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| Image Source: Cap Times, Amy Goodman, Dennis Moynihan related article |
Topics: Commentary, Politics, Research
"An armed society is a polite society. Manners are good when one may have to back up his acts with his life." Robert A. Heinlein
"The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre
On the night of October 1, 2017, a gunman opened fire on a large crowd of concertgoers at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip in the State of Nevada, leaving 58 people dead and 489 injured. Between 10:05 and 10:15 p.m. PDT, 64-year-old Stephen Paddock of Mesquite, Nevada, fired hundreds of rifle rounds from his suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel. About an hour after Paddock fired his last shot, he was found dead in his room from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. His motive is unknown.
The incident is the deadliest mass shooting committed by an individual in the United States. The crime reignited the debate about gun laws in the U.S., with attention focused on bump firing, a technique Paddock used to allow his semi-automatic rifles to fire at a rate similar to that of a fully automatic weapon. Source: Wikipedia
- The claim that gun ownership stops crime is common in the U.S., and that belief drives laws that make it easy to own and keep firearms.
- But about 30 careful studies show more guns are linked to more crimes: murders, rapes, and others. Far less research shows that guns help.
- Interviews with people in heavily gun-owning towns show they are not as wedded to the crime defense idea as the gun lobby claims.
Guns took more than 36,000 U.S. lives in 2015, and this and other alarming statistics have led many to ask whether our nation would be better off with firearms in fewer hands. Yet gun advocates argue exactly the opposite: that murders, crimes and mass shootings happen because there aren't enough guns in enough places. Arming more people will make our country safer and more peaceful, they say, because criminals won't cause trouble if they know they are surrounded by gun-toting good guys.
Is there truth to this claim? An ideal experiment would be an interventional study in which scientists would track what happened for several years after guns were given to gun-free communities and everything else was kept the same. But alas, there are no gun-free U.S. communities, and the ethics of doing such a study are dubious. So instead scientists compare what happens to gun-toting people, in gun-dense regions, with what happens to people and places with few firearms. They also study whether crime victims are more or less likely to own guns than others, and they track what transpires when laws make it easier for people to carry guns or use them for self-defense.
Most of this research—and there have been several dozen peer-reviewed studies—punctures the idea that guns stop violence. In a 2015 study using data from the FBI and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, researchers at Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard University reported that firearm assaults were 6.8 times more common in the states with the most guns versus those with the least. Also in 2015 a combined analysis of 15 different studies found that people who had access to firearms at home were nearly twice as likely to be murdered as people who did not.
This evidence has been slow to accumulate because of restrictions placed by Congress on one of the country's biggest injury research funders, the CDC. Since the mid-1990s the agency has been effectively blocked from supporting gun violence research. And the NRA and many gun owners have emphasized a small handful of studies that point the other way.
"For your hands are stained with blood, your fingers with guilt. Your lips have spoken falsely, and your tongue mutters wicked things." Isaiah 59:3
More Guns Do Not Stop More Crimes, Evidence Shows Melinda Wenner Moyer, Scientific American
Lexicon of the Spiral Galaxy
Lauren A. Johnson
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| Figure 1. A three-dimensional integrated circuit, made possible with carbon nanotubes (CNTs). The circuit senses and classifies ambient gases using a multilayered stack of devices that are connected by platinum wires known as interlayer vias. In the top layer, roughly 1 million CNT field-effect transistors (FETs) register a change in electrical resistance when the gas molecules adsorb on a CNT. The second layer hosts memory cells that read and store the signals created by the FETs just above them. The third layer contains another million FETs that process the sensor data and implement a machine-learning algorithm to identify the type of gas picked up. Conventional silicon CMOS circuitry on the bottom acts as an interface to external devices. (Adapted from ref. 2.) |
Topics: Carbon Nanotubes, Computer Engineering, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics
In 2013 graduate student Max Shulaker, his adviser Subhasish Mitra, Philip Wong, and their Stanford University colleagues built the first computer made entirely of carbon nanotube (CNT) field-effect transistors (FETs). 1 The achievement was eagerly anticipated. Even before their first incorporation into FETs in 1998, CNTs had been touted as a superior substitute for the silicon channel that shuttles current between the traditional FET’s source and drain electrodes.
