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Nanotubes On A Chip...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 6, 2013 at 2:00pm

The circular patch of carbon nanotubes on a pink silicon backing is one component of NIST’s new cryogenic radiometer, shown with a quarter for scale. Gold coating and metal wiring has yet to be added to the chip. The radiometer will simplify and lower the cost of disseminating measurements of laser power.

Credit: Tomlin/NIST

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has demonstrated a novel chip-scale instrument made of carbon nanotubes that may simplify absolute measurements of laser power, especially the light signals transmitted by optical fibers in telecommunications networks.

 

The prototype device, a miniature version of an instrument called a cryogenic radiometer, is a silicon chip topped with circular mats of carbon nanotubes standing on end.* The mini-radiometer builds on NIST's previous work using nanotubes, the world's darkest known substance, to make an ultraefficient, highly accurate optical power detector,** and advances NIST's ability to measure laser power delivered through fiber for calibration customers.***

 

"This is our play for leadership in laser power measurements," project leader John Lehman says. "This is arguably the coolest thing we've done with carbon nanotubes. They're not just black, but they also have the temperature properties needed to make components like electrical heaters truly multifunctional."

 

NIST: 'Nanotubes on a Chip' May Simplify Optical Power Measurements

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Zora Ball, First Grader, Becomes Youngest Person To Develop Mobile Game App

Posted by Nelo Maxwell on February 5, 2013 at 8:00pm

At 7 years old, Zora Ball has become the youngest person to create a mobile video game.

The app was unveiled at the University of Pennsylvania's Bootstrap Expo last month, the Philadelphia Tribune reports.

Ball developed the game using programming language Bootstrap, which is usually taught to students between the ages of 12 and 16, to help them learn concepts of algebra via video game development.

According to Mashable, Ball also successfully reconfigured the app when asked to do so at the Expo, silencing anyone who may have thought that her older brother -- a STEM scholar of the year -- helped her program the game.

Staff at Harambee Institute of Science and Technology, where Ball attends first grade and an after-school program, anticipate she'll do great things.

"I am proud of all my students," Tariq Al-Nasir, who heads the STEMnasium Learning Academy, told the Courier. "Their dedication to this program is phenomenal, and they come to class every Saturday, including holiday breaks."

Last year, the Huffington Post wrote about Kelvin Doe, a 13-year-old from Sierra Leone who created batteries and generators using materials he picked up around the house. Three years later, he became the youngest person to be invited to MIT's

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Eyes On The Stars...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2013 at 7:43am

Courtesy: Essence

Ronald E. McNair was born October 21, 1950, in Lake City, South Carolina. Died January 28, 1986. Survived by wife Cheryl, & two children. Was 5th degree black belt Karate instructor & performing jazz saxophonist. Enjoyed running, boxing, football, playing cards, & cooking.



Ronald E. McNair graduated from Carver High School, Lake City, South Carolina, in 1967; received BS in Physics from North Carolina A&T State University in 1971 and Ph.D. in Physics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1976; received honorary doctorate of Laws from NC A&T State University in 1978, an honorary doctorate of Science from Morris College in 1980, & an honorary doctorate of science from the University of South Carolina in 1984.



SPECIAL HONORS:

Graduated magna cum laude from North Carolina A&T (‘71) - named Presidential Scholar (‘67-’71), Ford Foundation Fellow (‘71-’74), National Fellowship Fund Fellow (‘74-’75), NATO Fellow (‘75) - winner of Omega Psi Phi Scholar of Year Award (‘75), Los Angeles Public School System’s Service Commendation (‘79), Distinguished Alumni Award (‘79), National Society of Black Professional Engineers Distinguished National Scientist Award (‘79), Friend of Freedom Award (‘81), Who’s Who Among Black Americans (‘80), an AAU Karate Gold Medal (‘76), 5 Regional Blackbelt Karate Championships.

