Category Archives: Singularity

The Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021 event with Gregory Brown has been cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later date. Inquiries can be sent to Em Lewisatelewis@rocklandmaine.govor 207-594-0310.

The Rockland Public Library presents Gregory Brown, Thursday, August 19, at 6:30 p.m., calling in via Zoom. This event is free and open to all.

Debut Maine author Gregory Brown will discuss and read excerpts from his new novel,The Lowering Days. The novel tackles issues of land ownership, the interactions of protection and stewardship among different communities, our reliance on extractive relationships for industry, and cycles of hurt in families and communities.

Speaking of the book, Richard Russo said, InThe Lowering Days, Gregory Brown gives us a lush, almost mythic portrait of a very specific place and time that feels all the more universal for its singularity. Theres magic here.

An audience Q&A will follow the talk.

Gregory Brown grew up along Penobscot Bay and still lives in Maine with his family. His work often explores the interaction of land and human influence, with a particular interest on social, cultural, and environmental issues. His short fiction has appeared inTin House,The Alaska Quarterly Review,Shenandoah,Epoch, andNarrative Magazine, where he was a winner of the 30Below Prize. He is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Sewanee Writers Conference, and the Napa Valley Writers Conference.

He is a graduate of Columbia University, where he studied journalism, and the Iowa Writers Workshop, where he studied fiction writing.The Lowering Daysis his first novel.

The Zoom call will be shown on the projector in the librarys Community Room, with limited seating. For a link to the Zoom event to watch from home, please emailelewis@rocklandmaine.govby 4 p.m. on August 19, and identify the event you are interested in attending in the subject line.

More here:

CANCELED: Maine author talk with Gregory Brown hosted by Rockland library - PenBayPilot.com

This logarithmic view of the Universe shows our solar system, the galaxy, the cosmic web, and the ... [+] limits of what's observable out to a distance of 46.1 billion light-years away. This view is only accessible to us today, 13.8 billion years after the start of the hot Big Bang. As we run the clock backwards, the Universe gets smaller, but there is a limit.

Today, when you look out in any direction as far as the laws of physics allow us to see, the limits of whats observable extend to truly astronomical distances. At the farthest reaches of our observable limits, the most ancient light we can see was emitted a whopping 13.8 billion years ago: corresponding to the hot Big Bang itself. Today, after traveling through our expanding Universe, that light finally arrives here on Earth, carrying information about objects that are presently located some 46.1 billion light-years away. Its only due to the expanding fabric of space that the most ancient light we can see corresponds to distances that exceed 13.8 billion light-years.

As time continues to march forward, well be able to see even farther away, as light thats still on its way eventually reaches us. Nonetheless, at any given time, theres a limit to how far away we can see: a limit to the observable Universe. This also means that if we went back to any point in the distant past, our Universe would also have a finite, quantifiable size: smaller than it is today, dependent on how much time has passed since the hot Big Bang.

But what if we went all the way back: back to the very beginning, and the very first moment of the hot Big Bang itself? Surprisingly, it doesnt give us a singularity, where the Universe reaches infinite densities and temperatures at an infinitesimal size. Instead, theres a limit: a smallest possible size that the Universe could have had. Heres why that limit exists, and how we can figure out the minimum size of the early Universe.

This image shows a slice of the matter distribution in the Universe as simulated by the GiggleZ ... [+] complement to the WiggleZ survey. The large-scale structure of the Universe grew from a more uniform, hotter, denser state, and only occurred as the Universe gravitated, expanded and cooled.

In our Universe, if we want to know anything about either what it will do in the future or what it was doing in the past, we need to understand the rules and laws that govern it. For the Universe, and in particular for how the fabric of the Universe evolves with time, those rules are set forth by our theory of gravity: Einsteins General Relativity. If you can tell Einsteins equations what all the different types of matter and energy in the Universe are, and how they move and evolve over time, those same equations can tell you how space will curve and evolve including by expanding or contracting at any point in the past or future.

The Universe we have is not only governed by Einsteins General Relativity, but a special case of it: where the Universe is both:

If the Universe is the same in terms of matter-and-energy in all places and in all directions, then we can derive a Universe that must either expand or contract. This solution was first derived by Alexander Friedmann and is known as the Friedmann-Lematre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) metric, and the equations that govern the expansion (or contraction) are known as the Friedmann equations.

While matter (both normal and dark) and radiation become less dense as the Universe expands owing to ... [+] its increasing volume, dark energy, and also the field energy during inflation, is a form of energy inherent to space itself. As new space gets created in the expanding Universe, the dark energy density remains constant.

If you can measure or determine whats in your Universe, then these equations will tell you all about your Universes properties in both the past and the future. Just by knowing, today, what makes up your Universe and what the expansion rate is right now, you can determine:

among many other properties.

We can do this as long as the types of energy in the Universe remain constant: as long as you dont convert one form of energy (like matter) into another form of energy (like radiation) that obeys a different set of rules as the Universe expands. To understand what the Universe did in the distant past or will do in the future, we have to understand not only how every individual component evolves with time and scale, but to understand when and under what circumstances these different components transform into one another.

Here in our Universe, based on what's in it today and how fast the Universe is presently expanding, ... [+] we can determine how much of the Universe was dominated by any different form of energy we care to look at: normal matter, dark matter, dark energy, neutrinos, and radiation. All five forms are present, but different components dominate at different times.

