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Topics: COVID-19, Materials Science, Optics, Photonics, Research

From chemistry to materials science to COVID-19 research, the APS is one of the most productive X-ray light sources in the world. An upgrade will make it a global leader among the next generation of light sources, opening new frontiers in science.

In the almost 25 years since the Advanced Photon Source (APS), a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Office of Science User Facility, first opened at DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory, it has played an essential role in some of the most pivotal discoveries and advancements in science.

More than 5,000 researchers from around the world conduct experiments at the APS every year, and their work has, among many other notable successes, paved the way for better renewable batteries; resulted in the development of numerous new drugs; and helped to make vehicles more efficient, infrastructure materials stronger and electronics more powerful.

Advanced Photon Source Upgrade will transform the world of scientific research, Brett Hansard, Argonne National Laboratory

Figure 1. Sarah Frances Whiting (1847–1927) using a fluoroscope to examine the bones in her hand in Wellesley College’s physics laboratory, circa 1896. On the table in front of her is a Crookes tube mounted on a stand and an induction coil to modulate the voltage. (Courtesy of Wellesley College.)

Topics: Applied Physics, Optics, Women in Science, X-rays

In February 1896 Sarah Frances Whiting, founder of the physics and astronomy departments at Wellesley College, conducted a series of x-ray experiments. She was working only a few weeks after the public announcement of Wilhelm Röntgen’s discovery of the rays, and she was not alone; amateur and professional scientists at colleges, universities, and medical centers across the US were attempting to replicate and extend Röntgen’s results. But Whiting (see figure 1), who enlisted the assistance of a Wellesley colleague and several students, was among the first to do so successfully. Even more importantly, Whiting was the first woman—and almost certainly the first person, male or female—to do so in an undergraduate laboratory. Her original glass plates from the experiments do not survive, but 15 photographs printed from them (see the opening image of one such photo above) were recently rediscovered in a campus building slated for demolition. They provide a vivid reminder of Whiting’s success.

The x-ray experiments were only one instance in which Whiting drew on her keen engagement with contemporary scientific advances to offer her students an experience available to few undergraduates at the time, and to almost no women. Throughout her long career, Whiting introduced thousands of women to physics and astronomy, both fields then associated almost entirely with men. Her pedagogical efforts led many of her female students to pursue their own careers in the sciences.

Sarah Frances Whiting and the “photography of the invisible”

John S. Cameron is an emeritus professor of biological sciences and Jacqueline Marie Musacchio is a professor of art history at Wellesley College in Massachusetts.

Dark Spider with some of his Mentors

Art by Pete Cacho. 

The fin LED pixel design includes the glowing zinc oxide fin (purple), isolating dielectric material (green), and metal contact (yellow atop green). The microscopic fins, which the research team arranged into comb-like arrays, show an increase in brightness of 100 to 1,000 times over conventional submicron-sized LED designs.

Credit: B. Nikoobakht, N. Hanacek/NIST

Topics: Light-Emitting Diode, Nanotechnology, Solid-State Physics

A new design for light-emitting diodes (LEDs) developed by a team including scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) may hold the key to overcoming a long-standing limitation in the light sources’ efficiency. The concept, demonstrated with microscopic LEDs in the lab, achieves a dramatic increase in brightness as well as the ability to create laser light — all characteristics that could make it valuable in a range of large-scale and miniaturized applications.

The team, which also includes scientists from the University of Maryland, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center, detailed its work in a paper published today in the peer-reviewed journal Science Advances. Their device shows an increase in brightness of 100 to 1,000 times over conventional tiny, submicron-sized LED designs.

A Light Bright and Tiny: NIST Scientists Build a Better Nanoscale LED

B. Nikoobakht, R.P. Hansen, Y. Zong, A. Agrawal, M. Shur and J. Tersoff. High-brightness lasing at submicrometer enabled by droop-free fin light-emitting diodes (LEDs). Science Advances. August 14, 2020. DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.aba4346

An eye for structure The LADI instrument at the ILL, a quasi-Laue neutron diffractometer used for single-crystal studies of biological macromolecules at high resolution. Neutron Laue diffraction patterns are recorded on a cylindrical detector, allowing the determination of protein structures including the locations of hydrogen/deuterium atoms. Credit: R Cubitt

Topics: COVID-19, High Energy Physics, Neutrons, Particle Physics

Advanced neutron facilities such as the Institut Laue-Langevin are gearing up to enable a deeper understanding of the structural workings of SARS-CoV-2.

