Her Winter...

We first got wind of her problems on our visit to Austin in November, thinking only by suddenly not eating that she missed us, which I'm sure she did. She collapsed in front of her sitter. In a few days, she was back to her old rambunctious Labrador self. She later collapsed in front of us when we returned to New York. An early morning visit to the emergency room and MRI revealed a mass on her spleen. For Labradors and Golden Retrievers, as had happened before 11 years ago, this is sadly common. The mass for 2/3 of the cases is usually malignant. It draws blood from her circulatory system into her abdomen as happened to both of my Golden's years ago, clearly evident on the MRI. She gets tired easily on stairs she used to bound up and down; three handfuls of dog food now reduced to one that takes an entire day to devour. Surgery, radiation and chemo therapy may buy her 3 - 6 months, and is expensive. As both sons made their way here, I've been too preoccupied to blog anything about physics.

We saw her slip away slowly and finally in her vet's office at PetSmart Banfield Hospital under injected euthanasia. We all cried as she slipped into eternal slumber, her last acts in life to wag her tail, perk her ears; interact and kiss the tears of her young men - my sons - away. As intelligent as she was, this was the only thing she has ever failed at.

I will remember the floppy ears of a puppy that on a dead run stumbled over herself. I will remember how a hiss from our cat, Felix would send her darting away, despite at adulthood outweighing her by 60 lbs. I will remember the whole eaten pizza, the three devoured  Monte Cristo sandwiches and the apple pie! It was all hilarious, well before phone video and You Tube. It is now a part of memories of her.

I will remember tough days at work - be it engineering, teaching martial arts or high school physics - no matter what day I'd had, her resolution was enthusiasm, unconditional love and "let's play" with boundless energy, now sapped by a mass acting as an internal vampire.

I will remember her on my move from Texas to New York as my only friend for a while in a new place. She seemed only to greet me with opened maw - can't call it a smile - panting tongue and her famous "whipping tale of death" that hurt if she hit you with it inadvertently. Now, death has claimed her.

Her atoms, mine and my families originated in the same crucible that birthed the star we now call our single sun. Her ashes will make their way back to that celestial birthplace, passing perhaps Sirius, the Dog Star.

And when Entropy claims me one day, hopefully my atoms will find that place, and we Raven, will play!

March 11, 2004 - December 24, 2014, a little before the Spring equinox and a little after the Winter solstice. Rest in peace, girl.

Blogging will begin again 1 January 2015. See you next year.

Love,

The Goodwin Family: Cassandra, Robbin, Jonathan and Reggie (dad)

K2...

The artistic concept shows NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft operating in a new mission profile called K2. Using publicly available data, astronomers have confirmed K2's first exoplanet discovery proving Kepler can still find planets.

Image Credit: NASA Ames/JPL-Caltech/T Pyle

NASA's planet-hunting Kepler spacecraft makes a comeback with the discovery of the first exoplanet found using its new mission -- K2.

The discovery was made when astronomers and engineers devised an ingenious way to repurpose Kepler for the K2 mission and continue its search of the cosmos for other worlds.

Lead researcher Andrew Vanderburg, a graduate student at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studied publicly available data collected by the spacecraft during a test of K2 in February 2014. The discovery was confirmed with measurements taken by the HARPS-North spectrograph of the Telescopio Nazionale Galileo in the Canary Islands, which captured the wobble of the star caused by the planet’s gravitational tug as it orbits.

The newly confirmed planet, HIP 116454b, is 2.5 times the diameter of Earth and follows a close, nine-day orbit around a star that is smaller and cooler than our sun, making the planet too hot for life as we know it. HIP 116454b and its star are 180 light-years from Earth, toward the constellation Pisces.

NASA: NASA’s Kepler Reborn, Makes First Exoplanet Find of New Mission

SETI Talk - Dr. Alexander...

