Nobel Prize:
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| The top image shows the full sky map as seen by Planck – the CMB temperature fluctuations on large scales are more extreme on the right side of the sky. The bottom image illustrates our bubble universe being born from the larger universe (depicted only by the blue background). Our bubble forms at time T0 and expands outwards, as shown with red rings at times T1, T2 and T3. In the 3D space–time, this expansion forms a "bubble wall" that acts as the starting point (t0) of our universe. Subsequent times (t1, t2, t3) are defined on hypersurfaces above the bubble wall. The yellow lines show the trajectories of constant positions in space inside this open universe. (Courtesy: ESA and the Planck Collaboration/Alan Stonebraker, Phys. Rev.Lett.) |
Physics World: Is the universe saddle shaped?
http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/oklo-reactor
'' the uranium deposits in the Oklo region of Gabon created a natural nuclear power plant that operated for hundreds of thousands of years until most of the fissile uranium was depleted. While a majority of the uranium at Oklo is the non-fissile isotope U238, only about 3% needed to be the fissile isotope U235 for the chain reaction to start. Today, that percent of fissile uranium in the deposits is around 0.7%, indicating that the deposit had sustained reactions for a relatively long period of time. But it was this exact characteristic of the rocks from Oklo that first puzzled scientists''
By the title of this post you can probably guess that that I am about to rant about sparkly vampires or loving vampires or generally any sort of vampire that would not feature predominantly as a villain in a Blade reboot (ed: Blade Reboot? awesome sauce!).
For the most part, you would be wrong. There is generally nothing wrong with twinkle vampires or any other form of fiction that explores wish fulfillment. There is a lot of "my rich boyfriend is a secret badass" to a lot of modern Vampire stories. As a result, people think the genera is over. No more vampire stories! people (namely book agents) cry!
There is nothing wrong with the genera. It might just be that the current story slate, i.e. rich boyfriend, needs to be investigated further. Economic theory says that if nothing else, most vampires should be at least affluent, if not down right uber-wealthy. Figure out a story that explains how your sexy vampire got his cash.
ISSUE 1: Vampires Are(or should be) Rich.
Vampires, without direct violence, can be expected to live anywhere from "A Very Long Time" to "Infinity." While that sounds great in and of itself, it is really great from an economic stand point. Most vampires lack the need of actual economic inputs (read: food, clothing, shelter, sleep...air). As such, their actual cash outlays are minimal to non-existent. If they possess special powers, such as super speed or flight, then generally they have zero to minimal transportation costs. Think about the cost of an average transatlantic flight. Vampires pocket that for fancy hotels and ebony wood coffins.
However, most vampires lack a normal occupation (with the exception of that one that was a Rock Star and that other one that ran a medical clinic in Washington State). One assumes, if you rob your food source (i.e. people), after a few years you have acquired some sizable assets. Let's assume that your vampire boyfriend is nice and does not commit regular robbery/homicides every other lunch period.
However, lets also not assume that he hails from some degenerate landed gentry or b) employs some sort of glamer on people, thereby hypnotizing them into giving them money. Assuming he was, in his mortal incarnation, middle class; then by investing some portion of his money (which he really does not need) in the sock market (say in General Electric Stock in 1915) and living solely off the dividends (or reinvestment or diversifying in times of economic struggle), then by the time he hit the 90's tech bubble he would be a millionaire several times over. By not touching the principal, each vampire more than 50 or 60 years old should have a sizable amount of the worlds money locked up in various modern, seaside, homes.
So any story that I encounter that does not explain why a) the vampire is or isn't rich, or b) lacks the assistance of a good financial advisor, is generally suspect.
ISSUE 2: Vampires Are Bad at Science.
Vampires, as stated above, are considerably long lived. Generally, society mourns the loss of great intellects, from Newton to Einstein. One would think that Vampires would scoop up these top notch scientist at the bargain basement price of "almost dead". Why stop there? Why not selectively "convert" the top graduate of a highly prestigious technical university.
There should be vampire covens of geniuses, sitting around creating fantastic works of art, literature, and science. One should assume that the internally produced vampire literature is significantly superior to human literature. Most vampire stories take the position that only good looking people of an artistic bent, become vampires (see said rock star). However, rarely do we get a story about the great and fabulous Vampire museums featuring the "post-turned" works of Picasso, Muro et. al.
Most vampires stories paint the species at a significant technological and ecological disadvantage relative to humans. Vampires rely on a slowly reproducing natural resource that is subject to plagues, pandemics, endemic violence, and natural and cosmic disasters. Modern day farmers would not tolerate the level of uncertainty in the long term viability of their stock. Likewise, surveillance technology, networked infrastructure, high-capacity ammunition, and directed energy weapons all level the playing field against the natural gifts of the supernatural.
