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Smart Fools...

Credit: michaelquirk Getty Images

Topics: Commentary, Education, Politics

BOSTON—At last weekend’s annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science (APS) in Boston, Cornell University psychologist Robert Sternberg sounded an alarm about the influence of standardized tests on American society. Sternberg, who has studied intelligence and intelligence testing for decades, is well known for his “triarchic theory of intelligence,” which identifies three kinds of smarts: the analytic type reflected in IQ scores; practical intelligence, which is more relevant for real-life problem solving; and creativity. Sternberg offered his views in a lecture associated with receiving a William James Fellow Award from the APS for his lifetime contributions to psychology. He explained his concerns to Scientific American.

[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]

In your talk, you said that IQ tests and college entrance exams like the SAT and ACT are essentially selecting and rewarding “smart fools”—people who have a certain kind of intelligence but not the kind that can help our society make progress against our biggest challenges. What are these tests getting wrong?

Tests like the SAT, ACT, the GRE—what I call the alphabet tests—are reasonably good measures of academic kinds of knowledge, plus general intelligence and related skills. They are highly correlated with IQ tests and they predict a lot of things in life: academic performance to some extent, salary, level of job you will reach to a minor extent—but they are very limited. What I suggested in my talk today is that they may actually be hurting us. Our overemphasis on narrow academic skills—the kinds that get you high grades in school—can be a bad thing for several reasons. You end up with people who are good at taking tests and fiddling with phones and computers, and those are good skills but they are not tantamount to the skills we need to make the world a better place.

What evidence do you see of this harm?

IQ rose 30 points in the 20th century around the world, and in the U.S. that increase is continuing. That’s huge; that’s two standard deviations, which is like the difference between an average IQ of 100 and a gifted IQ of 130. We should be happy about this but the question I ask is: If you look at the problems we have in the world today—climate change, income disparities in this country that probably rival or exceed those of the gilded age, pollution, violence, a political situation that many of us never could have imaged—one wonders, what about all those IQ points? Why aren't they helping?

What I argue is that intelligence that’s not modulated and moderated by creativity, common sense and wisdom is not such a positive thing to have. What it leads to is people who are very good at advancing themselves, often at other people’s expense. We may not just be selecting the wrong people, we may be developing an incomplete set of skills—and we need to look at things that will make the world a better place.

Do we know how to cultivate wisdom?

Yes we do. A whole bunch of my colleagues and I study wisdom. Wisdom is about using your abilities and knowledge not just for your own selfish ends and for people like you. It’s about using them to help achieve a common good by balancing your own interests with other people’s and with high-order interests through the infusion of positive ethical values.

You know, it’s easy to think of smart people but it’s really hard to think of wise people. I think a reason is that we don’t try to develop wisdom in our schools. And we don’t test for it, so there’s no incentive for schools to pay attention.

Is the U.S. Education System Producing a Society of “Smart Fools”? Claudia Wallis, Scientific American

Related links:

Alfred Binet, New World Encyclopedia

The Silicon Valley Billionaires Remaking America’s Schools, Natasha Singer, New York Times

#P4TC related link: TIC...February 17, 2013
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Pushing the Quantum Limit...

A zoom in on the Josephson junctions. Two layers of niobium are visible in the image, with the upper film colored blue and the lower film colored red. Josephson junctions are formed in the circular pits (they look a bit like an element of a muffin tin) where the two layers overlap (green). Credit: K. Lehnert/NIST/JILA

Topics: Black Holes, Dark Matter, General Relativity

Here’s a surprising fact: We don’t know what makes up 80 percent of the matter in the universe. I don’t mean that the matter is made of atoms, and we just don’t know which kind of atoms. What I mean is that four-fifths of the universe appears to be made of something that isn’t atoms at all, or more to the point, it’s not made from any of the fundamental particles that we know of.

Why do we think that this mystery matter exists? The short answer is that Albert Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity, has painted us into a corner. When we look through telescopes at stars and galaxies moving through the universe, something we can’t see is causing their motion to bend in a particular way. Einstein’s theory of gravity tells how much of this invisible mass—physicists call it “dark matter”—there must be to bend the trajectory of things we can see.

Faced with a situation like this, we make guesses (hypotheses) that we hope explain our strange observations. A good hypothesis should both be consistent with every known fact and have other detectable consequences. If we look for these other consequences and don’t find them, we discard or revise our hypothesis.

