Dreams Into Lightning 2

NIF: Laser Blast Brings Fusion Break-Even Closer

Fox:

The largest laser system in the world was turned on for a fraction of a second July 5, and it unleashed the most powerful laser blast in history -- besting a record set mere months earlier.

The National Ignition Facility (NIF) -- a laser test facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif. -- turned on its 192 laser beams for a scant instant the day after the nation celebrated its birth, unleashing a record-setting 1.85-megajoule blast into a target chamber that delivered more than 500 trillion watts of power. ...

This is really good news. The even better news is that they hope to reach the break-even point for controlled fusion by the end of the year. Science funding should be unstinting for fusion energy. We don't need to be in thrall to the exploitative ayatollahs.

NIF homepage is here.

Moon: Shackleton May Contain 22 Pct Water

NASA:

NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft has returned data that indicate ice may make up as much as 22 percent of the surface material in a crater located on the moon's south pole. ...

Science vs. the Institutions of Science

Is there a difference between faith in science, and faith in the institutions of science? I think so.

Volokh thinks so too.

To measure “trust in science” [Gordon] Gauchat relies on data from the General Social Survey (GSS) from 1972 to 2010, in which respondents were asked to rate the degree of “confidence” they have in various social institutions. Yet the GSS specific survey question does upon which Gauchat relies does not actually measure trust in “science.” Rather, the question asks respondents to rate their confidence in “the scientific community.” But “science” and “the scientific community” are not the same thing. The Gauchat study certainly finds something interesting, but it’s not quite what he claims.

Why does this matter? Because one can have tremendous faith in science, as an institution and a process for discovering truth, while simultaneously lacking confidence in “the scientific community” as represented by current scientific leaders, science agencies, university researchers, those who purport to speak for science, etc. ...

In practice, we need to make decisions based on the authority of others; but that is not a matter of accepting science, it is a matter of accepting authority.

Science consists of making precise observations, drawing inferences based on empirical data, testing the truth of theories against concrete results, and discarding those theories that are not supported by data. To believe in the validity of this process is to believe in science; everything else is faith.

Glenn Reynolds on Science Fiction and Conservatism

At Acculturated:

One place where conservatives–and particularly libertarians–do pop culture well is in the science fiction field. Authors like Sarah Hoyt, John Ringo, David Drake, and even Harry Turtledove produce excellent writing in the Robert Heinlein vein, which leans libertarian-right. And John Barnes is very capably reprising the brilliant Heinlein juvenile novels of the 1950s in a twenty-first century style.

Of course, academic-writing-seminar types have been proliferating in the science fiction world (often creeping in via fantasy) and some worry that they’ll ruin the field. But I don’t think so. ...

Morning Report: 2012-04-13

Did 1976 Viking mission find life on Mars after all? 'New analysis of 36-year-old data, resuscitated from printouts, shows NASA found life on Mars, an international team of mathematicians and scientists conclude in a paper published this week.'

North Korea rocket launch fails. 'North Korea's long-range rocket failed early Friday, U.S. officials said, calling it a blow for the reclusive state's propoganda efforts. The rocket broke up about 90 seconds after taking off, an official told NBC News.' Video at the link, where Rachel Maddow covers the story in her inimitable fashion. Claire Berlinski offers a thoughtful analysis.

Apparent coup attempt in Guinea-Bissau. 'Soldiers have taken control of much of the capital of the Guinea-Bissau in what appears to be a coup attempt. Heavy gunfire was heard in the city of Bissau and at the residence of outgoing Prime Minister Carlos Gomes Junior.' UPDATE: PM Gomes, President Pereira arrested.

Monitors report first Syria clashes since ceasefire. '"Fighting with heavy machineguns took place in Khirbet al-Joz, located [in Edleb province] on the Turkish border, between regime soldiers and [army] deserters," Rami Abdel Rahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights told AFP in Beirut.'

Police find weapons cache in Scotland house. 'The man who found the guns told BBC Scotland the haul included three assault rifles, handguns and a shotgun. At least two dozen officers, including a forensic team, have been searching a farm in Kessington Road in the Killermont area of Bearsden.'

Haredim: We accept the Universe!

Ha'Aretz:

In the heart of ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem two weeks ago, an unwritten taboo was shattered in broad daylight: The first Haredi conference on "Torah archaeology" - having been boldly advertised in the Haredi daily Hamodia, and approved by several leading rabbis - drew a packed audience.

The opening speaker, Chabad Rabbi Shaul Shimon Deutsch, brought several ancient coins to the conference, held in the Beit Bracha hall near Jerusalem's Mea She'arim neighborhood. Deutsch, who flew in from Brooklyn for the event, runs a museum that displays artifacts he acquired on the private market from the time of the Mishna. ...

