 per cent of humans that will ever be born. And this means there is a 95 per cent chance that the total number of humans that will ever exist will be less than 20 x 70 billion or 1.4 trillion.

These guys look at the scenario in which many civilisations have evolved throughout the universe, the so-called “universal doomsday” argument. “In that case, we should consider ourselves to be randomly chosen from all individuals in that universe or multiverse,” they say.

Now suppose that the world population stabilises at 10 billion and our life expectancy is 80 years, then the remaining humans will be born in the next 10,000 years. That’s not a long future for humanity. Today, Austin Gerig at the University of Oxford and a couple of pals put forward a new argument with a (slightly) happier ending.

These guys look at the scenario in which many civilisations have evolved throughout the universe, the so-called “universal doomsday” argument. “In that case, we should consider ourselves to be randomly chosen from all individuals in that universe or multiverse,” they say.

In the past, these universal arguments have been no more optimistic than the ordinary ones. They generally state that long-lived civilizations must be rare because if they were not, we would be living in one. What’s more, because long-lived civilizations are rare, the prospects for our civilisation ever becoming long-lived are poor.

This new approach approach allows Gerig and co to take a more fine-grained look at the odds that humanity will survive for much longer in future than it has existed in the past.

The results are complex but their main conclusion gives some reason for hope. “If [the number of existential threats] is not too large, the probability of long-term survival is about a few percent,” they say.


It's comforting to muse that we can actually know the future, and the likelihood of a predicted outcome. We guffaw when the weather anchor "gets it wrong," and somehow think that global warming means if the entire planet isn't becoming the Sahara Desert (and it snows somewhere), there's nothing to it. In the need for accuracy and truth, science revises itself through a rigorous process of peer review, and adherence to The Scientific Method. Modeling and probability always have a margin for error, so in reading the link, think of that.

One of the ways to "increase our odds" is addressing "existential threats" (meteors, nuclear war, pandemics, poverty), and becoming a space faring species. On "a few percent": Growing up under the "duck and cover" drills of the 60s during the Cold War (during which I never thought we had a snowball's chance), I'll TAKE that!

My Pascha post...

Physics arXiv: Universal Doomsday: Analyzing Our Prospects for Survival

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I Write Like...

Posted by William Hayashi on March 30, 2013 at 8:39pm

I Write Like

I write Like is a Web site that takes a sample of one's writing, does an analysis of the writing style and reports whose writing style is closest to of many of the greatest historical and contemporary writers.

I submitted a couple of samples and both times the site reported I Write Like Isaac Asimov, very flattering indeed. Check out who You Write Like!

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Diagnosing Fusion Plasma...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 30, 2013 at 7:00am
(Photo Credit: Graphic by Sam Lazerson)
A simulated plasma in the Large Helical Device showing the thin blue saddle coils that researchers used to make diagnostic measurements with the new computer code

Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) and the National Institute for Fusion Science (NIFS) in Japan have developed a rapid method for meeting a key challenge for fusion science. The challenge has been to simulate the diagnostic measurement of plasmas produced by twisting, or 3D, magnetic fields in fusion facilities. While such fields characterize facilities called stellarators, otherwise symmetric, or 2D, facilities such as tokamaks also can benefit from 3D fields.

Researchers led by PPPL physicist Sam Lazerson have now created a computer code that simulates the required diagnostics, and have validated the code on the Large Helical Device stellarator in Japan. Called “Diagno v2.0,” the new program utilizes information from previous codes that simulate 3D plasmas without the diagnostic measurements. The addition of this new capability could, with further refinement, enable physicists to predict the outcome of 3D plasma experiments with a high degree of accuracy.

The researchers employed a mathematical technique called “virtual casing” to develop the new code for 3D fusion plasmas that are in equilibrium. Such plasmas are held steady by the balance between the inward pressure of the magnetic fields that confine them and the outward pressure exerted by the plasma. Virtual casing enabled the researchers to efficiently calculate magnetic diagnostic signals given a simulated plasma. This was achieved by recognizing that the magnetic field at the edge of the simulated plasma was all that was necessary to calculate the magnetic diagnostic signals.