Somewhat to my surprise, I find myself working on an experiment designed to look for the consequences of a hypothetical dark matter particle known as the axion. This was surprising because physicists, like those in all professions, divide themselves up into distinct sub-fields. Predictably there are rivalries between, and stereotypes associated with, different cultures that build up around the subfields—the rough equivalent of engineering versus sales in the corporate world.

NIST: Pushing the Quantum Limit in the Search for Dark Matter, Konrad Lehnert
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Our Closest Star...

An artist's rendering of the newly named Parker Solar Probe spacecraft approaching the sun. Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory
Topics: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, NASA, Research, Solar Flares

It's a mission that's been in the works for nearly 60 years. NASA says it will launch a spacecraft in 2018 to "touch the sun," sending it closer to the star's surface than ever before.

The spacecraft is small – its instruments would fit into a refrigerator — but it's built to withstand temperatures of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, all the while maintaining room temperature inside the probe.

"Even though the sun is so close to us, there's actually a lot about it we don't understand," says heat shield lead engineer Betsy Congdon from the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

Scientists are hoping the data gathered might solve some of the big mysteries about the sun.

NPR: NASA Plans To Launch A Probe Next Year To 'Touch The Sun'Rae Allen Bichell, Merrit Kennedy
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On Stupid...

Intellectual Takeout - Bonhoeffer on the ‘Stupidity’ That Led to Hitler’s Rise, Annie Holmquist

Topics: Existentialism, Stochastic Modeling, Politics

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, The Gap, Exxon Mobil, ConocoPhillips, National, Grid, Apple, Adobe, Danfoss, Levi Strauss & Co., Mars Incorporated, Hewlett Packard, Enterprise, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Morgan Stanley, Unilever, Tiffany & Co Dignity, Health Ingersoll, Rand, Intel Corporation, PG&E Corporation, Johnson Controls, Royal DSM, The Hartford, Salesforce, Schneider Electric, VF Corporation

A lot of US businesses are concerned about the potential trade ramifications of a US withdrawal,” Elliot Diringer, executive vice president of the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, the organization that sponsored the full-page ads, told Business Insider. “They think it’s important that the US remain in Paris to ensure them access to the growing clean energy markets around the world, and they see that a US withdrawal could hurt their access to those markets.”

During his time as CEO of Exxon Mobil, Trump’s now Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said the company supported the agreement.

“At Exxon Mobil, we share the view that the risks of climate change are serious and warrant thoughtful action,” Tillerson said at a speech in 2016. “Addressing these risks requires broad-based, practical solutions around the world.” [1]

We have joined Nicaragua - a country we decimated in the "war on drugs" to arm the Contras and Syria - currently in a meltdown of civil war and refugees - and Russia as now one of four nations opting out of the Paris Climate Accords, hat tip to Pittsburgh.

I have an appreciation that when you talk about the age of the universe and the younger in comparison age of the Earth, humans have a perspective of "I'm from Missouri: I'll believe it when I see it." So, sense we've never SEEN a billion years its hard even with radiometric dating to prove to fellow humans that such an age is...provable.

2050 is 33 years, or a little over a traditional generation away. Non-scientists question actual scientists' stochastic models. President Bannon has reasserted himself by damning generations yet born. [2] Thirty-three years is enough time for incremental changes in the climate to take place and be seen by human eyes either living or born in 2017.

The non-sensational name of the phenomenon is "anthropogenic climate disruption." Despite the list of companies covering two fossil fuel companies and many that use them in either manufacture, power generation or transportation of goods and services, our chief "executive" wants to renegotiate ala his ghostwriter's inaugural tome, obviously to put his stamp on it as his ego won't allow him to follow the policies of his predecessor.

The irony is it will be China that will lead the way in green tech and alternative energy generation because they HAVE to: the very air is the number 1 way of dying in their vast country. [3] They will employ their billions of citizens and leave us in the global dust. [4] This will diversify their economy from electronics to that market, making solar and wind cheaper in comparison. In response to rising seas, they will likely move their populations over that landscape inland as other parts of the planet ponder other options. Lobbyists for the fossil industry (my guess) will make laws to combat the "free market" in this regard, similar to solar being so prohibitive to own in Koch-ruled Oklahoma. [5] Germany, China et al will step forward as well, time's arrow in Entropy points always inexorably to the future...it is only the Neanderthals denying science howling at the moon that revel in the nation's dark past as "ideal."

