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inserting the "A" into STEM

Posted by Arnold L. Johnson on February 7, 2014 at 7:30am

STEM, Science Technology Engineering Math. It is a wonderful concoction of techno giberish of the kind that is suppose to fix us but good. Can you imagine the cold hard logic and precision of the human mentality, analytical, circuits, machines, synthetics, bio-nano-techno-diversity. Give me the gadget, show me the numbers!! What happens when there is no longer a big red push button for stop? If you put STEM in your children, can you live with the results? When that child has to apply STEM to the real world you still live in. Ooh man, show me the shuttle so I can get off this rock.

Schools cut art first to save sports. Sports, the gladiator games, OK! You can learn teamwork and grunt for physical excellence. Gladiators are good for military stuff too. And sports make money and head injuries. He's a 4.0 athlete but head butting pulverized his brain to a palsy. Dr. So and so used to be a football player and.... Oh nurse, I'm want to check out of here!

To save us from becoming totally inert, add an "A" to STEM. "A" is for ART.

What does "art" bring to the table? Design, color, composition, human sensibility, humanity. Art is in the box and out the box and use a bag if necessary. Art is the application of STEM according to us, the elegant solution that is workable, accommodates who we are, makes us comfortable, improves us, gets the job done and were not dead or dying. Art is our fingerprint. Art is the application of STEM. Without art, STEM is just research, theory. Art is visualization, planning, prototyping, producing and deployment of the final piece.

Lots of mumbo-jumbo talk by educators about STEM. It's like tooting your own horn. But if you want to play a melody you need one more note, an "A". When art is in there you can apply your STEM to what is needed.

I'm not knocking STEM, just letting off a little STEAM.

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Gas Masks and Stoplights...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2014 at 6:52am
Garrett Morgan

In 1912, Morgan developed another invention, much different from his hair straightener. Morgan called it a Safety Hood and patented it as a Breathing Device, but the world came to know it as a Gas Mask. The Safety Hood consisted of a hood worn over the head of a person from which emanated a tube which reached near the ground and allowed in clean air. The bottom of the tube was lined with a sponge type material that would help to filter the incoming air. Another tube existed which allowed the user to exhale air out of the device. Morgan intended the device to be used "to provide a portable attachment which will enable a fireman to enter a house filled with thick suffocating gases and smoke and to breathe freely for some time therein, and thereby enable him to perform his duties of saving life and valuables without danger to himself from suffocation. The device is also efficient and useful for protection to engineers, chemists and working men who are obliged to breathe noxious fumes or dust derived from the materials in which they are obliged to work."



The National Safety Device Company, with Morgan as its General Manager was set up to manufacture and sell the device and it was demonstrated at various exhibitions across the country. At the Second International Exposition of Safety and Sanitation, the device won first prize and Morgan was award a gold medal. While demonstrations were good for sales, the true test of the product would come only under real life circumstances.



That opportunity arose on July 24, 1916 when an explosion occurred in a tunnel being dug under Lake Erie by the Cleveland Water Works. The tunnel quickly filled with smoke, dust and poisonous gases and trapped 32 workers underground. They were feared lost because no means of safely entering and rescuing them was known. Fortunately someone at the scene remembered about Morgan's invention and ran to call him at his home where he was relaxing. Garrett and his brother Frank quickly arrived at the scene, donned the Safety Hood and entered the tunnel. After a heart wrenching delay, Garrett appeared from the tunnel carrying a survivor on his back as did his brother seconds later. The crowd erupted in a staggering applause and Garrett and Frank reentered the tunnel, this time joined by two other men. While they were unable to save all of the workers, the were able to rescue many who would otherwise have certainly died. Reaction to Morgan's device and his heroism quickly spread across the city and the country as newspapers picked up on the story. Morgan received a gold medal from a Cleveland citizens group as well as a medal from the International Association of Fire Engineers, which also made him an honorary member.


Although he could have relied on the income his Gas Masks generated, Morgan felt compelled to try to solve safety problems of the day. One day he witnessed a traffic accident when an automobile collided with a horse and carriage. The driver of the automobile was knocked unconscious and the horse had to be destroyed. He set out to develop a means of automatically directing traffic without the need of a policeman or worker present. He patented an automatic traffic signal which he said could be "operated for directing the flow of traffic" and providing a clear and unambiguous "visible indicator."