Today, the Universe, as we measure it, is made up of the following forms of energy in the following amounts.

For most of the Universes history, these have been the only five components that mattered. They are all present today, and they were all present at least, we think they were all present right from the start of the hot Big Bang. When we go back as far as we know how to go, everything is consistent with this idea.

The stars and galaxies we see today didn't always exist, and the farther back we go, the closer to ... [+] an apparent singularity the Universe gets, as we go to hotter, denser, and more uniform states. However, there is a limit to that extrapolation, as going all the way back to a singularity creates puzzles we cannot answer.

But can we go back arbitrarily far? All the way back to a singularity?

If the Universe were always filled with matter or radiation, that would be exactly what were able to do. Wed go back to a single point of infinite density, infinite temperature, of space having an infinitesimally small size, of a time that corresponded to zero, and where the laws of physics broke down. There would be no limit to how far back you could run your equations, or how far you could extrapolate this line of thinking.

But if the Universe emerged from a singular high-energy state like that, there would have been consequences for our Universe: consequences that run counter to what we actually observe. One of them is that the temperature fluctuations in the Big Bangs leftover glow what we see today as the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation would have been as large as the ratio of the maximum energy achieved to the Planck scale, the latter of which is around ~1019 GeV in terms of energy. The fact that the fluctuations are much, much smaller than that, by about a factor of ~30,000, tells us that the Universe could not have been born arbitrarily hot.

The large, medium and small-scale fluctuations from the inflationary period of the early Universe ... [+] determine the hot and cold (underdense and overdense) spots in the Big Bang's leftover glow. These fluctuations, which get stretched across the Universe in inflation, should be of a slightly different magnitude on small scales versus large ones.

In fact, from detailed measurements of both the temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background and the polarization measurements of that same radiation, we can conclude that the maximum temperature the Universe achieved during the hottest part of the hot Big Bang was, at most, somewhere around ~1015 GeV in terms of energy. There must have been a cutoff to how far back we can extrapolate that our Universe was filled with matter-and-radiation, and instead there must have been a phase of the Universe that preceded and set up the hot Big Bang.

That phase was theorized back in the early 1980s, before these details of the cosmic microwave background were ever measured, and is known as cosmic inflation. According to the theory of inflation, the Universe:

which triggered and began the hot Big Bang.

The analogy of a ball sliding over a high surface is when inflation persists, while the structure ... [+] crumbling and releasing energy represents the conversion of energy into particles, which occurs at the end of inflation. This transformation from inflationary energy into matter and radiation represents an abrupt change in the expansion and properties of the Universe.

So, how hot did the Universe get at the hottest part of the hot Big Bang? If we can answer that question, we can learn how far back we can extrapolate the Universe we have today, and can learn what its minimum size as close as we can get to the birth of what we know as our Universe must have been. Fortunately, theres a straightforward relationship between how early we go in the early Universe and how hot the Universe could have gotten in its earliest, radiation-dominated phase.

Starting from today, with our Universe that contains dark energy, dark matter, normal matter, neutrinos, and radiation, we can begin by running the clock backwards. What we'll find is that, today, the Universe is transitioning to a phase where it expands exponentially, and where distances between objects will grow without bound. But earlier, the Universe was dominated by matter, where it grew at a particular rate, and even before that, it was dominated by radiation, where it grew at still a different rate. We can even plot this out: given how much time occurred since the hot Big Bang, how large was the size of the observable Universe?

The size of the Universe (y-axis) versus the age of the Universe (x-axis) on logarithmic scales. ... [+] Some size and time milestones are marked, as appropriate. One can continue to extrapolate this forwards and backwards in time, but only so long as the components of energy that exist today didn't have transitional points.

As you can see, there are a series of remarkable milestones. Today, 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, the Universe is 46.1 billion light-years in radius in all directions from our vantage point. Stepping backwards:

And yet, theres a cutoff to how far back we can go in time, which corresponds to the highest temperature the Universe could have ever reached.

The contribution of gravitational waves left over from inflation to the B-mode polarization of the ... [+] Cosmic Microwave background has a known shape, but its amplitude is dependent on the specific model of inflation. These B-modes from gravitational waves from inflation have not yet been observed, but the upper limits on their magnitude allow us to place constraints on the maximum temperature achieved during the hot Big Bang.

If you allow your Universe to get too hot, early on, you would see that it created an energetic spectrum of gravitational waves. You dont need an observatory like LIGO to see it; it would imprint itself in the polarization signal on the cosmic microwave background. The tighter our limits become i.e., the longer we go without detecting gravitational waves from the early Universe and the more stringently we can constrain their presence the lower that means the hottest temperature could have been.

About 15 years ago, we could only constrain the energy-equivalent of that temperature to be about 4 1016 GeV, but subsequent superior measurements have lowered that value substantially. Today, we can say that the Universe got no hotter, at the hottest part of the hot Big Bang, than about ~1015 GeV in terms of energy. That places a cutoff on how far you can extrapolate the hot Big Bang backwards: to a time of ~10-35 seconds and a distance scale of ~1.5 meters. The Universe, at the earliest stages we can ascribe a size to it, could have been no smaller than roughly the size of a human being. This is a tremendous and recent improvement by about a factor of ten over a decade ago, when we would have said no smaller than a soccer ball instead.