1. 28 major US companies that don’t want Trump to abandon the Paris agreementVeronika Bondarenko, Business Insider2. Trump Will Withdraw U.S. From Paris Climate Agreement, Michael D. Shear, NY Times3. China's Smog Is as Deadly as Smoking, New Research Claims, Feliz Solomon, TIME4. China cementing global dominance of renewable energy and technology, Michael Slezak, The Guardian5. The Koch Brothers' Dirty War on Solar Power, Tim Dickinson, Rolling Stone

Related links:

Are You Proud to be an American Today? Charlie Pierce, Esquire MagazineGiant iceberg poised to snap off from Antarctica: scientists, Mariëtte Le Roux, Yahoo! News
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Fifth at the Center...

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology, Einstein, General Relativity

General relativity has stood the test of time. But researchers are still exploring alternatives to the theory, attempting to unify gravity with other forces or to explain observations attributed to dark matter and dark energy. Many of these theories involve an additional force beyond the four known fundamental forces. Now, Andrea Ghez and Aurélien Hees at the University of California, Los Angeles, and co-workers, have analyzed the orbits of stars around the Milky Way’s center to derive limits on such a fifth force. While similar constraints had been obtained in weak gravitational fields, this is the first time fifth-force scenarios have been tested in a strong field, such as that created by the supermassive black hole at the center of our Galaxy. [1]

* * * * * * * * * *
Our current understanding of the Universe states that it's governed by four fundamental forces: gravity, electromagnetic, and the strong and weak nuclear forces.

But there are hints of a fifth force of nature, and if it exists, we'd not only be able to fill the remaining holes in Einstein's general relativity - we'd have to rethink our understanding of how the Universe actually works. And now physicists have figured out how to put this mysterious force to the ultimate test.

Gravity and the electromagnetic force are on the larger end of the scale - electromagnetic force is needed to keep our molecules together, while gravity is responsible for ensuring that entire galaxies and planets aren't ripped apart.

It's all very neat and sensible, but there's a problem - in a lot of ways, gravity is the 'odd one out' in this very important group.

For one thing, gravity is the last of the four fundamental forces that humans haven't figured out how to produce and control.

It also doesn't appear to explain everything that it should - studies have shown that there's more gravity in our Universe than can be produced by all the visible matter out there. [2]

1. Synopsis: Restricting the Fifth Force, Matteo Rini2. Physicists Are Probing The Centre of Our Galaxy to Find The Missing Fifth Force of Nature,BEC CREW #P4TC related link Fifth Force...May 31, 2016
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Puff N Stuff Planet...

An artist’s rendering of KELT-11b, a “Styrofoam-density” planet recently discovered by Lehigh astronomers that orbits a bright star in the Southern Hemisphere. (Image by Walter Robinson/Lehigh University)
Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, Space Exploration

Fifth-graders making Styrofoam models of the solar system may have the right idea. Lehigh researchers have discovered a new planet orbiting a star 320 light years from Earth that has the density of Styrofoam. This “puffy planet” outside our solar system may help solve the long-standing mystery of the existence of a population of highly inflated giant planets.

“It is highly inflated, so that while it’s only a fifth as massive as Jupiter, it is nearly 40 percent larger, making it about as dense as Styrofoam, with an extraordinarily thick atmosphere,” said Joshua Pepper, astronomer and assistant professor of physics at Lehigh, who led the study with researchers from Vanderbilt University and Ohio State University, along with researchers at universities and observatories and amateur astronomers around the world.

The research, “KELT-11b: A Highly Inflated Sub-Saturn Exoplanet Transiting the V+8 Subgiant HD 93396,” is published in The Astronomical Journal.

The planet, called KELT-11b, is an extreme version of a gas planet, like Jupiter or Saturn, but is orbiting very close to its host star in an orbit that lasts less than five days. The star, KELT-11, has started using up its nuclear fuel and is evolving into a red giant, so the planet will be engulfed by its star and will not survive the next hundred million years.

Lehigh University: ‘Styrofoam’ Planet May Help Solve Mystery of Giant PlanetsAmy White, Kurt Pfitzer
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Face Huggers to Covenant...

The Alien, or xenomorph. Credit: TM & © 2017 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation

Topics: Commentary, Science Fiction, Space Exploration

I was sixteen when my best friend and I saw the first "Alien" movie in Winston-Salem, NC. We jumped, guffawed and were amazed at the special effects and the "Amityville Horror in space" motif. And just like any Earthbound horror flick, we both asked the same question each scene: "what the HELL are you still doing there?" I'm not sure we knew the alien as a xenomorph, just something big, menacing, acid-breathing and ugly.

