Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming, Research
In the 2004 climate-change disaster flick "The Day After Tomorrow," increased greenhouse gases in the atmosphere have a paradoxical effect: Rather than heating up the planet, they trigger a sudden-onset global ice age. The movie was very silly and unscientific, but there was a kernel of truth at the core of it: The Earth really does have a massive, hidden air-conditioning system that messes with the climate in paradoxical, unexpected ways and is, in turn, affected by climate change. And a new paper turns to that AC unit to, possibly, answer one of the abiding mysteries of climate change: Why did warming seem to "pause" from the mid-1990s to the early 2000s?
Earth's air conditioning system is called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation (AMOC). It's a massive, looping current that carries warm water over the sea surface toward the North Atlantic and ferries cold (denser) water south along a deeper undersea route. It's the most important reason that much of Europe — a region much farther north than most population centers in North America or Asia — is warm enough to be comfortably inhabited, and it generally moderates temperatures across the North Atlantic region.
Researchers have suspected for a long time that the fate of the AMOC might be important to the overall fate of a world subject to rapid climate change.
The new paper, published July 18 in the journal Nature, argues that things might not work that way in a world like ours, warming rapidly as it is thanks to the extreme spike in greenhouse gases. The new study follows up on earlier research published in 2014 by the same authors, which Live Science covered at the time.
Recently a Dutch TV crew came to my home for an interview about my latest research in astronomy. When I told them I get many of my new ideas in the shower, they decided to film a scene showing the shower still running and me rushing from the bathroom, dressed in a robe, to my computer.
But despite their best efforts, there was no way for them to get a visual of my ideas and where they actually come from. The same video could have been made with the previous occupant of the house who shared none of my scientific ideas. He and I happened to use the same shower, eat in the same kitchen and sleep in the same bedroom, altogether sharing the same spaces (at different times) but with very different outcomes. Where do ideas come from?
Ideas originate from pregnant minds, just as babies emerge from the bellies of their mothers. What makes a mind fertile? For one thing, it is the freedom to venture without the confines of traditional thinking or the burden of practical concerns. If a quantum system is probed too often, it tends to stay in the same state.
The same is true for the mind of an individual if it is interrupted too often by others. Immersing oneself in the trivia of common wisdom resembles reading yesterday’s news in the daily newspaper, with no prospect for making a difference. Senior researchers aim to establish echo chambers in which their voices are heard loud and clear through their group members. This is an antidote to pregnancies with new ideas. Early career scientists might not fulfill their discovery potential if they accept the limits established by their mentors. Innovation occurs when researchers deviate from group thinking or fashion.
By its nature, persistent conservatism is ultimately doomed to a culture shock. In December 2013 I gave a pedagogical lecture on the topic of “Gravitational Wave Astrophysics” to students at the 30th Jerusalem Winter School in Theoretical Physics on Early Galaxy Formation. Some 10 minutes into my lecture a young lecturer at the school who specializes in traditional astronomy raised his hand and asked: “Why are you wasting the time of these students? We all know that this field will not be of use to them in their careers.”
In September 2015, while many of the same students were still working on their PhDs, LIGO discovered gravitational waves from the black holes merger GW150914. The subsequent detection of electromagnetic counterparts to the neutron stars merger GW170817 ushered a new era of multi-messenger astronomy, and the lecturer’s prophecy was demonstrated to be officially wrong by the announcement of the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics. In hindsight this blunder might not be surprising. Think about how riders of horse-drawn carriages viewed Ford's Model T car or how the executives of Encyclopedia Britannica viewed Wikipedia in its early days.
We have to consider what used to be the unthinkable. Slowly, as each shoe drops we get closer to the end of living with the openly treasonous "uncle in the attic": a narcissistic, emotionally immature and challenged man whose idea of paradise on earth would be a hellscape for everyone else, at least saner citizenry.
The Manchurian Candidate is a 1962 American suspense thriller film about the Cold War and sleeper agents. It was directed and produced by John Frankenheimer. The screenplay was written by George Axelrod, and was based on the 1959 Richard Condon novel The Manchurian Candidate. The film's leading actors are Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Janet Leigh, with Angela Lansbury, Henry Silva, and James Gregory among the performers cast in the supporting roles.
