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Dr. Pamela McCauley...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 22, 2018 at 9:00am
Dr. Pamela McCauley Bush

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Engineer, Educator, Leader & Entrepreneur

Dr. Pamela McCauley is an ergonomics and biomechanics expert, an internationally acclaimed keynote speaker, a Professor and Director of the Ergonomics Laboratory in the Department of Industrial Engineering and Management Systems at the University of Central Florida where she leads the Human Factors and Ergonomics in Disaster Management Research Team. She previously held the position of Martin Luther King, Jr. Visiting Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

She is the author of over 80 technical papers, book chapters, conference proceedings and the best-selling ergonomics textbook, Ergonomics: Foundational Principles, Applications, and Technologies. Many of her leadership, diversity, innovation and STEM education related keynote talks draw from her research-based book; Transforming Your STEM Career Through Leadership and Innovation: Inspiration and Strategies for Women, which examines the growing need for leadership and innovation in America, particularly among women and STEM professionals. To inspire students, particularly minorities and females, to consider careers in STEM, she authored, Winners Don’t Quit…Today they Call Me Doctor, in which she shares her challenging yet inspirational journey to engineering success despite financial, academic and personal difficulties.

Dr. McCauley is an award-winning educator often described as an “outstanding” professor and “enthusiastic” teacher. Her teaching efforts have resulted in the receipt of both the College of Engineering Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching and the Teaching Incentive Program Award (TIP). She is also the recipient of the National 2015 Black Engineer of the Year Award for Educational Leadership and the Promotion of College-Level Education.

The U.S. State Department awarded Dr. McCauley the prestigious Jefferson Science Fellowship for the 2015-2016 term. Jefferson Science Fellowships are distinguished appointments to senior academics based on their stature, recognition, and experience in the national and international scientific or engineering communities, and their ability to rapidly and accurately understand scientific advancements outside their discipline area to effectively integrate this knowledge into U.S. Department of State/USAID policy discussions.

Dr. McCauley has the distinction of being a 2012 U.S. Fulbright Scholar Specialist Program Awardee for her US-New Zealand Human Engineering and Mobile Technology in High Consequence Emergency Management Research Program. Due to her extensive expertise in biomechanics, human factors, and ergonomic design, Dr. McCauley is a highly sought Certified Professional Ergonomist (C.P.E.) and Expert Witness.

Website: Dr. Pamela McCauley

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Laser Phone Charging...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 22, 2018 at 8:52am
A new laser system can wirelessly recharge phones from across the room(Credit: Mark Stone/University of Washington)

Topics: Applied Physics, Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Laser

We've cut the cord for communication, thanks to Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, but charging our little pocket supercomputers still takes a tether. Judging by the range of wireless charging technologies in the works, that might not be the case for much longer. A team from the University of Washington has demonstrated how lasers could be used to charge a device from across the room.

The team mounted a power cell on the back of a smartphone and hit it with a narrow laser beam in the near-infrared part of the spectrum. From a distance of 4.3 m (14 ft), the laser was able to deliver 2 W of power to a 97-sq cm (15-sq in) area, charging the phone about as quickly as a regular old USB cable.

The laser emitter is designed to automatically sense when a phone is ready to be charged, while the smartphone was programmed to send out high-frequency "chirps" inaudible to the human ear that tells the emitter where it is.

"This acoustic localization system ensures that the emitter can detect when a user has set the smartphone on the charging surface, which can be an ordinary location like a table across the room," says Vikram Iyer, co-author on a study describing the device.

Laser system wirelessly charges phones from across the room, Michael Irving, New Atlas

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Dr. Jarita C. Holbrook...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2018 at 5:49am
Dr. Jarita C. Holbrook, Astronomers of the African Diaspora

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Birthplace: Honolulu, Hawaii Pre-doctorate education: B.S. Physics (1987), California Institute of Technology; M.S. Astronomy, (1992) San Diego State University Doctorate: Ph.D. Astronomy & Astrophysics (1997) University of California, Santa Cruz Area: History and Cultural Studies of Astronomy

Jarita C. Holbrook, received her degree in 1997 from the University of California at Santa Cruz. A National Science Foundation postdoctoral research fellow at UCLA, her interest is mainly in contemporary and historical African astronomy and cultural astronomy. Holbrook has traveled to Africa and the South Pacific to document celestial navigation techniques there and how new technologies have modified those techniques.

Experience (since the Ph.D.)