The global scientific community has mobilized at an unprecedented rate in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, beyond just pharmaceutical and medical researchers. The world’s most powerful analytical tools, including neutron sources, harbor the unique ability to reveal the invisible, structural workings of the virus – which will be essential to developing effective treatments. Since the outbreak of the pandemic, researchers worldwide have been using large-scale research infrastructures such as synchrotron X-ray radiation sources (CERN Courier May/June 2020 p29), as well as cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facilities, to determine the 3D structures of proteins of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), which can lead to COVID-19 respiratory disease, and to identify potential drugs that can bind to these proteins in order to disable the viral machinery. This effort has already delivered a large number of structures and increased our understanding of what potential drug candidates might look like in a remarkably short amount of time, with the number increasing each week.

Neutron sources join the fight against COVID-19, Matthew Blakeley, and Helmut Schober Institut Laue-Langevin.

Hello, everyone!

I've published a new short story set in my worlds of T'vanna. They can be found in the Tales of T'vanna series on Amazon.

Everything within me is a storyteller. I've been creating worlds since I was 7 years old, complete with their cultures, languages, foods, and religions. My goal is to bring people together in a unified concept of "human" and what it means. We all deal with a great many trials, and aren't exactly handed individual manuals for how to process what we'll experience. So the best we can do is offer stories. Engaging in others' stories allows us to better ourselves by gaining new perspectives and expanding our horizons. I hold great storytellers in very high esteem... and I desire to one day be counted among them.

 

As a person of color, I agree that we absolutely need more depictions of more colorful races and backgrounds. Coming up, I will be publishing tales about Airi, Mikal, Kina, Pikoul, Elu - and Mur and Docus, who are red-skinned and blue-skinned respectively - to name-drop just a few. But I also write about those with Asian looks, red-heads, blonds, etc - like Lissa in my latest publication.

 

 

(Image above is of Filin, Lissa, Meidalai (the "fish"), and Lydi. Art is by Alba Lugo, an artist from Mexico, who can be found on Instagram @Gelbekunst ^_^ We anticipate working together on MANY more projects to come!)

 

 

Here are short descriptions of my current publications!

 

Stay gorgeous, people.  

(visit patreon.com/chronicler9 to support my vision of having my own animation studio)

Beloved daughter dear of mine
Chosen by the Three Divine
Precious being at your birth
Will you ever know your worth...?

They tell me to let you go,
That you were born for such, and so
All onlookers say to me:
"What a blessing this child be!"

One day, just as is foretold,
I won't have your hand to hold.
You will go to Far Away
And I will ever mourn that day.

Ages pass before you'll see
How much you had meant to me.
But until then, with tears to trace,
I'll keep you in my embrace

And try to stave the hands of time,

Most beloved dear of mine.

(A poem from the heart of Kina's mother, in my coming "A Mikal's Child" series.)

If you gave birth to a child who you *knew* would randomly leave home on their own before they were five years old based on a prophecy, would you fight against that prophecy or agree with others in society to simply accept what will happen?

Exclusive art downloads from new releases, peeks at coming titles, and insight into no less than 5 parallel realities are being woven together in my new Patreon Page. 

patreon.com/chronicler9

A diagram showing different states of matter as a function of temperature, T, and interaction strength, U (normalized to the amplitude, t, of electrons hopping between sites). Strange metals emerge in a regime separating a metallic spin glass and a Fermi liquid. P. Cha et al./Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 2020

Topics: Black Holes, Modern Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductors, Theoretical Physics

Even by the standards of quantum physicists, strange metals are just plain odd. The materials are related to high-temperature superconductors and have surprising connections to the properties of black holes. Electrons in strange metals dissipate energy as fast as they’re allowed to under the laws of quantum mechanics, and the electrical resistivity of a strange metal, unlike that of ordinary metals, is proportional to the temperature.

Generating a theoretical understanding of strange metals is one of the biggest challenges in condensed matter physics. Now, using cutting-edge computational techniques, researchers from the Flatiron Institute in New York City and Cornell University have solved the first robust theoretical model of strange metals. The work reveals that strange metals are a new state of matter, the researchers report July 22 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“The fact that we call them strange metals should tell you how well we understand them,” says study co-author Olivier Parcollet, a senior research scientist at the Flatiron Institute’s Center for Computational Quantum Physics (CCQ). “Strange metals share remarkable properties with black holes, opening exciting new directions for theoretical physics.”

