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Improved Isotope Enrichment...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on July 1, 2014 at 6:33am
Caption: This is a still frame from an artist's animated rendering of the MAGIS Device (magnetically activated and guided isotope separation). To begin the MAGIS process, unpurified ore is vaporized and enters an optical pumping region where a one-watt laser (red beam) tuned to a specific wavelength magnetizes only the particles of the desired isotope so that they are repelled by a magnetic field. The magnetized and unmagnetized particles enter a curved tunnel lined with permanent magnets, called a wave guide. The particles must follow the curve to make it to the collector at the end, but can only do so if repelled by the magnetic field. Since only the particles of one isotope are magnetized (blue dots), only those particles make the trip and end up in the collector. The MAGIS method was developed by Mark Raizen, Tom Mazur and Bruce Klappauf. The full animation can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIRi-7AxFAM.

Credit: ©Marianna Grenadier, College of Natural Sciences, The University of Texas at Austin.


I don't know what's more exciting - the new discovery, or knowing one of the discoverers.

I guess it's both! Smiley

 MAGIS: Magnetically-activated and guided isotope separation:


 AUSTIN, Texas — Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin have devised a new method for enriching a group of the world's most expensive chemical commodities, stable isotopes, which are vital to medical imaging and nuclear power, as reported this week in the journal Nature Physics. For many isotopes, the new method is cheaper than existing methods. For others, it is more environmentally friendly.



A less expensive, domestic source of stable isotopes could ensure continuation of current applications while opening up opportunities for new medical therapies and fundamental scientific research.



Chemical elements often exist in nature as a blend of different variants called isotopes. To be useful in most applications, a single isotope has to be enriched, or separated out from the rest.



A combination of factors has created a looming shortage of some of the world's most expensive but useful stable isotopes.



Last year, the Government Accountability Office released a report warning that there may soon be a shortage of lithium-7, a critical component of many nuclear power reactors. Production of lithium-7 was banned in the U.S. because of environmental concerns, and it's unclear whether the current sources, in China and Russia, will continue meeting global demand.



Nuclear medicine in particular could benefit from the new method, the researchers say. Many stable isotopes are precursors to the short-lived radioisotopes used in medical imaging, cancer therapies and nutritional diagnostics.



The new method also has the potential to enhance our national security. The researchers used the method to enrich lithium-7, crucial to the operation of most nuclear reactors. The U.S. depends on the supply of lithium-7 from Russia and China, and a disruption could cause the shutdown of reactors. Other isotopes can be used to detect dangerous nuclear materials arriving at U.S. ports.



Raizen's co-authors on the paper are Tom Mazur, a Ph.D. student at the university; and Bruce Klappauf, a software developer at Enthought and a former senior research scientist at UT Austin.



Now, Raizen's top goal is getting this technology out of the lab and into the world. The MAGIS invention has been issued a U.S. patent, which is owned by The University of Texas at Austin, with Raizen and Klappauf as inventors.



Raizen plans to create a nonprofit foundation to license the technology.



 University of Texas at Austin:
Improved method for isotope enrichment could secure a vital global commodity
Contact: Steve Franklin
sefranklin@mail.utexas.edu
512-232-3692
University of Texas at Austin

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Adm. Michelle Howard becomes first four-star woman in Navy history

Posted by William Hayashi on July 1, 2014 at 10:28pm

The ceremony included a bit of comedy, but there was no denying the significance: For the first time in its history, the Navy promoted a woman on Tuesday to become a four-star admiral.

Surrounded by friends, family and peers, Adm. Michelle J. Howard was promoted to her new rank at the Women in Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery. She’ll take over as the vice chief of naval operations, the No. 2 officer in the service. She is not only the first woman to hold the job, but the first African-American.

It’s the latest achievement for Howard, who previously was the first African-American woman to serve as a three-star officer in the U.S. military and command a U.S. Navy ship. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus said her promotion is a “representation of how far we have come, and how far she has helped bring us.”

“She is also a great example of how much we as a nation and a Navy lose if we put artificial barriers in,” Mabus told a crowd of about 150 people. “If we don’t judge people based on their ability, based on their capability. I hope I have always been passionate about that, but I know the intensity has increased since I am the father of three daughters, and I refuse to believe that there are any ceilings for them, glass or otherwise. That they can get to wherever their abilities can take them. And with that, they and countless others in the Navy now have a wonderful role model in Michelle Howard.”