Dr. Claudia Alexander - Geophysics, NASA Project Scientist, APS

Here we have a talk by Claudia Alexander who will explain the science background of some of the mysteries of comets including pros and cons about why we think comets might have brought Earth’s water, concepts regarding missing nitrogen in the outer solar system, and material the comet is made of. Finally Dr Alexander will set the stage for the landing and walk through the 60 hours of time spent on the comet’s surface. The initial findings are summarized as well.

Source: Physics Database

Mars, Molecules and Methane...

Curiosity's "Space Selfie," Wikipedia. Video: The Telegraph

Reuters - NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity has found carbon-containing compounds in samples drilled out of an ancient rock, the first definitive detection of organics on the surface of Earth’s neighbor planet, scientists said on Tuesday.

The rover also found spurts of methane gas in the atmosphere, a chemical that on Earth is strongly tied to life. Additional studies, which may be beyond the rover’s capabilities, are needed to determine if the organic compounds and/or the methane gas were produced by past or present life on Mars or if they stem from geochemical processes.

“We have had a major discovery. We have found organics on Mars,” Curiosity lead scientist John Grotzinger, with the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., said during a webcast press conference at a science meeting in San Francisco.

“The probability of any of these things being sources (from life) ... we just have to respect that it is a possibility,” he added.

Reuters Science:
NASA rover finds organic molecules, methane gas on Mars, Irene Klotz

Dark Matter Signal...

This ellipse shows a region of sky where a galaxy made of dark matter is thought to exist.

Astronomers may finally have detected a signal of dark matter, the mysterious and elusive stuff thought to make up most of the material universe.

While poring over data collected by the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton spacecraft, a team of researchers spotted an odd spike in X-ray emissions coming from two different celestial objects — the Andromeda galaxy and the Perseus galaxy cluster.

The signal corresponds to no known particle or atom and thus may have been produced by dark matter, researchers said.

Space.com: Cosmic Mystery Solved? Possible Dark Matter Signal Spotted, Mike Wall
Eureka Alert: Researchers detect possible signal from dark matter

ARM...

Source: Link below

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla. — NASA will weigh several factors when it makes a Dec. 16 decision on a plan for its Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM), including how well each option supports later human missions to Mars, according to the agency official who will make that decision.

In an interview here Dec. 1, NASA Associate Administrator Robert Lightfoot said he will use a “matrix” of variables when deciding between two options for carrying out the robotic portion of ARM.

In one approach, called simply Option A by NASA, a robotic spacecraft would shift the orbit of a small near-Earth asteroid, up to ten meters in diameter, into an orbit around the Moon. The alternative, Option B, would use a robotic spacecraft to grab a boulder a few meters across from a larger asteroid and move that into lunar orbit.

“One of the main things I’m looking for is the extensibility to a martian mission,” Lightfoot said. Hardware proposed for ARM under each option should also be applicable for missions to the moons of Mars or even the martian surface itself, he said. “I want to build as little ‘one-offs’ as we can.”

Another factor will be potential commercial partnership opportunities for the mission. That would include, Lightfoot said, “commercial entities coming in to either help us do this or even take advantage of it once we’ve done it.” Other major factors he said he will consider are the technical and budgetary risks of each option.

Spacenews.com:
NASA To Weigh Several Factors in Decision on Asteroid Mission Option, Jeff Foust

The Bauer Mythos...

Image source: Forbes

“The United States participated actively and effectively in the negotiation of the Convention. It marks a significant step in the development during this century of international measures against torture and other inhuman treatment or punishment. Ratification of the Convention by the United States will clearly express United States opposition to torture, an abhorrent practice unfortunately still prevalent in the world today. The core provisions of the Convention establish a regime for international cooperation in the criminal prosecution of torturers relying on so-called ‘universal jurisdiction.’ Each State Party is required either to prosecute torturers who are found in its territory or to extradite them to other countries for prosecution.”

- Ronald Reagan, President of the United States, 1984

Address to the Nation upon signing the UN Convention on Torture

The Bauer Mythos by Reginald L. Goodwin

The Boys' Club...

