Going to try for a inked piece of art every day for 31 days...wish me luck
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| Image Source: Link below |
Topics: Climate Change, Existentialism, Global Warming
I can callously not care: after all, giving patterns in my own family, I'm doubting I'll be here in 2050 (88) or 2100 (138) especially. I would like to think my remains - reclaimed in promession - will be aiding a Maple tree with nourishment and growth.
However, there is a strong possibility my children will be here, and so will in turn any children they may procreate.
Resources are strained as we have overachieved in the Biblical mandate "be fruitful and multiply"in a society that encourages consumption, eschews conservation and praises waste. This naturally leads to income disparity and hoarding and callousness by the 1%. John Calhoun's experiments with our rodent cousins he wrote up in 1962 (joy: the year of my birth) was likely used as source material for many Dystopian novels. The bridge from Utopian to Dystopian society had the coined apropos name "behavioral sink."
Despite the best wishes of Stephen Hawking, we're not at the point of sub-light or warp travel. And, what about our behaviors would change to where we wouldn't become "Manifest Destiny" intergalactic locusts, in due time with colonial capitalism ravage yet another habitable planet?
I can't "complete the circle of life" nourishing a tree on a dysfunctional planet.
The bad news: Earth's climate change problem just passed a point of no return. Atmospheric carbon levels have passed 400 parts per million, and they won't return to more environment-friendly levels "ever again for the indefinite future."
The good news? Oh, wait, no. Sorry. We're pretty screwed.
We already knew it was bad. After all, in the last 20 years, humanity destroyed 1.27 million square miles—10 percent—of the Earth's wilderness. Climate change has "devastated" 93 percent of the Great Barrier Reef. The world's so screwed that genius Stephen Hawking recently claimed that "the human race has no future if it doesn't go to space."
But now we really, really know we're in trouble. Scientist Ralph Keeling, who's in charge of the Scripps Institute for Oceanography's carbon dioxide monitoring program, wrote in a blog that "it already seems safe to conclude that we won’t be seeing a monthly value below 400 ppm this year—or ever again for the indefinite future."
Similarly, NASA's chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt told Climate Central, “In my opinion, we won’t ever see a month below 400 ppm.”
A lot of problems come with climate change. Because of it, one-fourth of the Earth's species could be extinct by 2050. It also screws up food webs, as polar bears are finding out the hard way. Millions and millions of people will have to relocate due to rising sea levels, with scientists estimating that over 13 million Americans might have to move by 2100.
Complex:
Enjoy Earth While It Lasts: Atmospheric Carbon Levels Pass the Point of No Return
Mac MacCann
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| Image Source: Link below |
Topics: Computer Science, Photonics, Quantum Computer, Quantum Mechanics
When the quantum computer was imagined 30 years ago, it was revered for its potential to quickly and accurately complete practical tasks often considered impossible for mere humans and for conventional computers. But, there was one big catch: Tiny-scale quantum effects fall apart too easily to be practical for reliably powering computers.
Now, a team of scientists in Japan may have overcome this obstacle. Using laser light, they have developed a precise, continuous control technology giving 60 times more success than previous efforts in sustaining the lifetime of "qubits," the unit that quantum computers encode. In particular, the researchers have shown that they can continue to create a quantum behavior known as the entangled state—entangling more than one million different physical systems, a world record that was only limited in their investigation by data storage space.
This feat is important because entangled quantum particles, such as atoms, electrons and photons, are a resource of quantum information processing created by the behaviors that emerge at the tiny quantum scale. Harnessing them ushers in a new era of information technology. From such behaviors as superposition and entanglement, quantum particles can perform enormous calculations simultaneously. The report of their investigation appears this week in the journal APL Photonics.
Phys.org: Quantum computing advances with control of entanglement
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| Photomontage of a diamond and a hard-drive head. (Courtesy: I Jakobi) |
Topics: Computer Engineering, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science
A nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect in diamond has been used to create a magnetometer that can measure the broadband magnetic fields generated by hard-disk write heads. The work was done by researchers in Germany and the UK who have shown that a single NV can detect the oscillating and static magnetic fields associated with write heads at nanometre resolution. The new work could help further miniaturize hard-disk drives, thereby increasing their data-storage capacity.