Read the rest at the link to find out how an ancient scale in Deutsch's collection resolved an old halakhic dispute. More broadly, in the words of conference organizer Rabbi Eliyahu Soloveitchik,

"We're all Haredim who are guided by the fear of heaven, but that's not a reason to be afraid of science. The Haredi fear of science is gradually dissipating."

Go read it all.

Language Acquisition

Scientist Deb Roy (he's a guy) made a detailed study of his own son's journey in learning to speak. Wired:

Roy, a cognitive scientist and director of MIT Media Lab’s Cognitive Machines Group, wanted to understand how children assimilate and learn language in order to build robots that can learn as children do. So in 2005, before his son was born, he and his wife wired their home with 11 cameras and 14 microphones to capture every word the infant and his caregivers spoke and record the environment and events around which these utterances occurred. Part of the goal was to determine how much influence place and context have on language acquisition.

One of the most interesting discoveries, though, had to do with the behavior of adult caregivers teaching the child to speak:

Roy and his team had logically hypothesized that if caregivers were attuned to a child’s language skills, they would begin communicating with the child in simple language that grew more complicated as the child showed signs of comprehension.

“But when we plotted it, we didn’t see it,” Roy told Wired.com in an interview. “There was no correlation.”

Instead, the caregivers actually used simpler language the closer the boy got to grasping a word. At the point they sensed he was on the cusp of getting it, all three primary caregivers – Roy, his wife and their nanny – simplified their language to guide him to the word, then gently brought him into more complex language once he passed the hump.

Go read the full article at the link.

Scary Robots: Cheetah, Atlas, Geminoid DK

Why don't they just call them Centurions and Skinjobs and be done with it?

Gizmag:

[R]obotics company Boston Dynamics recently announced that America's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has awarded it a contract to design and build such a ... critter. The contract also includes the creation of an agile, bipedal humanoid robot. It's hard to say which one might ultimately be creepier.

The CHEETAH robot will reportedly have four legs, a flexible spine, an articulated head/neck, and perhaps a tail. It will be able to run faster than any existing legged robot or human runner, make tight, zig-zagging turns in order to chase or evade, be able to accelerate very rapidly from a standstill, and stop just as quickly.

The other robot, ATLAS, "will walk like a man, using a heel-to-toe walking motion, long strides and dynamic transfer of weight on each step," according to Boston Dynamics VP of Engineering Rob Playter. It will have a torso, two legs and two arms, although spookily enough, there's no mention of a head. It will be able to turn sideways to squeeze through narrow passages, and use its hands for balance and support on rough terrain.

DARPA + Boston Dynamics = Oh, shit.

But wait, there's more!

See that sandy-haired guy making faces at the camera? Well, he's a robot.
Fox:

Japanese researchers have blurred the lines between man and machine with their latest robot, the incredibly realistic Geminoid DK.

It is the third of the Geminoid series, a line of androids designed by Hiroshi Ishiguro, a professor at Osaka University and his team at Japan's Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR) in Nara.

The robot has been constructed to look exactly like Henrik Scharfe, an associate professor of Aalborg University in Denmark and is the first of the series based on a non-Japanese person.

Read the rest - and watch the videos, if you dare - at the link.

No word, yet, on how long it will take them to type the works of Shakespeare.

Monkeys use brainpower to control robotic arm.

Now we know where those alien spacecraft are hidden.

PhysOrg: Mercury craters show dark halos, shiny bottom.

The surprises continue. Scientists studying the harvest of photos from the MESSENGER spacecraft's Jan. 14th flyby of Mercury have found several craters with strange dark halos and one crater with a spectacularly shiny bottom.
"The halos are really exceptional," says MESSENGER science team member Clark Chapman of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. "We've never seen anything like them on Mercury before and their formation is a mystery."

Consider the picture above [at link].

The two craters at the bottom of the frame are located in Mercury's giant Caloris Basin, a thousand mile wide depression formed billions of years ago when Mercury collided with a comet or asteroid. For scale, the larger of the two is about 40 miles wide. Both craters have dark rims or "halos" and the one on the left is partially filled with an unknown shiny material. ...

The article suggests a couple of theories to explain the halos. But

None of this explains the shiny-bottomed crater: "That is an even bigger mystery," says Chapman. Superficially, the bright patch resembles an expanse of ice glistening in the sun, but that's not possible

because Mercury is, like, really really hot.

"We don't yet know what the material is, why it is so bright, or why it is localized in this particular crater."

Fortunately, MESSENGER may have gathered data researchers need to solve the puzzle. Spectrometers onboard the spacecraft scanned the craters during the flyby; the colors they measured should eventually reveal the minerals involved. "The data are still being calibrated and analyzed," says Chapman.

Full article, with photo, at the link. My money's still on the alien theory.