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At The Bottom of the World...

Antarctica's Twaites Glacier, one of the six glaciers of the Amundsen Sea Embayment of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
Credit: NASA

Sea level rise estimates are going to need to be revised upward: A portion of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet that is home to some of the fastest-flowing glaciers on the continent appears to have entered a state of retreat and melt that is “unstoppable,” two new studies have found.



It has passed the point of no return,” said Eric Rignot, lead author on one of the studies and a glaciologist at the University of California, Irvine, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.



The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been of concern to climate scientists because it contains enough ice to add 10 to 13 feet to global sea level rise were it all to melt. (Because the ice sheet’s ice is bound to land, it increases the volume of the ocean as it flows into it, like ice cubes added to a glass of water; sea ice, on the other hand, doesn’t change the ocean’s volume as it melts because it is already displacing that volume, just as a melting ice cube doesn’t add volume to the glass.)



Scientific American: Melt of Key Antarctica Glaciers "Unstoppable"

Tomorrow: Thinking Science

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Reporting Science...

Media Bistro

An interview with Miles O'Brien and how science in an entertainment-driven media frequently gets reported, often by many who don't have a science background or training. Mr. O'Brien did bring his training as a history major and enthusiasm for getting stories accurate - he demonstrates his chutzpah during the interview. Miles sadly had a traffic accident where a portion of his arm had to be amputated afterwards, (he seems to be in good spirits). If anything, the interview gives perspective on how science is reported to the nation, what holds our attention and what we ultimately emphasize and deem as important. Unfortunately, it also describes quite well the tripartite Venn diagram between dogma, ignorance and science denial. Source: StarTalkRadio.net

Tomorrow: At The Bottom of the World

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Acoustic Tractor Beam...

Credit: Physics World (link below)

An acoustic "tractor beam" that can pull an object by firing sound waves at it has been created by physicists in the UK and US. The beam was made using a commercial ultrasound surgery system and differs from previous tractor beams that use light. The researchers say their technique could be readily adapted for medical applications that manipulate objects or tissue within the body.



The new tractor beam has been created by Mike MacDonald and colleagues at the University of Dundee, University of Southampton and Illinois Wesleyan University by using an ultrasound ablation system, which is normally used to destroy tumours thanks to focused beams of intense sound. First proposed in 2006 by Philip Marston of Washington State University and realized using light in 2010 by David Grier and colleagues at New York University, the technique involves firing two beams of ultrasonic waves upwards at a triangular-shaped target at about 51° either side from the vertical direction. The target is shaped such that the beams bounce off opposite sides of the triangle, causing the reflected sound to travel straight up (see figure "Reflecting beams").



Physics World: Physicists sound-out acoustic tractor beam

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Saturn Opposition...

Image Source: Link below

On May 10, at 2 p.m. EDT, Saturn reaches opposition — the point in its orbit when it lies opposite the Sun as seen from Earth. The planet then appears as a bright yellowish object at magnitude 0.1 in the constellation Libra the Scales. In the Northern Hemisphere, that star pattern rises in the southeast at sunset.



As you might guess, opposition means the planet rises at sunset, climbs highest in the south around 1 A.M. local daylight time, and sets as the Sun comes up. Opposition also brings Saturn closest to Earth, so it shines brightest for the year (at magnitude 0.1). During times of good seeing (atmospheric steadiness), an observer can pick out the more prominent features of the globe and rings through a 3-inch telescope.



There’s no rush to do this. An apparition (observing season) of Saturn spans a bit more than 10 months. The current one began in late November 2013 when Saturn emerged from the solar glare in the morning sky. The planet will remain visible until October, when it will sink too low in the west after sunset for useful observations.



Astronomy: Saturn shines brightest in May, Michael E. Bakich

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Mother's Day (re post and add)...

Image Credit: IndieRockCafe.com

An anniversary, of sorts...

History of Mother's Day



"The first official Mother's Day celebrations in the United States took place in West Virginia in 1908, at the urging of Anna Jarvis. Anna's mother (also named Anna), who was active in her community, frequently organized women's groups to promote friendship and health. It had been her dream to reunite families divided by the Civil War with a day dedicated to mothers. When she passed away on May 12, 1907, Anna held a memorial service at her late mother's church in her honor. Her mother's idea of Mother's Day quickly caught on, and within five years of her death, virtually every state was observing the day on the anniversary of her death. In 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the second Sunday of May as the official Mother's Day.



"You can do anything you want to do, if you set your MIND to it. You can do all things through Christ who strengthens you." Mildred D. Goodwin, sunrise 15 September 1925, sunset 7 May 2009, laid to rest 12 May 2009.