The plot centers on the Korean War veteran Raymond Shaw, the progeny of a prominent political family. Shaw was a prisoner of war during the conflict in Korea and while being held was brainwashed by his captors. After his discharge back into civilian life, he becomes an unwitting assassin involved in an international communist conspiracy. Officials from China and the Soviet Union employ Shaw as a sleeper agent in an attempt to subvert and take over the United States government.Wikipedia 1962 film page
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Major Bennett Marco, Sergeant Raymond Shaw, and the rest of their infantry platoon are captured during the Korean War in 1952. They are taken to Manchuria, and brainwashed into believing Shaw saved their lives in combat – for which Shaw is subsequently awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Years after the war, Marco, now back in the United States working as an intelligence officer, begins suffering a recurring nightmare in which Shaw murders two of his comrades from their platoon, all while observed by Chinese and Soviet intelligence officials. When Marco learns that another soldier from the platoon has been suffering the same nightmare, he sets out to solve the mystery.
It is revealed that the Communists have been using Shaw as a sleeper agent who, activated by a posthypnotic trigger, immediately forgets the assignments he carries out and therefore can never betray himself either purposely or inadvertently. In Shaw's case the suggestion that he play solitaire is the trigger. Seeing the "Queen of Diamonds" playing card transforms him into an assassin who will kill anyone at whom he is directed. Shaw’s KGB handler is his domineering mother, Eleanor. Married to McCarthy-esque Senator Johnny Iselin, Eleanor has convinced the Communist powers to help her install her husband as president and allow them to control the American government through him.
By observing Shaw, Marco discovers the trigger shortly before the national convention of Iselin's political party. He uses the Queen of Diamonds card to draw out Eleanor's plan: after she obtains the vice presidential nomination for Iselin, Shaw is to shoot the presidential candidate so that Iselin can succeed him. Blaming the killing on the Communists will enable Iselin to assume dictatorial powers. Marco reprograms Shaw, although it is unclear until the final pages whether this is successful. At the convention, Shaw instead shoots and kills his mother and Senator Iselin. Marco is the first person to reach Shaw's sniper nest, getting there just before Shaw turns the gun on himself.Wikipedia novel page
There is nothing salacious that can embarrass this orange Satan. The visual everyone has of his tweeting at hours septuagenarians are relieving themselves via bowel movements doesn't stop him. The serial lies do not bother him. His cult following would still be with him if he shot someone on 5th Avenue in NYC. This is where we are. No, his biggest fear is the prospect he could be bankrupted AT WILL by Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs/Mafioso according to his namesake son.
The Derangement Syndrome is a plagiarism without credit of the previous one for the first and only African American president in the history of this racist republic. The Derangement Syndrome is attacking the allies we've been with since the end of the second world war and the beginning of the Cold War with Putin's nation. The Derangement Syndrome is disagreeing with the intelligence assessment of your own agencies, and agreeing with the Judo master that would knife you as soon as involuntary blinking. The Derangement Syndrome is owned by a president* that tweets the path to our adversaries coming to the seat of our power...to gloat? To inspect his new property? His Director of National Intelligence learned as we did with Andrea Mitchell. A meeting with a dictator post the assault on British soil with chemical weapons. A meeting with a dictator that ordered the attack on our electoral process that was with him 2 and 1/2 hours with only an interpreter; not a stenographer that could give us a readout of what was said; what was agreed on. A meeting with a dictator that pointedly proposed the ambassador originating the Magnitsky Act be sent to Moscow for interrogation, an interrogation he would likely not survive. There is still an insistence in this country on voter ID, which is laser-focused in North Carolina and elsewhere to diminish the votes of people of color, but beyond going to paper ballets does NOTHING about dark money from offshore accounts nor hacking of our electoral and civil commons infrastructure: aviation, power, sewer, water; food.
We cannot call ourselves a sovereign nation under these conditions.
Topics: Astronomy, Exoplanets, Planetary Science, Space Exploration
The Latest: On Jul. 17, 2018, scientists announced they had discovered 12 new moons orbiting Jupiter. That raised Jupiter’s total number of moons to 79—the most of any planet in the solar system. Fifty-three of the moons are confirmed and named; the other 26 are awaiting official confirmation of discovery before they are named.
The team first spotted the moons in the spring of 2017 while they were looking for very distant solar system objects as part of a hunt for a possible massive planet far beyond Pluto. “Our other discovery is a real oddball and has an orbit like no other known Jovian moon,” team leader Scott Sheppard said. “It’s also likely Jupiter’s smallest known moon, being less than one kilometer in diameter”.
Quantum dots made from the carbon material graphene prevent alpha-synuclein from aggregating into strand-like structures known as fibrils. They also help disaggregate fibrils that have already formed. Alpha-synuclein fibrils are thought to be implicated in Parkinson’s disease because they kill dopamine-generating neurons, so the new findings might help in the development of therapies to treat this disease as well as others in which fibrilization occurs.