It would be natural that, with unlimited life spans and budgets, individual vampires should be able to privately fund all manner of Manhattan Project-style endeavors. For example, given their superhuman abilities, vampires re almost specifically designed for Deep Ocean and Deep Space exploration.
A round trip to Proxima Centuri, at 1/10 the speed of light (which is all we could ever be capable of with modern technology) would take 80 years. This is seen as a barrier for humans, but with a steady supply of cryogenically frozen blood, would be a cake walk for vampires. Assuming ambitions closer to home, one would expect that at least some vampires use their vast wealth and time horizons to devise counter-measures to human extinction (since one prefaces the other), ready to be deployed at a moment's notice.
At the very least, you would assume that Vampires operate technology that is several generations ahead of our own. Faster computers, smaller devices, robots . (ed - see Vampire Hunter D series for technologically advanced vampires).
The point here is to note that the Vampire genre, just like any other genre, has room for interpretation or reinvention. Just because there have been a spate of successful, "Vampires are my Boyfriend", books doesn't mean that every story that could be written about them has been written. Now, a book on Vampire Economics might not get turned into a best selling novel series, but it would definitely set the author apart.
@Moorsgate
Nobel Prize:
American Physical Society: Friction at the Atomic Scale
Nobel Prize:
Our country is given shape in the form of the ship, the Pequod, named after the Indian tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American allies. The ship’s 30-man crew—there were 30 states in the Union when Melville wrote the novel—is a mixture of races and creeds. The object of the hunt is a massive white whale, Moby Dick, which, in a previous encounter, maimed the ship’s captain, Ahab, by biting off one of his legs. The self-destructive fury of the quest, much like that of the one we are on, assures the Pequod’s destruction. And those on the ship, on some level, know they are doomed—just as many of us know that a consumer culture based on corporate profit, limitless exploitation and the continued extraction of fossil fuels is doomed.
Chris Hedges, "We Are All Aboard the Pequod"
Houston Chronicle: Texas lawmakers on Tuesday began weighing changes to the state’s high school graduation requirements to give students more flexibility in which courses they must take.
A closely watched bill by Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, would change the default graduation plan so students would not necessarily have to take four years of English, math, science and social studies. Instead, they could specialize in areas such as arts and humanities or science, technology, engineering and math.
“My focus is to help stem the dropout rate,” Patrick said during a meeting Tuesday, explaining that students would be able to take more courses that interest them.
Lake Houston Observer: Assessments in Algebra II, geometry, English III, chemistry, physics, world geography, and world history have been eliminated from the testing requirements. As a result, the July 2013 STAAR administration will not include assessments for these courses. End-of-course assessments will continue to be offered in Algebra I, English I, English II, biology, and U.S. history.
Texas is a large market due to its sheer size. Thus, a lot of other states emulate them; based their textbook purchase decisions on what they deem are deliberative, informed educational moves.
This was alerted to me by a friend on Facebook. My description/reaction is as follows:
"So, biology only is going to help us design an I-phone? Ye gods, we are destroyed by ideology, lunacy and idiocy! The only "logic" I can see in this: physics and chemistry would destroy their creationist/intelligent design garbage narrative I've read they're trying to get in textbooks K-12. Texas influences a lot of education markets nationally that assume it following a rational course, which this is NOT."
We seem all firmly aboard the Pequod, 'tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine' (Ephesians 4:14); the ship of fools captained by a 1% Ahab fighting against the forces of nature and common sense. Anything that should be eliminated is the testing-industrial-complex, not science in an ever-increasing; ever-complicated world. We need more scientists, mathematicians, engineers and technologists with an appreciation for written discourse, geography and history; more importantly: a citizenry that appreciates these subjects and informed enough to demand such from its leaders and hold them accountable. A canyon gap between 1 and 99% will soon be an untraversable chasm. I do not see a stable society emerging from this Phoenix's ashes.
Controversies are manufactured to keep us divided: "Smokey James: ['Blue Collar' voice over echoing earlier line] They pit the lifers against the new boy and the young against the old. The black against the white. Everything they do is to keep us in our place." A fill-in-the-blank modern extrapolation is pretty simple.
Chris Hedges opined on climate change, which takes an appreciation of science. The conclusions of science have long been opposed since Galileo as it destroys the narrative of authoritarians in sheep and shepherds' clothing (Canis Lupus would be too obvious), more driven by their warped sense of order and power than any concern...as sociopaths lack empathy nor real concern for the well-being of their fellow humankind, spiritual and scientific efficacy in this country.
