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| Seebeck Effect - see arXiv (1) below |
EPFL scientists have provided the first evidence ever that it is possible to generate a magnetic field by using heat instead of electricity. The phenomenon is referred to as the Magnetic Seebeck effect or ‘thermomagnetism’.
A temperature difference across an electric conductor can generate an electric field. This phenomenon, called the Seebeck effect, lies at the root of thermoelectricity (heat turned into electricity), and is used to drive space probes and power thermoelectric generators, and could be implemented for heat-harvesting in power plants, wrist-watches and microelectronics. In theory, it is also possible to generate a magnetic field by using a temperature difference across an electrical insulator (‘thermomagnetism’). This has been referred to as the Magnetic Seebeck effect, and has enormous applications for future electronics such as solid-state devices and magnetic-tunnel transistors. In a breakthrough Physical Review Letters publication that has been promoted to “Editors’ Suggestion”, EPFL scientists have for the first time predicted and experimentally verified the existence of the Magnetic Seebeck effect.
Thermoelectricity and ‘thermomagnetism’
The Seebeck effect (thermoelectricity) — named after Thomas Johann Seebeck who first observed it in 1821 — is generated when electrons in an electric conductor move as a response to a temperature gradient. On average, the electrons on the hot side of the conductor have more kinetic energy and subsequently move at higher speeds than the electrons on the cold side. This causes them to diffuse from the hot to the cold side, generating an electric field that is directly proportional to the temperature gradient along the conductor.
Using an electrical insulator rather than a conductor, researchers led by Jean-Philippe Ansermet at EPFL have shown that a Magnetic Seebeck effect also exists. Because an insulator does not allow electrons to flow, a temperature gradient does not cause electrons to diffuse. Instead, it affects another property of electrons that forms the basis of magnetism and is referred to as ‘spin.’
In an insulator, a temperature gradient alters the orientation of electrons’ spin. Under certain conditions, this generates a magnetic field that is perpendicular to the direction of the temperature gradient. Similar to thermoelectricity described above, the intensity of the thermomagnetic field is directly proportional to the temperature gradient along the insulator. 2
1. Physics arXiv: Evidence for a Magnetic Seebeck Effect
2. Thermomagnetism: Using Heat to Make Magnets, Nik Papageorgiou, EPFL, Scientific Computing
It is well known by those of the Christian Faith that the Lord God created the Earth, the Heavens and their Multitudes in six days...and He rested on the seventh day.
But what I'm interested in is what happens on the Eighth Day...after Creation has been lived in awhile...after the end of the Millennium and Satan is once more allowed to run free...after the Four Horsemen have mounted their steeds...after the spawn of Hell rises up from the Dark Realms and invades the Realms of the Living?
What happens on that day?
That is precisely the focus of the next exciting chapter in The Soul Eater Chronicles!
Chapter One has just been put to bed and we're already on to the next installment.
I can't wait to see how it all turns out!
I'm also playing around with possible artwork for the new eBook cover...check out this comp image...neat, huh?! I'm definitely feeling this one!
Your buddy,
Wm Kane
There's a new little monster everyone should be afraid of. The Booty Goblin is a little demon that has the strangest means of killing his victims. I love the mythos Pudge creates around this character. I love how the only thing it can say is 'booty booty booty'. And per usual, Pudge's easy style makes reading this story a breeze. I bought this book 2 days ago and barely read any of it the first day. One of the things I love most is the complete impossibility of predicting who is going to make it to the end of the story. Once again, I was wrong. Pudge isn't afraid to kill major characters before the third act. Ramps up the tension, leaving the reader wondering whom to hang his hopes on. I would highly recommend this story to anyone who has ever read and enjoyed a book by Jimmy Pudge. Download a copy here. Only $0.99.
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: In recent years, engineers have begun to design and test thermal transistors with some success. Their goal is to exercise the same control over heat that they already have over electric current–the ability to switch it on and off, to modulate it and even to amplify it.
That would be hugely useful for managing heat dissipation but also for creating thermal logic gates that can process information in the form of heat.
The thermal transistors built so far all work by modulating the flow of phonons, or thermal vibrations, from one material to another. For this to work, materials must be in physical contact with one another.
But there is another way for heat to flow–by radiative transfer. In this case, heat flows with the passage of thermal photons from one material to another. In this case, the materials do not need to be in physical contact.