Synucleins are a family of proteins typically found in neural tissue. Researchers believe that one type of synuclein, alpha-synuclein, twists into fibrils, which then accumulate in the midbrain of patients with Parkinson’s. Treatments with efficient anti-aggregation agents might thus be one way of fighting the disease.
A team led by Byung Hee Hong of Seoul National University and Han Seok Ko of The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore have now found that graphene quantum dots (GQDs) bind to alpha-synuclein in vitro. Thanks to fluorescence and turbidity assays, as well as transmission electron microscopy measurements, the researchers found that the dots prevent alpha-synuclein from forming into fibrils. The nanostructures also dissociate already-formed fibrils into short fragments, with the average length of the fragments shortening from 1 micron to 235 nm and 70 nm after 6 and 24 hours respectively. The number of fragments starts to decrease after three days too and cannot be detected at all after seven days, which implies that the fibrils completely disintegrate after this time.
"And he called out with a mighty voice, “Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast." Revelation 18:2 English Standard Version
On the eve of the summit between the American Antichrist and Russian Beelzebub, the Manchurian Puppet with a Propecia Ferret on his head called our long-standing allies "foes." Pinocchio likely did not ask about the illegal annexation of Crimea; the chemical attacks on British soil nor the confirmed cyber attack by his own intelligence agencies on our electoral process in 2016. Our enemies used bitcoin as a cover for their deeds, reminiscent of a Bond villain. I expect a call to lift sanctions on the Russians. I expect the keys to our republic handed over to the devil.
- Russian bots stoked KKK fears (which, kind of is their raison d'être) during the protests of racism at the University of Missouri in 2015...
- 12 Russians were indicted Friday for actively hacking into the 2016 campaign...
- His party in the House want to impeach the Deputy Attorney General...
- We have NO protections against the Russians doing the same thing or worse in 2018 or 2020...
This began with the Orwellian-named Citizen's United and [dark] "money as free speech."
This began with Merrick Garland's seat stolen from President Obama; even the vow that the Supreme Court would be held 4-4 until the NEXT republican president, whether that happened in 2016 or 2020!
This nightfall is the public dissolution of our federal republic. It is the unraveling of accepted norms, and you cannot have norms when your citizens are bereft of information on what those "norms" are.
This nation was founded on the twin sins of genocide of Native Americans and the systematic kidnap, uncompensated free labor and debasement of African nations and their descendants. We've tried to obfuscate, fabricate false narratives and tell ourselves outright lies to blanket this heinous history. Now we flirt with fascism, the same we fought the second world war over and became at least metaphorically Winthrop's "city on a hill." Our union was then, and is still now segregated, and far from perfect. "United States" has always teetered between work-in-progress and oxymoron. There was always some hope of a better and brighter future. It has never been so relentlessly and purposely ground to powder, prepared for tossing into the garbage furnace of history with tiny, orange and malevolent hands; aided by an entire political party so afraid of demographic changes that they callously upend the notion of who can vote, who can marry, who can live comfortably in the public commons, bent on holding power beyond the norms of democracy - which then can no longer be called a democracy.
“Fallen, fallen is Babylon the great! She has become a dwelling place for demons, a haunt for every unclean spirit, a haunt for every unclean bird, a haunt for every unclean and detestable beast."
"Our republic and its press will rise and fall together." Joseph Pulitzer
Lügenpresse - Time.com, German for "lying press," a Nazi pejorative invoked by #MAGA supporters at rallies resembling "The Two Minutes Hate*" (1984), the obvious ideological precursor to "fake news" and "alternative facts."
Topics: Applied Physics, Commentary, Economy, Education, Einstein, Research
Did Einstein "own" Special and General Relativity, the photoelectric effect (for which the Nobel Prize was awarded); Brownian Motion or Mass-Energy equivalence? Did Richard Feynman "own" his diagrams? He's also credited for being the father of nanotechnology with his seminal talk: "There's plenty of room at the bottom." Norio Taniguchi, a Tokyo Science University Professor coined the term nanotechnology in 1974: does he, or his descendents "own" it? These things are known and associated with them, but we have never asked the ultimate question of ownership.
I know, for example, any process I changed as an engineer was "owned" by the company I was working for at the time. If I applied for a patent, my name would be on it, but the company "owned" the intellectual property rights. It works the same for universities: whatever inventions you file patents for, your institution "owns" it. It's something in Pavlovian fashion I will admit, I have been conditioned to accept.
That cannot, however, stop you from "thinking" about it even if you've left your notes with the lab you worked on the invention in.
In the era of the Internet and pirating, this question has gotten even thornier.