Shoulders thrown into the effort of rowing; brine spraying our collective faces, we steady our feet above deck as someone shouts:
"There she blows!--there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
"Hereby perhaps Stubb indirectly hinted, that though man loved his fellow, yet man is a money-making animal, which propensity too often interferes with his benevolence."
"From hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee."
"Ignorance is the parent of fear."
There she blows, a great force of nature and alas, we cannot all be Ishmael...
Luis F. Leloir
Born: 6 September 1906, Paris, France
Died: 2 December 1987, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Affiliation at the time of the award: Institute for Biochemical Research, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Prize motivation: "for his discovery of sugar nucleotides and their role in the biosynthesis of carbohydrates"
Field: Biochemistry
Luis F. Leloir was born in Paris of Argentine parents on September 6, 1906 and has lived in Buenos Aires since he was two years old. He graduated as a Medical Doctor in the University of Buenos Aires in 1932 and started his scientific career at the Institute of Physiology working with Professor Bernardo A. Houssay on the role of the adrenalin carbohydrate metabolism. In 1936 he worked at the Biochemical Laboratory of Cambridge, England, which was directed by Sir Frederick Gowland Hopkins. There he collaborated with Malcom Dixon, N.L. Edson and D.E. Green. On returning to Buenos Aires he worked with J.M. Muñoz on the oxidation of fatty acids in liver, and also together with E. Braun Menéndez, J.C. Fasciolo and A.C. Taquini on the formation of angiotensin. In 1944 he was Research Assistant in Dr. Carl F. Cori's laboratory in St. Louis, United States and thereafter worked with D.E. Green in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York. Since then he has been Director of the Instituto de Investigaciones Bioquímicas, Fundación Campomar. With his early collaborators, Ranwel Caputto, Carlos E. Cardini, Raúl Trucco and Alejandro C. Paladini work was started on the metabolism of galactose which led to the isolation of glucose 1,6-diphosphate and uridine diphosphate glucose. The latter substance was then found to act as glucose donor in the synthesis of trehalose (with Enrico Cabib, 1953 ) and sucrose (with Carlos E. Cardini and J.Chiriboga, 1955). Other sugar nucleotides such as uridine diphosphate acetylglucosamine and guanosine diphosphate mannose were also isolated. Further work showed that uridine diphosphate glucose is involved in glycogen synthesis and adenosine diphosphate glucose in that of starch.
Nobel Prize:
Physics arXiv: Optical "Bernoulli" Forces
The excitement! Tzaybur Lay’s twelve hearts hammered with the almost sexual thrill of bloodletting. As a Grundak, he shared his species’ love of war. With Grundak military training often being indistinguishable from war, it was no surprise that Grundaks comprised the vast majority of the Bringers’ Fist.
His Complement commandos encountered no enemy soldiers as of yet. Still, carrying out the High Cleric’s standing order to eliminate every living thing in their path in the course of achieving the mission objective gratified the Assualt Leader all the same. Those still on the station that claimed to support the High Cleric earned nothing but Tzaybur Lay’s contempt. If these so-called supporters were sincere, they would have been fighting and dying as true believers should instead of idling about, allowing heresy to fester.
Votta Ya, Tzayber Lay’s Second, fell along side his superior. “Assault Leader, I’m picking up low frequency signals. There’s too much degradation for me to determine the origins.”
“Those are enemy transmissions. Enemy soldiers are near.”
“But…are you sure, Assault Leader?”
Behind his bowl shaped helmet, Tzaybur Lay displayed a feral serrated tooth smile. A smile that gleamed challenge. “I can practically smell them. Be alert.
Votta Ya acknowledged and slid back into his place within the Complement’s formation.
Five equipment movers floated swiftly above the monorail that cut through the station. The flatbed movers carried five components comprising a Talon pulse cannon. The Talon was the Association’s premier artillery weapon. It fired a deuterium burst that was both highly penetrative and combustible. Few unshielded objects could withstand the destructive power of a Talon-launced deuterium burst. The Talon operators riding in the lead flatbed’s cab had heard stories about the near impenetrability of the Demon helpers’ metal. They were certainly hungry to match the output of their cannon against the vaunted hull of the enemy ship in the repair dock.
Hilun Gespie sat inside his Battle Shell on a bridge spanning fifty yards. A monorail ran beneath the bridge. The flatbeds transporting the cannon components were less than five minutes away. Gespie glanced at the Battle Shell beside him. “Time to pretty up, Kale.”
A laid back chuckle filled Gespie’s cockpit. “That might do me some good. I don’t know about you.”
“Are you calling me ugly?” Gespie queried with mock indignation.
Kale Riggins cleared his throat. “Uh…you said it, not me.”
