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Bottoms Up!...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 25, 2012 at 7:30am


The story goes: Donald A. Glaser developed the idea for the bubble chamber - a means of tracking atomic particles (alpha, mu mesons) staring at a bottle of beer. Or, er several bottles of beer at the University of Michigan Student Union. If you're looking for the physicists... He mentions beer as well as Ginger Ale and soda (I guess he was "designated driver") in his Nobel Prize speech.

Now...it appears Beaujolais helps with superconductivity. Looks like they had several trials...

And, you thought physics was boring? Remember, soda for the DD's.

 

Physics arXiv: Red Wine, Tartaric Acid, and the Secret of Superconductivity

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Authors4Trayvon

Posted by Deatri King-Bey on March 24, 2012 at 8:24am

Hello Everyone,

Those of you who know me know I couldn’t allow the Trayvon Martin tragedy to go by without opening my big mouth and doing something about it. I belong to a group called All4One Authors who are a co-op of authors who mentor, share resources and promote each other. Anywhooooo, we are organizing a fundraiser and are inviting authors to join us. In short  April 1-7, 2012, participating authors will donate 17% of their book sells (eBook and print) to the Martin family or give a monetary donation of at least $17. Please visit the website http://www.Authors4Trayvon.com for full details on how to participate, but please DO NOT give out the website to readers. I’m still adding authors and updating. We’ll be sending out the press release and starting promotion of the event in a few days. Stay tuned and I hope you decide to join us. If you know of other authors who may want participate, please feel free to share this information with them, but again, please do not release the link to readers yet.

 

Thank you

 

Deatri King-Bey

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Edison's Last Jam...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 24, 2012 at 7:58am
Good Technology

la vengeance se mange très-bien froide, or "revenge is very good eaten cold." Khan Noonian Singh in Wrath of Khan quotes "revenge is a dish best served cold," is alas not from the Klingons, but the 1841 French novel Mathilde by Marie Joseph Eugène Sue (Wikipedia)

In the late 19th century, two competing electricity systems jostled for dominance in electric power distribution in the United States and much of the industrialized world. Alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) were both used to power devices like motors and light bulbs, but they were not interchangeable.
 

A battle for the grid emerged from the Apple and Microsoft of the Gilded Age. Thomas Edison, who invented many devices that used DC power, developed the first power transmission systems using this standard. Meanwhile, AC was pushed by George Westinghouse and several European companies that used Nikola Tesla's inventions to step up current to higher voltages, making it easier to transmit power over long distances using thinner and cheaper wires.

The rivalry was fraught with acrimony and publicity stunts -- like Edison electrocuting an elephant to show AC was dangerous -- but AC eventually won out as the standard for transmission, reigning for more than a century.

When we visited the Architectural Engineering Department at North Carolina A and T, Dr. Singh (absolutely no relation to Ricardo Montaban's fictional character, but an interesting aside), spoke to my son of "off-grid" buildings, self-sufficient and generating their own power. I see this as a part of the effort towards energy independency.
However, It is my sincerely hope that no elephant is injured in this latest incarnation of DC power.

 

Scientific American: Edison's Revenge - Will DC Make a Comeback in the US?

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Real-Life ESPER...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2012 at 5:40am
Technovelgydotcom

The ESPER machine in the Sci-Fi Blade Runner allowed bounty hunter Deckard (played by Harrison Ford) to see around corners in search of his prey (replicants). Dutiful as we Sci-Fi fans tend to be, we suspend belief subconsciously to both enjoy the movie and help the plot along.

Until.

Bats, whales and dolphins (and, some very adept humans) use a sonar form of this: echolocation, where most likely, the sonar images are not exact or precise, but each group has enough experience to know friend from foe.

Gizmag: MIT researchers create camera that can see around corners

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Blues Love Blood & Wine New e-book

Posted by evrrp.com on March 22, 2012 at 1:39pm

Just released a new e-book. Blues Love Blood & Wine. It is available on Amazon for the kindle. You can read it even if you don't have a kindle with a free Kindle app for PC, Android or Apple products.

