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The Moon's Moon...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2015 at 6:28am


This artist's rendition shows part of the plan for NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission to robotically pluck a boulder off an asteroid and ferry it to high lunar orbit. Astronauts would then visit the boulder as early as 2025. Image Credit: NASA

Topics: Asteroids, Mars, Moon, NASA, Robotics, Space Exploration, STEM


In the 2020s, NASA’s human spaceflight program will revolve around sending astronauts to high lunar orbit to study a small boulder robotically plucked from the surface of a large asteroid, agency officials announced yesterday. The announcement is a crucial milestone for the agency’s nascent Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), which is intended to set the stage for future missions sending humans to Mars and other deep-space destinations.

NASA’s decision comes after months of delays as two separate teams investigated how to best achieve ARM’s objectives. The original ARM proposal, dubbed Option A, called for a “grab and bag” approach, in which a robotic space tug captures a small asteroid whole and wraps it in a protective sheath before guiding it into a stable lunar orbit. Though the boulder-snatching concept, Option B, is projected to cost $100 million more than Option A, it won out because it offers more operational flexibility, said NASA associate administrator Robert Lightfoot.

Then again, science is secondary for ARM. Its stated purpose is to test and develop new technologies for spaceflight, such as NASA’s Space Launch System heavy-lift rocket, its Orion deep-space crew capsule and an advanced solar-electric propulsion engine suitable for long-haul cargo trips. NASA is also pitching the missions as a step forward in demonstrating how a spacecraft can alter the orbits of potentially Earth-threatening asteroids—that’s the “Redirect” part of the ARM moniker.

Scientific American:

NASA Chooses a Boulder as the Next Destination for Its Astronauts
Lee Billings

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High Flight...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 27, 2015 at 6:33am
Bessie Coleman: Image Source at [2] below, slide 5 of 7


Topics: Education, Diversity in Science, NASA, Spaceflight, Star Trek, STEM, Women in Science


"Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,

And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;

Sunward I've climbed and joined the tumbling mirth of sun-split clouds -

and done a hundred things You have not dreamed of -

wheeled and soared and swung high in the sunlit silence.

Hovering there I've chased the shouting wind along

and flung my eager craft through footless halls of air.

"High Flight," John Gillespie Magee, Jr., Arlington National Cemetary

The recent death of Sally Ride (2012), the first American female astronaut, has brought to light her contributions to the space program and science. Dr Ride has influenced many females to get into the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Today, there is an increased push for the American education system to improve their STEM programs as well as to get students to show interest in the fields. It is important to bring attention to some of the African-American females that have, and are still, paving the road for future scientists, astronauts or any STEM degree holders.

Nichelle Nichols is not an astronaut, but her role in Star Trek as Lieutenant Uhura inspired many African-American women to become astronauts and astrophysicists including Mae Jemison. One of the first African-American female roles that was not a servant, Nichols used her position of popularity to work with NASA to recruit minorities and female personnel for the space agency. Those recruited include Dr. Sally Ride, the first female American Astronaut, Colonel Guion Bluford, the first African-American in space and many more. A genuine interest in space and the advancement of space Nichols flew aboard NASA’s C-141 Astronomy Observatory, which analyzed the atmospheres of Mars and Saturn on an eight-hour, high-altitude mission. [1]

1. TheGrio.com: Black women making their mark in space and science,
Similoluwa Ojurongbe
2. Madame Noire:
Taking Flight: 7 Black Female Astronauts and Aviators Who Changed History, Terry Williams

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See-Through Solar...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2015 at 7:15am
New York City Skyscrapers as Seen Through High-Performance SolarWindow™ Module


Topics: Alternative Energy, Green Energy, STEM, Solar Power, Materials Science


Science TIME: It’s called SolarWindow, and it involves spraying clear windows with transparent, electricity-generating coatings. The breakthrough, according to developers New Energy Technologies Inc., comes because previously “the collection of electricity was possible only through use of a metal contact, which blocked visibility and limited transparency.” The coatings use the world’s smallest functional solar cells, which measure less than a quarter the size of a grain of rice.