Quantum Physicists Crack Mystery of ‘Strange Metals,’ a New State of Matter, Thomas Sumner, Simon Foundation

A fan-made cover for George Orwell's novel. "Animal Farm" is one of Orwell's most well-known works and gained unlikely popularity with Ukrainian refugees. (Photo from Flickr user Ben Templesmith.) PRI.org

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Existentialism, Fascism, Human Rights

Farmers feed their pigs slop, a messy, wet mix of various leftovers—and when they do, they can say they slop the pigs. A derogatory way to talk about food that doesn't look very tasty is to call it to slop. And you can call sticky, overly sentimental music, writing, or film slop as well. Source: Vocabulary.com

When President Obama used an executive order for deferred action for childhood arrivals (DACA), that was considered constitutional overreach and tyranny from the executive branch. That was likely the executive at the time and the children in question are both brown. This was due to the GOP-dominated Congress not passing a DREAMS Act for those same children's path to citizenship. Immigration reform used to be a thing with republicans: Saint Ronald Reagan made a whole bunch of illegal immigrants citizens, and that might have contributed to the high numbers his republican successor, George W. Bush enjoyed for his 2004 reelection. That compassionate conservatism advantage has been dwindling ever since, at least until our current moment of discontent.

Ben Sasse called Orange Satan's executive orders unconstitutional slop, which it is. His clap back to the middle school mean-girl tweetstorm from Mango Mussolini is an admittance: "I don't need you to get reelected, you need me." He like a lot of other Republican senators had their constitutional duty to remove a criminal from office. They are the beneficiaries of Jim Crow, the Southern Strategy, Voter Purging, and Suppression. They shirked it because they are criminals themselves. Conditional integrity is still cowardice.

HuffPost senior White House correspondent S.V. Dáte asked the president during Thursday’s coronavirus task force briefing if, after 3½ years, “do you regret at all the lying you’ve done to the American people? All the dishonesties?”

“That who has done?” Trump replied. 

“You have done,” said Dáte, who wrote at length about Trump’s “Ministry of Untruth” earlier this year. 

Trump paused and then moved on to the next question.

In his report, Dáte noted that Trump’s stream of falsehoods across nearly every topic and in any setting is corroding America’s democracy as it normalizes lies coming from the nation’s highest office.

Trump's Response When Asked If He Regrets All The Lies He's Told America: None, Josephine Harvey, HuffPost

We have a view of history that fascism doesn't need competency. Hitler was quite literally a shit show, and the mythology of Nazi efficiency is...just that.

It's poignant that Senator Kamala Harris is African Diaspora through her Jamaican father and Indian Diaspora through her mother - both immigrants who met in Oakland, California where she and her sister were born as American citizens. Both marched and shouted for Civil Rights for all its citizens, especially their daughters, as civil rights have never had a hue, simply for and of humans. America, India, Germany have had and have caste systems that assign portions of humanity to either the apex of the pyramid where all riches are siphoned to or the base where all the weight of society crushes pariahs beneath it. She's a woman that self-identifies with black culture through her HBCU - Howard University and her Sorority, Alpha Kappa Alpha. She married another human that happens to be of European descent. She is above all, an earthling, and Oakland isn't a crater on Mars. Her fraternity brother, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr - found himself in an inflection of revelation.

Caste (Oprah's Book Club): The Origins of Our Discontents, Isabelle Wilkerson

In 1935, Nazi Germany passed two radically discriminatory pieces of legislation: the Reich Citizenship Law and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor. Together, these were known as the Nuremberg Laws, and they laid the legal groundwork for the persecution of Jewish people during the Holocaust and World War II.

When the Nazis set out to legally disenfranchise and discriminate against Jewish citizens, they weren’t just coming up with ideas out of thin air. They closely studied the laws of another country. According to James Q. Whitman, author of Hitler’s American Model, that country was the United States.

“America in the early 20th century was the leading racist jurisdiction in the world,” says Whitman, who is a professor at Yale Law School. “Nazi lawyers, as a result, were interested in, looked very closely at, [and] were ultimately influenced by American race law.”

In particular, Nazis admired the Jim Crow-era laws that discriminated against black Americans and segregated them from white Americans, and they debated whether to introduce similar segregation in Germany.

Yet they ultimately decided that it wouldn’t go far enough.

How the Nazis Were Inspired by Jim Crow, Becky Little, History.com

Fascism, like its cousin racism, doesn't need rationality over "us" and "them." It allows one group to dominate another without guilt, or blame for the consequences. It allows you to long for mythological glory times where Germany and America were "great again."

Fascism in Germany or America just needed enablers, and frankly, intellectuals that underestimate how a cornered animal - hog, rodent or narcissist - is its most dangerous and cunning when it figures it's going to die in prison and has nothing - other than its freedom - to lose.

Occator Crater and Ahuna Mons appear together in this view of the dwarf planet Ceres obtained by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on February 11, 2017. NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/Handout via REUTERS.