"The hard-disk industry currently has no established sensors that can resolve the magnetic field of write heads on the scale of 5–10 nm," explains team-member Ingmar Jakobi of the University of Stuttgart. "This is a serious impediment for developing these devices, which will carry the biggest share of data in the ever-growing digital world."
The NV defect in diamond offers a solution to this problem because it comprises a single electron spin that is highly isolated from its immediate surroundings. This spin is essentially a tiny magnet that could be used to detect changes in a magnetic field over nanometre distances.
Physics World:
Diamond magnetometer could help shrink computer hard drives, Belle Dumé
i don't know if i mentioned this but i have two comics coming out from MARVEL next month. One is MOSAIC and you can get a free prelude to the book at AMAZON or COMIXOLOGY.
I'm also co-writing SOLO with Gerry Duggan. It's a spinoff from DEADPOOL. It's a globe-spanning adventure with spies and assassins and lots of humor.
There's no free preview but we think it's big fun.
Both series are ongoing and BOTH should be of interest to this community. Neither is bringing what folks seem to expect.
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| Image source: Nature News, link below |
Topics: Astronomy, Gravitational Waves, Radio Astronomy, SETI
Set in a remote natural depression in the mountainous region of Guizhou, China, the world’s largest single-dish telescope is on the brink of sparking a new era in radio astronomy. But scientists also worry about the daringly complex structure of the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Radio Telescope (FAST).
“It will be the instrument of choice for any exotic object in its range,” says Matthew Bailes, an astrophysicist at the Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Australia. But “its design is so radical, we’re all wondering if it will work.”
On 25 September, FAST’s construction was declared officially complete. Some 200 scientists from around the world attended an inauguration ceremony and got their first look at FAST’s preliminary data, which will be used to debug the telescope. That process could take three years or more, says Peng Bo, an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing and the project’s deputy manager.
Then teams from around the world will be able to bid for time to use the telescope, FAST chief scientist Nan Rendong told Nature.
Many observatories are open to international teams, but astronomers were unsure whether FAST would be. “This is critical to achieving the best possible science,” says astronomer Jason Hessels at the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Amsterdam.
FAST has twice the effective collecting area of the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico and will scan twice as much sky (see ‘Galactic giant’). Size matters because many celestial objects are tough to detect. Spinning stars called pulsars and the cosmic clouds of hydrogen that hold clues to the origin of the Universe emit faint signals, whereas mysterious ‘fast radio bursts’ are transient. A larger -telescope increases the number of signals available, aiding the discovery and characterization of such objects.
Nan, who is an astronomer at the National Astronomical Observatories in Beijing, says FAST will also be able to detect molecules from outer space that are suggestive of life, and plans to enlist the telescope in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). The giant telescope is also likely to discover something completely unexpected, say astronomers.
Nature: Daring Chinese telescope is poised to transform astronomy, David Cyranoski
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| Artist's rendering of what the surface of the new planet Proxima Centaur B might look like Credit: ESO/M. Kornmesser |
Topics: Astrobiology, Astrophysics, Exoplanets, SETI, Star Trek
I recently purchased the documentary "For the Love of Spock" by Adam Nimoy, Leonard Nimoy's son (he had a son and daughter in his first marriage). It is a very good and touching biopic. One of the many scenes of the actor's career was Spock "mind-melding" with a humpback whale in "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home," in which Nimoy was very insistent on a story about them since then (and now) they're endangered with extinction. In the story line of Home, aliens were trying to communicate with Earth in a signal that Lieutenant Uhura unscrambled as the songs of whales, which existed only on Earth pre-23rd Century and pre-WWIII. The aliens - Spock reasoned - would have communicated with the only sentient species available at the time, since humans were kind of between Homo Erectus and building their first tools. This of course lead to the ubiquitous plot device of "sling-shot" time travel and a LOT of suspended belief if you are sitting in the theater quite familiar with "The Grandfather Paradox." It's "Trek": go with the bit...