About: Ronald E. McNair, PhD

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AIP, America, STEM...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 5, 2013 at 7:39am
National Robotics Challenge

Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) education is a subject of much discussion in Washington. The National Research Council report, Research Universities and the Future of America, was the topic of two hearings in the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology in the last Congress and continues to generate discussion among policy makers. Scientific professional societies, including the American Physical Society, American Association of Physics Teachers both AIP Member Societies, and the American Chemical Society, have issued reports including those on the status of graduate education in their disciplines. These and other recent reports have generated momentum and an increased desire among decision makers to take action to improve US STEM education.



The National Science and Technology Council’s Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math Education (CoSTEM), established by the America COMPETES Act of 2010, created an inventory in February 2012 of Federal STEM education activities and developed a 5-year strategic Federal STEM education plan. The purpose of CoSTEM is to coordinate Federal programs and activities relating to STEM education. This strategic plan will likely continue to be a resource to the Obama Administration as it continues to focus on STEM education issues.



The President issued a call to action in his 2011 State of the Union address to train 100,000 new STEM teachers over the next 10 years to improve access to and the quality of STEM education. This initiative began as a recommendation in a report, Prepare and Inspire, produced by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) and has now become a collaborative movement, known as 100kin10, composed of over 100 partner organizations that have and will continue to commit to increasing the number of STEM teachers. Increasing the number of new teachers is a primary focus, however these organizations recognize the need to continue to support existing STEM teachers while increasing the number of new teachers.

American Institute of Physics: STEM Education: An Update and Overview of Policy Discussions

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Dark Edge Fantasy

Posted by Winston Blakely on February 4, 2013 at 8:52pm

    

      

 Growing up on characters that represented high adventure
was a constant thing that inspired me as an artist and
gave me extreme satisfaction in a cool entertaining way.
 Now, with the prominence of Sword and Soul literature, I just
had to come up with a logo to connect my brand or
imprint of the genre, which I deeply love. Of course,
 I think of this as the official but unofficial logo for Sword 
and Soul, and definitely for all my titles that deal with sorcery
like my flagship heroine - Little Miss Strange or Kotas, the
Dragon who is featured in Immortal Fantasy, a pet project
that became my own version of Heavy Metal magazine.
 Upcoming heroes will carry this logo on the back of their books 
to let people know that Blakelyworks Studio is doing its
best to promote the growing genre of Sword and Soul.
After completing the assignment of Leopard's Moon-
Illustrated Tales of Sword and Soul, its only fitting
that this movement should be the next step for my
self-publishing ventures in all graphic forms that 
would fall under this premiere logo.  I hope that all will 
enjoy this upward endeavor and remember that a 
new shade of adventure awaits.    
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What Might Have Been...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 4, 2013 at 8:13am

Hadiya: Arabic, “guide to righteousness; gift.”



The Hadiya Kingdom (r. 13th century-15th century) was an ancient kingdom once located in southwestern Ethiopia, south of the Abbay River and west of Shewa. It was ruled by the Hadiya people, who spoke the Cushitic Hadiyya language. The historical Hadiya area was situated between Kambaat, Gamo, and Waj, southwest of Shewa. By 1850, Hadiya is placed north-west of lakes Zway and Langano but still between these areas. (Wikipedia)

Smiley

Site: Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. College Prep High School

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Minkowski Multiuniverse...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 4, 2013 at 8:10am
Lecture from University of Oregon - "The Beginning of Time"

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Metamaterials are synthetic substances with nanoscale structures that manipulate light. This ability to steer photons makes them the enabling technology behind invisibility cloaks and has generated intense interest from researchers.

 

The ability to guide light has more profound consequences, however. Various theoreticians have pointed out that there is a formal mathematical analogy between the way certain metamaterials bend light and the way spacetime does the same thing in general relativity. In fact, it ought to be possible to make metamaterials that mimic the behaviour of not only our own spacetime but also many others that cosmologist merely dream about.