Source: Radio Nessebar

Shanley Kane is the founder and editor of the most interesting and original of new publications that cover technology: Model View Culture, a quarterly journal and media site that offers readers a remorseless feminist critique of Silicon Valley. The critical distance expressed by the publication’s articles, essays, and interviews, where the Valley’s most cherished beliefs and practices are derided and deconstructed, was honestly won: Kane worked for five years in operations, technical marketing, and developer relations at a number of infrastructure companies in the San Francisco Bay Area. Often frustrated by the unexamined assumptions of her industry and irritated by the incompetence of her managers, she began blogging about technology culture and management dysfunction at startups, which led to Model View Culture (the name is a play on a technology, familiar to software developers, used to create user interfaces), founded a year ago. She maintains a lively and often profane Twitter persona, where she caustically dismisses the arguments of the kinds of men who tried her patience when she worked for them, and generously amplifies the ideas of writers and thinkers she admires, mostly women and minorities. She spoke to MIT Technology Review’s editor-in-chief, Jason Pontin.

(Disclosure: MIT Technology Review subscribes to Model View Culture, as it subscribes to many other publications, and Jason Pontin once made a small contribution to support an issue of the journal.)

“We are not getting hired, and we are not getting promoted, and we are being systematically driven out of the industry.”

“In the upper levels of tech, you are generally dealing with white men who have been coddled their entire lives, and they have rarely encountered even mild criticism.”

MIT Technology Review: A Feminist Critique of Silicon Valley, Jason Pontin

Tomorrow: The Bauer Mythos

Einstein's Dead Sea Scrolls...

Source: Link below

On the sexist treatment of Madame Curie (fellow Nobel Laureate):

The treatment to which Einstein referred included the fact that the French Academy of Sciences denied her application for a seat, possibly because of rumors that she was Jewish — or because she was having an affair with a married man, the physicist Paul Langevin.

“I am convinced that you consistently despise this rabble,” Einstein wrote, “whether it obsequiously lavishes respect on you or whether it attempts to satiate its lust for sensationalism!”

“Anyone who does not number among these reptiles,” he said of her critics, “is certainly happy, now as before, that we have such personages among us as you, and Langevin too, real people with whom one feels privileged to be in contact.”

Einstein concluded that “[i]f the rabble continues to occupy itself with you, then simply don’t read that hogwash, but rather leave it to the reptiles for whom it has been fabricated.”

On the discrimination against African Americans:

“Even among these there are prejudices of which I as a Jew am clearly conscious,” he continued, “but they are unimportant in comparison with the attitude of the ‘Whites’ toward their fellow-citizens of darker complexion, particularly toward Negroes. The more I feel an American, the more this situation pains me. I can escape the feeling of complicity in it only by speaking out.”

Einstein then addressed the complaints of those who have had “unfavorable experiences…living side by side with Negroes” which have led them to believe “[t]hey are not our equals in intelligence, sense of responsibility, reliability.”

“I am firmly convinced that whoever believes this suffers from a fatal misconception,” he wrote. “Your ancestors dragged these black people from their homes by force; and in the white man’s quest for wealth and an easy life they have been ruthlessly suppressed and exploited, degraded into slavery. The modern prejudice against Negroes is the result of the desire to maintain this unworthy condition.”

“The ancient Greeks also had slaves,” he wrote. “They were not Negroes but white men who had been taken captive in war. There could be no talk of racial differences. And yet Aristotle, one of the great Greek philosophers, declared slaves inferior beings who were justly subdued and deprived of their liberty. It is clear that he was enmeshed in a traditional prejudice from which, despite his extraordinary intellect, he could not free himself.”

The "Dead Sea Scrolls of Physics" online: Princeton Einstein Papers
#P4TC: Einstein

Artificial Skin...

Source: Link below

Some high-tech prosthetic limbs can be controlled by their owners, using nerves, muscles, or even the brain. However, there’s no way for the wearer to tell if an object is scalding hot, or about to slip out of the appendage’s grasp.

