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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?”
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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| 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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| Image Source: Spring 8 |
Topics: Optical Physics, Laser, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, X-rays
New experimental tools and techniques open windows that allow scientists to peek into unexplored scientific realms and to test theoretical predictions. X-ray imaging is unique, both because of the penetrating power of x rays in solid matter—as Wilhelm Röntgen discovered in 1895—and because x-ray wavelengths are short enough to resolve the interatomic spacing in matter via diffraction—Max von Laue’s discovery in 1912. Those properties allow scientists to push forward fundamental physical sciences and to find major applications in structural imaging, from new commercial drugs to jet turbine blades.
The early success of the Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) has bolstered plans for more accelerator-based x-ray free-electron lasers (XFELs) in Europe and Asia. But the new machines create a challenge: The ultrabright femtosecond pulses generated by XFELs have properties far beyond previous sources. They carry a million times more pulse energy than synchrotron x rays, are 10 000 times shorter, and have coherence that can produce focused x-ray beams with intensities up to 1020 W/cm2, more than a billion times greater than any previously achieved. The XFELs demand new research methods that can take advantage of those characteristics.
Physics Today:
Brighter and faster: The promise and challenge of the x-ray free-electron laser
Philip H. Bucksbaum and Nora Berrah
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| Image Source: Wikiquote "Once you have learned to read you will forever be free." "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." More at Brainyquote.com |
Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Frederick Douglass, History, Human Rights
Frederick Douglass was known well for being an escaped slave, committed republican (at that time in our history, the progressive party) and abolitionist. He was a staunch advocate of equality and education, seeing his own personal emancipation centered on something slaves were banned from doing: reading. His former master chastised his wife, saying teaching Frederick how to read would "ruin him" and make him unfit for the peculiar institution. He couldn't have agreed more.
In his uniquely bellicose manner, Mr. Douglass tackles this in a long soliloquy given July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY. I have thought of Charleston, South Carolina and how the narrative of our nation had been determined by a defeated foe to the point of redefining the narrative and main rationale (if you can call it that) behind the Civil War: the continued indentured servitude of a kidnapped people in perpetuity. In light of the debate sparked by the assassination of nine innocents in Mother Emanuel AME, and the symbol the terrorist so revered; the possibility on that symbol's removal in the bloody aftermath, I give you Frederick Douglass' apropos speech on its 163rd anniversary in scroll excerpt (not visible in some platforms) and read by the accomplished actor and voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones.
He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.
The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.
The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.
This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.
History is a Weapon: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Frederick Douglass
Related link: What the Civil War Can Teach us About Patriotism, Jarret Ruminski, PhD Historian, "That Devil History" blog
Okay; this is a rant, and will probably be my only, or one of very few blogs. That's because I have other venues for writing.
Anyway: Here is something that has caused me consternation for a very long time. Albinos in the media have always been seen as other than human. We have been given red demonic eyes, stark white unruly hair and skin that resembles a corpse or a powdered doughnut.
In fact, we have been portrayed as vampires, aliens, an even underground cannibal brainless brutes. Although I do know some brainless brutes with albinism, this is by no means the norm for people like me.
Believe me; if I had the power to make my eyes glow and make people step out in front of trucks, I certainly would. But I can't do that so breathe easy.
If you have ever seen Village of the Damned, The Time Machine, The Omega Man, or read a Marvel comic you know what I mean. If you've seen End of Days (I know that guy) read The Famished Road or Sent For You Yesterday, you are all too familiar with the albino as some otherworldly freak. I'm not even going to talk about Powder. ugh.
There are people who actually think we are witches or magic.Sometimes this is rather funny. I met a man who thought I was a witch and offered to save my soul. But sometimes it can be downright dangerous. People in parts of Africa have been hacking up albino children collecting their body parts for sale. They have had to put children in safe camps for their protection.
But I digress.
There was a man who contacted me about an albino character he wanted to create for a game. I suggested he give the character long blond dreads. That was a long time ago and I haven't heard anything.
So what would happen if there were a character in a comic book that was just a person with albinism? No superhuman powers, not out to conquer the universe. It would be just like putting an evil dwarf in your story who wasn't evil.
It's all about using disability and difference, as a metaphor for "the other".
I'm not going to offer any answers here since I don't have any myself. How do you portray a person with albinism in the comics? Why would you put them in the story? How would you draw them? I'll let you figure that out. I just thought I'd give you some food for thought.
A new social network that uses a points-based system to encourage people to interact with content is closing in on 1 million registered users since it launched earlier this month, according to the company's CEO.