Anyway, the title drew me in: "Do Dolphins Dream of Space Travel?" It was rather poetic, but it seemed to allude to a similar plot device that the author abandoned almost mid-essay, though it was very good writing. I wondered what a world - a water world - of dolphins would be like, or if beyond a brief foray about the surface of their oceans if they would regard the stars at all? It got me thinking of our fascination with the stars: we can see them as well as our other land sharing denizens too numerous to name; we're just the only ones that built telescopes to view them, writing and fiction to speculate about them and intact imaginations to fuel them.
It got me thinking about my Texas box turtle, "Speedy" (she's actually pretty fast, especially when she's hungry). Her terrarium is cleaned weekly; her water daily. She's fed at regular intervals a diet of crickets, land tortoise food with reptile vitamins and calcium coinciding with her UV lamp, timed on and off at 12-hour intervals.
What does she THINK of all this? What does she think of my (from her perspective) disembodied hand that reaches in and does all this "stuff" for her? When man was primitive with a limited understanding of the world, doxologies and myths were created before science was discovered. Now the two areas struggle to be the arbiters of explanation and meaning.
I guess for Speedy to have any thoughts about what all of my intervention means existentially, she would have to have an opposing thumb and develop her own language and writing to express them. On occasion, I take her out in the grass - weather permitting - to walk around as I stand guard for hawks that could swoop down and take her away. Maybe I should show her the stars as well to see how she reacts to them, the only evidence so far that I have of what she "thinks."
Scientific American: Do Dolphins Dream of Space Travel?
Dr. Lucianne Walkowicz is an astronomer at The Adler Planetarium in Chicago.
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| Image Source: Washingtonian |
Topics: African Americans, Diaspora, Diversity, History, STEM
As a parent, I exposed my sons to our culture and history through books like "Selected Poems by Langston Hughes"; "Complete Poems by Langston Hughes"; "Invisible Man" by Ralph Ellison; "Native Son" by Richard Wright. I also exposed them to books about black inventors, since I made most of my income in a STEM field.
Today is my oldest son's 34th birthday. Tomorrow, the National Museum of African American History and Culture opens. I gave a generous donation on the one day giving last Wednesday September 14th, a day before what would have been my mother's 91st birthday were she still alive. It was also to honor her memory.
I grew up in a de jure segregated neighborhood in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. I usually open a conversation with someone of strong political views and negative stereotypes: "Have you ever met someone from a ghetto?" They are usually surprised to hear they've been talking to someone born into one. The home my parents owned was due to the laws at the time, legislating where a segment of society lived, even where I was born: Kate Bitting Hospital, at the time was one of 12 hospitals exclusively for African Americans. My kindergarten - Bethlehem Community Center - was specifically named by the Methodist Ministries as a designation of location: Bethlehem Community Centers were on "our" side of town; Wesley Community Centers on the west, whiter side, both have integrated over time. I didn't have a computer (no one did), but my parents purchased The Encyclopedia Britannica, a chemistry set, a microscope, a telescope, an electronics kit, tools and comics. I was as thrilled by educational shows like "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau" as I was by Star Trek. I had excellent teachers that supplemented our out-of-date books with copies they xeroxed at their own cost. Both they and my parents were supporting all of us in a society designed to not give the proper resources for my friends and I to succeed. It had its moments, but it wasn't the dystopian nightmare some orange political figures have recently labeled it.
I lament the crisis going on in Charlotte, North Carolina. The seeds of this bitter outrage were sown with Klan activities both repelled and lethal; threats and crosses burned when certain families left "their place"; redlining as I alluded to in my parents' case and the shooting of yet another Scott: Walter in South Carolina, Keith in North Carolina. As is now customary in such crises, the dead's previous sins are brought forward by the media, and used to justify their public execution. It is ironic that Walter had a weapon dropped next to his body; Keith was murdered (if it was a gun, and not a book) ironically, by a black policeman in an open carry state.
