I don’t love math… It’s just a theory.

Prize awarded for largest mathematical proof – physics-math – 09 September 2011 – New Scientist

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20893-prize-awarded-for-largest-mathematical-proof.html

I love numbers and science, their simplicity and absoluteness. In an equation, if it is solvable, then there is a rational explanation for the solution. In many cases there is only one correct answer. All of my favorite science and engineering puzzles are this way. With one elegant indisputable solution. Unfortunately life is not always, or even usually, this way. Possibly why I love hard science (not soft science like psychology or part of biology) so much. It is ordered and logical, once you finally figure it out.

Up until today I thought I like math. I was actually under the impression that I enjoyed math itself. Until I read the above article and realized that the thought of numbers and equations that take up hundreds of thousands of pages, decades, and dozens of Ph.Ds to solve. It gave me a headache just thinking about math that complex. I’m not saying that I couldn’t read Aschbacher’s 1200 page paper and understand most of it. Granted it may take me as long to fully understand it as it took him to write it. But the thought of having a job like his filled me with dread. Which to me was odd, because if I truly LOVED numbers and math as I thought I did, I should relish the thought of diving into a pool of unsolved mathematical mystery and emerging with buried treasure. But I don’t. At least not on that scale.

What I realized is that I love numbers when their solutions result in actionable knowledge. If I use regression or integration to determine when a condition is at it’s best/worst or simply IS, and that knowledge means that this doohickey should be like ‘this’, or made out of ‘that’, or is ‘something’. I’m not saying that their solution doesn’t MEAN something. It means A LOT, and generations from now, their theorem will effect the way things work that the average person doesn’t even know exist despite depending on them. But when that equation was solved they didn’t then run out and MAKE something. It simply was a completed equation.

I LOVE puzzles, but what I really love are solutions and MAKING things. Not simply making them, but making them better than before. I love research, and part of all science is hypothesis and theory. But I could not live in a world of theory, where solutions aren’t actionable outside the world of more theory.

What is Bad could one day be Good

We have all seen many things through the ages be labeled as “Bad for you” or “Bad for the environment”, only later to have ‘the experts’ change there minds. This is most common with food, and usually changes when we invent a new way of analyzing or looking at things, and is most commonly seen in the ‘things we put in our mouth’ category. If you still don’t understand what I’m talking about, then I’ll just hint at Eggs and Cholesterol if your old enough to remember that debate.

But in recent history we have seen perceptions change not due to how we perceive things, but because of changes in technology and how we use (or more importantly RE-use) things. A prime example of this is methane sequestration from land fills to generate energy. Methane is one of the few examples of gasses that is better for the environment after combustion than before. So burning it is actually ‘green’, and so long as they are burning it go ahead and turn some of that into energy so we don’t have to burn coal instead. If you want to know more: http://tinyurl.com/3fobyrz

My newest favorite example of “Bad for you” becoming “Good for you” is a process that converts plastic bags back into usable petroleum. http://bit.ly/qBr2ta
It has been common for a good while to convert plastic bags into other usable items. And at the industrial level people have been converting plastic bags into oil for around half a decade. Not too long, but long enough that someone has finally made that technology efficient and accessible enough for wide spread use, and even consumer access.

While all of this is well and good, and hopefully you’ve learned something by this point in my blog, but I still haven’t made an actual point yet…

YESTERDAY DOE announced $41M in research for carbon sequestration. http://1.usa.gov/n6yRMW
You may be saying “TJ while this is great news for the environment, CO2 is still BAD”. Yes, yes it is. And while petroleum, methane, and CO2 are not at all the same things. We still use compressed CO2 in solid and gas for a variety of things. As it’s easy to create CO2 it is often done as part of the process in which it is used or stored. But what if we didn’t just find a way to clean up all the smokestacks in the US? What if all of these brilliant minds and Millions of dollars were used to not only sequester CO2, but use it?
Carbon is part of every consumer product I can think of. I’m sure we can make this environmental FAIL a WIN. I have a few ideas… but that’s proprietary

Learning what we didn’t know.