From the review, they do make a nod to neutrinos and solar sails. Everything is apparently at relativistic speeds that are one day attainable. Prevalent in the movies was the mechanized nature of the spacecraft and the reference to corporations that in a Star Trek universe, gave way to warp drive, world brotherhood, Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle-defying replicators, money becoming obsolete; peace, love and phasers.

I was equally surprised to find a review on Physics Today. The quintessential question science fiction repeatedly asks "what does it mean to be human" has in this review the spotlight has been turned in reverse:

"Should we improve on our design?"

"What if our improvement no longer needs us?"

*****Spoiler Alert*****

In 1979 Ridley Scott shocked and delighted filmgoers with Alien, a tense tale of the crew of the spacecraft Nostromo. Despite the movie’s science-fiction theme, the subtext was pretty basic: “It was seven people locked in the old, dark house,” Scott says. “Who’s going to die first, and who’s going to survive?” Buried within the tale were questions about the role of humanity, the human condition, and the hubris of greedy corporations. Those themes were explored more thoroughly by other directors in the action-packed sequels Aliens, Alien 3, and Alien: Resurrection.

When Scott returned to the Alien universe by directing the 2012 prequel, Prometheus, what had been side notes to the horror and action became significant plot points. Prometheus looked more closely at the relationship between humans and our progeny, whether carbon or silicon based, and at how we influence and adapt to our environment. The film pondered the nature of the legacy that humans—or, for the purposes of the movie, a superintelligent alien species—hope to leave when they pass on.

The movie is beautifully filmed by Scott. It is nice to see old-school techniques such as building giant sets instead of using green screens to create a new world. The Covenant’s bridge has 1500 working lights and displays, and the astronaut suits were inspired by modern deep-sea diving suits. The acting, as you would expect from a Scott movie, is top notch; Fassbender (the androids David and Walter) stands out because he has the best lines.

Physics Today: Review: Alien: Covenant is more than an origin storyPaul K. Guinnessy
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Dawn's First Light...

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Big Bang, Black Holes, Cosmology, Theoretical Physics

Not long after the Big Bang, all went dark. The hydrogen gas that pervaded the early universe would have snuffed out the light of the universe’s first stars and galaxies. For hundreds of millions of years, even a galaxy’s worth of stars — or unthinkably bright beacons such as those created by supermassive black holes — would have been rendered all but invisible.

Eventually this fog burned off as high-energy ultraviolet light broke the atoms apart in a process called reionization. But the questions of exactly how this happened — which celestial objects powered the process and how many of them were needed — have consumed astronomers for decades.

Now, in a series of studies, researchers have looked further into the early universe than ever before. They’ve used galaxies and dark matter as a giant cosmic lens to see some of the earliest galaxies known, illuminating how these galaxies could have dissipated the cosmic fog. In addition, an international team of astronomers has found dozens of supermassive black holes — each with the mass of millions of suns — lighting up the early universe. Another team has found evidence that supermassive black holes existed hundreds of millions of years before anyone thought possible. The new discoveries should make clear just how much black holes contributed to the reionization of the universe, even as they’ve opened up questions as to how such supermassive black holes were able to form so early in the universe’s history.

In the first years after the Big Bang, the universe was too hot to allow atoms to form. Protons and electrons flew about, scattering any light. Then after about 380,000 years, these protons and electrons cooled enough to form hydrogen atoms, which coalesced into stars and galaxies over the next few hundreds of millions of years.

Starlight from these galaxies would have been bright and energetic, with lots of it falling in the ultraviolet part of the spectrum. As this light flew out into the universe, it ran into more hydrogen gas. These photons of light would break apart the hydrogen gas, contributing to reionization, but as they did so, the gas snuffed out the light.
Quanta Magazine: Discoveries Fuel Fight Over Universe’s First LightAshley Yeager
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Ultra Cold and Fermi-Hubbard...

Raw fermionic microscope image (left) and processed image showing that spin-up atoms occupy alternating lattice sites as expected in an antiferromagnet. The spin-down atoms have been removed from the image. (Courtesy: A Mazurenko et al. / Nature)

Topics: Condensed Matter Physics, Optical Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Solid State Physics, Superconductors

New insights into a popular and potentially useful model of how electrons behave in solids have been provided by an experiment involving ultracold atoms. Markus Greiner and colleagues at Harvard University in the US studied the behaviour of lithium-6 atoms that are held in an optical lattice and interact according to rules set out by the Fermi-Hubbard model.

