A Science and Technological Society...

Oh, how I wish...still looking. Happy Halloween.

Wonky or Watery...

Source: BBC link below

Mimas is the so-called "Death Star" moon because, well...go pull up some You Tube videos of Episode IV: "A New Hope" if you need to come up to speed.

I'm not so sure I'd use the term "wonky" in a sentence, but this is the BBC where all things Star Trek TNG is in endless syndication due to no doubt Sir Patrick Stewart.

I am sincerely hoping for water and a few microbes. That would be mankind's encounter with extraterrestrials that didn't involve ray guns or "live long and prosper" greetings.

Mimas is nicknamed the Death Star because it resembles the infamous Star Wars space station.

It has a tell-tale wobble that is twice as big as expected for a moon with a regular, solid structure.

The researchers offer two explanations: either it has a vast ocean beneath its surface, or a rocky core with a weird shape resembling a rugby ball.

The study appears in Science Magazine.

Its authors are astronomers in the US, France and Belgium, who based their calculations on high-resolution photos of Mimas snapped by the Cassini spacecraft.

BBC News: Death Star moon may be 'wonky or watery', Jonathan Webb

Stretching Silicon...

Courtesy: M M Hussain

A new way to stretch single-crystal silicon (which is a rigid, brittle, material) to 10 times its original length without using a polymer support has been developed by researchers at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia. The feat will be an important step towards making stretchable and foldable electronics and photovoltaics, as well as structures like “smart skin” for robotics applications and biomedical sensors.

Inorganic single-crystal silicon is the basic building block of around 90% of all modern technology but it is intrinsically brittle and rigid and so cannot be stretched without mounting it on a polymer support first. And even in this case, it can only be stretched to about 3.5 times its original length. This means that silicon can not easily be used in flexible electronics – an area that is becoming more and more important with the advent of the “Internet of Things”, wearable electronics and novel applications like electronic paper-like displays and artificial skin.

A team led by Muhammad Hussain has now succeeded in fabricating a single-crystal silicon network of hexagonal islands connected through spiral springs that can be stretched to 10 times its original length and 30 times its original surface area. The technique might be applied to other inorganic semiconductor-based electronic materials too, says Hussain.

Nanotech Web: Silicon Gets Stretched

Back to Emmett Brown...

Source: Back to the Future Wikia

Marty: "Wait a minute, what are you doing, Doc?"

Doc: "I need fuel!"

— Marty and Doc while Doc refuels Mr. Fusion with garbage

Yes, I flashed back to the end of the first in the trilogy - I saw it with my cousin in Atlanta, Georgia just after graduation and commission in the US Air Force. It was 1985...I was young...I had hair...

Source: Nice Kicks web site

Largely due to previous reports of cold fusion back in the late 80's and being a fan of the National Ignition Facility, I casually viewed this story with some caution...at a considerable distance.

However, Lockheed is not a fly-by-night outfit as aerospace defense contractor, and I doubt their reactor will use ordinary garbage. The claim that it could develop a portable "Mr. Fusion" if successful will address energy needs, potentially diffuse global tensions over resources and unfortunately, bring out the less than savory that will mount a clear defense against it in favor of the current fossil fuel/scarcity economy status quo. This is similar to the spirited defense Thomas Edison gave of direct current by showing the dangers of alternating current electrocuting elephants. Tesla: 1; Edison: 0, and we are all using alternating current with no deleterious effects. I sincerely hope it doesn't come to that inhumane extreme.

I will reserve some skepticism and guarded optimism: the division of Lockheed working on this is "Skunk Works." It has a registered trademark, so I don't think it's a Nerd prank, just a PR faux pas. Link below; stay tuned...

Phys.org: Lockheed Martin pursues compact fusion reactor concept, Nancy Owano

Fear Bola and Duct Tape...

"Sell the fear": it was the instruction I received in a very uneventfully short career as a sales representative for an electronics security firm. Part of the memorized script I recited that entailed sharing horrid crime stats to wearied prospective buyers was "how did that make you feel?" It was of course, supposed to make you feel afraid, very afraid...for your lives and reaching for your checkbooks. At an appointment scheduled through the office, before I could launch into my memorized banter, the woman said: "I was just burglarized last night." Undoubtedly, the fastest sale I ever had. She knew exactly how she felt: violated, angry and afraid.