Beware the book has monsters in it, and one cool main character. It's like Charlies Angles meets Men in Black on a date.

Lots of fun. Please check it out and let me know what you think.

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Nanopower and MEMS

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2012 at 5:28am
NIST Photo

In our bodies, an electrolyte "any substance containing free ions that make the substance electrically conductive." (Wikipedia) Our muscles and neurons respond to this when we replenish it with a solution that has a salt like sodium, potassium, calcuim, magnesium (ibid). It made the University of Florida famous (Gatorade), and most likely quite wealthy.

It turns out you can be too thin—especially if you’re a nanoscale battery. Researchers from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the University of Maryland, College Park, and Sandia National Laboratories built a series of nanowire batteries to demonstrate that the thickness of the electrolyte layer can dramatically affect the performance of the battery, effectively setting a lower limit to the size of the tiny power sources.* The results are important because battery size and performance are key to the development of autonomous MEMS—microelectromechanical machines—which have potentially revolutionary applications in a wide range of fields.
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THE FASTEST... "Minds Racing" "Speed Freak"

Posted by Greg Payton on March 22, 2012 at 5:18am

This goes out to each and every individual I have had the honor of working with, sharing adventures with, learning with and learning from. I wanted to share with you, a new webseries campaign I’m producing that needs your help and support!

The Fastest is a sci-fi action series in which citizens of the small fictional New York City borough of Tran’s Port, find themselves moving and thinking at light speed after an accident affects random inhabitants in strange ways.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FASTEST BY CLICKING HERE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1116239088/the-fastest-minds-racing-speed-freak

OUR GOAL is to transform this into a web series and grow The Fastest campaign into a television series.  We've written character arcs for dozens of characters but will focus on shooting one episode for a character that Filmmaker, Google/YouTube Producer Chris Chan Roberson has developed and a character that Filmmaker/Entrepreneur Greg Payton has developed.  We've also extensively developed the history of Tran's Port, its supporting characters, and what's to happen in the first several seasons.

WHAT WE'VE DONE SO FAR Thanks to the years of teaching and on-set experience by Chris and Greg, the shoot is fully scheduled. The crew is in place and the roles have been cast.  We have all the equipment we need; taking advantage of the latest in RED, Sony, Panasonic and Go-Pro High-Definition camera technology.

WHAT WE NEED  The two most expensive budget items are food and transportation. The money raised here will feed our fearless crew. No food, no morale; no morale, no series.  The money will also help our crew travel to various parts of New York City and beyond to realistically create the fictional sixth borough of Tran's Port. 

Simply put: every dollar you spend will be seen on screen.  The money you invest in our series will not go towards processing fees or producer salaries, but will pay for someone to record professional quality sound, to have professional make up artists, to pay for actual locations opposed to redressed NYC apartments, and so forth and so on.


With every campaign, it has its deadlines! By April 8th, 6:20pm, the campaign must be fully funded that’s why I turn to some of my most trusted professionals, friends and loved ones for your support! Remember it only takes $1; more if you feel so generous! Like, donate and share with your own networks to help get the word out!

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE FASTEST BY CLICKING HERE: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1116239088/the-fastest-minds-racing-speed-freak

Every dollar counts as the campaign for the newest science-fiction series marches on! We plan to submit this series to the New York Television Festival http://www.nytvf.com/, the International Television Festival http://itvfest.org/, among others, so the vision for The Fastest will be shared among the masses!

LIKE, SUPPORT AND SHARE THE FASTEST!!

