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Design materialized as the next logical step

The mind space, similar to toothpaste. In the tube it can be squeezed and mangled within the confines of it's container. Remove the cap and out it comes but according to a little coaxing and the now unblocked orifice. The point is managing the next logical outcome. Then envisioning how far you can take that outcome. I've have seen geodesic domes made of Saran Wrap, bubble wrap and Plexiglas but I wouldn't live in any of them. The mind can conceive so much. Practicality is often based on economics and availability even before you get to durability and aesthetics. The famous Frank Lloyd Wright while on the cutting edge of style and grace made an eventually leaky dwelling because the materials available didn't perform as planned (pushed too far). I've seen cargo container home designers give up and coin the industrial/shipyard look as cool, trendy, hip, NOT! Think that's bad try the military look, not to diss the military, after all they did glamorize the one thing that works well, 'camouflage'. In architecture it is called facades. In fashion it is costume and makeup, in culinary it's substitute and seasoning. Look and feel of one thing while having the structure and substance of something else.....but you know how many Naugahydes it takes to simulate deep Corinthian leather? A full 10 gallon pail (that's hat in Texas).

Yes, this is an exercise in design, the next logical assumption. Every step wither back, to the side or to jump ahead leads somewhere. Strip the rippled walls off a cargo container and cover the frame in glass. Double the glass and fill the gap with Styrofoam beads, coat with Ray-ban, electric phase change salts, roll down screens. Curve the glass into a quonset covering. You can seal this or make it slide like a pool cover. Under the quonset the space is open, forget the horse barn and barrack look. I've seen private jets that have near the same shaped space so plush it's like Star Trek. The airship or future blimp has sliding vista windows and roofs, a strolling isle like a fashion show walkway, accommodations, build-ins, no wasted space, and no clutter, an observation deck with a bar, sleeping state rooms. Talk about leisure cruises.

Young folks are living in smaller spaces so they can afford the luxury. It is a mind-space trade off. JUST THINK, take "da lux" off your SUV and outfit your tiny house, haul it with a beater truck and look like stepping off a "Lost in Space" episode before Dr. Smith becomes Mr. Smith, the real one in the Matrix. All Smiths find out, this is why black Smiths live off world, "Nubian I think". Morpheus is one of the Jones boys but "The Rock" is a Johnson like me (no relation and yet I wonder).        

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Meadism

One of my favorite futurist artist Syd Mead talked about buildable futures. This caused a question to linger in my head for ever. What will the future look like and how will we of browness be involved. Yeah we buy a lot of pre-owned dwellings and do lots of apartments and condos and if fortune comes to us the "big House". I watch the programs about the tiny house movement and marvel at young white folk giving up the notion of a permanent foundation based house for one that is somewhat transportable. I laugh, some struggle to put everything in it and some like a camp trailer. It's a port-a-potty with a living onsuite.

Oh the serious talk of giving up amenities and paring down possessions, a kind of simple life with less ego and status display of materialism. But my question for us........what if we would do near the same. I say near because I'm not a fan of the gypsy life. But what If we look at some of the considerations of living with less like this. I don't mean living in a hut/shanty/shack like our ancestors, but even with the technology we have today it is still not far from that. Like living in an encampment on a distant planet. How would we build off-grid and still have what we need and do it with style and grace of course. I am not a fan of cargo containers in their raw state, junk yards (eclectic devastation art), apocalyptic futures. I have shown some of my ideas on this site and I think about the possibilities of a material culture that might come out of Afrofuturism besides body adornment, hero cosplay and sound art (love it). Like the tiny house adventurers would some of us make the plunge with the added twist of an Afrofuturist motif. Sort of a living experiment. It is a catalyst move for sure but move on the line of Space 1999 than the Bootsy Collins invasion. The point is living in the future today. Yes, I've got my vision of that future and you got yours. But how does this future materialize beyond todays mind-space? What if the tiny house were a bubble or the hull of a large plane, how would you live in it? the same?

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Hacking Rosie...

Lucas Apa, senior security consultant at cybersecurity company IOActive, handles robots by UBTech and SoftBank Robotics during a demonstration in Singapore August 21, 2017. Picture taken August 21, 2017. Jeremy Wagstaff

Topics: Commentary, Computer Science, Consumer Electronics, Robotics

My fond childhood memories of "The Jetsons" didn't include the possibility she could have been hacked or weaponized, but such is the world we share with sociopaths. I assume this might be a plot for the proposed live action reboot if it survives its pilot episode (it might be intriguing, but I don't expect Astro to do anything but bark, unlike his pre-Scooby-Doo dialogue). As robots become ubiquitous in our lives, along with the Internet of Things, this becomes a more likely possibility.