It is interesting then, that this definition is put forth. All the networks do this: posing simultaneously as the voice of reason and prophets of doom. It looks for answers while promoting doubt post "X-Files" that the "truth is out there." It makes a rational discussion and discourse almost impossible to attain.

This fear is unfortunately the byproduct of 9-11, reminiscent of the fear of Anthrax attacks that spurred the prodigious purchases of duct tape (I'm sure like manufacturers appreciated the bump in sales). Currently, a mint is being made in HAZMAT suits and other emergency supplies, just in time for Halloween. The governors of Illinois, New Jersey and New York are now competing in the silly season on which can suspend the Civil Rights of medical professionals the fastest, NJ and NY's main men potential presidential candidates in 2016, but I'm sure that has nothing to do with it. Both have used the now bipartisan, feckless dodge "I'm not a scientist" to defend inaction on climate change and fracking (NJ's chief executive selective ignorance notable after the devastation of Hurricane Sandy and his previous complaints of congressional inaction).

The danger of these draconian measures will be eventually discouraging military and medical professionals from doing what we did after 9-11 (paraphrase): "fighting terrorists/Ebola over there before they/it comes over here." What nurse or doctor will WANT to volunteer for hazardous duty when instead of a hero's welcome, they get thrown in a gulag? Kaci Hickox has tested negative, NEGATIVE for Ebola 2X! The protocol for self monitoring has worked successfully since developed for dozens of volunteers that have come to our shores after duty since 1976, when the virus was first reported on the continent of Africa. Nina Pham (RN), Amber Vinson (RN) both of Texas Presbyterian and Doctor Craig Spencer are medical professionals that knew these protocols and reacted to them swiftly. Could they be tightened? I'm for lowering the standard of the 103 degree temperature to any low-grade fever when you've deployed to an affected area along with the self-monitoring/isolation and reporting to medical authorities when anything changes. Ms. Vinson was diagnosed with a low-grade fever of 99.5 degrees after travel, and not infectious (a TV host in New York got explicitly graphic on the unlikelihood of casual infection). It does appear catching the infection prior to any forthcoming vaccine early is the key to survival.

The problem with this lack of appreciation for STEM fields, atomizing humanity to islands of xenophobia in our Solar System's outer asteroid belt (a mythical "over there" that will magically not affect us); tying the hands and feet that must combat Ebola [actually] "over there" that will tragically affect us, the inevitable outcome is the very thing no one wants: a modern plague, first in Europe then in America. We will fair better as currently not being torn asunder by Civil War (imagine the impact if this struck us during our actual Civil War). As a nation, we seem determined to do the stupid, and swiftly.

Out...

I'll be here till Sunday. In light of the 1st case of Ebola in NY, I have a post I was preparing called "Fear Bola and Duct Tape." The short answer is: I'm not at all worried. Click on yesterday's link, specifically the link in the article for R0.

Apps and Ebola...

Technology Review

Perhaps the sanest proposal I've heard so far, using technology to get people to the necessary treatment, track patients accurately; contain and control a pathogen before its R0 of 2 out of apathy based on xenophobia and tribalism grows exponentially to Bubonic proportions. With this country's current disastrous love affair with austerity, I'm not talking about the ubiquitous "there"...

"We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology." Carl Sagan.

Nigeria is Ebola free...so is Senegal, largely due to both countries having enough infrastructure and concerted effort to combat it, proving it can be contained and conquered. Thomas Eric Duncan has died, and two nurses that worked his case have been affected and are receiving the best treatment available. But, we've been exquisitely conditioned via initially pamphlets, chat rooms, talk radio and the Internet to not trust the government or technology - the moon landing never happened; a stateless cabal rigs every election to their desired outcome, not voter apathy, suppression-cum-"integrity" or Supreme Court judicial activism; "jack-booted thugs" will come, in black helicopters to intern us all in FEMA camps taking our guns and freedoms. The wondrous beauty of most conspiracy theories is they never have to be proven, and actual plots can be conveniently ignored.

In this election season especially, fear must be sold from those with no other plan than to just be afraid; Nigeria and Senegal's good news you'd never have known.

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: Back in July, Cedric Moro started a crowdsourced mapping service to keep track of the spread of Ebola in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea. Moro is a risk consultant who has created several crowdsourced maps of this kind using the openStreetMap project Umap.