1998 NSF Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UCLA.

Oct 98 - Oct 00 Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Biological, Social,Behavioral, and Economic Sciences, National Science Foundation
Aug 99 - Nov 99 Visiting Faculty, Department of Seamanship and Navigation, United States Naval Academy, Annapolis, MD
May 99 - July 99 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation Fieldwork, Kerkennah Islands, Tunisia, North Africa
Oct 98 - Jan 99 Visiting Faculty, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Colgate University, Hamilton, NY
August 1998 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation Fieldwork, Moce Island, Fiji, South Pacific
Oct 97 - July 98 Visiting Scholar, Center for the Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine, History Dept., UCLA
Sept 1997 Visiting Scientist, Research on organic compounds in comets, NASA Ames Research Center
July 1997 Cultural Astronomer, Celestial Navigation and Astronomical Artifacts Fieldwork, Tunisia, North Africa.
June 1997 Professor, Physics Dept., North Carolina A&T State University, Greensboro, NC
2000 Minority Postdoctoral Research Fellow in The UCLA Center for the Cultural Studies of Science, Technology, and Medicine

RESEARCH

Current Projects:

* African Astronomy & Culture
* Celestial Navigation in Three Cultures: Fiji, Tunisia, and the United States
* Celestial Navigation in East Africa
* Celestial Aspects of African Art

Research Interests: The night sky continues to fascinate people all over the world. How people think about the sky, use the sky, and depict the sky is immensely varied. Assuming that these variations reflect social and environmental differences, I use sky lore and sky knowledge as a way to probe cultures other than my own. Oftentimes, I decipher the science behind the myths: For example, moon goddess myths often speak of the goddess growing larger and then shrinking and growing larger again. This reflects the observed waxing and waning of the moon which occurs over 29.5 days.

As an applied anthropologist, I am thinking through ways in which my research can be of benefit. As a BARA member, I study indigenous knowledge systems and practices primarily to uncover the science in order to better understand the limitations of their effectiveness. This can be important in 'development' settings because quaint practices are then scientifically validated and transformed into practices that work. These practices then can be left intact or modified rather than destroyed.

Related links:

Black Sun: A Documentary

#P4TC: Survival Strategies...April 9, 2013

Twitter: https://twitter.com/astroholbrook

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DESI...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 21, 2018 at 5:42am
The 5,000 pencil-size robots will fit snugly inside 10 wedge-shaped petals. Here, one of those wedges is fully stocked with 500 robots, each of which will swivel independently to gather light from a known group of space objects, including distant galaxies. Credit: DESI Collaboration

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Dark Energy, Space Exploration, Spectrograph, Robotics

A 45-year-old telescope is going to get a high-tech upgrade that will enable it to search for answers to the most perplexing questions in astronomy, including the existence of dark energy, a hypothetical invisible force that might be driving the expansion of the universe.

The Nicholas U. Mayall Telescope in Arizona closed earlier this week to prepare for the installation of a 9-ton device that will feature 5,000 pencil-size robots aiming fiber-optic sensors at distant galaxies.

Every 20 minutes, the swiveling robots will reposition to allow the instrument — called the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) — to capture a new portion of the sky. Ten extremely powerful instruments called spectrographs will then analyze the light from the distant objects captured by the sensors and create what has been described as the largest and most detailed 3D map of the universe to date.

"We started with a conceptual design for the instrument in 2010," Joseph Silber, a DESI project engineer who works at the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, said in a statement. "It's based on science that was done on the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) instrument. But it's all done robotically instead of manually."

How 5,000 Pencil-Size Robots May Solve the Mysteries of the Universe, Tereza Pultarova, Space.com

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We have come so far by faith

Posted by Ms. Regina Owens on February 20, 2018 at 7:24pm

Let us not forget those who have gone before us, who have fought the good fight with faith, and courage. Black History Month is due in remembrance of them all, and us today must not allow those torches of courage to ever go out. Kudos to the Black Panther movie, now a superhero movie for us--not one of a "pale like," one that bolts out of a phone booth wearing a flying like red and blue cape. Blessings to you all!

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Alice Ball...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 20, 2018 at 9:42am
Alice Ball - see link below

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

This is Alice Ball, the pharmaceutical chemist who in 1919 developed a medical treatment for Leprosy and gave hope to millions. Her drug was the premier treatment for Leprosy until the 1940’s when antibiotics were developed. Before Alice, Leprosy was considered a hopeless disease. In the US people found to have Leprosy were forcibly removed from their homes and detained indefinitely in remote colonies. Alice’s treatment allowed hundreds of detainees to at last be paroled from the detention centres and go home to their families.