"We've been around for a week. We are already serving significant impressions," said Bill Ottman, the founder and CEO of Minds, in an interview last week. "We're not saying we're an ad network on the scale of Facebook or Google or television: It's the potential of what it might become."
Minds has existed as a blogging platform since 2012, reaching 30,000 users in its private alpha mode. But on June 19, the developers behind it launched a new social network and associated mobile applications for Apple and Android devices. And according to Ottman, it's already wildly popular, with almost 1 million accounts.
Angel Lover
By: Tricia Skinner
I was given a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.
Half-human angels with a mission to kill their fallen angel fathers, oh the DRAMA.
This is the second book in Skinner’s Angel Assassins Series. Even though I missed the first one, it was not hard at all getting drawn in and caught up. The hero of the story, Kasdeja (Kas for short) is the tech savvy Nephilim (half-angel) in a group of Nephilim, abandoned by their fathers as children and sentenced to die for being half human.... MORE
Writers of shorter works could lose out on revenue as company’s Kindle Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited no longer pay per copy downloaded
Self-published authors could be paid as little as $0.006 per page read under new rules planned by Amazon.
Writers who make their works available through Amazon’s Kindle Owners Lending Library, and a similar service called Kindle Unlimited, will no longer be paid per copy downloaded following a move announced last week.
Instead, they would receive a payment based on how many pages had actually been read, with longer books receiving a higher potential payment than shorter works.
In an email to authors, sent on Wednesday, Amazon revealed exactly how little that payment would be.
Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, NSBP, Steven Weinberg, Theoretical Physics, World Science Festival
The above is not the cover of "To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science." I downloaded that to my Kindle. This is just an autographed copy of one of his earlier famous books I'm proud to own. I'm equally proud to have met him.
As I've said, I met Dr. Weinberg at an NSBP conference in Austin, Texas in 2011. I meant to attend the World Science Festival in New York and hear this lecture personally. I alas, had a mandatory training related to work (it was good, though I went kicking and because it was good, not quite screaming towards the end of it). So accept my own consolation prize with the embed below. Consolation prize #2: I joined the World Science Festival as my "Father's Day" present to myself. I'll hopefully attend - barring anything else put on my schedule - next year.
Amazon.com:
To Explain the World: The Discovery of Modern Science, Dr. Steven Weinberg
And while I'm very proud of my one African American supporter it would be nice to have a few more. I'm only 70 dollars away.
I think I tried this before but this is very close to actually happening. You can read about it and hopefully support it here:
https://www.startjoin.com/writersofcolor3
I would love to review books like this:
(For all 14 images go here. Yes I hate the popups too.)
I just have some initial thoughts about the tragic yet entirely predictable outcome in the Trayvon Martin case.
One, it seems that the prosecution's heart just wasn't in it. They had to be dragged kicking and screaming into the case and it showed. Two, even if it had been filmed or if there were more witnesses there's a very good chance that you would have gotten that same verdict. There have been those cases as well, although I'm thinking of Oscar Grant where his death was pretty much filmed and that cop served a whopping one year sentence. Three, even if Trayvon Martin had lived and could have presented his own version there's no evidence that would have changed the verdict either. Just take a look at the local Jordan Miles verdict where Miles was beaten to an inch of his life and we couldn't get a conviction against the cops. Four, it has become clear to me that black men are Marked for Death in this society. It's clear that we're being groomed for the prison industrial complex at best and just routinely murdered at worst.
I'm really not sure what can be done about any of these things. I guess more decent paying jobs for everyone would help. Perhaps more black men need to carry guns so that predators will at least know they'll be in a fight. But when I reverse the situation in my head -- where Trayvon Martin shoots Zimmerman -- every time Trayvon Martin gets convicted and for a long time.
I was looking through my Facebook feed and found a number of helpful illustrations and images that explain these problems. These images made me feel a little better for some reason. So enjoy the slideshow. Related: The story about the arrest of Dennis Henderson, for, as best as I can tell, being "uppity" tells the problem from a Pittsburgh angle here and here. Somewhat Related: My struggle against Peter Gidas of Gidas Flowers and the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission (PHRC) continues. And justifiably so.
Title: The Ca$h Ninja Grant
By: Grant Chambers
Image Credit: KDA
To: Descendants of Counter-Inversion Veterans
It is neither our intent, nor desire to cause controversy. However, history provides little insight into the early life of the war hero, Antoine Clark, aka ‘Tha Ca$h Ninja.’ Contemporaneous records re-inflated from submerged computronium memory cores indicate that he was, at best, a middling third age hip-hop troubadour. Like other members of the genera superset, Tha Ca$h Ninja existed in a fragmented entertainment space deeply riven by notions of sub-genera purity and domain exclusivity. Pre-Inversion Artists frequently eschewed popular appeal, and Tha Ca$h Ninja was no different. For most members of various crews, clans and assorted musical combines, the widespread acclaim reached by classical artists (e.g. B.I.G., The Notorious) was considered a betrayal of artistic integrity. Musical balkinization resulted in flourishing, if not necessarily lucrative, hyper-local music scenes.
