No, I wasn't starving for food. I was starving or opportunity, direction, human interaction and friendship, but mostly I was starving for innovation and success. You see, around this time last year I found myself in a rut. I was doing hair, writing stories, making dolls etc etc. It felt like being on a hamster wheel to nowhere. And top on of everything else, our family was in a financial bind. Yes, I our ends didn't meet and we have more month at the end of our money.
One day while trying to complete a doll and at the same time worried if our gas would be cut off, something just told me to stop. I was trying to put out so much, but was taking nothing back in in return. Yes, I had burned out and what's worse our family was broke. So, I suggested to my husband that me and the baby move back to Mississippi with my family for a while he stayed back and searched for a better job and a more affordable home for our family.
When I moved back home I decided to get in a place of receiving and a place of rest. Instead of doing hair I decided to research hair. I spent hours and hours on Pintrest looking at hair styles and techniques. What I discovered was that I prefer to work with locs over m
ost other styles. They are low maintenance, yet versatile. While researching dolls, I discov
ered that if I made my dolls into mermaids it would save me a lot of time. Instead of writing I read. Nnedi Okorafor became my new best friend. I consider her God's apology for taking Octavia so ea
rly.
My mind went on many journeys in African-based culture, places and spirituality.
From Who Fears Death to Akata Witch and Akata Warrior and my latest read Kabu Kabu. I learned so many about what interests me as a reader and writer. I realized that as creatives it is our passion to give, but it should also be our priority to rest and take-in from time to time. I pray that I've taken in enough to start again and be better than I've been in the past. We shall see. Be blessed. Be favored.
Topics: Quantum Computer, Richard Feynman, Nanotechnology, Nobel Prize, Quantum Mechanics
The theme of this year’s April Meeting of the American Physical Society is the “Feynman Century” because the iconoclastic, Nobel-prize-winning physicist was born in 1918. This morning at a special session devoted to Feynman, quantum computing expert Christopher Monroe of the University of Maryland spoke about early contributions to quantum computing that were made by Feynman before his untimely death in 1988.
That theme continued in an afternoon session at the conference where nuclear and particle physicists discussed how quantum computers could be applied to their work. A huge challenge to those studying the physics of quarks (quantum chromodynamics or QCD) is that it takes vast amounts of computing power just to calculate the properties of relatively simple systems.
Low barrier to entry
Quantum computers, which (at least in principle), can solve certain problems much more efficiently than conventional computers could offer a way forward. Earlier this year we reported what is probably the first-ever nuclear physics calculation done using quantum computers – the binding energy of the deuteron. Thomas Papenbrock of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Lab explained how commercial cloud quantum-computing services from IBM and Rigetti had made this calculation possible, pointing out that the barrier to entry to quantum computing is very low thanks to these services.
The tornado that struck Greensboro Sunday was categorized as an EF2, but the damage it inflicted reached biblical proportions. Power was out at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering from that day until late Tuesday evening. Classes were canceled and arrangements to make them up emailed to students. The irony of the storm is the neighborhood that surrounds JSNN is predominately African American and/or people of color. In comparison to the rest of the city - power lines above ground vs. buried - it would be one of the latter locations to come back online first. Where my apartment is, power lines are buried and lights merely flickered. It was Katrina in miniature, as natural disasters likely or not likely inspired by climate change tends to pull the mask off the disparities inherit in our society we typically think egalitarian.
During a very stressful time at work during the 2016 electoral campaign, I wrote a cathartic essay about my foreboding at what was soon to become our country's 45th president*. He didn't just "happen." The GOP and Barry Goldwater made a Faustian compromise with their traditional principles after the passage of the '64 Civil Rights Act, the '65 Voting Rights Act and the '68 Fair Housing Act as disaffected Dixiecrats would use the refrain the former FBI director Jim Comey now uses to refer to his former membership with the Republican Party: "I didn't leave the Democratic Party (re: Dixiecrats) - the Democratic Party left me." Starbucks didn't just "happen" and "the talk" didn't just happen.
Systemic (Merriam-Webster):
: of, relating to, or common to a system: such as
a : affecting the body generally
b : supplying those parts of the body that receive blood through the aorta rather than through the pulmonary artery
c : of, relating to, or being a pesticide that as used is harmless to the plant or higher animal but when absorbed into its sap or bloodstream makes the entire organism toxic to pests (such as an insect or fungus)
Bowling for Columbine took a humorous look at the love affair this country has always had with violence: first the slaughter of Native Americans, then the kidnap and systematic debasement of the African Diaspora, soon reluctantly referred to as African Americans as would be established in our founding documents, which took courage to craft and break away from being a colony to becoming a nation. This is fear.
