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Post 9/11/2001 to encourage national unity:
Super Bowl commercial celebrating our changing demographics and diversity (E Pluribus Unum):
Acts 17:26 "And He has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their preappointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings,"...(I doubt they've read this one)
BTW: as complained, American The Beautiful penned by Katharine Lee Bates is not the national anthem. That distinction belongs to the Star Spangled Banner by Francis Scott Key. Civics is lacking, as ignorance is glorified and abounds...
New Colossus (The "Statue of Liberty poem")
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!" Emma Lazarus
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| Figure 2. The Mexican-hat potential energy density considered by Jeffrey Goldstone in his seminal 1961 paper. 2 The energy density is a function of the real (Re) and imaginary (Im) values of a spinless field ϕ. In the context of the electroweak theory developed later in the decade, the yellow ball at the top of the hat would represent the symmetric solution for the potential, in which the photon, W bosons, and Z boson are all massless. The blue ball in the trough represents the solution after symmetry breaking. In that solution the W and Z bosons are massive and the photon remains massless. The steepness of the trough is related to the mass of the Higgs boson. Citation: Phys. Today 66, 12, 28 (2013); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.2212 |
Symmetries and other regularities of the physical world make science a useful endeavor, yet the world around us is characterized by complex mixtures of regularities with individual differences, as exemplified by the words on this page. The dialectic of simple laws accounting for a complex world was only sharpened with the development of relativity and quantum mechanics and the understanding of the subatomic laws of physics. A mathematical encapsulation of the standard model of particle physics can be written on a cocktail napkin, an economy made possible because the basic phenomena are tightly controlled by powerful symmetry principles, most especially Lorentz and gauge invariance.
How does our complex world come forth from symmetrical underpinnings? The answer is in the title of Philip Anderson’s seminal article “More is different.” 1 Many-body systems exhibit emergent phenomena that are not in any meaningful sense encoded in the laws that govern their constituents. One reason those emergent behaviors arise is that many-body systems result from symmetries being broken. Consider, for example, a glucose molecule: It will have a particular orientation even though the equations governing its atoms are rotationally symmetric. That kind of symmetry breaking is called spontaneous, to indicate that the physical system does not exhibit the symmetry present in the underlying dynamics.
It may seem that the above discussion has no relevance to particle physics in general or to the Higgs boson in particular. But in quantum field theory, the ground state, or vacuum, behaves like a many-body system. And just as a particular glucose orientation breaks an underlying rotation symmetry, a nonvanishing vacuum expectation value of the Higgs boson field, as we will describe, breaks symmetries that would otherwise forbid masses for elementary particles. Now that the Higgs boson (or something much like it) has been found at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC; see Physics Today, September 2012, page 12), particle experimentalists are searching for more kinds of Higgs bosons and working to find out if the Higgs boson interacts with the dark matter that holds the universe together. Cosmologists are trying to understand the symmetry-breaking Higgs phase transition, which took place early in the history of the universe, and whether that event explains the excess of matter over antimatter. The measured mass of the Higgs boson implies that the symmetry-breaking vacuum is metastable. If no new physics intervenes, an unlucky quantum fluctuation will eventually spark a cosmic catastrophe.
Physics Today: The future of the Higgs Boson
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| Image source |
In an era of #Scandal, it's probably hard today for kids to imagine this was as controversial as it was. It was groundbreaking, and made room for the creative talents of Ms. Shonda Rhimes (not "her only rodeo," as they say in Texas). I know it was BANNED in North Carolina and most parts of the south in the 1960's. Wikipedia seems to show an international bias as well:
"Plato's Stepchildren" is a third season episode of the original science fiction television series Star Trek, first broadcast November 22, 1968. It is episode #65, production #67, written by Meyer Dolinsky, and directed by David Alexander. This episode is one of the first scripted American television broadcasts to depict an inter-racial kiss between a white man (Kirk) and a black woman (Uhura).[1][2] This episode was withdrawn by the BBC in the UK because of 'sadistic plot elements' during the initial run in 1971 and was not shown until a repeat run in January 1994.
Ms. Nicols describes the scene:
Hey BSFS! I am very excited this week. I am making my first appearance as Foundation Press publisher speaking to a local Atlanta group called ForeverFamily as part of its Black History Month program. I have the honor of encouraging kids 5-16 and their parents to consider writing as both hobby and profession.
