Happy FriYay, MOSS fans!
READER REVIEWS FOR AMAZON WANTED: If you've finished reading part I of Murder on Second Street, please do me a favor and head on over to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00D9X5T6A and leave a review. Help this Sy Sanford series reach the masses, and get ready for part II (release date is July 1).
Happy Father's Day weekend!!!
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| Graphene SEP |
The international system of units (SI) is made up of seven base units, which are the metre, kilogram, second, kelvin, ampere, mole and candela. The ampere, volt and ohm are the three fundamental units of electricity.
Ideally, a new definition of the ampere would be based on an extremely accurate source of electric current, capable of delivering one electron at a time. A single-electron pump (SEP) could be ideal in this respect because it produces a flow of individual electrons by shuttling them into a quantum dot and emitting them precisely one at a time. A good SEP also pumps the electrons quickly, so a sufficiently large current is generated.
Until recently, two types of SEP were promising contenders: tunable barrier pumps made from semiconductors, which are fast, and so-called hybrid turnstiles made from superconductors, which can be mounted in parallel to make the output current larger. Although the most accurate, a third type of pump usually made from metallic islands is too slow for making a practical current standard, but the UK researchers have now improved its performance by making it from graphene, which is a semi-metal. Graphene is a sheet of carbon just one atom thick that has a honeycomb lattice structure.
"Our experiments have shown that graphene is ideal for pumping large currents and its 2D crystal structure is just what is needed to make electrons pass through the SEP quickly," team leader Malcolm Connolly told physicsworld.com. The electron flow can reach near-gigahertz frequencies, very close to what is needed to create a current standard, he added.
If it proves accurate enough, the SEP could also help close the "quantum metrological triangle", which relates current, voltage and resistance. Voltage can be measured using the AC Josephson effect, while resistance can be related through the quantum Hall effect. Both these relationships include the same two fundamental constants – Planck’s constant, h, and the charge on the electron, e. A metrological current pump would allow physicists to directly relate current to frequency, and thus test whether e and h are as universal as we think.
Physics World: Redefining the ampere with the help of graphene?
"It's 1929 and a local Negro neighborhood called Jackson Ward in Richmond, Virginia is booming. In fact, it's called "The Black Wall Street of America" by economists of the day. Things are booming financially and socially for the Negro community, but then a series of what appears to be random murders of poor working class Negro women begins to happen and everyone is on edge, especially the Negro business owners. The Ward is a very tight community – strangers cannot move freely about in this segregated town. They hire haunted World War I veteran and alcoholic Sy Sanford to catch the cold-blooded murderer, but murder is not the only thing threatening to destroy "The Black Wall Street of America." The real Wall Street is about to come tumbling down and plunge Jackson Ward and its infamous 2nd Street into a debilitative financial and social state it may never recover from."
Murder, race, sex and money run wild in this soon to be American classic featuring an African American WWI veteran, Sy Sanford. Available for $1.99, get your copy of part I today, and then join the fan page for Murder on Second Street on Facebook to get updates, book signing information and to share your comments with other fans. Part II will be released July 1.
So click on the LuLu link below and order part I of this six part novel, Murder on Second Street, at http://www.lulu.com/shop/rebekah-l-pierce/murder-on-second-street-the-jackson-ward-murders-part-1/ebook/product-21048846.html?mid=social_facebook_pubsharefb.
I could see a precursor to a laser pistol, but I don't think any aspiring Jedi should duel with a pair of them any time soon! 
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| LARES |
This disco ball is an extraordinary object. It is entirely passive, with no thrusters or electronic components. Instead, it is a tungsten sphere about the size of a football, weighing 400 kg and covered with 92 reflectors that allow it to be tracked using lasers on Earth. These reflectors also make it look like a disco ball.
The ball’s small size large mass make it the most perfect test particle ever placed in orbit, the first aerospace structure ever made from tungsten and the densest object orbiting anything anywhere in the Solar System.
