Latest read, highly recommend for inquisitive people

Go to "Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100" page
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Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100 (Paperback)I have read all his books, and try to watch him whenever he is on TV. He is a marvelous story teller, that is what this book amounts to a story of history and the future. His global view is needed in this day and age of so much information. I loved reading about the things our scientists are working on, I was disappointed that the gobal view of our legislators is so obviously narrow in science, we know it is in many other things they vote on, but in science?

Oh, that our teachers and legislators could think like this...would we ever demand this, as life becomes more complex on earth? Just entering his mind as one reads the story you can follow his thought process and wonder at the majesty of what lies ahead. Will we be prepared, I wondered to make the decisions of the future if we elect people who can not envision the future.

What struck me was his opinion that the 40's and 50's and even now are one of the greatest era's of man's time on earth. He touched briefly on the why of it..(.the most fascinating part of my life is that I grew up in the 40's and 50's and know it to be true)! We had a serious world war, but we came out of it a better world...He states that Europe and the United States..... electrified after the war..and our National Highways were built. He cites the delay during the war years, then jumps over that, because he is younger than me, I guess, but it was as though the world burst forth into spring and flowers after the war ended...
I could compare even more, because I had just finished reading this book, Freedom's Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II This book stunned me I was so wrapped up in the excitment of seeing our country snap to attention under the great men of the time, and the book told me that we were not at a standstill, but just gearing up for what was to come once the war ended!

I encourage you to read Michio Kaku and the other book I mentioned above, for fun, for excitment and for dreaming the future...We are marvelous, if only we all could see that the choice of butter over guns, can make such a wonderful world. His comment on how Islam got lost in the momentum of the future world also struck me as very interesting, because as in all religions the studious make the dogma and where they go, so go the crowds...what a shame the glory of the Muslim world was allowed to fade as religious beliefs took precedence. Step into the mind of a great story teller...
 
                             

History of The Eagles Trailer


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History of the Eagles [3DVD] (2013)

 Early to bed and early to rise, then to my surprise, I stumbled on this great  movie this morning.  I loved, "The History of the Eagles", they were so creative.   It is so eye opening to see them  maturing under the eyes of history.  It made me realize the difficulty when creative people want to share their excitement over their own creation and how disappointment leads to break up...   It is so hard to stay quiet, and learn to co exist, but these guys have grown up!   Wow, it is nice to hear them back together, their integration of talent has given us some fantastic music...Love the Eagles, wish them well and hope you will take a peek, then buy the movie for your collection.  It's worth it as a gift for a friend who loves the Eagles...now you can't say I never know what to get for my friend at Christmas time.!