Thanks and much love for your support,

Greg Payton | Chris Chan Roberson
Creators
THE FASTEST

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My email to Hue-Man Bookstore, who does not support independent authors

Posted by Paul West on March 21, 2012 at 1:06pm

Good day,

As a local, Harlem-raised author, I was happy to see Hue-Man open
years ago. Since then, I have tried to get your establishment to carry
my independently published novel; on each of the several occasions on
which I did so, I was told that Hue-Man does not accept independently
published manuscripts. At first, I took this in stride; I thought
maybe it was a matter of excessive demand, and/or an attempt to
maintain a high literary standard. As a Harlem native, it made me
happy to think this might be the case. But since then, I've walked
into Hue Man--and received its newsletters--and been increasingly
disappointed in not only the diminishing quality of the newsletter's
writing, but the popularity-driven schlock that has more often
stocked its shelves. If you're going to pick up some of the
hoopla-oriented caricatured stuff I've seen, I think your consistent
unwillingness to represent a local author--whose book aims to inspire
critical thought and a progressive agenda--is disappointing. There was
a time when Hue-Man was on the short list of bookstores I'd have been
happy to say were among the first to stock my debut; I'm no longer
sure this is the case. Again, I find this disappointing. If you'd at
least taken a copy and it wasn't your cup of tea, I could have
retained my respect for the bookstore's standard and intent; now, I
increasngly believe that it's just an angle to slide into some
weak and unchallenging outpost of the mainstream, by promoting
half-baked quasi-intelligent products that tell people what they want
to hear. Feel free to prove me wrong, but I have my doubts.

Sincerely,
PW

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"Designer" Graphene...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 20, 2012 at 1:00pm
Ars Technica - link below

A new experiment involving a graphene-like material has shown that it's possible to perform some spectacular manipulations of the properties of these quasiparticles. The work is described in a Nature letter by Kenjiro Gomes, Warren Mar, Wonhee Ko, Francisco Guinea, and Hari C. Manoharan. The team arranged carbon monoxide molecules to form the same hexagonal pattern found in graphene, except that they could change the spacing slightly.

 

This produced an environment where the material's electrons behave remarkably like relativistic particles, with a "speed of light" that they can adjust. Additionally, the researchers could change the spacing between molecules in a way that the masses of the quasiparticles changed, or cause them to behave as though they are interacting with electric and magnetic fields—without actually applying those fields to the material. This setup will potentially help us explore new physics that may arise in these environments.

 

Wikipedia: Higgs mechanism
Ars Technica: Researchers mimic relativity and the Higgs field in graphene-like material

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BWB...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 20, 2012 at 9:30am

BWB © 19 March 2012, the Griot Poet

Driving While Black…no, he was

Walking While Black…

Being While Black…

Trayvon Martin’s crime was

Iced tea and a bag of skittles, the riddle of walking

In a hoodie in the rain during an intermission of the NCAA All-Star Game.

His English teacher said his major was “cheerfulness.”

Other than his hoodie that most teenagers wear,

George Zimmerman became Klansman and executioner,

The 2012 version of Emmett Till’s asthmatic whistle that got him tragically killed.

Mamie Till allowed an open casket view

To look at the ugliness that they’d visited on her son.

That brave act steeled backbone in the Civil Rights Movement;

A personal tragedy in a pre-racial reality.

Now, in the post-racial reality of having a

Black president, Trayvon’s spirit cries out for justice,

And the DOJ has a black attorney general, the force of law being:

“Hate Crime” – defined as “a traditional offense like

Murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias.”

For the purposes of collecting statistics,

Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense

Against a person or property motivated in whole or in

Part by an offender's bias against a race, religion,

Disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." (FBI.gov)

Every black and brown parent hugs their kids closer tonight;

Every black and brown child hides their Obama t-shirts and posters,

Else flirt with disaster.

These were the fights they’d see only in February/September-October

– once-a-year – in Black and Hispanic History (Month), or You Tube reels.

The young would roll their eyes and say:

“that’s old; it don’t happen anymore.”

Well…

Trayvon’s blood was spilled on a police department’s

Floor as his father called his cell for THREE days

And NO ONE answered until they got their “story” straight.