They found that the system becomes magnetic at low temperatures – and that the magnetism disappears when the density of atoms is reduced. The team can now use its atomic simulator to explore regimes of the Fermi-Hubbard model that could harbour very interesting physics including high-temperature superconductivity.

The electronic properties of solid materials arise from quantum-mechanical interactions between large numbers of electrons. It is notoriously difficult to calculate these properties, so physicists rely on simple models to simplify the mathematics – but even models have significant computational challenges. One such scheme is the Fermi-Hubbard model, which represents electrons as Fermi–Dirac particles (fermions) that hop between fixed sites on a lattice and only interact with each other when they occupy the same lattice site.

Physics World: Ultracold atoms shed light on the Fermi-Hubbard modelHamish Johnston
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Tabby's Star...

Another explanation for the dimming is that KIC 8462852 is surrounded by a swarm of dusty comets.
Topics: Astrophysics, Dyson Sphere, Exoplanets, Kardashev Scale, Kepler Telescope, SETI

Astronomers and alien life enthusiasts alike are buzzing over the sudden dimming of an otherwise unremarkable star 1300 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. KIC 8462852 or “Tabby’s star” has dimmed like this several times before, prompting some researchers to suggest that the megastructures of an advanced alien civilization might be blocking its light. And now—based on new data from numerous telescopes—it’s doing it again.

“This is the first clear dip we have seen since [2013], and the first we have ever caught in real time,” says Jason Wright, an astronomer at Pennsylvania State University in State College. If they can rope in more telescopes, astronomers hope to gather enough data to finally figure out what’s going on. “This could be the first of several dips about to come,” says astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University. “Many observers will be closely watching.”

KIC 8462852 was first noticed to be dipping in brightness at seemingly random intervals between 2011 and 2013 by NASA’s Kepler telescope. Kepler, launched to observe the stellar dimmings caused when an exoplanet passes in front of its star, revealed that the dimming of Tabby’s star was much more erratic than a typical planetary transit. It was also more extreme, with its brightness sometimes dropping by as much as 20%. This was not the passage of a small circular planet, but of something much larger and more irregular.

Science Mag: Star that spurred alien megastructure theories dims againDaniel Clery

#P4TC related links

Needle In A Haystack...October 19, 2015Occam's Razor...February 8, 2016
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Sleuthing Antimatter...

Two white dwarfs head toward a collision in this artist’s illustration. New research suggests that the Milky Way's preponderance of positrons could come from a specialized type of supernova from colliding low-mass white dwarfs — an explosion that is difficult to detect, but rich in an isotope that generates this kind of antimatter.

Credit: NASA/Tod Strohmayer (GSFC)/Dana Berry (Chandra X-Ray Observatory)
Topics: Antimatter, Astrophysics, High Energy Physics

The majority of antimatter that pervades the Milky Way may come from clashing remnants of dead stars, a new study finds.

The work may solve a 40-year-old astrophysics mystery, the study's researchers said.

For every particle of normal matter, there is an antimatter counterpart with the opposite electrical charge but the same mass. The antiparticle of the negatively charged electron, for instance, is the positively charged positron. [Will Antimatter Power the First Starships?]

When a particle meets its antiparticle, they annihilate each other, giving off a burst of energy. A gram of antimatter annihilating a gram of matter would release about twice the amount of energy as the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.

More than 40 years ago, scientists first detected that the kind of gamma-rays that are given off when positrons are annihilated were being emitted from all around the galaxy. Their findings suggested that 10^43 positrons — that's a 1 with 43 zeroes behind it — were being annihilated in the Milky Way every second. Oddly, most of these positrons were detected in the galaxy's central bulge rather than its outer disk, even though the bulge hosts less than half of the Milky Way's mass.

Charles Q. Choi
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Aluna's Encounter: The Fissure

I planted my feet firmly on the ground. I never felt more connected to the planet where I stood than where I was right then in that moment. I took in a large, deep breath. It felt like I was breathing in the essence of crisp fresh snow.

And then I released.

This part of the plateau no one was allowed near. Off to the distance, I could see our city, Sheba, the buildings were made of gold and the streets were littered with diamonds and gems.

