Farewell Fermilab :o(

My father worked here from 1968 through his early death in 1990.  I worked there during summer and holiday vacations from 1976-1984.  When I was in high school, I made the state level in Science Project with a scale model and explanation of this facility.  It is with a heavy heart that I see them planning to close the facility.

Tough budgetary times spare no one, not even the last best hope of American researchers discovering the “god particle” on their home soil. Rumblings and rumors surfaced early yesterday that Fermilab’s Tevatron would not receive an extension to continue operations until 2014.  They will close operations by the end of 2011.

Tevatron and the LHC ICern) are redundant, and the DOE and HEP program are respectfully bowing out of the Higgs race to focus on other aspects of particle physics that aren’t already being probed by more powerful experiments elsewhere in the world. It’s a letdown for those who wanted to see Tevatron find the Higgs first, but it’s a practical move that will keep science moving forward while keeping Fermilab and it’s HEP program at the forefront of particle physics.

Vitriol?

vit·ri·ol: something highly caustic or severe in effect, as criticism.

Does the following sound familiar?

I am going to ignore you, and have zero dialogue.  I will focus on the things about you that I do not agree with, and extrapolate that to paint a picture that is ugly and menacing.  I will speak half-truths and twist things to my perspective, regardless whether it is true or accurate.  I will make unrealistic demands out of the blue, and if you do not immediately respond, I will seek legal recourse.  When you protect yourself legally, and a solution is put in place, I will lament on how unfair the system is and how you manipulated things to conspire against me.  I will repeat this behavior over and over again, and hope for a different outcome.

Of course, the last sentence is the definition of insanity.

This attitude is in place today in our country; in politics, in corporations, in school boards, in relationships, entitlement, in __________ (you fill in the blank)...

I hope that as a country and a society, we can start to live up to the "We The People" philosophy.

I Have A Dream...

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.” I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice. I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today.  


August 28, 1963, Martin Luther King, Jr.

Sunday Silliness - Achievement :o)

Science Scene - New Hook & Ladder

Orville Douglas Denison spent much of his youth sketching out futuristic aircraft, but in retirement he has turned pragmatic. His “aerial fire truck,” a cross between a conveyer belt and a ladder, could help firefighters quickly shuttle victims out of burning buildings.

Denison began studying fire-rescue technology after watching TV coverage of the World Trade Center evacuations on September 11, 2001. Eventually he turned his focus to the ladders often used for smaller buildings. Firemen began deploying telescoping ladders in the 1880s, and they haven’t changed significantly since. “It’s ridiculous to climb up, put someone on your shoulders, and climb down,” Denison says. There had to be a faster way, he thought. So he designed a moving ladder that could be retrofit-ted to trucks to reduce a firefighter’s climbing time by more than half.

In a rescue, firemen could extend Denison’s hydraulic ladder to windows as high as 113 feet. But rather than clamber up the ladder, the firefighter would hop on, and the rungs would roll up at 200 feet per minute—more than twice the average climbing speed of a firefighter weighed down by 130 pounds of gear. The firefighter would ride to a window, load unconscious victims into a rescue bag, hook the bag to the ladder, and shift it into reverse to bring the person to safety. Denison says it can now take up to 15 minutes, and sometimes several men, to carry one victim down a ladder from 10 stories. He estimates that his ladder could lower four people to the ground in less than four minutes.

I love seeing practical solutions to real world problems, must be the geek in me :o)

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Why Goals Are Not Achieved

It is that time of year again when we reflect on what we had hoped to accomplish in the past year and what we plan to accomplish in the next. Most times we look back and realize that we did not quite measure up to our hopes and dreams. People tend to make the same mistakes when setting goals for both their business and personal lives:

1. Goals do not support your life or business main purpose.

2. Lack of continual action. Goals usually die from inactivity. Make sure you take one positive step towards your goals every day.

3. Lack of commitment. Many times we set a goal because it just seems like it should be completed or someone else thinks we should do it.

4. Goals that do not inspire. Goals should excite you. Plain vanilla goals usually never get off the ground. Set your goals high - goals that have a WOW factor.

5. Loss of focus. Goals tend to get lost in the mundane issues we face every day. Keep your goals visible. Write them down and post them where you can see them every day.

6. Goals are not positively focused. All goals should be written with a positive focus. We are drawn to things positive and repulsed from things negative.

7. Goals are not SMART. SMART goals are those that are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. SMART goals tend to give you a laser focus and keep you on track.

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TARP - Quiet Success

In October 2008, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (Division A of Public Law 110-343) established the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to enable the Department of the Treasury to promote stability in financial markets through the purchase and guarantee of "troubled assets." Section 202 of that legislation requires the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to submit semiannual reports on the costs of the Treasury's purchases and guarantees of troubled assets. The law also requires the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) to prepare an assessment of each OMB report within 45 days of its issuance. That assessment must discuss three elements:

• The costs of purchases and guarantees of troubled assets,
• The information and valuation methods used to calculate those costs, and
• The impact on the federal budget deficit and debt.