Today, Philippe Ben-Abdallah at the Université Paris-Sud in France and Svend-Age Biehs at Carl von Ossietzky Universität in Germany, unveil the first thermal transistor to operate on thermal photons. The big advantage of this device is that it works at much higher speed than phonon transistors, potentially at light speed.
The design is simple. The transistor consists of three parts, which Ben-Abdallah and Biehs call the source, drain and gate, in analogy to a conventional transistor. The source and drain are made of silica and held at different temperatures to create a temperature gradient.
The source, which is hotter than the drain, emits thermal photons which transfer heat to the drain.
Physics arXiv: Near-field thermal transistor
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| StopBullying.gov |
Sadly, it's happened again. And each time it happens, I am diminished in the spirit of John Donne's Meditation 17; we are diminished as a nation because brilliance that shouldn't die so young, a candle that should illuminate the darkness...is extinguished.
It's not the first time I've discussed bullying. Scientists get bullied too, many are the survivors of some pretty awful bullying for just being curious; just being different than the "cool, accepted norms." Now, the bullies are young earth advocates, climate change deniers, museums that have Fred and Barney; dragons and zip lines (see Sunday's rant). Lately, the bullies staged a "Seinfeld shutdown" and come out of it in the spirit of Macbeth: "like sound and fury, signifying nothing!"
The dark side of technology is it empowers narcissistic psychopaths. Those are the only words that come to mind when disengagement, transfer to another school only intensifies pursuit for the perverse pleasure of causing harm to a fellow human being. Then when the unthinkable happens and that person takes their own life, the Facebook post is "IDGAF" with 30 likes? Of course now, the account was hacked. That remains to be proven. I sincerely hope if true, they do. It does not absolve them from the physical abuse Rebecca Ann Sedwick received from them offline; I can only imagine the hateful name-calling; the social ostracizing. If they were truly innocent, when she left their school, they should have left her alone.
The narcissists are not all young, as former NY congressman Anthony Weiner lived long enough to see himself become a byword. Internet addiction disorder seems to suggest stereotypical nerds, but I think it is the act of esteeming something that amounts to ones and zeros; mean girls and idols; more important than yourself feeds into a pathology that previously might have in other times made someone a successful "Type A."
I personally witnessed a brouhaha almost ignite in a 4th period physics class...over Facebook...on what one of the young ladies said about themselves to others. This is a generation that compared to previous ones - coming through segregation, poll taxes, Jim Crow and Civil Rights; The Vietnam War; the draft; the Cuban Missile Crisis; The Korean War; The Cold War; WWII and "meatless Tuesdays" have more privilege and less sacrifice than previous ones; their only crisis growing up in the shadows of 9-11, Afghanistan and Iraq...and bullies.
I've recently experienced similar treatment from a religious zealot. A year older than I from the same high school, I don't have much of a recollection of him. I've blocked him, and liberally block anyone else that I think not worth my time. Life is too precious and short. As a survivor of old-school, offline bullying, I relate too well, too personally with each of these stories.
Our minds were made for reason and real problems, reading literature, campfires and conversations. I will finish this post, as I do others in about 20 Terran minutes. I'll then go read an assignment and do problems in solid state electronics. I'll look at my Kindle and laugh. I'll talk to people and treat them with respect.
This is an essay I wrote regarding a young lady that took her life in NY earlier this year.
This, along with gun violence, is becoming a dark national addiction for which we need a Betty Ford intervention.
For those interested in previewing the first two installments of the Darkside Trilogy, follow these links to the first four chapters of Discovery and the opening chapter of Conception:
Discovery tells the story of what happens in the United States of America when the country discovers a secret colony of African Americans living on the backside of the moon who have been there since before Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon.
For writers who may be interested in the construction of the story, these four chapters introduce the four main subplots of the story.
One of my main goals in writing the Darkside Trilogy was to make sure that the story was exciting, consistent and that the science and technology within the story was true-to-life. This series was written with an eye toward honoring the classic style of pioneers of the genera from the early years of the 20th Century.
Conception begins as a prequel, telling the 40-year story of how an extraordinary community of African Americans stole the world's march in the race to the moon, arriving several years before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the lunar surface.
