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Black Science Fiction Society PEEPS click the link below and support a brother. Assist me to move forward with my comic THE ADIGUN OGUNSANWO™ donate at least $5.00 per month for the BEST Entertainment with YOU N' MIND! ABYSSINIA MEDIA GROUP®.
In this electron micrograph of the energy-harvesting device, the lower quantum dot is the red blob at the top of the red triangle. The upper quantum dot is the blue blob at the tip of the blue triangle. The image shows an area that is about 2 μm wide. (Courtesy: F Hartmann et al.)
Topics: Coupled Quantum Dots, Electronics, Quantum Mechanics, Thermodynamics
Two quantum dots have been used to generate an electrical current from voltage noise. The device was created by physicists in Germany, who say that it could lead to the development of systems that convert waste heat into useful energy.
Electronic devices generate large amounts of excess heat that must be dissipated. Instead of simply discarding this energy, using it to do useful work could revolutionize the electronics industry, and make it possible to create more efficient devices. Indeed, for more than a decade, physicists have been thinking up ways to convert this heat into electrical currents that can do work, such as power electronic devices.
Now, Lukas Worschech and colleagues at the University of Würzburg in Germany have verified experimentally that random voltage fluctuations can be rectified to drive a direct current. The experiment uses voltage noise to mimic the hot and cold spots of waste heat, and is therefore not a direct demonstration of waste heat being converted into work. However, team member Fabian Hartmann explains that it shows that small voltage fluctuations can drive a current: "A device derived from our sample might be able to provide the necessary power to drive autonomous and self-powered systems."
Physics World: Physicists generate electrical currents from noise,
Katherine Kornei
Click here to support this project
My name is Christopher Love and I am the creator of the Flying Bullet.
The concept of the photo novel came about due to my love for the old black and white sci-fi serials and films of 40s, 50s and 60s like Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, King of the Rocket Men and Son of Ingagi.
WHAT IF!!! there was a black and white photo novel starring an African American hero. I imagine the hero would be based on real African American heroes of that era. The Tuskegee Airmen were heroes of the highest caliber who fought discrimination and the right to defend a country that didn't always defend them.
So now I have my hero, LT Curt Masters, a Tuskegee Airman, who is kidnapped by a UFO and goes on the high octane sci-fi adventure and exploring what it is to be a man and a human being. The graphic novel will be drawn in Black and White to keep with its inspirational roots.
The reason I write and produce stories featuring ethnically diverse characters is because their are very little heroes in mainstream media that look like the rest of us. So I am creating a graphic novel called "The Flying Bullet" which will be a SCI-FI adventure dealing with a Tuskegee Airman being transported billions of mile away from Earth in 1945. This photo novel is a 100% classic science fiction story. I took the rich history of african americans and combined it with the science fiction genre. The story deals with the struggles of african americans to be counted as full citizens of the United States in defense of their country during WWII. Curt Master soons discovers that the planet Earth is entangled in a bigger intergalactic struggle.
Soon Heroes Like Me Entertainment will produce original, low-budget, short films in the action, adventure and sci-fi genre starring everyone. I'm not asking for a hand-out but an opportunity to market the films to cable companies like TV-One, BET, SCI-FI Channel, Nickelodeon, and others networks or distribute by DVD and Video download.
Check out my website at heroeslikeme.com where you can see my other published work and content. If you have any further questions please email me at chris@heroeslikeme.com
I believe that everyone deserves heroes that look like them.
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-flying-bullet-a-sci-fi-action-photonovel/x/6107318
This Hubble Space Telescope image of four colliding galaxies in the Abell 3827 cluster shows the telltale signature of gravitational lensing--the bending of light's path by matter--in the form of blue arcs. The image suggests that dark matter in the cluster may interact with itself through some "dark force."
Credit: ESO
Topics: Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Gravitational Lensing, Humor
Title note: with Episode VII coming out Christmas, I couldn't resist!
After decades of studying dark matter scientists have repeatedly found evidence of what it cannot be but very few signs of what it is. That might have just changed. A study of four colliding galaxies for the first time suggests that the dark matter in them may be interacting with itself through some unknown force other than gravity that has no effect on ordinary matter. The finding could be a significant clue as to what comprises the invisible stuff that is thought to contribute 24 percent of the universe.
“This result, if confirmed, could upend our understanding of dark matter,” says physicist Don Lincoln of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois, who was not involved in the research. So-called “self-interacting dark matter” has been suggested for some time but it has generally been considered unorthodox. The simplest model of dark matter portrays it as a single particle—one that happens to interact with others of its kind and normal matter very little or not at all. Physicists favor the most basic explanations that fit the bill and add extra complications only when necessary, so this scenario tends to be the most popular. For dark matter to interact with itself requires not only dark matter particles but also a dark force to govern their interactions and dark boson particles to carry this force. This more complex picture mirrors our understanding of normal matter particles, which interact through force-carrying particles. For example, protons interact through the electromagnetic force, which is carried by particles called photons (particles of light).