W-I-I-T-F-M -- What this means for you:

  • Your smart phone charging from its face in a matter of minutes in the sunlight.
  • Office buildings generating and storing their own power, greatly reducing the cost of operation.
  • Ditto for your homes and thus, your heating and cooling expenses.
  • Your electric car, bus, train or plane could be self-sustaining.
  • It would make camping out in the woods rather interesting indeed.

What's exciting is reducing what has become a ubiquitous term: carbon footprint. Even if you're not a tree-hugging member of Greenpeace, I've never seen an instance where anyone went to war over sunlight.

Company Site: SolarWindow
Bloomberg: See-Through Solar Is Tomorrow’s Threat to Oil
JD Markman:
Why solar eclipsing oil may first cause a year-long crash, then a 17-year bull market

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Dr. Rosalyn Yalow...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 26, 2015 at 7:22am
Image Source: NobelPrize.org


Topics: Diagnostic Techniques, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Endocrinology, Metabolism, Nobel Prize, STEM, Women in Science

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1977

Born: 19 July 1921, New York, NY, USA

Died: 30 May 2011, New York, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Veterans Administration Hospital, Bronx, NY, USA

Prize motivation: "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones"

Field: diagnostic techniques, endocrinology, metabolism


jointly to Roger Guillemin and Andrew V. Schally "for their discoveries concerning the peptide hormone production of the brain" and the other half to Rosalyn Yalow "for the development of radioimmunoassays of peptide hormones".

Perhaps the earliest memories I have of being a stubborn, determined child. Through the years my mother had told me that it was unfortunate that I chose to do acceptable things, for if I had chosen otherwise no one would have deflected me from my path.

My mother, nee Clara Zipper, came to America from Germany at the age of four. My father, Simon Sussman, was born on the Lower East Side of New York, the Melting Pot for Eastern European immigrants. Neither had the advantage of a high school education but there was never a doubt that their two children would make it through college. I was an early reader, reading even before kindergarten, and since we did not have books in my home, my older brother, Alexander, was responsible for our trip every week to the Public Library to exchange books already read for new ones to be read.

By seventh grade I was committed to mathematics. A great chemistry teacher at Walton High School, Mr. Mondzak, excited my interest in chemistry, but when I went to Hunter, the college for women in New York City's college system (now the City University of New York), my interest was diverted to physics especially by Professors Herbert N. Otis and Duane Roller. In the spring when I was in college, physics, and in particular nuclear physics, was the most exciting field in the world. It seemed as if every major experiment brought a Nobel Prize. Eve Curie had just published the biography of her mother, Madame Marie Curie, which should be a must on the reading list of every young aspiring female scientist. As a junior at college, I was hanging on nuclear fission - which has resulted not only in the terror and threat of nuclear warfare but also in the ready availability of radioisotopes for medical investigation and in hosts of other peaceful applications.

"Rosalyn Yalow - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 25 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1977/yalow-facts.html

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E.X.O. the Graphic Novel - Creation of Roye Okupe out soon.

Posted by Carles CJ Juzang on March 25, 2015 at 5:30pm

Born in Lagos, Nigeria, Roye Okupe is a veteran creative specialist who holds both a Bachelor’s and Master’s in computer science from The George Washington University. His passion for animation led him to found YouNeek Studios in 2012, an avenue that would allow him pursue his dream of creating a diverse library of superheroes. Under that umbrella, Roye wrote and produced several animated productions including, but not limited to, 2D/3D animated short films, TV commercials, show openers, music videos and much more. Roye is no stranger to wearing multiple hats. He was part of a team (as a producer, assistant director and editor) of filmmakers who retold the Biblical story of King David in a contemporary movie titled D’Comeback, which premiered in the US in March 2010. With the superhero genre currently in its golden age, Roye has made it a goal to create a connected universe of heroes, with origins from locations that are currently neglected and ignored. The first of these locales will be Nigeria, where he was born. Roye is a creative director/producer at YouNeek Studios. Along with a team of artists, he is currently working on a Fall release for the E.X.O. graphic novel. Check him out and show your support at his website:

 

Youneekstudios.com

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A Future We Cannot Avoid...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 25, 2015 at 7:13am
At City College of San Francisco, student Daniela Cardenas prepares DNA for analysis during the biotechnology module of Bio 11: Introduction to the Science of Living Organisms. This course was developed with funding from the NSF-ATE grant titled, "Incorporating Molecular Biology into the Undergraduate Curriculum."