In the late 1990s, business managers and academic researchers tried to tackle what they saw as an urgent and growing problem: When knowledge workers such as industrial physicists walked out the door in the evening, they inevitably took valuable intellectual property with them. Managers did not fear the theft of patent documents. They feared losing a collection of intangible skills, a deep knowledge of the company’s processes, relationships with other technical workers, and the general know-how that makes an experienced employee more valuable than someone fresh out of college. In other words, businesses were worried that they did not fully own scientists’ minds.
Over the course of centuries, a struggle has been playing out about who gets to own ideas. Is it the person who comes up with them? The employer who funds the research? Or should the ideas be somehow shared between them?
For the most part, that struggle has resulted in scientists slowly losing control of their discoveries, both in private industry and in academia. Patents once went to the inventor by default, but now they belong to the employer. Hands-on skill and experience with the research process—sometimes called know-how or tacit knowledge—was once the most fundamentally personal part of what a worker brought to the table, yet business lawyers have built a variety of legal tools to constrain skilled workers from offering it up on the free market. By the 1990s teams of MBAs and business-school scholars joined forces to see if advances in information technology, management techniques, law, and sociology could allow them to extract workers’ know-how so that the company could store and own it indefinitely. The resulting academic research field and management fad became known as “knowledge management.”
This article traces changes in US law, business practices, and social expectations about research and invention in order to illuminate the history of business control over scientists’ ideas. It will not be the whole history—I skip over huge amounts of history about government sponsorship of research, changing national and international economic conditions, ties between industrial and academic scientists, and many other topics that would be needed for that.1 Still, it is a slice of history that physicists would do well to remember. We live in an age of strong intellectual property rights and relatively weak protections for workers, especially in high-tech fields where unionization is low. Where once an industrial scientist had unquestioned ownership of his or her ideas, that self-determination has eroded in many ways over centuries. Knowing that past might help scientists evaluate what they hope to see in the future.
Patrons can now access Patron Only content on my website. There are also tons of free stories and other webserials for everyone. Please stop by and say hi! https://tonyarmoore.com.
Topics: Climate Change, Ecology, Existentialism, Global Warming, Octavia Butler
Under Freytag's pyramid, the plot of a story consists of five parts: exposition (originally called introduction), rising action (rise), climax, falling action (return or fall), and dénouement/resolution/revelation/catastrophe.Dramatic structure - Wikipedia
Completely unplanned but apropos that this post appears on the superstitious "Friday the 13th," the reason for many Jason Voorhees movie serials in my youth. Also phonetically, it is akin to Fredo Corleone from The Godfather, insisting beyond all evidence to the contrary of intellectual acumen, heretofore demonstrably non-existent.
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The late William T. Kelley, who taught Trump at the University of Pennsylvania, said, “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddamn student I ever had.” Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter of “The Art of the Deal,” says Trump had “a stunning level of superficial knowledge and plain ignorance.” Source: Steve Chapman, Chicago Times
With their documented disdain of education, Karl Rovian "created realities" to include non-existent Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction; anti-science as entrance to "the club" and the tribal (and corporate-manipulated), lock-step climate denialism, it was inevitable this ideology would eventually birth an orange, sacrilegious personification. Amanda Marcotte, author of Troll Nation succinctly ties the right's absence of logic and reason as raison d'etre for its very existence. Their grifter-in-chief's mullet - well past expiration - has become this generations latest troll doll model. This would be funny if they, and he didn't have power.
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Failure to meet the United Nations’ 2ºC warming limits will lead to sea level rise and dire global economic consequences, new research has warned.
Published today in Environmental Research Letters, a study led by the UK National Oceanographic Centre (NOC) found flooding from rising sea levels could cost $14 trillion worldwide annually by 2100 if the target of holding global temperatures below 2ºC above pre-industrial levels is missed.
The researchers also found that upper-middle income countries such as China would see the largest increase in flood costs, whereas the highest income countries would suffer the least, thanks to existing high levels of protection infrastructure.
Svetlana Jevrejeva, from the NOC, is the study’s lead author. She said: “More than 600 million people live in low-elevation coastal areas, less than 10 meters above sea level. In a warming climate, global sea level will rise due to the melting of land-based glaciers and ice sheets, and from the thermal expansion of ocean waters. So, sea level rise is one of the most damaging aspects of our warming climate.”
