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n2doc's JournalEliminating entropy picokelvins from absolute zero
By Kyle Niemeyer
When you think about the temperatures associated with “cold,” you probably imagine a cold winter day, or a block of ice (32 °F, 0 °C, or 273.15 K). This is downright balmy compared to the nanokelvin (10<sup>-9</sup> K) temperatures physicists can regularly achieve in the lab. Now, things are about to get even chillier with a new technique that can reduce the entropy—and therefore temperature—of a cold gas to near-absolute zero by finely controlling the number and energy level of atoms.
At near-absolute-zero temperatures, atoms can be held in an optical lattice—formed by standing light waves, where the atoms sit in the troughs of the waves at low potential energy. At these temperatures, they lose most of their thermal fluctuations and begin to act like an ideal quantum system. Atoms held in an optical lattice can be used to simulate electrons trapped in a crystalline solid, so this quantum system can be helpful in studying important phenomena like quantum magnetism and high-temperature superconductivity. The atoms could also be used for quantum logic gates and registers (the working memory of quantum computers).
Unfortunately, to truly create an ideal quantum system, physicists have to reach temperatures extremely close to absolute zero, in the picokelvin (pK, 10sup-12 K) range. The current record for low temperature is 100 pK, but this wasn’t a gas held in an optical lattice.
more
http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2011/12/how-cold-is-cold-enough-a-lot-colder-than-you-think.ars
Michael Lewis: Princeton Brews Trouble for Us 1 Percenters
Dec. 29 (Bloomberg) -- To: The Upper Ones, From: The Strategy Committee, Re: The Alarming Behavior of College Students
The committee has been reconvened in haste to respond to a disturbing new trend: the uprisings by students on elite college campuses.
Across the Ivy League the young people whom our Wall Street division once subjugated with ease are becoming troublesome. Our good friends at Goldman Sachs, to cite one example, have been forced to cancel their recruiting trips to Harvard and Brown. At Princeton, 30 students masquerading as job applicants entered a pair of Wall Street informational sessions, asked many obnoxious questions ("How do I get a job lobbying the U.S. government to protect Wall Street interests?"
, rose and chanted a list of charges at bankers from JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, and, finally, posted videos of their outrageous behavior on YouTube.
The committee views this latter incident as a sure sign of trouble to come. The whole point of going to Princeton for the past several decades has been to get a job at Goldman Sachs or, failing that, JPMorgan. That Princeton students are now identifying their interests with the Lower 99 percenters is, in its way, as ominous as the return of the Jews to Jerusalem.
Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/28/bloomberg_articlesLWXKOQ1A74E9.DTL
Canada's Athabasca Oil Sands- 1984 to 2011 imagery
1994
2004
2011
Buried under Canada’s boreal forest is one of the world’s largest reserves of oil. Bitumen—a very thick and heavy form of oil (also called asphalt)—coats grains of sand and other minerals in a deposit that covers about 142,200 square kilometers (54,900 square miles) of northwest Alberta. According to a 2003 estimate, Alberta has the capacity to produce 174.5 billion barrels of oil.
Only 20 percent of the oil sands lie near the surface where they can easily be mined, and these deposits flank the Athabasca River. The rest of the oil sands are buried more than 75 meters below ground and are extracted by injecting hot water into a well that liquefies the oil for pumping. In 2010, surface mines produced 356.99 million barrels of crude oil, while in situ production (the hot water wells) yielded 189.41 million barrels of oil.
This series of images from the Landsat satellite shows the growth of surface mines over the Athabasca oil sands between 1984 and 2011. The Athabasca River runs through the center of the scene, separating two major operations. To extract the oil at these locations, oil producers remove the sand in big, open-pit mines, which are tan and irregularly shaped. The sand is rinsed with hot water to separate the oil, and then the sand and wastewater are stored in “tailings ponds,” which have smooth tan or green surfaces in satellite images.
more
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/athabasca.php
also
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/plugged-in/2011/12/28/growth-of-the-alberta-tar-sands-from-1984-to-2011/
South American Cities Launch Urban Gondola Systems
Under most of our radar, South American cities have successfully integrated gondola-like Cable Propelled Transit systems into their public transit networks. Two dozen cities in South America are in various stages of embracing CPT, though the urban gondola system has its roots in Medellin, Colombia. In a recent Planetizen feature, Steven Dale, an expert in cable-propelled transit, gives the back-story on its South American start.