Satisfied with his efforts, Morgan sold the rights to his device to the General Electric Company for the astounding sum of $40,000.00 and it became the standard across the country. Today's modern traffic lights are based upon Morgan's original design.



 Black Inventor: Garrett Morgan

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Accelerator Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2014 at 6:48am


Particle accelerators are used by just about every branch of science and technology these days: from chemists studying molecules using X-ray free-electron lasers to doctors treating eye cancer using beams of protons. And, of course, there are the particle physicists, who recently used the Large Hadron Collider at CERN to find the Higgs boson.


All of these applications, and many more, are the focus of the UK's Cockcroft Institute of Accelerator Science and Technology, which is located at Daresbury Laboratory in the Cheshire countryside, half way between Liverpool and Manchester.


In this video, Cockcroft Institute co-founder and its first director, John Dainton, explains why researchers in the north of England banded together to create the facility, which first opened its doors in 2006.



Physics World: Accelerating science and technology at the Cockcroft Institute

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Conception!

Posted by Ronald T. Jones on February 5, 2014 at 8:00am

A sequel to Discovery, the second in a series by William Hayashi. In Discovery the world discovers black people on the moon. Conception reveals how black people got there and why. First of all, the black lunar inhabitants are African American. Second, they are all experts in various STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) fields. Their knowledge makes them vastly qualified to meet the challenges of building and sustaining a habitat in an extraterrestrial environment. Their heritage provides the grievances fueling their drive to leave Earth, specifically the United States. The story centers around Benjamin Christopher Wright, a brilliant graduate student in physics who discovers a revolutionary new technology.

Realizing the world shaking implications of his discovery and fearing for his safety Christopher opts to keep this technology a secret. Christopher's bitterness over his father's death alienates him from American society. So much so that he embarks on an ambitious plan to use his discovery to relocate to the moon. He enlists the aid of childhood friends in his project. Soon, he and his team recruit hundreds of similarly alienated African Americans to populate his lunar utopia.

The research the author poured into this work shows in the authenticity of the science and technology depicted in the story. Real world tech is seamlessly woven into the fantastical tech underlying the characters' ability to travel back and forth between the moon and Earth. Other advances made by the moon colonists, from an interactive AI to anti-aging is equally plausible.

The characters are well defined and powerfully motivated. Christopher is a force of nature throughout the book. His determination to build a new civilization away from what he sees as the ills of American society is wrapped in a seething rage that pulsates from each page. Conception is a story about process. It's a step by step journey to the moon, detailing successes, setbacks, and subterfuge. It is also a story about a collision course. Because now the secret is out and a few thousand colonists who have thrived on the moon for decades will face a world determined to obtain their technology one way or another. How this confrontation unfolds will be revealed in book 3. Stay tuned!

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Energy Teleportation...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:26am
See link below

Energy could be moved over long distances by quantum teleportation, according to calculations done by a team of physicists in Japan. While energy teleportation is not a new concept, it had been thought that the amount of energy that could be sent dropped rapidly beyond short distances. The new proposal removes this shortcoming, allowing energy to be transferred much farther. The team believes that the theory could be verified in a semiconductor device and that similar energy teleportation could have occurred in the early universe.




Quantum teleportation is a remarkable idea that was first proposed by IBM's Charles Bennett and colleagues in 1992. It involves two parties, usually called Alice and Bob, who "teleport" a quantum state between each other. The scheme allows Alice to send information about an unknown quantum state to Bob, who is then able to construct a perfect copy of that state. To do so, the pair exchange classical information while sharing particles that are entangled quantum mechanically with each other. Physicists have since been able to teleport atomic states over distances of several metres and photon states over distances greater than 100 km.






While this formulation of quantum teleportation does not provide a means to exchange energy, in 2008 Masahiro Hotta of Tohoku University unveiled a theory explaining how energy could be teleported. In Hotta's formulation, Alice sends Bob the information that he needs to extract energy from the vacuum. This extraction is possible because in quantum field theory the vacuum is not devoid of energy but contains virtual particles that continually bubble-up and then vanish.