Anyone can enter information about suspected or confirmed Ebola cases while hospitals and other health facilities can tell people whether they are open and functioning and how many spare beds they have.

The site tracks other information to such as unsafe burials, hostility towards health workers and links to information about the disease. It even tracks the movement of infected individuals to see how the disease spreads.

Moro’s work has been hugely important in helping to link potential victims with appropriate healthcare facilities and giving a broader overview of the tragedy as it unfolds.

But it also has an important limitation. Anyone hoping to contribute must have access to a computer or smartphone to upload their information. That means the system is accessible only to a relatively small portion of the population.

Today, Mohamad Trad from Doctors Without Borders in Paris, France, and a couple of pals outline plans to build on Moro’s approach and make this kind of information available purely through ordinary mobile phones. “We propose building a recommendation system based on simple SMS text messaging to help Ebola patients readily find the closest health service with available and appropriate resources,” they say.

Abstract

We propose to utilize mobile phone technology as a vehicle for people to report their symptoms and to receive immediate feedback about the health services readily available, and for predicting spatial disease outbreak risk. Once symptoms are extracted from the patients text message, they undergo complex classification, pattern matching and prediction to recommend the nearest suitable health service. The added benefit of this approach is that it enables health care facilities to anticipate arrival of new potential Ebola cases.

arXiv:
Guiding Ebola Patients to Suitable Health Facilities: An SMS-based Approach
Mohamad Trad, Raja Jurdak, Rajib Rana

Related link:
World Science Festival: Everything You Need to Know About Ebola

Table-Top Gravity Wave Detector

Gravitational waves travel through space and time much like ripples on the surface of water. (Courtesy: iStock/mic27)

I've used "table-top" for several postings before. I think science needs to come up with a less-cliche descriptor.

A coin-sized detector might observe gravitational waves before the giant LIGO interferometers, according to two Australian physicists who have built the device. The detector is designed to register very high frequency gravitational waves via the exceptionally weak vibrations they would induce. Other scientists caution that the astrophysical objects thought to emit such radiation may do so very weakly or might not actually exist.

Predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity but yet to be directly observed, gravitational waves are ripples in space–time generated by accelerating massive objects. The tiny detector has been made by Maxim Goryachev and Michael Tobar of the University of Western Australia in Perth and is based on the decades-old technology of resonant-mass detection.

Physics arXiv:
Gravitational Wave Detection with High Frequency Phonon Trapping Acoustic Cavities
Maxim Goryachev, Michael E. Tobar
Physics World: Tabletop experiment could detect gravitational waves

How-To Find Exoplanets...

Source: Planetary Habitable Laboratory

Siding Spring...

It was yesterday. It's perhaps been traveling a million years to this date.

The NASA brief:


NASA: Comets: Siding Spring

The Bathtub...

Source: The Bathtub Theory of Economics and Life

"My goal is to cut government in half in twenty-five years, to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Grover Norquist

The bathtub: source of childhood delight in soap bubbles and added flatulence. In Grover-the-Grouch's special case, it is clearly the latter...

My apologies for the unannounced "blog break." Posting twice a day for any celebratory month can be taxing mentally. I'm back, somewhat refreshed and perplexed at the same time...

It can be said I spend a lot of time thinking about Sequestration from the search results that will now include this posting. Likely because I think it is the dumbest idea of self-inflicted immolation on the altar of libertarian, free market austerity I think humans have ever conceived! It requires "magical thinking"; fairies with pixie dust and exacting miracles on drive-through demand to pull off. The pixie dust is someone, somewhere in the "free market" writing a big enough check to cover what would normally be the "collectivist conspiracy" also known as a democratic republic. It should have healed Thomas Eric Duncan and the two nurses affected with the Ebola virus. Cutting $490 million from the CDC; $2.5 billion from NIH and STILL refusing to confirm or appoint a Surgeon General the NRA loves puts a huge dent in Tinker Bell's pixie dust. Nate Silver gives the stats why an Ebola travel ban is pointless. Pixie dust...

