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Mirror, Mirror...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 18, 2016 at 10:20am
Leonard Nimoy (R.I.P.) as mirror universe Spock, "Mirror, Mirror," Star Trek, S2, E4


Topics: Holograms, Optical Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Star Trek


When you look in the mirror, the image you see looks a lot like you—not exactly the same, because when you raise your right hand, your mirror-self raises its left. What’s more, the mirror image is merely an assemblage of reflected light, without a physical body behind it. Despite these differences, you can see an important connection between you and your reflection.

This type of mirror relation is a familiar and powerful form of symmetry. We can say that a Valentine heart is symmetrical because the left side is a reflection of the right. But the symmetry of your mirror image is different and deeper. A heart is symmetrical because the left and right side happen to have a similar shape. The symmetry between you and your reflection is due to the laws of physics. The nature of light requires your reflection to be symmetrical to you. It is an example of a powerful and subtle type of symmetry known as duality.

The duality between particles and waves is a central part of quantum theory. Light is clearly a wave: It has a wavelength that determines its color, and light waves can interact with each other to produce things like lasers. Light is also clearly a particle: It interacts with atoms as discrete photons; a single photon can be deflected like a billiard ball. Particle-wave duality means that quantum objects like light have a symmetry between their particle and wave aspects. They are particles with wave properties and waves with particle properties. They are both, and they are neither. The power of quantum theory is that you don’t need to distinguish between particles and waves. They are simply quantum objects with a duality between their particle and wave natures.

Does that mean that the universe is a hologram? Not quite. It means there is a duality...

Nautilus: What It Means to Live in a Holographic Cosmos
Brian Koberlein is an astrophysicist and physics professor at Rochester Institute of Technology.

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Who Wants 2B #SUPER?

Posted by CAP BLACK RLSH on November 17, 2016 at 7:00pm

I just posted this question on some of my social media and it’s one asked daily.

Growing up under ” Jim Crow-lite ” while desegregation was brand spanking new, my ambitious spirit met an ( integrated, by the way ) chorus of limitation imposers whom I resisted.

Imagine being a Black book worm who secretly wanted to be, of all things, a superhero??? My folks were teachers and education was one of the few professions intelligent Black people could choose where their intellect wasn’t demonized.

Fast forward to the 21st Century and everyone, regardless of background, has more opportunity to find their ” super ( unique potential and help others ) ” and unite with like mindedness than at any time in recorded history.

As economic pressures and racial tension challenge public confidence, now is the perfect time to find your ” super ” and inspire fellow dreamers to do the same.

So, that’s the thinking behind today’s post and the Life Fantastic I live. As history awaits writing by super citizens, the question remains:

Who wants 2B #SUPER?

-Nadra Enzi aka Cap Black, RLSH. @nadraenzi on twitter.

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Strange Numbers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 17, 2016 at 6:19am
Xiaolin Zeng for Quanta Magazine
Particle collisions are somehow linked to mathematical “motives."

Topics: Large Hadron Collider, LHC, Particle Physics, Quantum Mechanics, Richard Feynman, Research

An unexpected connection has emerged between the results of physics experiments and an important, seemingly unrelated set of numbers in pure mathematics.

At the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, physicists shoot protons around a 17-mile track and smash them together at nearly the speed of light. It’s one of the most finely tuned scientific experiments in the world, but when trying to make sense of the quantum debris, physicists begin with a strikingly simple tool called a Feynman diagram that’s not that different from how a child would depict the situation.

Feynman diagrams were devised by Richard Feynman in the 1940s. They feature lines representing elementary particles that converge at a vertex (which represents a collision) and then diverge from there to represent the pieces that emerge from the crash. Those lines either shoot off alone or converge again. The chain of collisions can be as long as a physicist dares to consider.

To that schematic physicists then add numbers, for the mass, momentum and direction of the particles involved. Then they begin a laborious accounting procedure — integrate these, add that, square this. The final result is a single number, called a Feynman probability, which quantifies the chance that the particle collision will play out as sketched.

“In some sense Feynman invented this diagram to encode complicated math as a bookkeeping device,” said Sergei Gukov, a theoretical physicist and mathematician at the California Institute of Technology.



 Quanta Magazine: Strange Numbers Found in Particle Collisions

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Naked SMBH...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 16, 2016 at 6:33am
Artist's conception of how the "nearly naked" supermassive black hole originated.
Credit: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF.


Topics: Astronomy, Astrophysics, Black Holes, Cosmology


Astronomers using the super-sharp radio vision of the National Science Foundation's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) have found the shredded remains of a galaxy that passed through a larger galaxy, leaving only the smaller galaxy's nearly-naked supermassive black hole to emerge and speed away at more than 2,000 miles per second.