Materials that detect heat, pressure, and moisture could help change this by adding sensory capabilities to prosthetics. A group of Korean and U.S. researchers have now developed a polymer designed to mimic the elastic and high-resolution sensory capabilities of real skin.

The polymer is infused with dense networks of sensors made of ultrathin gold and silicon. The normally brittle silicon is configured in serpentine shapes that can elongate to allow for stretchability. Details of the work are published today in the journal Nature Communications.

MIT Technology Review:
Artificial Skin That Senses, and Stretches, Like the Real Thing, David Talbot

Nanobuds...

A nanobud consists of a tube of carbon atoms with a bud-like appendage.

Transparent films containing carbon nanobuds—molecular tubes of carbon with ball-like appendages—could turn just about any surface, regardless of its shape, into a touch sensor.

The films were developed by a Finnish startup, Canatu, and could be used to add touch controls to curved automobile consoles and dashboards, for example. The films are rugged and can be repeatedly bent around something as thin as the cord for your earbuds, so they could be handy for adding buttons to flexible devices.

Touch screens are usually made by overlaying a display screen with a transparent sheet of indium tin oxide. This material is brittle, however, and can’t be used on anything other than a flat surface. Individual carbon nanotubes have long been seen as a promising alternative because they conduct electricity so well. But carbon nanotubes have performed badly in touch screens due to poor electrical connections between different nanotubes. Carbon nanobuds are better because the ball-like appendages are particularly good at emitting electrons, which improves those electrical connections.

MIT Technology Review:
“Nanobuds” Could Turn Almost Any Surface Into a Touch Sensor, Kevin Bullis

Unconventional Superconductors...

Top: Ripples extending down the chain of atoms breaks translational symmetry (like a checkerboard with black and white squares), which would cause extra spots in the diffraction pattern (shown as red dots in the underlying diffraction pattern). Bottom: Stretching along one direction breaks rotational symmetry but not translational symmetry (like a checkerboard with identical squares but stretched in one of the directions), causing no additional diffraction spots. The experiments proved that a new family of superconductors has the second type of electron density distribution, called a nematic. Credit: Ben Frandsen

A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia Engineering, Columbia Physics and Kyoto University has discovered an unusual form of electronic order in a new family of unconventional superconductors. The finding, described in the journal Nature Communications, establishes an unexpected connection between this new group of titanium-oxypnictide superconductors and the more familiar cuprates and iron-pnictides, providing scientists with a whole new family of materials from which they can gain deeper insights into the mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity.

A team of scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, Columbia Engineering, Columbia Physics and Kyoto University has discovered an unusual form of electronic order in a new family of unconventional superconductors. The finding, described in the journal Nature Communications, establishes an unexpected connection between this new group of titanium-oxypnictide superconductors and the more familiar cuprates and iron-pnictides, providing scientists with a whole new family of materials from which they can gain deeper insights into the mysteries of high-temperature superconductivity.

Phys.org:
Unusual electronic state found in new class of unconventional superconductors

Dumbbells and Detection Techniques...

Figure 1: Nano-objects with varying curvatures, Nature

ARGONNE, Ill. – Like snowflakes, nanoparticles come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. The geometry of a nanoparticle is often as influential as its chemical makeup in determining how it behaves, from its catalytic properties to its potential as a semiconductor component. 

Thanks to a new study from the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Argonne National Laboratory, researchers are closer to understanding the process by which nanoparticles made of more than one material – called heterostructured nanoparticles – form. This process, known as heterogeneous nucleation, is the same mechanism by which beads of condensation form on a windowpane.

Heterostructured nanoparticles can be used as catalysts and in advanced energy conversion and storage systems. Typically, these nanoparticles are created from tiny “seeds” of one material, on top of which another material is grown. In this study, the Argonne researchers noticed that the differences in the atomic arrangements of the two materials have a big impact on the shape of the resulting nanoparticle. [1]

ARGONNE, Ill. ― A team of researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory and Ohio University have devised a powerful technique that simultaneously resolves the chemical characterization and topography of nanoscale materials down to the height of a single atom.