Sea level projections exist for emissions scenarios and socio-economic scenarios. However, there are no scenarios covering limiting warming below the 2°C and 1.5°C targets during the entire 21st century and beyond. [1]
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The ancillary effects of climate change are brain-eating amoeba in Florida and Louisianna. It is playing a role in tick migrations, especially in the south; particularly in the Carolinas, where I now live again. There's only so much OFF we can wear for mosquitoes along with sunscreen for UV. It goes well beyond snowballs in the well of the Senate by representatives well-compensated by the fossil fuel industry that are the pimps to his prostitution. World population in 2100 is estimated to go from its present 7.6 to 11.2 billion; that presumes the Senator's grandchildren will be a part of that population.
Octavia Butler's short Parable Series is worth your time away from thousands of television stations you'll never watch and news feeds on social media that are either questionable or manipulated by Russian troll farms to manipulate you:
The sequel, “Parable of the Talents,” published in 1998, begins in 2032. By then, various forms of indentured servitude and slavery are common, facilitated by high-tech slave collars. The oppression of women has become extreme; those who express their opinion, “nags,” might have their tongues cut out. People are addicted not only to designer drugs but also to “dream masks,” which generate virtual fantasies as guided dreams, allowing wearers to submerge themselves in simpler, happier lives. News comes in the form of disks or “news bullets,” which “purport to tell us all we need to know in flashy pictures and quick, witty, verbal one-two punches. Twenty-five or thirty words are supposed to be enough in a news bullet to explain either a war or an unusual set of Christmas lights.” The Donner Administration has written off science, but a more immediate threat lurks: a violent movement is being whipped up by a new Presidential candidate, Andrew Steele Jarret, a Texas senator and religious zealot who is running on a platform to “make American great again.”
In her lifetime, Butler insisted that the Parable series was not intended as an augur. “This was not a book about prophecy,” she said, of “Talents,” in remarks she delivered at M.I.T. “This was a cautionary tale, although people have told me it was prophecy. All I have to say to that is:I certainly hope not.” [2]
Topics: Commentary, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Existentialism, Women in Science
Max Karl Ernst Ludwig PlanckBorn: 23 April 1858, Kiel, Schleswig (now Germany)Died: 4 October 1947, Göttingen, West Germany (now Germany)Affiliation at the time of the award: Berlin University, Berlin, GermanyPrize motivation: "in recognition of the services he rendered to the advancement of Physics by his discovery of energy quanta"Field: quantum mechanicsMax Planck received his Nobel Prize one year later, in 1919.Prize share: 1/1
From which we get Planck's constant, Planck length, Planck time and the now infamous institute that bears his name, which I never dreamed I'd associate with bullying.
Women, LGBT, and people of color are typically attracted to STEM fields because of interest, acumen and being the unfortunate victims of bullying, cyber or otherwise.
It is usually what attracts us to science in the first place: a solace from the parts of life that's unpleasant, that results in noses being shoved in lockers (me), harassment or assault, both purely physical or sexual. Surely, this cannot happen in academia.
We convince ourselves of this by the STEM fields being inherently difficult and requiring crosscultural and oftentimes crossgender collaboration to solve complex problems. Utopias like Star Trek are envisioned on this premise: if only the species were more "logical," and not as inclined to the lesser angels of its reptilian cortex.
We were wrong...
Picture the scene: You are an enthusiastic young scientist, with, you think, the world at your feet. You have an exciting offer to join a world-leading research institute in another country. And then, to your dismay, you find yourself in a workplace where everything feels wrong. Your supervisor intimidates you and you receive upsetting e-mails, but the institute leadership seems indifferent. You are alone in a foreign culture, and you don’t know what to do. Your friends tell you to complain, but you are afraid of repercussions — and of losing the opportunity you fought so hard for. And, anyway, you don’t know who to trust.
This has apparently been the situation for years for some young researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching, Germany. Details of their struggles with alleged bullying by one of the directors — Guinevere Kauffmann — erupted in the media in the past two weeks.
According to the allegations, problems at the institute have simmered for years. The institute put in place coaching and monitoring for Kauffmann, who says: “I believe I have modified my behavior very substantially in the last 18 months since the complaints were made.” The institute also circulated an anonymous survey to young researchers, asking whether they think the problems are continuing and whether they have enough support. The results are to be presented to the institute this week, but, according to a leaked copy of the report, they show three fresh allegations of bullying against current staff, although it is not known against whom. The institute says it is investigating.
Lockheed Martin’s concept, called Mars Base Camp, would need a way to replenish their fuel and air supplies. Lockheed Martin
Topics: Astrophysics, Mars, NASA, Photosynthesis, Planetary Science, Space Exploration
Note: From American Express travelers checks ads in 1975 with Oscar-winning actor Karl Malden; it was "them" instead of "it" back then. Yeah, I'm dating myself.
