"The one exclusive sign of thorough knowledge is the power of teaching." Aristotle | Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed on this Wordpress website are the views and opinions of the content creator, Dr. Reggie Goodwin, and should not be construed as shared, or sourced from The Environmental Protection Agency, or any organizations with which they have cooperative, or business relationships.
Topics: African Americans, Agriculture, Black History Month, Botany, Civics, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity in Science
As a botany and agriculture teacher to the children of ex-slaves, Dr. George Washington Carver wanted to improve the lot of “the man farthest down,” the poor, one-horse farmer at the mercy of the market and chained to land exhausted by cotton.
Unlike other agricultural researchers of his time, Dr. Carver saw the need to devise practical farming methods for this kind of farmer. He wanted to coax them away from cotton to such soil-enhancing, protein-rich crops as soybeans and peanuts and to teach them self-sufficiency and conservation.
Dr. Carver achieved this through an innovative series of free, simply-written brochures that included crop information, cultivation techniques, and recipes for nutritious meals. He also urged the farmers to submit soil and water samples for analysis and taught them livestock care and food preservation techniques.
In 1906, he designed the Jessup Wagon, a demonstration laboratory on wheels, which he believed to be his most significant contribution toward educating farmers.
Dr. Carver’s practical and benevolent approach to science was based on a profound religious faith to which he attributed all his accomplishments. He always believed that faith and inquiry were not only compatible paths to knowledge, but that their interaction was essential if truth in all its manifold complexity was to be approximated.
Always modest about his success, he saw himself as a vehicle through which nature, God, and the natural bounty of the land could be better understood and appreciated for the good of all people.
Dr. Carver took a holistic approach to knowledge, which embraced faith and inquiry in a unified quest for truth. Carver also believed that commitment to a Larger Reality is necessary if science and technology are to serve human needs rather than the egos of the powerful. His belief in service was a direct outgrowth and expression of his wedding of inquiry and commitment. One of his favorite sayings was:
“It is not the style of clothes one wears, neither the kind of automobile one drives, nor the amount of money one has in the bank, that counts. These mean nothing. It is simply service that measures success.”
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civics, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, Women in Science
Dr. Alexa Canady was the first African American woman in the United States to become a neurosurgeon.
I attended a summer program for minority students at the University of Michigan after my junior year. I worked in Dr. Bloom’s lab in genetics and attended a genetic counseling clinic. I fell in love with medicine.
Alexa Irene Canady had almost dropped out of college as an undergraduate, but after recovering her self-confidence she went on to qualify as the first African American woman neurosurgeon in the United States.
Alexa Canady earned a B.S. degree in zoology from the University of Michigan in 1971, and graduated from the medical school there in 1975. “The summer after my junior year,” she explains, “I worked in Dr. Bloom’s lab in genetics and attended a genetic counseling clinic. I fell in love with medicine.” In her work as a neurosurgeon, she saw young patients facing life-threatening illnesses, gunshot wounds, head trauma, hydrocephaly, and other brain injuries or diseases. Throughout her twenty-year career in pediatric neurosurgery, Dr. Canady has helped thousands of patients, most of them age ten or younger.
Her career began tentatively. She almost dropped out of college while a mathematics major, because “I had a crisis of confidence,” she has said. When she heard of a chance to win a minority scholarship in medicine, “it was an instant connection.” Her additional skills in writing and debate helped her earn a place at the University of Michigan Medical School, and she graduated cum laude in 1975.
Such credentials still could not shield her from prejudice and dismissive comments. As a young black woman completing her surgical internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital in 1975, on her first day of residency, she was tending to her patients when one of the hospital’s top administrators passed through the ward. As he went by, she heard him say, “Oh, you must be our new equal-opportunity package.” Just a few years later, while working as a neurosurgeon at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia from 1981 to 1982, her fellow physicians voted her one of the top residents.