Despite my challenging background, she said this often, and believed the quote I reproduced above, and more importantly: she (my MVP) believed in me. I am ever grateful that even as the light was fading from your eyes, you knew who your children - my sister and I - were.



Mildred: Her name means "gentle strength." She was that. Her name for me was "stink": diapers. You understand.



Please honor your mother (while she lives), who assists you in fulfilling your dreams: http://www.e-cards.com/area/mothers-day/ (also source of "history of Mother's Day" above)
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Nuclear Fusion With Hammers...


Michel Laberge’s favorite type of energy is the nuclear energy. And the reason for that, as Laberge discusses in this recent TED talk, is that it is the energy of the future. Today nuclear energy generates close to 20% of electricity in the US, but that is, of course, done through nuclear fission. Nuclear fusion, on the other hand, is thefuture of nuclear power, however generating energy in such a way is a gargantuan task for the engineers. There are many potential ways of harnessing the power of the atom and Michel Laberge offers a rather interesting one. High speeds, scorching temperatures and crushing pressure produced by synchronized hammers is the key of Laberge’s idea.



Source: PhysicsDatabase.com

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Loop Quantum Cosmology...


This classic video discusses the rapidly growing field of loop quantum gravity or, more generally, loop cosmology. The main idea behind loop quantum gravity is that space-time is granular and that such granularity is a consequence of quantum mechanics. The powerful implication of this, if, of course, the theory turns our to be correct, is that quantum theory and general relativity can be joined together in what is usually called quantum gravity. Such a powerful junction of the two fields would enable cosmologists to answer some fundamental and almost esoteric questions, for instance, what was the nature of the big bang and what caused it. This video introduces the main ideas of the field and the leading experts, including their interviews.



Source: PhysicsDatabase.com

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Expanding the Alphabet...

Image source: Huffington Post Science

For billions of years, the history of life has been written with just four letters — A, T, C and G, the labels given to the DNA subunits contained in all organisms. That alphabet has just grown longer, researchers announce, with the creation of a living cell that has two 'foreign' DNA building blocks in its genome.



Hailed as a breakthrough by other scientists, the work is a step towards the synthesis of cells able to churn out drugs and other useful molecules. It also raises the possibility that cells could one day be engineered without any of the four DNA bases used by all organisms on Earth.



“What we have now is a living cell that literally stores increased genetic information,” says Floyd Romesberg, a chemical biologist at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, who led the 15-year effort. Their research appears online today in Nature.



Nature: A semi-synthetic organism with an expanded genetic alphabet
Denis A. Malyshev, Kirandeep Dhami, Thomas Lavergne, Tingjian Chen, Nan Dai, Jeremy M. Foster, Ivan R. Corrêa & Floyd E. Romesberg
Nature: First life with 'alien' DNA
#P4TC:
DNA Codex
Google Mapping Human Genome
Book of Life

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The Dark God's Gift will return!

The 'Dark God's Gift' will return! Soon I'll be putting out the call for authors to submit works for DGG vol. II! Once more dark tales of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and more will envelop the minds of online readers at the Black Science Fiction Society. They 'Trynaught' will not be denied....

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El Niño...

Source: NOAA's El Niño Page

The El Niño / La Niña climate pattern that alternately warms and cools the eastern tropical Pacific is the 800-pound gorilla of Earth’s climate system. On a global scale, no other single phenomenon has a greater influence on whether a year will be warmer, cooler, wetter, or drier than average. Naturally, then, the ears of seasonal forecasters and natural resource managers around the world perked up back in early March when NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center issued an “El Niño Watch.”



The “watch” means that oceanic and atmospheric conditions in the tropical Pacific Ocean are favorable for the development of El Niño within the next six months. These maps reveal one of the most significant of those favorable signs: a deep pool of warm water sliding eastward along the equator since late January.



As the warm surface water is pushed westward by the prevailing winds, cool water from deeper in the ocean rises to the surface near South America. This temperature gradient—warm waters around Indonesia and cooler waters off South America—lasts only as long as the easterly winds are blowing.



If those winds go slack or reverse direction in the western Pacific, the warm pool of water around Indonesia is released and begins a slow slosh back toward South America. The slosh is called a Kelvin wave. If the Kelvin wave has a strong impact on the surface waters in the central and eastern Pacific, then it can help change the atmospheric circulation and trigger a cascade of climatic side effects that reverberate across the globe.