Born in 1892, Alice is the granddaughter of Iconic photographer JP Ball. She graduated from the University of Washington and the University of Hawaii with degrees in pharmacy and pharmaceutical chemistry. Her master’s thesis was titled The Chemical Constituents of Piper Methysticum and involved extracting active ingredients from kava root. Her chemistry work here was so impressive that she was enlisted by US Public Health Officer Dr Harry Hollmann to work her magic with chaulmoogra oil.

For centuries, Indian and Chinese health practitioners have been using chaulmoogra oil to treat leprosy but with limited success. The oil could be applied topically however that would mean it wouldn’t penetrate deep enough into the body; at best, it provided sufferers with some relief. Oil is not soluble in water therefore injecting was extremely difficult near impossible. Patients described the oil injections as ‘burning like fire through the skin’.

This is where Alice comes in. She was enlisted to use her unique skills and techniques to extract the active ingredients from chaulmoogra oil. She isolated the chaulmoogric acid and hydnocarpic acid contained in the oil and created the first water soluble injectable treatment for leprosy. At aged 24 she had managed to do something that had “thwarted researchers for years”.

Meet Alice Ball – The pharmaceutical Chemist who developed the first effective treatment for Leprosy, Women Rock Science on Tumblr

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Ready for S.E.T.I...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 20, 2018 at 9:39am
Credit: fotocelia Getty Images

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, SETI

It is my observation we haven't quite mastered terrestrial encounters with other hominids of differing cultures or shades of Melanin. So, an actual encounter with extraterrestrial life would be at this moment in our existence daunting. We're not ready, for extraterrestrials, or very frequently, each other.

When ‘Oumuamua, a mysterious interstellar object, swept through our solar system last October, it elicited breathless news stories all asking the obvious question—is it a spaceship? There were no signs it was—although many people seemed to hope otherwise.

Throughout history most strange new cosmic phenomena have made us wonder: Could this be it, the moment we first face alien life? The expectation isn’t necessarily outlandish—many scientists can and do make elaborate, evidence-based arguments that we will eventually discover life beyond the bounds of our planet. To true believers, what may be more uncertain is whether or not such news would cause global panic—which depends on how our minds, so greatly influenced by our Earthly environment and society, would perceive the potential threat of something utterly outside our familiar context.

If it’s a discovery somewhere in between the extremes of an extraterrestrial microbe and rapacious, hostile aliens laying siege to Earth, will people respond differently based on the era or society they live in?

Our brains are wired with ancient circuits to defend us against predators. But as we navigate through the world, experience can also shape what we come to accept or to fear and how open we are to novelty. This study only looked at U.S. responses but two neuroscientists think the results might have been very different around the world. “If you look at societies that are much less open and much more xenophobic and so on, they might perceive [finding extraterrestrial life] as much more negative and unsettling,” says Israel Liberzon, a professor of psychiatry, psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan who was not part of the study.

“Culture may be a strong determinant of how we respond to novelty,” says Cornelius Gross, a neuroscientist at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory–Rome who studies the neural circuitry of fear and was also not involved with the research. “People came to America because they were novelty seekers, so we’ve selected for [that] and then continued to foster novelty seeking and place it very high on our list.” Furthermore, Shostak says, a person’s religious beliefs could play a powerful role in shaping their reaction to learning that humanity is in fact not as universally special as many traditions hold.

Is Humanity Ready for the Discovery of Alien Life? Yasemin Saplakoglu, Scientific American

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Slavery and the American University...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 19, 2018 at 1:50pm
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library/Library of Congress “Halting at Noon,” a wood engraving showing a slave drive through Virginia in the early nineteenth century, 1864

Topics: African Americans, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Without modification, the title is the name of a book in the NY Review of Books. Apropos, considering the times we live in.

It's interesting that my Alma Mater was birthed in 1891, some 27 years after the end of the Civil War. It has established itself as a primary source of STEM graduates, and still graduates more African American engineers than any other institution.

Others, some noteworthy have a more sullen history. It is thus understandable, that the institution of white supremacy had in its underpinnings self-regulated "justifications" from clergy and academia. It makes a "self-evident truth" that white culture has clung to as its only solace in an unfair system even to themselves. It is a faux orthodoxy that has prepared us for this unique moment of authoritarian fascism.