Also on Feb 16 I am entering both my novels T'Schai and Enemy Space in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Contest, giving me two shots at the $50 thousand advance and publishing contracts. Wish me luck as I wish any of you entering the same!
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| Source: Link below |
Materials shape human progress—think Stone Age or Bronze Age. The 21st century has been referred to as the molecular age, a time when scientists are beginning to manipulate materials at the atomic level to create new substances with astounding properties.
Taking a step in that direction, Jens Bauer, at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and his colleagues have developed a bone-like material that is less dense than water but as strong as some forms of steel. "This is the first experimental proof that such materials can exist," Bauer said.
Ars Technica: New laser-printed material is lighter than water, as strong as steel
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| Image from Black Inventors |
Plasma etching utilizes a gas excited/ionized in an electromagnetic field into a plasma - the fourth state of matter (solid, liquid, gas, plasma). Etching is how the semiconductor industry transfers a pattern in a photomask (a designed chrome mask) using UV light and photoresist. The resist captures the pattern, and is developed like photos (in old-style film and a camera). The plasma uses physical as well as chemical processes that react with the film to remove it leaving the exposed pattern. The resist is usually stripped away before subsequent processing in the wafer fab.
Plasma etch is used to transfer that pattern (s) becoming the integrated circuits in your cell phone; remote control; your thermostat in your home; your security system; your laptop; its mouse, servers for banks and the Internet: basically everything electronic you can think of.
You have the genius of this man to thank for it:
Physicist George Edward Alcorn, Jr. is best known for his development of the imaging x-ray spectrometer. Born on March 22, 1940 to working class parents, Alcorn was an excellent student and star athlete. He was awarded an academic scholarship to Occidental College in Pasadena, California, where he completed his B.A. in Physics in 1962. From there, Alcorn pursued graduate studies at Howard University in Washington, D.C. He earned his master’s degree in nuclear physics in 1963, and his Ph.D. in atomic and molecular physics in 1967.
At NASA Alcorn developed the imaging x-ray spectrometer. An x-ray spectrometer assists scientists in identifying a material by producing an x-ray spectrum of it, allowing it to be examined visually. This is especially advantageous when the material is not able to be broken down physically. Alcorn patented his “method for fabricating an imaging x-ray spectrometer” in 1984. He was cited for his method’s innovative use of the thermomigration of aluminum. For this achievement he was recognized with the NASA/GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center) Inventor of the Year Award.
Alcorn is credited with more than 20 inventions, and holds at least eight U.S. and international patents, many of these related to the semiconductor industry. For instance, he developed an improved method of fabrication employing laser drilling, and a process for improving the process of plasma etching.
MIT Inventors of the week: George Edward Alcorn, Jr. PhD
Plasma Etching: Dr. Lynn Fuller, RIT
In autumn this year a brand new experiment at CERN called NA62 will start taking data and it will have the exciting goal of seeking physics beyond the Standard Model. The physicists working on it are now in the final stages of installing their 270-m-long experiment on the Super Proton Synchrotron (SPS) – which itself has a circumference of 7 km and feeds protons into the Large Hadron Collider. The NA62 collaboration comprises about 150 physicists at 20 institutes worldwide and its primary aim is to make an extremely precise measurement of the probability that a positively charged kaon will decay to a positively charged pion plus a neutrino/antineutrino pair.
Physics World: NA62 joins the search for new physics at CERN
I've discussed my own past before, and on a recent visit to South Carolina, I found out how things haven't much changed. My cousin and our family historian were granted a tour of the plantation that my Great-Grandfather Julius and his wife Epsy lived. They toured the grounds and the slave quarters. They were then told they (and by extension, any other family member) were "invited to never come again." Sad...
This is not physics obviously, but the tabulation of the cost of service - never paid, mind you - is quite accurate, and it expresses the time-worn phrase: "living well is the best revenge" (George Herbert).
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| Escaped slaves in Virginia, 1862, Library of Congress |
Source of letter: The Freedmen's Book and Letters of Note
Dayton, Ohio,
August 7, 1865
To My Old Master, Colonel P.H. Anderson, Big Spring, Tennessee
Sir: I got your letter, and was glad to find that you had not forgotten Jourdon, and that you wanted me to come back and live with you again, promising to do better for me than anybody else can. I have often felt uneasy about you. I thought the Yankees would have hung you long before this, for harboring Rebs they found at your house. I suppose they never heard about your going to Colonel Martin's to kill the Union soldier that was left by his company in their stable. Although you shot at me twice before I left you, I did not want to hear of your being hurt, and am glad you are still living. It would do me good to go back to the dear old home again, and see Miss Mary and Miss Martha and Allen, Esther, Green, and Lee. Give my love to them all, and tell them I hope we will meet in the better world, if not in this. I would have gone back to see you all when I was working in the Nashville Hospital, but one of the neighbors told me that Henry intended to shoot me if he ever got a chance.
