Featured Posts (3514)

Sort by

Dr. Gregorio Zara ...



Gregorio Zara — Filipino physicist and aeronautical engineer



Creator of the first videophone (a forerunner of such video telecommunication applications as Skype, Webcam and videoconferencing) and discoverer of the physical law known as the “Zara Effect.”



Back in the 1950′s, the videophone — a telephone device that allows you to see the individual you are speaking with in real (or near-real) time — was a mere dream of science fiction. But physicist and aeronautical engineer Gregorio Zara, one of the Philippines’ most celebrated inventors, began to change all that in 1955 when he introduced the first videophone. Gregorio, the creator of other early models of futuristic technology ( including a solar battery, a talking robot, and an airplane engine powered by biofuel), was born in 1902 in Lipa City, Batangas, a province in the Philippines. After graduating as valedictorian of his high school class, he enrolled at the University of the Philippines, and later went on the U.S. and France to complete his training in engineering and physics. Already he was formulating innovative ideas of the future that would hallmark his career.



Why He’s Important: Gregorio is perhaps best known as the inventor of the videophone, which he patented in 1955 as a “photo phone signal separator network.” Five years after he invented the instrument, AT&T began work on commercial application of a video phone (or “picturephone”). The company introduced the video phone to the public in 1964 at the New York World’s Fair, but the device did not become a viable marketable item until about 30 years later when it was integrated with the internet as the digital revolution took off. Video phones are especially popular today with the hearing impaired, in addition to being rooted in such familiar technologies as cell phones, telemedicine, Skype, distant learning and videoconferencing.



Other Achievements: In 1930, Gregorio discovered the physical law of electrical kinetic resistance (called the Zara Effect). “Kinetic electrical resistance is the resistance to the passage of electric current when contacts are in motion. Permanent electrical resistance manifests itself when contacts are at rest,” according to the online library Scribd.com in describing the Zara Effect.



Education: Gregorio earned his Bachelor’s of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1926 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his Master’s of Science in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Michigan (graduating summa cum laude), and his Ph.D. in Physics from the Sorbonne University in Paris (again, graduating summa cum laude, or “Tres Honorable” — the first Filipino given that honor from the university).



USA Science and Engineering Festival: Gregorio Zara, PhD

Read more…

In the second installment of the 'Dark God's Gift: A Great Uncle's Legacy; Dr. Sybil Perth's unexpected car trouble in the middle of the Nevada Desert has met with good fortune. Her vehicle is being looked after and a kindly couple has taken her in for the night, but the solemn warning by one of her hosts to leave has fallen on deaf ears. The growing mystery surrounding the tiny community is far too intriguing for Dr. Perth to ignore....

Read more…

The Moon's Rectangle...

The full Moon as seen from the Earth, with the Procellarum border structure superimposed in red

Scientists have identified a huge rectangular feature on the Moon that is buried just below the surface.

The 2,500km-wide structure is believed to be the remains of old rift valleys that later became filled with lava.

Centered on the Moon's Procellarum region, the feature is really only evident in gravity maps acquired by Nasa's Grail mission in 2012.

But knowing now of its existence, it is possible to trace the giant rectangle's subtle outline even in ordinary photos.

Mare Frigoris, for example, a long-recognized dark stripe on the lunar surface, is evidently an edge to the ancient rift system.

"It's really amazing how big this feature is," says Prof Jeffery Andrews-Hanna.

"It covers about 17% of the surface of the Moon. And if you think about that in terms relative to the size of the Earth, it covers an area equivalent to North America, Europe and Asia combined," the Colorado School of Mines scientist told BBC News.

BBC News: Moon's hidden valley system revealed, Jonathan Amos

Read more…

Dr. Benjamin Cabrera...

Source: Famous Scientists link below

Filipino scientist Benjamin Cabrera is one person that really deserves a pat on the back because not only is he a physician but he is also known for his works on public health and medical parasitology. He is a scientist that never seems to run out of ideas and uses his brain to bring advances solutions to problems. He has had a lot of achievements and while most of the have been significant, there are some works of his that just really stand out and are still significant and in use up until today. He boasts more than a hundred scientific publications to his name. His specialties were focused on public health and parasitology and this is where he did a lot of work and introduced a lot of breakthroughs in. It is important to note that he made his discoveries and breakthroughs during a time when technology wasn't yet too advanced and yet he managed and excelled and made some of the most ground-breaking breakthroughs and innovations in his chosen field and specialty.