Climate.gov: Slow slosh of warm water across Pacific hints El Niño is brewing
Huffington Post: Climate Change Is Already Here

NOAA's El Niño Page

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The Drink That People Think Will Replace Food

#blackscifi #afrofuturism #blacktwitter #blerd 

In December of 2012, three young men were living in a claustrophobic apartment in San Francisco’s Tenderloin district, working on a technology startup. They had received a hundred and seventy thousand dollars from the incubator Y Combinator, but their project—a plan to make inexpensive cell-phone towers—had failed. Down to their last seventy thousand dollars, they resolved to keep trying out new software ideas until they ran out of money. But how to make the funds last? Rent was a sunk cost. Since they were working frantically, they already had no social life. As they examined their budget, one big problem remained: food.

They had been living mostly on ramen, corn dogs, and Costco frozen quesadillas—supplemented by Vitamin C tablets, to stave off scurvy—but the grocery bills were still adding up. Rob Rhinehart, one of the entrepreneurs, began to resent the fact that he had to eat at all. “Food was such a large burden,” he told me recently. “It was also the time and the hassle. We had a very small kitchen, and no dishwasher.” He tried out his own version of “Super Size Me,” living on McDonald’s dollar meals and five-dollar pizzas from Little Caesars. But after a week, he said, “I felt like I was going to die.” Kale was all the rage—and cheap—so next he tried an all-kale diet. But that didn’t work, either. “I was starving,” he said.

Click Here For The Full Article

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Ununseptium...

Credit: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories

The official Periodic Table of the Elements is one step closer to adding element 117 to its ranks. That’s thanks to an international team of scientists that was able to successfully create several atoms of element 117, which is currently known as Ununseptium until it’s given an official name.



The paper for this experiment has been published in Physical Review Letters.



Ununseptium, like many superheavy elements near the end of the periodic table, is incredibly unstable, existing only for fractions of a second before decaying into other elements. In fact, scientists didn’t actually observe any atoms of element 117 – its existence was confirmed by its decay. Indeed, the elements that 117 decays to themselves decay.



As part of the Periodic Table, Ununseptium would be considered a Group VII element, putting it in the same family as flourine, bromine and chlorine.



Forbes: Scientists Confirm The Existence Of Element 117, Alex Knapp
Phys.org: Superheavy element 117 confirmed
Radio Chemistry: Element 117, Ununseptium

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Battle of Puebla - Wikipedia

Cinco de Mayo (Spanish for "fifth of May") is a celebration held on May 5. It is celebrated nationwide in the United States and regionally in Mexico, primarily in the state of Puebla, where the holiday is called El Dia de la Batalla de Puebla (English: The Day of the Battle of Puebla). The date is observed in the United States as a celebration of Mexican heritage and pride, and to commemorate the cause of freedom and democracy during the first years of the American Civil War. In the state of Puebla, the date is observed to commemorate the Mexican army's unlikely victory over French forces at the Battle of Puebla on May 5, 1862, under the leadership of General Ignacio Zaragoza Seguín. Contrary to widespread popular belief, Cinco de Mayo is not Mexico's Independence Day—the most important national patriotic holiday in Mexico—which is actually celebrated on September 16. (Wikipedia)



The National Society of Hispanic Physicists has a recognition page of Hispanic Americans in Physics - Past, Present and Future. Similar to what I posted during the month of February, my intention is to give the same attention to Hispanic Scientists and Engineers during the celebration of National Hispanic Heritage Month.
Teaching for Change: Book link here


Almost 10 years before "Brown vs. Board of Education," Sylvia Mendez and her parents helped end school segregation in California. An American citizen of Mexican and Puerto Rican heritage who spoke and wrote perfect English, Mendez was denied enrollment to a "Whites only" school. Her parents took action by organizing the Hispanic community and filing a lawsuit in federal district court. Their success eventually brought an end to the era of segregated education in California.


Praise for "Separate is Never Equal" by Duncan Tonatiuh
STARRED REVIEWS

"Tonatiuh masterfully combines text and folk-inspired art to add an important piece to the mosaic of U.S. civil rights history."
--"Kirkus Reviews," starred review
"Younger children will be outraged by the injustice of the Mendez family story but pleased by its successful resolution. Older children will understand the importance of the 1947 ruling that desegregated California schools, paving the way for Brown v. Board of Education seven years later."
--"School Library Journal," starred review
"Tonatiuh ("Pancho Rabbit and the Coyote") offers an illuminating account of a family's hard-fought legal battle to desegregate California schools in the years before "Brown" v. "Board of Education.""
--"Publishers Weekly"
"Pura Belpre Award-winning Tonatiuh makes excellent use of picture-book storytelling to bring attention to the 1947 California ruling against public-school segregation."
--"Booklist"



Happy Cinco de Mayo!
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Tyranny of Authoritarians...