The ball is known as the LAser RElativity Satellite or LARES. The Italians launched it in February last year and have been carefully measuring its orbital characteristics ever since.
Physics arXiv:
LARES Successfully Launched Into Orbit: Satellite and Mission Description
Read more: The Extraordinary "Disco Ball" Now Orbiting Earth
From MIT Technology Review
Follow us: @techreview on Twitter | technologyreview on Facebook
Hey guys, check out the all knightz blog page, we are working on a kickstarter campaign that we shall be dropping in October but we have started the pre production for this project early. Its going to be an animated 25 to 30 minute animated short.
These Hubble Deep Field images offered incredibly clear views of the cosmos in its infancy. What drew astronomers’ attention were the tiniest galaxies, covering only a few pixels on Hubble’s detector. Most of them do not have the grand spiral or elliptical shapes of large galaxies we see close to us today. Instead, they are irregular, scrappy collections of stars. The Hubble Deep Field confirmed a long-standing idea that the universe must have evolved in a series of building blocks, with small galaxies gradually merging and assembling into larger ones.
The tattooed hijacker Dern dubbed Five Star paused in the middle of pacing and touched an area next to his right ear to activate a sub-dermal communicator. He nodded and turned in a slow circle. “Good news, people. We’re a few minutes out from our destination. This will all be over soon and you can get back to whatever mundane lives you were leading before you met us.”
Ura flashed a relieved look at Dern.
Theresa clenched Cyril’s hand tightly. “Now we have to worry about how we’ll get to Ceres 3.”
“Cyril nuzzled closer to his wife. “Don’t worry your pretty little head about that. We’ll find a way.”
Dern said nothing. He watched the hijackers, unable to shake the nagging voice in the back of his head telling him that the resolution to this crisis was all too easy, all too reassuring.
Annually, thousands of deep space sleeper ships cruised to the farthest parts of known space and quite often beyond. Such journeys had become routine and safe enough for the most risk averse traveler to undertake with minimal concern. But they were not entirely void of hazards. A ship’s shielding could degrade, exposing passengers and crew to lethal radiation. A defective stasis system could fail in its IV delivery of nutrients to sleeping passengers, subsequently starving them to death. Engines might shut down, stranding ships or a faulty astrogation computer could veer a ship off course by years, perhaps centuries.
Thankfully, those problems were rare to nonexistent in an age when the major wrinkles initially hobbling deep space travel were ironed out.
And then there were occasional stories of sleeper ships disappearing enroute to their destinations never to be seen again.
Dern had heard of such occurrences over the years, but like most citizens paid little to no heed to them. Now, he had to wonder if those vanished ships had fallen into the hands of bandits and if so, what of the occupants? What was their fate? What would be the fate of he and his fellow passengers?
Dern’s fears bounded to full fruition when Five Star and his comrades suddenly leveled their weapons on the sitting passengers and opened up. Diamond-tipped, carbon-jacketed flechettes ripped from nearly a dozen assault rifles and pistols, buzz sawing across rows of flesh. Dozens of men and women crumpled beneath jack hammering rounds. A few passengers tried to scramble away only to be riddled to shreds, their bodies twisting in mid flight and crashing to the deck in contorted positions.
Blood and gore splashed across polished white surfaces, mingling with flachette- gouged pack marks.
Dern had enjoyed a relationship with violence that was disturbingly deep and abiding. But that was long ago, relegated to another life. To be so unexpectedly reunited with a specter from his past was so jarring, he could only sit, frozen in place watching death unfold around him as if he were outside his body.
A hijacker ten feet away pointed his RI4 at Dern and smiled. Dern peered into the weapon’s muzzle and saw his imminent demise, yet he still could not move.
Ura jumped up screaming.
The muzzle flashed.
A spatter of flachttes punched through her body, exploding against the bulkhead. One flachette caught Dern in the collar bone. Another one grazed his head after passing through Ura’s lower back. She collapsed on top of Dern as he lapsed into anguished darkness.