And, Conception ends with the same events that conclude Discovery, however they are seen from the perspective of those who left Planet Earth for a new beginning, away from any influences of a still prejudiced United States of America.
Four high school friends, who bond over the dream of living somewhere free of the racial deprivations of America, come up with the most ambitious plan ever conceived by man.
That plan, carried out in secret, and without the influence of white America, launched an exodus from Earth that bore the most unbelievable technological, medical and scientific fruit known to man.
For those here on BSFS who do purchase either or both of the installments of the Darkside Trilogy, please let me know so I may send you something by mail as a personal thank you for supporting my work.
I hope you enjoy the ride...
...or at least found on the former planets around them.
Most stars (including, in about 4 billion years, our sun) end their lives as white dwarfs, after they have burned all their nuclear fuel. These super dense stellar embers exert such strong gravity that any element heavier than helium will immediately sink to the dwarf’s core. So imagine astronomers’ surprise when they discovered that some white dwarfs are cloaked in layers of “pollution” made up of silicon, oxygen, and other elements much higher up on the periodic table.
This pollution is made up of “pieces of planetary systems that are falling into their central stars,” explains Jay Farihi, an astronomer at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom. By measuring the pollution’s constituent elements, scientists can peer back in time and discover what the original solar system’s asteroids, comets, and planets were made of. “It’s a wonderful technique for doing planetary forensics,” says Michael Jura, a white dwarf expert at the University of California, Los Angeles, who wasn’t involved in the current research.
In GD 61’s pollution, Farihi and his colleagues noticed a curious abundance of oxygen. Their first thought was that the original asteroid must have been encrusted with carbon dioxide in the form of dry ice. Trouble is, there was no carbon anywhere to be found around GD 61. So in order to account for the extra oxygen, “the only chemically viable substance left is water,” Farihi says.
Science Mag: Stellar Graveyard Shows Signs of Possible (Past) Life
Warwick:
Water discovered in remnants of extrasolar rocky world orbiting white dwarf
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| T Shirt Guru |
This is a repost with a bit of editing I think you'll find useful.
I've long championed what I like to term "conversational physics concepts," as well as diversity on this blog, particularly gender ascendancy in science, technology, engineering and math. Thus, my concentration this month wasn't all physics (though, I'm admittedly partial). For the nation to advance in the future, we need every one of us.
Hispanic Americans have contributed to our country in measurable ways in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. Knowledge is power: a cliche to be sure, but a commanding statement. Its corollary leads to poverty and personal powerlessness. Carl Sagan said: Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it (although too many have been systematically prevented from doing so). Resist that systematic effort when you detect it with all your might. Get help and study; form groups; connect to local chapters of NSHP and SHPE; invite speakers. Too many ethnic minorities drop out of STEM because it is difficult. Anything worth mastering is. Think of the other things in your life that were hard, and you didn't give up. That is the determination I'd like you to bring to this fight. It's more than just a career in science: it is literally learning how to think, and you can apply that in any area of your lives. For a democracy to function, we need an electorate with critical thinking skills. The cost you pay in this challenge I offer to you will be evident and measurable; the cost of the loss of your genius to this country is frightening and incalculable.
It is my hope one or several posts during the month informed, entertained and inspired. I started these posts with something that struck me as wrong: that due to someone's name and attending a historically black college and university as an undergrad, they would most likely not get a grant from the National Institute of Health. It affected me because I know and have taught one such young man that in his future, this impediment will affect him: he currently attends Howard University in Biology Pre Med, and plans to research in Ear, Nose and Throat ailments. Something that because of my own struggles with Sinusitis, I sincerely HOPE he's successful in getting research dollars!
I post this as a father, with two young men with dreams, hopes and futures in Education and Civil Engineering. I have watched over Robert and Mildred Goodwin's grandsons. As they did for me, I hope and work for a future that they can contribute to positively.
Shout out to the students and teachers at Manor High School 
For students, your futures lie not just in sports or rap music; a future in science, technology, engineering and math is not only possible: it is "what you can do for your country" (John F. Kennedy)...and for yourselves.
El reto: ¿Qué vas a celebrar? Adios...
If you haven't gotten a copy, download yours here. I would like to say thank you to everyone who already has one! I had no idea how this relaunch would go, but it has been a fantastic experience so far. A lot of people are responding to the new cover and I couldn't be happier with it. Now if we could just do something about that 47,700 number. My next goal is to crack the top 100 in Kindle sales.