It's the fear that makes a neighborhood watch cop-wanna-be kill a child guilty of getting the munchies for ice tea and skittles. It's the fear that causes NYC cops to choke a man to death for selling loose cigarettes: "I can't breathe." It's the fear that slaughtered Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Sandra Bland and a growing list of recent ancestors that would fill this post. It is a body count born of fear.
In The Chronicle of Higher Education, Donald Yacovone writes:
After reviewing my first 50 or so textbooks, one morning I realized precisely what I was seeing, what instruction, and what priorities were leaping from the pages into the brains of the students compelled to read them: white supremacy. One text even began with the capitalized title: "The White Man’s History." Across time and with precious few exceptions, African-Americans appeared only as "ignorant Negroes," as slaves, and as anonymous abstractions that only posed "problems" for the supposed real subjects of history: white people of European descent.
The assumptions of white priority, white domination, and white importance underlie every chapter and every theme of the thousands of textbooks that blanketed the country. This is the vast tectonic plate that underlies American culture. And while the worst features of our textbook legacy may have ended, the themes, facts, and attitudes of supremacist ideologies are deeply embedded in what we teach and how we teach it.
Scholars often bemoan their lack of influence: embarrassing book sales figures and the like. Yet my review of American textbooks revealed that historians of the 20th century exerted an enormous impact on the way Americans have come to understand their history. The results are painfully evident. Their work either filtered down into schools, as interpreted by educators, administrators, and popular authors, or appeared directly: Ph.D.-trained scholars wrote many of the textbooks I read. To appreciate why white supremacy remains such an integral part of American society, we need to appreciate how much it suffused our teaching from the outset.
Very soon in the founding of a new nation, however, White Christians began to establish their well-being by using the resources, bodies, and lives of others. Through their own "witchcraft," European Christians employed a mysterious and threatening potency that was the practice of using the other for their own gain. In [James W.] Perkinson's description, through the projects of modern Christian empire "a witchery" of heretofore unimaginable potency ravaged African and aboriginal cultures...For Perkinson, the witchcraft of White supremacy was conjured through racial discourse as an ideological and practical frame that he identifies as the 'quintessential witchery of modernity.'... In Perkinson's chilling words, "Whiteness, under the veneer of its 'heavenly' pallor, is a great grinding witch tooth, sucking blood and tearing flesh without apology."
On the Stephen Colbert Show, actor Will Smith made the poignant observation "racism is not getting worse, it's getting filmed." This mirror into our collective cultural psyche must be jolting to those that could depend on "the system" reinforcing and replicating itself; giving both intellectual and spiritual justifications to a hierarchy and status quo that requires a pariah, an underclass: an "other." It makes eight years being governed by an "other" fraught with peril. A fear of retribution if the former slugs of society suddenly found themselves empowered. A fear that has never been realized.
"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." US History: The Declaration of Independence
These words from the Declaration of Independence are among the most influential ever put on paper. The countless pleas for liberty and equality that have used the Declaration as a model are proof of its lasting power. The original Declaration challenged the authority of the British crown. Just within the United States, subsequent declarations have targeted capitalism, land owners, white supremacy, and the patriarchy. Time and again, those unhappy with the status quo have invoked the Declaration. Tyranny has meant different things to different people since 1776, but the search for liberty, however defined, goes on.
There is history for every current event; every modern crisis. There is a scaffolding we've built a facade over, and whitewashed. We've made ourselves Winthrop's mythological "city upon a hill," because we admire the poetry of the statement, but fail to live up to the ideals. Painting over a dung heap only makes it a less ugly, less acrid dung heap. It would be better to plow the feces beneath a compost pile, and let the stench fertilize something anew, a better republic without its current revealed blemishes, lies, and scars. We will never heal or have true equality, invoking Dr. Fletcher, until we do two things respecting our history demands: repentance and reparations. Any other empty apologies would be symbolic cowardice to a real, brutally savage system.
Dr. King said: "The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence." Paraphrased, we could evolve or devolve as a nation; we could be boldly courageous, or paralyzingly afraid. We can all march forward to a more hopeful future, or crawl backwards to a hierarchical, segregated and bigoted past.