Dr. Cabrera was quite prolific and published more than a hundred studies that on medical parasitology and public health. Not only did he write and publish his findings but he also made some very important innovations that changed the way diseases from mosquitoes were treated. He also made headway into developing treatments for parasite-infested agricultural soil. Seeing as his native country relied heavily in agriculture, his findings and innovations brought a lot of benefits to his homeland and alleviate a lot of their problems with land and parasites.



11 years after he graduated with his Master’s Degree, he and a certain Lee M. Howard conducted the very first study that focused on simian malaria. The study was conducted in the Philippines where they found that 8.6% of the animals they tested had malaria. The study was admittedly somewhat limited but it did show significant findings and suggested that the cases of simian malaria weren’t really all that significant and didn’t pose a real threat to the Filipino population.



His works were all significant but one stood out above the rest and it was about the study he conducted on filariasis which is an infectious and parasitic tropical disease that is brought about by infestations of thread-like nematode worms that belong to the Filariodea family. Dr, Cabrera’s work on this tropical disease is what garnered him the Philippine Legion of Honor which was a Presidential Award back in the year 1996.



Famous Scientists: Benjamin Cabrera, PhD

Read more…

Print Books Outsold Ebooks the First Half of 2014

Fans of print books, who have long lived in fear that their neighborhood bookstore will be rendered obsolete by the ubiquity of ebooks in a matter of years, can take comfort in new numbers from Nielsen Books & Consumer showing that ebooks were outsold by both hardcovers and paperbacks in the first half of 2014.

According to Nielsen’s survey, ebooks constituted only 23 percent of unit sales for the first six months of the year, while hardcovers made up 25 percent and paperback 42 percent of sales. In other words, not only did overall print book sales, at 67 percent of the market, outpace ebook sales, both hardcovers and paperbacks individually outsold ebooks.

Given the explosive growth of ebook sales since the launch of the Kindle in 2007, with increases in the triple digits for several years, many expected the paper book industry to remain in retreat for the foreseeable future. Recently, however, ebook gains seem to have stabilized with hardcover and paperback books still comfortably dominant. In 2013, sales growth for ebooks slowed to single digits, and the new numbers from Nielsen suggest the leveling off was no anomaly.

At Electric Literature, Lincoln Michel theorizes that this anticipates a future in which paper books and ebooks will coexist peacefully. This hope was also expressed to Publishers Weekly last year by industry insiders, including Perseus Books Group CEO David Steinberger, who commented that: "A healthy, diverse marketplace with multiple format, price point, and channel choices for the consumer is generally a positive for readers, authors, and publishers overall.”

Author Stephen King told HuffPost Live recently that he also believes print books have a long and bright future ahead of them, saying, "I think books are going to be there for a long, long time to come." King compares books' prospects positively with those of CDs and vinyl."[A]udio recordings of music have only been around for, I'm going to say, 120 years at the most," he said. "Books have been around for three, four centuries ... There's a deeply implanted desire and understanding and wanting of books that isn't there with music."

This continuing variety in format doesn’t only appeal to choice-conscious consumers. It may be a boon for those worried about the possible downsides of ereading, given growing, though still preliminary, evidence that print books may allow for deeper reading and stronger understanding and memory than digital books. Advocates of more engaged reading have often warned that the increasing omnipresence of ereading might erode our capacity to read deeply.

If the new trends continue, such warnings of the death of print books, and their potential benefits, may prove to have been greatly exaggerated.

Read more…

Hydrogen and Coconuts...

Source: Technology Review link immediately follows

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Hydrogen is a potential renewable fuel because it can easily be generated from water using electrolysis. It also burns cleanly to produce water vapour. The hope is that it could also be distributed using the same global network of liquid fuel transport that moves petrol around the planet.