The intrinsic thinness of single-wall CNTs—essentially graphene sheets rolled into hollow cylinders a nanometer wide—enables superb control over power dissipation in the transistor’s off state and allows the transistor to switch off and on with much lower energy consumption than is possible with any other material. Moreover, thanks to that one-dimensionality, which suppresses scattering, charge carriers in CNTs have a much higher velocity for a given electric field than in Si. (See the article by Phaedon Avouris, Physics Today, January 2009, page 34.)
The 2013 computer was modest: It contained fewer than 200 FETs, ran at a clock speed of just 1 kHz, and implemented a single instruction. Nonetheless, the instruction was a conditional statement that qualified the computer as “Turing complete,” able to make any calculation given enough memory and time. The achievement also reassured Shulaker, now a professor at MIT, and his Stanford colleagues that CNTs could form the foundation for a much more complex system.
The researchers have now built a prototype system that embodies a vision of a transformative computer architecture—one in which computing, data storage, and input and output technologies are each fabricated into two-dimensional layers that are built up into a 3D integrated circuit.2 Shown schematically in figure 1, the circuit consists of more than 2 million CNT FETs and more than 1 million memory cells. The components are divided among three layers—stacked on the same chip atop a layer of Si CMOS circuitry and interconnected by a forest of fine platinum wires.
The carbon nanotube integrated circuit goes three-dimensional R. Mark Wilson, Physics Today
LOOKA HERE - A BLACK-OWNED TOY STORE!!!
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| Image Source: Link below |
Topics: Education, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology
Note: This will hopefully catch up my posting hiatus this Thursday (last midterm).
QuantumWise develops commercial software for fast and reliable atomic-scale modeling of nanostructures, fully supported and delivered in an easy-to-use interface, tailored from state-of-the-art methods, and developed by experts to the specifications of our customers.
Who we are
QuantumWise is a self-funded, privately owned company headquartered in Copenhagen, Denmark, with local representation in Japan, Singapore and the United States. We sell our software products to several hundred companies, government labs, and universities around the world. QuantumWise was started in 2008, built on the company Atomistix (founded in 2003), which brought the academic transport code TranSIESTA into the commercial marketplace.
At present, QuantumWise has more than 20 employees world-wide, working with developing the code and supporting our users. Most of our employees have a Ph.D. in physics or chemistry, and/or are seasoned programmers with long experience in numerical modeling and GUI development.
QuantumWise, Physics Connect Website: QuantumWise.com
My first book is free today and tomorrow!
50,000 fans can't be all wrong! (except about tiny hands trump!) lol
Please check out my black Main Character, Richter!
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| Image Source: Scroll.in and NobelPrize.org |
The Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel 2017 was awarded to Richard H. Thaler "for his contributions to behavioural economics".
Integrating economics with psychologyRichard H. Thaler has incorporated psychologically realistic assumptions into analyses of economic decision-making. By exploring the consequences of limited rationality, social preferences, and lack of self-control, he has shown how these human traits systematically affect individual decisions as well as market outcomes.
Link: 2017 Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel
It was a sunny hot day. It was an Alabama sunny hot day in August. I sat in the parking lot of the U.S. Space and Rocket Center debating to myself whether I should go thru with this.
After several minutes, I decided that I came this far, I might as well go all the way. So over my shorts and T-shirt, I placed the thin aluminum style suit on. Not much people noticed me. When I was done and zipped the suit up, I became very warm and unusually uncomfortable. I placed the other accessories on like an old Army pistol belt and boots. The suit was made to resemble a Mercury silver spacesuit. There were no african-american astronauts that were part of the Mercury 7 team, but a person can still dream. They fueled the imagination of many Americans regardless of race and gender.