The galaxies are part of a cluster of galaxies more than 2 billion light-years from Earth. The close encounter, millions of years ago, stripped the smaller galaxy of nearly all its stars and gas. What remains is its black hole and a small galactic remnant only about 3,000 light-years across. For comparison, our Milky Way Galaxy is approximately 100,000 light-years across.

The discovery was made as part of a program to detect supermassive black holes, millions or billions of times more massive than the Sun, that are not at the centers of galaxies. Supermassive black holes reside at the centers of most galaxies. Large galaxies are thought to grow by devouring smaller companions. In such cases, the black holes of both are expected to orbit each other, eventually merging.

National Radio Astronomy Observatory:
Close Galactic Encounter Leaves "Nearly Naked" Supermassive Black Hole
Dave Finley, Public Information Officer

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JoeyPinkney.com 5 Minutes, 5 Questions With... Steve Bellinger, author of "The Chronocar"

Posted by Joey Pinkney on November 15, 2016 at 11:00pm

JoeyPinkney.com Exclusive Interview
5 Minutes, 5 Questions With…
Steve Bellinger, author of "The Chronocar: An Urban Adventure in Time"
(Barking Rain Press)

Imagine being born the son of a slave with the mind of a genius. That was Simmie Johnson in the years following the Civil War. After a perilous escape from lynch mobs in Mississippi, he manages to earn a PhD in physics at Tuskegee, and in his research, discovers the secret of time travel. He develops a design for a time machine, called a Chronocar, but the technology required to make it work does not yet exist.

Fast forward one hundred and twenty-five years. A young African American Illinois Tech student in Chicago finds Dr. Johnson’s plans and builds a Chronocar. He goes back to the year 1919 to meet the doctor and his beautiful daughter, Ollie, who live in Chicago’s Black Belt, now known as Bronzeville. But, he has chosen an unfortunate time in the past and becomes involved in the bloodiest race riot in Chicago’s history.

Joey Pinkney: Where did you get the inspiration to write The Chronocar: An Urban Adventure in Time?

Steve Bellinger: I’ve been a fan of science fiction since I was 12 years old. I’ve also loved writing all my life. By the time I was in high school, I dreamed of writing the “great American Science Fiction novel.” On the way, I wrote several short stories, radio dramas and even fan fiction. Once I decided it was time to write a novel, I wanted it to be “real” science fiction and feature not just Black characters but the Black experience...

[ Read more: http://knipj.com/mc7j ]

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Single Atom Magnifier...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 15, 2016 at 7:00am
Artist's impression of nanophotonics. Courtesy: NanoPhotonics Cambridge/Bart deNijs.


Topics: Nanotechnology, Optics, Picocavity


Researchers in the UK and Spain have succeeded in confining light to a volume smaller than the size of a single atom for the first time – a feat that seemed completely impossible even just a few years ago. The “picocavity”, which can be thought of as the world’s smallest magnifying glass, could be used to study how light and matter interact at tiny scales and even to observe individual chemical bonds forming and breaking between atoms. The cavity might also be used to make new optomechanical data storage devices in which information can be written and read by light and stored in the form of molecular vibrations.

For a long time, scientists thought that visible light could not be focused to less than half its wavelength – the so-called diffraction limit. In recent years, however, they have learnt how to use nanostructured metals like gold and silver that support surface plasmons (oscillations of electrons at the metal surface) to confine optical fields to much smaller than their wavelength.

Now, a team led by Jeremy Baumberg at Cambridge University in the UK has used highly conductive gold nanoparticles to make the world’s tiniest optical cavity. This cavity is so small that only a single atom can fit in it. “We will never do any better than this!” says Baumberg.

Nanotechweb: Picocavity confines light to smallest volume ever, Belle Dumé

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Advice on getting the word out on your new book.

Posted by Cecil King on November 14, 2016 at 10:00pm

14 Easy Ways Authors Can Promote Their Books

Book marketing doesn't have to cost thousands.



In the book marketing world what works today can be considered old news tomorrow and won’t work because ‘everybody’ is doing it. Some tactics continue to be effective over time. As a book publicist I keep an eye out for the latest tips and techniques. Here’s a list of ‘easy’ ways authors can promote their books.