But there numerous problems with this dream of a hydrogen-based economy. One of them is that hydrogen is difficult to store efficiently. Hydrogen gas has a poor energy density by volume compared to petrol. In fact, there is at least 60 percent more hydrogen in a litre of gasoline then there is in a litre of pure liquid hydrogen. In other words, hydrogen will always require bigger tanks.



So finding ways to store more of it is a huge challenge. One option is to store it as a liquid but hydrogen boils temperatures above -250 degrees centigrade and so requires bulky insulation to keep it in this state.



Another idea is to compress it. But this raises issues of safety should a hydrogen-fuelled car be involved in a collision.



That is why much of the material science research in this area has focused on chemical storage: finding materials that adsorb hydrogen efficiently and then release it again when it is required.




Now Viney Dixit and buddies at the Hydrogen Energy Center of Banaras Hindu University in India say they have discovered that carbonised coconut flesh is particularly good at this task. Today, they show that it outperforms a number of other hydrogen storage materials, particularly in its ability to work over many charging cycles.

Physics arXiv:
Hydrogen Storage In Carbon Derived From Solid Endosperm Of Coconut
Viney Dixit, Ashish Bhatnagar, R. R. Shahi, T. P. Yadav, O. N. Srivastava

Read more…

Benjamin Almedah...

"Buy N Earn." More about the company logo, mission, vision and core beliefs here.

Almedah Food Machineries Corporation has its humble beginnings in 1954 when Mr. Benjamin G. Almeda, Sr., founded the Almeda Cottage Industry which manufactured then his basic food processing inventions like Rice Grinder, Meat Grinder and Coconut Grater. Aside from Mr. Almeda’s inherent talent for original designs and inventions, he has the social driving vision of putting up a business which puts other people in business. For all of these he earned the title of Father of the Filipino Inventors and other prestigious awards.



Almeda Cottage Industry products could be found in the entire stretch of our nation from north to south. In the public markets, restaurants, school canteens, food stalls and even in households further attesting to its social motto of “OUR BUSINESS PUTS PEOPLE IN BUSINESS”. This time, most visible are the Ice Crushers, Grinders, Shredders, Hamburger Grills, Hotdog Rollers, Waffle Cookers and Bibingka Ovens.\r\n\r\nWith the boom of Food Industry in the latter part of 80’s and the subsequent change in the eating habits of the Filipinos, it became imperative that new strategies and more efficient approach to processing and preparation of food derivatives be employed. This saw the influx of foreign based food companies bringing in the latest and technologically advance food machineries. As a natural consequence, the local entrepreneurs in food business sourced their equipments from these foreign companies notwithstanding the high cost of the equipments, the duties and taxes of importation and the problem of post sales service and availability of parts. This natural phenomenon happened not because of prejudice for equipments that are locally made but because there is just no manufacturing company in the Philippines that is technologically capable of the more demanding needs of these boom in Food Industry.



As a consequence, Carlos, the youngest son of Mr. Almeda, came in the forefront of the family business to meet the demands and challenges of the modern technologies, proving once more that a Filipino can compete in the global demands of Food Industry. In October 1986, Mr. Benjamin G. Almeda who was 76 years old by then, finally relinquished full control of Almeda Cottage Industry to Carlos, who was by then a young physician by profession. He was given preference over his older brothers who were all engineers by profession because he showed sincere concern for the family business and his natural and inborn technological talents and marketing savvy inspite of the demands of his profession as a physician. With his assumption, possessing an uncanny ability for designing equipment that would put professional engineers to shame and coupled with a passion for excellence and a natural feel for market forces, he embued in the company a spirit of dynamism and unflinching competitiveness. In order to attain accuracy and precision, he bought computerized machineries for design and manufacturing, the same kind that were used by his foreign based competitors. These bold and ambitious steps and undertakings propelled the company back on the road to regaining the lead in the manufacture of food processing equipments which ALMEDAH FOOD MACHINERIES CORP. is today. Without discarding any of its original products and equipments, he added not only new line of specialty equipments but also complete manufacturing system for food industry. What used to be a monopoly of foreign based companies found an unwavering local competition.



Almedah Food Machineries: Benjamin Almedah, inventor and founder

Read more…

Federico Cantero Villamil...