Yet, Nate Silver gives a republican takeover of the US Senate a 60% chance at succeeding, but he hedges with reassuring nuance. Meaning: at the worst display of stupidity and cognitive dissonance, brace for more austerity cuts, magical thinking, "shining city on a hill" cliche bull excrement; repeal of The Affordable Care Act putting 10+ million recipients back to square one of waiting for death; further slippage internationally in our technological competitiveness and likely a sham impeachment trial that will make us permanently a mockery in the pages of history. We'll be the Proverb, the Byword of how a government of the people, by the people and for the people perishes from the Earth for the racial disdain of the real-life Huxtables at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue (1400 is apparently the annex down the street). The charge has been levied back-and-forth from the last administration to the present, but Eric Fromm's treatise "Escape From Freedom" is instructive in this excerpt:

"The fact that somewhere else he declares that a boy should be taught to suffer injustice without rebelling will no longer strike the reader-or so I hope-as strange. This contradiction is the typical one for the sadomasochistic ambivalence between the craving for power and for submission.

"The wish for power over the masses is what drives the members of the 'elite,' the Nazi leaders. As the quotations above show, this wish for power is sometimes revealed with an almost astonishing frankness. Sometimes it is put in less offensive forms by emphasizing that to be ruled is just what the masses wish...While the 'leaders' are ones to enjoy power in the first place, the masses are by no means deprived of sadistic satisfaction. Racial and political minorities within Germany and eventually other nations which are described as weak or decaying are the objects of sadism upon which the masses are fed. While Hitler and his bureaucracy enjoy the power over the German masses, these masses themselves are taught to enjoy power over other nations and to be driven by the passion for domination of the world."

"Trickle-down = golden flow" as the working class ("middle class" a moribund label now) are taught to spit and stamp on those at the bottom that not for luck or grace they would quickly be, and will to their own self-delusion, not likely leave their current stations and social stratus without the advantage of connections the 1% nonchalantly enjoy.

Or in our case, why the country went insane in 2010 and seems determined to continue it in 2014.

Free Thought Nation and Google Books

Related link: Eric Fromm dedication site

Diaspora Denouement...

Alder Koten Institute

From the beginning of the month, I quote the post Mes de la Herencia Hispana:

"The irony: in a country of immigrants, we're becoming "tribal"; somehow E pluribus unum: out of many, one - has lost its original Latin origins and just become a slogan printed on our money - if we ever bother to look at it.

"'Self-deportation' and repatriation as some have suggested would be a logistical and political nightmare that the global economy would immediately reject us as incompetent and unstable. Diversity has to be our strength, we have no other choice for continued existence as a nation state. If not, other countries that had neither a 'remember the Alamo' nor Civil War will make us look like a byword, an anachronism...a joke on the pages of history.

"That devolution does not have to take long..."

If you've reached this point, I hope you've learned something that you didn't already know about Hispanic History; Hispanic and Latino diaspora.

Diaspora: a group of people who live outside the area in which they had lived for a long time or in which their ancestors lived (Merriam-Webster). The term is typically used for certain groups - African Americans, Jews, etc., but it should apply to everyone - EVERYONE in America is from somewhere else, voluntarily or not, than where their ancestors lived.

Hispanic and Latino culture originated in Europe/Spain, spread through colonization to the Central and South Americas; the Philippines. It is a story that is not often told, as diversity studies are under assault by myopic, authoritarian forces that attack education  - important for an informed citizenry as well as the 1st Amendment right of civil disobedience; voting rights and thus the underpinnings of democracy itself.

I am neither Hispanic/Latino nor an expert in your history. I am a science enthusiast and an advocate of the democratization of knowledge - real knowledge, based on observation, empirical study and peer review - bringing to its participants freedom and empowerment.

You are the generation that since 1982 have never known life without a search engine. It's on your cell phones. Use it to fill in the gaps your schools for various reasons cannot. If the Internet is a playground, let it be for your own enrichment, knowledge and thus your power. You are also the generation that has not thought deeply about your rights, how tentative they are and the forces aligned* to block you from them, delude them and ultimately eliminate them.

"Remember, remember the 4th of November." The fourth - if you're 18 and above - is important for you to register and participate in. I will be, off line: volunteering, calling, campaigning and voting. It's homage to my sister - a youthful soldier in the Civil Rights Movement, so that her sacrifices and temps of fate - nearly losing her several frightening times - won't have been in vain. Democracy is not for armchair athletes; solutions are by the "consent of the governed," as shown in participation in the democratic republic procedure of elections, and that cannot be downloaded at optical speeds. Participation is vital to its existence; lacking it the opposite becomes undesirable, and darkly obvious.