The technique combines synchrotron X-rays (SX) and scanning tunneling microscopy (STM). In experiments, the researchers used SX as a probe and a nanofabricated smart tip of a STM as a detector.

Using this technique, researchers detected the chemical fingerprint of individual nickel clusters on a copper surface at a two-nanometer (nm) lateral resolution, and at the ultimate single atom height sensitivity. By varying the photon energy, the researchers used the difference in photoabsorption cross sections for nickel and the copper substrate to chemically image a single-nickel nanocluster - thus opening the door to new opportunities for chemical imaging of nanoscale materials. Until now, a spatial limit of about only 10-nm was attainable, and the researchers would simultaneously sample a large sample area. The researchers have improved the spatial resolution to 2 nm. [2]

Argonne National Laboratories:
1. Atomic 'mismatch' creates nano 'dumbbells', Jared Sagoff
2. Powerful new technique simultaneously determines nanomaterials' chemical makeup, topography, Angela Hardin

Broken Windows, Shattered Dreams...

Dear Mayor Bill de Blasio,

Welcome sir, to America.

I share your concern as I as an African American father, have not one, but two sons that I am constantly concerned about.

The concern did not start with Eric Garner, nor Mike Brown, nor Jordan Davis, nor Trayvon Martin, nor Renesha McBride, nor Amadeu Diallo, nor Sean Bell, nor Jonathan Ferrell nor a host of others that have become the current bodies in a dark, efficient version, according the the Guardian, of high-tech lynching.

My concern started when I had an Afro - an impressive one, like your son's - when I was fourteen years old in Winston-Salem, NC.

I pulled out a pick to comb my Afro (had one then). It was one of those folding-handle jobs: one side red, the other green, Black Nationalist colors. I was too young to know that or how it mattered. What I was doing was fixing my “do,” getting my ‘fro right, looking at model cars and toys in King’s Department store as my mother shopped for clothes; reminiscing when this was my whole focus in the world.

He was big: bald receding hairline, hair on the sides like Larry of “Moe, Larry and Curly” but greasy and laid flat with flakes of dandruff. He had a pot belly lapping over his large belt buckle. I was a little over five feet tall and 110 lbs. He was over six feet and outweighed me by about 200 lbs.

“What you doing, boy?”

I was startled, and turned around. I was as respectable as my parents had taught me to be in situations like this: “Nothing,” I said, and turned away.

“What’s in your pocket?”

“My pick!” and frankly, that’s all that was in my pocket. This man, who hadn’t announced who he was or why I was getting the 4-1-1, was beyond annoying me.

“Up against the wall!” he barked.

The wall was again, a shelf of model cars and toys only kids would like. “This isn’t much of a wall,” I quipped.

I was grabbed by the throat and left arm, shoved hard into the toy shelves. An avalanche fell on my ‘fro denting my styling. At this point, I was in shock.

“Who are you, man!?”

“Store detective…” He flipped me like an omelet. I was being bodily frisked…against my will.

“I didn’t steal anything,” I said, “the only thing in my pockets is a pick you prick!”

“SHUT UP, boy: I knows nigras steal!” Source: Old Tapes

Welcome to America: this is the America Dr. Maya Angelou thought had "grown up" after the election of our first black president. This is the America that a representative from South Carolina in the seat of Congress shouts "you lie" disrespectfully during a State of the Union Address. This is an American congress that costs $24 billion in a government shutdown. This is a congress that used the fears of ISIS/ISIL and Ebola to win the midterms that has now "mysteriously" vanished from the news cycle.

This is also, the America where "Broken Windows" became the shared pseudo academic delusion and pursued public policy. It is the spiritual and literal father of "Stop and Frisk"; "Stand Your Ground."

