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Smooth Operator...

Illustration of the programmable photonic circuit. Photons enter from the left, are processed and exit to the right. The connector at the centre top of the circuit is to the external control system. (Courtesy: Jacques Carolan et al./Science).


Topics: Consumer Electronics, Electrical Engineering, Nanotechnology, Optics, Photonics, Quantum Computer, Semiconductor Technology


Note: "Smooth operator" is in the link title of the above photo in the article. No insult or creative infringement to Helen Folasade Adu (the singer Sade) was intended.

A group of physicists in the UK has made a programmable photonic circuit that can be used to carry out any kind of linear optics operation. The researchers say that the device provides experimental proof of a long-standing theory in quantum information, and could help speed the development of photonic quantum computers, as well as establishing whether quantum computers are fundamentally different from their classical counterparts.

The research builds on work carried out back in 1897 by German mathematician Adolf Hurwitz, who showed how a matrix of complex numbers known as a unitary operator can be built up from smaller 2 × 2 matrices. A unitary operator provides a mathematical description of a linear optical circuit. This is any circuit that uses fairly standard optical components – such as mirrors, half-silvered mirrors and phase shifters – to route photons and cause them to interfere with one other. The operator has as many rows as there are output ports in the circuit and as many columns as there are input ports. With only one photon in the circuit, the probability that it travels from a particular input to a particular output is given by the square of the corresponding matrix entry.

Physics World: Physicists build universal optics chip, Edwin Cartlidge

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Scientists have created a transistor made up of a single molecule. Surrounded by just 12 atoms, it is likely to be the smallest possible size for a transistor – and the hard limit for Moore’s law.

The transistor is made of a single molecule of phthalocyanine surrounded by ring of 12 positively charged indium atoms placed on an indium arsenide crystal, as revealed in the scientific journal Nature Physics.

Click here for the full story

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On A Roll...

Image Source: Science Alert


Topics: Boeing, Lasers, Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, Star Trek, Star Wars


Earlier this year, Boeing patented a force field. Now, companies pursue patents largely for protection of intellectual property, but these pursuits have been legitimate good press beyond just the occasional TV commercial that blurs by in 30 seconds or so. If it works (the force field), it would only be good at this time for jeeps on the ground in conflicts that involve Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs). This fusion jet would change the game of propulsion terrestrially as well as for interplanetary travel. Like the previous patent filing, this is just a concept at the moment.

This is another neat idea that brings fusion propulsion a little closer. I don't think we'll be breaking the champagne bottles christening Utopia Planitia shipyards just yet.

Last week, the US Patent and Trademark Office approved an application from Boeing’s Robert Budica, James Herzberg, and Frank Chandler for a laser-and-nuclear driven aeroplane engine.


Boeing’s newly-patented engine provides thrust in a very different and rather novel manner. According to the patent filing, the laser engine may also be used to power rockets, missiles, and even spacecraft.

As of now, the engine lives only in patent documents. The technology is so out-there, that it’s unclear if anyone will ever build it.

Science Alert:
Boeing just patented a jet engine powered by lasers and nuclear explosions
Benjamin Zhang, Business Insider

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Chase Vapor

Why Chase Vapor is important: Chase Vapor is a show anyone can enjoy, but it is a show FOR geeks, most specifically kids who don't know they're geeks yet. Being a geek or nerd or whatever your preferred nomenclature is, can be a hard sad lonely time. The world isn't kind to people who don't fit in, especially when you're young. Weirdness is seldom treated as the commodity that it should be. As a weird young kid whose brain was full of 'What ifs' Star Trek was the perfect show. Every episode a 'What if' with a mystery and a moral conundrum thrown in., and ultimately a franchise about good people struggling to figure out what the right thing to do is. A universe where you could be a large gruff crinkly headed alien, and still have a ship full of friends who respected you, or a morphing glob of goo who solved crimes and was uncomfortable in social situations, but still got invited to them. And like any space faring sci-fi show, it gave you the stars. No matter how bad your day was you just had to wait 'til nightfall and look up. To a geek the night sky is no mere black curtain with holes poked in it, every star becomes an adventure just waiting to be imagined.
The outcast, picked on, left out kids of the world need that. The opportunity to turn a speck of distant light into a spark of magic. That spark can turn you from feeling like a loser, to chasing the dream of becoming an astronomer, or an engineer, or an astronaut, or a doctor, or if you're very unlucky a writer. It is vitally important that the next generation believe that they can save the world just like Chase, because they will very likely need to. Right now there is a child sitting somewhere feeling left out cause she isn't really into the pink princess doll she got for Christmas, or feeling confused because no one the same color as him ever seems to save the day in any of the shows he watches. Give them Chase Vapor, Chase Vapor will give them the stars.