Image Source

Federico Cantero Villamil (Madrid, 22 June 1874 - 1946) was a Spanish civil engineer known for the dams he constructed and planned along the river Duero and for his research on the aeronautical field, which is summarized in the Libélula española, a helicopter constructed by him.



His parents were the civil engineer Federico Cantero Seirullo and Isabel Villamil Olivares. He married Tránsito Cid, and they had two children. A few years later she died. Later, Cantero married Concepción García-Arenal Winter, a granddaughter of Concepción Arenal, and they had six children.



He became an engineer 30 September 1896, with the first mark. He did his working practice during 1897 in Zamora, and in 1900 he began to work at the "Jefatura de Obras Públicas de Zamora". In May 1900 he asked and obtained a leave in order to work in hydraulics. At that moment, the governments of Spain and Portugal were planning how to exploit the hydroelectric potential of the river Duero.



In 1899 founds the society "El porvenir de Zamora" (The Prospect of Zamora), with the aim of funding and exploiting the dam of San Roman, near Zamora. Its construction lasted until 1903. This dam took profit of a "hoz" (meander) of river Duero that was 11.2 km. long. He opened a tunnel 1.5 km. long and built up the turbines and engines at the other side. By means of this, the unevenness from the reservoir to the turbines measured 14 meters, while the height of the dam was only 5 meters.



Although Cantero's main work was that of the dams, since 1908 he was patenting other inventions in the field of aeronautics. His main interest was the problem of flight. It is in 1910 when he patented an ...idea to hold bodies in the air, and, if wanted, propulsion. Thirty-four patents followed the first one, being the last ones devoted to the helicopter he constructed: the Libélula española.



Wikipedia: Federico Cantero Villamil, inventor

Read more…

Monday, October 6th the DARK GOD'S GIFT continues with Sci-fi Author and Genesis Radio Host, William Hayashi's 'DARK GOD'S GIFT: A Great Uncle's Legacy'. Somewhere deep in the Las Vegas Desert, a lone traveler has car trouble and stops in a small community only to be drawn into a strange phenomenon affecting the lives those who live there. The traveler's decision to stay or move on will not only affect the locals, but the entire world!

Read more…

Black Speculative Fiction Month

Buy Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy!

There are many good writers, graphic artists, animators, and other creative people of color who need our support. Using their craft, they tell our stories. Art can influence the fate of our communities. Science Fiction and Fantasy can change the world. 

So, this is what we must do.

Google Black Science Fiction and Fantasy. Go to Amazon and Smashwords and other venues for ebooks. Purchase. Write a review (4 stars or 2 stars).  Tell your friends on Facebook and Twitter about what you have read. 

Get involved because October 2014 is Black Speculative Fiction Month! The dreams can become reality.

Believe. Create. Accomplish. 

Thank you.

Read more…

RM 8027...



At left, a structural model of a typical silicon nanocrystal (yellow) stabilized within an organic shell of cyclohexane (blue). At right, a high-resolution transmission electron microscope photograph of a single silicon nanoparticle.

Credit: NIST

If it's true that good things come in small packages, then the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) can now make anyone working with nanoparticles very happy. NIST recently issued Reference Material (RM) 8027, the smallest known reference material ever created for validating measurements of these man-made, ultrafine particles between 1 and 100 nanometers (billionths of a meter) in size.

RM 8027 consists of five hermetically sealed ampoules containing one milliliter of silicon nanoparticles—all certified to be close to 2 nanometers in diameter—suspended in toluene. To yield the appropriate sizes for the new RM, the nanocrystals are etched from a silicon wafer, separated using ultrasound and then stabilized within an organic shell. Particle size and chemical composition are determined by dynamic light scattering, analytical centrifugation, electron microscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS), a powerful technique that can measure elements at concentrations as low as several parts per billion.

NIST: World’s Smallest Reference Material is Big Plus for Nanotechnology
Michael E. Newman

Read more…

Fernando "Frank" Caldeiro...

Astronaut Fernando (Frank) Caldeiro poses in front of the orbiter Discovery

FERNANDO (FRANK) CALDEIRO

NASA ASTRONAUT (DECEASED)



PERSONAL DATA: Born June 12, 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, but considered New York City and Merritt Island, Florida, to be his hometowns. He died on October 3, 2009 following a 2-1/2 year battle with a brain tumor. He is survived by his wife, the former Donna Marie Emero of Huntington Beach, California, and two daughters.