With that said, Mabus added that “there is no news here today,” because the Navy picked the best officer, Howard, for her new job.

Howard is perhaps best known for leading Task Force 151, which oversaw counter-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden. After Somali pirates attacked the cargo ship MV Maersk Alabama and captured its top officer, Capt. Richard Phillips, in April 2009, she devised a plan with others to get him back, dispatching the USS Bainbridge, a destroyer, to help. Navy SEAL snipers eventually opened fire on a small lifeboat carrying Phillips and three pirates, killing the bandits and freeing him.

Click here for the full story

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Space-Based Quantum Cryptography...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 30, 2014 at 5:58am
Source: Technology Review

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Europe and China are gaining the upper hand in the race to bounce perfectly secure messages off satellites in low Earth orbit.



One of the great benefits of quantum communication is the ability to send messages from one point in space to another with perfect security. Not so great is the fact that so-called quantum cryptography is limited to distances of around 100 kilometers.



That’s because over longer distances, photons tend to be absorbed by the glass in fiber-optic cables and by the atmosphere when beamed from one location to another. That causes errors that are too great for perfect privacy.



But there is a potential way around this–to send photons to an orbiting spacecraft, which then retransmits the message securely when it is over another part of the planet. That’s possible because the photons traveling straight up only have to negotiate a few tens of kilometers of the atmosphere before reaching space.



So it’s not surprising that governments all over the world are keen on exploiting space-based quantum cryptography. Indeed, last year we reported on a Chinese team that had successfully reflected individual photons off an orbiting satellite, to simulate a satellite sending photons to the ground.



 Physics arXiv: Experimental Satellite Quantum Communications
Giuseppe Vallone, Davide Bacco, Daniele Dequal, Simone Gaiarin, Vincenza Luceri, Giuseppe Bianco, Paolo Villoresi

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The Party of Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 28, 2014 at 8:32am
Credit: Steve Lovelace

“When you call yourself an Indian or a Muslim or a Christian or a European, or anything else, you are being violent. Do you see why it is violent? Because you are separating yourself from the rest of mankind. When you separate yourself by belief, by nationality, by tradition, it breeds violence. So a man who is seeking to understand violence does not belong to any country, to any religion, to any political party or partial system; he is concerned with the total understanding of mankind.” Jiddu Krishnamurti

"As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter." General George Washington, 1st President of the United States' Farewell Address.

 *****


"The GOP isn't a political party: it's a mental condition," Jesse Ventura on Piers Morgan, when he had a show on CNN.

Also here: Actor and comedian Richard Belzer tells “Say Anything!” host Joy Behar why he thinks President Barack Obama is headed for a “landslide” victory in November noting:

“The Republican Party is not a political party – it’s a mental condition. And I mean that seriously because if you are for crushing the poor, unprovoked wars, there is no climate change, immigrants. It’s like ‘who are we’?”



Who are we?...



The National Academy of Sciences was founded on March 3, 1863, at the height of the Civil War.


The immediate roots of the NAS can be traced back to the early 1850s and a group of scientists based largely in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The group enlisted the support of Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson, who helped draft a bill for the incorporation of the National Academy of Sciences. Wilson brought the bill to the Senate on February 20, 1863, where it was passed on March 3. It was passed by the House of Representatives later that day, and was signed into law by President Lincoln before the day was over. The National Academy of Sciences had officially come into being with 50 charter members, who over the years would be joined by the election of the nation's most distinguished scientists. NAS History



We erroneously assume that the absolutely insane, the inane cannot possibly get elected to public office, then surprised when they do.



We assume that we are the grandchildren of Jefferson and his trinity of three greatest men; we assume our Civics and Social Studies is universal and understood by our political leaders.



“To err is human,” wrote Seneca. “To persist is diabolical.” Everyone makes incorrect predictions. But to be that consistently, grossly wrong takes special effort. So what’s this all about? Nobel Prize-Winning economist Paul Krugman opines in the New York Times on the ideological persistence of one party on the "sins" of the Affordable Care Act despite evidence to the contrary.