I want to know particularly what the good chance is you propose to give me. I am doing tolerably well here. I get twenty-five dollars a month, with victuals and clothing; have a comfortable home for Mandy,—the folks call her Mrs. Anderson,—and the children—Milly, Jane, and Grundy—go to school and are learning well. The teacher says Grundy has a head for a preacher. They go to Sunday school, and Mandy and me attend church regularly. We are kindly treated. Sometimes we overhear others saying, "Them colored people were slaves" down in Tennessee. The children feel hurt when they hear such remarks; but I tell them it was no disgrace in Tennessee to belong to Colonel Anderson. Many darkeys would have been proud, as I used to be, to call you master. Now if you will write and say what wages you will give me, I will be better able to decide whether it would be to my advantage to move back again.
As to my freedom, which you say I can have, there is nothing to be gained on that score, as I got my free papers in 1864 from the Provost-Marshal-General of the Department of Nashville. Mandy says she would be afraid to go back without some proof that you were disposed to treat us justly and kindly; and we have concluded to test your sincerity by asking you to send us our wages for the time we served you. This will make us forget and forgive old scores, and rely on your justice and friendship in the future. I served you faithfully for thirty-two years, and Mandy twenty years. At twenty-five dollars a month for me, and two dollars a week for Mandy, our earnings would amount to eleven thousand six hundred and eighty dollars. Add to this the interest for the time our wages have been kept back, and deduct what you paid for our clothing, and three doctor's visits to me, and pulling a tooth for Mandy, and the balance will show what we are in justice entitled to. Please send the money by Adams's Express, in care of V. Winters, Esq., Dayton, Ohio. If you fail to pay us for faithful labors in the past, we can have little faith in your promises in the future. We trust the good Maker has opened your eyes to the wrongs which you and your fathers have done to me and my fathers, in making us toil for you for generations without recompense. Here I draw my wages every Saturday night; but in Tennessee there was never any pay-day for the negroes any more than for the horses and cows. Surely there will be a day of reckoning for those who defraud the laborer of his hire.
In answering this letter, please state if there would be any safety for my Milly and Jane, who are now grown up, and both good-looking girls. You know how it was with poor Matilda and Catherine. I would rather stay here and starve—and die, if it come to that—than have my girls brought to shame by the violence and wickedness of their young masters. You will also please state if there has been any schools opened for the colored children in your neighborhood. The great desire of my life now is to give my children an education, and have them form virtuous habits.
Say howdy to George Carter, and thank him for taking the pistol from you when you were shooting at me.
From your old servant,
Jourdon Anderson
Jourdon: Touché!
STEM, Science Technology Engineering Math. It is a wonderful concoction of techno giberish of the kind that is suppose to fix us but good. Can you imagine the cold hard logic and precision of the human mentality, analytical, circuits, machines, synthetics, bio-nano-techno-diversity. Give me the gadget, show me the numbers!! What happens when there is no longer a big red push button for stop? If you put STEM in your children, can you live with the results? When that child has to apply STEM to the real world you still live in. Ooh man, show me the shuttle so I can get off this rock.
Schools cut art first to save sports. Sports, the gladiator games, OK! You can learn teamwork and grunt for physical excellence. Gladiators are good for military stuff too. And sports make money and head injuries. He's a 4.0 athlete but head butting pulverized his brain to a palsy. Dr. So and so used to be a football player and.... Oh nurse, I'm want to check out of here!
To save us from becoming totally inert, add an "A" to STEM. "A" is for ART.
What does "art" bring to the table? Design, color, composition, human sensibility, humanity. Art is in the box and out the box and use a bag if necessary. Art is the application of STEM according to us, the elegant solution that is workable, accommodates who we are, makes us comfortable, improves us, gets the job done and were not dead or dying. Art is our fingerprint. Art is the application of STEM. Without art, STEM is just research, theory. Art is visualization, planning, prototyping, producing and deployment of the final piece.
