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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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| Image of the 3-D droplet bioprinter, developed by the Bayley Research Group at Oxford, producing mm-sized tissues Credit: Sam Olof/ Alexander Graham |
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.
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| 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
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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| Study: More than 6 million could die early from air pollution every year, Azadeh Ansari, CNN |
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
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.
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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| On August 6, 1945, 8.15 am, the uranium atom bomb exploded 580 meters above the city of Hiroshima with a blinding flash, creating a giant fireball and sending surface temperatures to 4,000-C. Fierce heat rays and radiation burst out in every direction, unleashing a high pressure shockwave, vaporizing tens of thousands of people and animals, melting buildings and streetcars, reducing a 400-year-old city to dust. [1] |
"Fire and fury"...that sounds tough until you denigrate 755 career diplomats an adversary expels in a retaliatory move for [them] interfering in our last election cycle. 755 professionals, their families...and children that will be displaced stateside just as schools are starting. It sounds strong, but when Kim Jong Un thinks it's crazy, it likely is. There will be no "cost savings" or reduction to any payroll, as unbeknownst to most of us, Moscow hasn't raised their flag above our capital (yet). It's an obvious dodge, diverting attention from the ongoing Russia investigation, "playing chicken" with extinction for an ego; the plot for a poorly scripted reality show we're all haplessly in.
We cannot continue "government by tweet and bluster." We cannot call ourselves a federal republic when our leader undermines his own citizens. We cannot continue as a nation, a PLANET or a species.
He was aptly described as a "chaos agent" during the primaries. He proves it daily.
The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed about 250.000 people and became the most dreadful slaughter of civilians in modern history. However, for many years there was a curious gap in the photographic records. Although the names of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were incised into our memories, there were few pictures to accompany them. Even today, the image in our minds is a mixture of devastated landscapes and shattered buildings. Shocking images of the ruins, but where were the victims?
The American occupation forces imposed strict censorship on Japan, prohibiting anything "that might, directly or by inference, disturb public tranquility" and used it to prohibit all pictures of the bombed cities. The pictures remained classified 'top secret' for many years. Some of the images have been published later by different means, but it's not usual to see them all together. This is the horror they didn't want us to see, and that we must NEVER forget: [1]
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| Image Source: [1] |
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| Housewives and children were incinerated instantly or paralysed in their daily routines, their internal organs boiled and their bones charred into brittle charcoal. [1] |
The atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (6 and 9 August 1945) were the first of their kind. "Little Boy" and "Fat Man"+ were their code nicknames. If this "fire and fury" bluster sounds "familiar," it was likely borrowed from this far more presidential source. 45's impressive uncle likely explained a lot of things to the young millionaire, but his by now well known infamously short attention span, he likely missed a few salient points. Half-life+ is measured in thousands of years, for example. The current yield of thermonuclear versus atomic devices has been proposed to not be measured in mere TNT or megatons, but Hiroshimas.
The pictures above are vile, ugly and a reflection of a dark part of our national soul. "Hindsight being 20/20 vision," our actions may have tragically been utterly and arrogantly unnecessary. [2] We have danced on the edge of this scalpel for three generations that has been the background for a field known as dystopian science fiction, until Carl Sagan's salient warning now bears the hindsight of prophesy. [3] "Duck and cover" drills have become a part of our history of gallows humor, as currently our two malignant narcissistic* heads of state act like prepubescent boys, comparing the size of their phallus symbols, erect and ejaculating like pyromaniacs over the fires of Armageddon. A universe as well as what's left of the Earth will go on.
