Roddenberry's Child...

We lost Steve Jobs yesterday.

I can speak from the experience of first learning how to write code...on punch cards! They were still around on a few college campuses in the early '80s.

Then...the personal computer morphed, evolved, changed: from a keyboard you had to attach to a television to see anything, to Zenith green pixel screens - to the Apple. The Internet soon followed.

It was the Apple computer that made the mouse a prerequisite. At first, it was seen as "good for graphics" only. Then PC computers gained "mice." Software that could not talk between the platforms "looked" similar. Now there's no difference in what you see; how you use it. The two platforms "talk" to each other.

I called him Roddenberry's child: we all were. Dreaming a future of communicators (flip mobile phones), computer pads, automatic doors, medical diagnostic equipment, warp drive, the triumph of science and the exploration of other worlds. These things didn't exist except in the imagination of science fiction writers. We now have I-phones, I-Pads, medical diagnostic equipment that look like it's from a Next Generation set, the Alcubierre paper. Steve, like the rest of us, dreamed of making a difference.

No, the world is not like Star Trek. But Steve Jobs' hands-on involvement drove Apple Computer to heights they probably would have never imagined. In an era where executives negotiate their "severance package" up-front (i.e. their "golden parachute" if/when they fail), failure was not an option for Steve. Each innovation was personal. Each product was a part of his soul he shared with the world. Chief Executives are not at the moment a popular lot of late, nor many as concerned about their company's...or their country's success.

Perhaps we lost a type of CEO that [maybe] sadly, doesn't exist anymore...

The two Steves: Wozniak and Jobs, founders of Apple

From "The Last Samurai":

Emperor Meiji: Tell me...how he died.
Nathan Algren: I will tell you...how he lived.

"To infinity...and beyond!" Buzz Lightyear, Pixar's Toy Story, a Steve Jobs innovation

HiPER...

HiPER: High-Power Laser Energy Research

The UK has formally joined forces with a US laser lab in a bid to develop clean energy from nuclear fusion.

Unlike fission plants, the process uses lasers to compress atomic nuclei until they join, releasing energy.

The National Ignition Facility (Nif) in the US is drawing closer to producing a surplus of energy from the idea.

The UK company AWE and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory have now joined with Nif to help make laser fusion a viable commercial energy source.₁

HiPER is a proposed European High Power laser Energy Research facility dedicated to demonstrating the feasibility of laser driven fusion as a future energy source. HiPER is being designed to enable a broad array of new science including extreme material studies, astrophysics in the laboratory, miniaturised particle accelerators and a wide range of fundamental physics research.₂

1. BBC Science: UK joins laser fusion project

2. HiPER Project

A Truly "Smart Phone" Idea...

The Dark Knight

I humorously hear commercials of smart phones either doing electrolysis, or sawing turkeys. All to advertise the app of channeling your favorite radio station on your device.

Almost like a real-life example of Gotham "bat sonar," scientists use/want to use cell phones:

- to image malaria-infected blood;
- app to measure a spacecraft's position, altitude, earth's curvature;
- a wireless monitor of heart health.

Related links:
M-Science: Sensing, Computing and Dissemination
Scitation AIP: Harnessing consumer mobile devices for science

Big League Version of "Cooperate to Graduate"...

Zhi Guo, a graduate student at Arizona State U., works with a laser in a laboratory in the universities Biodesign Institute, which takes on real world problems.

With budget cuts affecting all levels of education and research in the current climate, cooperation to forward scientific advances would be a great idea!

This post details the idea at the collegiate level of course, but I think an analogous secondary structure could work:

- chemistry/physics working on instrumentation/robotics/a rocket club;

- Art/CAD/mathematics/physics working on architectural designs;

- biology/chemistry working in cooperation with a university for research on cancer (example)...

...that real-world connection could spur future high school graduates to consider jobs in science.

Think Educational "Manhattan Project"...

"Research universities face a long list of seemingly intractable problems.

"Faculty too often work in subject-specific silos. Taxpayer-supported basic science doesn't get converted by industry into useful products and jobs. The vagaries of federal financing play havoc with laboratory projects and staffing. And now, making it even worse for some universities, Congress is cutting off budgetary 'earmarks' reserved for many big-picture projects.

"One possible solution­—known as interdisciplinary science, or 'team science'­—is ripe for a surge in growth. An early sign: a new group of campus-based grant experts, known as the National Organization of Research Development Professionals, has ballooned from 32 to 232 members in the past two years, with what its leadership sees as a focus on promoting interdisciplinary science."

Chronicles in Higher Education: As Budgets Tighten, Big Science Gets a New Opportunity to Make Its Case

Thank your prof...

...and, what I've seen for the most part, they're doing this without compensation.

Chronicles in Higher Education: Academics Join Relief Efforts Around the World

Some of the noteable links in the article are:

Libya Crisis Map

Japan Sendai Earthquake Data Portal

Ushahidi ("testimony" in Swahili)

The Standby Taskforce: Online Volunteer Community for Crisis Mapping

The Science of TRON Legacy...

Susan Karlin writes an article for Scientific American on "Physicists give TRON filmmakers the low-down on how to digitize a person and transport him into a computer game."

1982: I attended AFROTC summer camp from NC A&T State University at Platsburgh AFB in Upstate New York. I won the Vice Commandant's Award, failing to get the top prize by 0.01 points: my camp average was 3.89, his was 3.90! I actually walked the streets of downtown Ticonderoga, which I'd only heard about in slapstick references in the "Three Stooges" (and now, I have an affinity towards their pencils - expensive, but very good quality).

We were twenty-somethings attending the movies after leave from the base and the discipline of military life. It was fun and escape. Surprisingly, the movie did not get an Academy Award for Special Effects because it was ahead of its time: using computers for SFX back then was considered CHEATING! Wow!

Scientific American: "Science of TRON: Getting Up to Speed with Teleportation and Quantum Computing"