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - Researchers who warned half a dozen robot manufacturers in January about nearly 50 vulnerabilities in their home, business and industrial robots, say only a few of the problems have been addressed.

The researchers, Cesar Cerrudo and Lucas Apa of cybersecurity firm IOActive, said the vulnerabilities would allow hackers to spy on users, disable safety features and make robots lurch and move violently, putting users and bystanders in danger.

While they say there are no signs that hackers have exploited the vulnerabilities, they say the fact that the robots were hacked so easily and the manufacturers’ lack of response raise questions about allowing robots in homes, offices and factories.

“Our research shows proof that even non-military robots could be weaponized to cause harm,” Apa said in an interview.

“These robots don’t use bullets or explosives, but microphones, cameras, arms and legs. The difference is that they will be soon around us and we need to secure them now before it’s too late.”

Labor Day Weekend in the US. It's also celebration my group got in our first Matlab program with no errors. Resuming blogging on Tuesday.

Robot makers slow to address cyber risk: researchers, Jeremy Wagstaff, Reuters Science

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Flexible Crystal...

Credit: University of Queensland
Topics: Consumer Electronics, Materials Science, Solid State Physics, Quasicrystal

Queensland researchers have shown that single crystals, typically thought of as brittle and inelastic, are flexible enough to be bent repeatedly and even tied in a knot.

Researchers from Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and The University of Queensland (UQ) determined and measured the structural mechanism behind the elasticity of the crystals down to the atomic level.

Their work, published in Nature Chemistry, opens the door for the use of flexible crystals in applications in industry and technology.

The research was led by ARC Future Fellows Associate Professor Jack Clegg in UQ's School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences and Associate Professor John McMurtrie in QUT's Science and Engineering Faculty.

Associate Professor McMurtrie said the results challenged conventional thinking about crystalline structures.

"Crystals are something we work with a lot – they're typically grown in small blocks, are hard and brittle, and when struck or bent they crack or shatter," he said.

"While it has previously been observed that some crystals could bend, this is the first study to examine the process in detail.

"We found that the crystals exhibit traditional characteristics of not only hard matter, but soft matter like nylon."

Bendable crystals tie current thinking in knots, Phys.org
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Diabolo...

Image Source: Link below
Topics: Geometry, Mathematics, Optical Physics

A ring-shaped optical cavity has degenerate resonant modes, because clockwise and anticlockwise waves resonate at the same frequencies. The degeneracy can be lifted, and the frequencies split, by a perturbation such as a physical rotation or the presence of a molecule or nanoparticle. Typically, the frequency splitting is proportional to the perturbation’s magnitude, as illustrated in the top panel of the figure for a hypothetical complex-valued perturbation ε (that is, one that can affect both the light’s frequency and its phase). Because the plot’s shape resembles a yo-yo-like toy called a diabolo, the degeneracy has been dubbed a diabolic point. The mode splitting around a diabolic point is the basis for optical gyroscopes, and it’s been explored for other sensing applications.

There’s another type of degeneracy, called an exceptional point, where not only do resonant frequencies coincide but their resonant modes do too. In the case of the ring resonator, inserting reflectors to scatter light from the anticlockwise mode into the clockwise mode (but not vice versa) creates an exceptional point with a single resonant mode, the clockwise-traveling wave. Perturbing the system splits that mode into two resonances, each with a small admixture of the anticlockwise wave, and the frequency splitting scales with the square root of the perturbation magnitude, as shown in the bottom panel.

Exceptional points make for exceptional sensorsAt just the right locations in parameter space, resonant frequencies are ultrasensitive to tiny changes.Johanna L. Miller, Physics Today
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Phase II Transitions...

Image Source: An article on LinkedIn by Linda Morales
Topics: Commentary, Education, Nanotechnology, STEM

In the post Transitions, I alluded to I might not be posting as regularly due to the rigors of graduate school. Well that rigor came last week and this week. I'm getting my footing on homework, collaboration and time management. The faculty, staff and student body here are the picture of diversity. I've literally met people from around the globe and not once have I repeated a country on our introductions. Ghana...Korea...Iran...Saudi Arabia...Sudan...Sweden...et al and each when I said I grew up in Winston-Salem (30 minutes west on I-40) and I'm an alumni of the university, they have without fail stated: "you came home."