Who are we, and who do we want representing our views after any election?



1979:

150 corporations control television (ABC, CBS, NBC, PBS, UHF); radio and print media.

2014:

6 corporations control television (more stations than I can list), radio, print media and Internet and social media. That is a 25X reduction if you wanted the math.



Washington nor Jefferson had to contend with lobbyists or corporations, nor influence peddlers that use marketing firms to direct our thoughts online and convert us into sheep commodities for profit.



It is not just a denial of climate change or science: it's a denial of reality itself; allowing larger forces to manipulate that reality for gain or profit and purposely seed doubt on institutions designed to act in our best interests, getting us to vote or behave not in our best interests.



If one party denies reality, HOW can we extend to it the reigns of power governing the most significant country on the globe? Mutually Assured Destruction was never meant as a goal.



I want a resurgence of the party of science - the previous Republican Party before the current takeover by bigots, extremists, terrorists and apocalyptic zealots. That would be a "return to principles" I think everyone could support.



Tomorrow: Tea, Earl Grey
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Tea, Earl Grey...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 29, 2014 at 7:14am


The above actually (or, a version of it) occurred 1st on the show:



Picard tries to explain to Ralph Offenhouse from the 20th century that there would be no need for his law firm any longer: "A lot has changed in three hundred years. People are no longer obsessed with the accumulation of 'things'. We have eliminated hunger, want, the need for possessions." (TNG: "The Neutral Zone")

Then, reiterated on the big screen:



When Lily Sloane asked how much the USS Enterprise-E cost to build, Picard tells her "The economics of the future is somewhat different. You see, money doesn't exist in the 24th century... The acquisition of wealth is no longer the driving force in our lives. We work to better ourselves and the rest of Humanity." (Star Trek: "First Contact"), see: Memory Alpha - Money

At these two lines - somewhat sappy sentiments, really - my conspiracy theorist fellow engineering coworker went into overdrive. It was Austin, Texas and he listened religiously to a certain overweight bloviating local talk show host was then [as he nauseatingly is now via the Internet mostly] on AM radio. I got a lot of rapid fire, staccato Communist-Socialist-New World Order ramblings that left me rather deer-in-the-headlights-dazed and amazed he bothered to memorize all the talking point non-techno-babble. I briefly thought about suggesting we go out to lunch, and maneuvering him towards a blood pressure machine. If you've seen his particular radio muse rant and rave, my friend was a pretty close clone, and closer to bursting a blood vessel on his forehead! I knew his systolic and diastolic readings had to be impressively BAD! It was really hard keeping a straight face.



 First observation: Mr. Ralph Offenhouse was fashioned as a general prick in the spirit of a few contemporary billionaire bad examples that apparently instead of being content with swimming in their loot like Scrooge McDuck want to control everything about human choice and existence in the 21st century, especially over alternative energy options (they'd outlaw a Dyson Sphere if it were ever developed; in Star Trek: Federation, Warp Drive was initially opposed by the powerful - you can't rule those who choose to go off-world). Ralph went to great personal expense in the standard economy we all know intimately now to survive his own mortality, and like a good 1%-er, he wanted his lawyer's law firm (its descendant partners, really) to tell him what his returns would be 300 years hence! Can't say I'm sad he's disappointed.

 Then I found this term: post-scarcity economy. It means "an alternative form of economics or social engineering in which goods, services and information are universally accessible." [Wikipedia] Essentially, a give economy of non-anal retentive hominids that aren't comparing their bank accounts like boy scouts compare penis lengths at jamborees (not much difference, really). On the Kardashev Scale, that would mean control of some impressive energies and violation of significant physics concepts: mass-to-energy conversion at a whim (E=mc2); making the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle "certain" to get (as I've joked many times): "tea, Earl Grey...hot!" It would also require cooperation politically and socially on a scale we've never seen before in our species, as everyone in their part of the planet thinks "their way" is the only way, and everyone else everywhere else are existentially Martians! There are profound changes in the economy due to technology - robotics, for example has eliminated many jobs that used to require human intervention on an assembly line. Now it requires at least humans with the technical skills to repair them when they inevitably break down. As we advance, we will have to give some consideration to what "work" means and how to pursue it.