We have sojourned in this land since 1619. Benjamin Banneker laid the design and foundations of our nation's capital. Slaves built the Executive Mansion. Norbert Rillieux, Benjamin Montgomery, Elijah McCoy, Lewis Howard Latimer, Andrew Jackson Beard, Jan Earnest Matzeliger, Daniel Hale Williams, M.D., Granville T. Woods, George Washington Carve, Madame C. J. Walker, Garrett Augustus Morgan, Ernest Everett Just, PhD; Frederick McKinley Jones, David Nelson Crosthwait, Jr., Percy Lavon Julian, PhD, Charles Richard Drew, M.D., Claude Harvard, Jane Cook Wright, M.D., Meredith Gourdine, M.D., Michael Croslin, PhD, Earl D. Shaw, PhD, John P. Moon, George E. Carruthers, PhD, Shirley Ann Jackson, PhD: all in the book "Black Stars: African American Inventors" by Otha Richard Sullivan and Jim Haskins. I hope they are ALL in the museum, a dream and life's mission of Congressman John Lewis. There are too many negative stereotypes constantly reinforced by an entertainment complex dominated by the European culture with citizens that typically don't live near African Americans and to this day, de facto self-segregate economically through opportunities and resources allocated in political fiat. It is the very reason ALL elections are important.
Also I hope, along with inventors, the one man that broke a 232-year hegemony of white male rule. 100% efficiency is anathema in Thermodynamics, as it implies something that cannot exist: a perpetual motion machine. Barack Hussein Obama has been vilified because of his name, because of his complexion, because of his intellect, because of his preparation; because of his effectiveness. A meeting was held the night of his inauguration to oppose ANYTHING he proposed, even if they had previously been for it. He was forced to show his long form birth certificate by the current front runner who wasn't satisfied and doubted it publicly for four years until last Friday in a faux news conference/hotel infomercial. He is the only chief executive that was disrespected during a State of the Union (Joe Wilson - R-SC) "you LIE." He's had records set on the number of filibusters filed against his legislation. He has brokered the Paris Climate accords. He is arguably our most effective president, but for the not-too-subtle subtext of America that predates him, a sour milk of rage nursed from the end of the Civil War to the present. He is both the culmination of what's possible in America and a public indictment to its hypocrisy. Hopefully, that door of 2.3% "Other" will be expanded to 4.4% as another wall; another glass ceiling crumbles. Change is a part of life. That is the change that will make us an even better nation than callously stoked fears.
America could not be America without our input. Every movement: Women's Suffrage; Women's Rights; LGBT and Human Rights have patterned themselves after our straightened backs did not bend. Our backs are further braced by the demonstrators in Charlotte exercising their First Amendment Rights, and my fraternity brother Colin Kaepernick kneeling during the National Anthem to express his.
This is a journey we've made and continue to make for a better nation. We should be proud of it, and ourselves.
Hello creators!. Been dabbling in writing again. Hope to start with short stories to get my feet wet and some illustrations to go along with it. I'm pretty shy about posting my written work...like most people, you are your worse critic.....lol. But thanks to a network of awesome talented friends i'm pushing myself out ther.
wish me luck!
If you could wake up tomorrow and be one of these characters which one would you choose? Panther's power or Icon's powers?
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| Figure 1. A discharging battery converts chemical potential into electric potential. At the anode, an oxidation reaction frees electrons (e−) from their parent atoms. The electrons pass through an external circuit, where they do work on a load, while the ions they leave behind diffuse through an electrolyte and separator to the cathode. There, the electrons and ions recombine via a reduction reaction. During recharging, the process is reversed, and the anode is restored. In lithium-ion batteries, the electrode materials are typically layered structures, with lithium stored in the gaps between layers. |
Topics: Alternative Energy, Electrical Vehicles, Green Tech, Global Warming, Solid State Physics
This post reminded me of the documentary "Who Killed the Electric Car?" and the synopsis that powerful forces - the same that fuel climate change denial as it did obfuscation on the dangers of cigarette smoking - are holding back progress because they want no other competition is the "free market" of commerce. Sounds less libertarian and more like targeted socialism for the already well-heeled 1%.
The electric vehicle’s history offers a lesson to the wise: Harvesting the fruits of basic science requires industrial foresight, investment, and a healthy dose of realpolitik.