 Physics World: Energy can be teleported over long distances, say physicists

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The "Jackie Robinson" of P&G...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:22am
WCPO 9, Cincinnati, Ohio

From "The African History Network":



Did you know that Crest Toothpaste, Folgers Coffee, Bounce Fabric Softener and Safeguard Soap were all created by an African-American Man? I have talked about Dr. Herbert Smitherman Sr. before on The African History Network Show before. In 2011 I spoke at an 8th grade graduation and told the audience about him to show them their potential. Most of the audience including parents had never heard of him and were amazed by his story.



Dr. Herbert Smitherman was a pioneering executive and professional chemist at Proctor & Gamble who led the way for other African-Americans at the prestigious company in the 1960s. He was the first black person with a doctorate hired at Proctor & Gamble.



With a PhD in physical organic chemistry, Dr. Smitherman developed a number of incredibly popular patents, including Crest toothpaste, Safeguard soap, Bounce fabric softeners, Biz, Folgers Coffee and Crush soda, to name a few. Not only are they still on the shelves, but many of them are on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center in the featured exhibit, “America I AM: The African-American Imprint.”



Nicknamed the “Jackie Robinson of Proctor & Gamble,” Dr. Smitherman spent 29 years there before turning in his labcoat to work as a professor at Wilberforce University. But after serving at the historically black college, Smitherman turned his attention to starting a high school called the Western Hills Design Technology School to help black students perform better in math and science.



A child of the south, Dr. Smitherman’s family lived in Birmingham, Alabama, where his father served as a reverend. A young Smitherman would see his father’s church burn down twice during their push for voting registration and voting rights.



He died on Oct. 9, 2010.



 Black America Web: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman Sr.
Cincinnati Herald: Dr. Herbert C Smitherman Sr broke barriers
Cincinnati NAACP: Dr. Herbert C. Smitherman

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1st Teleport to Solid-State Quantum Memory...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2014 at 7:15am
Image credit: Physics arXiv link below

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Quantum teleportation is the ability to transmit from one location to another without travelling through the space in between. Matter itself doesn't make this journey, only the information that describes it. This is transmitted to a new body that takes on the identity of the original.



But while science fiction fans have focused on body involved, quantum physicists are more interested in the information. For them, teleportation is the enabling technology behind a new generation of information processing technologies including a quantum internet that allows information to be transmitted with perfect security.



One of the building blocks of the quantum internet will be quantum routers that can receive quantum information from location and route it on to another without destroying it. So the race is on to demonstrate this kind of technology, which has the potential to revolutionise communications.



Today, Felix Bussières at the University of Geneva in Switzerland and a few pals say they’ve taken an important step towards this. These guys have teleported quantum information to a crystal doped with rare-earth ions—a kind of quantum memory. But crucially they’ve done it for the first time over the kind of ordinary optical fibre that telecommunications that are in use all over the world.



Physics arXiv:
Quantum teleportation from a telecom-wavelength photon to a solid-state quantum memory

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American Specter by Rasheedah Prioleau.

Posted by Rasheedah Prioleau on February 3, 2014 at 9:10am


The blog tour is coming to an end!  I want to thank BSFS and Genesis Science Fiction Radio for kicking off the American Spector blog tour weekend!  The interview was incredible and you can listen in here: http://www.talkshoe.com/tc/127374

The book launches tomorrow and in celebration I am having a Virtual Book Release Party, on Facebook, Twitter and right here on the BSFS website from 3pm-9pm EST.  You can sign up ahead of time on my website www.rasheedahprioleau.com for early bird giveaways.  

If you want a sneak peak here you go:

American Specter Sneak Peeks! 
Prologue: http://t.co/SISMC5iQhx 
Chapter 1:http://t.co/q7d6TMT85R
Chapter 2: http://t.co/EtzNVAefEf

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Investing Wisely...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 3, 2014 at 7:13am

Meanwhile, the US has yet to get a clue...
T-shirt Guru



Further details have emerged of a new £270m initiative being funded by the UK government to convert quantum-physics research into commercial products. The five-year initiative, which will include the creation of a network of quantum-technology centres, was one of a number of measures revealed by the government in its Autumn Statement in early December 2013 to boost the UK's science base. The Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne says that the money was "additional investment" in research and that science was a "personal priority" of his.



