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LIGO 2...

Artist’s rendition of colliding neutron stars creating gravitational waves and a kilonova. Image: Fermilab

Topics: Astrophysics, Black Holes, Dark Energy, Dark Matter, Nobel Prize, White Dwarfs

(Oct 16) A team of scientists using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam), the primary observing tool of the Dark Energy Survey, was among the first to observe the fiery aftermath of a recently detected burst of gravitational waves, recording images of the first confirmed explosion from two colliding neutron stars ever seen by astronomers.

Scientists on the Dark Energy Survey joined forces with a team of astronomers based at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) for this effort, working with observatories around the world to bolster the original data from DECam. Images taken with DECam captured the flaring-up and fading over time of a kilonova — an explosion similar to a supernova, but on a smaller scale — that occurs when collapsed stars (called neutron stars) crash into each other, creating heavy radioactive elements.

This particular violent merger, which occurred 130 million years ago in a galaxy near our own (NGC 4993), is the source of the gravitational waves detected by the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and the Virgo collaborations on Aug. 17. This is the fifth source of gravitational waves to be detected — the first one was discovered in September 2015, for which three founding members of the LIGO collaboration were awarded the Nobel Prize in physics two weeks ago.

Scientists spot explosive counterpart of LIGO/Virgo’s latest gravitational waves Andre Salles, Fermilab Office of Communication, asalles@fnal.gov, 630-840-6733

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Molecular Machines...

The use of pulses of chemical fuel to directionally transport components and substrates via an energy ratchet mechanism is operationally simple, effective, generates relatively innocuous waste products, and can function in a range of rotary and linear molecular motor and pump designs. Such a universally applicable chemically-fuelled molecular motor-mechanism has the potential to find broad application in molecular nanotechnology. Courtesy: D Leigh

Topics: Brownian Motion, Chemistry, Nanotechnology, NEMS

Chemists at the University of Manchester in the UK say they have succeeded in developing a new and simple technique for powering both linear and rotary molecular motors made from catenanes. These are mechanically interlocked rings of DNA that could be used to make devices that can be switched between different states using external triggers like changes in pH. The breakthrough method – until now it was only possible to power either rotary or linear motors – might be used to power future molecular machines.

“In the molecular machines we are familiar with in the ‘big world’, the parts, such as cogs, flywheels and pistons, do not move unless a force is applied to them,” explains team leader David Leigh. “At the molecular scale, however, molecules and their parts are constantly moving through Brownian motion and we need to find ways to control the direction of this motion if we are to develop fully-functioning nanomachines.”

Last year, Leigh’s team made the first autonomous chemically-fuelled molecular motor that runs as long as a chemical fuel is present. This rotary motor relies on information transfer between the machine components: a blocking group adds as soon as the ring has moved past a certain point in a given direction and that group also prevents the ring moving backwards through Brownian motion.

The researchers use trichloroacetic acid (Cl3CCOOH) as the fuel in their motor. Cl3CCOOH undergoes base-catalysed decarboxylation, and by adding an excess of this acid to a solution containing the molecular motor and another chemical (triethylamine, or Et3N), they were first able to make the medium acidic and then, as the Cl3CCOOH decomposes, basic.

Chemical fuel pulses power rotary and linear nanomotors, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org

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Subterranean Moon Base...

The Marius Hills Skylight, as observed by the Japanese SELENE/Kaguya research team. (Image: NASA/Goddard/Arizona State University)

Topics: Moon, NASA, Planetary Science, Science Fiction, Space Exploration

Hm. Just in time for Halloween, though (I think) the architecture of science fiction space bases will obviously need an update. This is also the idea motivating any future Martian colonies as well.

New research published in Geophysical Research Letters shows that several pits located near the Marius Hill region of the Moon are large open lava tubes, and that these ancient caverns have the potential to offer, in the words of the researchers, a “pristine environment to conduct scientific examination of the Moon’s composition and potentially serve as secure shelters for humans and instruments.” The team, which included scientists from NASA and Japan’s space agency, JAXA, combined radar and gravity data to make the finding.