Spaceflight is like backpacking. If you can’t restock supplies like food and water along the way, how far you can travel is limited by how much you can carry. And in space, you also have to worry about having enough fuel for your spacecraft and breathable air for your crew.
That’s why some researchers are looking toward technology that they call artificial photosynthesis — a way of harnessing the sun’s light to generate fuel and breathable air for longer missions. This system would mimic, in a sense, the way plants perform natural photosynthesis by converting light energy into chemical energy and producing oxygen in the process.
Research published Tuesday in Nature Communications brings us one step closer to this goal. For the first time, researchers performed photoelectrochemical experiments — chemical reactions that use light and the electrical properties of chemicals — in an outer space-like microgravity environment.
Bottoms up: physicists working on the ATLAS experiment have discovered the most common Higgs decay channel. (Courtesy: Maximilien Brice/CERN)
Topics: Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Quarks
Why "Quark"?
The name "quark" was taken by Murray Gell-Mann from the book "Finnegan's Wake" by James Joyce. The line "Three quarks for Muster Mark..." appears in the fanciful book. Gell-Mann received the 1969 Nobel Prize for his work in classifying elementary particles.
Physicists working on the ATLAS experiment at CERN have confirmed that the Higgs boson decays to two bottom quarks. The discovery was made by combining data from two runs of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and was announced today at the 2018 International Conference on High Energy Physics in Seoul, Korea.
Although this decay channel should account for nearly 60% of all Higgs decays at the LHC, it had proven extremely difficult to spot it amongst the vast number of particles that are produced by proton-proton collisions at the collider.
Electrons in some oxides can experience an “unconventional slowing down” of their response to a light pulse, according to Argonne material scientists and their collaborators. This surprising behavior may result in useful properties related to magnetism, conductivity or even superconductivity. (Image by Argonne National Laboratory.)
In a new study, researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory have determined that electrons in some oxides can experience an “unconventional slowing down” of their response to a light pulse.
The researchers describe the behavior as lasting about a millionth of a second, which is still a million times slower than traditional electronic recovery times.
“It’s as if the electron is spending two years or more dithering between states when normally it could make up its mind in a minute,” said Anand Bhattacharya, an Argonne materials scientist and co-author of the study, published May 4, in Nature Communications.
In a crystal, all the atoms form a periodic structure called a lattice, where the atoms are arranged in a repetitive pattern in three dimensions. The properties of electrons living in this space typically obey the same periodicity.
But below a temperature of about minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the electrons in the study material, lanthanum strontium ferrite, find it more energetically advantageous to cooperate with the lattice and magnetism on the iron atoms, to form a new periodic structure called a magnetically driven, charge-ordered state.
The behavior occurs close to a temperature that marks a phase transition — similar to the way in which 32 degrees Fahrenheit marks the phase transition from water to ice. But the phase transition studied here is peculiar because it marks a transition between a magnetic insulator and a non-magnetic metal. According to Bhattacharya, these sorts of phase transitions are potentially useful as 'switches,' where a material’s 'on' and 'off' states can allow us to toggle between metals, insulators, magnets and superconductors.
However, the material studied — known as La1/3Sr2/3FeO3 — had a surprise in store.
Topics: Commentary, Civics, Civil Rights, History, Human Rights, Politics
The Southern Strategy
The Southern strategy was Richard Nixon's strategy to *whiteify* the electorate so Republicans could hold onto power in light of demographic changes. It began as a grab for southern states during the 1968 and 1972 elections: a combination of dog-whistle politics as well as a deliberately racist agenda, effectively throwing any social clout the GOP had right out the window.
It resulted in a total party realignment over issues of civil rights and racism. Democrats went from being the party who opposed civil rights to being the party that passed them, and Southerners who were formerly Democrats voted Republican instead, because Republicans opposed progress in those areas to various extents. This was the most significant political realignment in the US since the "New Deal Coalition," and one that still continues to this day. Source: Rational Wiki
The link at Rational Wiki is instructive in its historical context. We're still reeling from the last election that did a lot of digital *whiteification* via social media threads, Russian troll farms and election meddling.
Our US republican senators are meeting with Russian spy Lavrov (one of the same spies this president* revealed classified information to in a meeting not covered by the US press) ahead of the Trump-Putin summit where no one else, press or otherwise is allowed in the meeting, which should probably go as well as his "summit" with Kim Jung Un. Their fidelity to "denuclearize" was laughable, but our possible retreat from the world stage could be actionable by a dim bulb going into a closed door battle-of-wits meeting with a Master KGB spy not even half-armed. That would be at least a 10% improvement from where he currently is: somewhere above amoeba, desperately trying not to drool.