Topics: Asteroids, Exoplanets, Space Exploration, Spaceflight

"Ceres was the Roman goddess of agriculture, grain, and the love a mother bears for her child. She was the daughter of Saturn and Ops, the sister of Jupiter, and the mother of Proserpine. Ceres was a kind and benevolent goddess to the Romans and they had a common expression, "fit for Ceres," which meant splendid." Source: Ceresva.org

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, is an “ocean world” with a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface, scientists said in findings that raise interest in this dwarf planet as a possible outpost for life.

Research published on Monday based on data obtained by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft, which flew as close as 22 miles (35 km) from the surface in 2018, provides a new understanding of Ceres, including evidence indicating it remains geologically active with cryovolcanism - volcanoes oozing icy material.

The findings confirm the presence of a subsurface reservoir of brine - salt-enriched water - remnants of a vast subsurface ocean that has been gradually freezing.

“This elevates Ceres to ‘ocean world’ status, noting that this category does not require the ocean to be global,” said planetary scientist and Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond. “In the case of Ceres, we know the liquid reservoir is regional scale but we cannot tell for sure that it is global. However, what matters most is that there is liquid on a large scale.”

Dwarf planet Ceres is 'ocean world' with salty water deep underground, Will Dunham, Reuters Science

The thin-film materials being tested during development. Courtesy: I Mathews

Topics: Alternate Energy, Internet of Things, Materials Science, Solar Power

Photovoltaic cells made from cadmium telluride (CdTe) – already widely used in solar energy generation – also excel at harvesting ambient light indoors, making them an excellent energy source for the fast-growing Internet of Things (IoT). This is the finding of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US and the Tyndall National Institute at the University of Cork, Ireland, who fabricated low-cost CdTe cells and measured their photovoltaic response when exposed to light from various sources, including LED bulbs.

At present, indoor IoT devices such as wireless sensors are typically powered by batteries.  However, study lead author Ian Mathews says that photovoltaic cells would be better because of they require less maintenance and are cheaper and easier to make. In his view, these characteristics present a “significant market opportunity” for CdTe cells in particular, yet researchers have rarely tested their effectiveness at converting ambient light (from incandescent, compact fluorescence, or LED bulbs, for example) into electrical energy. Instead, previous studies of indoor-light energy generation have mainly focused on rival photovoltaic technologies, such as silicon, III-V semiconductors, organic PV devices, and perovskite materials.

Thin-film solar cells make champion harvesters of ambient light, Isabelle Dumé, Physics World

Party line: the new protocol allows 10 parties to share information securely. (Courtesy: University of Witwatersrand)

Topics: Cryptography, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics

A “quantum secret sharing” scheme that allows 10 parties to share information securely – the highest number so far – has been developed and demonstrated by researchers in South Africa. The protocol involves each party performing quantum operations on the photon without measuring its state and the team says it could help increase both the rate at which data is shared on secure quantum networks and how many parties can be involved in the sharing.

In the original quantum key distribution (QKD) protocol, two parties, known as Alice and Bob, communicate by exchanging photons polarized in one of two possible bases over an untrusted link, each varying the polarization basis of his or her transmitter or receiver randomly. At the end of the transmission, Alice and Bob reveal to each other which basis they used to measure the photons sent and received, but not the result of the measurements.  Alice and Bob then announce their results for a sample of the photons in which they measured in the same polarization basis, to check that the emitted polarization always agrees with the received one. If it does, they can use the remaining photons that they measured in the same basis to form a secure cryptography key that allows them to communicate securely using conventional telecoms technology. A third party that intercepts the photons inevitably disturbs their state, so some of Alice and Bob’s measurements disagree and they know the line is bugged.

‘Quantum secret sharing’ scheme allows 10 parties to communicate securely, Physics World

FIG. 1. (a) Schematic of an inline digital holographic microscope. In a typical setup, a collimated laser (light red) illuminates a sample, which scatters light (dark red wavefronts). The transmitted and scattered light passes through an objective and tube lens, which focuses the light onto a digital camera. (b) A hologram of a polystyrene particle obtained from an inline holographic microscope.

Topics: Holography, Optical Physics, Microscopy, Modern Physics

Precise measurements in digital holographic microscopy by modeling the optical train, Ronald Alexander, Brian Leahy, Vinothan N. Manoharan, Journal of Applied Physics

The conduit,  son of the God of Scrawl. 