What if...we had never had slavery?
What if...we actually lived up to our loftier ideals?
What if...we treated our fellow women and men as equals?
Illustration shows the nanoresonator coating, consisting of thousands of tiny glass beads, deposited on solar cells. The coating enhances both the absorption of sunlight and the amount of current produced by the solar cells.Credit: K. Dill, D. Ha, G. Holland/NIST
Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, Green Tech, Nanotechnology, NIST, Solar Power
Trapping light with an optical version of a whispering gallery, researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a nanoscale coating for solar cells that enables them to absorb about 20 percent more sunlight than uncoated devices. The coating, applied with a technique that could be incorporated into manufacturing, opens a new path for developing low-cost, high-efficiency solar cells with abundant, renewable and environmentally friendly materials.
The coating consists of thousands of tiny glass beads, only about one-hundredth the width of a human hair. When sunlight hits the coating, the light waves are steered around the nanoscale bead, similar to the way sound waves travel around a curved wall such as the dome in St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. At such curved structures, known as acoustic whispering galleries, a person standing near one part of the wall easily hears a faint sound originating at any other part of the wall.
Whispering galleries for light were developed about a decade ago, but researchers have only recently explored their use in solar-cell coatings. In the experimental set up devised by a team including Dongheon Ha of NIST and the University of Maryland’s NanoCenter, the light captured by the nanoresonator coating eventually leaks out and is absorbed by an underlying solar cell made of gallium arsenide.
Whether you base your information on my real name or my Bill McSciFi nom-de-plum, I've been a busy little writer this year. I've got two releases out on Nerdanatix, two more in development, and another release, for a different company, running through the inking phase. Legends Parallel - the series for those of you who think quantum physics isn't violent or sexy enough - continues to earn rave reviews, Svarožič - the story of a woman trapped inside a man and a god trapped inside a human - debuted on Nerdanatix' top 5 most requested releases and continues to impress. You can click her name to read the 8 page character introduction for free.
Pestilent - the dystopian futurescape wherein humans harvest the essence of dead aliens to increase their life spans - and Bob: Sins of the Son - the son of Death wants to be a superhero, what could possibly go wrong?- are both in the hands of artists.
Hybrid Zero: Jungle Grrl - the story of the galaxy's oddest amusement park built on a simulacrum of Earth - is an extension of the Hybrid Zero universe created by Cyril Brown. Cyril's, mostly NSFW, work has been featured in numerous publications and he's now set to pop on an international scale.
Plus, of course there's more, my trilogy, The Brittle Riders, has been released as three individual print releases and a complete trilogy digitally. Think of it this way, if David Brin came off a three day tequila bender and dropped acid, he would have written The Brittle Riders. Essentially, after the death of every man, woman, and child on the planet things get a little weird. Apocalypses are funny that way.
I now return you to your regularly scheduled internet.
A cutaway rendering of the ADMX detector. Image: ADMX collaboration
Topics: Dark Matter, Particle Physics, Theoretical Physics, Quantum Mechanics
Forty years ago, scientists theorized a new kind of low-mass particle that could solve one of the enduring mysteries of nature: what dark matter is made of. Now a new chapter in the search for that particle has begun.
This week, the Axion Dark Matter Experiment (ADMX) unveiled a new result, published in Physical Review Letters, that places it in a category of one: It is the world’s first and only experiment to have achieved the necessary sensitivity to “hear” the telltale signs of dark matter axions. This technological breakthrough is the result of more than 30 years of research and development, with the latest piece of the puzzle coming in the form of a quantum-enabled device that allows ADMX to listen for axions more closely than any experiment ever built.
ADMX is managed by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and located at the University of Washington. This new result, the first from the second-generation run of ADMX, sets limits on a small range of frequencies where axions may be hiding and sets the stage for a wider search in the coming years.
“This result signals the start of the true hunt for axions,” said Fermilab scientist Andrew Sonnenschein, the operations manager for ADMX. “If dark matter axions exist within the frequency band we will be probing for the next few years, then it’s only a matter of time before we find them.”
Posted by Frank Yeiger on April 18, 2018 at 7:30am
Greetings BSFS,
Just stopped by to give you guys an update on my graphic novel project, and also thank you for all the support. Even if it was a dollar, every bit counted. We reached our original goal and actually hit the mark for one of our stretch goals! I had a great time on the podcast, you guys are wild! lol.