So on my lunch break today I was reading “Materials Handbook” Fifth Edition by George S. Brady. Not because I would learn something ‘new’ from a 60+ year old book. But because it is interesting to see what we have learned since then. I find it inspiring to see not only how much we have learned in a man’s lifetime (not mine, yet) but also how much scientists of the past could determine with so few instruments. In addition to that I find the examples of science we have disproved or improved gives insight into what science we currently believe that yet has room for improvement.

As somewhat of a side note, while reading this horribly outdated book vintage masterpiece I was reminded of a professor who would give no credit to any work that used Wikipedia as a resource.  He regularly told us that we had to go to the library for the information because not everything is on the internet.  And while in my given field of Material Science it’s true (I could name hundreds of subjects that aren’t even a foot note in Wikipedia), that doesn’t mean that user supplied facts are any less true than a book published 20 years ago. And yes most science books currently in use were first composed at least 20 years ago, and although each edition contains updates, the whole of the work stays very much the same in most cases.  I would bet that books (whether electronic or print) will always be the best way to present mass amounts of information (200-600+pages), but they are definitely no longer the only source of information. I think that open source information can be just as right or wrong as published information.

What I think the real lesson is that regardless of the source question the facts and more importantly the conclusions.  But don’t just ask “Is this correct”.  Ask “Why is this correct or incorrect? And how can I prove or disprove their conclusion”  Don’t question authority/science/politics/etc. for the sake of not being a lemming.  Questions it in order to find the TRUTH.

Don’t be a Hater, be a Creator.

The atrophy of ambition

Several weeks ago the Obama administration called to end the Constellation Space program. The Human Spaceflight Review was organized to review the Constellation program do to some concerns about the Aries I rocket amongst other things. They concluded that the program was underfunded, and the payload capabilities of the Aries I were lacking. Speaking as someone who was working in the space industry at the time I agree that the program would have been substantially better with the added funding, and the Aries I rocket should have been rethought before it reached the development stages it was at.

This was a hard decision for the president, but a choice was made that I didn’t see coming, and I still don’t fully understand. They decided to cut the entire Constellation program indefinitely postponing visiting the moon and mars. They did not cut the budget. They instead gave NASA a small increase in there budget, but gave them NO direction as to what to do with it. They said that they wanted to focus on “technology”. I love tech as much as the next guy, but it is an incredibly vague term.

I can see where the politicians are coming from in a sense. Since I first started working summer internships in aerospace I’ve had the “what’s the point of NASA?” conversation many times. For people who don’t see the grandeur and beauty of space, or understand the accomplishment and pride that not only the US has for having put a living person on the moon, this is a difficult conversation. A lot of people in my generation who didn’t see Neil Armstrong walk on the moon when it happened don’t feel passionately about going back.

So what do you say to someone who doesn’t care about space to justify the space program, because honestly it doesn’t matter to everyone? Technology. Without NASA we wouldn’t have satellites, cell phones, GPS, actual data about global warming, and countless materials that are used to make a lot of the super cool stuff we have today. You could argue that we would have gotten there without NASA, that the military would have pursued the technology, and you would be right. But the military only has there best interests at heart, and they only give up there technology when they are done with it. Meaning that we would be at least a generation behind, if not three. Who knows, instead of being excited about having apps on your phone, you would just now be getting your first camera phone.

So with that idea NASA is asked to develop technology, but without anyone telling them to what end. It would be like asking a teenage boy to build muscle but taking away his weights and not teaching him anything about exercise. Large for profit companies like General Electric, and 3M have been filling technological needs for years. They know how to probe the market for what is needed, design it, and then market it. Large government entities like NASA are not adept for things like that.

For decades NASA has been coming up with mind blowing technology, but it isn’t until someone else comes along and figures out good everday applications and licenses it that we get the amazing tech that we love. If you expect NASA to just come up with cool technology that people will actually be able to use then they are going to have to seriously beef up there marketing department. Because the NASA marketing department’s sole product for the last 50 years has been NASA. And if you check out any of there podcasts, or twitter feeds you’ll see they’re doing an awesome job at that.

But without the challenge, neigh the dream, of human space flight, how do you expect them to come up with anything more awesome than what they already have. The Wright brothers to take there ingenuity and make cars I don’t think it we would be talking about them. Or if you asked Edward Armstrong to work out the bugs of AM radio instead of ditching them to develop FM radio we’d probably still be listening to AM when our CD player doesn’t work.