We were in Tennessee (Bill Moyers as a young staffer with President Lyndon B. Johnson). During the motorcade, he spotted some ugly racial epithets scrawled on signs. Late that night in the hotel, when the local dignitaries had finished the last bottles of bourbon and branch water and departed, he started talking about those signs. “I’ll tell you what’s at the bottom of it,” he said. “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” Source: Snopes - LBJ: convince the lowest white man quote

According to the surviving records, the first enslaved African in Massachusetts was the property of the schoolmaster of Harvard. Yale funded its first graduate-level courses and its first scholarship with the rents from a small slave plantation it owned in Rhode Island (the estate, in a stroke of historical irony, was named Whitehall). The scholarship’s first recipient went on to found Dartmouth, and a later grantee co-founded the College of New Jersey, known today as Princeton. Georgetown’s founders, prohibited by the rules of their faith from charging students tuition, planned to underwrite school operations in large part with slave sales and plantation profits, to which there was apparently no ecclesiastical objection. Columbia, when it was still King’s College, subsidized slave traders with below-market loans. Before she gained fame as a preacher and abolitionist, Sojourner Truth was owned by the family of Rutgers’s first president.

From their very beginnings, the American university and American slavery have been intertwined, but only recently are we beginning to understand how deeply. In part, this can be attributed to an expansion of political will. Barely two decades ago, questions raised by a group of scholars and activists about Brown University’s historic connection to slavery were met with what its then-president, Ruth Simmons, saw as insufficient answers, and so she appointed the first major university investigation. Not long before that, one of the earliest scholars to independently look into his university’s ties to slavery, a law professor at the University of Alabama, began digging through the archives in part to dispel a local myth, he wrote, that “blacks were not present on the campus” before 1963, when “Vivian Malone and James Hood enrolled with the help of Nicholas Katzenbach and the National Guard.” He found, instead, that they preceded its earliest students, and one of the university’s first acts was the purchase of an enslaved man named Ben. In Virginia, a small consortium founded three years ago to share findings and methods has expanded to include nearly three dozen colleges and universities across North America and two in European port cities. Almost all of these projects trace their origins to protests or undergraduate classes, where a generation of students, faculty, archivists, activists, and librarians created forums for articulating their questions, and for finding one another.

Slavery and the American University, Alex Carp, New York Review Daily

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Planet Xs...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 19, 2018 at 1:47pm
RX J1131-1231 is about 6 billion light-years away. It is a lensed quasar; gravitational lensing caused by an intervening elliptical galaxy (center, yellow) has magnified and multiplied the image of RX J1131 into four images (pink) as seen with the Chandra X-ray Observatory. X-ray: NASA/CXC/Univ of Michigan/R.C.Reis et al; Optical: NASA/STScI

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Exoplanets

Discoveries of exoplanets in our galaxy exceed 3,700 to date, but if that’s not enough for you, astronomers are now probing outside of the Milky Way to find exoplanets in other galaxies. A group of researchers at the University of Oklahoma has just announced the discovery of a large population of free-floating planets in a galaxy 3.8 billion light-years away. Their results were published February 2 in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The researchers used a method known as quasar microlensing, which has traditionally been used to study the disk-like regions around supermassive black holes where material gathers as it spirals in toward the event horizon. When a distant quasar is eclipsed by a closer galaxy, the intervening galaxy will create several magnified replica images of the quasar. These replicas are further magnified by stars in the interloping galaxy to create a final super-magnified image that can be used to study the quasar in detail.

Astronomers report a possible slew of extragalactic exoplanets

Mara Johnson-Groh, Astronomy Magazine

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The Long Walk...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 16, 2018 at 1:00pm
Black Panther Costumer Designer Ruth E. Carter on Three Decades of Dressing Superheroes

Topics: African Americans, Afrofuturism, Black Panther, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Martin Luther King, Speculative Fiction, Star Trek, Women in Science

The cultural reference: James Meredith shot after staging a "long walk" (his solo March Against Fear) from Memphis, Tennessee to Jacksonville, Mississippi encouraging voter registration for African Americans in the south.

I was proudly part of the online record-breaking purchase on Fandango. I started a Facebook group for the movie. Sadly, there are groups formed to boycott it, by people of color uncomfortable with the idea the Black Panther, like Pharaoh in ancient Egypt would be considered a god. There will be the sad/mad/pound puppies that foam at the mouth and howl at the moon at any speculative fiction that doesn't look like a spliced clone of James T. Kirk and Han Solo. They're the same group of spoiled narcissists that had something to say about Voyager's Captain Janeway; Deep Space 9's Commander, then Captain Benjamin Sisko and Michael Berman on Discovery. It's old, it's long and tiresome. But this is a movie I've been waiting for my entire life. Black Panther came out when I was barely out on the planet in 1966 - I was four years old. I am 55 now.

“Wakanda is a small country in Africa notable for never having been conquered in its entire history. When you consider the history of the region, the fact that the French, the English, the Belgians or any number of Christian or Islamic invaders were never able to defeat them in battle…well it’s unprecedented.” The Black Panther - Marvel Knights DVD limited series.