Humanity: it's been a good run.1. Hiroshima, the pictures they didn't want you to see, Fogonazas2. The Bomb Didn’t Beat Japan … Stalin Did - Have 70 years of nuclear policy been based on a lie? Ward Wilson, Foreign Policy3. “We've arranged a global civilization in which most crucial elements profoundly depend on science and technology. We have also arranged things so that almost no one understands science and technology. This is a prescription for disaster. We might get away with it for a while, but sooner or later this combustible mixture of ignorance and power is going to blow up in our faces.” Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World - Science as a Candle in the Dark.Related links:How Do Nuclear Weapons Work? Union of Concerned Scientists*Malignant Narcissism: Collision of Two Personality Disorders, Rhonda Freeman Ph.D., NeuroSagacity, Psychology Today [Note: since I am not a psychiatric professional, this is not breaking the "Goldwater rule." I am merely a citizen observing the obvious.]No One Should Have Sole Authority to Launch a Nuclear Attack, by the editors of Scientific American, Policy & EthicsPowerful Pictures Show What Nuclear ‘Fire and Fury’ Really Looks Like, Rachel Brown, National GeographicTrump Doubles Down on Threats Against North Korea as Nuclear Tensions Escalate, Peter Baker, New York Times#P4TC:Catharsis... March 31, 2013M.A.D... July 20, 2014+Half-Life... August 5, 2016The Minutes... January 30, 2017The Physics of Doomsday... July 24, 2017
SHOT-OUT to M. Haynes for forwarding this exciting news!
MOTHER is coming...
...that's right, Octavia Butler, the mother of Black science fiction, is coming to a television near you through Ava Duvernay! Early yesterday it was announced that Duvernay would be creating a television series based off Octavia Butler's novel, Dawn. This marks the first time Butler's work makes a television appearance, and hopefully Mother Butler will once again make way for other Black speculative authors to follow in her footsteps! Take a look at the article here and set your DVRs now!
https://shadowandact.com/ava-duvernay-octavia-butler-dawn-victoria-mahoney-macro
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| This artist’s rendition shows the orbits of stars circling the supermassive black hole (blue halo) at the Milky Way’s center. A close analysis suggests the stars’ orbits are showing subtle effects predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity. Credit: ESO/M. Parsa/L. Calçada |
A giant star near the center of our galaxy hints, once again, that Albert Einstein was correct about gravity.
A group of astronomers in Germany and the Czech Republic observed three stars in a cluster near the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way galaxy. Using data from the Very Large Telescope in Chile, among others, the researchers tracked how the stars moved as they went around the monster black hole.
One of the stars, called S2, showed slight deviations in its orbit that might indicate relativistic effects, scientists said. If the observations are confirmed, then it shows that Einstein's theory of general relativity holds even under extreme conditions — in gravity fields produced by objects like the galactic center's black hole, which contains the mass of 4 million suns. General relativity says that massive objects bend the space around them, causing other objects to deviate from straight lines they would follow absent any forces on them.
Closest Supermassive Black Hole Tests Einstein’s Relativity, Jesse Emspak, SPACE.com and Scientific American
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| Image Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |
ABSTRACT
Two testable schemes for quantum heat engines are investigated under the quantization framework of noncommutative (NC) quantum mechanics (QM). By identifying the phenomenological connection between the phase-space NC driving parameters and an effective external magnetic field, the NC effects on the efficiency coefficient, N, of quantum engines can be quantified for two different cycles: an isomagnetic one and an isoenergetic one. In addition, paying a special attention to the quantum Carnot cycle, one notices that the inclusion of NC effects does not affect the maximal (Carnot) efficiency, NC, ratifying the robustness of the second law of thermodynamics.
Quantum engines and the range of the second law of thermodynamics in the noncommutative phase-spaceJonas F. G. Santos, Alex E. Bernardini, Physics arXiv
Black America" Series to be Produced and Written by Will Packer & Aaron McGruder
"http://afropunk.com/2017/08/hbos-confederate-amazons-black-america-minimize-massive-injustices-u-s-founded
"The Black Count" by Tom Reiss
Sweethome3d is bitter sweet. The one company makes two dark skinned characters that are stiff compared to an assortment of light skinned characters. An after thought, perhaps. Reminds me of my art class days, I was the model for the day and it took three tries and the teacher cursing before cartoonish me gave way to realistic me. Thus we have to present ourselves in digital space ourselves as ourselves. Think this is bad you should see the female, holy ancient mime ma, lean back a little you'll fall forward. OK, I had to rant of the digital space lacks. And this is at you 3d character designers of the dark skin clans. Don't forget regular people characters, you know, the ones who are not unplugged, the walk-ons and walk-bys, movie extras. They are essential in any drama and are cool if you need to show regular black folk living in that fancy modeled house (or spaceship) to a prospective black client. Yeah mon, Nubian I think.