They’d protect Invader Zimm through Florida’s

“Stand Your Ground” law, because if they

Prosecute Zimmerman, they risk [for themselves] lawsuit!

Trayvon’s blood calls out to God as Abel’s

Did for Cain’s slaughter of him.

And just to remind you – Trayvon’s “sin” so to not long ponder this riddle:

Driving While Black…NO, he was

Walking While Black…

Being While Black…

…with the deadly weapons of a hoodie, an iced tea and a bag of skittles!

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Hi there   I'm new to the site.  Does anyone know about reviews on Tananarive Due's speculative fiction?  I'd like to introduce her work to my college students, and want to give them some academic bac

Posted by Springs235 on March 20, 2012 at 12:45am

Hi there

 

I'm new to the site.  Does anyone know about reviews on Tananarive Due's speculative fiction?  I'd like to introduce her work to my college students, and want to give them some academic background.

 

 

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Ouch!...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 19, 2012 at 5:00pm
Full report here

At a panel discussion at the conference, a number of scientists and science policymakers said these poll figures reveal a startling degree of public skepticism toward the United States's ability to compete globally in scientific research. They blamed the public's perception of the United States as a dwindling science powerhouse on a lack of long-term thinking by lawmakers tasked with funding national science endeavors. While China and the European Union have taken steps to increase their research budgets, the United States more recently has struggled to keep its research budget from declining...

 
No sooner than yesterday's posting. I thought to scale back my comments. I'm glad I didn't!
 
To be fair and elucidate: the chart above and a the link below the picture seems at first glance we're OK having the proverbial "biggest piece of the pie." Adding all the other parts, it merely says collectively there is skepticism regarding our collective ability to do anything of significance or visionary leadership. A collective sigh; a national shoulder-shrug.
 
Cosmological Age, Evolution, Global Warming: we've become a sound-bite culture where journalism is meaningless, coreligionist rather than reasoned or rational, more concerned with scoring political points than solving critical problems: and jingoism is not patriotism! It makes Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Sower" and "Parable of the Talents" almost prophetic.
 
Prophecy, nor predictive models have to be destiny: it only occurs when either go unheeded.

 

 

AAAS Science Mag - Poll: Many U.S. Voters Have Gloomy View of America's Science Future

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No Scientists Need Apply?...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 18, 2012 at 6:00am

John Paulos is a Mathematics Professor at Temple University. Writing in the New York Times:
NYT Photo

I’ve visited Singapore a few times in recent years and been impressed with its wealth and modernity. I was also quite aware of its world-leading programs in mathematics education and naturally noted that one of the candidates for president was Tony Tan, who has a Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Tan won the very close election and joined the government of Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who also has a degree in mathematics.

 

China has even more scientists in key positions in the government. President Hu Jintao was trained as a hydraulic engineer and Premier Wen Jiabao as a geomechanical engineer. In fact, eight out of the nine top government officials in China have scientific backgrounds. There is a scattering of scientist-politicians in high government positions in other countries as well. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has a doctorate in physical chemistry, and, going back a bit, Margaret Thatcher earned a degree in chemistry.

I personally think it's a matter of motivation.
Usually, politics is not seen as a "STEM Career," so many don't even think to pursue such a path beyond the lab/fab. Dealing with a circuit/test tube/sample is far simpler than saying the right sound-bite-tested phrase for the cameras. It's quieter than a political rally.

It's also my observation that politicans have "emotional intelligence," meaning they can "move a crowd," a skill they need if they want to maintain a job. A skill unnecessary in a laboratory. Tech types tend to be self-motivated.

 
From Wikipedia: The term technocracy was originally used to designate the application of the scientific method to solving social problems, in counter distinction to the traditional economic, political or philosophic approaches. According to the proponents of this concept, the role of money and economic values, political opinions, and moralistic control mechanisms would be eliminated altogether if and when this form of social control should ever be implemented in a continental area endowed with enough natural resources, technically trained personnel, and installed industrial equipment so as to allow for the production and distribution of physical goods and services to all continental citizens in an amount exceeding the individuals' physical ability to consume.