History should not judge the Tha Ca$h Ninja harshly for his lack of commercial success, both for his later contributions to the Second Refactoring of the Western Convergence, and the fact that artists who did achieve some measure of cross-genre appeal usually did so through a combination of exploitative cultural appropriation and deployment of unregulated memetic-catalyzed Langfordian Syrens. Given the gross storage and algorithmic processing requirements necessary to deploy such vectors, Tha Ca$h Ninja, despite assurances regarding his personal net worth, would not have been financially able to support such domain violations.
Instead, Tha Ca$h Ninja’s core support grew out of a loyal fanbase cultivated from the dense urban conglomerations doting Bayou Country. He innovated a fork of ‘southern’ hip-hop that incorporated الدحية and full VR simulacrum of mundane events and various prior sexual conquests engaging in Dabke-style erotic dancing. To wit, his seminal hit “Ca$h Ninja is günna’ Ninja that A$$!” featured amelodic, and at times rambling, exposition on the nature of ontological empiricism paired with bass loops and FVR recordings of interactions with surgical and germ-line modified gender-fluid individuals and constructs.
As our hypothesis (attached) posits, etho-phrenol recognition shows that many of the exotic dancers were likely Greco-Syrians recruited from the large populations settled in and around Mobile after the Burning Sands War. If conclusively proved, it lends an explanation as to why the later incarnations of the Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary organization contained analogous command structures with various Levent-originated ‘Free’ forces.
By Tha Ca$h Ninja’s own statements, he was an avid and enthusiastic student of both Bushido and Wing-chun. While other historians take these statements as boastfulness in keeping with the hyper-masculinity of the genera, we aim to prove these claims. What is not in dispute is that Tha Ca$h Ninja did exhibit considerable proficiency in light energy weapons during the Reclamation of Texarkana from Class 2 autonomous, non-metabolizing carnivorous forms.
During the later stages of the Inversion, when the Silicon Lords retreated to western Rockies, Tha Ca$h Ninja Mercenary was one of the first outfits commissioned by the Distributed Republic to halt the advance of Semi-sentients across the Mississippi. Though apocryphal, it is said that Tha Ca$h Ninja, accompanied by his most loyal retainers "These Amazonian Bitches!", could be seen battling amphibious-mechs on the river bank, his white mink coat trailing behind him and his crisp athletic shoes caked with red mud.
We hereby submit this grant to the Descendants of Inversion Veterans and ask permission to excavate the sites indicated, and recompile any imprinted data structures such that a complete understanding of the Second Battle of Vicksburg can be had.
For more short fiction Friday please visit http://moorsgatemedia.blogspot.com/
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| Source: Facebook meme |
Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Philosophy, Thermodynamics
"Man - a being in search of meaning." Plato
Zeroth Law of Thermodynamics - The "zeroth law" states that if two systems are at the same time in thermal equilibrium with a third system, they are in thermal equilibrium with each other. [1]
First Law of Thermodynamics - Is the application of the conservation of energy principle to heat and thermodynamic processes: The change in internal energy of a system is equal to the heat added to the system minus the work done by the system. [1]
Second Law of Thermodynamics - In any cyclic process the entropy will either increase or remain the same. Since entropy gives information about the evolution of an isolated system with time, it is said to give us the direction of "time's arrow" . If snapshots of a system at two different times shows one state which is more disordered, then it could be implied that this state came later in time. For an isolated system, the natural course of events takes the system to a more disordered (higher entropy) state. [1]
Third Law of Thermodynamics - Is essentially a statement about the ability to create an absolute temperature scale, for which absolute zero is the point at which the internal energy of a solid is precisely 0.
Various sources show the following three potential formulations of the third law of thermodynamics:
1. It is impossible to reduce any system to absolute zero in a finite series of operations.
2. The entropy of a perfect crystal of an element in its most stable form tends to zero as the temperature approaches absolute zero.
3. As temperature approaches absolute zero, the entropy of a system approaches a constant. [2]
Sources:
1. http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/heacon.html#heacon
2. http://physics.about.com/od/thermodynamics/a/lawthermo_5.htm
There are admittedly other parts of the 2nd Law I don't focus on purposely: heat transfer and refrigerators. It will become apparent [hopefully] in a moment.