Credit: City College of San Francisco, Biology Department


Topics: African Americans, Diversity, Hispanic Americans, Jobs, STEM, Women in Science


In the U.S., almost half of all undergraduate students are educated at community colleges. The most recent data show that about 40 percent of community-college students represent the first generation in their family to attend college. Eighteen percent are Hispanic, 15 percent are Black, and 12 percent are students with disabilities.



The community college environment reflects not only demographic changes in the population, but also changes in the economy. As less-skilled jobs are less available, there is a need for more education and training in specialized fields to build or rebuild a career path toward a secure future.



This microcosm of students is key to the National Science Foundation's (NSF) commitment to support high-quality educational experiences in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (the STEM fields) while recruiting underrepresented groups into STEM and building the STEM workforce.



In 1992, Congress presented NSF with its first-ever mandate for program creation, known as the Scientific and Advanced Technology Act. In response to this legislation, the NSF established the Advanced Technological Education (ATE) program, with the overall goal of increasing the knowledge and skills of technicians who are educated at associate-degree-granting colleges.



In funding community colleges, the program gives them a leadership role in strengthening the skills of STEM technicians. The community colleges work in partnership with universities, secondary schools, business and industry and government agencies to design and carry out model workforce development initiatives in fields as diverse as biotechnology, cyber security and advanced manufacturing.

"Those in America with the most favorable view of science tend to be young, well-to-do, college-educated white males. But three-quarters of new American workers in the next decade will be women, non-whites, and immigrants. Failing to rouse their enthusiasm - to say nothing of discriminating against them - isn't only unjust, it's also stupid and self-defeating. It deprives the economy of desperately needed skilled workers."

National Science Foundation:
Preparing high-tech workers, meeting needs of employers
US Courts: Brown vs. Board of Education re-argued today, 1953
Amazon:
First Class: The Legacy of Dunbar, America's First Black Public High School, Alison Stewart
The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, Carl Sagan, Chapter 19: "No Such Thing as a Dumb Question"

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Dr. Barbara McClintock...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 24, 2015 at 9:49pm
Image Source: NobelPrize.org


Topics: Biology, Genetics, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Nobel Prize, STEM, Women in Science

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1983

Born: 16 June 1902, Hartford, CT, USA

Died: 2 September 1992, Huntington, NY, USA

Affiliation at the time of the award: Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Cold Spring Harbor, NY, USA

Prize motivation: "for her discovery of mobile genetic elements"

Field: genetics


Relatively few students took this course and most of them were interested in pursuing agriculture as a profession. Only twenty-one years had passed since the rediscovery of Mendel's principles of heredity. ... The results of these studies provided a solid conceptual framework into which subsequent results could be fitted. Nevertheless, there was a reluctance on the part of some professional biologists to accept the revolutionary concepts that were surfacing. This reluctance was soon dispelled as the logic underlying genetic investigations became increasingly evident.

When the undergraduate genetics course was completed in January, a telephone call came from Dr. Hutchinson. He must have sensed my intense interest in the content of his course because the purpose of his call was to invite me to participate in the other genetics course given at Cornell. It was scheduled for graduate students. His invitation was accepted with great pleasure and great anticipations. Obviously, this telephone call cast the die for my future. I remained with genetics thereafter. [1]

*****


To paraphrase George Orwell, every person is unique, but some are more unique than others. There has never been anyone like Barbara McClintock in this world, nor ever will be. She was not simply a representative of a type. Some have considered her as an eccentric, others as a heroine of Science, and still others as a model to be imitated. I would like to tell you how I think of her.