(It could still have been much larger, like the size of a city block or even a small city, for example. The Universe certainly got much hotter than it ever gets at the Large Hadron Collider, which only reaches ~104 GeV, but those upper size-limit constraints have a lot of flexibility.)

Hospital Corpsmen 3rd Class Tarren C. Windham kicks a soccer ball with an Iraqi child. That soccer ... [+] ball, ten years ago, represented approximately the minimum size that the Universe was at the moment of its birth. Today, it's approximately the size of the child in the photo, as the bounds have shifted due to improved observational constraints.

No matter how tempting it may be to think that the Universe arose from a singular point of infinite temperature and density, and that all of space and time emerged from that starting point, we cannot responsibly make that extrapolation and still be consistent with the observations that weve made. We can only run the clock back a certain, finite amount until the story changes, with todays observable Universe and all the matter and energy within it allowed to be no smaller than the wingspan of a typical human teenager. Any smaller than that, and wed see fluctuations in the Big Bangs leftover glow that simply arent there.

Before the hot Big Bang, our Universe was dominated by energy inherent to space, or to the field that drives cosmic inflation, and we have no idea how long inflation lasted for or what set up and caused it, if anything. By its very nature, inflation wipes our Universe clean of any information that came before it, imprinting only the signals from inflations final fractions-of-a-second onto our observable Universe today. To some, thats a bug, demanding an explanation all its own. But to others, this is a feature that highlights the fundamental limits of not only whats known, but whats knowable. Listening to the Universe, and what it tells us about itself, is in many ways the most humbling experience of all.

Visit link:

How Small Was The Universe At The Start Of The Big Bang? - Forbes

The supermassive black holes They are generally found at a fixed location at the center of galaxies. However, it happens that some of these cosmic monsters tramp in the universe.

Observing and determining the size of supermassive black holes is not impossible, but it is still very difficult. A team of researchers from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has relied on a new set of simulations to determine the number of massive gravitational singularities roaming the universe. The study findings may have important implications for understanding the formation and development of supermassive black holes.

The mass of the TNSM (Supermassive Black Hole) is somewhat proportional to the mass of the surrounding galactic bulge. This suggests a link between the developments of the singularity and the galaxy.

Read also: This funny supermassive black hole is spinning at 177,000 km/h

TNSM is a different phenomenon from a simple black hole. The two objects operate according to different logic, and therefore are not born the same way. A stellar-mass black hole forms from the collapse of the core of a massive star. However, the mechanism does not explain the existence of supermassive gravitational singularities that are 55 times the mass of the Sun.

TNSM will be the result of accretion of stars, gas and dust, and mergers with other black holes. This set of processes can be amplified at the level of galactic nuclei, especially in the event of a collision between galaxies. However, the time scale in the universe is very different from our time scale. A galaxy collision can take a long time. This provides a potential window for integration disorder. The process can be delayed or even prevented altogether. Wandering supermassive black holes can arise in this way.

Read also: What if Planet Nine was a small black hole?

The Romulus Cosmic Simulator at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics has been called to calculate the number of galactic collisions that may have occurred in the universe. By doing so, the astronomers wanted to know how many TNSMs roaming the universe. Galaxies similar in mass to the Milky Way host an average of 12 supermassive black holes, which are typically found on the periphery of the galactic halo and far from the center. , note the research authors. Note that an article detailing the new study was published in the Journal of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society last March.

In the early universe, about two billion years after the Big Bang, Romulus showed that the wandering TNSM was more numerous and brighter than the supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies. This means that massive wandering singularities will produce most of the light we can observe around TNSMs from galactic cores.

Unapologetic pop culture trailblazer. Freelance troublemaker. Food guru. Alcohol fanatic. Gamer. Explorer. Thinker.

See the original post here:

There are supermassive black holes roaming the universe - Persia Digest

CRISPR gene editing has had a big decade. The technology, which earned two of its discovers a Nobel Prize in 2020, can target and edit genes more easily than its predecessors. Still, as tantalizing (and controversial) as the technologys been over the years, its mostly been developed in the lab.

Thats changing now as a growing number of clinical trials are beginning to test gene therapies in humans.

Early CRISPR trials have focused on hereditary blindness and diseases of the blood, including cancer, sickle cell anemia, and beta thalassemia.

Although cutting-edge, the therapies can be costly and intense. In one trial for sickle cell anemia, doctors remove cells from the body, edit them in a dish, and then infuse them back into the patient. In another trial, practitioners inject the gene editing system directly into target tissues in the eye.

Such approaches wont work as readily for other diseases. So researchers and doctors are looking for a general delivery method, like any other medication. Now, a clinical trial from University College London (UCL) has taken a step in that direction.

Participants in the trial suffer from a condition called hereditary transthyretin amyloidosis, in which a mutated gene produces a malformed protein (transthyretin) that builds up in and damages the heart and nerves. The disease is eventually fatal.

Patients received a single infusion of a CRISPR-based therapy into their bloodstream. Blood carried the therapy to the liver, where it switched off the mutated gene and curtailed production of the errant protein. Though the Phase 1 trial was small, the approach had strong results relative to existing options. And it hints at the possibility other genetic diseases may be treated in a similar fashion in the future.