The initiative, which will begin in 2015, will focus on areas such as chip-scale atomic clocks for improved GPS communication, quantum-enabled sensors, quantum communication and quantum computing. Some cash will go to existing university research groups, while about £30m per year will go to the Technology Strategy Board – the UK's national innovation agency – to support immediate commercialization of technology. There will also be money for PhD students and postdocs, while some £4m will go on equipment for the new Advanced Metrology Laboratory being built at the National Physical Laboratory.



 Physics World: UK splashes out £270m on quantum technology

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Genesis of Uhura...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2014 at 6:58am
Source: Memory Alpha link below


Reading for Uhura...

Naming Uhura...

Discussing Uhura...


Memory Alpha: Nyota Uhura, literally "star freedom" or "freedom star," an allusion to the Underground Railroad. In some translations, Uhuru also means "truth."

The book Ms. Nichols refers to: "UHURU: A Novel of Africa Today," Hardcover – January 1, 1962, Robert Ruark.
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Frontiers of Quantum Information Science...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2014 at 6:53am

Frontiers of Quantum Information Science was the theme for the 31st Jerusalem winter school in theoretical physics, which takes place annually at the Israeli Institute for Advanced Studies located on the Givat Ram campus of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. The school took place from December 30, 2013 through January 9, 2014, but some of the attendees are still trickling back to their home institutions. The common denominator is that our very own John Preskill was the director of this school; co-directed by Michael Ben-Or and Patrick Hayden. John mentioned during a previous post and reiterated during his opening remarks that this is the first time the IIAS has chosen quantum information to be the topic for its prestigious advanced school–another sign of quantum information’s emergence as an important sub-field of physics. In this blog post, I’m going to do my best to recount these festivities while John protects his home from forest fires, prepares a talk for the Simons Institute’s workshop on Hamiltonian complexity, teaches his quantum information course and celebrates his birthday 60+1.



The school was mainly targeted at physicists, but it was diversely represented. Proof of the value of this diversity came in an interaction between a computer scientist and a physicist, which led to one of the school’s most memorable moments.

Quantum Frontiers: Reporting from the ‘Frontiers of Quantum Information Science’

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Mathematical Physics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2014 at 8:17am

Physics Database: In this course from the Perimeter Institute Carl Bender introduces the basics of mathematical physics. The covered topics include: perturbation theory, asymptotics, Schrodinger equation, Shanks transform, eigenvalue problems, Euler summation, divergent series and others. For more physics lectures check out our lecture page.
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Ouverture...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2014 at 8:00am
Source: Omega Deone Wilhite on FB

The Challenger Disaster happened 28 years ago last month, 28 January 1986. Dr. McNair, along with Francis R. Scobee, Michael J. Smith, Ellison S. Onizuka, Judith A. Resnik, Christa McAuliffe, and Gregory B. Jarvis became the sad reminders of the sometimes grim price of exploration and adventure.



I open African American/Black History Month ("ouverture" - en Francais) with some recollections I've posted previously on this blog, as well as Langston Hughes' "I Too" poem reenactment, born February 1, 1902 in Joplin, Missouri. Mr. Hughes and Dr. McNair were fraternity brothers in the Greek Letter organization known as Omega Psi Phi Fraternity, Inc (part of the "Divine Nine"). I do not know if either man ever met the other...



Discovery article: The Physics of...Karate

I recalled having met Dr. McNair when I was an undergraduate Engineering Physics major at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro back in '84. He's an alumni of the university, and we celebrated him being the 1st black astronaut from an HBCU. I was in Air Force ROTC, marched in the parade in his honor after his first mission, and introduced him at the Army/Air Force ROTC joint banquet. It was a busy weekend.



"Whenever you're in Texas, you should give me a call."



So I did. I lived in Austin, Texas at the time, stationed at Bergstrom Air Force Base (now the airport). Back then, I called information; asked for Dr. Ronald E. McNair in Houston, Texas. That was as close to "Google it" as we got back then.