I zipped my jacket up and hid behind a large rock and waited.

The reason why people weren't allowed out this far from Sheba was because of the instability of the terrain. The scientists said that our world sometimes would converge with another world; a more dangerous world.

But this terrain was also where the agents came in and out of around this time of the evening. I wanted to see who they were bringing back this time.

A crackling of lightning and static happened and immediately two agents appeared with a boy in their arms, not much older than me 15 or maybe 16?

"Aluna! Call for help!" my older cousin Ndulu commanded me.

I guess my hiding spot wasn't so great at all, I was scared to call for help because I knew I would get into trouble but as I dialed the number on my cell phone the boy began to speak.

He struggled to speak, Ndulu's girlfriend Kissa placed her hand on the boy's chest and sung to him.

The blood pouring out of his body stopped but he was still dying. Kissa had harnessed the power of her voice to heal but it was a minor fix.

The doctors arrived quickly and performed emergency surgery on the young boy right there on the plateau. They made me help, I thought for certain I would be yelled at or chastised but I wasn't.

We were there for hours. Finally, when he was stable and the doctor's felt like he was in the clear to be moved. He lifted his hand, he was pointing behind me. Another crackle, another distortion in the air, I could only hear the wind and I was gone.

Read the Rest of Part One

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Have you ever wondered about the mystery of the human race and the so called evolution of people in according to movies? I have seen many movies and love the science fiction genre but i always tend to wonder how i don't know how many times where in the blazes black people went. Did we all die off first? Were we like the game show the Weakest link? Did we all die off first like in every movie if so the animal kingdom is prejudiced and seriously love them some dark meat. Did white people turn into cannibals and eat us all like chicken? Exactly what happens to us in all of the movies and shows television shows alike. Did we all turn on each other and tear each other apart? Somebody has got to have an answer out there or am i just tripping. And lets talk superheroes.....Really??? Does everyone have to have Black in front of their name?? Black Lightning!Black Goliath! The Black Panther!!!! Dun dun dun!!!!! Hello where are the Latino heroes? No where in every movie they are either dirt poor in the hood or drug dealers for some cartel with a cliche background of drugs or gang raised. And not a father figure to be found Really???? Why are all of the portrayals negative? So what did they catch that disease too and die off with us in the future? Last week i saw a post on FB of a 14 year old black student graduating from college the youngest ever! Where are all of these bright stars now like him. Did somebody just tuck them away somewhere and experiment on them in a lab or something? Why haven't we changed things yet? Why are we the most of the homeless in america? Why are we the most unemployed in America? Why are we not more successful in business and life then we are. And why is it that when we think we have arrived we shut the door on where we came from and pretend we don't belong to our past by not helping anyone else to get there? It's not really that difficult to see when you step away and think about it. I thought about this for a long time as i traveled the world in the military. Being away makes you think about home a lot and reflect on your experiences and life while away. Things like why someone like Terry Crews hasn't even been considered for a superhero role i mean seriously everyone in Hollywood has to go through hell in training to look like that and he is that way everyday of the year. What about Michael Jai White? Have you seen Blood and Bone turn that man loose and give him a suit! He could actually kick everybody else's butt without breaking a sweat! So tell me why hasn't anyone written something that he could take on and own? Its simple because the people who own Hollywood don't want it so what do we do? Why hasn't anyone done anything about it yet? Producers? Black producers and heavyweights in Hollywood?? Why do we mistrust each other so much that we cant pull this off? Its laughably easy to do so why haven't we? Is everyone that jaded that they wont work as a team for not even one thing to work? Is our pride that bad that we cant support each other? Did we forget where we came from like our moms used to say? My mom died a couple of years ago and her words of wisdom are like gold to me now. Things haven't changed a bit if they only knew and understood that the money they spent on those new shoes would buy stock in the same companies and the long term would get them the credit and cash they need to live by. There is a way.... to be continued tomorrow.

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Free Everywhere including Amazon

Excerpt from Terror on Telderan


"Walls of the great chamber where alliance meetings were held were covered with fine priceless art gathered from various galaxies through the years. Soft blue lighting emanating from the oval table lit the room.
Lazon’s Apex was the first to arrive, his long tan robe fluttered behind him as he briskly approached his seat at the head of the oval glass table. Shortly after his arrival the Emperor of Natropi entered the chamber, he was followed by King Ashnar of Deltor, Elder Manook from the planet Tygalon, King Zerlious of Xanar, and the Supreme Ruler of the water planet Nep’o. One by one the members entered the room, greeted each other and sat down on one of the gray high back chairs. Each chair was equipped with a panel concealing buttons and switches allowing members to vote or view images on the glass table in front of them. When the sixteenth member took his seat the Apex glanced over at the empty chair once occupied by the ruler of Otar and began the meeting."
 