Please go here https://studios.amazon.com/projects/79693 Check out the show and Rate and comment on what you see.

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The other day I was listening to the podcast The Auteur Cast. In discussing The Empire strikes back, one of the hosts used the character of Lando Calrissian to question why there are so few black people in science-fiction. It’s not a new question. In 1976, on the album Bicentennial Nigger, Richard Pryor observed:

“I don’t like movies when they don’t have no niggers in ‘em. I went to see, I went to see Logan’s Run, right. They had a movie of the future called Logan’s Run. Ain’t no niggers in it. I said, well white folks ain’t planning for us to be here. That’s why we gotta make movies. Then we be in the pictures.”



It would be nice to say that times sure have changed in the 37 years since. There’ve been nineteen black astronauts in NASA, there’s a black president, a black attorney general and countless other black people have attained positions of power or advanced science (it's even fair to say that Neil deGrasse Tyson is a household name). But that's science-fact and in Hollywood science-fiction the future remains so white you’ve gotta wear shades.

Most space operas depict a universe populated by aliens with prosthetic alterations to their eyes and ears and in all shades of skin tone… almost invariably played by white people. If one tries to think of an alien played by a Latino, I can think of Edward James Olmos (in blue contacts) in Battlestar Galactica as Caprican (of Tauron descent) Commander Bill Adama and that’s it (OK, and Tahnee Welch in the Cocoon movies). Ricardo Montalban as Khan doesn’t count because firstly, Khan Noonien Singh was apparently supposed to be South Asian, given his title “Singh,” and a native of earth -- not an extraterrestrial. Speaking of Asian aliens – are there any besides Flash Gordon’s Ming the Merciless, emperor of the planet Mongo (obviously meant to be the face of yellow peril and who was also always played by white actors)?

Continued...

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I saw a future where........

Was watching morning news show, saw a couple of guys riding elongated skate boards carrying poles for balance and momentum. They looked like gondoliers in Venice..........

A skateboard city? Pedestrian sidewalks for walkers, wide streets and long skateboards with one driver and four passengers. It is a striking sight, how folks get on board, get in sync together and ride with a sort of mindless ease. Carrying stuff, reading their ePads and chattering back and forth with effortlessness. There is an apparent laid back attitude as if this mode of transport is preferred, even for the aged.  Wide skateboards carrying goods, delivering food, the precision of the riders to navigate is uncanny. The poles they carry to balance and propel are mostly plain but some are ornate and some are high-tek concealing lights, weaponry and safety items.

There are solitary blade skaters zooming about who often link shoulder to shoulder resembling a centipede to share power and aerodynamics for long trips in high speed lanes.

There is an ultra speed lane that has a unique feature, a crew of pushers. They patrol the byways looking for a flag signal from linked groups to speed-assist. The pusher has motorized wheels and emergency clearance to break riding rules. Pushers keep things moving, quick to point out or teach "good form" which is the law.

As with any city an element that skirts "good form" exists. They are slightly to overtly out of sync, somewhat arrogant and always dress the part. Shorts and tees and the fake tattoos they change like chameleons to hide and allude. They inhabit the skate parks and are all about extending their "terror-tory". They shout "remember the old school when skating was free and off grid?". They hate that boarding has become normalized, yet they don't prefer to walk.