Barbara McClintock was a woman who rejected a woman's life for herself. She began to do it as a small child and never deviated. Her childhood was not a happy one, and perhaps this provided the force, the moral tension that was so strong in her and so necessary for the life she lived. And we must not forget that at the foundation of every creative life there lies a sense of personal inadequacy that energizes the struggle. This sense was strong in Barbara.

Barbara deliberately chose a solitary life without encumbrances, but she did not reject womanhood. In a feminine way, she once said to me "I cannot fight for myself, but I can fight for others." In a time of confusion about such matters, it is important to note that Barbara did not fight against herself by choosing a path that was inconsistent with her nature or her capacity. This is why she could, at the end, say "I have lived a wonderful life and I have no regrets about it." This does not mean that Barbara's life of isolation protected her from inner storms and passions. On the contrary, she was familiar with periods of depression, sense of futility and, yes, tears of frustration and rage. Yet her final judgment on her life was strongly affirmative. [2]

1. "Barbara McClintock - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 23 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1983/mcclintock-facts.html
2. In Memoriam - Barbara McClintock

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Yotta-eV and ET...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 24, 2015 at 9:46pm
Artist's impression of a black hole. Could an advanced alien civilization create a cosmic collider using such an object? (Courtesy: NASA/JPL-Caltech)


Topics: Black Holes, Neutrinos, Particle Physics, Space, SETI


Has an advanced alien civilization built a black-hole-powered particle accelerator to study physics at "Planck-scale" energies? And if such a cosmic collider is lurking in a corner of the universe, could we detect it here on Earth?

Brian Lacki of the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton, New Jersey, has done calculations that suggest that if such an accelerator exists, it would produce yotta electron-volt (YeV or 1024 eV) neutrinos that could be detected here on Earth. As a result, Lacki is calling on astronomers involved in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) to look for these ultra-high-energy particles. This is supported by SETI expert Paul Davies of Arizona State University, who believes that the search should be expanded beyond the traditional telescope searches.

Like humanity, it seems reasonable to assume that an advanced alien civilization would have a keen interest in physics, and would build particle accelerators that reach increasingly higher energies. This energy escalation could be the result of the "nightmare scenario" of particle physics in which there is no new physics at energies between the TeV energies of the Standard Model and the 1028 eV Planck energy (10 XeV) – where the quantum effects of gravity become strong. "The nightmare of particle physics is the dream of astronomers searching for extraterrestrials," says Lacki.

An important problem facing alien physicists would be that the density of electromagnetic energy needed to reach the Planck scale is so great that the device would be in danger of collapsing into a black hole of its own making. However, Lacki points out that a clever designer could, in principle, get round this problem and "reaching [the] Planck energy is technically allowed, if extremely difficult".

Physics World: Have alien civilizations built cosmic accelerators from black holes?
Hamish Johnston is editor of physicsworld.com

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Dawn...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2015 at 11:47am
Image Source: Link below


Topics: Ceres, Ion Propulsion, NASA, Space Exploration


The NASA spacecraft Dawn has spent more than seven years traveling across the solar system to intercept the asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres. Now in orbit around Ceres, the probe has returned the first images and data from these distant objects.

But inside Dawn itself is another first – the spacecraft is the first exploratory space mission to use an electrically-powered ion engine rather than conventional rockets.

Such ion engines will propel the next generation of spacecraft.

Ion engines use electric power to create charged particles of the fuel, usually the gas xenon, and accelerate them to extremely high velocities. The exhaust velocity of conventional rockets is limited by the chemical energy stored in the fuel’s molecular bonds, which limits the thrust to about 5km/s. Ion engines are in principle limited only by the electrical power available on the spacecraft, but typically the exhaust speed of the charged particles range from 15km/s to 35km/s.