Scientific American:
Dark Matter May Feel a “Dark Force” That the Rest of the Universe Does Not,
Clara Moskowitz
Thought I would share the art of CIP. Los Angeles dred Christopher Willingham share his visions of a Cyberphunk Future, west coast style. Check out more at the following links:
Speaking from my own perspective, the type of writer's block I am addressing is not trauma bases, where there is a death in the family, but rather the common persistent ones, which sprout up at the most inconvenient times. But ask yourself:
"Is this type of writer's block a hurdle in the road, Or perhaps what you have currently stored within your subconscious, the unformed, is a better idea than what you, the conscious, is working with?"
A concept which came to me over time. Once I accepted this reality I no longer fought my blocks. I listen to music, stream the web, watch netflix, my dvds; whatever to get my mid off the 'here and now.' Once my body relaxes the hidden thoughts flow through me. I may from different periods, while engaging these deliberate distractions, pause to jot down notes in the document; as a way of guiding my process.
This exercises continues till nothing from the ether comes forth. After such, I organize the jumble lines to a workable paragraph, or passage. Polish it to a satisfactory result, and move forward.
How long does this process last? The results vary, but at least you'll be on a progressive track. Within time the gap between then and now is less.
NASA's spacecraft to an asteroid – the OSIRIS-REx mission — is being readied for a 2016 liftoff. Gary Napier, Lockheed Martin spokesman (left) and reporter Leonard David (right) stand in front of spacecraft build-up on April 6, 2015 as technicians work on the probe for launch next year. Credit: Leonard David
Topics: Asteroids, Bennu, Clean Room, NASA, Space Exploration, STEM
Ahem: in a lot of STEM fields that are "stimulating" (pun intended), you'll find yourselves in apparel like this, affectionately known as "bunny suits." You can find a brief history of the clean room here and here.
DENVER, Colorado – A fact-filled and incredible day at Lockheed Martin on April 6, visiting ultra-clean room facilities in which NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is coming together for a September 2016 liftoff.
The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) probe is headed for asteroid Bennu, a carbon-rich body that could hold clues to the origin of the solar system and host organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth.
The spacecraft will collect and return samples of the asteroid, returning the specimens gathered back to Earth for detailed analysis.
Lofted spaceward next year, the probe will reach asteroid Bennu in 2018 and return a sample to Earth in 2023.
In protective garb, this reporter saw assembly, test and launch operations (ATLO) phase technicians hard at work in a critical stage of the program.
Over the next several months, spacecraft handlers will install on the OSIRIS-REx structure its many subsystems, including avionics, power, telecomm, mechanisms, thermal systems, and guidance, navigation and control.
The Bennu is an ancient Egyptian deity linked with the sun, creation, and rebirth. It may have been the inspiration for the phoenix in Greek mythology. Wikipedia
Space.com:
A Reporter's View: NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Taking Shape, Leonard David
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| Image Source: Unraveling Fire II Boy - Art on Fire |
Topics: Domestic Terrorism, Oklahoma Bombing, Timothy McVeigh, Xenophobia
According to this online calendar, today was Wednesday 20 years ago.
I remember the boys were with me (my wife was working) and I was off with them, making PB&J sandwiches for lunch. They were 12 and 2 then. The news of the Oklahoma City Bombing sickened me and horrified my oldest son. He wept over the thought some as young as his brother had died; I wept over both of them, and about the world that was coming. [1]
I remember the helplessness I felt when the wreckage of the Alfred P. Murrah building was broadcast on all stations across the world. We were a few months from the midterms and Newton Gingrich's "Contract With (or, some would say on) America." We were a year from the Internet using something we all take for granted now - search engines, first on home pages like AOL and Yahoo; then the very title of it becoming both a noun and verb: Bing and Google. Star Trek Voyager, Boy Meets World, Seinfeld, Friends and X-Files were our national obsessions. We were six years from the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Peace Dividend we've never managed to cash in on.
The seeds of our unraveling/detachment from reality can be found here. As a nation, we've always been prone to fabricating "tall tales," but with the Internet it has made the loudmouth an expert, whether they completed a college degree, or have a wit of evident expertise in anything. The prerequisite seems to be willing to shout "fire" in crowded theaters or the public commons; babble incoherently and be misconstrued as "passionate" instead of insane. When the initial suspects were announced, every authority began looking for [initially] Arabic men; "false flag" became the excuse Du jour for everything we could not initially explain, then and now. Perhaps looking on this quick leap to accusation and judgment inspired a former US-backed Mujaheddin warrior we'd come to know infamously as Osama Bin Laden. Since they didn't care about vilification or leaps of illogical speculations, they literally had "nothing to lose."