“I’ll continue this interrogation later. On three…one…two…” Gespie tapped a sequence on his control board. “…three.”
Photon curtains draped over the battle shells, dousing them in camouflage. The camo blended the battle shells so well into the backdrop that they would have appeared completely invisible to the most discerning eye.
“Here they come,” Riggins announced eagerly.
Gespie methodically wrapped his fingers around the emitter control grip, as the flatbeds emerged from a tunnel and sped toward the bridge. He transmitted his Active Sight Visual to Unit Leader Baez. She was after all running the show for this operation.
“Stand by,” the PSWO operative ordered over Gespie’s private link.
Gespie uttered a terse, impatient acknowledgement. He reveled in the power of his battle shell, and could barely restrain the urge to do damage…serious damage!
Bringer’s Fist soldiers filtered into a square.
Low rise buildings fringed the open space, from where PSWO operatives lay in wait.
Twelve operatives were posted on rooftops, fifteen inside buildings at various floor levels. All had clear lines of sight on the square from every direction.
The fine hairs at the base of Tzayber Lur’s neck tingled. His enhanced visual picked up nothing unusual in the vicinity. Yet, an instinct honed by tens of thousand s of years of evolution screamed danger.
Votta Ya’s uncertain voice whispered in his helm comm. “Assault Leader…”
“I know,” Tzayber Lur inturupted, his gaze brushing over the buildings surrounding the square. “I feel it too.”
Baez was positioned on the roof of a low-rise building facing the enemy’s west flank. She rested her Core-7 on the top railing, sighted on the nearest Association soldier…”now!”
Flickering lines of solid and high-energy crossfire cut into the Bringers’ Fist soldiers…
Hilun Gespie triggered his emitters the instant Unit Leader Baez broadcast the word. A tide of energy blasted from both his emitters, raking the first flatbed mover.
Kale Riggins targeted the second and third flatbeds and a blooming conflagration consumed all three vehicles halting them in their tracks.
The fourth flatbed ran headlong into the demolished remnant of the third and its front end crumpled like paper as the rest of it flipped up and over.
Gespie and Riggins jettisoned their Battle Shells out of the way a split second before the flying flatbed came crashing down on the bridge, pulverizing its supports. Components of the Talon cannon hurtled in every direction.
The fifth flatbed swerved left to avoid the flaming pileup.
Gespie and Riggins drenched the fleeing flatbed in a shower of bolts. The flatbed knifed into the ground, dredging a fiery trench before exploding.
Hell ripped into the Bringer’s Fist Complement from above and ground level. Five soldiers dropped as a fusillade of energy-lined rounds smacked through their armor. Three more fell when completely solid projectiles pulverized their helmets.
Tzaybur was hit twice in the upper chest, but managed to initialize his armor’s power boost. He shot up fifteen feet, rotated and triggered his assault blaster. Dark and destructive iridescence poured out of his weapon’s twin barrels, hosing the surrounding buildings. Those of his Complement still upright returned fire, blasting away at an unseen enemy. The assault leader landed hard on his feet and bent to one knee. He grinned maniacally as a hail of enemy projectiles pocked his armor.
The impacts felt like hammerblows against bare skin, but he reveled in the pain and thanked the Bringers for bringing a worthy enemy into his sights. He had just the recipe for dealing with this foe. A slot in the shoulder segment of his armor retracted. Twelve diamond shaped objects ejected from the slot and flew in different directions before bursting.
Baez bit her lip in frustration. PSWO commandos opened up with everything they had. The enemy soldiers should have went down and stayed down after the first volley. Instead, their armor proved more resilient than she expected. Thirteen had fallen and were still. But it took a hell of lot of firepower to bring them down. Several staggered from multiple impacts, but remained on their feet. Indeed, they showed no signs of panic as they triggered their blasters, firing and advancing into the ambush instead of fleeing from it. One of the enemy soldiers leapt into the air. Baez shot the airborne target a half dozen times, narrowly avoiding immolation as a spray of massive energy beams swept past her, slagging part of the railing. Objects flew out of the soldier’s armor when he landed. The objects exploded, releasing dozens of finger size spikes that swarmed aimlessly before a measure of guidance took hold.
Sets of spikes darted toward areas where PSWO commandos were positioned. A set of ten spikes zeroed in on Baez. She scrambled backwards thinking they were mini-rockets. But the spikes decelerated and clattered to the surface around her.
Initially, puzzled, Baez stared at the dark gray metallic slivers. Their tips blinked a garish red light.
A warning whispered in her head. Homing munitions? She turned and ran, managing a dozen feet or so before the spikes erupted in a deafening howl of fire and turbulence. The roof collapsed beneath Baez’ feet, and she disappeared in a spewing fountain of black smoke and dust.