I don't have a vivid memory of Medgar Evers or Malcolm X - just what people told me, what I read and documentaries or dramas that I've viewed.

I do have a vivid memory of the life and death of Martin Luther King, Jr. I recall he was a Trekkie and talked Nichelle Nicholes out of quitting the show. I have a memory of Nichelle Nicholes and William Shatner sharing the first interracial kiss on Plato's Stepchildren, and how like in many markets in the south it was blocked in North Carolina (I wouldn't see it until I was an adult when it went into syndication reruns). I have a memory of the hot tears of five-year-olds in a segregated kindergarten that felt like we'd lost our favorite grandfather or uncle at the news he was no more from teachers that shared our grief. I have a vivid recollection of Confederate flags that paraded on pickup trucks in East Winston-Salem, NC... in celebration of Dr. King's assassination. For those of us in my age group, we resolved to not make his death in vein. If he would look upon our lives, we were determined to make him proud.

I recall the tears my wife shed on the election of the country's first African American president and the memory of her grandparents. Her grandfather "Paw-Paw" almost died in Shreveport, Louisiana at the hands of two white Klansmen for ATTEMPTING to vote. Serendipitously, it was two other white males that sped him to the hospital and saved his life. He, nor his bride "Mother Dear" lived to see the fruition of their labors in the personification of the country's first black president. The republic had existed 232 years, and with the exception of changing parties, managed to keep the office of Chief Executive distinctly white and (so far) exclusively male. Barack Obama was the seventh candidate we had all seen. Running for president as a black candidate was a running joke: you could run, you just couldn't WIN. The death threats and secret service protection he needed as a candidate said something was different this time.

The white backlash was immediate, as if a membrane had been jostled on a sensitized nerve. The rumble started with birtherism, "praying for the president" (reference Psalm 109:8-10); witch doctor effigies during the debates on affordable healthcare (that in hindsight benefited the complainers); screaming citizens at the border in the direction of brown children (the mortar for mythical border walls); and a beautiful, bright and loving African American family - the personification of the Huxtables before the downfall of Bill Cosby - routinely compared to animals and gorillas by people who haven't looked in the mirror, lately.

So, it is in this juxtaposition of previous, audacious hope; the resurgence of overt, de facto nationalistic, white supremacy racism, and a future in the hands of rank incompetents and xenophobes that we look forward to this movie. I don't know what will occur in the aftermath. I can only hope for a good, UPLIFTING and entertaining film.

The photo above says everything we've endured in our long walk. We'll do so as always, going forward in dashikis and "straight outta Wakanda" t-shirts with our backs rod straight. I'd like to think - like Star Trek - Dr. King would have loved it.

"Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can't ride you unless your back is bent." Martin Luther King, Jr.

#P4TC: Slow-Walking Wakanda... August 16, 2015

Related links:

Box Office: 'Black Panther' Is Still Tracking For Record-Crushing Opening, Scott Mendelson, Forbes

Black Panther Set to Break Barriers, MSN video

Will ‘Black Panther’ Smash the ‘Deadpool’ February Box Office Record? MSN

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To Be, or Not to Be...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 16, 2018 at 9:13am
Stephanie Wehner is part of the team trying to build a true quantum network across Europe. Credit: Marcel Wogram for Nature

Topics: Internet, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics, Schrödinger’s cat, Theoretical Physics, Women in Science

Cultural reference: Hamlet, Act III, scene I.

The sobering part is, Europe will likely build a quantum Internet before us, China will commercialize clean energy; everywhere else will have MAGLEV (magnetic levitation) bullet trains that go 200 mph (while we're stuck with the ones that fatally crash at 80), our bridges, railroads and general infrastructure crumbling (toll road taxed to death) from a malignant narcissist, political amateur conman's claim of being "great again."

Before she became a theoretical physicist, Stephanie Wehner was a hacker. Like most people in that arena, she taught herself from an early age. At 15, she spent her savings on her first dial-up modem, to use at her parents’ home in Würzburg, Germany. And by 20, she had gained enough street cred to land a job in Amsterdam, at a Dutch Internet provider started by fellow hackers.

A few years later, while working as a network-security specialist, Wehner went to university. There, she learnt that quantum mechanics offers something that today’s networks are sorely lacking — the potential for unhackable communications. Now she is turning her old obsession towards a new aspiration. She wants to reinvent the Internet.