This is a really exciting time for me. Literally, a dream coming true.
If you'd like to check out the project. Click the link below.
Afrofuturism is on the Radar once again, and this time we explore its relationship to Cyberpunk, a related Science Fiction genre.
Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk is a sub-genre of science fiction that features advanced science and technology in an urban, dystopian future. On one side you have powerful mega-corporations and private security forces, and on the other you have the dark and gritty underworld of illegal trade, gangs, drugs, and vice.
It emerged in the 80s and is considered to have been crystallised following the popularity of William Gibson’s Sci-Fi redefining Novel, ‘Neuromancer’, the precursor and inspiration for the ‘Matrix’ Trilogy.
Briefly, its about the Central Character’s outlaw Hacker experiences in a ‘Collective Virtual Reality Hallucination’ called the Matrix which is accessed by plugging the Brain into Cyberspace…The story is set in a Dystopian High Technology Earth Civilization controlled by big Corporations.
What also makes ‘Neuromancer’ unique is that at the time it was written the Internet was a far cry from where it is now, but that didnt stop Gibson from coining the term ‘Cyberspace’ even though he didnt own a Computer at the time he wrote his groundbreaking Novel which subsequently won numerous awards and has since acquired Cult status.
Neuromancer: Visionary…
Afrofuturism
Afrofuturism is the re-imagining of a future filled with arts, science and technology seen through a black lens. The term was conceived a quarter-century ago by white author Mark Dery in his essay “Black to the Future,” which looks at speculative fiction within the African diaspora. The essay rests on a series of interviews with Black content creators.
Dery laid out the questions driving the philosophy of Afrofuturism:
Can a community whose past has been deliberately rubbed out, and whose energies have subsequently been consumed by the search for legible traces of its history, imagine possible futures? Furthermore, isn’t the unreal estate of the future already owned by the technocrats, futurologists, streamliners, and set designers ― white to a man ― who have engineered our collective fantasies?
As stated in our last Afrofuturism entry, what makes Afrofuturism significantly different from standard science fiction is that it’s steeped in ancient African traditions and Black identity.
However, a narrative that simply features a Black character in a futuristic world is not enough. To be Afrofuturism, it must be rooted in and unapologetically celebrate the uniqueness and innovation of Black culture.
However, an Afrofuturist narrative does not have to occur within a fictional Dystopian setting…This is perhaps because Afrofuturism is aspirational in character as a means for Black Creators to exit the limiting real world Dystopia they experience everyday. From this perspective, Afrofuturism can be seen as an exercise in constructing Black Utopia.
Nevertheless, the aspirational quality of Afrofuturism does not in itself limit the use of fictional Dystopian settings in Afrofuturist narratives where this is appropriate for the story being told.
Cyberpunk Dystopia
In the case of Cyberpunk however, Fictional Dystopia appears to be an intrinsic element, and it is in this respect I would say Cyberpunk differs from Afrofuturism which is not necessarily limited to portraying Dystopia except where it fits the story.
For more on the evolution of Cyberpunk, check out the classic 90s BBC Documentary below made at a time the Cyberpunk wave was gathering momentum on the back of Gibson’s ‘Neuromancer’…Lots of great Gibson interview footage.
Cyberpunk Documentary
You can also check out our Pinterest Page’s ‘Muthaland Funk’ Board celebrating Africa and Afrofuturism….One!
Afrofuturism is a cultural aesthetic, philosophy of science, and philosophy of history that explores the developing intersection of African culture with technology. It combines elements of science fiction, historical fiction, fantasy, Afrocentrism and magic realism with non-Western cosmologies in order to critique the present-day dilemmas of black people and to interrogate and re-examine historical events.
The term was coined by early Technoculture Writer Mark Dery in his 1993 essay “Black to the Future”.
Seminal Afrofuturistic works include the novels of Samuel R. Delany and Octavia Butler; the canvases of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Angelbert Metoyer, and the photography of Renée Cox; the explicitly extraterrestrial mythoi of Parliament-Funkadelic, the Jonzun Crew, Warp 9, Deltron 3030, and Sun Ra; and the Marvel Comics superhero Black Panther.
AFROFUTURISM & BLAXPLOITATION
Afrofuturism can be distinguished from Blaxploitation, an ethnic subgenre of exploitation films emerging in the United States during the early 1970s. The films, portrayed famous but stereotypical Black characters like ‘Shaft’.