No doubt, these caverns would be perfect for aspiring lunar colonists. Inside these large holes, humans would be protected from the Sun’s dangerous rays, and other hazards. The Moon has no atmosphere to speak of, so these “instant” shelters would be extremely advantageous.

Philadelphia is shown inside a theoretical lunar lava tube. (Image: Purdue University/David Blair)

Scientists Just Found the Perfect Spot to Build an Underground Colony on the Moon George Dvorsky, Gizmodo

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The time is now

Woke up to a brisk 31 degrees in Nashville today. I had forgotten what winter felt like for the last 5 years in Florida now is the wake up call. Wake up call is a good phrase to use in this case. Ask yourself what was your wake up call? How did it occur and better yet what have you done about it? I realized today that i have actually been a member of this site since 2012 and I still believe it was a great idea to join this site. I haven't really been on here and I can legitimately come up with more excuses than Martha Stewart has recipes on why i haven't  done anything yet but hey now that's out of the way i can get down to business again. I will be back to punishing this keyboard with work and post on here from now on. I have 7 books to write and number one needs to be finished by March 2018. Hey I have a question and feel free to answer or give your opinion i look forward to hearing them. See i have this plan and as of now it is going into motion what would it take to get you as an artist, animator, publisher, Writer and creator of worlds to actually work as one? Because i don't know about you but i am out to change the world and wreck certain people's nasty agendas and thoughts on who we are and what we should be portrayed as. I am done with the talk now its time to put in the work and show the world at large just how talented we are and most of all show them how to we are leaders as well. So here we go and strike up the band i am now declaring all out war on PROCRASTINATION ON THIS SITE and not doing what we dream of doing and have been dreaming of forever. We all have goals and dreams but the one thing we are missing is action. Me included oh no I am in no means excluded from this as a matter of fact I include myself on this so there it is. OK now.....Your Move! 

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Freedom and Responsibility...

Image Source: Link below

Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Science, Research

As a no-knock raid (s) may be going on in Washington, DC or surrounding suburbs, this is a follow-up from the piece "The Right to Science," the material sourced from the American Association for the Advancement of Science as is this post.

In the era of "doubling down" on inanity at 140 characters in wee hours of the mornings (paired with septuagenarian bowel movements), AAAS is being very explicit and direct with reality, not "alternative facts," lies and propaganda.

A quote from my professor in Nano Safety:

"All science and engineering has a moral and philosophical component. It is imperative that as future scientists you pursue your research ethically, thinking also of your impact on society going forward." (I have omitted his name for his privacy)

BTW: The interpolation homework wasn't that bad, and we finished the project report. On to the others in Nano Physics and Safety. I will hibernate after finals.

The freedom to pursue science, apply its findings and share its discoveries is linked to the obligation of the scientific community to conduct its work with integrity and keep the interest of humanity as a core tenet, according to a new statement adopted by the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s Board of Directors.

The AAAS Board of Directors adopted the “Statement on Scientific Freedom and Responsibility” on Oct. 12 to govern the organization, its members and guide scientists across the globe – the first known such position adopted by a scientific organization, according to members of the AAAS committee that developed the statement.

“Scientific freedom and scientific responsibility are essential to the advancement of human knowledge for the benefit of all. Scientific freedom is the freedom to engage in scientific inquiry, pursue and apply knowledge, and communicate openly,” the statement says. “This freedom is inextricably linked to and must be exercised in accordance with scientific responsibility. Scientific responsibility is the duty to conduct and apply science with integrity, in the interest of humanity, in a spirit of stewardship for the environment, and with respect for human rights.”

The four-line statement is meant to be a lasting and widely applicable affirmation, recognizing that freedom necessary to extend the global scientific enterprise requires the scientific community to adhere to and apply high ethical standards, interlocking two longstanding pillars of science.

AAAS Adopts Statement Binding Scientific Freedom with Responsibility Anne Q. Hoy, AAAS

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Striking a Balance (minor NSFW section)

I have read some intelligent, insightful, and meaningful posts up here. This is not one of those. This is just some shameless self promotion I hope you can enjoy.