The University of California, Berkeleys Jennifer Doudna, who shared the Nobel Prize for CRISPR, cofounded Intellia, the company that, alongside fellow biotech company Regeneron, developed the treatment (NTLA-2001) used in the UCL trial.

This is a major milestone for patients, Doudna said. While these are early data, they show us that we can overcome one of the biggest challenges with applying CRISPR clinically so far, which is being able to deliver it systemically and get it to the right place.

The therapy is made up of three parts. A tiny bubble of fat, called a lipid nanoparticle, carries a payload of CRISPR machinery: a strand of guide RNA and a sequence of mRNA coding for the Cas9 protein.

Billions of these CRISPR-carrying nanoparticles are infused into the bloodstream, making their way to the liver, the source of the dysfunctional protein. The mRNA instructs the cells to produce the Cas9 protein (CRISPRs genetic scissors) which then links up with the guide RNA, seeks out the target gene, and snips it.

The cell repairs the DNA at the site of the break, but imperfectly, switching the gene off and shutting down production of the problematic protein.

Interim trial results, reported in the New England Journal of Medicine last weekend, were very encouraging. The trials six patients, who received either a low or high dose, reported no serious side effects. Meanwhile, production of the target protein declined by up to 96 percent (and an average of 87 percent) in those given the high dose.

The disease, which affects some 50,000 people worldwide, was untreatable until recently.

Existing drugs, approved by the FDA in 2018, silence the mRNA that produces the malformed thyretin protein, instead of altering its gene. They reduce protein production some 80 percent and keep people alive longer, but dont work for everyone and require ongoing treatment.

The CRISPR approach, if successful, would be a one-time treatment. That is, by targeting the genes themselves, the protein is permanently silenced.

Patrick Doherty, a trial participant, told NPR he jumped at the opportunity.

Doherty, an avid trekker and hiker, was diagnosed with transthyretin amyloidosiswhich had killed his fatherafter noticing symptoms, like tingling fingers and toes and breathlessness on walks.

Its [a] terrible prognosis, he said. This is a condition that deteriorates very rapidly. Its just dreadful.

Doherty started feeling better a few weeks after the treatment and said improvements have continued.

A one-hit wonder, he called it. A two-hour process, and thats it for the rest of your life.

Although the results are promising, theres reason to temper expectations.

The trial, as noted was small, and focused on safety. Future work will further test safety and efficacy in larger groups, whichas is apparent from recent experience with covidcan reveal rare side effects or prove disappointing despite early success.

Researchers will likely also look out for off-target snips in the liver or other cells. A benefit of this approach, however, is the cells break down the mRNA after theyve made the Cas9 protein. In other words, the gene-editing system doesnt persist long.

It also remains to be seen whether the approach would work as well in other diseases. The liver was a prime target for the trial because it greedily soaks up foreign substances. Other organs and tissues may not be as amenable to a general infusion of the therapy.

Finally, the treatment may come with a hefty price tag, perhaps running into the hundreds of thousands of dollars according to Bloomergs Sam Fazeli.

Not one person in my field is doing a victory lap, even around their laboratory bench,Fyodor Urnov, a University of California, Berkeley gene editing expert, told US Today. Were all slightly blue because were all holding our breath.

If the trial does prove successful, however, researchers will want to know if they can reach any organ or target tissue with a general infusion. And can genes also be edited in vivo? Instead of merely knocking out a faulty gene, can we safely correct it?

In the future, when the kinks have been worked out and the science more thoroughly proven, Urnov said, gene editing could help millions of people around the world with genetic conditions. And this trial, it seems, is a notable step in that direction.

Image Credit: NIH

Read the original here:

Breakthrough CRISPR Gene Therapy Could Be a 'One and Done' Injection - Singularity Hub

Monday Philips Ekpe

I accepted this role for three major reasons. First, the author is well known to me as someone who is focused, passionate and thorough. Second, even though this book is largely set in the Nigeria of 2006, its thematic immediacy or relevance is clearly not in doubt. And, third, having spent over three decades working in the media and also now teaching same, I humbly say that I am very much at home with the contents.

Prefaced with quotations from the eternal words of Jesus Christ and one of the enduring expressions of the 17th Century English thinker, Thomas Hobbes, The Singularity Clause makes no pretence about the rationale for its presentations, arguments and submissions. In one breath, the reader sees divine guidance and dictates in the affairs of mortals. At the same time, he or she like Hobbes is bound to make enquiries that relate to the real reasons for governments, their indispensability or otherwise to our corporate survival, the appropriate modes of interactions and transactions between governments and the populace, the true source of authority, and the very essence of political power.

Sincerely, the first time I saw the title of this book, my mind went to syntax, the branch of linguistics which bothers itself with how words are brought together to construct excellent phrases, clauses and sentences. Remember what your primary school teacher taught you about singular nouns, how they must go with fitting verbs for a clause or sentence to make sense? Luckily, two dictionary definitions of singularity came to my rescue. One: unusual or distinctive manner or behaviour (peculiarity). Two: a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. The latter depiction of the word, singularity, especially, is indeed ominous.