 

Indeed, a couple of years ago we looked at a suggestion by Igor Smolyaninov at the University of Maryland in College Park that it ought to be possible to use metamaterials to create a multiverse in which different regions of the material corresponded to universes with different properties.

 

Today, Smolyaninov and a couple of buddies announce the extraordinary news that they have done exactly this. They’ve created a metamaterial containing many “universes” that are mathematically analogous to our own, albeit in the three dimensions rather than four.

 

The experiment is relatively straightforward. Metamaterials are usually hard to engineer because they are based on nanoscale structures. However, Smolyaninov and pals have instead exploited the self-assembling nature of cobalt nanoparticles suspended in kerosene.

 

Cobalt is ferromagnetic so the nanoparticles tend to become aligned in a magnetic field. In fact, if the density of nanoparticles is high enough, the field causes them to line up in columns. When this happens, the nanocolumns form a metamaterial which is mathematically equivalent to a 2+1 Minkowski spacetime.

 

So light passing through behaves as if this region has one dimension of time, aligned with the nanocolumns, and two dimensions of space, perpendicular to the nanocolumns.

 

That creates a single Minkowski universe. The trick that Smolyaninov and pals have pulled off is to create a multiverse containing many Minkowski spacetimes.


Wolfram Mathworld: Minkowski Space
Physics arXiv:
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Timbuktu...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 3, 2013 at 10:39pm


Because of Diola Bagayoko's (pictured left) expertise in educational theory and physics, his wife thought that he would be the perfect person to help undergraduates, especially African-Americans and other underrepresented minorities at Southern University in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, start their careers in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Established in 1990 with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Louisiana Board of Regents, the Timbuktu Academy is an award-winning mentoring program for underrepresented minorities in STEM fields. The program's pre-college to graduate curricula includes the Undergraduate Research Program (URP), which provides students with the educational support they need to succeed in graduate school. Bagayoko, a solid-state physicist and native of Mali, named the academy after the medieval Malian city of Timbuktu, which was renowned for its scholarship.

In the beginning, Timbuktu Academy provided mentoring only for physics undergraduates and a handful of pre-college students, but with the help of additional funding from the Department of the Navy and the Office of Naval Research (ONR), in 1993 the academy added chemistry and engineering majors and 100 to 200 pre-college students. To date, the academy's URP has sent 74 students -- 47 in physics -- to science and engineering graduate programs throughout the country, including the University of Michigan, Stanford, and Cal Tech. Moreover, 19 have earned M.S. degrees and 8 have earned Ph.D.s with many others nearing completion.

MySciNet: Timbuktu Academy: Mentoring Future Scientists
Site: Timbuktu Academy of Science and Technology


1996 Presidential Award Recipient

2002 Presidential Award Recipient
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Mr. Polite...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2013 at 6:57am


Polite Stewart, Jr. received his degree in physics Friday at the ripe old age of 18.

 

Stewart entered Southern four years ago to enormous fanfare. He was under a microscope as his classmates learned of the student on campus who was too young to get a driver’s license and actually too young to live on campus alone.

 

He had offers from colleges across the country. Who didn’t want a child prodigy on their campus? But, it would have been difficult for his parents to send him across the country at such a young age.

 

Instead, he enrolled at Southern where he was familiar with the campus, where he had taken high school-level courses at the school’s famous Timbuktu Academy, and more importantly, he would only be a 10-minute drive from campus.

 

But with all of the local media tracing his first steps on campus, Stewart was an unwilling celebrity. He just wanted to get down to doing his schoolwork and getting to fit in with his classmates. “The attention I got died down pretty quickly,” he said.

 

He traces his love for academics to the dinosaur books his father bought him as a young child. Later, as a toddler, Stewart said he began watching scientific documentaries where his interest in herpetology, entomology and paleontology grew. “I was pretty much interested in all the sciences,” he said.

 

Now, barely an adult, Stewart has set his sights on a career in biological and physical engineering. He spent last summer doing research at North Carolina State University, where he worked on developing self-cleaning, anti-glare glass coated with anti-reflective material and designed to repel oils and water.