To fulfill its statutory requirement, CBO has prepared this report on transactions completed, outstanding, and anticipated under the TARP as of November 18, 2010. CBO estimates that the cost to the federal government of the TARP's transactions (also referred to as the subsidy cost), including grants that have not been made yet for mortgage programs, will amount to $25 billion. That cost stems largely from assistance to American International Group (AIG), aid to the automotive industry, and grant programs aimed at avoiding foreclosures. Other transactions with financial institutions will, taken together, yield a net gain to the federal government, CBO estimates.


CBO's current estimate of the cost of the TARP's transactions is substantially less than the $66 billion estimate incorporated in the agency's latest baseline budget projections (issued in August 2010) and the $109 billion estimate shown in the agency's previous report on the TARP (issued in March 2010). The reduction in estimated cost over the course of this year stems from several developments: additional repurchases of preferred stock by recipients of TARP funds; a lower estimated cost for assistance to AIG and to the automotive industry; lower expected participation in mortgage programs; and the elimination of the opportunity to use TARP funds for new purposes (because of the passage of time and the provisions of the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, P.L. 111-203). CBO's current estimate is also well below OMB's latest estimate, $113 billion, because the market value of assets held by the government has increased and several recipients of TARP funds — most notably General Motors and AIG — have significantly restructured the Treasury’s investment since May 31, 2010, the date used as the basis for OMB's analysis.


Clearly, it was not apparent when the TARP was created two years ago that the cost would turn out to be this low. At that time, the U.S. financial system was in a precarious condition, and the transactions envisioned and ultimately undertaken through the TARP engendered substantial financial risk for the federal government. However, the cost has come out toward the low end of the range of possible outcomes anticipated when the program was launched. Because the financial system stabilized and then improved, the amount of funds used by the TARP was well below the $700 billion initially authorized, and the outcomes of most transactions made through the TARP were favorable for the federal government.

Science Scene - Electric Garbage Trucks

Paris waste management is about to get cleaner.  The city will be getting 12 all-electric garbage trucks by the end of 2011.

The trucks are being built by PVI Electric Powertrain and will feature five strings of seven lithium-ion battery packs providing 250 kWh of energy.  The batteries will have a liquid cooling system to keep temperatures in line.  Each new truck will reduce CO2 emissions by 130 tons compared to a diesel-fueled truck.

Like city buses, or the hybrid street sweeper that just hit New York City streets, garbage trucks are well-suited for electrification.  They have fixed routes, travel at mostly slower speeds and have a lot of stops and starts -- conditions that allow battery power to really excel over diesel or gasoline.  The shifts that municipal trucks operate on are also perfect for fitting in recharging or battery swaps.

The electric garbage truck can pick up 16 tons of waste in two rounds of service before needing a recharge or swap.  The first truck will be introduced into the Paris suburb of Courbevoie and the next eleven will be in service within the next year.



Source

Science Scene - Future Space Travel, a Powerful Proposition

Interstellar travel won’t be possible for at least 200 years, according to a former NASA propulsion scientist who has some new calculations. And by then, the spaceships we would design for the trip will be obsolete.

Forget cost, political will and all the other variables — simply obtaining enough energy will take until 2196, according to Marc Millis, former head of NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Project and founder of the Tau Zero Foundation, which supports interstellar travel research.

Millis did plenty of extrapolating to reach this conclusion, which he presented at an astronomy meeting in Prague last fall and posted to the physics archive this week. He crunched 27 years of data on energy trends, mission energy requirements, individual energy use and even societal priorities, and chose two possible trips: An aimless interstellar colony ship, and a 75-year-long mission to Alpha Centauri.

For a 500-person ship on a one-way journey, Millis figures you would need at least an exajoule — that’s 10¹⁸ joules — which is just a little bit less than all the energy consumed by the entire world in one year. For an unmanned ship destined for Alpha Centauri, you would actually need more energy, because you’d want to slow it down upon arrival at our nearest neighboring star. This would require 10¹⁹ joules. Even without accounting for fuel, the 500-passenger ship wouldn’t be able to launch until around 2200 at the earliest, and the A. Centauri probe won’t be ready until around 2500.

Millis’ math is actually more optimistic than other studies, which have suggested you would need 100 times the world’s total energy output to cover that distance.

Choice

Every one of us alone has the power to direct the course of our lives by choosing what actions we will or won't take.  While sometimes it's easier to believe you don't have a choice, the reality is that you always have a choice to behave differently.

 - Francine Ward, business leader.