Just for a sneek experiment I found a brown person face map and swapped it with the map on one of the white (there I said it) characters. What a monster (LOL)! We need to be who and what we are in digital space. Alas I am a plug and play guy and so I wait for a crew of pre-posed digital black persons to be free-ware or reasonably priced. I wonder if digital people know they are slaves to sentient beings? Story!!!
So if it is not too much fuss, you could apply SweetHome3D to 3D storyboarding. If you have a more powerful PC than I, I am sure the rendering shots are useful. And by the way Sweethome3d is free. There is no excuse for ones just getting into it to get in on it. And as toys go, this is dollhouses on steroids. I think I am going to insert SketchUP 2d "face-me" figures into sweethome3d, like living with life size paper cutouts, cartoonish effect.
Now read the coded message in the picture. House with roof blown, horse in house but it's cool (shades), dark guy is still in the box, light guy in Armoni and tennis shoes is running things. Who knows, the Shadow do.
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| FIG. 1. SIMS profiles of (a) as-deposited boron and carbon layers with the inset showing a schematic of the alternating layers of amorphous carbon and boron deposited on c-sapphire using the pulsed laser deposition technique and (b) pulsed laser annealed (B-doped Q-carbon) thin films with the inset showing a schematic of B-doped amorphous Q-carbon formed on c-sapphire. |
ABSTRACT
Following a brief report on high-temperature superconductivity in B-doped Q-carbon [Bhaumik et al., ACS Nano 11(6), 5351–5357 (2017)], we present detailed structure-property correlations to understand the origin of superconductivity in strongly bonded lightweight materials and methods to further enhance the superconducting transition temperature (Tc). Nanosecond melting of carbon in a super undercooled state and rapid quenching result in a strongly bonded unique phase of B-doped Q-carbon. The temperature-dependent resistivity and magnetic susceptibility measurements demonstrate type II superconductivity in this material with a transition temperature of 36.0 ± 0.5 K and an upper critical field of 5.4 T at ∼0 K. It has also been shown that in B-doped Q-carbon, the upper critical magnetic field (Hc2(T)) follows Hc2(0) [1-(T/Tc)2.1] temperature dependence and is consistent with the Bardeen–Cooper–Schrieffer formalism. In the present study, B-doped Q-carbon thin films are formed on sapphire substrates by employing pulsed laser annealing (PLA) using a nanosecond excimer laser. This process involves the rapid quenching of highly undercooled melt of homogenously mixed B and C. Through the structure-property correlation measurements in B-doped Q-carbon, we estimate a higher electronic density of states near the Fermi level. Higher density of states near the Fermi-level along with higher Debye temperature and phonon frequency are responsible for the enhanced Tc. As a result of rapid melting and quenching, we can achieve 17.0 ± 1.0 or higher atomic % of B in the electrically active sites of Q-carbon which leads to the formation of shallow electronic states near the valence band maximum. From the critical current density versus field moments, the value of critical current density (Jc (2T)) in B-doped Q-carbon at 21 K is calculated as 4.3 × 107 A cm−2, which indicates that this novel material can be used for the persistent mode of operation in MRI and nuclear magnetic resonance applications. This discovery of high-temperature superconductivity in B-doped amorphous Q-carbon shows that the non-equilibrium synthesis technique using the super undercooling process can be used to fabricate materials with greatly enhanced physical properties.