There is always talk of the gliders of the future, no more wheels. Sure water gliders are as old as boats but land gliders? That is the holy grail of boarding. Come on, you got to believe the Silver Surfer is god. Ok, he's a herald of a galaxy eater. Not to worry, NASA has the TUMS project to protect us. So SS can once again be Harold the skateboard rider.   

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W. M. Keck Foundation Award...

Mark G. Raizen, Professor of Physics


Topics: Atomic Physics, Optical Physics, Laser Cooling, Nanotechnology, Nobel Prize, Research


In a society of near instantaneous gratification, this represents years of painstaking research and discipline. You can see more of Mark's research here at the research groups' home page. I salute this achievement and am proud to call he and his wife Alicia good friends of the family.

AUSTIN, Texas — The W. M. Keck Foundation has awarded scientists at The University of Texas at Austin two grants totaling $1.5 million to develop a powerful, alternative method for cooling atoms and involve more undergraduate students in using new advanced technologies for research.

Known for supporting high-impact research with the potential to reshape scientific understanding, the Keck Foundation’s contributions to The University of Texas at Austin total more than $7 million with the two new grants announced this month.

A grant of $1 million from the Keck Foundation’s Science and Engineering Research Grant Program will support the “Ultra-Bright Atom Laser” project led by Mark Raizen, a professor in the Department of Physics. The project proposes a new method for cooling atoms in a gas phase toward absolute zero.

Until now, laser cooling has been the standard method for cooling atoms and was recognized by a Nobel Prize in Physics in 1997. Raizen's method could be far more effective than the existing laser-cooling practice and result in an ultra-bright atom laser, predicted to surpass the current state-of-the-art by a factor of 100 million. Applications of the powerful new atom laser include innovations in nanoscience, tests of fundamental physics and new, noninvasive detection of gravitational anomalies, such as underground tunnels or oil and gas reservoirs.

UT News:
Keck Foundation Awards $1.5 Million for New Method to Cool Atoms and Student Research

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Pentaquark...

CERN: An illustration of the possible layout of quarks in a pentaquark (Time)


Topics: Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Particle Physics, Quarks, Quantum Mechanics, Theoretical Physics


Actually, the idea of a pentaquark - penta = 5; quark, the building blocks of matter consists of 4 quarks and 1 antiquark bound together has been around for a while, at least quarks theoretically since the 1960s. The LHC - the celebrated particle accelerator of Higgs Boson fame, found strong evidence , but the Jefferson Lab in Newport News, Virginia saw experimental evidence in 2003, and hints at the LHC recently. I'm going to go with Time (also source of the illustration) and the BBC write ups, excerpted because of their gasping fan "cuteness." However, I do appreciate the attempt at increasing the physics literacy of the general public that's of late is hostile to all things science. Note on the link to "LHCb collaboration": there are a LOT of collaborators, but if you want, they're #2 on the page search results at the link.

Time: The discovery may provide hints as to what happens when giant stars collapse

Physicists at the Large Hadron Collider at the CERN in Switzerland announced the discovery of a new particle, the pentaquark.

The Collider, which smashes atoms together, showed signs of the pentaquark in 2011 and 2012, but scientists wanted to make absolutely sure of its existence before announcing its discovery. Tanya Basu

BBC: Scientists at the Large Hadron Collider have announced the discovery of a new particle called the pentaquark.

It was first predicted to exist in the 1960s but, much like the Higgs boson particle before it, the pentaquark eluded science for decades until its detection at the LHC.

The discovery, which amounts to a new form of matter, was made by the Hadron Collider's LHCb experiment.

The findings have been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters. Paul Rincon

Physics arXiv:
Observation of J/ψp resonances consistent with pentaquark states in Λ0b→J/ψK−p decays
LHCb collaboration

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Blind Spotting...