Dr. Canady was chief of neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan from 1987 until her retirement in June 2001. She holds two honorary degrees: a doctorate of humane letters from the University of Detroit-Mercy, awarded in 1997, and a doctor of science degree from the University of Southern Connecticut, awarded in 1999. She received the Children’s Hospital of Michigan’s Teacher of the Year award in 1984 and was inducted into the Michigan Woman’s Hall of Fame in 1989. In 1993, she received the American Medical Women’s Association President’s Award and in 1994 the Distinguished Service Award from Wayne State University Medical School. In 2002, the Detroit News named Dr. Canady Michigander of the Year.
Dr. George Carruthers, [right], and William Conway, a project manager at the Naval Research Institute, examine the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph, the first Moon-based observatory Carruthers developed for the Apollo 16 mission. Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the moon in April 1972.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Diversity in Science, Instrumentation, NASA
Dr. George Carruthers, a scientist at the Naval Research Laboratory, stands to the right of his invention, the gold-plated ultraviolet camera/spectrograph. The first Moon-based observatory, Carruthers developed it for the Apollo 16 mission. He stands beside his colleague William Conway. Working for the Naval Research Laboratory, Carruthers had three years earlier received a patent for a Far Ultraviolet Electrographic Camera, which obtained images of electromagnetic radiation in short wavelengths.
Apollo 16 astronauts placed the observatory on the Moon in April 1972, where it sits today on the Moon’s Descartes highland region, in the shadow of the lunar module Orion. Asked to explain highlights of the instrument’s findings for a general audience, Dr. Carruthers said “The most immediately obvious and spectacular results were really for the Earth observations because this was the first time that the Earth had been photographed from a distance in ultraviolet (UV) light so that you could see the full extent of the hydrogen atmosphere, the polar auroras and what we call the tropical airglow belt.”
Dr. Carruthers made the first detection of molecular hydrogen in space, in 1970, using a sounding rocket. He developed a rocket instrument that obtained a UV image of Comet Halley, and an instrument with two cameras, with different far-UV wavelength sensitivities, used on the STS-39 space shuttle mission in 1991. He also worked on UV imaging of Earth’s polar auroras and of the faint photochemical luminescence found in the upper atmosphere, with an instrument, Global Imaging Monitor of the Ionosphere (GIMI), on a Department of Defense satellite, the Advanced Research and Global Observation Satellite (ARGOS), launched in 1999. In 2012, he was awarded the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the nation’s highest honor for technology achievement. Dr. Carruthers extended his work beyond his scientific endeavors; in the 1980s, he helped launch a program called the Science and Engineers Apprentice Program, allowing high school students to do research at the Naval Research Laboratory. He also taught science classes at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Dr. Carruthers passed away on Dec. 26, 2020, and is remembered for his contributions to physics, astronomy, and education.
Topics: African Americans, Black History Month, Civics, Civil Rights, Diaspora, Diversity in Science, Women in Science
Patricia Bath Laserphaco Cataract Surgery
U.S. Patent No. 4,744,360 Inducted in 2022 Born Nov. 4, 1942 – Died May 30, 2019 Dr. Patricia Bath invented Laserphaco, a new device and technique for removing cataracts. It performed all the steps of cataract removal: making the incision, destroying the lens, and vacuuming out the fractured pieces. Bath is recognized as the first Black woman physician to receive a medical patent.
After completing an ophthalmology residency at New York University, Bath completed a corneal transplant surgery fellowship at Columbia University. While a fellow, she was recruited by UCLA Medical Center and Charles R. Drew University to co-found an ophthalmology residency program at Martin Luther King Jr. Hospital. She then began her career at UCLA, becoming the first woman ophthalmologist on the faculty of its prestigious Jules Stein Eye Institute. She was appointed assistant chief of the King-Drew-UCLA Ophthalmology Residency Program in 1974 and chief in 1983. Bath conceived her Laserphaco device in 1981, published her first paper in 1987, and had her first U.S. patent issued in 1988. Her minimally invasive device was used in Europe and Asia by 2000.