I re-acclimated myself to the new F.D. Bluford Library. It's much larger with three floors, the top being the quietest place to study in. The librarians said I'd be there a lot, reading the papers my professors published in journals, of which they have a lot of from American, Indian, Chinese journals as well as from professional technical societies if memory serves. The old Bluford was renamed in honor of my Chancellor Edward Fort as a research and grant center. He's still around, and teaching as well as Dr. Casterlow (my karate and calculus instructor - retired) and Dr. Sandin, who's taught at A&T since 1968. He taught Dr. Ron McNair his first physics class, as he had taught mine. After 50 years of honorable and distinguished service, he'll retire next year.

One of the things I got over quickly was being an older graduate student. I saw some during graduate orientation that at least looked distinctly older than me. No one has made me feel uncomfortable, and the chair of the Nanoengineering Department said I wasn't his oldest student (I asked). He graduated a PhD last year at the ripe young age of 63. He's working as a director in industry. There's hope.

I've joined the Nano Energy group as my research area of concentration. I interviewed the principle investigators in that and the nano-wire/photonics group before I made my decision, both areas tempting and equally interesting. I felt energy was a good fit for my industry experience, science and social interests and my inclinations to do something that makes the world a better place.

I also share Dr. Cho's ambition of getting more African Americans into batteries and by extension STEM fields: the New York Times published an article stating even with Affirmative Action, African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos lag behind all other groups since I was an undergrad. I recall 1980 was supposedly the largest number of African American males attending colleges and universities, noted again by the New York Times in a 2002 related article, observing more sadly are inmates. I speculate the impacts of globalization, adolescent pregnancies and inadequate educational resources (see NYT article, second link) keeps societal stratification darkly and remarkably intact.

The JSNN (Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering) has a "nano-bus" they use to do K-12 outreach. It's a teaching requirement for PhD students (that can also be fulfilled by grading papers or teaching a class or lab), so I volunteered. I was respectfully declined as this is my first semester, and the graduate coordinator wants us to focus on setting a good foundation to be successful. After my fire hose days, I can see the importance. When it's appropriate (i.e., I've successfully managed time and the fire hose), and for reasons I hope I've made you understand, I'll be getting on that bus.
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Photograph of a sapphire wafer that is patterned with the photonic bandgap resonators used in this work. It shows two full devices and parts of four others. Before using them in experiments they are cut out of the array and wired up. The devices themselves are about 1 cm long. The serpentine structures are microwave Bragg mirrors and the straight lines of varying width at the center of each device are the microwave cavities. Courtesy: A Sigillito

Topics: Electromagnetism, Solid State Physics, Quantum Dots, Quantum Mechanics

Researchers at Princeton University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have succeeded in controlling nuclear spins in silicon by purely electrical means. Until now, electronic or nuclear spins could only be manipulated through radio-frequency magnetic fields. The feat could help in the development of quantum processors based on nuclear spin qubits.

Classical computers store and process information as "bits" that can have one of two logic states ("0" or "1"), but quantum computers work on the principle that a quantum particle (such as an electron or atomic nucleus) can be in two states at the same time – "spin up" or "spin down". These two spin states represent a logical "1") or a "0", so N such particles –or quantum bits (qubits) – could be combined or "entangled" to represent 2N values simultaneously. This would lead to the parallel processing of information on a massive scale not possible with conventional computers.

In practice, it is difficult to make even the simplest quantum computer, however, because these quantum states are fragile and are easily destroyed. They are also difficult to control. For a qubit to work, it should thus be well isolated from its environment to preserve its quantum properties, and prevent "decoherence". At the same time it should be robust enough so that its state can be read out and manipulated. The intrinsic magnetic moment of an atomic core, or nuclear spin, is a good qubit candidate in this respect because it fulfills all of these criteria.

There is a problem, however, in that the magnetic moment of a nuclear spin is 10 billion times smaller than the moment of one bit of a modern hard drive, and it is almost impossible to detect, let alone manipulate, such a tiny signal.

Electric fields control nuclear spin qubits in silicon, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org
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Solar Eclipse 2017...

Image Source: NASA.gov

Topics: Eclipse, NASA, Space, Space Exploration

The good news: The eclipse glasses I ordered from Amazon are on the approved NASA list (see Friday's post).