Source: Technology Review


Topics: Acoustics, Humor, Materials Science, Radio Frequency Microelectronics, Sonar


I had the brief temptation to call the post "Bat Sonar," but for the youth that missed the exposure to the campy antics of Adam West/Burt Ward Batman and Robin, the metaphor would have been over their heads due to lack of exposure and severely dated me (not that I haven't numerous times already).

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Acoustic "Radar" Spots Stowaways Inside Metal Cargo Containers

Seeing people on the other side of metal walls has never been possible despite the array of high-tech sensors that can peer through other materials. That looks set to change.

The detection of stowaways in lorries, shipping containers, and train carriages is an increasingly important activity as countries all over the world attempt to tackle the illegal movement of people across borders. Various technologies are designed to help but all have significant limitations.

Passive millimeter wave sensors can see through walls but require a source of illumination such as the sky. That generally rules out the detection of stowaways hidden away from sunlight.

Microwave radar systems provide their own source of illumination but generally struggle to detect motionless people. In any case, these signals do not pass through metal walls and so are unsuitable for cargo containers and the such-like.

Then there are systems based on the detection gamma rays. These pass easily through metal walls and are designed primarily for the detection of nuclear materials. But they pose a significant health hazard for humans and so are not suitable for spotting stowaways.

Finally, there are acoustic sensors, which can certainly send signals through metal walls but have never been powerful or sensitive enough to detect humans accurately on the other side.

Until now. Today, all that changes thanks to the work of Franklin Felber at Starmark, a scientific consulting company based in San Diego, who has built and tested an acoustic sensor that is both powerful and sensitive enough to detect the breathing motion of an otherwise stationary human on the other side of a cargo container wall.

Physics arXiv: Demonstration of novel high-power acoustic through-the-wall sensor,
Franklin Felber

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And Pluto...

Latest photos of Pluto's puzzling spots.
Source: John Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Planetary Science, Space Exploration


..."and Pluto," the end of the memorized verse we recited to my teacher Mrs. Flynt showing our mastery of the [then] nine planets for a good grade. Pluto - apart from my elementary school science classes - has entered our imaginations again. By the time this auto posts, several images will have been broadcast around the globe. An ounce of the ashes of astronomer Clyde Tombaugh - the discoverer of Pluto - is on board poetically for this journey. I'll likely update this post with some video embed when available.

When New Horizons rocketed away from Cape Canaveral on Jan. 19, 2006, Pluto was the ninth planet in our solar system. It was demoted to dwarf planet a scant seven months later.

Tombaugh's widow and two children offered up an ounce of his ashes for the journey to Pluto. The ashes of the farm boy-turned-astronomer are in a 2-inch aluminum capsule inscribed with these words:

"Interned herein are remains of American Clyde W. Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto and the solar system's 'third zone.' Adelle and Muron's boy, Patricia's husband, Annette and Alden's father, astronomer, teacher, punster, and friend: Clyde Tombaugh (1906-1997)" *

A truth from fiction, Clyde Tombaugh has gone "where no one has gone before." \\//_

The promised embed:

NASA: Pluto and Charon: New Horizons' Dynamic Duo
New Horizons: NASA's Mission to Pluto
* USA Today:
Astronomer's ashes nearing icy world he discovered: Pluto, Marcia Dunn, Associated Press

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I am still just reeling from this book. I was a skeptic when this became the Blerd Book Club read, but I have to say the club got it right. A nine year old quick thinking girl, Letitia, goes to a her sister’s kindergarten class to save her and ends up saving about a dozen of her classmates as well from certain death during the zombie apocalypse.

MORE...

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Kinetic Theory and the Blitz...