Ominously, McVeigh was executed after waving further appeals June 11, 2001, three months to the DAY on the World Trade Center attacks of 9-11. [2]
"And I saw the beast and the kings of the earth with their armies gathered to make war against him who was sitting on the horse and against his army." Rev 19:19 ESV
This has sadly been used by forces that would overthrow our democratic republic and establish a dangerous form of theocracy known as dominionism. (Note: all forms of theocratic governance are antithetical to democratic republican ideals.) Whether this is perceived as a literal or figurative event, perhaps it is a realization that peace isn't in our human natures. We have made cartoons and superheros of WWII and the "greatest generation," not having cultural memory of how hard life was here and on the war front, whitewashing what would become the Civil Rights movement as internal struggle from collective memory. "Here be dragons," and if none available, our determined imaginations will manufacture some in our need to slay them.
It was lastly, also the world of black helicopters, "jack-booted thugs" in black camouflage; "New World Order" - first in an address by President George Herbert Walker Bush, then neurosis by conspiracy theorists that would by steady osmosis - find its way into the mainstream. It was two years to the day from the Waco, Texas standoff between the ATF and the Branch Davidians and one day from Adolf Hitler's birthday (also used by Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold in their violent attack on Columbine High School in Colorado. In Timothy McVeigh's conspiracy-here-be-dragons literature found at the scene, a guide written sadly by a physics apostate: The Turner Diaries. William Luther Pierce may have earned a PhD in physics, but that did not inoculate him from irrational stances and daft thoughts. His lineage in the Confederacy; his alliance with the John Birch Society (founded by the patriarch of the Koch brothers), his anti-Semitic/anti-gay worldview were the seeds that filled his ink before he put pen to paper; before the Internet was a commercial entity. Hate does not require low IQ's or high tech: simple xenophobia and smoke signals will do. It is a legacy we're still inheriting, like dandelion seeds in the wind.
1. Today: 20 years later, TODAY looks back at the Oklahoma City bombing
2. History.com: Oklahoma City Bombing
http://www.amazingabilities.com/amaze6a.html
Check it out!
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| Image Source: Biography.com |
Topics: Einstein, Special Relativity, Space Exploration, Spaceflight, Spacetime
It was Einstein that entered the term "warp" into our lexicon before the notion was popularized on the original Star Trek. That warp was gravity from the mass of objects like planets, suns; wormholes and black holes. It has lived on in the discovery of the intermediate vector boson ("W" and Z0particle), theorized by Dr's Sheldon Lee Glashow, Abdus Salam and Steven Weinberg, meaning his was the "shoulder of [a] giant" these men stood on when they made their discovery. The foundation of the Higgs Boson were courses in special and general relativity as well as quantum mechanics, the root of all things micro and nano electronic. In a way, he's achieved immortality.
The link below is a PDF that goes through a primer of the physics at the high school level, which is appropriate. The more we understand about the physics that is all around us, the less we are frightened by, or put off by it. As we increase our intellectual acumen in STEM fields, is it too much to request such a self-study of those who wish to be our leaders, and possibly possess the nuclear codes?
This brief book is for the inquisitive reader who wishes to gain an understanding of the immortal work of Einstein, the greatest scientist since Newton. The concepts that form the basis of Einstein’s Theory of Special Relativity are discussed at a level suitable for Seniors in High School. Special Relativity deals with measurements of space, time and motion in inertial frames of reference (see chapter 4). An introduction to Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity, a theory of space, time, and motion in the presence of gravity, is given at a popular level. A more formal account of Special Relativity, that requires a higher level of understanding of Mathematics, is given in an Appendix.
Historians in the future will, no doubt, choose a phrase that best characterizes the 20th-century. Several possible phrases, such as “the Atomic Age”, “the Space Age” and “the Information Age”, come to mind. I believe that a strong case will be made for the phrase “the Age of Einstein”; no other person in the 20th-century advanced our understanding of the physical universe in such a dramatic way. He introduced many original concepts, each one of a profound nature. His discovery of the universal equivalence of energy and mass has had, and continues to have, far-reaching consequences not only in Science and Technology but also in fields as diverse as World Politics, Economics, and Philosophy.
Free Physics Book: The Age of Einstein
Frank W. K. Firk
Professor Emeritus of Physics
Yale University
Tomorrow: The Unraveling
I remember it rained a lot in New China. On those days I would hang near the front of the family store, and when my Mother was reading and my Father not in sight, I would silently slip out the front entrance and onto the sidewalk. With my eyes closed, I would lean back against the wall of the store. I could feel the coolness of the wet wind on my face. Above my head the shop signs swayed in the wind and water would begin to fill first the street and then the sidewalk itself. I couldn't wait to get my own spaceship so I could be free!