The bad news: They're not here yet. Luckily, I'm adept at returning their merchandise when they've flubbed the ball, and unless the US Postal Service comes through with a Lynn Swann diving save, I'm likely going to be viewing it from the links I planned below. Like I said, I'd rather have what's left of my eyesight the remainder of my life. Another (partial) eclipse if I'm so inclined is a plane ticket away.

Eclipse Live Stream
NASA TV’s - Eclipse Across America: Through the Eyes of NASA

On Monday, Aug. 21, 2017 (today), a total eclipse will cross the entire United States, coast-to-coast, for the first time since 1918. If you can’t make it to the path of totality you can still safely view a partial eclipse and you can still enjoy totality through the eyes of NASA Television and NASA webcasts.

Viewers around the world will be provided a wealth of images captured before, during, and after the eclipse by 11 spacecraft, at least three NASA aircraft, more than 50 high-altitude balloons, and the astronauts aboard the International Space Station – each offering a unique vantage point for the celestial event.

NASA Television will air a four-hour show, Eclipse Across America: Through the Eyes of NASA, with unprecedented live video of the celestial event, along with coverage of activities in parks, libraries, stadiums, festivals and museums across the nation, and on social media.

Related links:

Eclipse Live, NASA.gov
Total Solar Eclipse 2017: Here Are the Best Live (Video) Streams, Sarah Lewin, Space.com

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PRESS RELEASE

Total Solar Eclipse African American Style: Black Suns: An Astrophysics Adventure

Black Suns: An Astrophysics Adventure, a documentary about chasing eclipses and science dreams, chronicles the lives of two globe-trotting astrophysicists, Dr. Alphonse Sterling and Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi, as they follow/document the two solar eclipses that occurred in 2012. The film is hosted by award-winning cultural astronomer Dr. Jarita Holbrook. Black Suns premiered on Friday, June 9 at the 7th Annual Art of Brooklyn Film Festival, where it won the Jury Prize. There will be a screening at the AAS HEAD meeting in Sun Valley on Sunday, August 20. It will be screening August 26 @ 13:40 at the Bronzelens Film Festival in Atlanta (Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History 101 Auburn Ave NE). 

For this eclipse weekend we are offering a preview streaming special for $3.99 on Vimeo (https://vimeo.com/ondemand/blacksunseclipse).

Dr. Alphonse Sterling (http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/people/sterling/) of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, currently stationed in Japan: a man who had early success in the U.S., but left his home country to further cultivate his wide-ranging interests.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi (https://www.aps.org/careers/physicists/profiles/oluseyi.cfm)  of the Physics & Space Sciences department at the Florida Institute of Technology: a scientist who beat all the odds -- poverty, homelessness, single parent, poor early education, gang warfare -- to get to where he is today.

Dr. Jarita C Holbrook (https://www.facebook.com/drjaritaholbrook/)
Scientist and cultural anthropologist, Dr. Holbrook’s films include “Hubble’s Diverse Universe,” (HDU, exec prod/interviewer/editor, 2010) http://www.HDUmovie.com and "The Micro-X Rocket Project" (exec prod/interviewer/co-director, in production). 

Black Suns explores how and why the two men became scientists, their opposing paths and personalities, their struggles as minorities in a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics) field, and their noteworthy accomplishments to date. 

Why Is Black Suns Important?
Black Suns is for a general audience, but it is being created for our future – America’s children – especially those underserved communities whose math and science talents might be overlooked. The two scientists personal unveilings will intrigue and engage young people in these communities. Further, Alphonse and Hakeem exhibit different styles and personalities, dispelling the belief that only one type of person can become a successful scientist. Therefore, by following the two astrophysicists as they chase the two eclipses, it is the filmmakers’ goal to motivate young people so that they seek out their own incredible scientific journeys.

Follow the adventures on:
Twitter @blacksunsdoc
And on Facebook blacksunsdoc/ 

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Eclipse Caveats...

Image Source: See link [2] below

Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Eclipse, Moon, NASA

Usually I do something about current events, but I will admit to you some exhaustion since Monday's Appomattox post and Tuesday's meltdown. The covers of the New Yorker (via The Hill), Time magazine and The Economist are apropos, on point and quite sad. It's not like we didn't see this coming. Americans sadly have a long inglorious history of denying reality.

I'm frankly retreating into science, hoping the rumors the nine rallies from his knuckle-dragging Troglodytes have all been canceled this weekend "due to terrorist fears." After this blubbering fool went accidentally viral, they really need a reset on the English language (and history) to look up the definition of "supremacy."