Credit: Thomas Fuchs


Topics: History, Humor, Kinetic Theory of Gases, Mathematical Models, Stochastic Modeling


This happens at 10:00 am EST. There are two things I thought I'd never see growing up in the south: 1) an African American president; 2) retiring the old Virginia battle flag Mr. Roof admired as the Confederate Flag. My first encounter with it was April 5, 1968: this was the day after the assassination of Martin Luther King. I was five and at Bethlehem Community Center, my kindergarten. I remember the tears when we were told Dr. King had died; I remember the flag and the jeers from the streets outside, the honking and gunshots celebratory of his death. Like I said: two things from personal experience I thought I'd never see. It took no less than the magnum opus, thunderous crescendo of the descendant of Jefferson Davis - Jenny Horne to drive the point home.
Okay, this was a bit of a stretch but it APPEARS in Scientific American. I mean a stretch applying theory meant for essentially micro environments to macro environments. They apply the fact that armies and gases have densities and a little imagination. There have been other models of war using either known mathematics or natural phenomena. I was also mildly entertained by the credits for the author of the article and the photo credit. I'll let you discover without mention. I hope I'm not in trouble with too many high school physics teachers, and it makes your Friday.Smiley Faces

I just found this smiley face funny:

Smiley Faces

In 1939 Nazi Germany debuted the “lightning war,” or blitzkrieg, in Poland. This deadly military offensive involved mounting a burst of firepower-heavy attacks to cause confusion and break through an enemy's lines unexpectedly. Nearly 80 years later Russian physicists have found they can model this surprise tactic with a scientific law: the kinetic theory of gases.

The parallels are obvious enough, with some creative thought. Both armies and gases have densities—troops per square kilometer or atoms per cubic meter. Basic units also have measurable cross sections that define territorial coverage—for troops, average weapon range, and for atoms of gas, electron orbital reach. And for both entities, when cross sections overlap, confrontations occur. Further, in the case of a blitzkrieg, defenders' dispersion can be seen as resembling the widely separated atoms of a gas.

Scientific American:
The Kinetic Theory of Gases Accurately Predicts Nazi Blitzkrieg Attacks, Tim Palucka

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“No matter how successful I am, and no matter how many things I have under my belt, it just feels like nothing is enough” – those are the words of the writer and performer Dylan Marron, talking about his own difficulty in finding work and being cast in Hollywood.

We know that Marron isn’t alone. There’s a dearth of non-white actors getting roles in Hollywood. We know because of the statistics, the lack of award nominations and the steps that have been taken to counteract it.

Click here for the full story

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Immersion Lithography...

Figure 1. (a) A sketched diagram of 193i exposure head. Water fills the gap between the final lens and the wafer. The water injection and confinement system is not included in the diagram. (b) Optical paths of two-beam interference for both "dry" and 193i exposures.


Topics: Economy, Education, Photolithography, Nanotechnology, Semiconductor Technology, STEM


This is a good article in Solid State Technology and I leave a follow-on link to SPIE (the International Society for Optics and Photonics). Regular photolithography is focusing ultraviolet light through a chrome mask (through a medium of air), which contains the pattern for the integrated circuits that make up a lot of our electronics, the Internet and in the case of our economy and travel yesterday: Wall Street and United Airlines. Immersion Lithography usually involves water as the illustration from the SPIE figure above shows.

I believe a great deal in the educational infrastructure that must exist for not just (as I've often referred to) future replacement workers, but from the perspective of viable jobs for young people to matriculate into, the "mystery" of high tech needs to be removed. It's more like hard work, the same effort in say, mastering a sports skill, a similar discipline can be mustered for STEM fields. It keeps crime down and hopes up. As a nation, we need to stop obfuscating about contrived controversies in science; fighting the Civil War (what about war is "civil" anyway?); the racism, sexism, homophobia and get everyone in the boat to ROW - hard. Patching ignored holes only delays our sinking... or salvation.

While the lithography equipment market sometimes seems like A Tale of Two Cities, it’s more complicated than that. The basic fact is that the semiconductor industry is soldiering on with 193-nanometer immersion lithography technology and multiple-patterning exposures while extreme-ultraviolet lithography continues its long-aborning development.