Seeing where you've been as a culture hopefully will give you pride and confidence in where you are all eventually going - inevitably, to the future and the majority. That is a matter-of-fact; not destiny. Be an informed citizenry - and be involved in your country. Now is a good time to practice.

"We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely."

Edward Osborne Wilson, entomologist and biologist known for his work on ecology, evolution, and sociobiology.

* “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite."

Thomas Jefferson, Founding Father, author of the Declaration of Independence, scientist, statesman and 2nd President of the United States.

Inventor Benjamin Valles...

Source: LinkedIn

Hometown: Chihuahua, Mexico

Link to patents: here

System and method for preforming cable for promoting adhesion to overmolded sensor body
Patent number: 7077022
Abstract: The end portion of the insulation sheath of a cable is formed into a grommet to promote better mechanical bonding with a vehicle sensor housing that is overmolded onto the cable.
Type: Grant
Filed: March 3, 2004
Issued: July 18, 2006
Assignee: Delphi Technologies, Inc.
Inventor: Benjamin Valles

Embed for some platforms (patent 1 of 5 in both mediums):

Z Machine and Nuclear Fusion...

SANDIA NATIONAL LABORATORIES

Scientists are reporting a significant advance in the quest to develop an alternative approach to nuclear fusion. Researchers at Sandia National Laboratories in Albuquerque, New Mexico, using the lab’s Z machine, a colossal electric pulse generator capable of producing currents of tens of millions of amperes, say they have detected significant numbers of neutrons—byproducts of fusion reactions—coming from the experiment. This, they say, demonstrates the viability of their approach and marks progress toward the ultimate goal of producing more energy than the fusion device takes in.

Fusion is a nuclear reaction that releases energy not by splitting heavy atomic nuclei apart—as happens in today’s nuclear power stations—but by fusing light nuclei together. The approach is appealing as an energy source because the fuel (hydrogen) is plentiful and cheap, and it doesn’t generate any pollution or long-lived nuclear waste. The problem is that atomic nuclei are positively charged and thus repel each other, so it is hard to get them close enough together to fuse. For enough reactions to take place, the hydrogen nuclei must collide at velocities of up to 1000 kilometers per second (km/s), and that requires heating them to more than 50 million degrees Celsius. At such temperatures, gas becomes plasma—nuclei and electrons knocking around separately—and containing it becomes a problem, because if it touches the side of its container it will instantly melt it.

"Holding my nose, and diving deep": the first paragraph sounded like cold fusion, but Science published it, so I'll wish them well, and print the results - successes or failures, as this proceeds.

AAAS: Z machine makes progress toward nuclear fusion, Daniel Clery

Inventor Emilio Sacristan...

Source

Hometown: Santa Ursula Xitla, Mexico

Link to patents: here

7 of 17:
Universal pneumatic ventricular assist device
Patent number: 7217236
Abstract: A pneumatic ventricular assist device (VAD) is disclosed for use in any circulatory support application including RVAD, LAVD, or BIVAD, trans-operative, short-term or long-term, tethered implantable or extracorporeal. In the preferred embodiment, the VAD consists of a soft contoured pump shell and a disposable pumping unit, which includes: a pump sac; an inlet and an outlet (a.k.a. discharge) with one-way valves; and tubing connectors. The valves comprise a cantilevered pair of closely adjacent thin ledges, nicknamed “valve leaflets,” that resemble needle-nose pliers. The valve leaflets permit a one-way flow of blood between them, as an opposite flow pinches the distal ends of leaflets together, thereby closing off the channel between them. This design is specially designed to allow continuous and fluid movement of blood (in one direction) while limiting blood-contacting surfaces.
Type: Grant
Filed: May 25, 2004
Issued: May 15, 2007
Assignee: Innovamedica S.A. de C.V.
Inventors: Moises Calderon, Emilio Sacristan

Embed for some platforms (patent 7 of 17 for both mediums):

Black Hole Analogue...

Victor De Schwanberg/SPL

Scientists have come closer than ever before to creating a laboratory-scale imitation of a black hole that emits Hawking radiation, the particles predicted to escape black holes due to quantum mechanical effects.

The black hole analogue, reported in Nature Physics1, was created by trapping sound waves using an ultra cold fluid. Such objects could one day help resolve the so-called black hole ‘information paradox’ - the question of whether information that falls into a black hole disappears forever.