First off, I recently licensed the IP for Legends Parallel, Pestilent, and Bob: Sins of the Son to Nerdanatix. They will be developing video games, printing and distributing the comics, and looking into other venues for exploitation, including spin off properties. 

This video is a primer designed to give game designers an idea of what they're getting into with Legends Parallel before they slog through the comics and scripts. It is WILDLY NSFW, but it's an accurate preview. It is also a lot of fun to listen to so crank it up and watch it on a big screen.

Legends Parallel Nerdanatix Promo from Bill McCormick on Vimeo.

Next up on my video jukebox today is a brief teaser for my trilogy, The Brittle Riders, which just dropped en toto via Azoth Khem. The basic idea is that the series starts with the death of every man, woman, and child on the planet and then gets kind of dark.

The Brittle Riders Teaser from Bill McCormick on Vimeo.

Lastly, but far from leastly (my post, my imaginary words), I give you Alokia The Kaiju Hunter. This is the only project I have coming out that is purely directed at teens. The crew hails from Japan, Serbia, and Chicago. I'm the Chicago part. This is early in development, we just finished the character designs so they match my script, but we're shooting for summer of 2018 to start regular issues.

It has a drunken gorilla king, so you know kids will love it.

Alokia The Kaiju Hunter Teaser I from Bill McCormick on Vimeo.

And that concludes my interruption of your day. I hope to see everyone at the Motor City Black Age of Comics Convention on November 18th.

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Possible Go Wrongs...

Image Source: TV Tropes: The All-Devouring Pop Culture Wiki

Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming

Note: I'm writing a report and Power Point presentation on a project in MATLAB on Numerical Methods (Trapezoid Rule, Simpson's Rule and Gauss Quadrature, not that you asked), AND a homework on interpolation (joy). I will resume next Monday on All Hallow's Eve, for no particular superstitious or zombie apocalypse reason.

Tomorrow (October 7th, so this is long past), the EPA is expected to take a first formal step in repealing the Obama Administration’s Clean Power Plan (CPP), a regulation designed to cut carbon dioxide emissions from power plants by approximately 30 percent below 2005 levels by 2030. This is a terribly irresponsible decision. Recent ferocious storms, intensified by warming oceans and air, remind us of the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions. The Obama administration’s Clean Power Plan is a sensible, flexible, cost-effective rule addressing one of one of the biggest sources of US carbon emissions, and one of the least expensive sources to control.

Notably, it appears from a leaked draft that the EPA does not base its proposed repeal on a change in policy goals, or on any of the usual considerations such as the rule’s costs, feasibility, or impacts. Rather, the EPA hangs its repeal hat entirely on a legal hook—the EPA now claims that the Clean Power Plan violated the law because it regulates “beyond the fenceline” of individual power plants—a claim that is directly contrary to what the EPA and the Department of Justice argued in court just last fall. With this legal sleight of hand, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt once again forsakes the mission of the agency he heads—to safeguard human health and the environment—to pander to fossil fuel interests.

As I've stated before: N = N0 * ert is the exponential growth formula. N0 = initial number; N = final number; r = 0.02 (growth rate for humans); t = years. With a little algebra, you can solve for t and find the population doubles in roughly 35 years, our current world population estimate at 7.6 billion. N = 15,256,782,730 (roughly) in 35 years. The problem with climate change and population is our politics like our enterprise are both myopically focused on business quarters and the next election cycle, not mid or the next century. More people simply mean more competition for limited resources, one of which - for LIFE and social stability - is potable water.

The poet T.S. Elliot is the author of the famous poem "The Hollow Men." How apropos a title to relate to this subject. You owe yourselves beyond my meager excerpts to read the full text here, Source: AllPoetry.com, other sources: Biography, Wikipedia

I

We are the hollow men

We are the stuffed men

Leaning together

Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!

Our dried voices, when

We whisper together

Are quiet and meaningless

As wind in dry grass

Or rats' feet over broken glass

In our dry cellar

Shape without form, shade without colour,

Paralysed force, gesture without motion;

Those who have crossed

With direct eyes, to death's other Kingdom

Remember us-if at all-not as lost

Violent souls, but only

As the hollow men

The stuffed men.