Happy Black History Month (tomorrow), for what it’s worth at the moment.
The Green Book: Guide to Freedom is a documentary about the emergence of the Black middle class in the 1940s and 1950s. The documentary explores the dangerous journeys Black people took outside their cities and the book that helped guide them.
The book, The Negro Motorist Green Book, was a guide for Black people to find places to eat, drink, shop, and stay overnight. The book was no longer needed after the Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed the racial discrimination that made it necessary. Google AI
The Google AI stated that it’s “not available on Hulu,” which was news to me, as I had just watched it on Hulu (probably because I saved it in my “favorites” and the Hulu streaming gods left me alone – they get paid monthly).
The Negro Motorist Green Book, popularly known as the Green Book, was a travel guide intended to help African American motorists avoid social obstacles prevalent during the period of racial segregation, commonly referred to as Jim Crow. The Green Book listed businesses that would accept African American customers.
The book was the vision of Victor Green, an African American US postal employee from Harlem, New York. The first guide focused on Metropolitan New York. The next year, in 1937, Green expanded listings to other locations. His book would eventually include every state and several international destinations before ceasing publication in 1964. Before its demise, the book was the most popular of several tourist guides created specifically for an African American audience.
These types of travel guides were necessary during the Jim Crow era because African Americans were subject to acts of discrimination and occasional intimidation as many businesses refused to accept them as customers. African American motorists, for example, were warned to avoid sundown towns which required minorities to be outside the city limits before sundown, hence the name. African American travel could be fraught with risk and guides like the Green Book were an important resource.
One of the unintended consequences of the success of the Civil Rights Movement is a lot of businesses that sprang up in reaction to segregation now had to compete with larger corporations during “integration” that could offer more services. Many businesses that advertised in the Green Book no longer exist, boarded up, and condemned, many are not even memorialized with a historical designation in the cities they were located. The FW Woolworth International Civil Rights Museum is a noted exception and the Magnolia House (listed in The Green Book), both in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Tabitha Brown and Melissa Butler have sounded the alarm on the unintended consequences of boycotting businesses that have removed their DEI initiatives. Like the black-owned businesses post-Green Book, they might not survive, and it took years to get their products placed in the “big box” stores. Their sales dropping would mean they would be removed from the shelves they fought so long to occupy, in favor of the products the corporation would promote over theirs. Again, going into spaces that took considerable effort to sell products in gives our (as of 2019) 910 billion dollars, projected to be 1.7 trillion in 2030 consumer impact, it would seem that we lack both focus and vision: that buying power impacts Target and similar businesses giving our dollars on the altar of corporate indifference. We seem to justify finding our own backdoors.
“If you can control a man’s thinking you do not have to worry about his action. When you determine what a man shall think you do not have to concern yourself about what he will do. If you make a man feel that he is inferior, you do not have to compel him to accept an inferior status, for he will seek it himself. If you make a man think that he is justly an outcast, you do not have to order him to the back door. He will go without being told; and if there is no back door, his very nature will demand one.” ― Carter Godwin Woodson, The Mis-Education of the Negro
“Who taught you to hate yourself? Who taught you to hate the color of your skin? To such an extent you bleach, to get like the white man. Who taught you to hate the shape of your nose and the shape of your lips? Who taught you to hate yourself from the top of your head to the soles of your feet? Who taught you to hate your own kind? Who taught you to hate the race that you belong to so much so that you don’t want to be around each other?”
Who Taught You to Hate Yourself? Malcolm X, May 5, 1962, Genius dot com
Sixty-three years ago, Malcolm called the motives of the Antioch High School shooter. He posted anti-black, antisemitic tropes online. Who taught him to hate himself?
Boycotts are the knee-jerk, go-to tactic we gravitate to without an understanding of the mathematics of the Montgomery Bus Boycott: 30,000 – 40,000 African Americans participated, 90% of the black residents participated, and they comprised 75% of the bus company’s customers. Therefore, unless the clientele of Target and Walmart match Montgomery’s numbers, any thought of a boycott will only hurt these black businesses.