What this means in practice is that electrically powered thrusters are much more fuel efficient than chemical ones, so an enormous amount of mass can be saved through the need for less fuel on board. With the cost to launch a single kilogram of mass into Earth orbit of around $20,000, fuel savings can make spacecraft significantly cheaper.

This can be of great benefit to commercial manufacturers of geostationary satellites, where electric propulsion can allow them to maneuver adding new capabilities to the satellite during its mission. And for scientific missions such as interplanetary travel to the outer regions of the solar system, electric propulsion is the only means to carry useful scientific payload quickly across the enormous distances involved.

Discovery: Step Aside, Rockets – Ion Engines Are the Future of Space Travel
By Steve Gabriel, University of Southampton
#P4TC: NEXT...

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Cyber-Bullying...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 23, 2015 at 11:52am
ERA: History


Topics: Bullying, Diversity in Science, Equal Rights, Internet, Trolls, Women in Science


Section 1. Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex.

Section 2. The Congress shall have the power to enforce, by appropriate legislation, the provisions of this article.

Section 3. This amendment shall take effect two years after the date of ratification.

A moment to discuss this related topic: Yesterday, the Equal Rights Amendment was passed by congress in 1972 (a rare time congress actually worked in our behalf). It would ultimately be defeated from becoming law by Phyllis Schlafly, using fear tactics and some homophobia.

Even the actress Ashley Judd is not immune to cyber-bullying, subjected to the vilest and violent responses to a somewhat off-color remark at a sporting event, that most are thinking anyway as their team is losing, but didn't openly share on social media as we do now (as it didn't exist before). The double-standard is quite apparent as no male sharing such disappointment is assaulted in such a manner.  What used to be done in-person by the muscular bully on the playground is done by the cowardly troll on the Internet, usually before there moms call them down for dinner.

As a survivor of trolls: you have the ability to respond in protecting yourselves from bullying, cyber or otherwise. Most social media has a method of blocking them from commenting on your stream. The FBI has a podcast on cyber-bullying as well as an official PSA. My bullying usually has been the response to something said innocuously in a science post that offended a particular troll's view of the universe. After a spirited back-and-forth that eventually went nowhere, I either used the aforementioned blocking settings, or in one severe case, I went here where I found this:

The IC3 (Internet Criminal Complaint Center) was established as a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C) to receive Internet related criminal complaints and to further research, develop, and refer the criminal complaints to federal, state, local, or international law enforcement and/or regulatory agencies for any investigation they deem to be appropriate. The IC3 was intended, and continues to emphasize, serving the broader law enforcement community to include federal, as well as state, local, and international agencies, which are combating Internet crime and, in many cases, participating in Cyber Crime Task Forces. You can file a complaint here.

Like Ms. Judd, it stops when you stand up and say "no more!" Social media has done wonderful things, but has revealed homophobes, misogynists, racists, sectarians and sociopaths. NONE of you with the ambition, drive and intelligence can be good scientists or engineers if you don't feel safe, on or offline. Sadly, by accident or incident, these Neanderthals will one day be someone's father, dealing with the seeds they have sown to the wind they will inherit. Let their mothers deal with them now when the authorities come to their doors. They deserve neither your power, your protection nor your respect.
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Outcasts of Jupiter by Shobo and Shof Coker

Posted by Carles CJ Juzang on March 23, 2015 at 1:30pm

I have been a fan of artist Shof Coker for quite sometime. He and his brother/writer Shobo Coker have released on Tapastic.com their Online Comic

Outcasts of Jupiter

Check it out at this link:

 

http://tapastic.com/episode/65786

 

This creative family, including their sister Funola Coker, works under their business banner The Coker CoOp. 

http://www.cokercoop.com/

 

Originally from Lagos, Nigeria.... Check it out!

 

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Guidelines

Posted by Wayne Kelly on March 22, 2015 at 10:55pm

     I don't believe knowledge should be hoarded, but instead shared with others. Perhaps the following may help you, when composing your own work. 

1) With the exception of pay period, or vital research, no internet activity is conducted, till after you are done for the day.