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Download “Kingdom of Lethe” Free

Greetings everyone!

My short story, Kingdom of Lethe is FREE to download from amazon.com for the next three days only. 

STORY DETAILS

Title: Kingdom of Lethe
Author: Tonya R. Moore
Genre: Science Fiction (futuristic, steampunk)
Blurb: a new case drags a detective into the strange world of a woman claims her beautiful memories have been stolen.
 
Click the link below to Download :
The regular price for this Kindle ebook is $2.99, so please try to download a copy while it's still free.
About the Author

'm a Jamaican writer of speculative fiction–short stories, web serials, and novelettes. Currently living in Florida, I'm pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in Creative Writing and English with a concentration in Fiction.

 

Homepage: https://tonyarmoore.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/tonya_writes

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonya.writer

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Plasma Jet Engines...

"Plasma Stingray" Leaving on a plasma plane Future Workshop Electrofluidsystems TU Berlin

Topics: Aeronautical Engineering, Green Tech, Plasma Physics

Plasma jet engines were initially the fanfare of science fiction, and in theory quite practical. In the weightless and vacuum of space, it could propel astronauts to Mars in a little over a month, as in the case of the VASIMR project by NASA.

The caveat to this is that electrical plants are in and of themselves massive affairs, and typically not flight worthy or aerodynamic.

This will require thought, creativity, engineering miniaturization (likely exploiting nanotechnology designs yet dreamed or drafted) and above all: national will. It would be thrilling to work on such a project and bring such devices into existence. The roar of jet engines at airports and service shows could be reduced (in my imagination) to a hum and a distant memory. This could be the beginning of shuttle designs for ascending to orbital space stations or decent from mother ships on distant worlds.

Sadly, since traditional jet engines use fossil fuels, I can foresee armies of lobbyists and current industries invested in keeping the status quo allied against this endeavor.

As the oft stated colloquialism goes: "This is why we can't have nice things."

FORGET fuel-powered jet engines. We’re on the verge of having aircraft that can fly from the ground up to the edge of space using air and electricity alone.

Traditional jet engines create thrust by mixing compressed air with fuel and igniting it. The burning mixture expands rapidly and is blasted out of the back of the engine, pushing it forwards.

Instead of fuel, plasma jet engines use electricity to generate electromagnetic fields. These compress and excite a gas, such as air or argon, into a plasma – a hot, dense ionised state similar to that inside a fusion reactor or star.

Plasma engines have been stuck in the lab for the past decade or so. And research on them has largely been limited to the idea of propelling satellites once in space.

Berkant Göksel at the Technical University of Berlin and his team now want to fit plasma engines to planes. “We want to develop a system that can operate above an altitude of 30 kilometres where standard jet engines cannot go,” he says. These could even take passengers to the edge of the atmosphere and beyond.

The challenge was to develop an air-breathing plasma propulsion engine that could be used for take-off as well as high-altitude flying.

New Scientist:
Plasma jet engines that could take you from the ground to space
Sandrine Ceurstemont

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Scientific American:
Young Scientist Makes Jet Engines Leaner and Cleaner with Plasma
Melissa C. Lott

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Cyber Bomb...

Computer virus bomb. Credit: Hiroshi Watanabe Getty Images
Topics: Biology, Computer Science, Medical Physics, Politics, Research

I use Opera almost exclusively because it allows me to surf with a personal VPN I've set up. I don't know what measures mobile phone providers are coming up with countermeasures for the malware that makes the Internet the wild west. As a nation, we have the self-inflicted wound of a "healthcare" system that is oxymoron, less geared towards service than profitability. The dollars swimming in their stock portfolios makes the greedy inadvertently along with all of us targets.

My father's advice still rings true: "locks are made for honest people."

Hospitals and medical devices in the U.S. are extremely vulnerable to the type of massive cyber attack that tore through more than 150 countries Friday, and some health care providers here may have already been—or soon will be—hit, cybersecurity analysts warn.