Although Blaxploitation films were originally made specifically for an urban black audience, the genre’s audience appeal soon broadened across racial and ethnic lines once Hollywood realized the potential profit of expanding the audiences of Blaxpoitation films across those racial lines.
Blaxploitation Icon: Shaft
The difference between Afrofuturism and Blaxploitation lies in the ability of Afrofuturist Protagonists to imagine a reality beyond their current experience, whereas characters like ‘Shaft’ almost ‘revel’ in the ghetto experience without feeling the need to question how they got there, and whether perhaps the ghetto is not their natural home and should think of leaving.
Such ‘fundamental’ questions are cast aside for purely visceral pleasures in Films like ‘Shaft’. Afrofuturists however, directly confront the Social structure by questioning the ‘appropriate’ place for Black people firstly in Art itself, and by necessary extension Society…It is the rejection of a preconceived notion of the ‘role’ a Black person is expected to play in Art, and ultimately Society itself.
Basquiat & Other Afrofuturist Artists
Jean-Michel Basquiat December 22, 1960 – August 12, 1988) was an American artist who during the late 1970s combined the hip hop, punk, street art movements with classical art.
You may remember the ‘Hip Hop Faculty’ entry we did on Graffiti and Basquiat last year. Since then, Basquiat’s ‘Untitled’ 1982 painting, depicting a skull, set a new record high for any U.S. artist at auction, selling for $110,500,000.
Famous Basquiat Works
The mantle has been carried by quite a few Artists from the Eclectic Sun Ra and Grace Jones, with Janelle Monae representing the movement in Pop Culture today. The success of Black Panther has further cemented the appeal of the Afrofuturist aesthetic.
Janelle Monae
Grace Jones: Slave To The Rhythm Full Album
Sun Ra
Conclusion
Afrofuturism represents a re-imagining of the Self beyond the limitations imposed by Society in both Art and ‘real’ life. In expressing themselves in ‘unexpected’ ways, Afrofuturists challenge the normalization of Black marginalisation within Society itself.
Check out more on Afrofuturism and our tribute to the Afrofuturist Movement in our Pinterest Board ‘Muthaland Funk’ below.
A documentary of the life and times of Basquiat can be viewed via our YouTube Channel’s ‘Music, Sports & Culture’ Playlist.
Simplifying the complex: some of the mathematical constructions at G4G13; Bjarne Jesperson’s “Knotted Cube” is second from right. (Courtesy: Robert P Crease)
When Roxana started to juggle balls with her feet it was proof, if any were needed, that G4G is the most disciplinarily diverse conference around.
G4G, or “Gathering for Gardner”, is a biennial event in honor of the recreational mathematician Martin Gardner (1914–2010). As a columnist for Scientific American, Gardner inspired generations of physicists, mathematicians, philosophers, puzzle-makers, logicians, magicians and others, including me. The 13th gathering this past weekend was called G4G13.
The conference began last Wednesday in the usual fashion: early-bird registrants flocked to the bar at the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Atlanta to show their favourite mathematics, physics, logic and magic tricks. These are called “bar bets”, for their only practical purpose is to give you cool ways to try to win money off sceptical strangers. I saw some classics on Wednesday, such as the challenge to guess whether a red wine glass is taller than its circumference – as a stranger is likely to think – or shorter, as it almost always is. The events of the next four days shared the same spirit, combining learning about the world with a spirit of playfulness – linked wherever possible to the number 13.
Gardner’s special skill was to get people to enjoy maths by acquainting them with the pleasure of solving problems in areas that ranged from physics to card playing and magic. About 120 talks were given – almost all a mere six minutes long, and each delivered to the entire gathering. We learned about such things as mathematical knitting, hyperbolic tiling patterns, the physics of dice and tops, fine points of logic, and pseudoscience. One celebrity participant was the 2014 Fields medallist Manjul Bhargava. Another was Erno Rubik, the Hungarian inventor of the eponymous cube that in the 1980s became the bestselling toy of all time.
Greek: ὅπερ ἔδει δεῖξαι, "what was to be demonstrated," QED.
The March for Science in April 2017 was a unique demonstration of concern about the role of science and engineering in society and government. More than a million people in cities and towns around the world gathered in streets, made placards and banners, and heard speakers extoling the relevance and beauty of science—and also warning of diminished influence of science in policymaking. Some have dismissed the marchers as just another interest group advocating for more government funding for their work.