 In the 24th century, humanity would have some cultural memory of life before Warp, specifically their memories of WWIII and flirting with the apocalypse. Like most cultural groups that have gone through dreadful shared histories - the African Diaspora; the Holocaust - the group says collectively "never again." The group in this fictional case is the human species itself. With that near-miss on mass extinction, there would be motivation to do something radically different than previous economic formulations (sorry Ralph). Their life spans essentially doubling suggests universal healthcare (and low stress since the premise is people work because they want to, not because they have to - see replicator below); their comfort with technology points to an education system (like their health system) devoid of our current political machinations.

 So, after reading several theses on the subject (some of them mentioning it outright, see "Related Links" below), I settled on the only thing that made sense from a physics standpoint as a "Federation Credit" in a 24th century economy: a Joule, unlike Bitcoin, actually based on the following physics definition.

 Joule (pronounced like "jewel") is a measure of work, defined as force exerted over a defined distance, units: Newton-meter. Dividing by a unit of time (second) and you get a Joule/second = a Watt, or measure of power. For the electrical buffs out there: it's one ampere of current passed through a resistance of one ohm for one second.

 It makes sense in this regard: infants and toddlers probably wouldn't get much credit (other than being cute) since they can't do too much in the way of work. Dependent on your occupation and contribution to society, you'd get more Fed Joule creds in your account. It would increase proportionately if you say, discovered a new invention, won the Nobel Prize or solved a crisis on a distant planet. Your creds would then increase and due to the Deus ex machina transporter-replicator-thingy. You could trade it on replicated clothing, Earl Grey Tea, food, furniture or on worlds that still had a banking system - like the Ferengi. As you age - 120 years for the average 24th century human is kind of getting up there - your credits would diminish proportionately. It coincides with Leonard McCoy's complaint in the Star Trek reboot in '09:

"Taking the whole planet in the divorce" suggests a one-way exchange of currency (sounds like it was not in Bones' favor).

 So can we say the [now former] Mrs. McCoy "had him by the Joules"? Leonard was obviously "Fed-street-cred-deficient"; "broke" in a society supposedly without what we consider money.

 I hope my former coworker reads this, stops listening to AM talk radio; learns to laugh at life a little and calms down hopefully quite a bit...


Smiley



 Related Links:

Amazon.com: Debt: The First 5,000 Years, David Graeber
Author site: Capital in the 21st Century, Thomas Piketty
Bernd Schneider's Star Trek Site: The Economy of the Federation
Rick Webb: The Economics of Star Trek - The Proto-Post Scarcity Society
Slate: Star Trek Economy - (Mostly) Post-Scarcity; (Mostly) Socialism
TED: Conversations - Implementing a Star Trek Economy
Wikipedia: United Federation of Planets - Economics

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Are you a streamer?

Posted by Tyrone "Tyr" Jackson on June 28, 2014 at 12:13pm

So, lately I have been using this program , or rather, online application called Live Stream (there is another called picarto, which I use here and there as well.) It has allowed me to stream work that I am working on, in real time…well, with a couple seconds of lag here and there. In which its a great tool, I think, for on the fly critiquing and just a way to show others how you do what you do because, ever artist is different in their styles to complete their creations. Other than that, it is also a great source for getting yourself out there, marketing and PR…art wise that is. Its not a hard program to use once you have caught on to it and there are ample tutorials and vids on how to get set up (this is the internet age, after all.) However after using the program I began to wonder, who else on BSFS, are streamers? I know of one other person who streams here and there and she (Tanece) and I watch one another streams when we are afforded the opportunity. 

So, I ask, who's a streamer? Who isn't? Who has heard of the fact that you can do this and who hasn't? Ultimately, whose interested. I'll start by posting a stream of my own.

https://new.livestream.com/accounts/8543546/events/3140710

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Crowd-Sourced Sky Map...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 26, 2014 at 8:47am
Credit: Technology Review

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Astrophotography is currently undergoing a revolution thanks to the increased availability of high quality digital cameras and the software available to process the pictures after they have been taken.



Since photographs of the night sky are almost always better with long exposures that capture more light, this processing usually involves combining several images of the same part of the sky to produce one with a much longer effective exposure.