I've ordered my own glasses from Amazon, who gave a warning some of their third party suppliers didn't give documentation guaranteeing safety standards. [1] Ahem: Luckily, the glasses I ordered from Amazon are on the approved NASA list. [2] I'm posting a live stream tracker provided by NASA Monday for safer viewing, and if you happen to not be on the viewing path where you are.

Please look at the links below and govern yourselves accordingly and safely. This is a once-in-a-lifetime event if you're lucky to be in the path. Don't make it your last.


1. Amazon Is Warning People Not To Use Some Solar Eclipse Glasses That Were Sold On The Site, Leticia Miranda, consumer affairs reporter BuzzFeed News

2. Reputable Vendors of Solar Filters & Viewers, Solar Eclipse 2017, NASA

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The Fifth Season is coming to TV!

N.K. Jemisin’s ‘The Fifth Season’ Book To Be Developed As TV Series At TNT!

Now Mr. Hayashi can't complain about there being no other famous black creatives than Delany and Butler. 

http://deadline.com/2017/08/nk-jemisin-the-fifth-season-book-developed-tv-series-tnt-1202150542/

Now who says diversity doesn't sell?! If some yesteryear agent says that, throw this article in their face and say "Are you sure? Now get me TNT's president and NO I won't hold!" 

Of course, this assumes TNT won't screw this up like they did the TFTC revival. 

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The Right to Science...

Image Source: European Society of International Law, Vol 4, Issue 1 Editorial board: Anne van Aaken (editor-in-chief), Jutta Brunnée, Başak Çali, Jan Klabbers

Topics: Civil Rights, Human Rights, Science, Research

The right of all people to benefit from scientific progress is spurring new research by science and human rights practitioners and informing organizations how to secure those benefits, according to presenters at a AAAS Science and Human Rights Coalition Meeting, held July 27-28 in Washington.

The right to science is enshrined not only in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, but also in Article 15 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, said Jessica Wyndham, interim director of the AAAS Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law program and a coordinator of the Science and Human Rights Coalition.

The international provision requires governments to ensure the right of everyone “to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications, to conserve, develop and diffuse science, to respect the freedom indispensable for scientific research and to recognize the benefits of international contacts and cooperation in science,” Wyndham said. A total of 165 countries are party to the treaty, which the United States has signed but not ratified.

The right to science is the subject of a new report, “Giving Meaning to the Right to Science: A Global and Multidisciplinary Approach,” developed by AAAS’ Scientific Responsibility, Human Rights and Law Program and Science and Human Rights Coalition and released in conjunction with the meeting. The report can provide “a foundation for a shared understanding of the right to enjoy the benefits of scientific progress and its applications,” said Margaret Weigers Vitullo, director of academic and professional affairs at the American Sociological Association.

Human Rights Coalition Deepens Understanding of the Right to Science, Andrea Korte, AAAS
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Every story has not two, but multiple sides to it. Some span lifetimes others generations and some very rare ones span realities. It all depends on how many dimensions you can see it in. This is one such story, a story of family, of secrets and the duty that goes along with it. This story has and is being played out on multiple planes of existence, sometimes one after the other, sometimes simultaneously. The details of the story and how it relates to itself among the various realities is complicated but needless to say this chapter of it, which will probably be a long one, should help to elaborate on the intricacies of the grander picture in both depth and scope. I’m am aware that in this reality there is a tendency to reject or block out things which the mind cannot comprehend, but I assure you that this is not only comprehensible but completely understandable. However that is only for the few who would understand this sort of thing. A myth wrapped in a legend packaged in a good bit of lore. But like any other story, there is some truth to it, some irrefutable fact. A fact that makes it seems so much more real than the mundane realities and eventually supersedes it. The fact is of course that no story is just a story and so they are all in actuality real somewhere. So sit back, enjoy and pay attention cause your reality might be next on the totem pole.-The Geist, The Prince at the Gateway
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Every story has not two, but multiple sides to it. Some span lifetimes others generations and some very rare ones span realities. It all depends on how many dimensions you can see it in. This is one such story, a story of family, of secrets and the duty that goes along with it. This story has and is being played out on multiple planes of existence, sometimes one after the other, sometimes simultaneously. The details of the story and how it relates to itself among the various realities is complicated but needless to say this chapter of it, which will probably be a long one, should help to elaborate on the intricacies of the grander picture in both depth and scope. I’m am aware that in this reality there is a tendency to reject or block out things which the mind cannot comprehend, but I assure you that this is not only comprehensible but completely understandable. However that is only for the few who would understand this sort of thing. A myth wrapped in a legend packaged in a good bit of lore. But like any other story, there is some truth to it, some irrefutable fact. A fact that makes it seems so much more real than the mundane realities and eventually supersedes it. The fact is of course that no story is just a story and so they are all in actuality real somewhere. So sit back, enjoy and pay attention cause your reality might be next on the totem pole.-The Geist, The Prince at the Gateway
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My name is Kenneth James, and I am currently editing the personal journals of the renowned SF writer Samuel R. Delany in a multivolume series for Wesleyan University Press.  The first volume, In Search of Silence -- which collects Delany's journals from the 1960s -- has, since its publication earlier this year, received very positive reviews from such venues as The New Republic, The Gay & Lesbian Review, and the Barnes & Noble column by SF critic Paul Di Filippo.  Here are links to two of these (the G & L Review article is unfortunately behind a paywall):
The next volume, which I'm working on now and which is entitled Autumnal City, collects Delany's personal journals from the '70s -- during which time Delany wrote some of his most groundbreaking work, including Dhalgren, Trouble on Triton, and Tales of Neveryon.  During this time he also did substantial preliminary work for the novel Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand.
I've just launched a crowdfunding campaign at Indiegogo to fund the completion of Autumnal City.  Here is a link to the campaign page; do check it out if you'd like to learn more about the project:

Please help spread the word about this campaign!

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3D Living Tissue...

Image of the 3-D droplet bioprinter, developed by the Bayley Research Group at Oxford, producing mm-sized tissues Credit: Sam Olof/ Alexander Graham
Topics: 3D Printing, Additive Manufacturing, Biology

Scientists at the University of Oxford have developed a new method to 3D-print laboratory- grown cells to form living structures.

The approach could revolutionize regenerative medicine, enabling the production of complex tissues and cartilage that would potentially support, repair or augment diseased and damaged areas of the body.

In research published in the journal Scientific Reports, an interdisciplinary team from the Department of Chemistry and the Department of Physiology, Anatomy and Genetics at Oxford and the Centre for Molecular Medicine at Bristol, demonstrated how a range of human and animal cells can be printed into high-resolution tissue constructs.

A confocal micrograph of an artificial tissue containing 2 populations human embryonic kidney cells (HEK-293T) printed in the form of an arborized structure within a cube Credit: Sam Olof / Alexander Graham

Interest in 3D printing living tissues has grown in recent years, but, developing an effective way to use the technology has been difficult, particularly since accurately controlling the position of cells in 3D is hard to do. They often move within printed structures and the soft scaffolding printed to support the cells can collapse on itself. As a result, it remains a challenge to print high-resolution living tissues.

A new method for the 3-D printing of living tissues, Alexander D. Graham et al. High-Resolution Patterned Cellular Constructs by Droplet-Based 3D Printing, Scientific Reports (2017). DOI: 10.1038/s41598-017-06358-x, Phys.org
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White Bored!

The driving force behind this comic book gaming adventure is the Black experience.  Their conflicting hopes, dreams and visions of a better future and a brighter tomorrow are dramatized in a scintillating voyage between comic books and video games.  Move over pop culture dinosaurs, Ultimate Voyages promises to restore its readers, gamers and adventurers to their rightful place.  No more sitting in the balconies or at the back of the bus.  Its novelty is in its reimagining the world or the United States, for that matter, as the home of the free and land of the slave.  It delivers a stretch of storylines and character building levels that are fun and engaging for those brave enough to enter its dimension.  The story ventures out with Ultimate Voyages through Language and History, followed by its sequel The UHURU Initiative: Revenge of the White Gaud, then drops you in the driver’s seat in a World of Ultimatums, pulling you back in with the yet to be released title Courage to Succeed.  Created and produced by a private individual fed up with the lack of inclusion and connection he felt with popular culture.  

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Sooner Than Expected...

Study: More than 6 million could die early from air pollution every year, Azadeh Ansari, CNN
Topics: Climate Change, Economy, Environment

Scientific American does give the report with some caveats, but as my title alludes, the Chinese - unlike the United States - is serious about addressing this national health issue. They will stumble, learn and eventually surpass us in a technical market we may find ourselves scrambling to catch up with them in. From the image above, I do understand Beijing's motivations.