 

This would, unfortunately create a new "class" of being that only specialized knowledge would allow the ascendancy to the governing body. Since it would only require a select few, much as our current system of governance, it would become quite evident that the shift of power would favor one group (s) over others. The world does not work like Star Trek, or Vulcan. Our baser instincts would prevail. (Besides, it ultimately didn't work so well on the fictional home of Superman - they, er... blew up.) Smiley

 

However, the current pandering to focus groups and "the base" needs to cease. Our leaders need SOME appreciation of science for clear decision-making, else they will model an anti-intellectualism that will soon become the "new normal," one we will not recover from...for maybe a generation.

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ET Don't Phone?...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 18, 2012 at 12:10am

OK: It's kind of a rant, but hopefully a thought-provoking one.

Screeneddotcom



Star Trek made us fawn over Vulcans; loath Klingons (who in a wierd Worf way, turned out to be cool), and Romulans (not-so-much).

ET gave us the cute beneficent alien, we didn't get a whole lot of tech from him/her, but a good feeling after seeing him/her with a young, screaming Drew Barrymore; we rooted for ET when we thought its life force left.

SETI has three links on this blog page: each starts with, er "SETI" on "Cool Physics Links." However, with the current political climate of "other-ness," my predictions are gloomy, but succinct:

- gun sales would increase along with survivalists and militias;

- a new invective -- like "Slag" in Alien Nation -- would be invented;

- the new-new concern would be inter species marriages;

- Ragnorok, End-Time, Mayan Prophecies et al would become prominent immediately.

I'm watching a lot of episodes on Science Channel on the subject: "Are We Alone"; "Alien Encounters." It's in the nerd Zeitgeist (a very small fraction of said Zeitgeist, mind you).

An interesting paper is making its way across the net asking if "first contact" will help or harm humanity: Acta Astronautica. I'm reminded of the Twilight Zone episode: "To Serve Man."

I think sadly, we only have ourselves as reference, and how we evolved as the top of the predatory scale, similar to H.G. Wells' recollection of Britain's foray into Australia inspiring War of the Worlds. A feeling of universal reciprocity; "karma" that we would reap the whirlwind: what we've collectively sown in the winds of time...with one another.
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Quantum Cognition...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 16, 2012 at 5:30am
Quantum Biology

The aim of [quantum cognition] is to use quantum theory to develop radically new models of a variety of cognitive phenomena ranging from human memory to decision making. Although speculative, this research is gaining momentum. For instance, later this year, the highly regarded Journal of Mathematical Psychology will publish a special issue of quantum models of cognition. In addition, quantum cognition is a prominent theme within the Quantum Interaction Symposia, which provide a forum for a growing body of researchers applying quantum theory to non-quantum domains.

I recall a reporter interviewing me for a fitness magazine (I owned a martial arts studio at the time) describing themselves as "mental." Explains a lot...

This kind of lends to either a step towards quantum computing, or the "woo woo" physics I blogged on earlier. Although: Paris in June sounds nice (see Symposia link above). Smiley

PhysOrgdotcom:

Physics arXiv links:

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Graphene Battery...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 15, 2012 at 5:51am


Researchers at Hong Kong Polytechnic University claim to have invented a new kind of graphene-based "battery" that runs solely on ambient heat. The device is said to capture the thermal energy of ions in a solution and convert it into electricity. The results are in the process of being peer reviewed, but if confirmed, such a device might find use in a range of applications, including powering artificial organs from body heat, generating renewable energy and powering electronics.

 

Hope...for my laptop!Smiley

 

Physics World: Graphene in new 'battery' breakthrough?

Physics arXiv:
Self-Charged Graphene Battery Harvests Electricity from Thermal Energy of the Environment
Zihan Xu1†*, Guoan Tai1,3†, Yungang Zhou2, Fei Gao2, Kim Hung Wong1

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