The ship entered the planet’s atmosphere, descending toward a settlement called Routh. Neither the Coalition nor the other five polities comprising the human Diaspora was aware of this settlement’s very unsanctioned existence. That was sure to change in time. The Coalition dispatched regular patrols to search for and dissolve rogue settlements on the planets it laid claim to. Most unsanctioned settlers accepted dissolution. If they were upstanding, law-abiding types, Coalition patrols, acting on the discretion of commanding officers, opted not to deport them.
Criminal settlements were another matter entirely. Routh’s unsavory inhabitants knew they lived on borrowed time. Until a patrol did discover them, they intended to squeeze as much profit from their varied criminal enterprises as possible. After that, it was on to another uncharted world… provided they escaped arrest and imprisonment.
Tunnal slouched in the captain’s chair, his fingers drumming a delightful rhythm on the armrest. A place like Routh needed all the ships it could get, since it lacked the industry and skilled labor to build them from scratch. The latest model sleeper ship, with cutting edge propulsion, state-of-the-art spatialonics and high yield multi-range weaponry to fend off pirates (Tunnal smirked) was guaranteed to net him and his associates their biggest payday.
His subdermal com buzzed. Tunnal sat up straight and pressed next to his ear to receive. “Go ahead.”
An enthused voice responded. “The passengers have been liquidated, Boss.”
Tunnal gazed surreptitiously around the bridge. Crew members sat at their stations, stupidly oblivious to the slaughter he green lighted below. Their turn would soon come…but not before they landed the ship. He lowered his voice to a near whisper. “Good job. Check the bodies. Confirm that they’re all dead.”
“Will do, Boss. We’ll make damn sure there are no witnesses.”
I'm failry new to this particular site and have found it to be interesting so far. In due process, I am currently working on homework assignment and since my favorite topics involves Sci-fi/ fantasy/Comic art, I have decided to post a series of questions for my homework assignment here.They are as follows:In the past, or during your childhood, was there a particular work, theme or image in the category of science fiction/fantasy artwork or films that you favored but was considered “wrong or “demonic” by either : your relatives, friends religious groups? Why was that particular piece of art your favorite? Why would the others that you knew view it as “bad” or “demonic”? If misunderstood as being “bad” what was your explanation or evidence to clarify the image to being harmless or just a misunderstanding? If you came to the conclusion that the image was bad as a final result what is your reason? How is it looked upon today?How do you compare some of the sci-fi works that are created today in comparison with what you have experienced in the past? What do you think would cause society to look at that particular type of art/film differently and/ or change their way of looking at it? Is the controversy still evident today as it is in the past? And what reasons do those individuals (or yourself) have to back up those reasons?Just to give a brief example, during my childhood, I grew up in the south (Central Florida) and I had a fascination for drawing dragons anthros and mythical creatures. I was condemned and judged by church members and a few folks in my family because their hypothesis is based on just a few scriptures in the Bible, giving them circular reasoning as to why all dragons are evil. Not only that, I was always pestered with questions such as, "why can't I draw landscape sceneries, or people?" Grant it, I can draw people and just about anything I lay my eyes across, I just find it boring to draw. Since at that particular time I was at a very young age, I had difficulty explaining my intended purpose for drawing mythical creatures and that my art had no evil intentions behind them. Besides,the dragons I created doesn't look like anything that the scriptures describes.
I don't normally rant about consumer electronics. I don't like cell phones. Computers are slow, and there's nothing genuinely new under the sun. However, I'm a gamer, and I've just been insulted. About a week ago, Microsoft told the world about its upcoming game console, the XBox ONE. They spoke extensively about all the new features, which were cool, but weren't enough to allay disdain at the "not-so-cool" features, features like it won't play used games.