2) Listen to podcast episodes, during the week, dealing with author related material. (From and to work, while on breaks and through-out lunch)

3) When creating, your area must always be clear, and clean. Any clutter is bound to be a distraction.

4) Listen to music, to center your mind, before you begin.

5) Write for two hours each day, to insure natural progression.

6)  Have another project set-up, or in the works, the moment you are done with your present one. 

7) In order to break away from the monotony, the following project MUST be completely different from the previous one. jumping between each novel series, helps in more ways than one.

These guideline can be applied to anyone, regardless their field of creativity. 

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First Contact...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2015 at 8:31am
Image Source: Carl Sagan Contact

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, First Contact, Sectarianism, SETI

"Man fears time, but time fears only the pyramids." Arab Proverb


Before the movie of the same name by the cast of Star Trek: The Next Generation, there was an episode using the same name - "First Contact." The implications were that the particular alien species had a lot invested in their traditions and customs; the introduction of another humanoid species outside of itself would profoundly change their self-concept, similar to early man thinking Earth being the center of the universe, and the scientific, Heliocentric corrections of Copernicus and Galileo being heresy. I alluded to this in the post Terms of Indifference, and it was definitely brought to fore in the movie Contact based on a novel by Carl Sagan, which originally started life as a stalled screenplay. We don't have to go warp drive or travel to other worlds to see this species sectarianism. Just the transition from our current Type 0 Kardashev Scale (or, Carl Sagan gave us 0.7) to a Type 1 civilization is daily fraught with regressive forces determined to look backwards fearing natural forward motion, science and knowledge. That would thus bring an end to their respective hegemony, as they would no longer have unquestionable basis to their authority over others. It is incredulous the pull of ignorance on species survival. The irony is they typically rail about this online (often, in all CAPS) with a platform created by science in many cases, in 140 characters or less. It may be why the stars are silent: Type 1 may be a hard gap to leap and Type 2 a rarity; sadly, intelligence maybe its own Entropy.
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Dr. Rita Levi-Montalcini...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 22, 2015 at 8:37am
Image Source: NobelPrize.org


Topics: Biochemistry, Cell Physiology, Diversity, Diversity in Science, Medicine, Nobel Prize, Women in Science

The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1986

Rita Levi-Montalcini

Born: 22 April 1909, Turin, Italy

Died: 30 December 2012, Rome, Italy

Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute of Cell Biology of the C.N.R., Rome, Italy

Prize motivation: "for their discoveries of growth factors"

Field: biochemistry, cell physiology

Prize share: Stanley Cohen and Rita Levi-Montalcini "for their discoveries of growth factors"


My twin sister Paola and I were born in Turin on April 22, 1909, the youngest of four children. Our parents were Adamo Levi, an electrical engineer and gifted mathematician, and Adele Montalcini, a talented painter and an exquisite human being. Our older brother Gino, who died twelve years ago of a heart attack, was one of the most well known Italian architects and a professor at the University of Turin. Our sister Anna, five years older than Paola and myself, lives in Turin with her children and grandchildren. Ever since adolescence, she has been an enthusiastic admirer of the great Swedish writer, the Nobel Laureate Selma Lagerlöf, and she infected me so much with her enthusiasm that I decided to become a writer and describe Italian saga "à la Lagerlöf". But things were to take a different turn.

Ever since childhood, Paola had shown an extraordinary artistic talent and father's decision did not prevent her full-time dedication to painting. She became one of the most outstanding women painters in Italy and is at present still in full activity. I had a more difficult time. At twenty, I realized that I could not possibly adjust to a feminine role as conceived by my father, and asked him permission to engage in a professional career. In eight months I filled my gaps in Latin, Greek and mathematics, graduated from high school, and entered medical school in Turin. Two of my university colleagues and close friends, Salvador Luria and Renato Dulbecco, were to receive the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, respectively, seventeen and eleven years before I would receive the same most prestigious award. All three of us were students of the famous Italian histologist, Giuseppe Levi. We are indebted to him for a superb training in biological science, and for having learned to approach scientific problems in a most rigorous way at a time when such an approach was still unusual.