The irony of these dark times is this blatant white supremacy should drive us closer together. In our 0.9 to 1.7 trillion dollar demographic, only two cents gets to the African American community:
An NAACP study found that a dollar circulates in Asian communities for 30 days, as opposed to six hours in Black communities. It found that only two cents of every dollar African Americans spend goes to Black-owned businesses. One researcher estimated that if Black consumers spent at least one dollar out of every ten with Black businesses, it could generate one million jobs for African Americans. Minority buying power can do far more than purchase; it can become an investment in stronger, local communities.
One dollar out of every ten is ten cents per dollar of the 0.9 to eventually 1.7 trillion dollars we freely give to this economy for continued disrespect, disheartening policy decisions, and abject hatred of our contributions to this nation. A tithe, and we don’t have to ask anyone’s permission to do so. This cooperation is beyond reflexive boycotts without clear goals and the will to be uncomfortable for long terms: the Montgomery boycott lasted over a year.
Wakanda and its superhero ruler, T’Challa/The Black Panther, is a fantasy comic book product (the first black superhero) developed by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, for Marvel.
Mansa Musa ruled the Mali Empire, and unlike the fictional wealth of the nonexistent element, Vibranium, his wealth was from the conventional element of gold and the mineral salt. He was said to have been the richest person who has ever lived.
This present darkness may be the thing we need to come together again. Ten cents won’t get us the Mali Empire, or Wakanda, but it might get us independence, freedom, a sense of control of our own destinies, and peace of mind. It will be as long, or longer than a boycott, but we would have to work together towards a common goal. It would be the last thing they would expect us to do. The dominant society is counting on it that we won’t. We will also have to be willing to literally fight for it because as history has shown in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Rosewood, Florida, success attracts the jealousy of psychopaths.
Keeping the carbon: Biochar can be added to cement to sequester carbon within concrete. (Courtesy: Sabbie Miller)
Topics: Biomass, Civil Engineering, Environment, Global Warming, Green Tech
Replacing conventional building materials with alternatives that sequester carbon dioxide could allow the world to lock away up to half the CO2 generated by humans each year – about 16 billion tons. This is the finding of researchers at the University of California Davis and Stanford University, both in the US, who studied the sequestration potential of materials such as carbonate-based aggregates and biomass fiber in brick.
Despite efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by decarbonizing industry and switching to renewable energy sources, humans will likely continue to produce significant amounts of CO2 beyond the target “net zero” date of 2050. Carbon storage and sequestration – at source or directly from the atmosphere – are therefore worth exploring as an additional route towards this goal. Researchers have proposed several possible ways of doing this, including injecting carbon underground or deep under the ocean. However, all these scenarios are challenging to implement practically and pose their own environmental risks.
Modifying common building materials
In the present work, a team of civil engineers and earth systems scientists led by Elisabeth van Roijen (then a PhD student at UC Davis) calculated how much carbon could be stored in modified versions of several common building materials. These include concrete (cement) and asphalt containing carbonate-based aggregates; bio-based plastics; wood; biomass-fiber bricks (from waste biomass); and biochar filler in cement.
The researchers obtained the “16 billion tons of CO2” figure by assuming all aggregates currently employed in concrete would be replaced with carbonate-based versions. They also supplemented 15% of cement with biochar and the remainder with carbonatable cement; increased the amount of wood used in all new construction by 20%; and supplemented 15% of bricks with biomass and the remainder with carbonatable calcium hydroxide. A final element in their calculation was to replace all plastics used in construction today with bio-based plastics and all bitumen with bio-oil in asphalt.
“We calculated the carbon storage potential of each material based on the mass ratio of carbon in each material,” explains van Roijen. “These values were then scaled up based on 2016 consumption values for each material.”