TV news. Few mediums reach as many people as TV news. I’ve spent the better portion of my life placing clients on TV news programs and interview shows. It’s extremely effective in letting people know about your book. The easiest way to land a TV interview is to send your book with a personally addressed cover letter/pitch and press release about the book to the news director of the station. Provide your photo and send it in. Do that for every TV station you want to appear on. Start local first then go after the big shows.
Talk radio. Listeners turn to talk radio to be fully informed on topics that are not covered completely in newspapers or on TV and to have an actual conversation with the host and you, the guest. Talk radio show hosts will in most cases ask you to share your website, e-mail address or toll-free phone number or they’ll mention it themselves. Use the same methods discussed to solicit TV News above.

Kickstarter. Need money to promote your book? Many authors have successfully turned to Kickstarter to fund their book marketing.
Goodreads. 50 Million readers find books to read on Goodreads so it makes sense for authors to find out as much as possible about how it can help sell books. One way is to make sure reviewers post their reviews on Goodreads. Also ask readers to add your book to Listopia lists where books are grouped together by genre and subject. Get active on Goodreads. Write reviews of books you’ve read and add books you’d like to read to your ‘Want to Read’ list. Buy an ad on Goodreads. Target your ad by book genre, location, gender or age.

Amazon Author page. Make sure you are utilizing your Amazon Author page. Are all your books listed? Have you added your author photo and bio? What about including your book trailer, blog and tour schedule? Take advantage of all the tools you can that cost nothing!

Amazon KDP Select. This is where you give away your ebook on Amazon for up to five days. When this first started it was amazing how effective it was in getting exposure for authors. While not as effective today, it’s still worth doing.

Book awards. You have to enter to win. It’s well worth your time and money giving you media opportunities as it distinguishes you when you become ‘an award-winning author.’

Book Fairs. Meet fellow authors and readers who love books. It’s where the rubber meets the road in the book business. You’ll find out what readers like and what’s on the mind of authors. You may find out some good info about effective marketing methods. Make it a point to hit a few during your next vacation.

Writer’s Conferences. Where serious authors go to hone their craft, meet fellow authors and listen to experts in the field. Well worth your time to find out how others are progressing in the writing field. Writers are quite nice people so you’re bound to make long term friends who collectively can change your life for the better. When you look back after a few years you’ll remember bits of advice that made all the difference in your success.

Social Media. Become active on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Instagram. Create specific content for each of the mediums using blurbs, your book trailer, memes and book reviews. It’s a major project no doubt, but it’s one of the best low cost ways to reach readers. Plus, Facebook offers advertising directly to fans of authors in your genre or specific authors themselves. Get busy and just do it!

Book trailer. Just as a movie trailer is used to get consumers interested in a movie, a book trailer does the same for a book. If a picture is worth 1000 words then a book trailer must be worth 100,000 words! Get one for your book and post it to social media and include the URL in all pitches.

Read a book. You want people to buy your book then go out and buy and read books about book marketing. You can’t know everything on book promotion so read books to find out what you need to learn.

ProfNet. A reporter, freelance writer or television producer is assigned a story and places a query on ProfNet requesting an expert who could speak to the topic. Queries come from the NY Times, Good Morning America, Women’s World Magazine, NPR etc. Authors are perfect for ProfNet because of their built-in credibility since they wrote about the subject matter covered in their book. The media likes people who have credentials and are authorities and experts.

Book signing event. Often we’ll land a media interview because we have an event such as a book signing. The event gives the media a ‘reason’ to talk about your book right now. Since book stores are solicited by authors and publishers incessantly, try another retail outlet. One client of mine set up a book signing in a bake shop. We got TV and newspaper coverage for that one!
The Bottom Line: Authors, recheck your marketing mix and take advantage of all the ‘easy’ ways to promote your book. Do it today!

https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/283716

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Plasmas Without Solenoids...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 14, 2016 at 7:11am
Left: Plasmoid formation in simulation of NSTX plasma during startup without solenoid. Right: Fast-camera image of NSTX plasma shows two discrete plasmoid-like structures. Credit: NSTX


Topics: Applied Physics, Nuclear Fusion, Plasma Physics, Research


The tokamak is an experimental chamber that holds a gas of energetic charged particles, plasma, for developing energy production from nuclear fusion. Most large tokamaks create the plasma with solenoids—large magnetic coils that wind down the center of the vessels and inject the current that starts the plasma and completes the magnetic field that holds the superhot gas in place. But future tokamaks must do without solenoids, which run in short pulses rather than for weeks or months at a time as commercial fusion power plants will have to do.

Recent computer simulations have suggested a novel method for launching the plasma without using solenoids. The simulation modeling shows the formation of distinct, current carrying magnetic structures called plasmoids that can initiate the plasma and complete the complex magnetic field.