ASML Holding is the leading vendor in the EUV lithography field, and it’s also a big supplier of 193nm immersion lithography systems. The industry consensus now seems to be that the near future will see the combined use of EUV and immersion, possibly at the 10-nanometer process node and definitely at the 7nm node. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess.

ASML had big news to reveal at the SPIE Advanced Lithography Symposium in February. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing had successfully exposed 1,022 wafers within 24 hours on ASML’s NXE:3300B EUV system, with sustained power of more than 90 watts from the scanner’s power source.

In April, ASML reported that “one of its major U.S. customers” had agreed to order at least 15 EUV systems. Industry speculation on the unidentified customer quickly centered on Intel. The Dutch company has been relatively quiet since then.

Solid State Electronics:
Immersion lithography remains the industry’s workhorse technology, Jeff Dorsch
SPIE: 193nm immersion lithography: Status and challenges, Yayi Wei and David Back

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Does Amazon Love Authors?

Revised payment methods for Kindle  Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited, like other Amazon services, are author and reader friendly, argues Orna Ross

Zemanta Related Posts ThumbnailNow will you admit that Amazon is no friend to authors?” said my book-loving friend, who had telephoned me from Ireland for a chat. He’d heard a writer on Irish radio talking about what he called  “Amazon attack on author incomes”.

“You know, whenever I see what the media writes and says about Amazon,” I said, “I wonder if the information I’m getting about other topics is as skewed and inaccurate.”

“But this poor writer’s income had been totally decimated, overnight. On a whim. They are only paying writers for the number of pages read now, instead of the whole book. Aren’t you worried?”

Sigh.

I do understand that most people outside our business (and some within) are not au fait with the difference between a reader buying an ebook on Amazon vis a vis borrowing it via Kindle Owners Lending Library (KOLL), or downloading it as part of their Kindle Unlimited (KU) subscription. [Details on these differences, from a writer’s perspective, here, if you’d like to know more]

But this wasn’t an honest misunderstanding. This was, once again, a wide strand of the press and reading public refusing to let facts inform the latest chapter in their “Amazon Is A Scary Monster” story.

My friend is a reader who resents ebooks and his determination to diss Amazon over this latest move was echoed in media, old and new, across  the world — UK daily newspapers right-wing ( The Telegraph) and left The Guardian, culture press USA (The Atlantic), business press (Canada Business), tech reporting (Gismodo Australia), not to mention among authors online. In all of these articles, and hundreds more, errors, fallacies, and  miscalculations flew, laced with howls of protest from self-interested authors.

They confused sales with borrows, did calculations that overlooked how KENP (Kindle Edition Normalized Page) counts are higher than print page counts, overlooked the leap in the global fund from $3 million to $11 million; and generally assumed bad motives and outcomes.

It was left to author blogs (see Hugh Howey and Catherine Ryan Howard ) and the ever-thoughtful publishing commentator, Porter Anderson, to keep the record accurate.

So Why All The Negativity?
You could put it down to the negativity bias to which, psychologists tell us, we are all prone — do you pay more attention to a good review or bad? — but it’s more than that. What we have here is fear.

Amazon is powerful and has flexed that power in negotiations with publishers. It is at the forefront of technological change that has thrown up big challenges for independent publishers and wholesalers, booksellers and authors. And it keeps on ringing the commercial changes in an industry that is conservative and that, quite rightly, values its cultural role as well as its commercial well-being.

Continued...

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It’s fair to say that Daniel José Older is having a very good year.

In the first week of 2015, Penguin published his first novel, Half-Resurrection Blues. By the end of January, Anika Noni Rose’s production company had optioned the film and television rights to the book, as well as rights for the following two in the series. This week sees him publish a hotly anticipated young adult novel called Shadowshaper.

To top it off, he got married in March.

Until 2014, Older worked by day as an emergency medical technician in Manhattan. He wrote mostly at night. And he sees himself, explicitly, as an outsider to the literary and publishing scene: “I entered the writing work clearly and strategically to do this thing, to write these books, to get them into the world and fuck with people, and to generally fuck shit up,” he says at a restaurant in Brooklyn.