III

This is the dead land

This is cactus land

Here the stone images

Are raised, here they receive

The supplication of a dead man's hand

Under the twinkle of a fading star.

Is it like this In death's other kingdom

Waking alone

At the hour when we are

Trembling with tenderness

Lips that would kiss

Form prayers to broken stone.

(Elliot's last, most quoted stanza)

V

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

This is the way the world ends

Not with a bang but a whimper.

Scott Pruitt’s Cynical Move to Rescind the Clean Power Plan Ken Kimmell, Union of Concerned Scientist, President, Oct 9, 2017, 12:47 PM EDT

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Atoms and Josephson Junctions...

An electron microscope image of a quantum simulator made from a 1D array of Josephson junctions (light dots). (Courtesy: Philip Krantz, Krantz NanoArt, adapted by APS / Alan Stonebraker)

Topics: Modern Physics, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Superconductors

A theory that describes how quantum particles interact with each other in 1D has been put to the test by two independent teams of physicists. In one experiment, aspects of the Tomonaga–Luttinger theory were verified using laser-trapped ultracold atoms. The other study made use of superconducting devices. Confirmation of the theory could lead to the development of new technologies based on nanowires and other 1D systems. Applications include electronics, sensing, energy harvesting and quantum information.

Tomonaga–Luttinger theory describes a 1D ensemble of interacting quantum particles in terms of a Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid (TLL). It predicts properties of 1D quantum systems such as how electrons behave in a nanowire. Testing these predictions in a systematic way has not been possible, however, because it is very difficult to control how particles interact in 1D systems such as nanowires.

Atoms and Josephson junctions simulate 1D quantum liquid, Hamish Johnston, Physics World

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Mori's family adventure Kick-starter

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2140728215/moris-family-adventures-kids-international-travel/descriptionMori’s Family Adventures is a family traveling book narrated by my son Mori. The series follows my family as we travel the world, enjoying family fun, and learning a thing or two about the regional cultures.Our goal is to get this book series in front of early grade school students who are just starting to read on their own. We feel that students this age have little to no cultural experiences do to the great cost of traveling abroad. Also the narrow educational direction we commonly see. Mori’s Family Adventures provides children and their teachers a median to show other cultures in an immersive way. The educational goal of the series is to expose different cultures to kids. Show the fun family activities their family can have at these locations. Lastly, to teach some historical information about the region, and get children excited about seeing new things outside of the U.S.https://youtu.be/aGV7QoUXHS0
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Oligarchy...

Image Source: Foundations of Government, Slide Player, Slide 5

Topics: Commentary, Existentialism, History, Politics

I let the previous post last Friday stand without any other comment. I'm also working on reports for three projects in graduate school. I have a limited amount of hope that things will change. It is partly the subject of today's commentary.

I read "Letters at 3 AM: 'O' is for Oligarchy" in the print version of The Austin Chronicle when I lived in Austin, Texas. As in the date in the online version, I remember reading it in 2010. The premises it raised have aged very well, unfortunately.

*****

The US is dominated by a rich and powerful elite.

So concludes a recent study by Princeton University Prof Martin Gilens and Northwestern University Prof Benjamin I Page.

This is not news, you say.

Perhaps, but the two professors have conducted exhaustive research to try to present data-driven support for this conclusion. Here's how they explain it:

Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.

In English: the wealthy few move policy, while the average American has little power. Source: BBC News, Study: US is an oligarchy, not a democracy, 17 April 2014

*****

The U.S. government does not represent the interests of the majority of the country's citizens, but is instead ruled by those of the rich and powerful, a new study from Princeton and Northwestern universities has concluded.

The report, "Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens" (PDF), used extensive policy data collected between 1981 and 2002 to empirically determine the state of the U.S. political system.

After sifting through nearly 1,800 U.S. policies enacted in that period and comparing them to the expressed preferences of average Americans (50th percentile of income), affluent Americans (90th percentile), and large special interests groups, researchers concluded that the U.S. is dominated by its economic elite. Source: Business Insider, Zachary Davies Boren, The Telegraph, April 16, 2014

*****

Ganesh Sitaraman carried on this traditional observation of the obvious in The Guardian:

While the ruling class must remain united for an oligarchy to remain in power, the people must also be divided so they cannot overthrow their oppressors. Oligarchs in ancient Greece thus used a combination of coercion and co-optation to keep democracy at bay. They gave rewards to informants and found pliable citizens to take positions in the government.