That’s all straightforward if you’ve taken the pictures yourself with the same gear under the same circumstances. But astronomers want to do better.



“The astrophotography group on Flickr alone has over 68,000 images,” say Dustin Lang at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and a couple of pals. These and other images represent a vast source of untapped data for astronomers.



 Physics arXiv: Towards building a Crowd-Sourced Sky Map
Dustin Lang, David W. Hogg, Bernhard Scholkopf

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Insania Gigantum...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 27, 2014 at 7:00am
Einstein and Oppenheimer: Both men in their later years dismissed black holes as anomalies, unaware that they contained some of the deepest mysteries of physics (Image: Alfred Eisenstaedt, LIFE magazine)

For those of you whose Latin is crisper than mine: roughly "the folly of giants"...

 On September 1, 1939, the same day that Germany attacked Poland and started World War 2, a remarkable paper appeared in the pages of the journal Physical Review. In it J. Robert Oppenheimer and his student Hartland Snyder laid out the essential characteristics of what we today call the black hole. Building on work done by Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar, Fritz Zwicky and Lev Landau, Oppenheimer and Snyder described how an infalling observer on the surface of an object whose mass exceeded a critical mass would appear to be in a state of perpetual free fall to an outsider. The paper was the culmination of two years of work and followed two other articles in the same journal.

Then Oppenheimer forgot all about it and never said anything about black holes for the rest of his life.

What happened? Oppenheimer’s lack of interest wasn’t just because he became the director of the Manhattan Project a few years later and got busy with building the atomic bomb. It also wasn’t because he despised the free-thinking and eccentric Zwicky who had laid the foundations for the field through the discovery of black holes’ parents – neutron stars.



Thus for Oppenheimer, black holes, which were particular solutions of general relativity, were mundane; the general theory itself was the real deal. In addition they were anomalies, ugly exceptions which were best ignored rather than studied. As Dyson mentions, unfortunately Oppenheimer was not the only one affected by this condition. Einstein, who spent his last few years in a futile search for a grand unified theory, was another. Like Oppenheimer he was uninterested in black holes, but he also went a step further by not believing in quantum mechanics. Einstein’s fundamentalitis was quite pathological indeed.



History proved that both Oppenheimer and Einstein were deeply mistaken about black holes and fundamental laws. The greatest irony is not that black holes are very interesting, it is that in the last few decades the study of black holes has shed light on the very same fundamental laws that Einstein and Oppenheimer believed to be the only thing worth studying. The disowned children have come back to haunt the ghosts of their parents.

 

"If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst forth at once in the sky,

It would be like the splendor of the Mighty One.
[I am Mighty, world-destroying Time.]
Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds."

 The Bhagavad Gita, the last sentence quoted by Oppenheimer reflecting on scientists' reactions when the atomic bomb was successfully tested.

Scientific American:
Oppenheimer's Folly: On black holes, fundamental laws and pure and applied science, Ashutosh Jogalekar

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ET and Climate Change...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 25, 2014 at 6:25am


Enrico Fermi, when asked about intelligent life on other planets, famously replied, “Where are they?” Any civilization advanced enough to undertake interstellar travel would, he argued, in a brief period of cosmic time, populate its entire galaxy. Yet, we haven’t made any contact with such life. This has become the famous "Fermi Paradox”.



Various explanations for why we don’t see aliens have been proposed – perhaps interstellar travel is impossible or maybe civilizations are always self-destructive. But with every new discovery of a potentially habitable planet, the Fermi Paradox becomes increasingly mysterious. There could be hundreds of millions of potentially habitable worlds in the Milky Way alone.



So why don’t we see advanced civilizations swarming across the universe? One problem may be climate change. It is not that advanced civilizations always destroy themselves by over-heating their biospheres (although that is a possibility). Instead, because stars become brighter as they age, most planets with an initially life-friendly climate will become uninhabitably hot long before intelligent life emerges.



The Earth has had 4 billion years of good weather despite our sun burning a lot more fuel than when Earth was formed. We can estimate the amount of warming this should have produced thanks to the scientific effort to predict the consequences of man-made greenhouse-gas emissions.