The physicist Stephen Hawking stunned cosmologists 40 years ago when he announced that black holes are not totally black, calculating that a tiny amount of radiation would be able to escape the pull of a black hole2. This raised the tantalising question of whether information might escape too, encoded within the radiation.

Hawking radiation relies on a basic tenet of quantum theory — large fluctuations in energy can occur for brief moments of time. That means the vacuum of space is not empty but seethes with particles and their antimatter equivalents. Particle-antiparticle pairs continually pop into existence only to then annihilate each other. But something special occurs when pairs of particles emerge near the event horizon — the boundary between a black hole, whose gravity is so strong that it warps space-time, and the rest of the Universe. The particle-antiparticle pair separates, and the member of the pair closest to the event horizon falls into the black hole while the other one escapes.

Hawking radiation, the result of attempts to combine quantum theory with general relativity, comprises these escaping particles, but physicists have yet to detect it being emitted from an astrophysical black hole. Another way to test Hawking’s theory would be to simulate an event horizon in the laboratory.

Nature: Hawking radiation mimicked in the lab, Ron Cowen

R Naught and Austerity...

Source: NPR

As I noted in my post on Sequestration, we are truly reaping what we've sown to the wind of libertarian philosophy and austerity.

"Tightening one's belt" is painful in actual practice, but makes for a good soundbite for politicians that get free healthcare and a six-figure salary for working less than one-third of everyone else's very busy year.

A nurse has been infected; that affects me as I have relatives - a young son in college in particular - in the Dallas area. Yet, as I've discussed basic precautions with him, I'm not as concerned as the news has whipped us up to be.

1st point: the corporate news is driven by Nielsen ratings, i.e. they need you to LOOK at them constantly to justify their diminishing existence.

2nd point: Business Insider details the last 10 pandemics that almost wiped out mankind - when mankind was in the smaller enough numbers to actually wipe out.

3rd point: the infrastructure of Liberia is third world, but don't worry! Third-term, "Oops heard 'round-the-world" Governor "Good-Hair" turning down billions of Medicaid and Medicare expansion dollars in the most obvious political stunt of the 21st century probably had nothing to do with their lack of preparation - nothing at all!

4th point: R0 or R naught is the reproduction number of a virus. Please note: Ebola has an R naught of ~ 1.5 to 2, meaning the Dallas nurse is likely not going to be the only one infected. Measles has an R0 = 18. Yes, there's a vaccine for measles and a possible one for Ebola of simian origins, which leads to my next and final point:

We don't need an Ebola health czar: a confirmed Surgeon General would do. The CDC nor the NIH can perform "magic" nor miracles with a budget slashed by 490 million and 2.5 billion (see Sequestration link above). What we need is our collective national heads either out of the clouds or out of our rears where methane flatulence dwells! We need desperately to stop electing slackers that start their campaign slogans with "government is the problem," when in a democratic republic - in order for it to function properly - it is "We The People" who give our consent to representative government to look out for our best interests...not a well-heeled, moneyed few who's psychological balance I think we all need to question.

Juan Manuel Lozano...

Image Source

At Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana ( TAM ) we transform dreams into reality.

TAM is the world leader in hydrogen peroxide rocket engines for helicopters and related technologies.

Juan Manuel Lozano has been working with hydrogen peroxide propulsion systems since 1975, inventor of the penta-metallic catalyst pack to be used with organic hydrogen peroxide, and inventor of the most popular machine in the world to produce your own hydrogen peroxide to be used as a rocket fuel.

Tecnologia Aeroespacial Mexicana: Juan Manuel Lozano, inventor

ET and Prayer Cloths...

Source

In his new book "Religions and Extraterrestrial Life" (Springer 2014), David Weintraub, an astronomer at Vanderbilt University, takes a close look at how different faiths would handle the revelation that we're not alone. Some of his findings might surprise you.

Public polls have shown that a large share of the population believes aliens are out there. In one survey released last year by the company Survata, 37 percent of the 5,886 Americans who were polled said they believed in the existence of extraterrestrial life, while 21 percent said they didn't believe and 42 percent were unsure. Responses varied by religion: 55 percent of atheists said they believed in extraterrestrials, as did 44 percent of Muslims, 37 percent of Jews, 36 percent of Hindus and 32 percent of Christians.