The ability of quantum particles to live in undefined states — like Schrödinger’s proverbial cat, both alive and dead — has been used for years to enhance data encryption. But Wehner, now at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, and other researchers argue that they could use quantum mechanics to do much more, by harnessing nature’s uncanny ability to link, or entangle, distant objects, and teleporting information between them. At first, it all sounded very theoretical, Wehner says. Now, “one has the hope of realizing it”.

The quantum internet has arrived (and it hasn’t), Davide Castelvecchi, Nature

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Afrofuturism...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 15, 2018 at 10:19pm

Topics: African Americans, Afrofuturism, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Speculative Fiction, Women in Science

Originally posted on #P4TC as Speculative Futures #7... February 17, 2015.

Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture By YTASHA L. WOMACK

In this hip, accessible primer to the music, literature, and art of Afrofuturism, author Ytasha Womack introduces readers to the burgeoning community of artists creating Afrofuturist works, the innovators from the past, and the wide range of subjects they explore. From the sci-fi literature of Samuel Delany, Octavia Butler, and N. K. Jemisin to the musical cosmos of Sun Ra, George Clinton, and the Black Eyed Peas’ will.i.am, to the visual and multimedia artists inspired by African Dogon myths and Egyptian deities, the book’s topics range from the “alien” experience of blacks in America to the “wake up” cry that peppers sci-fi literature, sermons, and activism. With a twofold aim to entertain and enlighten, Afrofuturists strive to break down racial, ethnic, and social limitations to empower and free individuals to be themselves.

Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Afrofuturism-World-Sci-Fi-Fantasy-Culture/dp/1613747969

"The Day We Surrender to the Air" by Antonio Jose Guzman
An article that appears on io9.com by Jess Nevins, 9/27/12. I include a link below to a remarkable, mentioned and available book "Light Ahead for the Negro," by Edward A. Johnson

Africans, and those of African descent, have not been treated well by speculative fiction, both inside its texts and in real life. Anti-African racism is a fact of life in Western culture, and was even more pronounced before 1945. Not surprisingly, the number of works of speculative fiction written by black writers is low. But that number is not zero, and it's worth taking a look at the fantasy and science fiction stories that black writers produced before 1945.

io9.com The Black Fantastic, Jess Nevins

Light Ahead for the Negro, Edward A. Johnson

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We, Terrans...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 15, 2018 at 5:42am
Image Source: Fan Art Central dot net

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, Politics, Star Trek

Yesterday at a high school in Parkland, Florida was the 18th shooting in 2018. It's only been 45 days. There were 345 mass shootings in 2017 alone. We've been chugging along since January 1. This will be remembered as a Valentine's Day massacre.

My sister-in-law and nephew live near this neighborhood. She describes it as affluent, well-off enough for someone to purchase an AR-15 and ammunition. We'll get the obligatory "thoughts and prayers" that will amount to legislatively, nothing. Pew Research reports most gun owners happen to be white and male, many paranoid, delusional and prepping for a race war. Many work with a fellow classmate, a high-level GS engineer. They tell him this, my friend relays to me...another African American male...to his FACE. I, like him, believe them at least in as far as his safety.

The gun industry is failing under their preferred president*, who himself probably doesn't own a single firearm. Remington ironically has filed for bankruptcy, since their business model hinges on making the handful of gun enthusiasts nervous about the "gov-mint coming to take your guns" and "jackbooted thugs" (whatever that means). Just 3% of American citizens own 133 million guns. This is the business model, warped though it is. We are all cannon fodder.

"Terran strength is born out of pure necessity. Because they live in constant fear, always looking for the next knife aimed at their back. Their strength is painted rust. It's a facade."

– Michael Burnham, 2256 ("Despite Yourself")

The Terran Empire was a repressive interstellar government dominated by the Terrans from Earth in the mirror universe. The Empire ruled by terror, its Imperial Starfleet acting as its iron fist. In Starfleet, officers promoted themselves by killing superiors that did not follow the rules of the Empire. Torture was a common form of interrogation. (ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly"; TOS: "Mirror, Mirror")

The precise historical origin of the Empire is a subject of much debate and speculation among fans. If the opening credits of the two Enterprise mirror universe episodes are any indication, the time of the Empire's formation can be pushed back at least to the age of sail (roughly 1571 - 1862 in our universe).

A scene cut from ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" had Archer invoking the blessings of "the gods", hinting that the Empire may be a continuation of or successor to the Roman Empire. Marlena Moreau mentioning Kirk becoming a "Caesar" would add support to this notion, as may the fact that "Terra" is the Latin word for "Earth".

The salute used by officers (closing the fist over the heart and then extending the arm in front, saying, "Long live the Empire") is also reminiscent of the Roman soldiers' and gladiators' salute to Caesar.