Everything starts with magnetic field lines, or loops, that rise through an opening in the floor of the tokamak. As the field lines are electrically forced to expand into the vessel, a thin layer, or sheet, of electrical current can form. Through a process called magnetic reconnection, the sheet can break and form a series of ring-shaped plasmoids that are the magnetic equivalent to the bubble rings created by dolphins.

Phys.org: Launching fusion reactions without a central magnet, or solenoid

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Van Bullock...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 11, 2016 at 7:27am
Image Source: Unapologetically American


Topics: Civics, Civil Rights, Politics, Veterans Day


To my fellow veterans: happy Veteran's Day. I salute your Giri (Japanese): duty, obligation, honor to this nation.

Van Bullock (R.I.P.) was my ninth grade Social Studies Teacher. He was a short, stocky man with an impressive bearing and presence, white-haired mop hairdo kind of like Moe Howard of the Three Stooges in wire progressive lenses. It was 1976, our country's Bicentennial year, 8 years after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy as the country tried mightily to build bridges in the place of previous De Jure and De Facto walls. Mr. Bullock's teaching technique was using stenciled notes he passed out to all of us, particularly me and Ve Pauling and lecturing with the fire of a camp meeting preacher. (Ve is my fraternity brother in Kappa Alpha Psi; he and I realized at A&T's homecoming - GHOE last month that we've known each other since the fifth grade, attending middle school, high school and college together.) It was pre-Cable Service; pre-24-hour entertainment and news; pre-Internet. It was three years before the first rap song - King Tim the III, Personality Jock, and the first rap album - The Sugar Hill Gang burst on the scene my junior year. Fashion for me centered around acne, Afros and Bell Bottoms. The distractions in class might have been an unannounced fart, a pretty girl next to you or a view outside the classroom window.

Van Bullock would lecture and captivate a crowd of 25 fourteen-year-old teens from view and girls that HAD the notes in front of us: we still took notes in the margins, on the back of each stenciled page. Tests were open book, open note and challenging: he expected great detail and essay answers. The name of the class was Social Studies, but what he was teaching was lessons of citizenship: Civics.

Civics (n): the study of the rights and duties of citizens and of how government works. Meridian-Webster online

Mr. Bullock was teaching Civics because he had the freedom to do so. He was not held to the standard of preparing students for a high-stakes standardized test because no such machination existed from the testing industrial complex. He did not have the pressure of "teaching to the test" with the wink-and-nod from Principal and Superintendent stating the party line that you were not to, knowing full well your end-of-year evaluation depended on how a teenager who's frontal lobe could misfire on the very DAY of that high-stakes exam, put his head down and take a nap...>_<

Van Bullock was teaching all of us, in a forced-bused integrated class in East Winston the rudimentary fundamentals of citizenship. Though forced, it exposed us beyond our cultures and expanded our tolerance, friendships and spheres of influence. We were learning - side-by-side - together. We looked different, we lived on different sides of town and if we attended worship centers probably had different perspectives on that as well. We could all agree that learning those building blocks to take on the responsibilities of the adulthood and the world we were all growing up into was important. We had classroom debates; mock elections: history came alive in that man's room! We learned (hopefully putting a few at ease), to make, change or ABOLISH a Constitutional Amendment it takes a 2/3 majority in both houses of congress (67 senators; 292 house members) and 3/4 of the states - 38 in our case - to ratify it in their legislatures. I tried to capture and emulate that magic every time I taught physics and math at Manor High School. Sometimes I was successful; sometimes I wasn't.

I assumed wrongly that this would always be the focus of our nation's education enterprise, preparing citizens for ownership of our federal republic.

I am sadly aware Mr. Bullock, quite clearly that it is not.
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Supersolids...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 10, 2016 at 7:00am
Electron snapshot: the probable position of the remaining helium electron after photoionization. (Courtesy: M Ossiander/ TUM, M Schultze/ MPQ)

Topics: Applied Physics, Bose-Einstein Condensate, Condensed Matter Physics, Materials Science

Fresh evidence for a new state of matter called a supersolid has been put forth by two independent teams of physicists. Supersolidity has been a controversial concept whereby some atoms in a solid material are able to form a superfluid at very low temperatures – allowing them to flow ghost-like through the solid without any resistance. While initial observations of supersolidity in solid helium-4 in the 2000s have since been explained in terms of more mundane physics, some physicists believe that supersolids should exist – at least in principle. Now, Wolfgang Ketterle and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the US and Tilman Esslinger and colleagues of ETH Zürich in Switzerland have created supersolid analogues using ultracold atoms. Both systems comprise Bose–Einstein condensates (BEC), which are already superfluids. The teams used different optical techniques to make the atoms arrange themselves into crystalline structures of high and low density resembling a solid. They then showed that the atoms can flow freely through such crystals, while the regions of high and low density do not move. While these experiments involve dilute gases, rather than actual solids, both studies show that the supersolid state of matter is possible. Both experiments are described in preprints on arXiv.