She couldn’t have plunged no more than three stories to ground level. Yet the rapid descent felt like a 10,000-foot free fall. Baez landed on her back. Inertial padding in her helmet and armor cushioned the impact. Baez groaned in pain. She could have used a little more padding. She wrenched herself to her feet and waded through rubble toward the building’s exit. She lost her Core 7 in the fall and didn’t have time to look for it. She unholstered her Wingstinger and burst through the exit pumping shots into the enemy soldier who launched those munitions.
She took a quick assessment of the situation. The ambush was unraveling. More explosions from those damnable munitions had forced the PSWO operatives out of position. More enemy soldiers fell as Core 7 rounds peppered their armor, but not enough to eliminate the entire force as a threat.
“Everyone advance! Advance!”
PSWO operatives emerged from various areas of concealment, firing their Core 7s as they closed in on the enemy soldiers. Four Council soldiers were knocked backwards as enemy bolts slammed into their armored bodies dead on. The rest continued forward at a methodical, undaunted pace, carbon rounds ripping from their weapons tearing chunks out enemy armor. PSWO operatives doled out rates of fire twice faster than what their opponents’ blasters could deliver. Only the durability of their armor kept the Bringer’s Fist soldiers upright longer than they should have been.
Thirty light war cruisers swarmed the assault boat Matador as it rounded a sharply angled corner of the station. Ruby lasers lanced from Matador’s emitters, slashing the night. Six Association cruisers bucked violently as the lethal lasers cut through shielding and hull, boring into interiors, igniting reactors. A center cruiser exploded, its blast wave sending the others spinning away. More Association cruisers sped toward the Matador, but one veered off in a slightly different direction. It brushed close to the station’s equator covering a two-mile distance in less than three seconds. Then it dipped abruptly, crashing into the station in an impact so shattering the ship vaporized. A tremendous flash sprouted from the collision. It subsided rapidly, revealing a vast hole from which a plume of atmosphere shot out with typhoon strength.
The Matador’s captain, Rajay Thapoory, looked at the monitor in puzzlement. “Did that ship just deliberately…?”
A second cruiser raced toward the impact site, pausing fractionally to release clusters of small objects into the hole.
“Troop pods,” his XO said.
Thapoory shook his head. “Why are they deploying troops inside the station?”
The XO examined a sensor screen. “They’re bringing in more than troops, sir. Configuration scans are picking up bulk material inside some of those pods.”
Captain Thapoory took a handful of seconds to process the XO’s report. His eyes slowly narrowed. “Contact the Far Walker.”
Greggory, Lian, and Grimes stood around the display tank watching an image playback of the Association cruiser slamming into the station and the subsequent pod drops.
“What the hell…” Grimes’ expression registered shock and revulsion. “The Matador never touched that ship…that was a suicide crash!”
“If they wanted to hole the station, for whatever reason, they could have simply used firepower,” said Lian.
“It would have been too obvious.” Greggory turned away from the tank, facing Lian and Grimes. “Using a crash to disguise deployments inside the station is a good plan. The one, big flaw is that it still drew our attention.” He looked briefly at the display. “I think I know what they’re trying to do. Contact PSWO and Infantry. Tell them to mobilize.”
Tzayber Lur, Assault Leader, 12th Complement of the Bringers’ Fist Division growled into his mouth comm. The fifty soldiers under his command quickened their debarkation from the troop pod. High-speed winds screamed and whipped about, escaping through a massive breach above produced by the cruiser’s impact. Tzaybur Lur belted out praise chants for the 3,000 martryrs aboard who willingly gave their lives to pave the way for the Bringers’ Fist.
More pods soared through the breach, faster than they should have. Two bumped into each other and whirled out of control. One pod received the worst of the contact and tumbled twice when it hit the surface before skidding on its side and plowing into a thick support column. A handful of Bringers’ Fist soldiers managed to claw their way free of the mangled wreckage. Less than half of them cleared it before a pierced reactor gave up its volotile energies, consuming what was left of the pod.
Tzayber Lur chanted for the pod fatalities as well. Such were the hazards of a mission. They needed to dash halfway through the station, assemble five pulse cannons and blast that Demon helper ship out of its repair dock. And they needed to be quick about it.
“Move it, move it!” the Assault Leader bellowed, activating his powered armor boost to counteract the blasting wind. Chances were his Complement was not going to be the first to reach and secure the designated launch zone, but he was damned if it was going to be last.