“The sheer magnitude of carbon storage is pretty impressive”
While the production of some replacement materials would need to increase to meet the resulting demand, van Roijen and colleagues found that resources readily available today – for example, mineral-rich waste streams – would already let us replace 10% of conventional aggregates with carbonate-based ones. “These alone could store 1 billion tonnes of CO2,” she says. “The sheer magnitude of carbon storage is pretty impressive, especially when you put it in context of the level of carbon dioxide removal needed to stay below the 1.5 and 2 °C targets set by The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).”
Indeed, even if the world doesn’t implement these technologies until 2075, we could still store enough carbon between 2075 and 2100 to stay below these targets, she tells Physics World. “This is assuming, of course, that all other decarbonization efforts outlined in the IPCC reports are also implemented to achieve net-zero emissions,” she says.
Humans tend to chronicle worst-case scenarios, such as Armageddon (Judao-Christian), Pralaya (Hindu), and Ragnarok (Norse). If you follow the scripts for each, there is a “hack”: a insisted upon “happy ending” where everything is reborn anew, and those bothersome “others” that you couldn’t legislate or exterminate are killed off in the melee.
There have never been once concluded two possibilities: 1) we can try to avoid Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D., the actual nuclear “strategy,” and 2) happy endings only work for fairy tales, and physics is kind of unforgiving.
WASHINGTON, Jan 28 (Reuters) – Atomic scientists on Tuesday moved their “Doomsday Clock” closer to midnight than ever before, citing Russian nuclear threats amid its invasion of Ukraine, tensions in other world hot spots, military applications of artificial intelligence and climate change as factors underlying the risks of global catastrophe.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists set the clock to 89 seconds before midnight – the theoretical point of annihilation. That is one second closer than it was set last year. The Chicago-based nonprofit created the clock in 1947 during the Cold War tensions that followed World War Two to warn the public about how close humankind was to destroying the world.
Researchers report plasmons in boron-doped diamond; quantum applications Diamond, often celebrated for its unmatched hardness and transparency, has emerged as an exceptional material for high-power electronics and next-generation quantum optics. Diamond can be engineered to be as electrically conductive as a metal, by introducing impurities like the element boron.
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have discovered another interesting property in diamonds with added boron, known as boron-doped diamonds. Their findings could pave the way for new types of biomedical and quantum optical devices—faster, more efficient, and capable of processing information in ways that classical technologies cannot. Their results are published recently in Nature Communications.
Potential advancements in quantum devices, biosensors, solar cells The researchers found that boron-doped diamonds exhibit plasmons—waves of electrons that move when light hits them—allowing electric fields to be controlled and enhanced on a nanometer scale. This is important for advanced biosensors, nanoscale optical devices, and for improving solar cells and quantum devices. Previously, boron-doped diamonds were known to conduct electricity and become superconductors, but not to have plasmonic properties. Unlike metals or even other doped semiconductors, boron-doped diamonds remain optically clear.
Oligarchy (noun): government by the few; a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes, Merriam-Webster
In Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Farewell Address, he warned of the military-industrial complex.
“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” National Archives
In Joseph R. Biden’s Farewell Address, he warned of oligarchy, run by the tech-industrial complex, which ironically spells the acronym: “T.I.C.”
“Today, an oligarchy is taking shape in America of extreme wealth, power, and influence that really threatens our entire democracy, our basic rights and freedom, and a fair shot for everyone to get ahead.” Reuters
Tick (noun): any of a superfamily (Ixodoidea) of bloodsucking acarid arachnids that are larger than the related mites, attach themselves to warm-blooded vertebrates to feed and include important vectors of infectious diseases. Seems appropriate.
Why do Republicans believe so much stuff that is simply not true? What is their problem with reality?
Stay with me on this for a second….
In 1976 Republicans lost a Presidential election with an incumbent candidate to an unknown peanut farmer. This rocked them to the core.
After the election, they used a new methodology (focus group studies) to try to figure out how to win elections in the future. Their efforts identified one narrow path to victory for Republicans in national elections. They had to divide the country along the lines of religion and race to win. Ronald Reagan used this to great effect in 1980. In making this change Republicans switched their base from fiscal conservatives to religious conservatives. This fundamentally changed the nature of the Republican Party.