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| Image Source: ABB Robotics (link below) |
Topics: Economy, Futurism, Jobs, Robotics, STEM
We are somewhere on the Kardashev Scale muscling our way from type 0 to type 1, slowly and steadily against a resisting, authoritarian and fearful tide. The future is here. However, to continue its advance will require training young people unabashedly in STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - the bedrock of advancement, economic prosperity, employment, equality and progress. STEM employees eventually retire, and need able replacements in their fields. Regressing, falling back to comforting dogma and superstitions heralds the dark ages. Irreplaceable artifacts from antiquity are being trashed by such forces in Mosul; similar ones here would have us too dumb to continue this important work. Robots at a minimum will need designers to dream them, and human hands to repair them.
The new era of robotic co-workers is here. YuMi is the result of years of research and development, making collaboration between humans and robots a reality, but it is also much more.
ABB has developed a collaborative, dual arm, small parts assembly robot solution that includes flexible hands, parts feeding systems, camera-based part location and state-of-the-art robot control. YuMi is a vision of the future. YuMi will change the way we think about assembly automation. YuMi is “you and me”, working together to create endless possibilities.
ABB Robotics: YuMi
In this funny short Ron Funches walks you through the best costumes for all your black cosplay needs.
Enjoy YO!
April 29 2015 is the due date for this second volume of CONCRETE PARK. the Sci fi Gang Action/Adventure Comic from husband and wife team of Writer Erika Alexander (Living Single) and Artist Tony Puryear (Screenwriter - Eraser is one of his credits), and Erikas brother is also credited with co-writing. This comic has OUTSTANDING graphics and tight story. Check it out when you can.
LINKS:
https://www.darkhorse.com/Comics/Previews/24-155?page=0
by Kat Salazar
After a brief hiatus from mainstream comics, Blak Boks LLC collaborators Eric Canete (The End League, Iron Man: Enter the Mandarin) and Jon Tsuei (Comic Book Tattoo) are announcing their ambitious take on sci-fi and action-centric storytelling in their book RUN LOVE KILL. They will be joined by designer and color artist Leonardo Olea, with Manu Fernandez providing eye-catching CGI build models for the covers. The series will be published through Image Comics in Spring 2015.
“Speaking personally, it's an incredible opportunity for me to finally get a chance to share this story that Jon and I have been laboring over for a few years now,” said Canete. “Our collaborative process has been open for discussion and always presented with the caveat there's always room for improvement. I believe these reasons are some of the major contributing factors of why we were able to create something we can both be really proud of. From script to final colored image, the story grew and evolved. To add to our momentum and good fortune, we've had the contribution of very capable partners in Leonardo Olea (book designer/color artist) and Manu Fernandez (CG covers)—both of whom understood our way of working and they really bought in early on to our creative process.”
The story follows a wanted woman in hiding named Rain Oshiro. The narrative style will prominently feature two very different but significantly connected moments throughout her life: "The Past"—which will explore her history as an impressionable student, an abiding soldier, and a wanted fugitive; and "The Present"—which will show her as she is now and how she copes with (and runs away from) the decisions made in her past. At its core, the story is an exploration of choices—both good and bad. And now, how her choices have formed her into the person she has and will become. Set against a background of a futuristic world as only artist Canete can imagine, Rain has just 24 hours to escape a barricaded city while trying to evade a military force determined to either capture or kill her.
“I'm excited for the opportunity to have an audience go along for the ride with us,” Canete continued. “While I believe it is some of the best visual work I've done in recent time, it is almost secondary to the effort we put into the characterization and story. We wanted to take our time to let the whole thing unfold without feeling rushed, and we hope the audience will feel that as they read through the issues. That really is the part that has me the most intrigued and excited—how the story will affect your views and opinions about the characters as we reveal more about them.”
Tsuei added: “I hope readers will join us for a story we feel extremely proud of. Run Love Kill has a fantastic setting wrapped in action and explosions, but at it's core, is a story about life and the difficult choices we all face. I loved creating this world with Eric and I'm excited to share it with all those who decide to give it a try.”
"Eric and Jonathan first approached me about this project years ago and it was an immediate 'yes,' so I can't tell you how thrilled I am to finally see Run Love Kill finally coming to fruition,” said Eric Stephenson, Publisher at Image Comics. “It's grown since we originally talked about doing the book at Image, which is all the more exciting, because I think what Eric and Jonathan are doing with this story is really special."
RUN LOVE KILL will launch from Image Comics this month, April 2015.
Links for more info:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/prev_img.php?pid=26695&cover=1
https://imagecomics.com/comics/releases/runlovekill-1
http://thenerdsofcolor.org/2015/04/01/an-interview-with-runlovekill-writer-jonathan-tsuei/
https://instagram.com/ericcanete/
Just had to post cause I can't wait to see the role that John Boyega and Lupita Nyong’o will play in this installment moving forward with the STAR WARS universe.