By 2004 the all-electric vehicle seemed destined for the dustbin of history. General Motors (GM) was recalling and destroying all copies of the EV1, its first-generation electric car, after company officials convinced themselves and regulators that fuel cells, not batteries, were the ultimate power source of the future electric car. Meanwhile, hybrid electrics had begun to proliferate as a more economically viable alternative in the short run. Most batteries were then considered simply too expensive, too heavy, and too weak to power cars on their own. Then came the lithium-ion battery. (See the article by Héctor Abruña, Yasuyuki Kiya, and Jay Henderson, Physics Today, December 2008, page 43.) With higher energy density than older rechargeables—and with the ability to release that energy quickly on demand—the battery is widely viewed as having led a revival of the electric vehicle. Tesla Motors pioneered its use in automobiles with the Roadster, and today most all-electric vehicles have batteries that use some sort of lithium chemistry. Although concerns about safety, cost, and durability linger, few would dispute that the lithium-ion battery has been the chief technological enabler of the renaissance of the all-electric vehicle.
The emergence of the lithium-ion battery did not happen overnight. It was shaped for decades by the influence of materials scientists. It was the product not of a singular eureka moment but of many strands of research tracing back to the rise of the US national security state at the dawn of the Cold War. That’s when John Goodenough, a physicist by training, found himself helping to build a sophisticated air-defense computer for the US military. Although he couldn’t have imagined it at the time, he was about to embark on research that would help found solid-state ionics—the science of inserting and storing ions inside solids without changing their fundamental structures—and contribute to revolutionizing automobile transport.
The many twists and turns that ensued illustrate the unpredictability and contingency of innovation. The story of the long road to lithium-ion power shows how changing social, economic, and environmental conditions after World War II altered the R&D priorities of government and industry. It affords insight into how trends in the energy economy shaped science and engineering over time. And it reveals a hidden history of the shifting fortunes of physics, a discipline that has traditionally relied on state patronage.
Physics Today:
Cold War computers, California supercars, and the pursuit of lithium-ion power
Matthew N. Eisler
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| Simulation of a laser pulse that's created a plasma aperture in a thin foil. (Courtesy: Bruno Gonzalez-Izquierdo et al/Nature Communications) |
Topics: Laser, Optical Physics, Plasma Physics, Research
The quality of laser-accelerated proton beams can be improved by controlling the polarization of the incident laser light, researchers in the UK have discovered. The finding could help physicists to create compact sources of proton beams for use in medicine, lithography or even astrophysics.
Beams of protons and other positive ions have a wide range of applications, including particle physics, materials processing and medicine. Proton-beam therapy, for example, is used to destroy some cancerous tumours with a minimum of collateral damage to surrounding healthy tissue. However, the practical use of proton and ion beams is held back by the need for large and expensive particle accelerators to generate high-quality beams.
One way forward is laser-plasma acceleration, in which a high-power laser pulse is fired into a target. This creates a plasma in which the electrons separate from the ions. This creates huge electric fields that are capable of accelerating protons, ions and electrons to very high energies.
Physics World: Laser polarization boosts quality of proton beams, Tim Wogan
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| Calgary has seen quantum communication brettA/Getty |
Topics: Computer Science, Entanglement, Quantum Computer, Quantum Teleportation
A little math for perspective: 7 kilometers x 1,000 meters/1 kilometer x 39.37 inches/1 meter x 1 foot/12 inches x 1 mile/5,280 feet = 4.35 miles. Fiber optic cables typically have a range, and stations to repeat/boost the signals. This could be improved of course, and part of an infrastructure buildup that could spur the education industry K-12 and post secondary to prepare future workers for building a new communications architecture. A lot of automated and outsourced jobs are not coming back, and these likely wouldn't be frustrated by old money, like the fossil fuel industry does alternative energy.
A new world record for quantum teleportation has been set, bringing quantum communication networks that can stretch between cities a step closer. Two independent teams have transferred quantum information over several kilometres of fibre optic networks.
Being able to establish teleportation over long distances is a crucial step towards exchanging quantum cryptographic keys needed for encoding data sent over the fibres.