Indirect support for the idea that the Empire had a relatively "ancient" origin may be found in a statement made by the mirror Phlox in "In a Mirror, Darkly, Part II". In that episode, he revealed that, although he had found significant differences between the great historical works of literature in the mirror universe and those of the prime universe, he had discovered an exception in Shakespeare, Phlox expressing that the works of Shakespeare were "equally grim in both universes."

Additionally, the mirror Philippa Georgiou in the Star Trek: Discovery episode "Vaulting Ambition" stated that the ideals of equality, freedom, and compassion were "delusions Terrans shed millenia ago."

Memory Alpha: Terran Empire

Insightful as ever, Trek peered through the facade of our existence with a clearly focused lens, like a magnifier in sunlight. The original Star Trek, Enterprise, Deep Space 9 and Discovery had their swings at plot lines in the mirror replicate of our supposedly civilized home. When Gene Roddenberry envisioned the mirror universe, it was through a transporter accident that Kirk, "Bones," Uhura and Scotty ended up in a universe to diametrically opposite of what they'd left. The Federation was all about inclusion and equality; the Terran Empire was all about fascism and fear. Change the Terran motto in the emblem above from "force" to "fear" and it encapsulates the zeitgeist we're being driven to by every obfuscatory statement and tweet.

Instead of thinking "that's them," we may want to look more closely in our own mirror, after a treatment of Windex...this isn't them at some mythical "over there."

This...

   is...

      US!

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Frederick Douglass...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2018 at 6:05am
Image Source: Wikiquote "Once you have learned to read you will forever be free." "Knowledge makes a man unfit to be a slave." More at Brainyquote.com

Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, Diversity in Science, History, Women in Science

Originally posted as "The Meaning..." #P4TC, July 5, 2015.

Today is Valentine's Day and Frederick Douglass's 200th birthday, or at least the day he assigned for himself. One of my favorite quotes by him (that I use) is "The soul that is within me, no man can degrade."

Frederick Douglass was known well for being an escaped slave, committed republican (at that time in our history, the progressive party) and abolitionist. He was a staunch advocate of equality (an early one for women) and education, seeing his own personal emancipation centered on something slaves were banned from doing: reading. His former master chastised his wife, saying teaching Frederick how to read would "ruin him" and make him unfit for the peculiar institution. He couldn't have agreed more.

In his uniquely bellicose manner, Mr. Douglass tackles this in a long soliloquy given July 5, 1852 in Rochester, NY. I have thought of Charleston, South Carolina and how the narrative of our nation had been determined by a defeated foe to the point of redefining the narrative and main rationale (if you can call it that) behind the Civil War: the continued indentured servitude of a kidnapped people in perpetuity. In light of the debate sparked by the assassination of nine innocents in Mother Emanuel AME, and the symbol the terrorist so revered; the possibility on that symbol's removal in the bloody aftermath, I give you Frederick Douglass' apropos speech on its 163rd anniversary in excerpt, read by the accomplished actor and voice of Darth Vader, James Earl Jones.

Mr. President, Friends and Fellow Citizens:

He who could address this audience without a quailing sensation, has stronger nerves than I have. I do not remember ever to have appeared as a speaker before any assembly more shrinkingly, nor with greater distrust of my ability, than I do this day. A feeling has crept over me quite unfavorable to the exercise of my limited powers of speech. The task before me is one which requires much previous thought and study for its proper performance. I know that apologies of this sort are generally considered flat and unmeaning. I trust, however, that mine will not be so considered. Should I seem at ease, my appearance would much misrepresent me. The little experience I have had in addressing public meetings, in country school houses, avails me nothing on the present occasion.

The papers and placards say that I am to deliver a Fourth of July Oration. This certainly sounds large, and out of the common way, for me. It is true that I have often had the privilege to speak in this beautiful Hall, and to address many who now honor me with their presence. But neither their familiar faces, nor the perfect gage I think I have of Corinthian Hall seems to free me from embarrassment.

The fact is, ladies and gentlemen, the distance between this platform and the slave plantation, from which I escaped, is considerable-and the difficulties to he overcome in getting from the latter to the former are by no means slight. That I am here to-day is, to me, a matter of astonishment as well as of gratitude. You will not, therefore, be surprised, if in what I have to say I evince no elaborate preparation, nor grace my speech with any high sounding exordium. With little experience and with less learning, I have been able to throw my thoughts hastily and imperfectly together; and trusting to your patient and generous indulgence I will proceed to lay them before you.