Physics World: Have supersolids been seen at last? Hamish Johnston

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Atomtronics...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 9, 2016 at 5:30am
[Credit: C. Suplee/NIST]

Topics: Atomic Physics, Bose-Einstein Condensate, Diversity in Science, Nanotechnology, Quantum Mechanics, Semiconductor Technology, Women in Science

Gretchen Campbell describes the new and emerging field of atomtronics, which seeks to make circuit-like devices with extremely cold atoms.

When Gretchen Campbell entered graduate school in 2001, Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) were still a novelty. Today, says Campbell, an atomic physicist at the Joint Quantum Institute (JQI) of the University of Maryland and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), researchers have moved beyond exploring the properties of these extremely cold collections of atoms, which behave like giant quantum waves. Instead, they’re using BECs as tools to study other kinds of physics. In Campbell’s field of atomtronics, for example, scientists are manipulating BECs with light to engineer systems that mimic transistors and other circuit components, or function as entirely new devices. The group she leads at the JQI has fabricated and studied a tiny ring of BEC intercepted in one spot by laser light that acts as a barrier for the atoms. Rotating this spot around the ring causes the system to behave like a superconducting quantum interference device, or SQUID, a sensitive detector of magnetic fields. Campbell, who initially wanted to be a vet, spoke with Physics about what attracted her to atomic physics and the many experiments that she’d like to try with ring-shaped BECs.
Image Source: Improved Isotope Enrichment, #P4TC


How do you describe atomtronics to someone outside of physics?


One of the properties of ultracold atoms is that they behave as a superfluid. People have proposed that it’s possible that we could use this superfluid behavior to create circuits, in which the atoms take the place of electrons. There have been some proposals to create analogs of conventional electronics. Others say, hey, let’s take advantage of the qualities of ultracold atoms that are distinct from electrons and see if we can make new types of devices and sensors.

What are these distinct qualities?


Since BECs behave as a superfluid, this means that if we create currents in our atomtronic circuits, they will persist, in much the same way that a superconducting current will persist in a loop of superconducting wire. Now, with BECs you have coherence, which you wouldn’t have in, say, a conventional electronic system. We also have the advantage that we can control the internal states of the atoms.
Image Source: NASA Cold Atom Laboratory, International Space Station

I take it there aren’t any practical atomtronics devices in existence yet?


Yeah, not at all.

If you had to guess, what do you think the first one might be?


I don’t really know. We’ve demonstrated a proof-of-principle rotation sensor: In our ring-shaped device, the current of the BEC will change when the rotating laser spot reaches a critical rotation rate. The rate associated with this transition will shift if the BEC itself experiences a rotational acceleration, so measuring the shift allows us to measure rotation. But because our device is so small—the rings are only 100 micrometers—it’s perhaps best suited for measuring changes in acceleration on a very small length scale. One always hopes that down the road there will be a practical application, but right now I’d say atomtronics is completely driven by fundamental physics.

APS Physics: Things You Can Do with a Loop of Cold Atoms, Jessica Thomas
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Lasers and Anti-Lasers...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 8, 2016 at 7:52am
Schematics above show light input (green) entering opposite ends of a single device. When the phase of light input 1 is faster than that of input 2 (left panel), the gain medium dominates, resulting in coherent amplification of the light, or a lasing mode. When the phase of light input 1 is slower than input 2 (right panel), the loss medium dominates, leading to coherent absorption of the input light beams, or an anti-lasing mode. Credit: Zi Jing Wong/UC Berkeley


Topics: Laser, Modern Physics, Optical Physics


Bringing opposing forces together in one place is as challenging as you would imagine it to be, but researchers in the field of optical science have done just that.

Scientists at the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have for the first time created a single device that acts as both a laser and an anti-laser, and they demonstrated these two opposite functions at a frequency within the telecommunications band.

Their findings, reported in a paper to be published Monday, Nov. 7, in the journal Nature Photonics, lay the groundwork for developing a new type of integrated device with the flexibility to operate as a laser, an amplifier, a modulator, and an absorber or detector.