These models predict that our planet should warm by a few degrees centigrade for each percentage increase in heating at Earth’s surface. This is roughly the increased heating produced by carbon dioxide at the levels expected for the end of the 21st century. (Incidentally, that is where the IPCC prediction of global warming of around 3°C centigrade comes from.)



 Space.com:
Why Haven't We Encountered Aliens Yet? The Answer Could be Climate Change, David Waltham

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Quantum Biology...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 24, 2014 at 6:31am
A scanning electron microscope image of cryptophytes. A UNSW Australia-led team has discovered how cryptophytes that survive in very low levels of light are able to switch on and off a weird quantum phenomenon that occurs during photosynthesis. Credit: CSIRO

A UNSW Australia-led team of researchers has discovered how algae that survive in very low levels of light are able to switch on and off a weird quantum phenomenon that occurs during photosynthesis.



The function in the algae of this quantum effect, known as coherence, remains a mystery, but it is thought it could help them harvest energy from the sun much more efficiently. Working out its role in a living organism could lead to technological advances, such as better organic solar cells and quantum-based electronic devices.



The research is published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.


It is part of an emerging field called quantum biology, in which evidence is growing that quantum phenomena are operating in nature, not just the laboratory, and may even account for how birds can navigate using the earth's magnetic field.



 Phys.org:
Quantum biology: Algae evolved to switch quantum coherence on and off

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Review of Joe R Lansdale's The Thicket

Posted by Gerald Dean Rice on June 21, 2014 at 8:30pm

The Thicket

I listened to this on audio and this story wasted no time getting to it. A teenaged boy seeks to retrieve his younger sister after his grandfather is murdered. I'd been wanting to read a Lansdale book for a while after reading one of his short stories a year ago and The Thicket just leapt out at me.

The Good

The writing is awesome. Every character is rich with his own history and you feel like you're behind each characters' eyes. I only knew Lansdale as a horror author, but he is extremely adept at a period piece thriller (I guess that's what you'd call it). And there are several parts that are laugh-out-loud funny. Like Shorty describing the man who came into his story who kept threatening to dress him up in doll's clothes.

The Bad

Nothing. Honestly, I loved every bit of this story. If anything, I'd like to see another story with some of these characters.

And How Did I Feel About That…

I'm a new Joe R Lansdale fan. Now I'm going to find as much of his stuff as I can and begin reading. Michael C Hall stars in the movie adaptation of his novel Cold In July. I'm going to pick that one up as soon as it comes available.


I write stuff too! Download a copy of my short Where the Monsters Are. Only $0.99.

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Science Impact...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 23, 2014 at 7:46am
NSF's Data By Design infographics are a snapshot of NSF's programs, processes, funding and impact.

Credit: NSF


June 20, 2014

Today the National Science Foundation (NSF) released a robust toolkit that includes new videos, infographics, fact sheets and brochures that describe NSF investments in fundamental research and how they contribute to the nation's science and engineering enterprise.



"NSF's toolkit offers a range of information about the vital work of the Foundation in a compelling way using modern communications methods," said NSF's Office of Legislative and Public Affairs Director Judith Gan. "We encourage the NSF community and the general public to explore the materials we're releasing today to learn more about how the agency helps our nation remain at the competitive forefront of discovery and innovation."



Part of the toolkit package is an animated, NSF-produced video describing the agency's rigorous merit review process. The agency also developed infographics called, "Data by Design: Snapshot of NSF's Programs, Processes, Funding & Impact." These colorful charts showcase the Foundation's role in building tomorrow's workforce, driving innovation, influencing national and international discoveries, and facilitating interdisciplinary collaborations.

National Science Foundation:
National Science Foundation toolkit highlights impact of NSF investments

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Trek Musings...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 21, 2014 at 7:18am
Star Trek official site

Star Trek:

"The Eugenics Wars: The Rise and Fall of Khan Noonien Singh," Volume 1 and Volume 2, by Greg Cox

Star Trek: "Federation," Judith Reeves-Stevens



Admittedly, there is a suspension of belief for Trekkie fans: Warp Drive (NASA is researching it currently); transporters; phase weapons; Vulcan and Klingon humanoid species, and a heavy dose of Deux ex machina (after all, what would the story have been if the Klingons discovered us first?). Gene Roddenberry, by his own admission, was a hopeless optimist.