FRANKLIN R. CHANG-DÍAZ (PH.D.)
NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)
PERSONAL DATA: Born April 5, 1950, in San José, Costa Rica, to the late Mr. Ramón A. Chang-Morales and Mrs. María Eugenia Díaz De Chang. Married to the former Peggy Marguerite Doncaster of Alexandria, Louisiana. Four children. He enjoys music, glider planes, soccer, scuba diving and hiking. His mother, brothers and sisters still reside in Costa Rica.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Colegio De La Salle in San José, Costa Rica, in November 1967 and from Hartford High School in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1969; received a Bachelor of Science degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Connecticut in 1973 and a Doctorate in Applied Plasma Physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977.
SPECIAL HONORS: Recipient of the University of Connecticut’s Outstanding Alumni Award (1980); seven NASA Space Flight Medals (1986, 1989, 1992, 1994, 1996, 1998, 2002); two NASA Distinguished Service Medals (1995, 1997) and three NASA Exceptional Service Medals (1988, 1990, 1993). In 1986, he received the Liberty Medal from President Ronald Reagan at the Statue of Liberty Centennial Celebration in New York City and, in 1987, the Medal of Excellence from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He received the Cross of the Venezuelan Air Force from President Jaime Lusinchi during the 68th Anniversary of the Venezuelan Air Force in Caracas, Venezuela (1988), and the Flight Achievement Award from the American Astronautical Society (1989). Recipient of four Doctorates “Honoris Causa” (Doctor of Science from the Universidad Nacional de Costa Rica, Doctor of Science from the University of Connecticut, Doctor of Law from Babson College and Doctor of Science from the Universidade de Santiago de Chile. He is honorary faculty at the College of Engineering, University of Costa Rica. In April 1995, the government of Costa Rica conferred on him the title of “Honorary Citizen.” This is the highest honor Costa Rica confers to a foreign citizen, making him the first such honoree who was actually born there. Recipient of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics 2001 Wyld Propulsion Award for his 21 years of research on the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engine.
NASA bio: Franklin Ramón Chang Díaz, PhD
Personal Page: Franklin Ramón Chang Diaz
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Contact: Quinton Veal quintonveal@hotmail.com
Valjeanne Jeffers sister24moon@gmail.com
Valjeanne Jeffers is the author of five books, The Immortal series and The Switch II: Clockwork (books 1 and 2). Her work has been featured in numerous anthologies including, Genesis: An Anthology of Black Science Fiction, Mocha Faeryland and Griots: A Sword and Soul Anthology.
Quinton Veal is the author of three books, Her Black Body I Treasure, United Souls, and The Collected Works of Quinton Veal. His work has been featured in Genesis Science Fiction Magazine, Poetic Gumbo and I want my Poetry to. . . He has created and designed numerous covers including Immortal III and The Collected Works of Quinton Veal.
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As the Hispanic population grows, such students are increasingly a linchpin in state and federal plans to get more students trained in the science, technology, engineering, and math fields. But Hispanic students are also heavily underrepresented among degree recipients in those so-called STEM fields—and a new report from the Center for Urban Education provides some recommendations for changing that.
The report, "Tapping HSI-STEM Funds to Improve Latina and Latino Access to STEM Professions," argues that the Hispanic achievement gaps at the baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral levels exist in large part because of finances. "A lot of discussion about participation hasn't acknowledged that fact," said Lindsey E. Malcom, one of the co-authors and an assistant professor at the University of California at Riverside.
Hispanic students are more likely than their peers to come from low-income families—and that affects not only the competing demands on their time and money but also the types of institutions they are most likely to attend. Such students disproportionately start their college educations at community colleges and Hispanic-serving four-year colleges, which typically have lower costs. In turn, the researchers say, those institutions tend to have fewer resources, often leaving them less equipped to support students and to prepare them for graduate work.
The report recommends that colleges, particularly those with large Hispanic populations, work to better inform students of their full range of financial-aid options. It also pushes colleges to recognize that many Hispanic undergraduates are supporting themselves and are more likely to work and to put in longer hours than their peers.
The Chronicle of Higher Education:
In the STEM Fields, How Hispanic Students Pay for Their Education Affects Success
By Elyse Ashburn
And, a few more I added.