For non-gamers, I'll let you know the secret to gaming in poor communities. It's called GameStop. It's a retail store dedicated to video games. It also functions as a pseudo-pawn shop. When you're tired of playing a video game, you can bring it to them and you'll get store credit towards another video game. The game you turn in is then sold again as a used game for a slightly lower price. So if you wonder why Pookie doesn't have a job, but he's knee-deep in video games, this is why.
What Microsoft is trying to do is stop this practice because, quite frankly, they hate GameStop. Oh, and poor people. They obviously hate poor people too. But this isn't the insult for me, the poor, Black gamer. No, it isn't. Even though the XBox ONE has a camera that's ALWAYS on and watching you, in a time where every American can rightly assume that Big Brother is watching them through their Twitter and Facebook accounts; this is not Microsoft's insult to me.
I can tell you how Microsoft tried to impress me with a Blu-Ray drive in their new machine, even though no one cares about Blu-Ray. If someone had the excess cash to care about extra sharp pictures on their DVDs, they would wisely buy a Blu-Ray player or an HD TV for this effect. They would not buy a new game system. The PS2 and PS3 game systems tried similar tactics, but the DVD drives in those systems were more of a bane than a boon.
I'll even push aside the fact that the new XBox ONE will not play old XBox 360 games, even though those games were published by the same company for a system that uses the exact same programming language. Thus if you buy an XBox ONE, you'll have to wait a couple months before you can play more than just one game. To put this in perspective, a gamer with no spouse or children can finish one video game in 2 days. I'm married with a kid, so it takes me longer, i.e., a week. It will be MONTHS before you can play more than ONE game on the XBox ONE.
None of these things alone can compare to the insult Microsoft has tossed in my direction. What is the insult, you say? At their press conference, they refused to mention the price of the system. They said that the price for the XBox ONE would be released at a later date. Excuse me, Microsoft? Do you think I'm stupid? I've been playing video games since 1982. It's 2013 right now. That's right. I've been into games for 31 YEARS, and I'm a young gamer. You think I, and gamers like myself, don't pay attention to market trends in the video game industry? Your system is going to cost $600. You know it. I know it. Stop playing games with grown men.
The average gamer is 35 and is married with kids. The PS3 was a paperweight with a Blu-Ray drive and wouldn't play old PS2 games. It cost $600 at launch. Why is Microsoft pretending that they're not about to make the same mistake? They're not going under $600 because they want to offset development costs. They're not going over $600 because they're not completely insane. Only ignorant children, who have not seen the rise and fall of Sega or the political firestorm set by Mortal Kombat, would sit idly by wondering how much Microsoft's new system is going to cost. So before they launch their system, (which should be in August or September) let me tell you what's going to happen if they don't want their stock price to fall
1. They're going to make the system play used games.
2. It WILL be backwards-compatible (play games from their older systems).
3. The camera on the system will turn off when I turn off the system.
These things will happen or the XBox ONE will join the ranks of TurboGraphX 16, Atari Jaguar, 3DO, Sega CD, and the Sega Saturn. If Microsoft doesn't remember these systems, that's fine. I've been playing games longer than they've been making them. I know a paperweight when I see one.
Buy my new book "Squirrels & Puppies"!!
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| Yeah, right |
The planet's 6.8 billion people were living 50% beyond Earth's sustainable means in 2007, the latest year for which figures are available, according to the biannual "Living Planet" report by WWF, a conservation group previously known as the World Wildlife Fund.
"Even with modest U.N. projections for population growth, consumption and climate change, by 2030 humanity will need the capacity of two Earths to absorb CO2 waste and keep up with natural resource consumption," the report says, adding that four and a half planets would be needed if everyone used as many resources as the average American.1
People required 18.2 billion hectares (45 billion acres) of land by 2008, with 12 billion productive hectares available, WWF said today in its biennial Living Planet report. About 55 percent of land needed was for forest to absorb carbon dioxide emissions. The Earth takes one and a half years to regenerate natural resources used annually by human inhabitants, WWF said.