The attack relied on a type of malicious software called ransomware, which keeps users from accessing their computer systems until they pay a ransom. The pernicious new strain, aptly named WannaCry, froze or slowed business and health care computer systems around the world, including several within the U.K.’s National Health Service.

The malware exploits a vulnerability in the Windows operating system that many system administrators have not yet patched—including at many U.S. hospitals, experts warn. Moreover, WannaCry does not distinguish between a computer, smartphone or medical device. And, unlike the case with many other cyber attacks, a user need not click a link to unknowingly install it; if a health care system is connected to the internet and using an outdated system, the malware can find it and infect it.

Scientific American: U.S. Hospitals Not Immune to Crippling Cyber Attacks
Dina Fine Maron

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Qubit Supremacy...

Image Source: Link below
Topics: Computer Science, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

IBM Research has built its most powerful quantum chips yet, and is putting them up for use by researchers via the cloud.

The most impressive of its new chips is a prototype that uses 17 of the quantum equivalent of digital bits known as qubits. That’s up from five last year, and more than the nine that were featured in a device recently tested by Google. Like some of Google’s other latest quantum chips, IBM is starting to lay out qubits in orientations where they sit side by side. In the past it’s been hard to do that and ensure that the hardware still works, but the fact that it’s now achievable suggests that scaling up the devices even further will be plausible in the future.

The second of the new chips, pictured above, features 16 qubits, which makes it less powerful than the larger chip. But this device is robust enough that IBM is using it to upgrade its online service, which allows any researcher to test algorithms on quantum chips. The previous version of the service, which was part of the first-ever head-to-head quantum computer race, used the firm’s five-qubit chip. Meanwhile, the 17-qubit device will be opened up to just a handful of specific researchers to test.

MIT Technology Review:IBM Nudges Ahead in the Race for Quantum Supremacy, Jamie Condliffe
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A photographer takes a picture of the inside of a prototype of a drift tube of the new linear accelerator Linac 4, the newest accelerator acquisition since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), which is due to feed the CERN accelerator complex with particle beams of higher energy, during its inauguration at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Meyrin near Geneva, Switzerland, May 9, 2017. REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Topics: Cancer, CERN, High Energy Physics, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics

A new particle accelerator unveiled at CERN, the European physics research center, is expected to spawn portable accelerators that could help doctors treat cancer patients and experts analyze artwork.

CERN is gradually upgrading its hardware to get more data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), its 27-km (17-mile) circular accelerator that smashes protons together at almost the speed of light to probe basic questions about the universe.

Its latest upgrade, resembling a 90-metre oil pipeline hooked up to a life support machine, replaces the 39-year-old injector that produces the flow of particles for the LHC.

Standing by the new Linac 4 machine, which cost 93 million Swiss francs ($93 million) and took 10 years to build, project leader Maurizio Vretenar said CERN had miniaturized the technology and saw many potential uses.

"It's a brave new world of applications," he told Reuters in Linac 4's tunnel 12 meters under Geneva.

CERN has already built a version to treat tumors with particle beams and licensed the patent to ADAM, a CERN spin-off owned by Advanced Oncotherapy.

Another medical use is to create isotopes for diagnosing cancers. Since they decay rapidly, they normally have to be rushed to patients just in time to be used.

Reuters Science: New CERN particle accelerator may help both doctors and art sleuthsTom Miles
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The Power of Comedy...

Image Source: Poem Hunter
Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics

The FCC is leading a faux investigation into the late night comedian Stephen Colbert using the bleeped "cock holster," yet apparently silent about the current resident of the country's seat of power using the phrase "grab 'em by the p----" in a Hollywood Access hot mic moment (they'll say he was a candidate then, and it didn't count). The bar for acceptable presidential behavior has obviously been substantially lowered.

Comics in particular, from court jesters, Bill Maher and Jon Stewart have a knack to point out the absurd under the cover of levity. We laugh as we are informed, meanwhile the much maligned mainstream media is always in the hunt for Nielsen Ratings, in a precarious balancing act between financial viability and Constitutional duties.

Some, like Al Franken put down the shtick long enough to run for public office and become effective in the senate, perhaps replacing Ted Kennedy as its "lion."

Democratic republics are not like microwave popcorn: they don't just "work" when you set the timer and walk away. They require a vigilant citizenry and engagement in every election that occurs in your municipality. Otherwise, the horror vacui will be filled by dark money and not in line with the goals of the citizens of a republic.

Whether this one survives is not exactly a laughing matter.

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