In light of it being Columbus Day, it's kind of a fun speculation, but a somber one as well.

There is move afoot to dumb down AP History for not teaching enough "patriotism, respect for law and order" and to avoid/obfuscate and/or present a less harsh view of American History like - colonization and its impact on Native Americans; slavery and Jim Crow and its impact on African Americans.

Seriously, the article at Space.com and I assume the book as well posits a good question: if we were to discover extraterrestrial life, how would we as a society deal with it? Currently, we're having many difficulties between science and the many faiths that insist any science conforms to what its holy writ said before telescopes...or radiometric dating...or quantum mechanics.

It's also interesting that fairly modern faiths like Mormonism, Seventh-day Adventism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Baha'i Faith (from the article) all accept the possibility of extraterrestrial life coinciding with the telescope coming into popular usage by astronomers at the time.

Would we, or could we develop a "Prime Directive"? Note the origins of it in vintage faux Star Trek history:

The creation of the Prime Directive is generally credited to original-series producer Gene L. Coon, although there is some contention as to whether science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon, who wrote of the Prime Directive in an unused script for the original series, actually came up with it first. The Prime Directive closely mirrors the zoo hypothesis explanation for the Fermi paradox.

The directive reflected a contemporary political view of critics of the United States' foreign policy. In particular, the US' involvement in the Vietnam War was commonly criticized as an example of a global superpower interfering in the natural development of southeast Asian society, and the assertion of the Prime Directive was perceived as a repudiation of that involvement.

In an interview published in a 1991 edition of The Humanist magazine, Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry implied that it also had its roots in his belief that Christian missionaries were interfering with other cultures. Wikipedia

It would be interesting (and I think, a very good idea) if we could get some practice with one another in a Prime Directive primer before encountering and trying to convert say...the Klingons.

Space.com: Would Finding Alien Life Change Religious Philosophies?
Megan Gannon, News Editor

Felipe Vadillo-Ortega, M.D., PhD...

Source: Biology of Reproduction

Research Interests & Projects

Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons and Birth Outcomes in Mexico City. We will investigate how air pollution and the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon (PAH) component of particles can influence the outcome of pregnancy, and whether certain periods of gestation represent critical time windows and opportunities for preventive intervention.

Air Pollution, Inflammation and Preterm Birth: A Mechanistic Study in Mexico City. We will advance understanding of prematurity by investigating how air pollution and inflammation may act together to influence the outcome of pregnancy, and whether certain periods of gestation represent critical time windows and opportunities for preventive interventions, both clinical and environmental.

Professional Affiliations

Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico (UNAM)

School of Public Health
University of Michigan: Felipe Vadillo-Ortega, M.D., PhD

Other-ing...

Source: LA Times Opinion

The epic conflagration between Ben Affleck, Bill Maher and Sam Harris in some links has well over a million hits. The "emperor has no clothes" when Bill is getting props from that other-Bill-named-O'Reilly for Islam-o-phobia as a "proper" mental state.

To note:

Isaac Asimov - secular humanist, scientist and science fiction writer - gave a succinct explanation regarding critical thinking, fundamentalism, science and religion. He pointed out in his interview with Bill Moyers, Robert Millikan - of the famous oil drop experiment (I met his grand nephew at Manor HS); Michelson - of the Michelson-Morley experiment measuring the speed of light - were both Nobel Laureates and devout Christians.

Steven Weinberg (born May 3, 1933) is an American theoretical physicist and Nobel laureate in Physics for his contributions with Abdus Salam and Sheldon Glashow to the unification of the weak force and electromagnetic interaction between elementary particles. Dr. Salam was known as a devout Muslim and was a member of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community who saw his religion as fundamental part of his scientific work. (Wikipedia)

In the Slate article: "What Jefferson Really Thought About Islam":

...his vote was interpreted by Jefferson to mean that Virginia's representatives wanted the law "to comprehend, within the mantle of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mahomedan, the Hindoo, and Infidel of every denomination." Mahomedan would have been how Islam was referenced. Might have also been the origin of that pesky Establishment Clause of the 1st Amendment everyone seems to gloss over.