BEIJING—As the United States reverses its climate policies, the world's top greenhouse gas emitter is in the midst of setting up a national carbon-trading system.

Chinese officials are preparing to launch an emissions market later this year that will cover roughly a quarter of the country's industrial CO2. Officials and nonprofit groups from the European Union, Australia and California have been advising the Chinese on their program design.

Expectations are tempered: Details of China's national system are still murky, but enough information has emerged that observers are skeptical it will be immediately comparable to existing programs, due to design features as well as the haste with which China is rolling it out.

"Initially, it's not going to be more robust than, say, California or RGGI or even some of the pilots," said Jeremy Schreifels, a visiting fellow at Resources for the Future who has been observing the market's evolution. He was referring to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative covering nine Northeastern states.

China Is Preparing to Launch the World’s Biggest Carbon Market, Debra Kahn, Scientific American
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Appomattox Legacy...

Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Commentary

Today is my 55th birthday. I start graduate classes today. I'd hoped to be in a better mood, an uplift from Friday's post.

Saturday, I watched the events in Charlottesville, Virginia unfold on national television. My wife cried even before the name of the victim run over by a coward was announced. I'm sure her as well as my own thoughts drifted to our adult sons. My nephew opined about his own son, not even a year old and the world he and his girlfriend have to prepare him for.

I'm studying an exciting STEM field (Nanoengineering), but I find the living at my particular artificial societal demarcation of humanity exhausting. No one can convince me this isn't a mental disorder; a mass hysteria born of the first African American being elected president of the republic in 232 years and the backlash encouraged by right/Reich wing web sites, talk radio and schlock television hosts on conservative outlets. Despite having their chaos agent in power, this madness continues unabated.

I will study HARD. I think it's the only thing that will keep me calm...and sane.

I could only think of the post for Appomattox (April 12, 2015). I think it is apropos for our current and continuing neurosis on division, expanded via FOGHORN by our current "chief executive*", an obvious accident of a bereft national knowledge of civics responsibility.

His response to the violence Saturday he encouraged during the campaign was weak and tepid. An obvious dolt at history, he's never heard the quote made famous by Malcolm X "the chickens have come home to roost," (and he wasn't the origin of it, just its more modern proponent) now a double entendre of karma and irony.

One would think he was concerned about how his words would be measured by the Klan and Neo Nazis, and could care less what the rest of his nation thinks.

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time." - James A. Baldwin

*****

NATIONAL PARKS SERVICE
Topics: #BlackLivesMatter, Civil Rights, Human Rights, Dred Scott, Walter Scott

Thursday, 9 April was the Sesquicentennial, the 150 year anniversary of the South's official surrender to the North in the person of Generals Robert E. Lee to Ulysses S. Grant in Appomattox, Virginia. On the same date in 1947, Branch Rickey signed Jackie Robinson, making him the first African American to play in major league baseball; the first professional athlete of color in any sport at the time. He walked through a door first opened by Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympic Games, invalidating Hitler's theories of Aryan athletic superiority.

Yesterday, Walter Scott was buried...murdered in the heart of the Confederacy, for a broken tail light.

Cliven Bundy - that $1.1 million dollar, artful, tax-dodging welfare queen, who actually through armed militia threatened US officials with armed insurrection - is still free.

Dred Scott - the man for whom the Supreme Court's most daft decision was the match spark for the Civil War (and apparently, the nomination of Abraham Lincoln as candidate to the-then radical/progressive republican party) - said in the opinion of Chief Justice Taft:

"In the opinion of the court, the legislation and histories of the times, and the language used in the Declaration of Independence, show, that neither the class of persons who had been imported as slaves, nor their descendants, whether they had become free or not, were then acknowledged as a part of the people, nor intended to be included in the general words used in that memorable instrument...They had for more than a century before been regarded as beings of an inferior order, and altogether unfit to associate with the white race, either in social or political relations; and so far inferior, that they had no rights which the white man was bound to respect; and that the negro might justly and lawfully be reduced to slavery for his benefit." [1]

Hauntingly, Dred Scott is buried just miles outside of Ferguson, Missouri.