Unit Leader Karinia Baez, Planetside Special Warfare Ops, crouched just within the entrance of a storefront facing a five-lane concourse. With a mental command to her helmet’s visual, she zoomed in on enemy movements at six hundred yards and closing. Fifty-one hostiles in heavy powered armor tramped swiftly down the concourse. A gathering of station occupants stood along both sides of the concourse, observing the soldiers’ approach. The occupants were part of a minority that chose not to evacuate the station. Perhaps they thought the situation was not serious enough to warrant so drastic a departure. Or maybe they were among those who were deeply loyal to the High Cleric and felt it unneassary to leave. After all, what did they, as true believers, have to fear?
A readout flashed above Baez’ helm display identifying the Association soldiers as members of the Bringers’ Fist, an elite detachment. Fist soldiers were the most highly trained and fanatical of all the forces under the High Cleric’s control. They were also incalculably ruthless.
A foreboding chill crept through Baez as the armored soldiers neared the bystanders.
The next instant they leveled cannon-size blaster rifles on the crowd.
Searing death funnelled from fifty-one barrels, slashing and burning through bodies with indiscriminate savagery.
Half the bystanders were reduced to charred chunks of flesh before the other half gained the presence of mind to scatter.
Some of the soldiers targeted their fleeing victims, blasting them apart in coherent ripples of light. Others preferred to kill up close, using narrow blades that extended from the tips of their armor suited arms. The blades were three feet long, less than an inch wide with ultra durable diamond edges that glowed emerald green.
Despite being no stranger to violence, Baez flinched when a pair of armored suits chased down four bystanders and hacked them to pieces.
The butchery continued as streaks of metallic green met flesh and bone, sending body parts flinging away on streamers of blood. With every bystander dead, the soldiers resumed their advance across a gore-splattered surface.
Baez reverted to normal vision and took a deep breath in an effort to tamp down her rage. Patience, patience. She sent a message through her subdermal comm. “First contacts are close to position.”
“Copy,” a voice replied. “Ready to light ‘em up.”
“Wait for my word,” Baez said with a smirk. She was ready too. The PSWO operative melted into the shadow of her dim hideaway and withdrew.
Born: 10 April 1887, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Died: 21 September 1971, Buenos Aires, Argentina
Affiliation at the time of the award: Instituto de Biologia y Medicina Experimental (Institute for Biology and Experimental Medicine), Buenos Aires, Argentina
Prize motivation: "for his discovery of the part played by the hormone of the anterior pituitary lobe in the metabolism of sugar"
Bernardo Alberto Houssay was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on April 10, 1887, one of the eight children of Dr. Albert and Clara (née Laffont) Houssay, who had come to Argentina from France. His father was a barrister. His early education was at a private school, the Colegio Británico. He then entered the School of Pharmacy of the University of Buenos Aires at the exceptionally early age of 14, graduating in 1904. He had already begun studying medicine and, in 1907, before completing his studies, he took up a post in the Department of Physiology. He began here his research on the hypophysis which resulted in his M.D.-thesis (1911), a thesis which earned him a University prize.
In 1910 he was appointed Professor of Physiology in the University's School of Veterinary Medicine. During this time he had been doing hospital practice and, in 1913, became Chief Physician at the Alvear Hospital. In addition to this he was also in charge of the Laboratory of Experimental Physiology and Pathology in the National Department of Hygiene from 1915 to 1919. In 1919 he became Professor of Physiology in the Medical School at Buenos Aires University. He also organized the Institute of Physiology at the Medical School, making it a centre with an international reputation. He remained Professor and Director of the Institute until 1943. In this year the Government then in power deprived him of his post, as a result of his voicing his opinion that there should be effective democracy in the country. Although receiving many invitations from abroad, he continued his work in an institute which he organized with the support of funds contributed by the Sauberan Foundation and other bodies. This was the Instituto de Biología y Medicina Experimental, where he still remains as Director. In 1955 a new Government reinstated him in the University.
Nobel Prize:
I almost hesitate to post it because many who do not "believe in the Big Bang Theory" will shout: aha! I say: ah, science - self-examining, exploring; learning more tomorrow than we thought we knew yesterday. Quantum mechanics had its trials and tribulations: Weins Law, Rayleigh-Jeans Law and the "ultraviolet catastrophe" eventually getting to Max Planck (of Planck's constant) and light seen as quanta. This eventually led to Einstein and the photoelectric effect in his Annus mirabilis papers generated in a lowly patent office in Munich. Thus we have the Internet, I-phones, flat screens, etc.
This description matches some of the wording I've seen over the years of the "universe as hologram" and admittedly either didn't understand or regarded as new age mystic pop culture. This challenge will have to be peer-reviewed and experiments performed to verify. Stay tuned...
However, Pluto is still not a planet.