Quantum teleportation is a phenomenon in which the quantum states of one particle can be transferred to another, distant particle without anything physical traveling between them. It relies on a property called entanglement, in which measuring the state of one particle immediately affects the state of its entangled partner, regardless of the distance between them.
Conceptually, one way of doing teleportation involves three participants: say, Alice, Bob and Charlie. In order for Alice and Bob to exchange cryptographic keys, they have to first establish the capacity for teleportation, with Charlie’s help.
First Alice sends a particle (A) to Charlie. Bob, meanwhile, creates a pair of entangled particles (B & C), sends B to Charlie and holds on to C. Charlie receives both A and B, and measures the particles in such a way that it’s impossible to tell which particle was sent by Alice and which by Bob. This so-called Bell state measurement results in the quantum state of particle A being transferred to particle C, which is with Bob.
New Scientist:
Quantum teleportation over 7 kilometres of cables smashes record, Anil Ananthaswamy
Hello BSFS,
I would to announce that Incus Interactive (William Smith member) has been invited to special game
development event based in Seattle, Washington called Steam Dev Days 2016. This event (press-free)is going to
go over many topics from computer (Steam) hardware development to virtual reality development and a lot more! My invite is good for up to four more people to go with if interested and the link is here;
http://steamcommunity.com/devdays.
William Smith Jr.| Incus Interactive Productions
Technical Artist and Steam Hardware OEM
https://incusinteractiveproductions.wordpress.com/
You can now buy hard copy or Kindle versions of my novel, THE BRITTLE RIDERS. If you are a critic interested in reviewing it let me know and I'll send you a copy.
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| At the City Market in Charleston, S.C., one of the most popular spots in town, shoppers dodged seawater that bubbled up from storm drains during high tide in June. Credit Hunter McRae for The New York Times |
Topics: Economy, Education, Climate Change, Global Warming, Politics
This Is What It Looks Like: That's the post I wrote for the impact of Hurricane Sandy; recalling my experience with Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. Yet Congressman Lamar Smith is not impressed [2]. We're at the point where only the blithely self-ignorant would overlook the signs. How many polar bears on receding ice; how many that turn to cannibalism to momentarily survive shall we ignore...until we cannot?
The problem is we all think in short-term: business quarters and targets; election cycles and not generational; not to posterity. As long as our hedge fund earns this quarter, or we win an election cycle, we're stupidly callous of the unintended consequences our actions have down-the-road. The only thing of concern in a self-centered culture is the immediacy of NOW. The fact that we have the equivalent of Cray Supercomputers in our hip pockets and a search engine that's eviscerated the need to memorize, take notes on or recall ANYTHING and the disdain of expertise in every sphere of endeavor: we have devolved, and it has obviously affected our politics.
A bigoted birther, bloviating, conspiracy provocateur and reality-TV star is a major party nominee and Keeping Up With the Kardashians is a top-rated show. Before the tragic death of Anna Nicole Smith, Bill Mahr reflected on his show "but, what does she do?" We are living in an epoch where fame is more important than skills one studies for, earns and has experience in. Young people used to dream of being astronauts, doctors or politicians: now they aspire to be reality TV stars. We are literally at a juncture in history where people are "famous for being famous" and nothing else.
The New York Times: For decades, as the global warming created by human emissions caused land ice to melt and ocean water to expand, scientists warned that the accelerating rise of the sea would eventually imperil the United States’ coastline.
Now, those warnings are no longer theoretical: The inundation of the coast has begun. The sea has crept up to the point that a high tide and a brisk wind are all it takes to send water pouring into streets and homes. [1]
The New Yorker: From climate change and evolution to sex education and vaccination, there has always been tension between scientists and Congress. But Smith, who has been in Congress since 1987 and assumed the chairmanship of the Science Committee in 2013, has escalated that tension into outright war. [Congressman Lamar] Smith has a background in American studies and law, not science. He has, however, received more than six hundred thousand dollars in campaign contributions from the oil-and-gas industry during his time in Congress—more than from any other single industry. With a focus that is unprecedented, he’s now using his position to attack scientists and activists who work on climate change. Under his leadership, the committee has issued more subpoenas than it had during its previous fifty-four-year history. [2]
The Insider starring Russell Crowe was simply about the analogy to climate change denial in the tobacco industry. They both tend to use the same lawyers and disinformation tactics.