This is an instance of pure, naked guile of what demonic goal they are trying to achieve.
It has always been about the mythological stratification of race: I say myth, because there is no scientific basis for the demarcations. Yet, whole rallies like the tragedy at Charlottesville and one year later (because Heather Hyer's vehicular murder was such a "winner" for "fine people"), a so-called "white" Civil Rights rally at the Washington Mall is approved and being organized. They might as well have a parade over pixie dust; a Loch Ness Monster square dance; a ritual sacrifice for UFOs and a pagan solstice observance for Bigfoot! It has been proven over and again to not exist, yet there are the Alt-Right, Aryan Nation, KKK, Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists that insist on it being a "thing," because racism and its kissing, incestuous twin fascism have no basis in rationality.
"Dear White America: Letter to a New Minority," by anti-racist author and activist Tim Wise was an entertaining read, written not in chapters, but as a very long, book-length letter. It is a consoling tome about the eventual majority of this country being people of color, and the numerical minorities so-called "whites." (I detest the term "majority-minority country" as oxymoronic, and insistent of the mythological separation of humanity.)
In the book description on the website:
In America, being white has long meant never having to think about race. Whites have been able to assume that the culture, political leadership and their own neighborhoods would “look like them,” and the economy would work for them, so long as they played by the rules. Now, facing chronic economic insecurity, a multicultural pop culture, a black president and a future in which they will no longer be the majority, whites are growing anxious. This anxiety has helped create the Tea Party phenomenon and is characterized by the call to “take the country back” to a mythologized past. Using racialized nostalgia, the right seeks to enlist fearful whites in a movement for reactionary social and economic policies. But as Tim Wise explains, such an agenda will only further harm the nation’s people, including most whites. Only by embracing a progressive, multicultural future, can the hope of American democracy survive.
This moribund "strategy" has petered out, nearing the end of its eventual shelf life. It was to fetch disgruntled, southern constituents from the Democratic Party - the original slave-trading defender and predominate in confederate states versus the newer, Civil Rights focused Republican Party of that era led by Abraham Lincoln. It was a change in demographics, then as now that caused a seismic shift in focus. The philosophical focus of each party flip-flopped sides after the '64 Civil Rights Act, '65 Voting Rights Act and the '68 Fair Housing Act. "Fear of a Black Planet" by the Hip Hop group Public Enemy might as well have been a political Punnett Square. The people who still want to "take their country back" fear black, brown, Asian, Native and LGBT. In their calculus, if you're not making white babies - as feckless college dropout and congressman Steve King alluded in a racist tweet and public comments, you are of no value. The decline in white birth rates are explained by simply existing in Western nations with better access to birth control, family planning, women deciding to delay childbirth for career advancement and some individuals/couples choosing to go childless. It's not the existential crisis screeds like "white" genocide conclude. But of course, screeds are generally not rational.
This was begun as the Reagan Revolution in Philadelphia, Mississippi where he started his presidential campaign with a "state's rights" speech near the site James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner - three Civil Rights workers, an African American and two Jewish men, registering black voters - had been murdered by the Ku Klux Klan, August 4, 1964. It was a "wink-and-nod" to southern Dixiecrats that soon became "Reagan Democrats." This is the tail-end of dog whistle politics and polite "wink-and-nod" verbal Jui-Jitsu advocated by political operative Lee Atwater. It is comical to hear conservative pundits now aghast at this president* and his rhetoric - at his fourth-grade level of vocabulary, purely unsophisticated for the fine art of subtlety. The dog whistle in his tiny fingers is a foghorn on Twitter, Pied Piper calling cockroaches, leeches and rodents from under rocks and out of anal crevices. His lies are simply the metastasis of the ones that got us into Iraq on Weapons of Mass Destruction that were not there, cost us many lives, casualties both of mortal wounds and PTSD for a nation that never attacked us on 9/11. It is not, nor should it be surprising. It is now a choice of white supremacy over national solidarity. It is now a choice being a satellite of Moscow over national sovereignty. It is now a choice of self-governance over a fascist, post-fact manipulated state.
November 6, 2018 (midterms) could decide the fate of democracy globally...of whether we are the best example, or simply another republic on its way to the dustbin of history.
*The usage of the asterisk (*) next to president* I borrow from and attribute to Charles P. Pierce, a writer for Esquire magazine and frequent media commentator on MSNBC. He's also author of the prescient book: "Idiot America: How Stupidity Became a Virtue in the Land of the Free." And so, despite his and other authors' warnings to the contrary, our republic is at the stage-edge of this cliff...