Lots of mumbo-jumbo talk by educators about STEM. It's like tooting your own horn. But if you want to play a melody you need one more note, an "A". When art is in there you can apply your STEM to what is needed.
I'm not knocking STEM, just letting off a little STEAM.
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| Garrett Morgan |
In 1912, Morgan developed another invention, much different from his hair straightener. Morgan called it a Safety Hood and patented it as a Breathing Device, but the world came to know it as a Gas Mask. The Safety Hood consisted of a hood worn over the head of a person from which emanated a tube which reached near the ground and allowed in clean air. The bottom of the tube was lined with a sponge type material that would help to filter the incoming air. Another tube existed which allowed the user to exhale air out of the device. Morgan intended the device to be used "to provide a portable attachment which will enable a fireman to enter a house filled with thick suffocating gases and smoke and to breathe freely for some time therein, and thereby enable him to perform his duties of saving life and valuables without danger to himself from suffocation. The device is also efficient and useful for protection to engineers, chemists and working men who are obliged to breathe noxious fumes or dust derived from the materials in which they are obliged to work."
The National Safety Device Company, with Morgan as its General Manager was set up to manufacture and sell the device and it was demonstrated at various exhibitions across the country. At the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation, the device won first prize and Morgan was award a gold medal. While demonstrations were good for sales, the true test of the product would come only under real life circumstances.
That opportunity arose on July 24, 1916 when an explosion occurred in a tunnel being dug under Lake Erie by the Cleveland Water Works. The tunnel quickly filled with smoke, dust and poisonous gases and trapped 32 workers underground. They were feared lost because no means of safely entering and rescuing them was known. Fortunately someone at the scene remembered about Morgan's invention and ran to call him at his home where he was relaxing. Garrett and his brother Frank quickly arrived at the scene, donned the Safety Hood and entered the tunnel. After a heart wrenching delay, Garrett appeared from the tunnel carrying a survivor on his back as did his brother seconds later. The crowd erupted in a staggering applause and Garrett and Frank reentered the tunnel, this time joined by two other men. While they were unable to save all of the workers, the were able to rescue many who would otherwise have certainly died. Reaction to Morgan's device and his heroism quickly spread across the city and the country as newspapers picked up on the story. Morgan received a gold medal from a Cleveland citizens group as well as a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which also made him an honorary member.
Although he could have relied on the income his Gas Masks generated, Morgan felt compelled to try to solve safety problems of the day. One day he witnessed a traffic accident when an automobile collided with a horse and carriage. The driver of the automobile was knocked unconscious and the horse had to be destroyed. He set out to develop a means of automatically directing traffic without the need of a policeman or worker present. He patented an automatic traffic signal which he said could be "operated for directing the flow of traffic" and providing a clear and unambiguous "visible indicator."
Satisfied with his efforts, Morgan sold the rights to his device to the General Electric Company for the astounding sum of $40,000.00 and it became the standard across the country. Today's modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan's original design.
Black Inventor: Garrett Morgan
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| WCPO 9, Cincinnati, Ohio |
From "The African History Network":
Did you know that Crest Toothpaste, Folgers Coffee, Bounce Fabric Softener and Safeguard Soap were all created by an African-American Man? I have talked about Dr. Herbert Smitherman Sr. before on The African History Network Show before. In 2011 I spoke at an 8th grade graduation and told the audience about him to show them their potential. Most of the audience including parents had never heard of him and were amazed by his story.
Dr. Herbert Smitherman was a pioneering executive and professional chemist at Proctor & Gamble who led the way for other African-Americans at the prestigious company in the 1960s. He was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.
With a PhD in physical organic chemistry, Dr. Smitherman developed a number of incredibly popular patents, including Crest toothpaste, Safeguard soap, Bounce fabric softeners, Biz, Folgers Coffee and Crush soda, to name a few. Not only are they still on the shelves, but many of them are on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center in the featured exhibit, “America I AM: The African-American Imprint.”
Nicknamed the “Jackie Robinson of Proctor & Gamble,” Dr. Smitherman spent 29 years there before turning in his labcoat to work as a professor at Wilberforce University. But after serving at the historically black college, Smitherman turned his attention to starting a high school called the Western Hills Design Technology School to help black students perform better in math and science.
A child of the south, Dr. Smitherman’s family lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where his father served as a reverend. A young Smitherman would see his father’s church burn down twice during their push for voting registration and voting rights.