The point being that NASA directly and indirectly employs many of the smartest minds in our country, and to take away the task at hand without giving them any specific direction will not only cost the country jobs, it will cost us ambition and ingenuity. Two of the things that have made the United States what they are. And without space flight what will inspire the next generation of rocket scientists?

forget twitter, fMRI FTW!

My last post (I know it’s been a long time) was about breaking research on brain image reproduction. After reading recent publications on the subject I am filled with a giddy excitement, and paranoid fear at the same time. While my scientific inner child, who wants nothing but to build world peace by the means of very large shiny tools,  dances with joy at the idea of being able to tap into all of the thoughts that his hands and mouth are too clumsy to articulate.  My paranoid sci-fi apocalyptic reading inner adult cringes at the thought of someone being able to monitor our most inner thoughts, are safest of safe places could be monitored! I suddenly feel naked in my cubicle knowing that my boss could not only monitor the key strokes of this blog, but also read my thoughts!

whoa whoa, slow down. data overload.

What I am talking about is fMRI. the possibility of being able to construct data collected from the brain in a way that you can actually see what’s going on in there.  Neuroscientists at UCLA and Rutgers University have been working on exactly that.  Turning a cat scan machine into a mental x-ray. How successful they currently are or are not may determine how sound this technology may prove to be in our lifetime. But any success is an indication that it will be one day possible.

Many of you have read the “tweet with your mind” story. I thought it would be cool tell I saw the head dress you would have to wear.  The interesting part to me was that the tech was so accessible that they put it together in a matter of weeks.

How long will it be till I don’t have to type this blog? When I make a mental note, it is actually a pdf note or list that I can go back through later. When the minds of babies can be recorded so we can actually know “what are they thinking?”. When we can download the memories of our loved ones, or not so loved ones and keep them for history. The possibilities are endless.  If you think twitter is big, wait until we have linked data w/o a computer interface. Information could be closer than your fingertips.

Brain Image Reproduction

Starting a few years ago I began to wonder if it would be possible to record what you saw like a video.  Or keep track of all of the great and fleating thoughts that you had throughout the day, without having to write them all down.  What if you could take an image that you created in your imagination and make it come to life without the need to have great fine motor skills.  That would be great for minds like mine which are creative but forgetful and lack some of the skills required to express or recreate your thoughts and ideas.

Apparently research being conducted in japan at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories is working on solving this problem.  As of right now they can only roughly recreate black and white images viewed by a person.  But maybe the ability to read neurotransmisions and rectreate there significance digitally is not an acheivement that should be prefaced with the preposition “Only”.

More info at: Pink Tentacle

Knee Surgery

For family and friends, and anyone else who wants to know, I was struck by a car while riding my bike on September 10th.  On November 18th I underwent surgery to repair my meniscus as well as other damaged cartilage (I do not remember the technical name for the other parts of my knee that had lost cartilage), my ACL was replaced with a donor ligament, and scar tissue was removed from my MCL and other parts of my knee.  I was told that I would most likely need a complete knee replacement later in life if I wished to walk unaided.  I was also informed that I could no longer run as a sport, that running would have to be limited to “life and death” situations.  This was all very disheartening to me, but the good news is that I should be able to continue snowboarding, although if I do I’m sure I will need that knee replacement sooner than I otherwise would.  The following link has a small amount of blood, but shows my knee 24 hrs after surgery for those who wish to see it.  knee.

As of right now I am recovering well, and hope to be healthier than before by the begining of next snowboarding season.

Research Abstract

I recently submitted my first abstract for a materials Conference.  The first conference to which I have submitted the abstract was PACRIM8, hopefully I will still submit the abstract to ACERS and TMS.  below is the current draft of the abstract.  Research as always is continuing and the project develops as time goes on.  Check back for updates, or ask any questions you may have.