Thermodynamics is the science of "energy and its transformations," usually applied to systems. As I've alluded to in previous posts, the system in question is modern civilization itself. It's just an observation, not a doomsday prophecy. I see common cause-kissing cousins in Al Qaeda, ISIL/ISIS and Dylann Roof, hence the meme from Facebook above.
We tend to fight Entropy in various ways personally: diet, exercise, vitamins. It doesn't keep us from dying, but theoretically it preserves us; prolongs our stay on the planet.
A society can fight Entropy through education, as in the case of what should be called forevermore the Roof massacre, the less-educated tend to be more prejudiced and have less of a nuanced view of the world. It's typically "us versus them," as he stated an hour after his clandestine attendance at a bible study and his rampage began. Would he have been so angry, would he have sought the web sites of racist lunatics had he finished high school? Perhaps learned a trade or finished at least a college degree? His focus on debunked mythologies about African Americans purposely causing - in his twisted logic - genetic annihilation through miscegenation could have been alleviated by education. That would have resulted in stable finances, self-esteem that usually leads to better wardrobe selection, cologne, charm and if fortunate: coitus. He could have relieved his problems; his libido and nine innocent souls would still be with us.
The violence we're seeing in the news is tribal and primitive, born of ignorance and a sense of entitlement that is pathological. Isla Vista in Santa Barbara last year; a torrent of violence on black bodies since Trayvon Martin - shot, choked and beaten; churches set aflame appear to have made a "comeback" - to now a pastor and state senator and his members gunned down in their own house of worship. As these primitive instincts express themselves so violently, we as a nation are approaching Entropy as regressive types struggle in an ever-changing world that frightens them and their perceived loss of meaning, purpose and "specialness" in it. Unfortunately, "times arrow" has no reset button, and nation states not careful nor renewing itself with education of its citizenry, can drift inexorably from order...to chaos. It is at this juncture of our current history, ignorance - in the spirit of Thomas Gray's "Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College" - is NOT nor ever has been: bliss.
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| The MIT researchers' prototype for a chip measuring 3 millimeters by 3 millimeters. The magnified detail shows the chip's main control circuitry, including the startup electronics; the controller that determines whether to charge the battery, power a device, or both; and the array of switches that control current flow to an external inductor coil. This active area measures just 2.2 millimeters by 1.1 millimeters. |
Topics: Computer Science, Electrical Engineering, Internet of Things, Semiconductor Technology
The latest buzz in the information technology industry regards "the Internet of things"—the idea that vehicles, appliances, civil-engineering structures, manufacturing equipment, and even livestock would have their own embedded sensors that report information directly to networked servers, aiding with maintenance and the coordination of tasks.
Realizing that vision, however, will require extremely low-power sensors that can run for months without battery changes—or, even better, that can extract energy from the environment to recharge.
Last week, at the Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits, MIT researchers presented a new power converter chip that can harvest more than 80 percent of the energy trickling into it, even at the extremely low power levels characteristic of tiny solar cells. Previous experimental ultralow-power converters had efficiencies of only 40 or 50 percent.
Moreover, the researchers' chip achieves those efficiency improvements while assuming additional responsibilities. Where its predecessors could use a solar cell to either charge a battery or directly power a device, this new chip can do both, and it can power the device directly from the battery.
Phys.org:
Ultralow-power circuit improves efficiency of energy harvesting to more than 80 percent, Larry Hardesty
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| Artistic rendering of a lithography by photonic nanojets from an optically trapped microsphere. Courtesy: A A R Neves |
Topics: Biology, MEMS, Nanotechnology, Optical Tweezers
Traditional optical tweezers, which have been around for decades, are one of the most important modern-day tools in biology, physics and chemistry. They work by trapping micron-scale objects near the focus of a laser beam. The technique allows objects to be picked up and moved to another place using just light.
Being able to control the position of individual molecules in this way is critical in medical research, for example, when manipulating viruses or large proteins. And being able to accurately place tiny objects, such as carbon nanotubes or nanowires, for instance, in a given structure or array will be important for fabricating nanomachines such as molecular motors and other devices in the future.
Nanojets are relatively new structures and are typically formed under the “shadow” of an illuminated dielectric cylinder or microsphere. The microsphere acts as a focusing lens and the nanojets form thanks to the constructive interference between the incoming and scattered light fields.