As I proudly walked to the entrance of the Space and Rocket Center, I then noticed the stares. Little children were pointing their finger at me. All I could do was to wave back at them with a nervous grin.
About sixty years ago, other men wore similar suits like mine. The only difference is that theirs was the real McCoy and they were the real pioneers of this new frontier of space.
It started with a dream from individuals like Copernicus, Katherine Johnson and Werner Von Braun. They had a dream and their contributions helped us to the land a man on the moon.
In pursuing their wildest dreams, there are setbacks and sacrifices. Many lives were lost in the launch pad for both the United States and the former Soviet Union.
But the dream didn’t die.
They learned from their mistakes and paid homage to those we lost who dared to believe.
The dream went on. From it, it launched new innovations and sciences. From it, we built a shuttle and then a space station where human beings has spent over a year in orbit. We have sent probes to Mars and to the very boundaries of our Solar system and beyond.
Those were big dreams.
As I walked through the rocket center taking video I would use later on, people began to come up to me to shake my hand. Some employees, who never saw me thought I worked there also. Every person I saw greeted me with a smile.
Soon my nervousness went away and I did what I determined to do.
My goal is nothing to compare with landing on the moon. But it’s still worthwhile. To show those that anyone, I mean anyone, can fly on a rocket or have impossible dreams. It becomes possible when you begin to believe that you can do it.
I left with a sense of accomplishment and pride.
From the video footage I filmed, I was able to craft a science fiction short film called Opportunity 7.
Dare to Dream.
-Christopher Love
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| Image Source: Daily Mirror Original: Ill: N. Elmehed. © Nobel Media 2017 |
Topics: Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize, Peace
I can't think of a more timely and apropos prize for the current zeitgeist. I hope it has impact.
The Nobel Peace Prize 2017 was awarded to International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) "for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons".
Link: Nobel Peace Prize
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| Image Link: Source below |
Topics: Literature, Nobel Laureate, Nobel Prize
The Nobel Prize in Literature for 2017 is awarded to Kazuo Ishiguro "who, in novels of great emotional force, has uncovered the abyss beneath our illusory sense of connection with the world".
Link: Nobel Prize Literature
Hey guys It's been a long time coming but now its finally paying off
https://www.dropbox.com/s/kgfbzrn34iw835h/GEX%20demo.zip?dl=0
Controls: ASD/ZXC = shoot
Left, Right, Up, = move
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| Image Source: Link below |
The Nobel Prize in Chemistry 2017 was awarded to Jacques Dubochet, Joachim Frank and Richard Henderson "for developing cryo-electron microscopy for the high-resolution structure determination of biomolecules in solution".
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| Image Source: Link below |
The Nobel Prize in Physics 2017 was divided, one half awarded to Rainer Weiss, the other half jointly to Barry C. Barish and Kip S. Thorne "for decisive contributions to the LIGO detector and the observation of gravitational waves".
Food Weaponization - similar scenario played out in "Logan" film where mutants were killed off from GMO foods! This tense info need not be slept on, as it also details Planned Parenthood genocidal history against Blacks. GODSPEED!!!
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| Image Source: Link below |
The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 2017 was awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young "for their discoveries of molecular mechanisms controlling the circadian rhythm".
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| Image Source: Seminar link below |
I saw Dr. Oluseyi speak at the National Society of Black Physicists, Austin, Texas in 2011 (where I met Nobel laureate Steven Weinberg). I signed up to hear him speak again today, obviously scheduled as a pick-me-up for graduate students before midterms. We could all use it.
And there, at Tougaloo College, you had a breakthrough.
Yes.These three grad students from MIT and Harvard came to Tougaloo, where I was one of two physics students in 1986. They were all black physics students from the Cambridge area – and each of them thought they were the only one! They came to realize that kids from certain communities just have no idea that physics as a career exists. They decided they’d start the National Council of Black Physics Students, to help the most down-and-out kids in the country. So where did they go? Mississippi. They showed up on our campus.