 

After continuing his research in a post-grad program next summer, Stewart said he will start graduate school at one of a number of colleges that have shown interest.

 

His mother, Ava Stewart, isn’t surprised by her son’s success.

 

“His father and I could tell early on that he wanted information. There was an intensity in his focus. He started reading when he was three,” she said.

 

Southern University: Polite Stewart, Jr. to receive physics degree at 18 years old

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The Physics of Rembrandt...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 2, 2013 at 6:30am
Mock-up of Rembrandt's "An old man in military costume" with a portrait painted underneath the final work. Photo: Andrea Sartorius, © J. Paul Getty Trust (free for editorial use if credit is given)

A sophisticated X-ray technology is paving the way to uncover the secrets of a 380-year-old Rembrandt masterpiece. Underneath the Old Man in Military Costume, painted by the Dutch artist in the years 1630-31, previous investigations spotted another portrait which was only faintly distinguishable with all applied technologies. For years, art historians puzzled over the question of who is depicted on the repainted picture. 

Now, an international team of scientists has used a detailed mock-up to test different methods of looking beneath the original painting at DESYs X-ray source DORIS and at the National Synchrotron Light Source (NSLS) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in the United States, as well as with a mobile X-ray scanner. The results are published as the cover story of the "Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry" (JAAS) of the British Royal Society of Chemistry.

"Our experiments demonstrate a possibility of how to reveal much of the hidden picture," said first author Matthias Alfeld from the University of Antwerp (Belgium). "Compared to other techniques, the X-ray investigation we tested is currently the best method to look underneath the original painting."

Brookhaven National Labs: Mysterious Rembrandt
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The Shoulders of Giants...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2013 at 6:46am

 

Franklin McCain: double major, Chemistry/Biology
Ezell Blair Jr. (later known as Jibreel Khazan): Sociology
Joseph Alfred McNeil: Engineering Physics; US Air Force Veteran (I am proudly both)
David Richmond: Business Administration and Accounting

If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. Found in Letters of Sir Isaac Newton

 

Site: February One Documentary
North Carolina Museum of History: The Greensboro Four

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One Photon At A Time...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2013 at 6:00am
The single-photon detector is characterized by five convincing factors: 91% detection efficiency; direct integration on chip; counting rates on a Gigahertz scale; high timing resolution and negligible dark counting rates. Source: KIT/CFN.

Ultrafast, efficient, and reliable single-photon detectors are among the most sought-after components in photonics and quantum communication, which have not yet reached maturity for practical application. Physicist Dr. Wolfram Pernice of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), in cooperation with colleagues at Yale University, Boston University, and Moscow State Pedagogical University, achieved the decisive breakthrough by integrating single-photon detectors with nanophotonic chips. The detector combines near-unity detection efficiency with high timing resolution and has a very low error rate. The results have been published by Nature Communications (doi:10.1038/ncomms2307).

 



 


Without reliable detection of single photons, it is impossible to make real use of the latest advances in optical data transmission or quantum computation; it is like having no analog-digital converter in a conventional computer to determine whether the applied voltage stands for 0 or 1. Although a number of different single-photon detector models have been developed over the past few years, thus far, none have provided satisfactory performance. 

Several new ideas and advanced developments went into the prototype developed within the “Integrated Quantum Photonics” project at the DFG Center of Functional Nanostructures (CFN). The new single-photon detector, tested in the telecommunications wavelength range, achieves a previously unattained detection efficiency of 91%.

 

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology:
Quantum Communication: Each Photon Counts, Press Release

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Voila...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 1, 2013 at 3:45am

An article by Scientific American
Courtesy of Wallentin et al

Here's how to make a powerful solar cell from indium and phosphorus: First, arrange microscopic flecks of gold on a semiconductor background. Using the gold as seeds, grow precisely arranged wires roughly 1.5 micrometers tall out of chemically tweaked compounds of indium and phosphorus. Keep the nanowires in line by etching them clean with hydrochloric acid and confining their diameter to 180 nanometers. (A nanometer is one billionth of a meter.) Exposed to the sun, a solar cell employing such nanowires can turn nearly 14 percent of the incoming light into electricity—a new record that opens up more possibilities for cheap and effective solar power.