The nanojets created by Antonio Alvaro Ranha Neves of the Centro de Ciências Naturais e Humanas at the UFABC are a little more complex since they rely on highly focused incident light beams (in contrast to the plane waves generally used to form such jets). Neves used two collinear and co-propagating beams to create his nanojets and positioned one trap in a particular direction with respect to the other. It is the precise positioning of these two beams in this way that allows the nanojets to be switched on and off at will, he explains When they are switched on, they exert a trapping force on the microsphere, holding it approximately midway between the focuses of both beams.
Nanotechweb: Optical tweezers produce “nanojets”, Belle Dumé
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| Illustration of a molecule in the presence of gravitational time dilation. The molecule is in a quantum superposition of being in several places at the same time, but time dilation destroys this quantum phenomenon. (Courtesy: Igor Pikovski, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics) |
Topics: Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger Wave Equation, Superposition
Why do we not see everyday objects in quantum superpositions? The answer to that long-standing question may partly lie with gravity. So says a group of physicists in Austria, which has shown theoretically that a feature of Einstein's general relativity, known as time dilation, can render quantum states classical. The researchers say that even the Earth's puny gravitational field may be strong enough for the effect to be measurable in a laboratory within a few years.
Our daily experience suggests that there exists a fundamental boundary between the quantum and classical worlds. One way that physicists explain the transition between the two, is to say that quantum superposition states simply break down when a system exceeds a certain size or level of complexity – its wavefunction is said to "collapse" and the system becomes "decoherent."
An alternative explanation, in which quantum mechanics holds sway at all scales, posits that interactions with the environment bring different elements of an object's wavefunction out of phase, such that they no longer interfere with one another. Larger objects are subject to this decoherence more quickly than smaller ones because they have more constituent particles and, therefore, more complex wavefunctions.
Physics World: Does time dilation destroy quantum superposition?
Edwin Cartlidge, science writer in Rome
Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Charleston, History, Human Rights
I was in Charleston, South Carolina for my oldest son's graduation from Army Basic Training. My wife and I took a horse and buggy tour of Charleston, past the historic Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, its history and high steeple. The memories of being burned down and the parishioners worshiping in secret; Dr. Martin Luther King and Corretta Scott King leading from its steps marches to facilitate the world we currently have - not perfect, but better supposedly than the one we had.
Dylann Storm Roof ended that blithe innocence with the blood of nine innocent members spilled on the floor during...bible study.
The coward did not pick a certified street gang - Bloods, Crips, Gangster Disciples, Latin Kings - and go out in a martyred blase of glory. Surely, he would have started the "race war" in his manifesto; surely he would have spurred others to his cause. They would make room on Mount Rushmore for his gaunt young face. He would be immortal...and dead.
More than one article appears on the subject with its own official hash tag: #TakeItDown. Standard bearers of the GOP like Mitt Romney and state representatives are now calling for its removal from the South Carolina capital, something along with an African American president, I thought I'd never see. Rev. Clementa Pinckney - the pastor and state senator of Mother Emanuel now lies in state...beneath that flag. Mr. Roof was enamored with that, along with the ensigns of Apartheid South Africa and equally repugnant Rhodesia.
The confederate flag has been first above the capital of South Carolina since 1961; made law in 1962, so as long as I've been on the planet. 1961 was the 100th anniversary of the Civil War's beginnings. It's first appearance was in 1954, which Lee Atwater succinctly described in the "Southern Strategy." This has been done with a wink-and-a-nod; covered with platitudes like "tradition"; "heritage"; "way of life"; "Christian values" ignoring the domestic terrorism and outright encouragement of genocide by fire, explosions, gunshot and lynchings...now gunfire in a church. Yet another moment of eulogy over shootings like Newtown that should not happen...that not just children's lives matter, but #BlackLivesMatter. They matter in Chicago and Newtown; they matter in country municipalities and cities...they matter in churches that traditionally, have bible study on Wednesday nights, and I assume synagogues and mosques have similar times of cultural unity either weekly or annually - Ramadan and Yom Kippur comes to mind.
Dylann published a manifesto on the Internet. He gunned down nine innocent American souls. Falsely, it was spread through social media early on Roof was treated to a Burger King meal after his arrest; Freddie Gray in Maryland [definitely] a broken back. Freddie (18) was made by the media to look like a "thug"; Dylann (21), predictably as a confused "kid."
I'll likely tune into or DVR what the president has to say yet again. He looks like he's getting tired of it; I'M getting tired of it. He is one year and four days older than I, yet the gray hair and cracked skin makes him look ninety. As a country, we're an international embarrassment and likely, our lower mortality with respect to the rest of the industrialized world is a self-inflicted wound made by constantly playing...Russian roulette. I am particularly tired of talking about this, yet again. Our "normal" is national psychosis; E pluribus unum to warring tribes.