EDUCATION: Graduated from W.C. Bryant High School, Long Island City, New York, in 1976; received an associate degree in applied science in Aerospace Technology from the State University of New York at Farmingdale in 1978, a bachelor of science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona in 1984, and a master of science degree in engineering management from the University of Central Florida in 1995.



ORGANIZATIONS: Experimental Aircraft Association, Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association.



AWARDS: Kennedy Space Center (KSC) Technical Leadership Certificate; Rockwell International Corp. Certificate of Commendation; Group Achievement Awards (9); KSC Center Director Round Table Award; KSC Superior Performance Awards (2); KSC Public Affairs Certificate of Appreciation for Service. University of Central Florida Distinguished Alummni, 2001 Tampa’s Museum of Science and Industry Hispanic Scientist of the Year. Appointed in 2002 by President G. W. Bush to serve in the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans under the President’s “No Child Left Behind Act”.



EXPERIENCE: From 1985-1988, Caldeiro worked as a test director during the production and flight test of the Rockwell/USAF B-1B Bomber. In that capacity he was involved in the checkout and delivery of all 100 aircraft. In 1988, he was transferred by Rockwell International to the Kennedy Space Center as a space shuttle main propulsion system specialist. In this capacity he was the Rockwell International design center representative for the ground processing and launch of the Orbiter Discovery.



NASA: Fernando "Frank" Caldeiro, astronaut

Read more…

George D. Zamka...

Astronaut Testimonials

GEORGE D. ZAMKA (COLONEL, USMC, RET.)

NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)



PERSONAL DATA: Born in 1962 in Jersey City, New Jersey. Raised in New York City; Irvington, New York; Medellin, Colombia; and Rochester Hills, Michigan. Married to the former Elisa P. Walker of Mississippi; they have two children. He enjoys weightlifting, running, bicycling, scuba diving and boating. His mother, Sofia Zamka, and brother, Conrad P. Zamka, both live in Florida. His father, Conrad Zamka, resides in Indiana.



EDUCATION: Graduated from Rochester Adams High School, Rochester Hills, Michigan, in 1980. Received a Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics from the United States Naval Academy in 1984; received a Master of Science degree in Engineering Management from the Florida Institute of Technology in 1997.



ORGANIZATIONS: Association of Space Explorers, United States Naval Academy Alumni Association, Marine Corps Association and Marine Corps Aviation Association.



SPECIAL HONORS: NASA Space Flight Medal (two), NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, Legion of Merit, Distinguished Flying Cross, Defense Meritorious Service Medal, Meritorious Service Medal, Navy Strike Air Medal (six), Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V and various other military service and campaign awards. Distinguished Graduate, United States Naval Academy. Commodore’s list and Academic Achievement Award, Training Air Wing Five. Awarded the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.



EXPERIENCE: Zamka was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps after graduating from the United States Naval Academy in May 1984. After basic flight training, he was trained as an A-6E pilot at Whidbey Island, Washington, from 1987 to 1988. He then flew with Marine All Weather Attack Squadron VMA(AW)-242 in El Toro, California. He served in administration and flight safety roles and also as squadron weapons and tactics instructor. In 1990, he trained to be an F/A-18 pilot and was assigned to Marine All Weather Fighter Attack Squadron VMFA(AW)-121, also in El Toro. He flew the F/A-18D Night Attack Hornet during overseas deployments to Japan, Korea, Singapore and Southwest Asia. Zamka flew 66 combat missions over occupied Kuwait and Iraq during Desert Storm. In 1993, he served with 1st Battalion, 5th Marines in Camp Pendleton, California, and the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit in the Western Pacific. He was selected to attend the United States Air Force Test Pilot School class 94A and graduated in December 1994. Zamka was then assigned as an F/A-18 test pilot/project officer and the F/A-18 operations officer for the Naval Strike Aircraft Test Squadron (NSATS). While assigned to NSATS, Zamka flew a wide variety of tests in the F/A-18 Hornet, including high angle of attack, loads, flutter, crew equipment and weapon system programs. Zamka returned to VMFA(AW)-121 in 1998 and was serving as the aircraft maintenance officer deployed to Iwakuni, Japan, when he was selected for the astronaut program. Colonel Zamka retired from the Marine Corps in August 2010.



