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Are you a streamer?

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...

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...

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...



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 ChangeDavid Waltham

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Quantum Biology...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...



...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...

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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Computational Anthropology...

Location-based social networks are allowing scientists to study the way human patterns of behaviour change in time and space, a technique that should eventually lead to deeper insights into the nature of society.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: The increasing availability of big data from mobile phones and location-based apps has triggered a revolution in the understanding of human mobility patterns. This data shows the ebb and flow of the daily commute in and out of cities, the pattern of travel around the world and even how disease can spread through cities via their transport systems.



So there is considerable interest in looking more closely at human mobility patterns to see just how well it can be predicted and how these predictions might be used in everything from disease control and city planning to traffic forecasting and location-based advertising.



Today we get an insight into the kind of detailed that is possible thanks to the work of Zimo Yang at Microsoft research in Beijing and a few pals. These guys start with the hypothesis that people who live in a city have a pattern of mobility that is significantly different from those who are merely visiting. By dividing travelers into locals and non-locals, their ability to predict where people are likely to visit dramatically improves.



Zimo and co begin with data from a Chinese location-based social network called Jiepang.com. This is similar to Foursquare in the US. It allows users to record the places they visit and to connect with friends at these locations and to find others with similar interests.



Physics arXiv: Indigenization of Urban Mobility
Zimo Yang, Nicholas Jing Yuan, Xing Xie, Defu Lian, Yong Rui, Tao Zhou

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NASA's Flying Saucer...

Credit: JPL/NASA

They're doing the testing at high altitudes to simulate thin atmospheric conditions on Mars. In a twist, the flying saucer isn't coming from the Red Planet...we're sending our own. Smiley



NASA did not conduct the flight test of the agency's Low-Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) from the U.S. Navy's Pacific Missile Range in Kauai, Hawaii, during its designated launch period. The project's reserved time at the range will expire Saturday without NASA being able to fly the test because of continuing unfavorable weather conditions.



NASA will hold a media teleconference at 10 a.m. PDT (1 p.m. EDT) on Thursday, June 12 to discuss what this delay in the LDSD testing means and possible next steps for the project.



Speakers will be:



--Mark Adler, LDSD Project Manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California



--Ian Clark, LDSD Principal Investigator at JPL



The teleconference will be streamed live on NASA's website at: http://www.nasa.gov/newsaudio


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        Coming Soon in the fall of this year is an artbook that I think most of bsfs members will enjoy.

         From my own personal archives of Blakelyworks Studio I have picked what I think is the best

   

         of my work, with new features and chapters included. Take special note that Jarvis Sheffield,

         creator of this very same site you are chatting on and networking to get your most creative

         projects done, did the introduction to Aura, The Art of Winston Blakely.  And a profound

         tip of the hat to William Hayashi for the suggestion of this idea which is about to be

         available soon.

         Please, stay tune for further announcements about this deluxe coffee table artbook.

               Thank You

                 Winston Blakely

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