"In a single optical cavity we achieved both coherent light amplification and absorption at the same frequency, a counterintuitive phenomenon because these two states fundamentally contradict each other," said study principal investigator Xiang Zhang, senior faculty scientist at Berkeley Lab's Materials Sciences Division. "This is important for high-speed modulation of light pulses in optical communication."

Phys.org:
Lasers + anti-lasers: Marriage opens door to development of single device with exceptional range of optical capabilities

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Solar Steam Generator...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 7, 2016 at 6:00am
Figure 1. A three-layer steam generator consists of a selective absorber insulated above with bubble wrap and below with polystyrene foam. Because conductive, convective, and radiative losses are suppressed, most of the solar heat captured by the absorber is channeled to a small slot where the absorber is in contact with water. (Adapted from ref. 1 .)

Citation: Phys. Today 69, 11, 17 (2016); http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/PT.3.3351


Topics: Climate Change, Global Warming, Green Energy, Green Tech, Solar Power


A combination of inexpensive materials collects and concentrates heat from the Sun.

Heating water to its boiling point is an important first step not only for preparing a cup of tea or a bowl of pasta, but for a range of applications fundamental to an industrial society, including distillation, sterilization, and power generation. In a solar economy, one could boil water with an electric heater powered by a photovoltaic cell. But it would be far more efficient to use solar energy to heat the water directly.

That’s manifestly possible. For decades solar steam turbines in wide-open sunny spaces have used arrays of mirrors to concentrate sunlight from a large area onto a small volume of water. But those mirrors are expensive: They must be precisely machined to focus light over several hundred meters, and they must be mounted on motors to track the Sun’s position in the sky. Because the motors require that a powerful source of electricity already be available, optical concentrating arrays aren’t suitable to smaller-scale or off-the-grid applications, such as sterilizing medical instruments in a clinic in the developing world.

Now MIT’s Gang Chen, George Ni, and their colleagues have demonstrated a different approach: concentrating not the Sun’s light but its heat.1 Because their steam generator consists entirely of commonly available materials—a conscious choice on their part—they estimate that per unit area, it could be built for just 1–3% of the cost of an array of motorized mirrors.

The device is sketched in figure 1. It works by absorbing solar energy over a large area but giving it nowhere to escape except through a small slot where the absorber is in contact with a reservoir of ambient-temperature water. If the absorption area is large enough and the contact area is small enough, the water is locally brought to a boil to release steam before the heat can diffuse out into the bulk liquid. The challenge, then, is to keep the absorber from losing too much heat to conduction, convection, and radiation. Normally—and not unfortunately—those losses prevent any object heated by unconcentrated sunlight from getting anywhere near 100 °C.

To limit conductive and convective losses, the researchers insulated the top and bottom of the absorbing layer. For the bottom layer, they used ordinary polystyrene foam, which also kept the device afloat. The choice of top layer was a bit more constrained, because they needed something optically transparent. So they tried bubble wrap. “I was surprised by how well the bubble wrap worked,” said Ni. “Most researchers are using high-performance materials, and here we were, testing out bubble wrap, which wasn’t designed for maximum optical clarity.” Indeed, the bubble wrap transmits only 80% of the light that hits it. But its insulation benefits far outweighed that modest optical inefficiency.

Physics Today: Solar steam generator needs no lenses or mirrors, Johanna L. Miller