I got to speak to him for a good three hours. I found out some things:


  • 5 weeks before his dissertation defense, someone purged his data (also known as sabotage). Without data, he'd essentially have failed to get his PhD. He said he stayed up for 3 weeks and re-accomplished 5 years of research. He slept for a week after that.
  • He was planning to leave NASA and go into academia. Challenger would be "his last mission." That was sadly true. It devastated me, and inspired some creative writing in his honor.
  • A lot of his determination he learned as a participant on the school karate team, which a the time. According to my Calculus instructor and his teammate Dr. Gilbert Casterlow (Sensei), you could get a disqualification for "unnecessary redness of the skin." The rule was designed not to favor African Americans, obviously.


Recalling this makes me determined to stay in science, contribute, help when and if I can, and stand on the shoulder of this and other giants (he was actually only 5'6", but you get the idea).




“When getting an education is a revolutionary act & dreams are the province of men,” Stanley Tucci.
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One-Shot Memories...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 31, 2014 at 11:23am
The "one-shot" memory devices that recent NIST research might make possible can be envisioned as physical keys that can only be used a single time, a useful feature for computer security applications.
Credit: Talbott/NIST

Computer security systems may one day get a boost from quantum physics, as a result of recent research from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Computer scientist Yi-Kai Liu has devised a way to make a security device that has proved notoriously difficult to build—a "one-shot" memory unit, whose contents can be read only a single time.



The research, which Liu is presenting at this week's Innovations in Theoretical Computer Science conference,* shows in theory how the laws of quantum physics could allow for the construction of such memory devices. One-shot memories would have a wide range of possible applications such as protecting the transfer of large sums of money electronically. A one-shot memory might contain two authorization codes: one that credits the recipient's bank account and one that credits the sender's bank account, in case the transfer is canceled. Crucially, the memory could only be read once, so only one of the codes can be retrieved, and hence, only one of the two actions can be performed—not both.



"When an adversary has physical control of a device—such as a stolen cell phone—software defenses alone aren't enough; we need to use tamper-resistant hardware to provide security," Liu says. "Moreover, to protect critical systems, we don't want to rely too much on complex defenses that might still get hacked. It's better if we can rely on fundamental laws of nature, which are unassailable."



Unfortunately, there is no fundamental solution to the problem of building tamper-resistant chips, at least not using classical physics alone. So scientists have tried involving quantum mechanics as well, because information that is encoded into a quantum system behaves differently from a classical system.



 NIST: Quantum Physics Could Make Secure, Single-Use Computer Memories Possible

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HARD AT WORK TURNING DREAMS INTO REALITIES!!

Posted by Administrator: Jarvis Sheffield on January 30, 2014 at 9:31pm

Hello everyone,

The campaign to get the Earth Squadron futuristic, 3D, Sci-Fi, action film made is well underway!

The team has been working hard behind the scenes on pre-production work so this film will be great.

We have been putting in many weeks of work and late nights creating characters, ships and environments this awesome project.

We need your help to help with the financing of this epic film. Be a part of something groundbreaking project.

 

Please make a donation towards getting this futuristic tale today at: 

http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/earth-squadron-movie-project

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Permittivity Measurements...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 30, 2014 at 6:52am
FIG. 2.
SEM micrographs of the KTN thin films deposited on (a) MgO and (b) LaAlO3.
Citation: J. Appl. Phys. 115, 024103 (2014); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4858388

ABSTRACT



The dielectric properties of a KTa0.65Nb0.35O3 ferroelectric composition for a submicronic thin layer were measured in the microwave domain using different electromagnetic characterization methods. Complementary experimental techniques (broadband methods versus resonant techniques, waveguide versus transmission line) and complementary data processing procedures (quasi-static theoretical approaches versus full-wave analysis) were selected to investigate the best way to characterize ferroelectric thin films. The measured data obtained from the cylindrical resonant cavity method, the experimental method that showed the least sources of uncertainty, were taken as reference values for comparisons with results obtained using broadband techniques. The error analysis on the methods used is discussed with regard to the respective domains of validity for each method; this enabled us to identify the best experimental approach for obtaining an accurate determination of the microwave dielectric properties of ferroelectric thin layers.



 © 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

 Scitation:
Intercomparison of permittivity measurement techniques for ferroelectric thin layers

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