Previously Republicans were a pragmatic group of people looking for workable solutions to the problems of the country. Here is what Barry Goldwater had to say about this change.
“Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they’re sure trying to do so, it’s going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can’t and won’t compromise. I know, I’ve tried to deal with them.”
This switch turned the Republican Party from a group of political pragmatists to a faith community. In short, the most important issues to Republicans were group loyalty and shared belief.
The problem you have when a group is centered on its beliefs as opposed to its goals is that if any of the beliefs do not line up with the facts, it is going to be very hard to change them. This goes double if these beliefs are wrapped up in their religion such that they believe that they came from God.
The solution for Republicans was “alternative facts.” Their beliefs were the most important thing to them, but the facts were less so. They were much more willing to create facts that aligned with their beliefs and then believe those facts than change their beliefs.
This is cowardice and if it continues will create even worse disasters for the U.S. Policy has to align with the facts. Beliefs are not terribly important in politics. The facts and policies that align with those facts need to be the focus.
I haven’t watched the confirmation hearings, though I’ve been asked if I did. I have seen excerpts posted on YouTube that have been decidedly nauseous. Despite that most of the candidates’ slim “qualifications” should bar them from selection, they have the votes in the Senate on party lines alone, especially if they throw out the filibuster for the minority party and 60-vote threshold as I expect them to do.
This kabuki theater isn’t supposed to put forward the best and brightest minds, or anyone qualified for the positions. Sycophancy is the “secret sauce” of political expediency. “Deconstructing the administrative state” (Bannon, the Leninist) means defying the norms that have held the republic together since its inception, but like any physical momentum, it eventually meets the Entropy of friction over time and distance. Their despise of the “deep state” means what they want is a shallow alternative, where expertise can be ignored for the almighty, all-powerful “gut,” “hunch,” or claims of communication with spirits through dreams. Preparation can be substituted for crowdsourcing “concepts of plans,” otherwise known as conspiracy theories. Quantum mechanics can be mastered in a few clicks: Who needs a degree in Physics? Who needs those stinking, liberal-biased facts?
Where does this lead us?
Kakistocracy (noun): government by the worst people.
Kleptocracy (noun): government by those who seek chiefly status and personal gain at the expense of the governed.
Idiocracy (noun): 1. a society governed or populated by idiots 2. government by idiots.
Our nation is turning into an idiocracy.—Neil deGrasse Tyson
As we lurch toward idiocracy—the real thing, not the movie—we must change course.—John Kass – definitions and quotes from Merriam-Webster.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
This chip-based “tractor-beam,” which uses an intensely focused beam of light to capture and manipulate biological particles without damaging the cells, could help biologists study the mechanisms of diseases. Credits: Credit: Sampson Wilcox, RLE
Topics: Biology, Biotechnology, Optical Tweezers, Research
MIT researchers have developed a miniature, chip-based “tractor beam,” like the one that captures the Millennium Falcon in the film “Star Wars,” that could someday help biologists and clinicians study DNA, classify cells, and investigate the mechanisms of disease.
Small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, the device uses a beam of light emitted by a silicon-photonics chip to manipulate particles millimeters away from the chip surface. The light can penetrate the glass coverslips that protect samples used in biological experiments, enabling cells to remain in a sterile environment.
Traditional optical tweezers, which trap and manipulate particles using light, usually require bulky microscope setups, but chip-based optical tweezers could offer a more compact, mass manufacturable, broadly accessible, and high-throughput solution for optical manipulation in biological experiments.
However, other similar integrated optical tweezers can only capture and manipulate cells very close to or directly on the chip surface. This contaminates the chip and can stress the cells, limiting compatibility with standard biological experiments.
Using an integrated optical phased array, MIT researchers have developed a new modality for integrated optical tweezers that enables trapping and tweezing of cells more than a hundred times further away from the chip surface.
Physics and Nano 