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My Review of Dr. Strange

Posted by Rod Van Blake on November 6, 2016 at 4:30pm
DR. STRANGE THE IMPOSSIBILITIES MAY BE ENDLESS BUT THEY GOT SOME OF THEM WRONG.ROD VAN BLAKEDr. Strange#MarvelDr. Strange the impossibilities may be endless but they got some of them wrong.November 6, 2016 at 13:12PMPosted by Rod Van Blake @KisonAskariFormer Marine, scifi author, and unashamed adult gamer who loves all things scifi and Fantasy. Living the life in the Virgin Islands #IAN1I'm a day late with my review but here it is. I got a chance to go check out Marvel's new adaptation of Dr. Strange and for the most part it was well done. Benedict Cumberbatch looks the part and plays a good arrogant, self absorbed neurosurgeon. Most people familiar with the comic book origins will be familiar with this story and newcomers will find things easy to understand and it's all very well presented. The special effects were what can be expected of a sci-fi/fantasy film of today.I have never indulged but often wondered how the experience would have gone if I had been tripping on acid or some other neuro-tropic drug while watching this in 3-D. I bet I would likely be freaking out quite a bit as the characters repeatedly bent time and space to manipulate the environments during the fight scenes. It was a fun ride and the writers for the most part remained faithful to the source material, but for some reason added a casting change that has been a topic of hot debate since the release of the cast some time ago.First let me go through the casting choices I liked aside from the aforementioned Cumberbatch casting. Mordo is played by Chiwetel Ejiofor whom I have liked a lot ever since seeing him in Serenity. The rigidity and at times uncompromising aspects of this character are well portrayed and he seems to have good chemistry with Cumberbatch as well as a lack thereof when they are supposed to be at odds.Baron MordoMads Mikkelsen who seems to have been around forever as a perennial bad guy in films plays Kaecilius, one of the bad guys in the film is interesting. I'm not sure if there was enough of him featured so we could have done with more screen time for this character. He's obviously had a lot of experience in similar roles and when he is there he doesn't disappoint and is not too cliche despite the role of misguided apprentice gone wrong being an old and over used trope at best.KaeciliusBenedict Wong funnily enough plays Wong the librarian for an old order after the old one was killed after an ancient ritual was stolen and Rachel McAdams plays as Dr. Stephen Strange's colleague/off again on again love interest. From what I hear no one has had any problems with those castings. I like them as well.WongWong is affable and also has some good chemistry with the other actors. It took me a second to recognize him as the Khan in the Netflix original Marco Polo. He is the lone Asian in a prominent role in this film which is where most of the tension surrounding the last casting choice I am going to mention. They cast Tilda Swinton as the Ancient One.Tild Swinton and the Comic versionNow first off my main beef with this is that it strays too far from the source material. Swinton did a great job with the role but it's not a casting choice I personally would have made. Marvel defended the choice by saying it was a win for diversity by giving a woman a prominent role while avoiding the "dragon lady" stereotype by choosing NOT to place an Asian woman in the role. The Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA) of course went on the attack in light of the history of "whitewashing" roles in Hollywood and I have to side with them on this. Why?The Ancient One and MordoLook no further than the good diverse casting choice they gave us with Mordo. He's intelligent, badass, and has his own moral code that he abides by. They cast a black man who was not willfully ignorant or just there for comic relief which is done often so I find it hard to believe they could not have executed a similar casting using an Asian woman while avoiding making her portrayal seem like an overbearing dragon lady. It's true that the role of Sorcerer Supreme and the Ancient One rotates but the point I am making is that it could have been done. I also urge anyone out there who feel underrepresented to create your own characters! It's one of the reasons I began writing my own science fiction tale and will also be doing Fantasy as well. If they don't give you what you want go out and make it yourself for you and others out there who may feel the way you do.That's not to say Swinton did a bad job, but in this day and age you have to be more sensitive to how things are perceived. It's not as if this is an unknown phenomena after reaction from castings in Gods of Egypt and Exodus brought about uproar.In conclusion I would say if you're a fan of Marvel and Dr. Strange go see this film but if you abstain because you feel strongly about the casting faux pas I understand. It has some funny moments, witty moments, and can be predictable but that's not uncommon. The visuals are amazing and tie nicely into the Marvel cinematic universe. There's a chance they can fix the mistake going forward as it looks as if Dr. Strange will continue as a character to be featured later. Let me know what you think.

https://creators.co/@KisonAskari/4141576

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Do You Like to Read Sci-Fi?

Posted by Bill McCormick on November 5, 2016 at 1:10pm

Stupid question, I know. Why else would you be on this blog? A better question might be "Do you like to read sci-fi for free?" If the answer to that is HELL TO THE YEAH!! then head over to my site, link below, and click on the short stories page. I put up a bunch of my, previously released, stuff for you to peruse. Of course, if that bonus check is burning a hole in your wallet, my comic book, LEGENDS PARALLEL, and my novel, THE BRITTLE RIDERS, are for sale on their respective pages. I'm more than willing to let you buy them.

Let me know your thoughts if you check anything out.

BILL McSCIFI

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WMD and Proxies...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 4, 2016 at 6:49am
Image Source: Link below


Topics: Consumer Electronics, Economy, Internet of Things, Jobs, Mathematical Models


Data science in our interconnected world is beyond big, and becoming more so with the advent of the Internet of Things in consumer electronics.

However, it would be remiss to not know the genesis of big data in a 50s innovation by the banking industry: credit cards. They are the status symbols of "success," in reality just another bill to pay.

They are also a means companies use to screen potential hires despite their resumes, experience or in-person interview performance. It likely exacerbates the growing gap in income inequality. If some want to take us metaphorically back to the days of misogynistic Madmen, Fonzie and Chachi (Emmett Till and pre Rosa Parks), in many ways we're already there.

Credit scores are one of the formulas that determine our world. They often work against us, from job prospects to how long we’re on hold.