According to research published online in Science—and validated at Germany's Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems—this novel nanowire configuration delivered nearly as much electricity as more traditional indium phosphide thin-film solar cells even though the nanowires themselves covered only 12 percent of the device's surface. That suggests such nanowire solar cells could prove cheaper—and more powerful—if the process could be industrialized, argues physicist Magnus Borgström of Lund University in Sweden, who led the effort.

 

Nature:
Novel solar photovoltaic cells achieve record efficiency using nanoscale structures, David Biello

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Leopard's Moon Has Arisen

Posted by Whiyayul & Diop Malvi on January 31, 2013 at 10:22pm

Across a wide terrain of both era, genre and just out and out adventure, comes these stories of heroines and villains, bold swordsmen, and horrors of the Dark Realms.  The Leopard's Moon anthology is ripe with these juicy bits of derring do, determination, and being deadly to the last fatal drop! Arisen on Amazon.com, CreateSpace ebooks, and Tah Dah! Over the peaks of the Kindle range!

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THIS CALL IS TODAY 1/31/2013 - Want to see your book, story or manuscript become a movie or TV show?

Posted by Penelope on January 31, 2013 at 1:25pm

I received this email and thought it would be of interest to some of you!  It is a call that takes place this afternoon!

Want to see your book, story or manuscript become a
movie or TV show?

If you answered "yes" then you're invited to join
my friend Steve Harrison today, Thursday, January 31st for a
free telephone seminar on How To Sell Your Book To
Hollywood As A Movie Or TV Show... Even If It's
Self-Published.

On the call Steve is interviewing a true Hollywood
insider who helps hundreds of published and
unpublished authors and screenwriters bring
their projects to the screen.

https://m164.infusionsoft.com/go/SYBTH0113/A10077/

Steve's guest has worked with some of the biggest
producers and movie studios in Hollywood to get
movies made, including Paramount pictures, Universal
Music, Jerry Bruckheimer, the Hughes Brothers who've
produced 6 major studio films (including The Book Of
Eli starring Denzel Washington) and many more.

Right now Hollywood producers are looking for more books
and stories they can turn into movies and TV shows.

That's because today there are more broadcast channels,
thousands of cable channels, a growing number of independent
film companies, movies and videos on demand, online movies
and MORE media outlets now than at any other time in history.

And guess what all these media companies need?

They all need fresh content.

And books (both fiction and non fiction... and everything
from novels to how-to books) are the perfect source material
for new movies and TV shows.

If you've ever dreamed of seeing your "name up in lights"...

If you have a message you think can be turned into a movie
or TV series...

Or if you're just plain fed up with the quality of shows on TV
today and know your story would make for better viewing...

Then make sure to jump on today's free telephone seminar on
It's free for you to listen in on
the interview. Just go here now to reserve your spot:

https://m164.infusionsoft.com/go/SYBTH0113/A10077/

Enjoy the teleseminar today! I'm proud to be a
compensated affiliate for Steve's company, which offers
a variety of training programs and services for authors
and authors-to-be.

Here's to your bestseller,

Mahesh Grossman
President
The Authors Team



554 Liberty St. #3
El Cerrito, CA 94530

www.AuthorsTeam.com
www.GetAnAgentNow.com
www.PublishYourBusinessBook.com
www.WriteABookToday.com
www.ChildrensBookUniversity.com
www.AgentUniversityProgram.com

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Chilling Antihydrogen...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 30, 2013 at 7:00pm

A method for laser-cooling magnetically trapped antihydrogen atoms to temperatures of about 20 millikelvin has been proposed by a team of researchers from Canada and the US.