If you are eager to further break down the singularity riddle, you may go straight to Chapter 4 of Book One, The Quest for Power. And just in case you need a whetting of your appetite, listen to this statement by, you guessed right, Nicolo Machiavelli in his classic, The Prince, as captured in this section. According to him, The prince ought to read history and study the actions of eminent men, see how they acted in warfare, examine the causes of their victories and defeats in order to imitate the former and avoid the latter. A noble counsel, you may say, but then how many Nigerian leaders at all levels of government today are sober enough to engage themselves with such non-mundane matters? What we see oftentimes are men and women in official positions who act as if the future does not exist; as if they hold special keys that determine fate; as if the privileges of the moment will never end; as if they can decide what the people would do with their bungled legacies tomorrow. In short, as if they have received assurances from the Almighty that they will escape from the consequences of deliberate abuse of public trust.

Thankfully, however, the writers intention is not to frighten his readers or paint a picture of despair and irredeemable collective destruction. Rather, he provides in lucid language, informed accounts of some events that threatened the very foundations of the then nascent Nigerian democracy, notably the failed efforts of former President Olusegun Obasanjo to prolong his stay in office.

The core strengths of this treatise include adequate illustrations from the various parts of the country, spotlight on equally nationally spread personalities, painstakingly researched facts, appropriately acknowledged referencing, and well blended and applied quotes. Above all, this book is written in liquid prose instead of the rigid style that subject matters of this nature are often presented in. All these attributes make The Singularity Clause a compelling read. A fast reader can actually be through with the 105-page publication in one or two hours. In a world that is increasingly a victim of self-inflicted rush, the brevity and compact expressiveness demonstrated here are, in my opinion, among its key selling points.

The ten chapters here, each with a catchy title, are concise and frank. The Human Society that opens the book draws its validity from the creation story as recorded in the Holy Bible. Nigerias perennial monster called corruption appears here alongside a domineering figure in the Book of Genesis named Nimrod. The Need for Good Governance looks at what critics label as the fallacy upon which our constitution stands, that is, We the people Dr. Enyioko is of the view that irresponsible or incompetent administrations inevitably breed chaos. Most parts of the country are now theatres of fear or violence or both.

But while the present government should not bear the whole blame for this season of anomie, excuses are also not acceptable at this point. Calls for separation are growing louder and the author seems to directly address the ethic agitators in our midst. As he puts it, For the pro-balkanization groups, there are no agreed lines on how to split Nigeria. Some would prefer a rip along religious lines, while others along ethnic or economically homogenous lines. This hope would be kept alive from generation to generation without realization for the pro-dismemberment groups, and simultaneously forge a close band of unity in the majority of citizens, who have come to see a great strength in the dictum, unity in diversity. Lovers of One Nigeria may now shout, Amen! Those words written many years ago have become even more critical now.

Democratic Institutions starts with 10 rhetorical questions and proceeds to matters relating to constitutional amendment. The Essence of Party Politics presents a historical run from pre-independence Nigeria to contemporary times. Readers can also obtain useful information about the functions of political parties. Ideology in Perspective begins with five profound rhetorical questions and moves on to shed light on Dr. Enyiokos conviction that any politics rooted in ideologies naturally proceeds with the productive involvement of the citizenry. He is certain that when the people participate fully on the basis of their political philosophies, in his words, The epoch of charlatans, political nitwits and vampires involvement in politics strictly for what they would get out of the system, would be gone forever. This sounds like a very tall dream to me. The poser is, when will that day come? At the moment, from what the eyes of most Nigerians can see, it will take a miracle to achieve a reversal of the current downward spiral of the moral fabric of our longsuffering polity.

The chapter titled, Funding provides an insight into legitimate and surer ways political parties can fund their programmes and also thrive. Electoral Umpire x-rays the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) which was led by Prof. Maurice Iwu at the time. The Electorate visualises the power possessed by the voting public beyond balloting. The writer thinks that even after elections, people can force the government to address their grievances through protests, for instance. The role of Transnational Corporation of Nigeria PLC (Transcorp) in Obasanjos plot for a third term in power also appears here. Against decorum, good judgement and the codes of the private sector, some of its leading actors listed in this section pulled their clouts and resources together in support of the inglorious agenda. Similarly, there is a roll call of the National Assembly members belonging to the 2007 Movement who withstood that conspiracy.

The last chapter, aptly captioned Profiling Result Oriented Politicians, is garnished with quotes from Robert Greenes The 48 Laws of Power. It is the authors hall of national models that parades former governors, senators, other politicians, technocrats and business titans. I wonder if Dr. Enyioko is still proud of all of them 15 years after.

My little quarrel with this book borders on the structure. Two quick examples will suffice. One, I do not see the need to further break this modest volume into three books. If the author had allowed the work to flow as a long essay, the purpose would still have been accomplished. This particular exercise is, therefore, at best, redundant. Two, after earning a place on the front cover, The Transcorp Phenomenon is brutally buried in Chapter Five of Book Two and denied a well-deserved prominence. That is unfair.

I must quickly add that none of these perceived flaws robs The Singularity Clause of its importance and pertinence. At a time when centrifugal forces are on the loose in our beloved country, nationalist efforts like this one should be appreciated and promoted.

The author is precise about his mission as declared in the Introduction: The Singularity Clause is a compass to help politicians navigate through the murky waters of Nigerian politics. It is a self-help manual that will arm its readers with the requisite theoretical knowledge and practical experience needed to compete robustly. I believe he has kept faith with that goal.