Inspired by a tourist gondola in nearby Caracas, Medellin therefore endeavored to become the first city in the world to fully-integrate ski lift style gondolas into their public transit network. The technology was cheap, fast and safe and it furthermore eliminated all topographical challenges. The initial line opened in 2006 - at only 2 km in length – and now moves up to 40,000 commuters per day, equivalent to Toronto’s famed Queen Streetcar Line; one of the busiest and longest in the world.
The Metrocable (as it's called in Medellin) has been a roaring success and since its opening, Medellin has added an additional 8 km of Cable Propelled Transit lines throughout the city with plans for half dozen more lines. A second, parallel line is planned near the original to ease congestion that resulted from the system meeting ridership double what was forecasted.
Dale writes that CPT is a perfect example of "disruptive technology," a term Harvard professor Clayton Christensen coined to describe "simple, convenient-to-use innovations that initially are used by only unsophisticated customers at the low end of markets." (Though in the case of the CPT's growth in South America, Dale suggests "developing" is a more accurate descriptor than "unsophisticated" or "low end."
more
http://www.good.is/post/south-america-launches-urban-gondola-systems/
Is Less Reading Making Americans Less Empathetic?
December 29, 2010 • 3:00 pm PST
A new study from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor shows that Americans' levels of empathy have dropped significantly in the last three decades.
Using a questionnaire called The Interpersonal Reactivity Index, which asks to what degree student respondents agree with statements like "I often have tender, concerned feelings for people less fortunate than me," researchers were able to ascertain that almost 75 percent of today's student have less empathy than students 30 years ago.
Scientists have long considered empathy an inherent trait, with infants barely a year old offering assistance and sharing their resources during lab tests. But a decline in empathy proves that even inborn tendencies can be profoundly impacted by social situations. The question now is what those empathy-depleting social situations are.
In the past 30 years Americans have become more likely to live alone and less likely to join groups—ranging from PTAs to political parties to casual sports teams. Several studies hint that this type of isolation can take a toll on people’s attitudes toward others. Steve Duck of the University of Iowa has found that socially isolated, as compared with integrated, individuals evaluate others less generously after interacting with them, and Kenneth J. Rotenberg of Keele University in England has shown that lonely people are more likely to take advantage of others’ trust to cheat them in laboratory games.
Other scientists theorize that people reading less has contributed to the decline in empathy:
In a study published earlier this year psychologist Raymond A. Mar of York University in Toronto and others demonstrated that the number of stories preschoolers read predicts their ability to understand the emotions of others. Mar has also shown that adults who read less fiction report themselves to be less empathic.
more
http://www.good.is/post/a-new-study-says-america-is-losing-its-empathy/
Man charged with battery after picking up woman, 65, throwing her out of Chili's booth
By ALEXANDRA SELTZER
Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Updated: 2:10 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011
Posted: 11:25 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 27, 2011
JUPITER — After throwing his neighbor out of a booth while dining at a Chili's Grill and Bar Restaurant Sunday afternoon, a 44-year-old man was arrested and charged with battery.
Franklin William Goepfert, of Jupiter, was arrested on a charge of battery on a person 65 years old or older.
This morning, Palm Beach County Circuit Court Judge Krista Marx ordered Goepfert to have no contact with the victim, Elisabeth Stetzer, and be held in lieu of $3,000 bail.
Around 6 p.m. Sunday, Jupiter Police responded to the Chili's restaurant on U.S. Highway 1 after dispatchers received a call of a battery on a person.
more
http://www.palmbeachpost.com/news/crime/jupiter-man-charged-with-battery-after-picking-up-2059976.html
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