Submitted for the approval of the Black Science Fiction Society:

  I take a shot of cheap bourbon and push the ships accelerator lever forward, causing my Class 1 Freighter "Francine" to moan and rattle in protest. The ships know it all AI shines a bright red holographic "WARNING" light across my face, sending a hot flash of pain through my head. Friend of mine used to say that buying cheap liquor was a waste of time cuz you still end up paying for it the morning after anyway. I pour myself another glass out of spite, even though I know the dead bastard is right. He was right up to the point where he caught a laser blast to the chest for drawing down on a faster gun who had insulted his ship. Can’t say I blame his reaction. Some things you just don’t say to a man who’s partial to his spacecraft. The searing red blinking light gets to be too much so I swipe the warning halo message away a little too fast and drop my glass on the hard metal floor of the cockpit, sending it into a thousand pieces. I string together a series of curse words then decide to chug straight from the damn bottle instead. Who’s got time for class anyway?

  As if the strain on the accelerator drive wasn't enough, bright flashes of orange light pepper the edges of my view screen, and the cockpit shakes more violently than before. I clench my jaw to keep my teeth from rattlin out of my head. Laser blasts bounce off my weakened shields from behind. Damn! They caught up to me! Just what I need, Pirates trying to cut me down. They got the nerve to be pissed at me for stealing the minerals they stole in the first place!? Name of the game I say. The next series of blasts that smash against my hull tell me they might not share that opinion. Doesn't matter. Their ships are quick but my babygirl Francine bigger and tougher. Her guns went dry a standard half hour ago, but that's okay too. Dumb ass'd pirates messed up when they let me get too close to the jump gate. A fresh round of flashes and shakes knocks me off my seat in front of the control console. I hit the floor hard and my knees and back burn with a hot flood of agony. Shards from the broken glass slice into my right hand and arm as I land. I yell out with a big grin on my grizzled face as I think back to another saying my brother had.

  "A good jolt of pain'll do ya better than whole damn pot of coffee!" I say it out loud to no one in particular, then steady myself on the edge of the control console.

  "Shields at thirty two percent. Hey could be worse. They could be at thirty one!" The ship AI says in a soothing, chipper female voice.

   "I thought I turned the damn personality settings off." I mumble and try to ignore my aching bones as I climb my old worn out body back into the seat. Just gotta make it to the gate. Don't even bother trying to maneuver. These damn cheap ass after market replacement bio-arms aren't as quick as they need to be on the controls, no matter how hard I will em to be so. Hell, they're even two shades lighter then the rest of me! The cut from the glass has my right had bleeding all over the place. Silver-blue colored liquid seeps from my bio-arm and finds it’s way between the crevices of the main consoles rusted metal. None of that matters though. Just need to keep burning the thrusters. The shields will hold.

  After a few seconds I see a tiny ring in the distance that don't look big enough to fit on my pinky. Hard to believe it’sas big around as all of Old Earth. I press the ship harder. Every warning indicator she has, and one Ididn't even know she had, flashes to life. The engine is overheating, along with central computer. It's working too hard. Doesn't matter. I got the gate in my sights. On the other side is my employer and adozen warships that'll make these pirates piss their pants just before they tuck tail and turn back for the shithole asteroid cluster they came from. In the meantime though, Francine keeps takin a pummeling.

  "I know it hurts baby, but get us through that gate and Daddy's gonna give you a complete systemoverhaul. Promise, just you wait and see." I say to the center console. Starting to get messages about fires starting up in the lower decks and the decreasing of the shields. No problem. She's taken worse punishment and the ore shipment is in a secure nuclear grade container. All that matters is the gate is minutes away. I tip the burbon back and drain the bottle as a fresh round of lasers hits my baby from the left side. Red smoke, colored by the warning lights, begins to seep into the cockpit. I smash the bottle off the side wall and laugh my ass off until the smoke cuts off the laughter and replaces it with a cough.

  "Guess what?! We're four minutes from the jump gate! Wanna know the actual odds of us making it there alive, or would you prefer an optimistic lie?!” The ships AI blared me through the ships speakers.

  "Personality settings off!" I yell out, as I reach under the console and yank out a cluster of wires. As the happy voice fades I look up out the main view window, and see it. From my perspective the gate looks to be a bit bigger around, but its still just a small circle engulfed in a sea of stars. Be there in less than two minutes, tops. As strap into my chairs over the shoulder safely harnesses and grab the controls with both hands I notice that they're trembling. No drug in the Galaxy better than this. The gate grows bigger as it approaches. The pirates have time for one more volley of fire. If it doesn't end me, I'm home free, if not, I'm even more free. HA! This is it baby! The life of a Jacker. Nuthin better. Fortune and glory behind one door and certain death behind the other. Which ever happens might as well be decided by the flip of a coin. Not the life to live if you've got to an ounce of sense in your brain,and I wouldn't have it any other way!