Scientists have tested Einstein’s theory of general relativity to new degrees of precision using the giant elliptical galaxy ESO 325-G004, the yellow ball of stars near the upper left side of this image. Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)
Topics: Astrophysics, Cosmology, Einstein, General Relativity
Astronomers have used a pair of galaxies far beyond the Milky Way to test general relativity with unprecedented precision
Three years ago astrophysicist Tom Collett set out to test a theory. Not just any theory, but one that sets scientists’ expectations for how the universe operates at large: Einstein’s general relativity. First published in 1915, the theory mathematically describes how gravity emerges from the fundamental geometry of space and time, or spacetime, as physicists call it. It postulates that dense objects, such as Earth and the sun, create valleylike dips in spacetime that manifest as gravity—the force that binds together a galaxy’s swirling stars, places planets around suns and, on Earth (or any other planet), keeps your feet on the ground.
Einstein’s equations underpin a host of real-world applications such as the global positioning satellites that make precise navigation and split-second financial transactions possible around the planet. They also elucidate several otherwise-inexplicable phenomena, including Mercury’s oddball orbit, as well as predict new ones, such as gravitational waves—ripples in spacetime that were only directly observed a century after general relativity’s debut. In test after test, whether here on Earth or in observations of the distant universe, the theory has emerged unscathed—a success so stunningly unshakeable it draws a certain breed of scientists like moths to a flame—each seeking to reveal cracks in Einstein’s edifice that could lead to the next breakthrough in physics.
Collett, a research fellow at the University of Portsmouth in England, is among them. “General relativity is so fundamental to the assumptions we make in our interpretation of cosmological and astrophysical data sets that we’d better be sure it’s right,” he says. With that mind-set, in 2015 Collett partnered with nine colleagues to perform the most sensitive experiment yet to test whether Einstein’s famed theory holds up at the scale of an entire galaxy. Their results, published June 21 in Science, reiterate Einstein’s theory still reigns supreme.
Topics: Civil Rights, Frederick Douglass, History, Human Rights
I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.
This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.
The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty. [1]
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations. [2]
This remain as true today as it was back in the seventh century. But what it means to cultivate the next generation has changed. For young people to thrive in the modern world, a significant proportion of that cultivation must be immersion in scientific ideas. And to judge by its commitment to science and scientific education, China is making a serious investment in this long-term mission. [1]
Genetic engineering, the search for dark matter, quantum computing and communications, artificial intelligence, brain science—the list of potentially disruptive research goes on. Each has significant implications for future industries, defense technologies and ethical understandings of what it means to be human.
And, increasingly, the notable achievements in these fields are coming not from the great centers of science in the West, but Beijing, Shanghai, Hefei, Shenzhen and a number of other Chinese cities that make up China’s extensive research system. Inevitably, the question arises: How much of the future is being invented in Chinese labs? [2]
Schematic showing nonsurgical injection of mesh electronics into the vitreous body of the eye, allowing conformal coating of the mesh on the surface of retina for electrophysiological recording of individual retinal ganglion cells in live animals. Credit: Lieber Group, Harvard University. All rights reserved
Topics: Biology, Materials Science, Optics, Research
Mesh electronics, a macroporous network of components with mechanical properties similar to that of biological tissue, is a relatively new technology that can be used to probe activity in the brain. Now, researchers at Harvard University in the US have developed an injectable mesh that can record the neural activity of mouse eyes in vivo. The device, which does not interfere with eye movement or light-processing, could help neuroscientists study the fundamental properties of primary vision input retinal ganglion cells (RGCs) and how these cells connect with other vision-related brain regions for the first time. The work could also help in the development of retinal prosthetics for restoring vision through non-surgical procedures.
“Mesh electronics is a submicron-thick, large-area macroporous network,” explains team leader Charles Lieber. “We fabricate the meshes as flat 2D sheets using standard semiconductor photolithography-based techniques and suspend them (like a colloid) in aqueous solution. Our specific design, which we first reported on back in 2015, enables mesh electronics to be rolled up into a tubular structure and drawn into a syringe needle.”
On the scale of a single neuron
“We can deliver these structures into specific brain regions with a spatial precision of 20 microns (which is on the scale of a single neuron) using the controlled injection approach we developed. This allows us to control the rate at which we withdraw the needle during injection and means that the mesh structure remains fully extended in the dense tissue of the brain during injection and does not crumple.”
In their new work Lieber and colleagues “non-coaxially” injected the mesh electronics onto the highly curved retinal cup of the eye. As the structure unrolls it forms a stable recording interface to RGCs, which process visual information received by photoreceptors (rods and cones). The researchers then did a series of experiments.