Dr Ekpe read this review of the book, The Singularity Clause: Obasanjos 3rd Term, the Transcorp Phenomenon & Deep Political Discourse, written by Dr. Elvis C. Enyioko, at Merit House, Maitama, Abuja, on June 24, 2021

Like Loading...

Continue reading here:

A COMPASS FOR THE MURKY WATERS OF POLITICS - THISDAY Newspapers

This was sent tothe Board of Education and the superintendent of schools, East Lyme Public Schools.

I'm a retired educator. I was a teacher, NYC,Hartford, Director of Pupil Services, Assistant Superintendent, West Hartford Public Schools, Interim Superintendent ,Hartford ,Waterbury and Bloomfield.

I was out of town in April when you approved your "Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Strategic Plan." I just recently received a copy and am quite dismayed.

You cite your core values as countering racism, advancing diversity, promoting equity and fostering inclusion. You plan to use DEI teams to achieve these goals.

As I read the document my eye was drawn to one of the glossary terms, Multiculturalism. "Multiculturalism within individuals is the degree to which they know, identify with and internalize more than one culture." That should be your end game.That is E Pluribus Unum. That is unity and the singularity of humanity that is Martin Luther King Jr.'s way.

The methodologies proposed therein will not lead to multiculturalism. Rather, they will lead to races being separate but equal. They dictate that we must have a member of each cohort represented because only that person can identify and represent that group. That's not multiculturalism; and who is that single person who is like all those in that diverse cohort?

The Constitutional protections that you must endow on all children are Equal Opportunity and Equal Treatment. Are these a problem in East Lyme? Do you believe you'regoing to find that we are exclusive and that we treat children inappropriately because of race, creed or color?

You have a second major goal to "develop students' capacity as independent thinkers."

Given the direction you're going in, part of the instruction will include demonizing the white race and the democratic process, under the heading of "white supremacy." How do you expect to get to unity through blame, based on questionable data? Are you willing to trade Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Redemption" for "Reparations"? When you deal with equity in the classroom, what will you do when the argument is made that as long as there are children who are not on goal that you cannot offer AP courses because it's giving more to the privileged few?

The arguments made by this group have their underpinnings starting in the '70s by the Black Panther Movement, the Critical Race Theorists movement by the Nationalist movement and, more recently, BLM. All of these groups have based their positions on anger and resentment and called for the separation of the races. At the last board meeting I shared with you direct quotes showing this animus.

I plead with you, don't go forward with this process. You are in loco parentis from 9 to 3, at such time all of our children become your children. The decisions you make in this area are not just as Board members, they are as parents. Please pause, be absolutely sure you understand not only the rock going into the water but the ripples that will hit the shores of this community and country. You need to be sure that you believe that this is what you would teach your child in your home and that you would expect your church to teach. As an educator and a parent, I can't believe that you wouldchoose separate but equal, rather than we are all God's children. That we are not all personally responsible for our actions. That we can hide behind a global term called race as the factor that defines us.

I beg you, please rethink your position on this matter, pause, be sure you know everything you need to know before moving forward on this course.

Matthew Borrelli resides in Niantic.

Read the rest here:

Pause and beware of 'separate but equal' - News from southeastern Connecticut - theday.com

Maybe I should start again? I've fudged it.

I got off to a great start though. I switched Earth to an entirely plant-based diet and felt very happy with myself, but then I sort of let a nuclear war wipe half the population out. I went a bit Thanos. And then, whoops, I thought I'd see what happened if I let a vicious group of people unleash a virus on what was left of the world, and well, total extinction apparently.

Shame! Alien contact was just around the corner. The prun horse-people, more advanced than the humans, were already on their way. But when they arrived there were no humans there to meet. How embarrassing! Mind you it's probably for the best. We'd probably have tried to put saddles on them.

Don't panic, I'm not really in charge of Earth. Can you imagine? Vegan burgers and nuclear war. No, no, I'm not in charge of Earth.

I'm actually in charge of the galaxy!

I'm some kind of benevolent god-thing in a game called The Fermi Paradox. It's my job to interfere, which I love, in the development of various civilisations around the galaxy. There are loads of them, not just humans. I've had strange worm-people; dinosaur-people; horse-people; even a kind of overgrown evil butterfly-people. They were a bad sort though so I, um, cashed them in.

And by "cashed" I mean "made extinct", but hear me out! It was a pretty bad situation. I was either going to lose 90 percent of the population and not get anything for it, or I could lose them all and get something for it. And the "something" I wanted was Synthesis.

Synthesis is gold in the game. It is the game's currency, the game's resource, and therefore the game's limiter. What you can choose for a civilisation to do at a major development point in their history depends on how much Synthesis you have. Take switching to a plant-based diet for example: it's a big move! It's a big, positive move, and these are usually the ones that require a lot of Synthesis to push through. And you don't come by a lot of Synthesis easily.

Synthesis is generated each kind of turn. An amount of time elapses (it never really says how long) between these turns, and then things that look like dandelion heads appear on your map of the galaxy (or solar system). They are Synthesis points, and when you click on one, it banks it, telling you a bit of story relevant to the star system you're near in the process. Banking Synthesis this way earns you one point per turn, so when you consider some of the biggest choices, like world peace, can cost upwards of 50 Synthesis, you begin to appreciate how pricey these decisions can be.