But the March, as I saw it and took part in it, represented something more: a significant change in how scientists see themselves and their work. This change had been slowly developing over recent decades and is now reaching a crescendo. Plans for another March for Science tomorrow indicate that the change among scientists is real, and that last year’s march was not simply a flash in the pan.
Scientists and friends of science are excited about recent progress in almost every scientific discipline. Whether it be observations of neutron star collisions, new findings on intergenerational epigenetic changes, macroscopic quantum entanglements, or human behavior, unprecedented scientific advances abound that will improve our future. Science marchers point to science as central to improving the human condition. At the same time, they are concerned about weakening public understanding and support of scientific research and the widespread neglect of scientific evidence. These concerns brought marchers to the streets in 2017 as much as pride in scientific accomplishments.
I participated in the March for Science in Poughkeepsie, NY last year. Alas, this year's conflicts tutoring SAT math tomorrow, an obligation I've taken on locally in Greensboro. I will miss this year, but be there "in spirit." I should be able to participate in Earth Day next Sunday.
“The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.” ~Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
Stand with us on Earth Day, April 22, when we march in concert with thousands of people in Washington, DC, and hundreds of cities around the world to show we value science.
Science is first of all a method. It begins with the simplest yet most profound act we humans can make: asking a question. It requires the best of our intellect to follow the lead those questions lay out on the map. It requires our courage when that path reveals truths we would prefer not to face. It requires our minds to stretch beyond their native intuitions; to imagine a petite three-dimensional sphere whirling through space when the surface beneath our feet is flat and big enough to hold billions of our kind; to conceive of scales outside the reckoning of our senses, from the tininess of our sun in a gargantuan universe to the immensities of space inside an atom too small too see without expensive, highly developed technology.
Science expands our senses, our curiosity. We live every day in a world that yesterday was impossible magic.
Yet, when lies become mainstream public currency, when borders close to the free sharing of research, when people are told to stop asking questions or to avert their eyes from evidence, the pursuit of science itself becomes an endangered species.
Yes, scientists themselves are human. They are people of their day and culture. Any endeavor that requires humans to carry it out will produce failures and mistakes, even horrific ones. Yet the solution is not to slam the door, shut down controversy, or retreat from the challenge. What better remedy than the methods of science: to address the errors by asking better questions, seeking more knowledge, engaging more minds in order to bring a broader variety of backgrounds and perspectives into the quest?
Topics: Education, Diversity in Science, STEM, Women in Science
In their order of appearance:
Project #21, Burglar alarm (3D snap kit)
Project #11, Flying Saucer
Project #53, Flashing Laser Light with Sound
Project #548, Rechargeable Battery (solar panel)
The Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering will participate in the USA Science and Engineering Festival as part of the North Carolina Science Festival. Our portion is called "Gateway to Science." I am a humble one of many great exhibits. I'll start 9:00 am at the Nano Energy table (my group), then take the evening shift from 1:00 - 5:00 pm at the electronic snap kits table I spent until 9:30 last night setting up, as well as I saw many other fellow students setting up their displays in the wee hours. Like anything, it's something you're at first "voluntold" to do, but take pride in your particular part coming off without a hitch. It's going to be a long, eventful day. I'll try to get some other photos posted when I get a break.
Warning signs: the greater blue-ringed octopus changes its appearance when threatened using techniques that have inspired an adaptive infrared reflector. (CC BY-SA 2.5/Jens Petersen)
A simple device with tuneable infrared reflectivity has been made by mimicking the adaptive properties of the skin of octopuses and related animals. Chengyi Xuat, Alon Gorodetsky and George Stiubianu of the University of California, Irvine created the device using a dielectric elastomer and say that it overcomes many of the limitations of previous adaptive infrared-reflecting systems.
Reflecting infrared radiation is important for many technologies, ranging from building insulation to spacecraft components. But most of the materials used to reflect radiation in the infrared region are static: they are unable to respond and adapt to changes in the environment. Some adaptable infrared-reflecting systems have been developed, but they tend to be complex and difficult to control, while also lacking spectral tunability and requiring high operating temperatures.
Inspired by the skin of cephalopods – squid, octopuses, and cuttlefish – Gorodetsky and colleagues have now developed an adaptable infrared-reflecting system that they say is easy to control, can respond rapidly and be used repeatedly. The system also has a tuneable spectral range and works at low temperatures.