A novel high-temperature carbon-based superconductor: B-doped Q-carbonAnagh Bhaumik1, Ritesh Sachan1,2, and Jagdish Narayan1,a)Journal of Applied Physics 122, 045301 (2017); doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4994787
The nerd artist life. Hard to describe, I do draw with gel pens and I do fancy a bullet nose marker. The great god Harold and the Purple Crayon (they made a movie, well a cartoon) would be proud.
My tools consist of an XP era desktop and an engineering laptop. They are overworked but hang in there quite well. The laptop has a removable graphics card. It has gone black 5 times and 5 times I have revived it by baking it in the oven. A trick I learned from British PC Techs on U-tube. I also have a 8" tablet that use to be a phone and has no flash for the camera replacing the 10" tablet I can't fix. Android apps are handy.
I am a Linux guy. Nuff said. While the programs it runs are limited in commercial success they excel in freeware, join the league of remarkable programmer projects, open source and sorry it also comes in Mac and Windows versions software.
I know you know about GIMP the not really Photoshop and Inkscape the no where near Illustrator so I won't go there. By the way they work fine for me and they are both free.
I will touch on Sweet Home 3D. It is a JAVA program and it draws your walls in 3d while you draw the floor plan. Then you can add doors and windows and furnishings, trees, cars and whatever else many people have contributed in the way of models. You can alter material colors, map patterns and it does alpha channels. If you need clear or tinted glass, hey.
Then it does rendering from fuzzy and flat to reflections and lights, shadows. I have found that if you design a thing in say SketchUp, you can export DAE/OBJ/KMZ, you can import it into Sweet Home3d and it will be right at home, sweet pun. It will also do walk through movies. Now who said you can do just houses, "this is the construct............." Anyway even though I am not Syd Mead, here is a picture of my artwork in a modeled space and both are my artwork.
And also a sea container studio with windows inspired by Boba Fett's cloner facility apartment. You could model scenes and throw in some 3d characters.
I am not much for fantasy, sometimes sci-fi can be a stretch, a futurist, yeah. For a digital artist it can be rough. The concept of fine art looms large with its smell of oil or the quick drying acrylic glaze. The image of one who holds the brush as it were a light saber. The image of the imager frozen in framonite to hang before the gazers with hand to chin. Mind gawkers, all of them, peering ever so close to see if brush hairs were inadvertently glued to the surface. The gallant gallery head bobbles with cha-ching. Then I bring my digital print. Doesn't matter if it is an eleven by eight point five inch print or forty by sixty foot print, they ask the same question with a slight distain, "where is the original?". I am ready this time, "I have it right here" and whip out a tiny micro dot on a business card. "You really can't see it until you put this in a computer or print it out as a did for your easier viewing." "And I got some fume of linseed oil in a Glade mister. I expect the same respect you give lithographers and photographers and block printers. And no you can't do this on your office printer......................ever!" Wait till they start putting human brains in automatons, "ooh where is the original?"
$400 Needed To Reach Our Goal!!
WE NEED YOUR HELP!!
Our current Kickstarter for TITAN THE ULTRA MAN #2 is underway but we need your support to bring the book to life! We're seeking funds to get the book printed and distributed with only $400 dollars away from meeting our goal. We are so very close but need your support to get to the finish line!
Some of the available rewards for backing the book are shown here along with the cover and interior page art from the TITAN THE ULTRA MAN #2 comic.
A review of the comic by Geekery Magazine can be seen here - http://www.geekerymagazine.com/2017/07/28/review-titan-the-ultra-man-2/
Here's How To Show Your Support:
To bring the comic book to print, the $1,000 funding goal must be met. We are currently halfway towards meeting our goal.
- TITAN THE ULTRA MAN #2 needs more backers and another $400 more in order to get funded.
- To pledge go to https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/260671993/titan-the-ultra-man-2-relaunch?ref=user_menu
- The Kickstarter ends on Monday, August 28, 2017 2:54 PM EDT.
You can pledge as little as ONE DOLLAR - Every dollar counts to making the goal!
Thank you for your time and your support!
Tony Kittrell
Listen to this book for FREE when you try Audible.
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Planet of Doom excerpt
By Lawrence Johnson Sr.