After seeking the expertise of former "Big Tobacco" executive Jeffrey Wigand (Russell Crowe), seasoned TV producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) suspects a story lies behind Wigand's reluctance to speak. As Bergman persuades Wigand to share his knowledge of industry secrets, the two must contend with the courts and the corporations that stand between them and exposing the truth. All the while, Wigand must struggle to maintain his family life amidst lawsuits and death threats.
I would hate to watch the televised Mea Culpa of Lamar Smith or other like-minded political figures that have pushed this mythology of climate conspiracy; about how they were wrong as "Super Storm _____" becomes the norm. I would hate to see the blank faces as military naval bases are damaged; as more conflagrations spurred by weather-generated lack of supply; the silence that speaks more volumes than the actual answer they cannot say...
"I don't know."
That will not be existentially, "good enough" or expedient.
1. Flooding of Coasts, Caused By Global Warming, Has Already Begun, Justin Gillis
2. The House Science Committee's Anti-Science Rampage, Lawrence M. Krausss
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| Image Source: Technology Review (see Basic Income below) |
Topics: Economy, Existentialism, Philosophy
I have the unpleasant distinction of having been on unemployment, even self-published a book about it. I don't recall it as halcyon days.
My unemployment compensation amounted to $1,320 per month that the State of Texas initially sent me a live check, then populated a debit card. I had the obligation of a minimum of three job searches per week I had to keep logs of, and if asked - unannounced - to produce them.
Let's say I made $200 for one week, as I did in seasonal work for a shipping company lifting boxes and a sales job with a security company. I had to report that (example) minuscule increase. Then legally, the state unemployment adjusted what I received to $1,120/month. In essence, your ceiling was established. Lying was illegal state and federally, and I did not desire to see life behind bars. You of course, desired to earn whatever living you became accustomed to prior to unemployment. It was the financial equivalent of treading water...
I read the print version of Technology Review's business issue because the cover - titled "Free Money" with a cartoon techie next to a sketched Segway giving what looked like a check or money to an presumably out-of-work caricatured individual. The Silicon Valley idea was to give the unemployed $10,000 per year to give them space to "invent" or invest in their own education to retrain for another career.
Caveat 1: Duchess Community College Tuition and Fees (since this is where I live now)
Tuition for Full-Time Students (over 11 credits)+
New York State Resident† $1,764.00 per semester
Nonresident $3,528.00 per semester
Student Activity Fee $5.00 per credit hour
Technology Fee $13.00 per credit hour
Caveat 2 - Rent: A decent apartment runs about $1,500 - 2,100/month. Add to that FOOD, gas or transportation; clothing and entertainment - retraining workers aren't monks. I'll leave it to you to do the math.
If the unemployment compensation were without conditions, a 12-month compensation would be $15,840.00, though Texas and many states only do with (with seeking employment conditions) for six months.
So...I'm not a fan of this approach. I agree SOMETHING has to be done, but $10 - 15,000 probably doesn't cut it. Something like new entry-level jobs in alternate energy, for example that does not require much training after high school, up to design engineers and researchers. There should be a program of continuous training and lifelong education for career advancement and frankly, for the fact humans get easily bored. Proverbs about "idle minds" and the work shed of Beelzebub applies.
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| Image Source: Ibid |
However, the current level of income inequality has to be solved (reference graphs), unless we want something in a modern society - first, second or third world - decidedly undesirable, tribal, horribly stratified, weaponized and...dystopian.
MIT Technology Review:
Basic Income: A Sellout of the American Dream, David H. Freedman
What the Great Economists Would Have Thought of a Universal Basic Income
Letter to the Editor
Topics: Economy, Jobs, Moore's Law, Semiconductor Technology, STEM
I’ve written about this before, but now living this pendulum swing and what is the pending aftermath of the industry, I thought I’d give some perspective to what is occurring that most consumers aren’t aware of.