A few nine-year-olds will send me hate mail now...
It could be time to bid the Big Bang bye-bye. Cosmologists have speculated that the Universe formed from the debris ejected when a four-dimensional star collapsed into a black hole — a scenario that would help to explain why the cosmos seems to be so uniform in all directions.
The standard Big Bang model tells us that the Universe exploded out of an infinitely dense point, or singularity. But nobody knows what would have triggered this outburst: the known laws of physics cannot tell us what happened at that moment.
“For all physicists know, dragons could have come flying out of the singularity,” says Niayesh Afshordi, an astrophysicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Waterloo, Canada.
It is also difficult to explain how a violent Big Bang would have left behind a Universe that has an almost completely uniform temperature, because there does not seem to have been enough time since the birth of the cosmos for it to have reached temperature equilibrium.
In our Universe, a black hole is bounded by a spherical surface called an event horizon. Whereas in ordinary three-dimensional space it takes a two-dimensional object (a surface) to create a boundary inside a black hole, in the bulk universe the event horizon of a 4D black hole would be a 3D object — a shape called a hypersphere. When Afshordi’s team modelled the death of a 4D star, they found that the ejected material would form a 3D brane surrounding that 3D event horizon, and slowly expand.
The authors postulate that the 3D Universe we live in might be just such a brane — and that we detect the brane’s growth as cosmic expansion. “Astronomers measured that expansion and extrapolated back that the Universe must have begun with a Big Bang — but that is just a mirage,” says Afshordi.
Nature: Did a hyper-black hole spawn the Universe?
Physics arXiv: Out of the White Hole: A Holographic Origin for the Big Bang
Born: 29 October 1920, Caracas, Venezuela
Died: 2 August 2011, Boston, MA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA
Prize motivation: "for their discoveries concerning genetically determined structures on the cell surface that regulate immunological reactions"
I was born in Caracas, Venezuela, on October 29, 1920 of Spanish-Jewish ancestry. My father, a self-made business man, was a textile merchant and importer. He was born in Spanish Morocco, whereas my mother was born and raised in French Algeria and brought up in the French culture. When I was five years old, my family moved to Paris where we resided until 1939. My primary and secondary education was in French which had a lasting influence on my life. The second World War caused our return to Venezuela, where my father continued to have a thriving business. It was decided that I should pursue my education in the United States, and we moved to New York in 1940. I registered at Columbia University in the School of General Studies, and graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in 1942, having also completed the pre-medical requisites for admission to Medical School. By that time, I had elected to study biology and medicine, instead of going into the family business, as my father would have wanted. I did not realize, however, that admission to Medical School was a formidable undertaking for someone with my ethnic and foreign background in the United States of 1942. In spite of an excellent academic record at Columbia, I was refused admission by the numerous medical schools I applied to and would have found it impossible to study medicine except for the kindness and support of George W. Bakeman, father of a close friend, who was then Assistant to the President of the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond. Learning of my difficulties, Mr. Bakeman arranged for me to be interviewed and considered for one of the two remaining places in the Freshman class. I was accepted and began my medical studies in July 1942. While in medical school, I was drafted into the U.S. Army with the other medical students, as part of the wartime training program, and naturalized American citizen in 1943 I greatly enjoyed my medical studies, which at the Medical College of Virginia were very clinically oriented. I received what I considered to be an excellent medical education in the relatively short time of three war years.
Nobel Prize:
ARGONNE, Ill. – Just like people, materials can sometimes exhibit “multiple personalities.” This kind of unusual behavior in a certain class of materials has compelled researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory to take a closer look at the precise mechanisms that govern the relationships between superconductivity and magnetism.
Previous measurements of magnetic and electronic properties in these superconducting oxide materials relied on aggregate or “bulk” measurements of a large area. By using advanced scanning tunneling microscopy at the laboratory’s Center for Nanoscale Materials, Argonne physicist John Freeland and materials scientist Nathan Guisinger were able to develop a clearer picture of the physical and chemical behavior of boundary regions within the material.
According to Guisinger, the most important regions of study in oxide superconductors are the boundaries or interfaces.
“You can think of the sample as kind of like lasagna,” Guisinger said. “There are layers within it that have different properties, and we want to see if the ‘cheese’ in one section mixes with the ‘sauce’ in another.”
Argonne National Laboratory: A Material's Multiple Personalities
"I see you have constructed a new light saber, your skills are complete."