Many cephalopods can rapidly change the colour and patterning of their skin. This is done for both camouflage and signalling, and is enabled by pigment cells with adjustable spectral properties that can response within hundreds of milliseconds. These yellow, red, and brown cells, known as adaptive chromatophores, are packed with pigment granules and can be expanded and contracted by radial muscles. As their size and shape changes so do the wavelengths of light that they absorb and reflect.
Topics: Economy, Existentialism, Space Travel, Politics
Well-heeled space tourists will have a new orbital destination four years from now, if one company's plans come to fruition.
That startup, called Orion Span, aims to loft its "Aurora Station" in late 2021 and begin accommodating guests in 2022.
"Affordable" is a relative term: A 12-day stay aboard Aurora Station will start at $9.5 million. Still, that's quite a bit less than orbital tourists have paid in the past. From 2001 through 2009, seven private citizens took a total of eight trips to the International Space Station (ISS), paying an estimated $20 million to $40 million each time. (These private missions were brokered by the Virginia-based company Space Adventures and employed Russian Soyuz spacecraft and rockets.)
"There's been innovation around the architecture to make it more modular and more simple to use and have more automation, so we don't have to have EVAs [extravehicular activities] or spacewalks," Bunger said of Aurora Station.
*****
Elysium or the Elysian Fields (Ancient Greek: Ἠλύσιον πεδίον, Ēlýsion pedíon) is a conception of the afterlife that developed over time and was maintained by some Greek religious and philosophical sects and cults. Initially separate from the realm of Hades, admission was reserved for mortals related to the gods and other heroes. Later, it expanded to include those chosen by the gods, the righteous, and the heroic, where they would remain after death, to live a blessed and happy life, and indulging in whatever employment they had enjoyed in life. Source: Wikipedia
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In the year 2154, the very wealthy live on a man-made space station while the rest of the population resides on a ruined Earth. A man takes on a mission that could bring equality to the polarized worlds. Matt Damon, Jodie Foster, Sharlto Copley, IMDB
"All science and engineering has a moral and philosophical component. It is imperative that as future scientists you pursue your research ethically, thinking also of your impact on society going forward." Quoted from the post "Freedom and Responsibility," October 30, 2017.
for sometime now I’ve wanted to complete this Black and white in color.
steven just began the color works. It was submitted as part of an Blackage Anthology Book
that fell through yeatrs ago. It now posted as an extra on line story on Stranger web page
at Ghettostone Publications site. Recently I have attempted to contact director and movie creator Mr. Fuqua
of Training Day fame to ask if they would please take a look. Stranger storyline has been featured in an independence film years ago, but I think the film success of Black Panther has inspired movie goers so why not try again.
Stranger is ageless and bright to America in the hula of a slave ship ( check Universe book O) from ghettostone, but
he is our Universes ultimate evil doer. Always hidden in the shadows The Stranger would be the last thing you see before your demise.
I enjoy writing for villians they are much easier to write that heroes because most people dont
beliveve in heroes any more and ask why would a super powered hero help anyone as opposed to
gettin paid or becoming famous. Villians from a Black perspective I thing should reflect history
and power so The Stranger brought to America in a slaveship morphs into a Werewolf and manipulates
youth into his evil service. He appears in all my stories so far except for RAMZEES.
Here a page from a quick down and dirty Blackage Anthology Book that never was, enjoy
The target chamber used to achieve laser fusion is shown in the foreground and the laser appears in the background. (Courtesy: Advanced Beam Laboratory/Colorado State University)
Topics: Green Tech, Nanotechnology, Nuclear Fusion
Smaller, cheaper neutron sources and new opportunities for simulating the extreme conditions at the center of stars are among the possible benefits of new research carried out by physicists in the US and Germany. The group directed rapid-fire pulses of intense blue light from a compact laser at arrays of nanostructures to generate a dense plasma yielding large numbers of neutrons created by nuclear fusion.
Scientists have built ever more energetic lasers in the quest to demonstrate nuclear fusion’s feasibility as an energy source. The National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California, for example, generates pulses with a whopping 1.8 MJ of energy, in order to compress tiny pellets of deuterium and tritium to the point where the nuclei fuse and emit copious numbers of neutrons. The aim is to achieve ignition, when the alpha particle released by the fusing nuclei provides the heat for a self-sustaining reaction – with the energy of the emitted neutrons ultimately being tapped to produce electricity. However, NIF is enormous – occupying the area of three football pitches – and, like other high-energy lasers, can only fire a handful of times a day.