Besides many great free textbooks that you can find online, the internet offers a variety of free science tutorials, videos and other resources. These are great to study individually or to assist you during revision. So today let’s take a look at some of the best links for science students.
A plethora here at Physics Database.
Hyperphysics Concepts
Physics Central
Physics Circus
Physics 4 Kids
Society of Physics Students
Wolfram Physics
Thanks to Ronald T. Jones for the embed...
KANSAS CITY: TOPEKA, Kan. — An anti-evolution group filed a federal lawsuit Thursday to block Kansas from using new, multistate science standards in its public schools, arguing the guidelines promote atheism and violate students' and parents' religious freedom.
The group, Citizens for Objective Public Education, had criticized the standards developed by Kansas, 25 other states and the National Research Council for treating both evolution and climate change as key scientific concepts to be taught from kindergarten through 12th grade. The Kansas State Board of Education adopted them in June to replace evolution-friendly standards that had been in place since 2007.
The new standards, like the ones they replaced, reflect the mainstream scientific view that evolution is well-established. Most board members believed the guidelines will improve science education by shifting the emphasis in science classes to doing hands-on projects and experiments.
Chris Hedges, TRUTH DIG: U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz—whose father is Rafael Cruz, a rabid right-wing Christian preacher and the director of the Purifying Fire International ministry—and legions of the senator’s wealthy supporters, some of whom orchestrated the shutdown, are rooted in a radical Christian ideology known as Dominionism or Christian Reconstructionism. This ideology calls on anointed “Christian” leaders to take over the state and make the goals and laws of the nation “biblical.” It seeks to reduce government to organizing little more than defense, internal security and the protection of property rights. It fuses with the Christian religion the iconography and language of American imperialism and nationalism, along with the cruelest aspects of corporate capitalism. The intellectual and moral hollowness of the ideology, its flagrant distortion and misuse of the Bible, the contradictions that abound within it—its leaders champion small government and a large military, as if the military is not part of government—and its laughable pseudoscience are impervious to reason and fact. And that is why the movement is dangerous.
When our public officials can accuse the president of collusion with Al Qaeda (not acknowledging he ordered that hydra's former head slain), and close to the same breath say these are "signs of the end times"; when truckers ride to the capital to perform citizens' arrests (in a moribund protest) inevitably against their own best interests, goaded by talk show pundits collectively with less education than fruit flies; when the same group that denies climate science and its latest dire conclusions can also deny the global, catastrophic effects of hitting next Thursday's default (even the Koch brothers have pulled back from the brink of this Pokemon-AstroTurf-fully-metastasized-Godzilla they've created); when it is clear that Texas Senator Ted Cruz is a living "Deja Vu" of fictional Texas Senator Andrew Steele Jarret in Octavia Butler's "Parable of the Talents", we can not only not govern, we cannot sustain a republic that denies governance, denies science, denies engineering, denies math, denies environmental conservation, denies climate change, denies market regulation, denies civics, denies governance, denies economics, denies facts and reality with such impunity, and calls the child abuse of not teaching science in its proper context a "parental right."
We The People have a global economy built on science. No other nation has tax exempt "creation museums," and the nucleus mother-of-all-creation-museums is currently in financial trouble, as science denial in the long run is an obviously bankrupt strategy. Their solution: add dragons and zip lines (I'm not kidding). I'm sure Europe and Asia - devastating us in PISA results and STEM graduates - will be on board soon.
We have to decide if, as a country, we're going to prepare our youth to compete for jobs in the 21st and 22nd Century, or confuse the hell out of them with "teaching [made up] controversies" leaving them poor, uneducated, desperate and destitute with no hope of a future. This is not science, religion nor is it charity: it is authoritarianism, the societal mid misstep prior to fascism; it is a disservice to both science and faith from a faction of humanity whereby the fundamental known fact about nature - change - is a byword.
We have to decide to prepare them for jobs in a middle class that will understandably require more hard skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, or leave them defenseless and exacerbate the wealth gap between rich and poor, and the obvious societal instability that will follow.
We have to stop parroting the talking points that debt is the only thing we don't want to pass on to our children: ignorance is even more devastating.
We have to decide in the next and ongoing elections in a future more technical and challenging, to hear what our candidates - at all competitive levels of governance - have to say about science in an actual public debate, instead of the call-and-response sermon talking points they cynically memorize for a base.