The above novels allude to the fictional fact that the ascension of the Federation did not come with a witty techno-babble resolution in less than sixty minutes. Especially this gem in the timeline:



Rising from the ashes of the Eugenics Wars of the mid-1990s, the era of World War III was a period of global conflict on Earth that eventually escalated into a nuclear cataclysm and genocidal war over issues including genetic manipulation and Human genome enhancement. World War III itself ultimately lasted from 2026 through 2053, and resulted in the death of some 600 million Humans. By that time, many of the planet's major cities and governments had been destroyed. The rest of the info at the source link is about as cheery, see: Memory Alpha.



They get some things surprisingly (frighteningly) right: nuclear winter (man made, and the antithesis of similarly global warming - irony); radiation in the atmosphere and sickness; the breakdown of social order giving space to the rise of authoritarian demagogues like the fictional Colonel Green (previous paragraph link). We somehow get over that and the genetic mutations associated with most likely plutonium poisoning and a half-life that would make life on a nuclear-devastated planet tenuous for 480 centuries (~24,000 years to get rid of half of it). Transporters...Vulcans...Deux ex machina...



Greg Cox converted the Eugenics Wars into a clandestine conflict between Khan and his super-intelligent, super-strong, megalomaniac genetic sisters and brothers. I guess Caesars just can't get along. In TOS, the Eugenics Wars was the third world war. Either way, losing a tenth of humanity is a lot of people.



"Federation" blended TOS, TNG and Zephram Cochrane with no mention of ENT or "First Contact" (who would have benefited directly from his genius). They also spoke of an "Optimum Movement," a racist, neo-fascist organization that lit the tender box (and launched the nukes) for the conflagration.



This is where I really hope "life [does not] imitate art."



Tomorrow: Fearing Fundamentalism
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WiTricity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 20, 2014 at 6:21am
Texas Power and Light

Tesla would be proud...1600th post.

Serbian-American inventor Nikola Tesla was born in July of 1856, in what is now Croatia. He came to the United States in 1884, and briefly worked with Thomas Edison before the two parted ways. He sold several patent rights, including those to his alternating-current machinery, to George Westinghouse. His 1891 invention, the "Tesla coil," is still used in radio technology today.

Around 1900—nearly a decade later after inventing the "Tesla coil"—Tesla began working on his boldest project yet: Building a global communication system—through a large, electrical tower—for sharing information and providing free electricity throughout the world. The system, however, never came to fruition; it failed due to financial constraints, and Tesla had no choice but to abandon the Long Island, New York laboratory that housed his work on the tower project, Wardenclyffe. In 1917, the Wardenclyffe site was sold, and Tesla's tower was destroyed.





In addition to his AC system, coil and tower project, throughout his career, Tesla discovered, designed and developed ideas for a number of important inventions—most of which were officially patented by other inventors—including dynamos (electrical generators similar to batteries) and the induction motor. He was also a pioneer in the discovery of radar technology, X-ray technology and the rotating magnetic field—the basis of most AC machinery. Biography.com

The WiTricity® technology story begins late one night with MIT Professor Marin Soljačić (pronounced Soul-ya-cheech) standing in his pajamas, staring at his mobile phone on the kitchen counter. It was the sixth time that month that he was awakened by his phone beeping to let him know that he had forgotten to charge it. At that moment, it occurred to him: “There is electricity wired all through this house, all through my office—everywhere. This phone should take care of its own charging!” But to make this possible, one would have to find a way to transfer power from the existing wired infrastructure to the phone—without wires. Soljačić started thinking of physical phenomena that could make this dream a reality.



 Company site: WiTricity.com

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Green Fridges...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 18, 2014 at 6:58am
Using the "magnetocaloric effect" to build a low-temperature magnetic refrigeration device. (Courtesy: Shutterstock/Spectral-Design)

A large, rotational magnetocaloric effect – which could be used as the basis for a low-temperature magnetic refrigeration device – has been observed in crystals of the compound HoMn2O5, according to research carried out by scientists in Canada and Bulgaria. This finding expands our knowledge of magnetocaloric materials, adding to our progress towards a practical and environmentally friendly magnetic cooler that might be usable in a domestic setting.