Some researchers are instead working on less energetic but more rapid-fire lasers. These will never get anywhere close to ignition, but can still achieve exceptionally high intensities – thanks to the extreme brevity and hence power of their pulses. Such lasers can create plasmas with very high energy densities ideal for studying extreme astrophysical environments, for example. These devices could also potentially be used as compact sources of neutrons, which probe atomic structure in ways not possible with X-rays. Neutrons are usually produced at large accelerators or reactors and a compact source would be welcomed by scientists.
Allen Dulles, the fifth and longest-serving Director of Central Intelligence, took a personal interest in the construction of the Original Headquarters Building (OHB). He was the son of a Presbyterian minister and insisted that a Biblical quotation be fixed in stone in the OHB Lobby. The verse – "And Ye Shall Know the Truth and the Truth Shall Make You Free" – John 8:32 – now stands as the Agency motto. At the dedication ceremony for OHB, Dulles included this quotation in his speech. Source: CIA.gov
Whatever your opinions of them, that is the motto of our preeminent spy agency, one of the 17 intelligence agencies along with what's left of our allies that has confirmed Russia interfered in the 2016 elections that our current president* exhaustively and nauseatingly labeled "fake news."
On August 19, 2016, I wrote a blog post titled: "These Truths..." It talked about self-evident, rational truths, such as evolution, the age of the universe; governance. Those were halcyon days, when we had a president and not a president*/embarrassment. When we (at least, as member of the non-bigoted, saner part of the electorate), were convinced our president had fidelity to his marriage, his country and its Constitution.
Excerpt from "These Truths":
This year's election is unique as one political party has nominated such a flimflam artist as its candidate, that has made no bones about his hostility to science: "climate change is a plot by the Chinese against American manufacturing." As the New York Daily News opined on his loose 2nd amendment comments: "this isn't funny anymore."
This is an assault on fact versus fantasy, science versus psychobabble; sanity versus insanity. Flimflam's persona non grata interviewed on Alex Jones - the KING of conspiracy provocateurs - as a casual search of YouTube on his rant compilations attests, many right wing pundits have, as he's complained - mainstreamed his views in the public sphere without crediting him, only nourishing a faux ecosystem around Mr. Flimflam. FF sometimes quotes him verbatim, which Jones says admirably is "surreal."
This president*/flimflam artist denies knowing of $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels. Unlikely. His lawyer apparently gives it from his own home equity, supposedly not expecting to get repaid. The problem is, if the president* had paid him back, it wouldn't be an in-kind donation during an election, an FEC violation. And why ISN'T a "billionaire" writing a check for his own hush money payments? There is likely a prenuptial agreement he'd be in violation of if this proves out true, and that will cost flimflam what little money Putin lets him dip his toes in.
What it does mean: 1. A lawyer MUST inform his client of any contractual agreement s/he enters into on behalf of her/him. 2. By denying the NDA (non-disclosure agreement) with an adult film star, he may have essentially nullified it. He also has one with a Playboy centerfold with which he supposedly had a long-term affair. Stormy's lawyer salivates at the prospect of questioning the president* and his lawyer under deposition. I relish when, as he did from his first spouse where he invoked his Fifth Amendment right to not self-incriminate ninety-seven times, he does so again - hilariously and maddeningly under oath.
What exactly is "truth" in this president*'s era? He has the all-time Olympic record for fabrications, fibbing; lying and obfuscations. His evangelical base seems unmoved by his past, his present dissembling and twitter ranting. They had conniption fits when President Clinton had a consensual relationship with an ADULT (albeit young) White House intern. A blue dress with spermatozoa was salacious; "grab 'em by the p----" on Access Hollywood deserving of a Mulligan. The rank hypocrisy of what amounts to an authoritarian political movement masking itself as a religious order self-imposed to tell everyone ELSE how to live is breathtaking. The word "EVILGELICALS" should become a thing in our modern lexicon; they should not recover, and the congregations in their immediate futures should be comprised of crickets.
If indeed, "the truth shall make you free"...an avalanche of lies from a president* backed by a faux religious order - evilgelicals - is a prelude to slavery.