Welcome to the America I have not escaped with extensive and ongoing training and a career in a STEM field - physics. Welcome to the America that causes my pulse to rise, my heart to skip beats when either son doesn't answer their cell phones. These are young men, mind you, that have never committed a crime; never had a record; never seen the inside of a jail cell, yet lately they, I, their mother are all guilty of "existing while black," which covers all the colloquialism bases. Our existence, over a long, painful history that IS America, is an indictment to the American Mythology of Exceptionalism. Every story, every bloodbath, every riot, every acquittal of our murders by citizens or the police only lessens my lifespan: I am constantly and consistently concerned to NOT become the next grieving parent!

Welcome sir, to my America as I, and your children will either witness or sadly experience it, and the ever-present fear of being a part of this darkly efficient, ever-repeating tragedy.

"Black Like Me," John Howard Griffin

"Invisible Man," Ralph Ellison

"I'm black, British, and just moved to New York. After the Eric Garner decision, I can't breathe," Lanre Bakare

http://m.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/11/barack-obama-ferguson-and-the-evidence-of-things-unsaid/383212/, Ta-Nehisi Coates

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_windows_theory

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/nyregion/author-of-broken-windows-policing-defends-his-theory.html?referrer=&_r=0

http://m.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/crime/windows.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/US/york-city-mayor-bill-de-blasios-personal-reaction/story?id=27357694

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/12/05/nyregion/mayor-bill-de-blasio-retraining-new-york-police-dept-eric-garner.html?referrer=

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/12/04/new-york-mayor-bill-de-blasio-and-police-union-officials-clash-after-grand-jury-decision-in-eric-garners-death/

http://nypost.com/2014/12/05/de-blasio-is-throwing-cops-under-the-bus/

A Golden Spike...

Image Source: Interesting Engineering

Having had the pleasure of lunch in San Antonio with a good friend and scientist I admire along with his wife Alicia and mine (Cassandra), Mark pointed out STEM is difficult, it takes effort to master it and good scientists are usually busy doing...GOOD science. Popular shows have their place in framing the importance of science in our daily affairs, but the best most of us can hope for is a general appreciation for that import, and a vision not to hinder its growth and continuance. 

We used to do great things.

Then, we gave voice to a warped skepticism; a clear evidence of the abhorred vacuum of nature being filled by the inexperienced, the uneducated: the loud, obnoxious nincompoops with a microphone and an audience of willfully ignorant malcontents that sadly: vote. In return for this political Baal worship, they are rewarded with policies against their, and the country's long term best interests.

There are some, still to this day, who doubt the moon landing ever happened. Never having lived during the era or too young to have witnessed it for themselves, their evidence are web articles of dubious expertise and sourcing; Internet videos that can be fabricated on laptops and uploaded to web sites NOW: neither sites, laptops or URLs existed during those days.

The technology we use today is a direct spin off from the space program. The integrated circuit was initially developed due to reducing rocket payloads. Newtonian physics is what we use at the moment to get satellites or astronauts into orbit. Our 238-year experiment in self-government seems to work on cartoon physics at the moment.

We've driven a golden spike into the trail leading inexorably into the future leading to the first manned landing on Mars; the mining of asteroids and Helium 3 on a moon base and more of us having the "Overlook Effect" as we become a space faring species. It will be a paradigm shift technologically, politically and sociologically. Only myopia, fear, draconian budget cuts, conspiratorial and magical thinking will drive us into another inexorable, tragic direction: back to tribalism, the caves and dissolution of the nation state.

We used to do great things. Maybe we can do it...again.

Al-Jabr...

Image Source: Kevtak Algebra Readiness Classroom and Homework page

This reminds me of a student in one of my first math classes I taught at the high school level - Algebra 1 - stating emphatically he "didn't need math to be a mechanic." A visit to the web page for UTI, and that "troubleshooting" and electronic technology involves a considerable amount of math managed to refocus him successfully (the Pre-Calculus class was a bit older, and concentrated on graduating - I didn't need to do much "pep-talking").

A little history for perspective: we use it to balance chemical equations; the first high school physics you'll ever learn before you run into Calculus will be based on this foundation.