Hi all, I know many have thought of this but I thought I'd mention it because I'm having so much fun. Yeah, yeah, smartphones everybody's got one. Except me, I got an old school cellphone so that I'm not bothered by endless txt, emails and calls or my own fiddl'n with the darn thing. I was in the market for a new laptop, one with longer battery life, light weight yet some power. I kept seeing the tablets at the various stores. I resisted for so long, finally pick one up for a closer look. Smartphones/cellphones, OK, the 7" tablet, just a big smartphone, the 10" tablet..............wait, hummmmmmmmm!
Picked up a Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (it's OK to get an iPad, sheeech!). It does everything I need and has Wacom touch and stylus technology to boot. I can draw on the thing. It's like having a Wacom Cintiq............almost. The apps are all Android apps, there are numerous drawing apps including Photoshop Touch, Autodesk Sketch Pro and one called ArtFlow which I like very much. The Note app is wonderful, you can insert pictures, write/draw/type your ideas. I'm always in waiting rooms, running trips, finding a quite spot, watching a vid while working. It has two cams, takes very good pictures and videos. I recorded a couple of bands, two dance troops and a walk through at a local Art festival. I take it everywhere. I'm thinking velcro dots in the car, around the house. My old Chevy has been instantly upgraded.
All done, I can transfer pics and vids to my laptop via Dropbox (cloud transfer/storage) or use a flash drive. I'm still discovering hidden functions. Tablets don't have the full power of the force, but does well with what energy it commands. 7 hour battery life, wi-fi and sci-fi (thought I'd throw that in there!). I use a lot of note pads so this device is like having an endless roll of paper towels, stacks of envelopes and sticky notes galore.
Being in my usual semi-retirement economic crunchiness, a new laptop with the weapons of glory would have cost me a grand. This thing cost me less than 1/2 a grand, most apps were free. The big time apps are free but are advance feature locked, $4-$10 to unlock. That's Photoshop for $10, ok Photoshop Touch. Still it does a lot and I can still transfer pics over to GIMP on my laptop.
So, what's so sci-fictionee about a tablet? I imagine my self like those artist sitting on the river bank, easel, brushes, paints, tam, sweet air, curious walker-bys...........only without the setup, the mess, the cleanup. I'm in the role imagined. And passer-bys? "Hi, is that a Nook or iPad?" "Why no, it's a Galaxy 10.1!" Sounds kind of spacey.
Born: 13 June 1911, San Francisco, CA, USA
Died: 1 September 1988, Berkeley, CA, USA
Affiliation at the time of the award: University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA
Prize motivation: "for his decisive contributions to elementary particle physics, in particular the discovery of a large number of resonance states, made possible through his development of the technique of using hydrogen bubble chamber and data analysis"
Field: Particle physics
Luis W. Alvarez was born in San Francisco, Calif., on June 13, 1911. He received his B.Sc. from the University of Chicago in 1932, a M.Sc. in 1934, and his Ph.D. in 1936. Dr. Alvarez joined the Radiation Laboratory of the University of California, where he is now a professor, as a research fellow in 1936. He was on leave at the Radiation Laboratory of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1940 to 1943, at the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago in 1943-1944, and at the Los Alamos Laboratory of the Manhattan District from 1944 to 1945.
Early in his scientific career, Dr. Alvarez worked concurrently in the fields of optics and cosmic rays. He is co-discoverer of the "East-West effect" in cosmic rays. For several years he concentrated his work in the field of nuclear physics. In 1937 he gave the first experimental demonstration of the existence of the phenomenon of K-electron capture by nuclei. Another early development was a method for producing beams of very slow neutrons. This method subsequently led to a fundamental investigation of neutron scattering in ortho- and para-hydrogen, with Pitzer, and to the first measurement, with Bloch, of the magnetic moment of the neutron. With Wiens, he was responsible for the production of the first 198Hg lamp; this device was developed by the Bureau of Standards into its present form as the universal standard of length. Just before the war, Alvarez and Cornog discovered the radioactivity of 3H (tritium) and showed that 3He was a stable constituent of ordinary helium. (Tritium is best known as a source of thermonuclear energy, and 3He has become of importance in low temperature research.)
Nobel Prize: Biographical, Nobel Lecture, Banquet Speech
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| Image of the diffraction grating made by the researcher |
Contrary to classical mechanics, quantum physics states that a particle can act like a wave and vice versa – an idea that was first proposed by Nobel-prize-winning physicist Louis de Broglie back in 1923. While the idea that tiny particles such as electrons could behave like a wave came as a shock, scientists now know that even objects a million times more massive than electrons, such as complex molecules, also show quantum interference. Massive molecules have very small wavelengths and therefore a grating with extremely thin and closely spaced slits is needed to observe their diffraction. Currently, such sophisticated devices are specially fabricated using nanotechnology techniques.
Physics World: Diatoms bring the quantum effects to life