It was a dark time for The Planetary Alliance. Two of Princess Arianna’s highly regarded warriors Dajus and Mallobo had gone rogue. Their attacks on the Planetary Alliance and their master computers have thrown the entire galaxy into chaos. Following the attack and destruction of the intergalactic transport ship the Star Lighter and it 8,000 passengers, members of the Planetary Alliance put in a call to Da’Quan, the best intergalactic detective of his time. His job seemed simple, locate Dajus and Mallobo and the alliance would do the rest.
It would be a simple task if it were not for the fact that the two outlaw warriors had the ability to appear and disappear at will. It would be some time before Da’Quan would meet with his new employers. As luck would have it Da’Quan’s ship was forced to crash land on the Planet of Doom.
Just before the crash Da’Quan saw the red flashing lights on the Spirit’s console. He could also hear the warning message constantly blaring over his pa system he named Nano. “Alert, crash imminent, take preventive measures.” Something was pulling his ship down to the planet below. As he struggled to keep his craft airborne Da’Quan noticed a small island up ahead. It was touch and go for a while but Da’Quan was able to get out a distress call to a friend and land his ship without breaking any bones.
The tall dark haired Da’Quan carefully maneuvered his toned six-foot frame into the chair in front of the console. ‘Where the hell am I?’ he asked himself.
After taking a minute to scan his computer charts Da’Quan slumped down into his seat. He took a deep breath and double checked his charts hoping that he had made an error but there was no doubt about it, Da’Quan had landed on Akanon, better known as the Planet of Doom. His only hope was to try and repair his ship and leave before he was discovered.
It was midday, the weather was warm, there were no signs of Artificial Intelligence but within a few minutes Da’Quan could hear voices headed in his direction.
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| A vertical slice of the internal magnetic structure of a sample section. The sample is 0.005 millimetres (5 microns) in diameter and the section shown here is 0.0036 millimetres (3.6 microns) high. The internal magnetic structure is represented by arrows for a vertical slice within it. In addition, the colour of the arrows indicates whether they are pointing towards (orange) or away from the viewer (purple). Graphics and text: Paul Scherrer Institute/Claire Donnelly |
Thanks to a technique called hard X-ray magnetic tomography, researchers at the Paul Scherrer Institute (PSI) in Switzerland, the ETH Zurich and the University of Glasgow have succeeded in imaging the magnetization in 3D bulk-like magnets and observe features down to just 100 nm. In particular, they have observed structures known as Bloch points, which were predicted theoretically more than 50 years ago but never actually seen in an experiment until now. The new work could help us better understand the relationship between the magnetic structure and the behaviour and performance of bulk magnets, and so improve the everyday applications in which they are employed.
“Although it was possible to image the arrangement of magnetic moments in 3D before now in films of up to around 200 nm thick using soft X-rays and electrons, it was not possible to study the internal micromagnetic structure of larger, bulk, systems,” explains team member Claire Donnelly of the PSI. “In general, it is not possible to slice down a magnet to investigate its structure because the magnetic configuration will change accordingly. Scientists have tried to overcome this problem in the past using neutron magnetic imaging, but they were only able to achieve a spatial resolution of tens to hundreds of microns using this approach.
“In our new work, we are able to study the internal magnetization within a micron-sized system with 100 nm spatial resolution and observe micromagnetic details within the bulk for the first time.”
The researchers, led by Laura Heyderman, imaged the internal magnetic structure of a micron-sized pillar made of the magnetic material gadolinium-cobalt using hard X-ray magnetic tomography, a technique developed at PSI during the course of this study. “We had to make a number of advances in developing this method,” explains Donnelly. ‘First, we developed hard X-ray magnetic imaging with nanoscale magnetic resolution (this work was published last year). Hard X-rays have a much higher energy than soft X-rays and thus a much larger penetration depth, which allows us to study thicker samples with high spatial resolution.
X-ray nanotomography reveals 3D magnetization structures, Belle Dumé, Nanotechweb.org