From a similar, thoughtful article in The Atlantic: "It is easy to proclaim all souls equal in the sight of God,” wrote James Baldwin in 1956 as the Civil Rights Movement took hold in America; “it is hard to make men equal on earth in the sight of men." [2]

Since the election and reelection of President Obama, it's apparent we've never stopped fighting the Civil War. As publicly directed towards him, there is an obvious visceral disdain for the part of the American electorate that he, by existing embodies. There has been since his two terms an increase in highly motivated hate groups; hate crimes; the escalation in murders (example by this recent affront), luckily caught on a citizen's smart phone. Some would say the president has encouraged this. However, I posit that it's not his encouragement, it is his presence in the Presidential Mansion - renamed The White House after a visit to President Theodore Roosevelt by Booker T. Washington, and the national backlash it ensued [3] - that is so offensive to those that don't want their place in the social hierarchy disturbed (wanting "their country back"). From Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, Renisha McBride, Eric Garner and now Walter Scott: the Facebook meme below sums up the anger and frustration felt by citizens of this country. [4] It means we can never relax, never just "be." Even our genetic telomere lengths are shorter due to this stress.

Over time, the Civil War became the subject of great romanticization and sentimentalism in cultural memory. For veteran soldiers on both sides, reconciliation required time and the pressure of political imperatives imposed by the larger society on them and on the conflict’s memory. In the wake of this war, Americans faced a profound and all but impossible challenge of achieving two deeply contradictory goals—healing and justice. Healing took generations in many families, if it ever came at all. Justice was fiercely contested. It was not the same proposition for the freedmen and their children as it was for white Southerners, in the wake of their military, economic and psychological defeat. And in America, as much as it sometimes astonishes foreigners, the defeated in this civil war eventually came to control large elements of the event’s meaning, legacies, and policy implications, a reality wracked with irony and driven by the nation’s persistent racism. [2]

Walter Scott sprinted from the scene of a traffic stop, possibly thinking he was to be served for neglected child support payments. That is not worthy of an execution. He was shot in the back with the same regard as cattle at a slaughter shop; killing a mad dog fleeing. Considering that I am a US citizen that trained in a STEM field, an armed forces veteran (as Walter Scott); a MAN: I, nor my sons (the oldest also a veteran) should feel like this in our own country:

The "United" States of America: You cannot be united if you still support the slavery historically-generated "states rights" in everything from voting rights for African Americans; criminalizing a woman's right to choose, to same-sex marriage. The Ku Klux Klan; the John Birch Society; the Tea Party are the typical regressive reactionary responses to any fairness; any progress from the "lesser classes" that should "know their places." [5] We are becoming a byword; an oxymoron. The global economy we encouraged we're falling woefully behind. Technologically backpedaling, we are contesting Darwin and "Creation Science"; anti-vaccination activists to actual scientists; the Jesuit 6,000 year estimate to actual red shift measurement of the age of the universe; climate disruption that the Pentagon sees as an existential threat snowball poo-pooed as pseudo-controversy: our competition abroad has no equivalent analog - our inanity is being ignored for good reason. Like ancient Rome, we're bloated and over-extended; intensely tribal and superstitious; pseudo-scientific; withering from within. We are now a de facto Oligarchy, the only thing we're lacking is the final, deafening crash on the heaps of feudalism and anachronism. We could avoid it by an evolution in thought and policy; a new Appomattox that reinvigorates the republic, and takes this country forward: our viability as a nation is really in the long run, what matters for us all.

"We must learn to live together as brothers, or perish together as fools."
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

1. This Day in Quotes: March 6, 1857, The Dred Scott Case2. The Atlantic: The Civil War Isn't Over, David W. Blight3. Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans from the Civil War to World War II, Douglas A. Blackmon4.
5. The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin, Corey Rubin
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The Ysaak War. It is the saga of Moon of Pluton

A second part of the successful book "Moon of Pluton," written by Venezuelan author Ángel David Revilla, better known by his readers as Dross Rotzank, tells how the creation of his latest book and some peculiarities of itself.

Before publishing my first book, I had already written this second part because writing is a passion for me, I'm in love with it. In fact, I opened the Youtube channel with the very premeditated and treacherous idea that publishers would listen to me. Although I later fell in love with this platform for everything it has given me.

The Ysaak War," which began as a short story, but, word for word, became a novel of greater encouragement. "I like to sail on a raft and get into the open sea, and find out how far I'll go. I want to know what I will think of, how I will solve situations ... see what happens. 'The Ysaak War' when I was a story I did not like the end so much, so I added, changed and corrected. So I write, without planning, I enjoy it as much as possible.

The novel, besides being science fiction, mixes the fantasy and goes deep into the characters and their conflicts. For Dross, these qualities relate to the commitment to their readers: to offer the best story.

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