Because of them, I ended up meeting recruiters from Stanford University that ended up accepting me to Stanford for grad school. In all of Stanford’s history, at that time, there were only two black professors in all of the six schools of natural sciences and mathematics. One was my PhD advisor, Art Walker, who was also the PhD advisor of Sally Ride. Just being in his presence showed me a different model of how I could be.
But in the end, Art’s support changed it for me. It was like two different lives. I ended up changing my name from James Edward Plummer to reflect how my life had changed so drastically. I wanted my middle name to reflect how I am. So my middle name is Muata and it means “He seeks the truth.” I wanted my first name to reflect what I want to become. My first name Hakeem means “wisdom.” And my last name is from the West African Yoruba people, and it means “God has done this.”
Rise of a gangsta nerd: Fellows Friday with Hakeem Oluseyi, TED BlogNC A&T Seminar link: NCAT.edu/oluseyi
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| Researchers at Columbia University created an evaporation engine, driven by bacterial spores that swell as they absorb moisture from evaporating water. XI CHEN |
"Caveat emptor is the only motto going, and the worst proverb that ever came from the dishonest stone-hearted Rome." Anthony Trollope
Please note I'm not quoting Trollope (an apropos name for our times as malapropism) as a critique of the study. All science is preliminary, in iterative steps. "Rome was not built in a day," and neither will sustainable energy solutions that will hopefully replace our current fossil model. It is unfortunate that our easy access to information via search engines have made us all attention deficit as a species and unappreciative of process, either political or scientific.
Technology that can tap into the renewable power of natural water evaporation could produce a huge portion of the nation's energy needs—at least theoretically (see "Scientists Capture the Energy of Evaporation to Drive Tiny Engines").
Prototype "evaporation-driven engines" generate power from the motion of bacterial spores that expand and contract as they absorb and release air moisture. If it could be done efficiently and affordably, the devices could provide more than 325 gigawatts of electricity-generating capacity, outpacing coal, according to a study published Tuesday in Nature Communications.
That, however, would require covering the surface of every lake and reservoir larger than 0.1 square kilometers in the lower 48 states, excluding the Great Lakes, with arrays of the devices. Obviously, that would directly conflict with existing economic and recreational uses, and raise a host of serious aesthetic and environmental concerns. Notably, interfering with evaporation on a large enough scale, across a big enough lake, could even alter local weather.
But study coauthor Ozgur Sahin says that the paper is more of a thought experiment designed to underscore the potential of the technology and the importance of advancing it beyond lab scale, rather than any sort of literal development proposal.
Evaporation Engines Could Produce More Power Than Coal, with a Huge CaveatJames Temple, MIT Technology Review
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| Credit: Joshua Edel |
Note: My study group is preparing for midterms next week. I give my apologies for what will be an erratic posting schedule. I'm merging two colloquialisms: drinking from fire hoses and eating elephants one bite at a time. I should resume posting normalcy - as far as grad school goes - the 9th of October, until finals week in December.
From last Friday's posting, it's obvious what I thought of the (lack of) humanity pursuing the deaths of millions to give tax cuts for the few. I'm glad for the moment the Affordable Care Act hasn't met the zombie apocalypse. I have no doubt like the pertinacious walking dead, they will try again.
Surface plasmons—collective, light-driven oscillations of electrons in metal—have given us stained glass, flat lenses, and home pregnancy tests. Now they bring us the mirror–window, a liquid mirror whose reflectivity can be tuned, or eliminated altogether, with an applied voltage.
Developed by researchers led by Alexei Kornyshev, Anthony Kucernak, and Joshua Edel at Imperial College London, the device makes use of gold nanoparticles inside a cell filled with two immiscible electrolyte solutions—one aqueous, the other oily. Dispersed throughout one phase or the other, the nanoparticles interact negligibly with light, and the cell is transparent. But when the particles form a dense monolayer at the liquid–liquid interface, their plasmon resonances couple to each other and they become optically reflective.