Shadowshaper is set in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood of Brooklyn, where Older lives. The protagonist, a young Afro-Latina named Sierra, learns about her family’s history of supernatural powers. She can, as it turns out, interact with the spirit world. Her family has gone to great lengths to conceal that fact from her, but now it’s Sierra’s responsibility to protect them from what’s coming.

Older’s imagined Brooklyn is full of danger, less gentrified than the real-life version, and decidedly diverse. “We’re doing something very political by deciding whose life matters, where we’re going to focus things, and who we erase from the picture,” he says. This kind of diversity, he feels, is lacking in most other fantasy YA novels. “When we create worlds based on this world that don’t include diversity, we’re lying,” he says. “We’re not being honest as authors. Even if it’s infused with magical powers, or zombies, or whatever you’ll have, we should still be trying to tell the truth. Then, it becomes a question of what truth, how are we telling it, and whose truth do we take the time to repeat?”

Older is critical of books that he says fail to include racial diversity – such as, he says, The Hunger Games. He chalks it up to a “phenomenal lack of imagination” on the part of the author, and a laziness, he feels, that is designed to keep some people out of the picture. “To be able to figure out all these quirky things about what you imagine the future will be like, and not somehow have any folks of colour doing anything heroic or worthwhile in it, what happened?” he asked. “Where did we go?”

Continued...

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My MS is almost ready for submission

I recently uploaded the first 25 pages of my MS on my website: www.snpetro.com/. Below is a description of my novel and a link to the first 25 pages.

The Warrior from Monde:

Human women are ideal for seeding Castra’s alien army. But the children of such a union are not conceived without a price. One part his mother, and nine parts his father, Lucian is like no other child. With his father absent, his mother faces raising him in squalor, and in a country unfamiliar to her, Monde.

Lucian grows up in a world of politics, religious contention, and spies. But what he craves is war. And he has been gifted with the body, mind, and courage of a warrior. His formidable strength and superior intelligence incite both awe and envy. He earns praise from as high as the king. But not all see Lucian’s abilities as benign. Suspicion soon forms around him. His inborn charm keeps most enemies at bay. But not for long. He struggles to suppress growing, dark urges. And he sees the world as rank with weak men and vain challenges. This leaves him to question why he was born with such gifts. Are they to be wasted on a world he feels distant from?

This book is currently undergoing editing. I hope to have it ready for agent submission by the fall.

Read the first 25 pages (author’s edit): The Warrior from Monde, first 25 pages

Please read the sample, and leave a comment on my site here: https://snpetro.com/

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Physics of Gas Mileage...

Credit: John Moreno/Argonne National Laboratory


Topics: Applied Physics, Mechanical Engineering, Physics and Pop Culture, Semiconductor Technology, Thermodynamics


If you bought a car in the late 2000's - post 2010 - you likely have a feature in your vehicle that calculates your gas mileage and range you have on the amount of fuel. This can be a little confusing for sure, but surprisingly (or if you follow this blog, not so much) a lot of physics goes into the LED display on your dashboard. This article from Phys.org gives a good overview of the five properties that goes into that calculation your integrated circuits do for you. After all, it's summer in the northern hemisphere, and wherever you are on that part of the globe, we're all driving SOMEWHERE.

Physics is inescapable. It's everywhere, making your Frisbees fly, your toilets flush and your pasta water boil at a lower temperature at altitude. We've harnessed these forces, along with chemistry and engineering, to build a marvelous contraption called a car—but many of the same properties that allow you to fly along the freeway also affect how much gas mileage you get out of your car. We talked to Argonne transportation engineer Steve Ciatti to explore some of the forces at work in your engine when it's on the road.

1. Vapor pressure
2. Friction
3. Drag coefficient
4. Momentum
5. Rolling resistance

Bonus: Air temperature

Phys.org: Five properties of physics that affect your gas mileage, Louise Lerner

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