When blanket statements are made of one group - in this case, Muslims - it broad brushes those that practice their religion peacefully, it atomizes them into a prejudicial, bigoted category. One could say: "if/because the Ku Klux Klan has been known to burn crosses, then all Christians must burn crosses." In logic, that is Post Hoc Fallacy.

The debate - if you can call it that - ignored pretty much the impact of our foreign policy that can be summed up in three words since Mossadegh was deposed from democratically elected power in Iran in 1953 and the Shah installed by the US: get-the-oil! Never mind like oil rich and mineral rich countries - i.e. aluminum, diamond, lithium - the people living over the mineral wealth get NOTHING. We'll just "pray" for them as we enrich ourselves - cell phones, jewelry, laptops, etc. Being poor and hungry probably doesn't radicalize them: they just "hate us for our freedoms" (to loot).

Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris and Michael Shermer - all supposed paragons of critical thinking, rationality and reason - have lately been called out for their sexism and boorish statements. I notice however, they are all authors with public platforms on social media not unlike Bill Maher who has his show, and controversy quite frankly sells a lot of books.

It is true many scientists - a vast majority - do not believe in a personal deity. Lack of belief or otherwise does not make one a good scientist. As I've pointed out to many numerous times, science requires adherence to its tenants: following The Scientific Method and submitting your results to rigorous, brutal inquiry. It is then you've got something that can be called a Law or Theory, both of which are horribly misunderstood.

There is a prevailing modern myth regarding theism and science, a large part owed to the pseudoscience of creationism/intelligent design; its plainly politicized motivations and lack of usefulness - what has intelligent design "designed"? The insistence of passing it off as science - as the rest of the global economy carries no such delusions - in the public classroom has set up animosity between the two camps of reality vs. fantasy. Global warming denial, despite the evidence and 97% of climatologist agreeing on it, is just another example of the crackpot mainstreamed via marketing.

Science may/may not lead one to become either Atheist or Agnostic. That like theism is a personal choice. The solution is not politically injected authoritarian pseudoscience or willful ignorance. Atheism nor theism will make you more rational, reasoned or thoughtful in your approach to problem-solving, science or interactions with your fellow humans.

I could however, go for a few less narcissistic, xenophobic assholes.

Dr. María González...

“500 million people worldwide suffer from invasive amebiasis, the disease kills 110,000 people per year.”

Born on Sept. 10, 1955 in San Buenaventura, Coahuila, Mexico. Dr. González won the MEXWII 2006 award for her work on diagnostic methods for invasive amebiasis. María González patented the processes to diagnose invasive amebiasis, a parasitic disease that kills over 100,000 people each year.

Her parents are Maria del Socorro Garcia Gonzalez and Humberto Flores Flores. She is the first of 5 siblings from her family and is now married to Federico Castaneda and has a daughter Ana Cecilia and son Juan Jorge. Dr. González grew up in a home where everyone was treated equally and her parents always instilled the importance of a good education. She was raised to help people study and get ahead. Dr. Gonzalez’s parents had a very open relationship with their children and always had open dialoge during dinner. Dr. Gonzalez’s Grandmother was a very strong willed woman that inspired Dr. Gonzalez to excel.

She studied her bachelor’s degree in Chemistry as a drug biologist at the Faculty of Chemical Sciences at the Autonomous University of Coahuila (1976). Master’s and doctorate of Science specializing in immunology (1986) at the National School of Biological Sciences of the National Polytechnic Institute (1982). Conducted a post-doctoral in the Unité d, Immunohematopatologie. Institute in Paris Paris (1985). Dr. Gonzalez is the author of 21 articles published in national and international journals and 17 popular articles.

Amazing Mexicans: Dr. María del Socorro Flores González

Dark Matter's Bright Future...

The cryostat for the XENON1T experiment.
Image credit: The XENON1T Collaboration.

The US Department of Energy Office of High Energy Physics and the National Science Foundation Physics Division have announced their joint programme for second-generation dark-matter experiments, aiming at direct detection of the elusive dark-matter particles in Earth-based detectors. It will include ADMX-Gen2 – a microwave cavity searching for axions – and the LUX-Zeplin (LZ) and SuperCDMS-SNOLAB experiments targeted at weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs). These selections were partially in response to recommendations of the P5 subpanel of the US High-Energy Physics Advisory Panel for a broad second-generation dark-matter direct-detection programme at a funding level significantly above that originally planned.

CERN Courier: A bright future for dark-matter searches