Image source: Famous Scientists

Muhammad al-Khwarizmi

Baghdad in the 9th century was a global center of culture and trade, a hub connecting India and China with the Mediterranean and Europe. It was a rich city, a center of learning, and scholars from all over the world would come to study at the House of Wisdom, a renowned library and academy where Muhammad al-Khwarizmi lived as a scholar.

Ideas traveled in consort with commerce along the roads of Baghdad, and al-Khwarizmi embodied the wide range of the city's global vision. The Muslim scholar expanded upon the work of Greco-Roman astronomers such as Ptolemy, created one of the oldest surviving treatises on the Jewish calendar and employed and popularized the Hindu number system of 1, 2, 3... (which, because of al-Khwarizmi's work, we now refer to as the Hindu-Arabic numeration).

But his most influential work dealt with methods to solve complete equations. In "The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing," al-Khwarizmi demonstrated how to simplify equations by adding or subtracting an identical quantity from both sides. For example, adding 4x to each side of 6x = 40 - 4x reveals that 10x = 40. This "act of completion" - al-jabr - gave mathematicians a new tool: algebra.

From Time, Special Editions: Great Scientists - The Geniuses, Eccentrics and Visionaries Who Transformed Our World, Mathematics, page 21.

And, in the spirit of irony as well as completion: x = 4 (today).

Wake Up, Jibo and Pepper...

In case you're wondering, Pepper's on the left; Jibo on the right

While we slept, Rosie came into being.

I read the article about JIBO in an issue of Popular Mechanics on the way back to New York from Austin, Texas. An excerpt:

Breazeal stands a few feet from Jibo and says, in a voice only slightly different from the one she uses to talk to humans, "Wake up, Jibo."

Nothing.

Breazeal looks at the man.

"Wait," he says, adjusting, fiddling. "Hold on. Okay. Go ahead."

Again Breazeal looks at her robot and says with purpose and hope, "Wake up, Jibo."

The robot's round head twists on its base, a remarkably human wiggle. A white circle appears on its round screen, like an eye opening. In a voice like an animated movie character—cute, cheerful, but not treacly or grating—Jibo responds, "Hello, Cynthia!"

Pepper is our first C-3PO (fluent in 17 languages); associating JIBO naturally as R2-D2's progenitor. Pepper uniquely will be the first robot that can "read" our emotions and tailor it's conversation to you.

JIBO is apparently not an acronym, and looking up the definition online can vary from the profound to the profane. All of this, JIBO and Pepper will come with a price: that is the price of accepting something "new"; strange, different, without immediately fearing it for the sake of its uniqueness. It is that fear of technology that keeps us backwards, tribal and far behind than we ought to be. These are the things that occur while we sleep.

For a friend who has an acute interest in robotics: Parama Roy. Remember her name.

Beta Boston:
Robot startup Jibo unveils a multi-purpose 'social-bot' for the home
Scott Kirsner

IndieGoGo: JIBO, Worlds First Family Robot. 4,800 Pre-Sold!
(and, $2,287,609 raised in a $100,000 initial crowd-funding goal)

That's Really Possible:
Presenting our first real R2-D2 and C-3PO: JIBO and Pepper!
Glyn Taylor

Bio Circuits...

Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT (yeast cell images from National Institutes of Health)

Researchers have made great progress in recent years in the design and creation of biological circuits — systems that, like electronic circuits, can take a number of different inputs and deliver a particular kind of output. But while individual components of such biological circuits can have precise and predictable responses, those outcomes become less predictable as more such elements are combined.

A team of researchers at MIT has now come up with a way of greatly reducing that unpredictability, introducing a device that could ultimately allow such circuits to behave nearly as predictably as their electronic counterparts. The findings are published this week in the journal Nature Biotechnology, in a paper by associate professor of mechanical engineering Domitilla Del Vecchio and professor of biological engineering Ron Weiss.

The lead author of the paper is Deepak Mishra, an MIT graduate student in biological engineering. Other authors include recent master’s students Phillip Rivera in mechanical engineering and Allen Lin in electrical engineering and computer science.

MIT News: New device could make large biological circuits practical,
David L. Chandler
#P4TC: Bio-Computer