PPPL:
A fast new method for measuring hard-to-diagnose 3D plasmas in fusion facilities

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Swiss Army Metamaterial...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 29, 2013 at 6:07am
Assoc Prof Darren Sun holding the patented Titanium dioxide nanofibre in a test tube and the hydrogen reactor in the background. (Credit: Image courtesy of Nanyang Technological University)

Science fiction? Hardly, and there's more -- It can also desalinate water, be used as flexible water filtration membranes, help recover energy from desalination waste brine, be made into flexible solar cells and can also double the lifespan of lithium ion batteries. With its superior bacteria-killing capabilities, it can also be used to develop a new type of antibacterial bandage.



Scientists at Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore, led by Associate Professor Darren Sun have succeeded in developing a single, revolutionary nanomaterial that can do all the above and at very low cost compared to existing technology.



This breakthrough which has taken Prof Sun five years to develop is dubbed the Multi-use Titanium Dioxide (TiO2). It is formed by turning titanium dioxide crystals into patented nanofibres, which can then be easily fabricated into patented flexible filter membranes which include a combination of carbon, copper, zinc or tin, depending on the specific end product needed.

 

Science Daily:
Multi-Purpose Wonder Can Generate Hydrogen, Produce Clean Water and Even Provide Energy

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Star Trek Renegades' Prop fundraiser - for the Trekkies and Trekkers in the group!

Posted by Penelope on March 28, 2013 at 8:57pm
header

3.28.13

Star Trek: Renegades prop fundraiser continues!

The Renegades Team would like to thank all our new backers who have helped raise additional funds for new prop designs. So far, we have raised just over $2700.00. 

Our design team is coming out with new designs almost daily. Apart from new Federation phaser designs, we also have new communicators, Klingon disruptors, Klingon communicators, door panels, data terminals, and a huge prop (over 6 feet tall!) that is ultra top-secret at the moment (hey, we have to save some surprises for the film!)

Props by Scott Nakada

As you can imagine, designing and building a prop from scratch is a long, tedious and expensive process. The first step is the design. This can be the most difficult, according to Renegades Art Director, Scott Nakada. "Star Trek is unique in that it has a certain history behind objects. Keeping the lineage or a look/ design aesthetic can be difficult while simultaneously trying to maintain a look of something fresh and new." It can take anywhere from 3-4 hours, or up to several months to get the design just right.

After the design is approved, the construction begins. A full-color shaded image is converted to black and white for cutting guides at a 1:1 scale. The layers are then separated and printed onto adhesive material. Styrene sheets of various thicknesses are cut to give the various parts their correct dimensions.

STR Combadge Prop

The next stage is the mold. RTV silicon rubber is used. RTV is quite expensive ($160 per gallon!) and is the consistency of thick slime. "I am estimating the film could use 10 gallons of the stuff for the various pieces of work," Nakada says. The styrene parts are then placed into small molding containers made from foam core, then the RTV material is poured over them.

After 24 hours, the mold is set, and a casting polyurethane resin material (also expensive - $145 for two gallons) is poured into the mold. This step must be done very quickly, as it solidifies in 3 minutes!

After about 45 minutes, the prop can be taken out of the mold, but must sit, completely undisturbed for 8-24 hours to reach full hardness. Finally, the prop is painted and sealed. "They are blown free of any surface contaminants, and then painted with a primer layer and several coats of automotive paints, and appropriately colored other paints ranging from acrylics, to airbrush paints of differing types to a simple good old can of Krylon. One prop can use up to 7 different paints and painting techniques," Nakada relates. And if electronics are used, the complexity of the process is increased exponentially. And, of course, the costs of the materials alone are just the tip of the iceberg. There's also equipment, prototyping materials, expendables, etc.

STR Combadge Prop

Please help us create these top-of-the-line, never-before-seen-anywhere-in-Star-Trek props! As you can see, there is much time and effort necessary to do this, and we have a long way to go to reach our $15,000 goal.

And there are rewards for your support! From downloads of the Renegades pilot, to DVDs or Blu-Rays to exclusive Renegades Crew t-shirts, to personally autographed cast photos - there's something for everyone. You can even get one of the props!

Crew TShirts

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Design by Justin R. Durban & Thomas Moore - (Free OGAM OST mp3 download)

 

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Yin and Yang...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 28, 2013 at 6:47am

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."

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Six-Legged Lizards...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2013 at 2:28pm

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."

Science: New, Off-Road Robot Inspired by Nature

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OK let me confess

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on March 27, 2013 at 10:08am

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.

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