In recent times, the potential of magnetic refrigeration techniques as an alternative to traditional, vapour-compression solutions has been attracting considerable attention. This is mainly thanks to the lower energy demands of the technique, and the fact that it is not reliant on hazardous fluids. Such devices take advantage of the magnetocaloric effect – a phenomenon in which certain materials change temperature in response to an externally applied magnetic field. Such fields cause the magnetic dipoles of the atoms within magnetocaloric compounds to align. To balance out this decrease in entropy – and thereby satisfy the second law of thermodynamics – the motion of the atoms also becomes more disordered, and the material heats up. In contrast, when the applied field is removed, the process reverses and the material cools. In magnetic refrigerators, these temperature changes can be harnessed, using a fluid or gas, to drive a heat pump.

This relates to the ozone layer and how we could use technology to reduce the size of the hole over the Antarctic. UV radiation is filtered by it to make our existence possible. Kind of an important thing, since Monday's post on warp drive technology - though inspiring - is still in the theory stage. The only spaceship we currently have is under our feet.



 Physics World: Using magnetic cooling for 'green' refrigeration
#P4TC: "An Extremely Bold Op-Ed," November 19, 2010

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Speaking of Warp Drive...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 16, 2014 at 6:00am


...whether or not we achieve it, it is fascinating that we're giving science discussions on it! Besides, this KILLS any previous designs of starships (without being too far off as well).



Instead of nacelles, it looks like we'd have two hoops enclosing the vessel. No "pivoting at Warp 2" recommended...see the video presentation below.

 The dilemma can be summed in this humorous meme (not meant to insult anyone, but if you do a Google search, it's likely to come up):

Source: Motenes



The science behind the humor: it took about as much fuel as the shuttle weighed to get it into orbit. Fuel would then be spent (emptied), and Newtonian mechanics - momentum and gravitational pull of planets mostly - would be the predominate force moving a craft forward.

 The only interstellar vehicle that's left our solar system is Voyager 1 on August 25, 2012, launched in 1977 when I was decidedly (blessedly) in high school. With abs...and hair on my head...

 35 years is a long time for a one-way trip. NASA is attempting to reduce such journeys to a human lifetime, and maybe make it a round trip. Even 1/10 c (the speed of light) would be a civilization-changing accomplishment.

 Look at the picture above. Nope, it’s not a snapshot of a Star Wars scene, or any other sci-fi movie. It’s what you get if you combine a NASA physicist working on achieving faster-than-light travel with a 3D artist, and the result is freaking AWESOME. And yes, you heard correctly, there are scientists working on faster-than-light travel, and this is what the ship could look like in the future.

Read more at http://www.iflscience.com/space/nasa-reveals-latest-warp-drive-ship-designs#EPvMa3eRlv4Ekmb1.99

#P4TC links:
"As Dreams Are Made On," September 21, 2012
"Alcubierre Drive," October 28, 2012
"Warp Fields and Research Efficacy," July 26, 2013

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My Name is Barry Allen...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on June 14, 2014 at 7:41am
The Global Dispatch

Dimensional barrier...unknown energies...antimatter...dark energy...x element (?)...I applaud their near Star Trek level techno-babble. Smiley



Though it mixes comic companies, he reminds me of Toby Maguire in the original Spiderman movies. Similar to Peter Parker's epic lunchroom fight with Flash Thompson, everyone moving in slow-mo; the look of sheer terror and befuddlement is entertaining when Barry Allen realizes he's not quite human anymore (or, as they allude, he's a meta-human).



Anyway, this post is reminiscent is when I encountered comic book characters, other than reading them in the comics. It would be on Saturday mornings, rising early at 6 AM, glued to the set until 3 PM ending with the Lone Ranger and Tonto. It's how I know the Apollo moon landing happened (when Jonny Quest reruns gets interrupted for Neil Armstrong, as a 6-year-old, you can get a little excited). I, of course, wasn't disappointed.



I hope you enjoy it in the fall. Along with Arrow, Gotham, Agents of Shield, the fall line up - minus "reality" television - should be fun (again).
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