Image Source: The Graveyard Site

This was inspired by my read of the old COSMOS on my kindle. I happened upon this letter excerpt from Galileo to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615. Given the unbelievable, relentless assaults on the new show by Young Earth/Universe Creationists, Galileo might as well have been writing this letter in the 21st Century:



To the Most Serene Grand Duchess Mother:



Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors-as if I had placed these things in the sky with my own hands in order to upset nature and overturn the sciences. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts; not their diminution or destruction.

.

.

.

Now as to the false aspersions which they so unjustly seek to cast upon me, I have thought it necessary to justify myself in the eyes of all men, whose judgment in matters of` religion and of reputation I must hold in great esteem. I shall therefore discourse of the particulars which these men produce to make this opinion detested and to have it condemned not merely as false but as heretical. To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even m purely physical matters - where faith is not involved - they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense.



That's aspersions...without asparagus!



Fordham University
 Galileo Galilei: Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina of Tuscany, 1615

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Pseudo Gap Superconductors...

Argonne National Laboratory

Thanks to a new study by the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers have identified and solved at least one paradox in the behavior of high-temperature superconductors. The riddle involves a phenomenon called the “pseudogap,” a region of energy levels in which relatively few electrons are allowed to exist.



Despite their name, high-temperature superconductors are actually quite cold – roughly 250 degrees to 350 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Conventional superconductors, like those used in MRI machines or particle accelerators, are even colder. Even though they are still quite cold, high-temperature superconductors are of special interest to researchers because, at least in theory, they are much easier to keep sufficiently cold and are thus potentially more useful.



Argonne National Laboratory:
Scientists gain new insight into mysterious electronic phenomenon

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There is a population of people in the world that are under represented. You can look in every country, every where and you might see one if you are lucky. They are the people, black people you just can't find anywhere.

What the heck is he talking about?  OK I'm doing a project, a building design, I want to show some people in it to show both the sense of scale and that black people are in the house.

When using SketchUP, no problem, it has a face front tool. You take a photo, cut out the people, make a part out of it and insert it in your scene. It is a 2d picture that faces front no matter which angle the 3d picture is viewed from. By the way black people look cool in a modern spacey really kool house.

Switch over to Sweet Home 3d or other 3d drawing programs. Now Sweet Home 3d has 2 black persons. A male as stiff as a board in a suit and a female with a bigger bust than two Barbies also stiff. The white characters are more naturally posed, look like real people. Dang, reminds me if a life drawing class I took. I was the model and it took the class 3 tries before I looked like me. What was that!?!

I know many of you are into 3d characters for games and animation BUT did you ever consider the under served market of little black people for architectural models and renderings. Hi, I'm a new architect of color. Hello new architect of color, what do you bring to the table? I bring a whole library of little black people so that your black clients will accept your envisionings without wenching. Yeah, we don't admit it but that is a problem. Your hired. OK, I want a beefy contract for me and also one for my little black people.

Hey, desktop publishers have the same problem, clip-art that targets or features black people doing the same things as other peoples is scarce. Come now, we are fluent in portraiture, religious, hip-hop, revolutionary posters, hair-do, head-shots, slave stuff and sci-fi (our favorite).

We 2d'em, 3d'em and omni-max them, but a little black dude waving hi, sitting reading a novel, a sweet thing walking wearing normal daily clothes. Oh yes, you can include a super hero wardrobe and a Chihuahua that transforms into a Doberman. And I don't mind at all if you hook me up wid resources, there is stuff I don't know. SH3f, 3ds, obj and other formats. I like free but might do real money if I have too.

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A Plane That Drives...

Source: Link below

Flying cars have long been the stuff of science fiction, though plenty of entrepreneurs and visionaries have struggled to make the concept a reality – including no less than the original Henry Ford.



The group of Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni that developed the Transition flying car have said they’re ready to take a giant leap even farther into the wild blue yonder. They’ve announced a more advanced concept, the TF-X, that is rapidly working its way toward reality.



To start with, the four-seater would be capable of vertical take-offs and landings. And since it would largely be controlled by a central computer network, the TF-X would, claims a Terrafugia promotional video, require a pilot/driver to have as little as five hours of training, a slight fraction of what it now takes to get the most basic private pilot’s license.



Oh, and if that isn’t appealing enough, the team says their newest flying car design would use an environmentally friendly plug-in hybrid powertrain.

NBC News: Flying Car Moves from Science Fiction Toward Reality,
Paul A. Eisenstein
#P4TC: From Fantasy, To Reality (2011)
Site: Terrafugia.com

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