He has logged more than 5,000 flight hours in more than 30 different aircraft.



NASA EXPERIENCE: Selected as a pilot by NASA in June 1998, Zamka reported for astronaut candidate training in August 1998. He has served in various technical and leadership roles in the Astronaut Office, including space rendezvous and proximity operations, landing and rollout instructor and lead for shuttle systems within the Shuttle Operations Branch. Zamka served as lead for the Shuttle Training and Procedures Division and as supervisor for the astronaut candidate class of 2004. In 2007, he completed his first spaceflight as pilot on STS-120. For his second spaceflight, Zamka commanded the crew of STS-130, which flew in February 2010. Colonel Zamka has logged more than 692 hours in space. In March 2013, Zamka retired from NASA. He is now serving as the Deputy Associate Administrator, Federal Aviation Administration, for Commercial Space Transportation.



NASA: George D. Zamka, Colonel, USMC, astronaut, retired

Read more…

60 Years Young...

From Planet X - kind of reminded me of "The Time Tunnel" (dating myself)

CERN, Europe’s particle-physics laboratory and the place famous most recently for the discovery of the Higgs boson, is celebrating its sixtieth birthday today (actually 29 September).



The name CERN originally was the French acronym for Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, or European Council for Nuclear Research, and its convention officially came into force on 29 September 1954. In the wake of a war that had torn the continent apart, a small group of scientists and policy-makers created CERN in an attempt to use fundamental research to reunite Europe.



From 12 founding members, the organization has today grown to 21 states, with scientists at the lab hailing from almost 100 countries around the globe.



While CERN hosts a celebration at its home near Geneva, Switzerland, Nature looks back at some of the lab’s most significant moments from the past six decades.



Some excerpts from the timeline:



1983: CERN’s 6.9-kilometre-long Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) discovers the particle carriers of the weak force, the W and Z bosons.



1989: CERN computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee’s drafts a paper outlining plans for an information-management system, which at the time he termed “the mesh” but which later becomes known as the World Wide Web. Berners-Lee’s boss, Mike Sendall, famously replies that the proposal was “vague, but exciting”, giving Berners-Lee the green light for development. The world’s first web page address is born the following year (this copy is from 1992).



2012: On 4 July scientists at the LHC’s ATLAS and CMS experiments announce that they have found a clear signal of the Higgs boson, and reporter Geoff Brumfiel records the moment in a live blog (and later in an article). The announcement, made by the ATLAS and CMS experiments, causes waves around the world, and in 2013 earns theoretical physicists François Englert and Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize in Physics for their prediction of the mechanism.



Nature News Blog: CERN at 60: Biggest moments at flagship physics lab, Elizabeth Gibney

Read more…

Victor Ochoa...

Images Source: Smithsonian Education

The Ochoa Plane



Ochoa's machine is made of a framework of steel spring and steel tubing which he has contrived to put together in such a manner that it can be folded by working a lever. Over the framework is stretched a canvas covering. The plane is about twenty-six feet wide and the machine measures from front to back only six feet. The rear rudder is similar to a bird's tail.



The whole arrangement is mounted upon two bicycle frames whose wheels form the groundwork of the aeroplane. Between the bicycle frames, the inventor has mounted a six-horse power motor, below which he has placed a seat for the operator. The whole machine weighs about 250 pounds.



The inventor has been working upon this aeroplane more than twenty years, and during that time has succeeded in putting together several machines that operated successfully for short distances. The first fruit of his labors was a marvelously accurate reproduction of a bird with six wings. With this he believed he had solved the problem of aerial flight. His earliest models, propelled by clockwork, flew with remarkable stability.



He also invented an adjustable wrench, electric brake, pen and pencil clip, reversible motor and windmill. He apparently also was a revolutionary with a $50,000 dead-or-alive price on his head. Quite a guy!