Monday, July 29, 2013

IMAGINE YOUR 'FEELINGS'.EMOTIONS COULD BE EXPOSED IN COLORED LIGHTS


Tetrapod Quantum Dots Light the Way to Stronger Polymers

Feature
Fluorescent tetrapod quantum dots or tQDs (brown) serve as stress probes that allow precise measurement of polymer fiber tensile strength with minimal impact on mechanical properties. Inserts show relaxed tQDs (upper) and stressed tQDs (lower). Fluorescent tetrapod quantum dots or tQDs (brown) serve as stress probes that allow precise measurement of polymer fiber tensile strength with minimal impact on mechanical properties. Inserts show relaxed tQDs (upper) and stressed tQDs (lower).
Fluorescent tetrapod nanocrystals could light the way to the future design of stronger polymer nanocomposites. A team of researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) has developed an advanced opto-mechanical sensing technique based on tetrapod quantum dots that allows precise measurement of the tensile  strength of polymer fibers with minimal impact on the fiber’s mechanical properties.
In a study led by Paul Alivisatos, Berkeley Lab director and the Larry and Diane Bock Professor of Nanotechnology at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, the research team incorporated into polymer fibers a population of tetrapod quantum dots (tQDs) consisting of a cadmium-selenide (CdSe) core and four cadmium sulfide (CdS) arms. The tQDs were incorporated into the polymer fibers via electrospinning, among today’s leading techniques for processing polymers, in which a large electric field is applied to droplets of polymer solution to create micro- and nano-sized fibers. This is the first known application of electrospinning to tQDs.
“The electrospinning process allowed us to put an enormous amount of tQDs, up to 20-percent by weight, into the fibers with minimal effects on the polymer’s bulk mechanical properties,” Alivisatos says. “The tQDs are capable of fluorescently monitoring not only simple uniaxial stress, but stress relaxation and behavior under cyclic varying loads. Furthermore, the tQDs are elastic and recoverable, and undergo no permanent change in sensing ability even upon many cycles of loading to failure.”
Alivisatos is the corresponding author of a paper describing this research in the journal NANO Letters titled “Tetrapod Nanocrystals as Fluorescent Stress Probes of Electrospun Nanocomposites.” Coauthors were Shilpa Raja, Andrew Olson, Kari Thorkelsson, Andrew Luong, Lillian Hsueh, Guoqing Chang, Bernd Gludovatz, Liwei Lin, Ting Xu and Robert Ritchie.
From left, Andrew Olson, Shilpa Raja and Andrew Luong are members of Paul Alivisatos's research group who used electrospinning to incorporate tetrapod quantum dot stress probes into polymer fibers. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt)From left, Andrew Olson, Shilpa Raja and Andrew Luong are members of Paul Alivisatos's research group who used electrospinning to incorporate tetrapod quantum dot stress probes into polymer fibers. (Photo by Roy Kaltschmidt)
Polymer nanocomposites are polymers that contain fillers of nanoparticles dispersed throughout the polymer matrix. Exhibiting a wide range of enhanced mechanical properties, these materials have great potential for a broad range of biomedical and material applications. However, rational design has been hampered by a lack of detailed understanding of how they respond to stress at the micro- and nanoscale.
“Understanding the interface between the polymer and the nanofiller and how stresses are transferred across that barrier are critical in reproducibly synthesizing composites,” Alivisatos says. “All of the established techniques for providing this information have drawbacks, including altering the molecular-level composition and structure of the polymer and potentially weakening mechanical properties such as toughness. It has therefore been of considerable interest to develop optical luminescent stress-sensing nanoparticles and  find a way to embed them inside polymer fibers with minimal impact on the mechanical properties that are being sensed.”
The Berkeley Lab researchers met this challenge by combining semiconductor tQDs of CdSe/CdS, which were developed in an earlier study by Alivisatos and his research group, with electrospinning. The CdSe/CdS tQDs are exceptionally well-suited as nanoscale stress sensors because an applied stress will bend the arms of the tetrapods, causing a shift in the color of their fluorescence. The large electric field used in electrospinning results in a uniform dispersal of tQD aggregates throughout the polymer matrix, thereby minimizing the formation of stress concentrations that would act to degrade the mechanical properties of the polymer. Electrospinning also provided a much stronger bond between the polymer fibers and the tQDs than a previous diffusion-based technique for using tQDs as stress probes that was reported two years ago by Alivisatos and his group. Much higher concentrations of tQDs could also be a achieved with electrospinning rather than diffusion.
When stress was applied to the polymer nanocomposites, elastic and plastic regions of deformation were easily observed as a shift in the fluorescence of the tQDs even at low particle concentrations. As particle concentrations were increased, a  greater fluorescence shift per unit strain was observed. The tQDs acted as non-perturbing probes that tests proved were not adversely affecting the mechanical properties of the polymer fibers in any significant way.
“We performed mechanical tests using a traditional tensile testing machine with all of our types of polymer fibers,” says Shilpa Raja, a lead author of the Nano Letters paper along with Andrew Olson, both members of Alivisatos’ research group. “While the tQDs undoubtedly change the composition of the fiber – it is no longer pure polylactic acid but instead a composite – we found that the mechanical properties of the composite and crystallinity of the polymer phase show minimal change.”
The research team believes their tQD probes should prove valuable for a variety of biological, imaging and materials engineering applications.
“A big advantage in the development of new polymer nanocomposites would be to use tQDs to monitor stress build-ups prior to material failure to see how the material was failing before it actually broke apart,” says co-lead author Olson. “The tQDs could also help in the development of new smart materials by providing insight into why a composite either never exhibited a desired nanoparticle property or stopped exhibiting it during deformation from normal usage.”
For biological applications, the tQD is responsive to forces on the nanoNewton scale, which is the amount of force exerted by living cells as they move around within the body. A prime example of this is metastasizing cancer cells that move through the surrounding extracellular matrix. Other cells that exert force include the fibroblasts that help repair wounds, and cardiomyocytes, the muscle cells in the heart that beat.
“All of these types of cells are known to exert nanoNewton forces, but it is very difficult to measure them,” Raja says.
“We’ve done preliminary studies in which we have shown that cardiomyocytes on top of a layer of tQDs can be induced to beat and the tQD layer will show fluorescent shifts in places where the cells are beating. This could be extended to a more biologically-relevant environment in order to study the effects of chemicals and drugs on the metastasis of cancer cells.”
Another exciting potential application is the use of tQDs to make smart polymer nanocomposites that can sense when they have cracks or are about to fracture and can strengthen themselves in response.
“With our technique we are combining two fields that are usually separate and have never been combined on the nanoscale, optical sensing and polymer nanocomposite mechanical tunability,” Raja says. “As the tetrapods are incredibly strong, orders of magnitude stronger than typical polymers, ultimately they can make for stronger interfaces that can self-report impending fracture.”
This research was primarily supported by the DOE Office of Science.
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Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory addresses the world’s most urgent scientific challenges by advancing sustainable energy, protecting human health, creating new materials, and revealing the origin and fate of the universe. Founded in 1931, Berkeley Lab’s scientific expertise has been recognized with 13 Nobel prizes. The University of California manages Berkeley Lab for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science. For more, visit www.lbl.gov.
DOE’s Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States, and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, please visit the Office of Science website at science.energy.gov/.

Additional Information
For more about the research of Paul Alivisatos go here

Louis Armstrong - A Kiss to Build a Dream On

This is the most wonderful version in my book, maybe because I was a teenager in love when this song came along. I played it over and over...and how could I ever forget going to see Louis at Lake Whalom Park with my "teenage love".  Memories that never die.  So compare the three versions and see was I just a teenager in love as a song declares, or does Louis have it!

KD Lang - A Kiss To Build A Dream On

KD Lang has such a great voice for love songs ...this is one of my favorites.

A KISS TO BUILD A DREAM ON/MANHATTAN TRANSFER

Heard this on Siriusly Sinatra this morning for the first time.  I love Manhatten Transfer, and this was a brave venture because Louis Armstrong and K. D. Lang have  great versions.  Their approach is different, the tinkling sound in the back ground and  her lovely voice.  Now I will go to the other versions for you to consider...