This, for the purpose of this celebration, is the Fourth of July. It is the birth day of your National Independence, and of your political freedom. This, to you, as what the Passover was to the emancipated people of God. It carries your minds back to the day, and to the act of your great deliverance; and to the signs, and to the wonders, associated with that act, and that day. This celebration also marks the beginning of another year of your national life; and reminds you that the Republic of America is now 76 years old. l am glad, fellow-citizens, that your nation is so young. Seventy-six years, though a good old age for a man, is but a mere speck in the life of a nation. Three score years and ten is the allotted time for individual men; but nations number their years by thousands. According to this fact, you are, even now, only in the beginning of your national career, still lingering in the period of childhood. I repeat, I am glad this is so. There is hope in the thought, and hope is much needed, under the dark clouds which lower above the horizon. The eye of the reformer is met with angry flashes, portending disastrous times; but his heart may well beat lighter at the thought that America is young, and that she is still in the impressible stage of her existence. May he not hope that high lessons of wisdom, of justice and of truth, will yet give direction to her destiny? Were the nation older, the patriot's heart might be sadder, and the reformer's brow heavier. Its future might be shrouded in gloom, and the hope of its prophets go out in sorrow. There is consolation in the thought that America is young.-Great streams are not easily turned from channels, worn deep in the course of ages. They may sometimes rise in quiet and stately majesty, and inundate the land, refreshing and fertilizing the earth with their mysterious properties. They may also rise in wrath and fury, and bear away, on their angry waves, the accumulated wealth of years of toil and hardship. They, however, gradually flow back to the same old channel, and flow on as serenely as ever. But, while the river may not be turned aside, it may dry up, and leave nothing behind but the withered branch, and the unsightly rock, to howl in the abyss-sweeping wind, the sad tale of departed glory. As with rivers so with nations.

History is a Weapon: The Meaning of July Fourth for the Negro, Frederick Douglass

Related link: What the Civil War Can Teach us About Patriotism, Jarret Ruminski, PhD Historian, "That Devil History" blog

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Atomically Precise Manufacturing...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on February 14, 2018 at 5:58am
Credit: University of Texas at Dallas

Topics: Instrumentation, Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Scanning Tunneling Microscopy

A University of Texas at Dallas graduate student, his advisor and industry collaborators believe they have addressed a long-standing problem troubling scientists and engineers for more than 35 years: How to prevent the tip of a scanning tunneling microscope from crashing into the surface of a material during imaging or lithography.

Details of the group's solution appeared in the January issue of the journal Review of Scientific Instruments, which is published by the American Institute of Physics.

Scanning tunneling microscopes (STMs) operate in an ultra-high vacuum, bringing a fine-tipped probe with a single atom at its apex very close to the surface of a sample. When voltage is applied to the surface, electrons can jump or tunnel across the gap between the tip and sample.

"Think of it as a needle that is very sharp, atomically sharp," said Farid Tajaddodianfar, a mechanical engineering graduate student in the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science. "The microscope is like a robotic arm, able to reach atoms on the sample surface and manipulate them."

The problem is, sometimes the tungsten tip crashes into the sample. If it physically touches the sample surface, it may inadvertently rearrange the atoms or create a "crater," which could damage the sample. Such a "tip crash" often forces operators to replace the tip many times, forfeiting valuable time.

Dr. John Randall is an adjunct professor at UT Dallas and president of Zyvex Labs, a Richardson, Texas-based nanotechnology company specializing in developing tools and products that fabricate structures atom by atom. Zyvex reached out to Dr. Reza Moheimani, a professor of mechanical engineering, to help address STMs' tip crash problem. Moheimani's endowed chair was a gift from Zyvex founder James Von Ehr MS'81, who was honored as a distinguished UTD alumnus in 2004.

"What they're trying to do is help bring atomically precise manufacturing into reality," said Randall, who co-authored the article with Tajaddodianfar, Moheimani and Zyvex Labs' James Owens. "This is considered the future of nanotechnology, and it is extremely important work."

Microscopy breakthrough paves the way for atomically precise manufacturing, The University of Texas at Dallas

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Black Super Heroes (Comic Book List)

Posted by Bill McCormick on February 13, 2018 at 5:25pm

Due to another project I was researching, partly for my review of Black Panther, I have been assembling a list of black superheroes. I've been limiting it to comic books since I have a life and a girlfriend who requires attention. Please take a look, let me know what errors I have made, and, this is the cool part, send me info on your characters, as long as they have two or more issues out, and I'll add them to the list.

Please follow the format I'm using so I don't have to edit your submission. I don't want to miss something and have you mad at me.

THE LIST

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