You can earn Synthesis in bulk, though. You can earn it for making horrid decisions like letting an entire civilisation die. I got 40 Synthesis for wiping out those butterfly people, and for letting the humans die - real earners! And those points I used elsewhere. Sacrificing a civilisation for another one's gain, then, is a genuine tactic in the game. Think about it like the dinosaurs being wiped out. That was the galaxy-god banking a bit of Synthesis for the humans! What? We can always build Jurassic Park down the line!

Those big-spends are the game's big moments, presented as multiple-choice dilemmas when development milestones occur. Of the three choices, usually one costs a lot of Synthesis (the best option), one costs nothing (the OK option), and one earns you a lump of Synthesis (the horrid option). These decisions also have icons next to them which represent the effect they will have on a handful of important gauges. These are technological development, population, resource scarcity, potential war casualties, and utopia/dystopia.

These gauges are always moving as time elapses, but you can bump them one way or another either during the big development moments, or turn-to-turn by picking Synthesis points with their relevant icons on (and in either positive or negative form). Pick a negative population Synthesis and maybe your civilisation develops and distributes contraception, for example.

To recap a bit: each turn you'll choose between banking a Synthesis point, or picking a Synthesis with an icon on to affect a gauge in some way (and not bank the point). Then, at various milestones (fill the technological development gauge and you will enter a new era) you'll make big decisions.

It's a fascinating idea, in no small part because many of the dilemmas you face are pertinent to the situation our own civilisation is in right now: challenges like inequality, climate change, conflict, and more. Solving them in one fell swoop is incredibly empowering. But there are further-reaching ideas, too, things like space exploration and beyond. I don't know what happens when civilisations collide, because I haven't got that far yet, but that's definitely where the game is headed. The goal is to get four separate civilisations to the Singularity Age. I haven't managed it with one.

What I hope this Early Access process brings, besides needed polish and some presentation flair (it's a bit functional, a bit still - there's not much animation - and a bit sluggish to respond) is more imagination. It's not necessarily lacking at the moment but it's limited, both in the amount of situations there are to challenge civilisations with, and the humanness of them. By that I mean the situations predominantly seem to be ones a human civilisation has faced or will face. Are they really applicable to all developed species in a galaxy? I know it's tricky to think outside of that box, given we are human, but I would love The Fermi Paradox to try.

Appropriately, though, there's time. And I am excited by the recent announcement that Vampire: The Masquerade - Bloodlines 2 writers Brian Mitsoda and Cara Ellison will join the project. They are certainly imaginative, and presumably they will help the game do exactly that: think differently. If they can, The Fermi Paradox could be great.

Read more:

Oops I let the humans die: being god of the galaxy in The Fermi Paradox is tricky - Eurogamer.net

PASTELS AND PEDOPHILES Inside the Mind of QAnonBy Mia Bloom and Sophie Moskalenko

A cult. A singularity. An amorphous blob. These are just a few ways researchers have described QAnon, the baseless conspiracy theory that has morphed into a movement so robust that two acolytes now hold seats in Congress and dozens if not hundreds more participated in the Jan. 6 insurrection. While frustrating for people in the business of using words to convey precise meaning, the fact that QAnon defies easy definition is exactly what makes it so powerful.

A recent poll found that 15 percent of Americans believe there is a cabal of liberal elites who worship Satan and traffic children for sex and blood. This is QAnons core tenet, but the movement contains multitudes. Adherents believe Donald J. Trump is battling the cabal, which, depending on whom you ask, may or may not comprise members of a reptilian alien race disguised as humans. Many followers also embrace conspiracy theories about Covid-19, Black Lives Matter, vaccines and the death of John F. Kennedy Jr. Skepticism and bigotry unite these disparate theories; authority, expertise and otherness are always suspect.

In Pastels and Pedophiles, Mia Bloom and Sophie Moskalenko, both experts on extremist radicalism, offer their own description of this bizarre new feature of American life. We consider QAnon to be like a sticky ball, rolling down a hill, they write. It picks up other conspiracies and their supporters along the way growing ever larger over time. Believers can cherry-pick ideas to suit their needs.

Bloom and Moskalenko seek to understand why people believe QAnons outlandish notions in defiance of all knowledge and reason. Pastels and Pedophiles is at its strongest when it drills down on this front, showing that QAnon offers people a false sense of agency and community in an uncertain world. Believers collectively analyze crumbs of cryptic information. The outcome of this deciphering is preordained, but thats not the point: When they reach conclusions, followers feel smart, superior and united. Particularly for people who are lonely or disenchanted with their lives, the emotional benefit of believing in QAnon is arguably more important than the dogma itself. The same goes for people introduced to QAnon through the hashtag #SavetheChildren, which the movement co-opted in 2020. New supporters were told that spreading a message about the threat of pedophilia made them righteous crusaders.