 


The team claims that cooling the antihydrogen would make it much more stable and so easier to study in experiments. In particular, it could lead to better spectroscopic analysis of antihydrogen, so that its properties can be compared with those of hydrogen.

 



An artist's concept showing a trapped anithydrogen atom being released after 1000 seconds. The new proposal allows for such trapped antimatter to be laser cooled and then studied. (Courtesy: Chukman So/CERN)

Antihydrogen is an atomic bound state of a positron and antiproton that was first produced at CERN in 1995. Over the past few years, physicists working on the ALPHA experiment at the Geneva lab became the first to capture and store a significant amount of the stuff, holding a total of 309 antihydrogen atoms for 1000 seconds in 2011. In early 2012 the team then showed that it is possible to probe the internal structure of an antihydrogen atom by carrying out the first tentative measurements of the antihydrogen spectrum. By improving such measurements, researchers hope to determine what structural differences, if any, antimatter has compared with ordinary matter.

This, they hope, could eventually explain why the universe currently contains much more matter than antimatter.

 

Physics World: Lasers could chill antihydrogen

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Graphene Photoconductivity...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on January 29, 2013 at 11:00am
a) Spatial images of the photocurrent amplitude and phase as a function of gate voltage. The photocurrent in the graphene channel switches sign twice from negative to positive and back to negative. b) Photocurrent amplitude (red) and phase (blue) in the centre of the graphene channel as a function of gate voltage. Courtesy: Nature Photonics

Photodetectors – devices that detect light by converting optical signals into electrical current – are routinely employed in applications such as communications, sensing and imaging. Most light detectors are made of III-V semiconductors like gallium arsenide and they work by absorbing photons to produce electron-hole pairs that then separate and generate an electrical current.

 


Graphene – a sheet of carbon just one atom thick – has a number of unique physical and mechanical properties that make it ideal for detecting light. One important advantage is that electrons move much faster through graphene than through other materials. They behave, in fact, as if they had no mass and travel at 1/300 the speed of light. These particles are called massless Dirac fermions and their behaviour could be exploited in a host of applications, including transistors that are faster than any that exist today.

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Reflection

Posted by Dada Aum Ra on January 28, 2013 at 7:00pm

I was thinking the other day of the effects typing consistently in comparison to writing and transferring to electronics. This as I realized, even though I am left handed, on the computer some fine tuned things are dobe with my right hand. With this thought came realization that I miss writing. My left hand expresses differently than using both hands to type letter. I enjoy creating, shaping letters to look the way I want them to look. I also enjoy finding the perfect font. The enjoyment is not even, they are acknowledged. The personal touch of a pen can not be compared. At all. Should we be paying attention to how slowly we are conforming into writing similarly with individual thoughts? Hmmm

Still thinking about that.

It is often a world of searching, connecting, searching more and moving on for me. An artist for life, photography, and poetry were my pathways in NYC during younger years. Later poetry stayed, with photography popping it's head up from time to time. Throughout it all, science fiction was a backbone of entertainment and independent thought, stimulating my brain...thankfully. Clockwork Orange was major, the colors and the mentality combined... incredible. Shibumi, (novel), Octavia Butler -everything- with "Wild Seed" at the top of the list. 

Then one day I wrote a book, Small Town Planet Earth. A scifi, mystical novel that gives an example of living life without being guided by fear, with good guys and bad guys & a little life magic. Completion was a unexpected, wonderful feeling. Time went on.

New Mac entered my life, and of course I had to write, SOMETHING.....sitting at my laptop...I..waited.....until, words began to come. Fast forward to present day...five successful performance reads later. Starting in Atlanta, to D.C. to NY...tweaking from feedback to where we are now....finally, my play, with an excellent cast, "Colored Lives" is coming to the stage. 

This is a light scifi story...writer speaking to her ancestor about her play. Actor's lives become entwined within the performance. The magic is in the merging; the easy conquest over apparent issues. The magic of love. The magic of the written word is profound. Thoughts.....

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