In 1936 I graduated from medical school with a summa cum laude degree in Medicine and Surgery, and enrolled in the three year specialization in neurology and psychiatry, still uncertain whether I should devote myself fully to the medical profession or pursue at the same time basic research in neurology. My perplexity was not to last too long.

"Rita Levi-Montalcini - Facts". Nobelprize.org. Nobel Media AB 2014. Web. 21 Mar 2015. http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1986/levi-montalcini-facts.html

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Diamond Nanosheets...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 21, 2015 at 3:39pm


Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Electrical Engineering, Jobs, Nanotechnology, Materials Science


TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Diamond films are among the most extraordinary materials on the planet. They are strong, transparent and they conduct heat well. They are biologically inert but can also be chemically functionalised by attaching molecules to their surface. What’s more, when doped, they become semiconductors and so can be used in electronic circuits.

So it’s no wonder that materials scientists are licking their lips at the prospect of incorporating this wonder material into more or less any device they can think of.

But there’s a problem. Diamond films have to be grown at high temperatures in an atmosphere of pure hydrogen, which is not compatible with the way other microdevices are made, such as silicon chips.

So a useful trick would be to have a way to make diamonds films in one place and then transfer them to another so that they can be placed onto chips and other devices.

Today, Venkatesh Seshan at the Kavli Institute of Nanoscience in The Netherlands and a few pals, say they have perfected a way to grow diamond films on a quartz substrate, separate the films and then pick them up and place them somewhere else.

The team begin by placing nanodiamond seed crystals on the quartz surface and heating it to over 500 degrees C in a hydrogen plasma atmosphere. The seeds then grow, creating a crystalline diamond surface up to 180 nanometres thick.

Physics arXiv: Pick-up and drop transfer of diamond nanosheets
V. Seshan, J.O. Island, R. van Leeuwen, W.J. Venstra, B.H. Schneider, S.D. Janssens, K. Haenen, E.J.R. Sudhölter, L.C.P.M. de Smet, H.S.J. van der Zant, G.A. Steele, A. Castellanos-Gomez

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WISE...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on March 21, 2015 at 3:42pm
Image Source: Louisiana Tech University


Topics: Diversity, Diversity in Science, Economy, Engineering, Women in Science


Arizona: The Women in Engineering Program at the University of Arizona aims to increase interest and diversity in the fields of social and natural science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and medicine by offering a variety of outreach programs and student engagement opportunities. In doing so, we work to motivate students to enter careers in STEM fields and to support them along the way. At WISE we firmly believe that greater diversity produces better science and science that is better equipped to address some of the most pressing problems we face in the world today.

Stony Brook: The Women in Science and Engineering (WISE) Program seeks to increase the number of women in science, math and engineering fields through outreach, recruitment and retention efforts. Combining the vast resources of a major university with the close bonds of a small community, the WISE College Program enables undergraduate women to work closely with peers and faculty to form friendships and to achieve a solid background in their field. The WISE Precollege Program reaches out to local schools to inspire young women to choose to pursue science math and engineering degrees.

The WISE Program is multidimensional. Thank you for your interest in the program. We hope you find the information on this web site useful. If you would like additional information, please contact the WISE office.

UK: At WISE (Women in to Science and Engineering), our mission is to increase the gender balance in the UK’s STEM workforce, pushing the presence of female employees from 13% as it stands now, to 30% by 2020.

Our services are designed to build and sustain the pipeline of female talent in STEM from classroom to boardroom, boosting the talent pool to drive economic growth.

WISE, which has 30 years experience of inspiring girls to pursue STEM subjects, now incorporates the UKRC, which had a contract from the Government from 2004-12 to increase opportunities for women in science, engineering and technology through support services to business, education and women returners. The UKRC is now an independent Community Interest Company trading as WISE (company number 07533934).
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