Dimensional perspective: The average human hair is 100,000 nanometers in diameter, or 100,000 x 10E-9 meters (0.0001 meters if you were wondering). Your average smart phone device has a gate controlling the flow of electrons that is printed at around 35 – 20 nanometers (0.000000035 - 0.000000020 meters), so it’s ridiculously small in comparison. Note that shorthand metric notation saves a lot of typing.
Process Engineering your chip: It involves Epitaxial Growth, Chemical Vapor Deposition and Plasma Vapor Deposition to deposit the layer films needed to pattern; extreme ultraviolet photolithography to mask out patterns in the films, which runs into struggles with standing wave phenomena and quantum effects; reactive ion etch to transfer those incredibly small features into layers of built-from-the-ground-up circuitry (some wet chemical etch as well, mostly to clean or clear surfaces of defects, but some etching too); ion implantation that dopes (introduces impurities) into Silicon or Germanium to make a semiconductor conductive; chemical mechanical planarization for topology and Rapid Thermal Anneal processes to activate certain films. That’s done pretty much over and over for greater than 100 infinitesimally thin film layers to put a chip in a plastic dip that ends up in your laptop or hip pocket. That is how we fill the demand of the market for faster processors to share the ubiquitous cat, dancing turtle and cut puppy videos.
Without a background in physics or chemistry, and a little simple math I can show you why we’ve hit this wall and where we’re likely to go next.
From the formula above for resistance, "resistivity" is an intrinsic property related to the material that's conducting electrons, so it doesn't change (unless you dope it to). Notice length in the numerator; cross sectional area is in the denominator. The length of a longer wire has more resistance to conducting electricity than a shorter one. As these devices undergo shrinks following Moore's Law, length and area will decrease, but specifically a decrease in cross sectional area will increase resistance.
Another formula:
It's very simple to note an increase in resistance - due to the shrinks typified by Moore's Law - will result in an increase in power and thereby: heat. This has numerous and quite dramatic examples recent news reports provide. Heat has to be dissipated with a "heat sink" (Thermodynamics), that usually entails a fan to cool your chip that has to be attached to your device's battery. It's not your imagination that your battery life is less after months or years of usage as Lithium degrades over time - using the same battery to power your device and its heat sink to cool it is why. Plus, consumers are both more savvy and satisfied: how fast does one need to share a cat video? To coin a phrase, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it!" or for that matter, replace it with the exploding variety. We're now at the natural limitations of Moore's Law. The game going forward will likely be memory and battery improvements, which should have transferable benefits in computing, electric vehicles and power storage; newer industries and employment.
That being said: This link from Semi Wiki on "Age, Training and Winning in the Silicon Valley Culture" is so apropos, I think it should be shouted from rooftops. If we're going to create a new economy, we need to be willing to do some things we've done traditionally - like education - differently and lifelong.
The Internet of Things (IoT) and what I like to call "smart car tech" (so-called driver-less cars, which has an existing analog already: public transportation if a national infrastructure were implemented) is a reflection of that as the device gates are typically larger (65-130 nm) than what's needed for cute pet videos and Snap Chat updates.
I think cell or mobile phones are ubiquitous enough that they're as much a fixture of modern life as the transistor radio and walk-man (G-d, I just dated myself!) used to be.
The industry is going "Back to the Future" so to speak on what it will manufacture until something beyond Silicon, Germanium and a wholly different application is discovered.
Tomorrow: Free Money
Related links:
http://news.utexas.edu/2015/04/15/hot-chips-managing-moores-law
http://www.nature.com/news/the-chips-are-down-for-moore-s-law-1.19338
http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2005/12/the_end_of_moores_law.html
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/what-is-moore-s-law
http://techland.time.com/2012/05/01/the-collapse-of-moores-law-physicist-says-its-already-happening/
https://www.wired.com/insights/2015/01/the-rise-of-diamond-technology/
http://www.allaboutcircuits.com/textbook/direct-current/chpt-2/calculating-electric-power/
http://www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-ohm.htm