When I was little, I used to gaze at the traffic out the car window and study license plate numbers. I would reduce each one to its basic elements — the prime numbers that made it up. 45 = 3 x 3 x 5. That’s called factoring, and it was my favorite investigative pastime.

My love for math eventually became a passion. I went to math camp when I was 14 and came home clutching a Rubik’s Cube to my chest. Math provided a neat refuge from the messiness of the real world. It marched forward, its field of knowledge expanding relentlessly, proof by proof. And I could add to it. I majored in math in college and went on to get my Ph.D. Eventually, I became a tenure-track professor at Barnard College, which had a combined math department with Columbia College.

And then I made a big change. I quit my job and went to work as a quantitative analyst for D. E. Shaw, a leading hedge fund. In leaving academia for finance, I carried mathematics from abstract theory into practice. The operations we performed on numbers translated into trillions of dollars sloshing from one account to another. At first I was excited and amazed by working in this new laboratory, the global economy. But in the autumn of 2008, after I’d been there for a bit more than a year, it came crashing down.

The crash made it all too clear that mathematics, once my refuge, was not only deeply entangled in the world’s problems, but also fueling many of them. The housing crisis, the collapse of major financial institutions, the rise of unemployment — all aided and abetted by mathematicians wielding magic formulas. What’s more, thanks to the extraordinary powers I loved so much, math combined with technology to multiply the chaos and misfortune, adding efficiency and scale to systems that I now recognized as flawed.

If we had been clear-headed, we all would have taken a step back to figure out how math had been misused and how we could prevent a similar catastrophe in the future. But instead, in the wake of the crisis, new mathematical techniques were hotter than ever, and expanding into still more domains. They churned 24/7 through petabytes of information, much of it scraped from social media or e-commerce websites. And increasingly, they focused not on the movements of global financial markets but on human beings — on us. Mathematicians and statisticians were studying our desires, movements and spending power. They were predicting our trustworthiness and calculating our potential as students, workers, lovers, criminals.


Discovery Magazine: Weapons of Math Destruction, Cathy O'Neill

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IoT and Security...

Posted by Reginald L. Goodwin on November 3, 2016 at 6:25am
Credit: Courtesy of BRAND X PICTURES


Topics: Computer Science, Consumer Electronics, Internet, Internet of Things


As someone who saw DARPANET evolve from a simple text only communication, to its first commercial applications in AOL,  Netscape to now, I've been a little worried that such gadgets would only give a pathway to hackers into our homes. One likely and sad scenario could be (out of spite and pure evil), some sociopath with a keyboard could set your thermostat to 100 degrees, whether or not realizing you have pets that could be compromised under such conditions the hours you're away from them at work. Not trying to depress holiday sales, but we really need to think this one through before the inevitable flurry of patches that will be pushed out in response to attacks.

With this year’s approaching holiday gift season the rapidly growing “Internet of Things” or IoT—which was exploited to help shut down parts of the Web this past Friday—is about to get a lot bigger, and fast. Christmas and Hanukkah wish lists are sure to be filled with smartwatches, fitness trackers, home-monitoring cameras and other wi-fi–connected gadgets that connect to the internet to upload photos, videos and workout details to the cloud. Unfortunately these devices are also vulnerable to viruses and other malicious software (malware) that can be used to turn them into virtual weapons without their owners’ consent or knowledge.

Last week’s distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks—in which tens of millions of hacked devices were exploited to jam and take down internet computer servers—is an ominous sign for the Internet of Things. A DDoS is a cyber attack in which large numbers of devices are programmed to request access to the same Web site at the same time, creating data traffic bottlenecks that cut off access to the site. In this case the still-unknown attackers used malware known as “Mirai” to hack into devices whose passwords they could guess, because the owners either could not or did not change the devices’ default passwords.

The IoT is a vast and growing virtual universe that includes automobiles, medical devices, industrial systems and a growing number of consumer electronics devices. These include video game consoles, smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo and connected thermostats like the Nest, not to mention the smart home hubs and network routers that connect those devices to the internet and one another. Technology items have accounted for more than 73 percent of holiday gift spending in the U.S. each year for the past 15 years, according to the Consumer Technology Association. This year the CTA expects about 170 million people to buy presents that contribute to the IoT, and research and consulting firm Gartner predicts these networks will grow to encompass 50 billion devices worldwide by 2020. With Black Friday less than one month away it is unlikely makers of these devices will be able to patch the security flaws that opened the door to last week’s attack.

Scientific American: IoT Growing Faster Than the Ability to Defend It
Larry Greenemeier

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