Smithsonian Education: Victor Ochoa Mexican inventor

Read more…

The Dark God's Gift continues in 'A Tangled Web' Pt. II. Agent Thia Wayan's cover as an Asian Mobster's wife is holding well, too well! As she goes deep into the Triad's inner-circle the Big Boss of the Dragon Triad has taken an 'interest' in the lovely agent. If she didn't have enough problems, the Boss receives a strange jeweled gift Agent Wayan believes could be far more dangerous than the gang themselves!

Read more…

Guillermo González Camarena...

Source: Antonio Toriz's blog

Guillermo González Camarena invented an early color television system. He received US patent 2296019 on September 15, 1942 for his "chromscopic adapter for television equipment". [1]



He was born on February 17, 1917 in Guadalajara, Jalisco. At two years of age, his family moved to Mexico City. Ever since he was young, he liked building electric toys, for which he established a laboratory in the basement of his house.



In 1930 he enrolled in the School of Mechanical and Electric Engineers and two years later was given license as radio operator. While he experimented in his laboratory, he worked at the radio station of the Ministry of Education. In 1934 he built his own television camera, he was 17 years old.



With the goal of giving color to television, he developed and patented a Trichromatic Sequential Fields System from primary colors, which could be adapted to the black and white system. This last patent was granted to him when he was 23 years of age. [2]



1. Inventors.com: Top List of Mexican Inventors, Mary Bellis
2. Explore and do Mexico: Guillermo González Camarena...

Read more…

Dr. Fe del Mundo...

Source: Amazing Women of History link below

Fe del Mundo (1911–2011) was a Filipino pediatrician who was the first woman to be admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1936 — over ten years before the school officially began admitting women. She was also the first woman to be named National Scientist of the Philippines in 1980, and founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines.

Born in Manila in the Philippines in 1911, Fe decided to become a doctor when her older sister died from appendicitis at the age of 11. She enrolled in the University of the Philippines in 1926. While earning her medical degree, she decided to pursue pediatrics. *

Fe del Mundo, OLD ONS OGH, (November 27, 1911 – August 6, 2011) was a Filipino pediatrician. The first woman admitted as a student of the Harvard Medical School,[1][2] she founded the first pediatric hospital in the Philippines.[3] Her pioneering work in pediatrics in the Philippines in an active medical practice that spanned 8 decades[2][4] won her international recognition, including the Ramon Magsaysay Award for Public Service in 1977. In 1980, she was conferred the rank and title of National Scientist of the Philippines while in 2010, she was conferred the Order of Lakandula.




Del Mundo was noted for her pioneering work on infectious diseases in Philippine communities. Undeterred by the lack of well-equipped laboratories in post-war Philippines, she would not hesitate to send specimens or blood samples for analysis abroad.[12] In the 1950s, she pursued studies on dengue fever, a common malady in the Philippines of which little was then yet known.[12] Her clinical observations on dengue, and the findings of research she later undertook on the disease are said to "have led to a fuller understanding of dengue fever as it afflicts the young".[5] She authored over a hundred articles, reviews and reports in medical journals[5] on such diseases as dengue, polio and measles.[16] She also authored "Textbook of Pediatrics", a fundamental medical text used in Philippine medical schools.[17]



Del Mundo was active in the field of public health, with special concerns towards rural communities. She organized rural extension teams to advise mothers on breastfeeding and child care.[11] and promoted the idea of linking hospitals to the community through the public immersion of physicians and other medical personnel to allow for greater coordination among health workers and the public for common health programs such as immunization and nutrition.[17] She called for the greater integration of midwives into the medical community, considering their more visible presence within rural communities. Notwithstanding her own devout Catholicism,[2][5][11] she is an advocate of family planning and population control.[11]



Del Mundo was also known for having devised an incubator made out of bamboo,[17] designed for use in rural communities without electrical power.[11] Wikipedia

* Amazing Women in History: Dr. Fe del Mundo

Read more…

Interview with Winston Blakely

 

                   Just in time before the release of Aura - The art of Winston Blakely

                    comes what I consider a very introspective , positive and personal

                     interview on myself.

                      Please take a moment and read this... I am sure you will enjoy it.

        

                           Thanks

     http://cedpharaoh.com/360BEYOND/creator-spotlight-winston-blakely-conceptual-and-comic-book-artist/

Read more…