These collaborators legitimized the regime and gave oligarchs beachheads into the people. In addition, oligarchs controlled public spaces and livelihoods to prevent the people from organizing. They would expel people from town squares: a diffuse population in the countryside would be unable to protest and overthrow government as effectively as a concentrated group in the city.

They also tried to keep ordinary people dependent on individual oligarchs for their economic survival, similar to how mob bosses in the movies have paternalistic relationships in their neighborhoods. Reading Simonton’s account, it is hard not to think about how the fragmentation of our media platforms is a modern instantiation of dividing the public sphere, or how employees and workers are sometimes chilled from speaking out.

Greece, the birthplace of our ideas on democracy as Rome was our ideals of a republic is an apropos historic comparison.

In my March 31 post, The Shattering, oligarchy wasn't mentioned, but implied. I observe the former head of the KGB, he and the other former members of the Politburo have abandoned the ideals of the Communist Manifesto. They don't appear at all interested in "sharing their wealth," but in its avaricious accumulation.

Perhaps their American counterparts have left the "quaint" notion of a federal republic.

Ventrella Quest Cartoon - Free Speech

"We have 'given them the store' of white supremacist bigotry, and our republic. I'm concerned apathy, racism, stupidity and tribalism may well not allow us... to get it back." The Shattering, March 31, 2017

*****

“The really dangerous American fascist... is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power... They claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective, toward which all their deceit is directed, is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection."

~quoted in the New York Times, April 9, 1944, Vice President Henry Wallace, Good Reads

Related links:

Facebook’s General Counsel to Testify to Congress in Russia Probe, Jonathan Allen, NBC News

Twitter, With Accounts Linked to Russia, to Face Congress Over Role in Election, Daisuke Wakabayashi and Scott Shane, NY Times

We, Oligarchy...#P4TC, August 2, 2015

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Check out my latest book: Justine Mingana!

The peaceful occupation of Earth by the benevolent Calaar opened avenues of opportunity for Justine Mingana and hundreds of millions of other humans trapped in poverty. Mingana achieved what she never thought possible as a child: she became a starship captain. Another alien race arrived in Earth's skies, this one hostile and aggressive, offering a brutal contrast to Calaar altruism. Now, Mingana must make a show of loyalty to a new set of occupiers while pursuing a hidden agenda, one that may lead to the demise of her ship and crew. For the sake of Earth's liberation from the clutches of tyrants, Alien and human alike, Mingana is prepared to make that sacrifice...and she is just as prepared to kill.

https://www.amazon.com/Justine-Mingana-Ronald-Jones-ebook/dp/B071J97HYB/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1508438620&sr=8-1&keywords=Justine+mingana

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future dwelling technology

OK, my latest thinking. The quonset has dormers on each side which is connected to stacked shipping containers. The sea-cons can be porches or room expansion. The quonset ends are flat so you can attach dome-like extensions. I used an octagonal shaped dome in keeping with standard 90 degree building technology. And yes, you don't have to use shipping containers, but they are ready-made steel frames. And you could just as well dock your tiny house on the side of the quonset.

Someone asked me what kind of people would live in my dwellings. I am a bungalow person, smallish but bigger than a tiny house. How to live in a smallish house is living in your mind instead of living by your body. The body requires space and stuff, both of which can be costly. But you can do whatever you imagine, so make choices. Yoda could live with the Hulk (they both are green and powerful) but the Hulk (a big guy) changes into human (a tech stuff buff) who requires lots of space and Yoda ("mind" you) requires less space. If you figured it out, I'm am hooked on what can be built from available stuff today because even if you become super-human, housing design moves like a glacier. I'm just breaking the ice (for tea). You must enlist your powers and "built to suit."

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Polite Society...

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

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Carbon Nanotube FET...

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

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QuantumWise...

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

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