We have to decide to educate ourselves enough in science to call their bluff/BS when they are lying.
This status quo of stupidity is untenable; possessing a prayer cloth is not solving real or political Calculus. Your next I-phone or AIDS vaccine is not going to drop out of the sky from magical thinking.
We have to decide if we're going to compete globally in the arena of ideas, or sit helplessly on the sidelines, and turn the opening lines of the Science Fiction comedy "Idiocracy" into prophesy:
Narrator: The years passed, mankind became stupider at a frightening rate. Some had high hopes that genetic engineering would correct this trend in evolution, but sadly the greatest minds and resources were focused on conquering hair loss and prolonging erections.
As the 21st century began, human evolution was at a turning point. Natural selection, the process by which the strongest, the smartest, the fastest, reproduced in greater numbers than the rest, a process which had once favored the noblest traits of man, now began to favor different traits. Most science fiction of the day predicted a future that was more civilized and more intelligent. But as time went on, things seemed to be heading in the opposite direction; a dumbing-down. How did this happen? Evolution does not necessarily reward intelligence. With no natural predators to thin the herd, it began to simply reward those who reproduced the most, and left the intelligent to become an endangered species.
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| Credit: Amazon link below |
Previous related link: Malala Day. I of course, think she got robbed for the Nobel Prize again. Dean Kaman says "you get what you celebrate." I celebrate Malala.
LISTEN to what this amazing young woman says about education; the passion in her voice. See her link below. This is what lifts all boats. Ms. Yousafzai is an impressive advocate.
Or, as the Taliban will one day call her: Madam President.
Amazon: I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban
Malala's Site: Malala Fund
Ronald T. Jones' Space Opera 'Dark God's Gift: A Dark Path' concludes as the Galactic Regent Alec Dishman finds himself at the center of a bloody coup attempt! Enemies surround Proctor Dishman but worst of all, his greatest enemy is all too familiar to him. Yet, with the Power of the Dark God's Gift the Galaxy's Ruler plans to crush the rebellion and cut his name into the firmament of history itself!
Researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory say they have tripled the number of neutrons produced by fusion in tiny capsules of deuterium and tritium and thus have moved the National Ignition Facility a step closer to its goal of sustained nuclear fusion. The 13 August firing of NIF's 192-beam laser yielded 3 × 1015 neutrons, whose total energy reached 8 kilo-joules. That output was nearly twice the 5 kJ of energy that produced the plasma in the peppercorn-sized sphere of fusion fuel, says Ed Moses, the lab's principal associate director for NIF.
The result puts NIF a factor of four to five away from ignition, says Moses; last fall the Department of Energy reported that NIF was an order of magnitude away from its goal. Only a factor-of-two increase in plasma energy will be needed to attain alpha heating, an intermediate milestone at which alpha particles from fusion reactions contribute twice as much energy to the plasma as the laser does.
Note the National Ignition Facility was the "warp core" engineering for the movie "Star Trek: Into Darkness." I've mentioned this before, as not only a means of diminishing our dependence on foreign oil, and thus volatile regions of the world: it could change our whole paradigm as a country and a species - heating, energy consumption, food prices at the grocers (determined by fossil fuel prices); income inequality...if we let it.
Of course, we'll have to get through the self-immolation also known as the government shutdown (I really tried to avoid mentioning that).
Physics Today: Lab reports big advance in laser fusion quest, David Kramer
BBC: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab, Paul Rincon
SIDNEY M. GUTIERREZ (COLONEL, USAF, RET.)
NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)
NASA ASTRONAUT (FORMER)
PERSONAL DATA: Born June 27, 1951, in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Married to the former Marianne Sue Cremer of Jefferson City, Missouri. They have three children. Recreational interests include camping, woodworking, and racquetball.
EDUCATION: Graduated from Valley High School, Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 1969; received a bachelor of science degree in aeronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy in 1973, and a master of arts degree in management from Webster College in 1977.
ORGANIZATIONS: Member of the Society of Experimental Test Pilots, the Air Force Association, the U.S. Air Force Academy Association of Graduates, and the Society of Space Explorers.