“We are living as if we have an extra planet at our disposal,” WWF International Director General Jim Leape said in the report. “We are using 50 percent more resources than the Earth can provide, and unless we change course that number will grow very fast. By 2030, even two planets will not be enough.”2
1. USA Today: Second Earth Will Soon Be Needed
2. Bloomberg: Another Earth Needed to Meet Humans' Demand for Resources
...realizing, upon original transmission, it should have been "Earl Grey," I just went for it. Too many links to correct now. 
Space.com: NASA Funds 3D Pizza Printer Denise Chow, SPACE.com Staff Writer
Xerox has a bunch of full-color templates for many business communications documents, including Press Releases.
If you have to put something like that together, and you have little experience in composing compelling business visuals, you might want to take a look at these suggestions for the print-at-home crowd, or for creating your own PDF to take to the local Office MAX, Office Depot, Fed-X/Kinkos, etc.
http://www.office.xerox.com/small-business-templates/enus.html
Additionally, If you're looking for a free - four color separation PDF generator that acts like a printer driver in any version of Microsoft's Windows operating system, I highly recommend this one. It has produced perfect PDF files for any use:
SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Amazon is once again shaking up traditional publishing models. This time, it's giving fans a chance to add their own personal touches to their favorite fiction - and get paid in the process.
This week, Amazon.com Inc announced "Kindle Worlds," which offers aspiring writers an opportunity to pen their own takes on franchises in books, TV, movies, even games and comics. The world's largest Internet retailer plans to license content, then accept submissions online that may then be sold through its Kindle ebook store.
Things will kick off with Amazon licensing three teen TV series - "Gossip Girl", "Pretty Little Liars" and "The Vampire Diaries" - from Warner Bros Television Group's Alloy Entertainment, Amazon said on its website. More content deals will be announced in coming weeks.
Amazon has in the past decade emerged as the most disruptive force in publishing. It popularized digital books with its Kindle store and e-reader, contributing to the demise of traditional bookstores such as Borders.
In its effort to legitimize fan fiction, the company is establishing a model under which it acts as publisher and pays fan-writers between 20 and 35 percent of sales, depending on length.
"There's probably not an author/fangirl alive who hasn't fantasized about being able to write about her favorite show," budding novelist Trish Milburn enthused on Amazon's website. "The fact that you can earn royalties doing so makes it even better."
(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Phil Berlowitz)
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| LIGO Hanford Observatory |
As we pointed out, the mission of the NSF is to fund research in fundamental questions in science (typically called "basic" research). As such, the research isn't intended to have immediate commercial or military applications; those would come decades down the line, if ever. And it's generally considered impossible to predict which areas of research will eventually be viewed as groundbreaking at some point in the future.
Now, scientists who have served in the NSF are saying the same things. In a letter to Smith obtained by Science magazine, they point out that the draft bill "frankly requires the Director [of the NSF] to accurately predict the future." And they point to a technology that's currently having a huge commercial impact—the laser—that grew out of basic research using microwaves. In fact, in their view, "many basic research projects in every field supported by the NSF would likely not qualify for certification under this bill."
"There are also Idols formed by the intercourse and association of men with each other, which I call Idols of the Market Place, on account of the commerce and consort of men there. For it is by discourse that men associate, and words are imposed according to the apprehension of the vulgar. And therefore the ill and unfit choice of words wonderfully obstructs the understanding. Nor do the definitions or explanations wherewith in some things learned men are wont to guard and defend themselves, by any means set the matter right. But words plainly force and overrule the understanding, and throw all into confusion, and lead men away into numberless empty controversies and idle fancies." Sir Francis Bacon, Aphorism 43.
Ars Technica:
Proposed bill that would regulate NSF research funding faces backlash
Scientists not amused, bill's backers appear confused.
by John Timmer
Argonne National Laboratory:
Graphene layers dramatically reduce wear and friction on sliding steel surfaces