He died on Oct. 9, 2010.
Black America Web: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman Sr.
Cincinnati Herald: Dr. Herbert C Smitherman Sr broke barriers
Cincinnati NAACP: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman
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| See link below |
Energy could be moved over long distances by quantum teleportation, according to calculations done by a team of physicists in Japan. While energy teleportation is not a new concept, it had been thought that the amount of energy that could be sent dropped rapidly beyond short distances. The new proposal removes this shortcoming, allowing energy to be transferred much farther. The team believes that the theory could be verified in a semiconductor device and that similar energy teleportation could have occurred in the early universe.
Quantum teleportation is a remarkable idea that was first proposed by IBM's Charles Bennett and colleagues in 1992. It involves two parties, usually called Alice and Bob, who "teleport" a quantum state between each other. The scheme allows Alice to send information about an unknown quantum state to Bob, who is then able to construct a perfect copy of that state. To do so, the pair exchange classical information while sharing particles that are entangled quantum mechanically with each other. Physicists have since been able to teleport atomic states over distances of several metres and photon states over distances greater than 100 km.
While this formulation of quantum teleportation does not provide a means to exchange energy, in 2008 Masahiro Hotta of Tohoku University unveiled a theory explaining how energy could be teleported. In Hotta's formulation, Alice sends Bob the information that he needs to extract energy from the vacuum. This extraction is possible because in quantum field theory the vacuum is not devoid of energy but contains virtual particles that continually bubble-up and then vanish.
Physics World: Energy can be teleported over long distances, say physicists
Happy 80th birthday, sir! You are one of my heroes...
Biography: "Hammering" Hank Aaron
A sequel to Discovery, the second in a series by William Hayashi. In Discovery the world discovers black people on the moon. Conception reveals how black people got there and why. First of all, the black lunar inhabitants are African American. Second, they are all experts in various STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. Their knowledge makes them vastly qualified to meet the challenges of building and sustaining a habitat in an extraterrestrial environment. Their heritage provides the grievances fueling their drive to leave Earth, specifically the United States. The story centers around Benjamin Christopher Wright, a brilliant graduate student in physics who discovers a revolutionary new technology.
Realizing the world shaking implications of his discovery and fearing for his safety Christopher opts to keep this technology a secret. Christopher's bitterness over his father's death alienates him from American society. So much so that he embarks on an ambitious plan to use his discovery to relocate to the moon. He enlists the aid of childhood friends in his project. Soon, he and his team recruit hundreds of similarly alienated African Americans to populate his lunar utopia.
The research the author poured into this work shows in the authenticity of the science and technology depicted in the story. Real world tech is seamlessly woven into the fantastical tech underlying the characters' ability to travel back and forth between the moon and Earth. Other advances made by the moon colonists, from an interactive AI to anti-aging is equally plausible.
The characters are well defined and powerfully motivated. Christopher is a force of nature throughout the book. His determination to build a new civilization away from what he sees as the ills of American society is wrapped in a seething rage that pulsates from each page. Conception is a story about process. It's a step by step journey to the moon, detailing successes, setbacks, and subterfuge. It is also a story about a collision course. Because now the secret is out and a few thousand colonists who have thrived on the moon for decades will face a world determined to obtain their technology one way or another. How this confrontation unfolds will be revealed in book 3. Stay tuned!
WELCOME TO THE VIRTUAL BOOK LAUNCH PARTY!!! Feel Free to leave comments, requests and questions right here. We will have a giveaway every hour!
Meanwhile, the US has yet to get a clue...
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| T-shirt Guru |
Further details have emerged of a new £270m initiative being funded by the UK government to convert quantum-physics research into commercial products. The five-year initiative, which will include the creation of a network of quantum-technology centres, was one of a number of measures revealed by the government in its Autumn Statement in early December 2013 to boost the UK's science base. The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne says that the money was "additional investment" in research and that science was a "personal priority" of his.
The initiative, which will begin in 2015, will focus on areas such as chip-scale atomic clocks for improved GPS communication, quantum-enabled sensors, quantum communication and quantum computing. Some cash will go to existing university research groups, while about £30m per year will go to the Technology Strategy Board – the UK's national innovation agency – to support immediate commercialization of technology. There will also be money for PhD students and postdocs, while some £4m will go on equipment for the new Advanced Metrology Laboratory being built at the National Physical Laboratory.
Physics World: UK splashes out £270m on quantum technology