SPECIAL HONORS: NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, NASA Exceptional Achievement Medal, Two NASA Space Flight Medals, 1990 Congressional Hispanic Caucus Award, Awarded Aviation Week and Space Technology Aerospace Laureate in Space and Missiles for 1991, Hispanic Engineer magazine 1992 Hispanic Engineer of the Year National Achievement Award, Aviation Week and Space Technology Citation for Aerospace Laureate in Space and Missiles for 1994, 1994 selected by Hispanic Business magazine as one of the 100 most Influential Hispanics, selected by Hispanic Magazine for the 1995 Hispanic Achievement Award in Science, 1995 inductee into the International Space Hall of Fame, Distinguished Graduate of the USAF Academy; awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Air Force Meritorious Service Medal, Air Force Commendation Medal with 1 Oak Leaf Cluster, National Defense Service Medal, and Air Training Command Master Instructor.
EXPERIENCE: Gutierrez was a member of the National Collegiate Championship Air Force Academy Parachute Team with over 550 jumps, and a Master Parachutist rating. After graduation from the Academy he completed undergraduate pilot training at Laughlin Air Force Base in Del Rio, Texas. He remained there as a T-38 instructor pilot from 1975 through 1977. In 1978 Gutierrez was assigned to the 7th Tactical Fighter Squadron at Hollomon Air Force Base, Alamagordo, New Mexico, where he flew the F-15 Eagle. He attended the USAF Test Pilot School in 1981 and was assigned to the F-16 Falcon Combined Test Force after graduation. While there, Gutierrez served as primary test pilot for airframe and propulsion testing on the F-16 aircraft. Test projects included the F-100 Digital Electronic Engine Control, F-16C & D Model Structural and Performance Testing, F-16 Maximum Performance Braking Tests, and F-16 Mobile Arrestment Qualification.
He has logged over 4,500 hours flying time in approximately 30 different types of airplanes, sailplanes, balloons, and rockets.
I am admittedly, a Carl Sagan fan. As such, this book is not unfamiliar to me. As such, rereading it in trying times (what I will constantly refer to as the) self-immolation also known as government shutdown, his words are as poignant, as prescient as they were in the mid nineties when it was first published.
I completely avoided my "sermon soliloquy" Sunday, or tried to - see "self-immolation" above. Some paragraphs, sentences on my Kindle (unintentional Freudian slip) gave me pause. I share them without comment or edit, save underlined highlight:
For me, there are four main reasons for a concerted effort to convey science - in radio, TV, movies, newspapers, books, computer programs, theme parks, and classrooms - to every citizen. In all uses of science, it is insufficient - indeed it is dangerous - to produce only a small, highly competent, well-rewarded priesthood of professionals. Instead, some fundamental understanding of the findings and methods of science must be made available on the broadest scale.
- Despite plentiful opportunities for misuse, science can be the golden road out of poverty and backwardness for emerging nations. It makes national economies and the global civilization run. Many nations understand this. It is why so many graduate students in science and engineering at American universities - still the best in the world - are from other countries. The corollary, one that the United States sometimes fails to grasp, is that abandoning science is the road back into poverty and backwardness.
- Science alerts us to the perils introduced by our world-altering technologies, especially to the global environment on which our lives depend. Science provides an essential early warning system.
- Science teaches us about the deepest issues of origins, natures, and fates - of our species, of life, of our planet, of the Universe. For the first time in human history we are able to secure a real understanding of some of these matters. Every culture on Earth has addressed such issues and valued their importance. All of us feel goosebumps when we approach these grand questions. In the long run, the greatest gift of science may be in teaching us, in ways no other human endeavor has been able, something about our cosmic context, about where, when and who we are.
- The values of science and the values of democracy are concordant, in many cases indistinguishable. Science and democracy began - in their civilized incarnations - in the same time and place, Greece in the seventh and sixth centuries B.C. Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it (although too many have been systematically prevented from doing so). Science thrives on, indeed requires, the free exchange of ideas; its values are antithetical to secrecy. Science holds to no special vantage points or privileged positions. Both science and democracy encourage unconventional opinions and vigorous debate. Both demand adequate reason, coherent argument, rigorous standards of evidence and honesty. Science is a way to call the bluff of those who only pretend to knowledge. It is a bulwark against mysticism, against superstition, against religion misapplied to where it has no business being. If we're true to its values, it can tell us when we're being lied to.
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