Crystallographic Characterization of Rare-Earth Hafnates

Thomas J. Anderson

Dr. Rick Ubic

The nature and degree of disorder in the Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La → Lu) series has never been fully quantified. The purpose of this study is to investigate the structure of such pyrohafnates and specifically to determine the degree of both cation and anion disorder, both of which have implications for ionic conductivity. Towards that end, several lanthanide pyrohafnate compounds, Ln₂Hf₂O₇ (Ln = La, Pr, Nd, Tb, Dy, Yb, and Lu), have been synthesized via a solid-state reaction mechanism. The crystal structures were determined by electron diffraction, and Rietveld structural refinements were conducted using neutron diffraction data collected at the Los Alamos Neutron Science Center. As expected, low-Z lanthanides result in pyrochloric compounds whereas high-Z lanthanides form fully fluoritic ones. Intermediate lanthanides form partially disordered pyrochlores, and some show anionic disorder unconnected to cation disorder. As expected, the fluorite-equivalent cubic lattice constant was found to decrease as Z increases.

Face to face

My freshman year of college (2001), I thought it was weird that people would IM people when they where just down the hall. I quickly found myself doing it realizing that I could talk to everyone on the hall AND pretend to do my homework, and surf the web all at the same time.

One night late at IHOP (2005) I was sitting at a table with a friend, his date and her sister, you can see where this is going. I actually thought the sister was cute, so instead of pretending to go to the bathroom and dragging him along like a couple of middle school girls, I texted him to ask him about her, and if she may be interested, I also asked her sister something of the sort. They both pick up there phones and then I see her pick up her phone, realizing that one of them texted her. within 30 seconds everyone is on there phones texting and I feel like we are in 7th grade passing notes. I couldn’t stand it that long and turn to her and start conversation to end the weird circle of texting.

then when I first met my wife’s family (2006), they are all a bunch of NERDS! I was baffled to find them all one saturday morning in the living room together. I thought oh, how cool, a family that spends time together casually. Then I realized that there where 5 people using 6 computers, and that no one was verbally talking to each other. I sat down and picked up my laptop to check my e-mail, thinking that everyone was busy working on something important. Then my wife IMed me. I wasn’t 6 feet away from her. apparently they were all doing something. but in addition via e-mails and IM’s they where plotting a surprise for her mother while she was in the room. Almost everyone was in on it. The weird part of this communication was that you knew what you said, and what was said to you, but because we weren’t in a chat we had no idea what was being said to mom.

So these are a couple of random stories of my experience of using electronic comunication despite the ability to talk to people face to face. The reason I bring all of this up is because I was in a lecture on the NASA campus where someone explained the trends of human society and claimed that by the time my children (they aren’t born yet) are in college that it will not be in person.

He claimed that people will replace almost all of there face to face duties with electronic equivalents. He went on to discuss how that there are certain jobs that would seem to need a human touch. Obviously doctors are not being replaced, but a piece of equipment can often times do what there skilled hands cannot, and it may not be too long before they are no longer holding the scalpel.

an tangible example he gave was hospice/nursing homes. You may think that the elderly would prefer to talk to someone. In japan a robot was developed to give them there daily medicine, bring them drinks, etc. After a brief period the patients came to prefer the robot to the person. They resented a person for telling them what to do in there current position, but they thought of the robot as more of a helpful pet.

What do you think? will face to face interaction become obsolete. Think about this as you are reading a blog and posting a comment as opposed to sitting down in a meeting discussing it. How many times would you rather conduct business via teleconference, e-mail, text, etc. rather than sitting in a meeting discussing it in person.

Polyimide Foam

I haven’t written hardly all summer, so I thought I would give a quick update on my summer project and what is going on.

So NASA Langely Developed a polyimide foam for use as insulation in naval ships.  It was found that this foam was also a very good sound absober.  It is 95% open cell, but still has a large amount of cellular wall material, or membrain.  The way the foam absorbs sound is by deflecting the sound wave and then by thermal absorption of the energy in the sound wave.  

We have been working on a post production process to make the foam more sound absorbent because although it is sound absorbent and cost effective to manufacture it is not as sound absorbent as the engineered fiberglass that is currently used as sound insulation on airplanes, which is where the foam would be used as a sound absorber.

The research over the summer seems to conclude that we have found a repeatable way of making the foam more absorbent then current fiberglass on the market, but more confirmations still need to be done.  You can look forward to a technical paper on my research within the next couple months.  And then a research paper, hopefully this year. (I don’t have as much influence with that, when anything “officially” comes out of NASA it takes forever.

bigger picture

This is the a microscopic image of the foam partially processed, taken with an HRSEM – “high resolution scanning electron microscope”