Where Pastels and Pedophiles stumbles is on matters of race and gender. The authors dance around the intersections of QAnon and white supremacy, never tackling them in earnest. They note that most QAnon believers arrested for storming the Capitol came from battleground states, but they dont discuss how racial identity may have informed the participants psychological distress over changing culture and eroding social norms. (The Jan. 6 insurrectionists were overwhelmingly white.) Meanwhile, the authors paint a terrifying picture of how suburban white women have pulled QAnon from the internets shadowy corners into pastel-hued Instagram squares but their description of what motivates QAmoms is underdeveloped. They suggest some combination of innate altruism and motherly instincts, along with a desire to make social activism easy: Women who did not feel comfortable with political topics like Black Lives Matter could engage with strangers online without triggering uncomfortable exchanges. Who would object to saving the children? But for many women, the children in question arent literal they are a symbol, a disembodied idea of innocence and goodness. The book leaves dangling threads about white womens self-interest masquerading as selflessness; the weaponization of their comfort; and what QAmoms notion of innocence and goodness might really mean.

Pastels and Pedophiles is a primer on one of the knottiest subjects of our time, and it will surely be helpful to uninitiated readers. But the sticky ball whose roll is shaking America has complex engineering. Only with a complete blueprint can we hope to combat it.

Go here to read the rest:

Confronting the Threat of QAnon - The New York Times

The Standard Model of the birth of the Universe is usually referred to as the Big Bang. Essentially, everything in existence expanded out of an infinitesimally small point, called a Singularity, with unfathomable energy. From that beginning the Universe, as we know it, exploded into being following the natural laws of Nature. When and how did scientists come up with that idea?

Based on their imaginations and physical environments, people in myriad cultures and religions and philosophies throughout history invented various creative explanations for how the Universe began. Is the current science based explanation any different and if so how?

That the Universe began from a singularity is a relatively new deduction. Since the time when scientists began to speculate on what the environment beyond Earth really was, they postulated the Universe was in a Steady State or Static State, existing from infinity past to infinity future and not changing in any dramatic way. It was Edwin Hubble in 1929 who was first to notice an odd aspect to distant galaxies. The light from those distant galaxies (there are billions of galaxies each composed of billions of stars which Hubble is also credited with unveiling) was shifted toward the red end of the spectrum. This solid science indicates the light source is moving away from us, and the greater the shift, the faster the object is receding and the farther away it is.

Since that initial realization, astrophysicists and astronomers have fine-tuned the measurements of this phenomena until there is no doubt that nearly all galaxies are moving away from each other in ever increasing velocity as if in the aftermath of an explosion. If we run the clock backwards in time, the closer the galaxies are to each other until reaching the time when everything was compressed into a point of infinite energy. (What about solid stuff like atoms? They are bits of compressed energy as Einstein showed and nuclear weapons prove.)

The evidence for the Standard Model is substantial, but it is not perfect. In order for the Universe to begin that way, the equations indicate there had to have been a period of time very early on, which astrophysics call Inflation, when the Universe was expanding faster than the speed of light. Yet this violates the current understanding of the laws of Nature. And the current mathematical equations fail to describe what conditions were like at time zero.

Before Einsteins revolutionary E=MC2, scientists thought that space contained some sort of tangible substance they called ether. Part of their reasoning was that waves like water or sound waves require something to move through. Water waves require water and sound waves require a substance like air. But if there was nothing in space (a vacuum), then they believed light could not traverse it because light also acts like a wave. Without getting too technical, Einsteins breakthrough eliminated the need for a substance in space because light can also act like particles and can pass through a vacuum.

It is important to note that scientists generally accept the Standard Model because, even though it has issues, the evidence for it is substantial. But is there any other possibility? The following is one other, but in order for it to work we have to rejuvenate the ether that was rejected after Einsteins work. But this ether is not a substance as we think of a substance but rather merely an underlying condition of probabilities, which we can call a field for simplicity sake. In this view, the entire Universe did not start from a massive expansion from an infinitely small point, but from a tiny fluctuation in this field of probabilities, something like a seed planted in a field of soil. So from and within this field, then, this tiny fluctuation grew exponentially gaining energy and eventually expanding outward into the Universe, as it exists today. This underlying field is theoretical, but it could explain such oddities as to why the expansion of the Universe is not slowing down but speeding up and why most of the energy and matter in the Universe is unaccounted for by the Standard Model. It could explain virtual particles, strange bits of energy that pop in and out of existence. Where do they come from and where do they go when they are not here? It could explain dark energy and dark matter, which are mysterious substances that are suspected only by their effects on ordinary matter.

So the Big Bang or the Little Pop? Several new scientific initiatives are underway to glean more information from the Cosmos. Scientists will let the evidence speak for itself and like scientific inquiry in most other instances, will likely reveal more questions than it answers.

Read more:

Did the universe begin with a big bang or a little pop? - Herald Review

There are tens of billions of galaxies in the universe, each with tens of billions of stars. Many stars have planets, and a healthy fraction of those are rocky and can sustain liquid water on their surfaces (like Earth). Even frozen moons circling frigid gas giants generate and retain enough energy to heat huge subsurface oceans.

Meanwhile, the ingredients for life as we know it are everywhere. Four of the six most abundant elements in the universecarbon, hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogenalso happen to be crucial players in biochemistry. Weve even spotted complex organic molecules on asteroids, comets, and in interstellar clouds of gas.

In short, the more we learn about the universe, the more likely it seems that life in its simplest forms ought to be somewhat common. And if simple life is common and even a small fraction of life-sustaining planets develops a technological civilization, there ought to be many such civilizations in the galaxy. Sowhere is everybody?

Though attributed to famed physicist, Enrico Fermi, who reportedly posed the question at lunch in 1950, other researchers dug out the implications in published works after he died.

The thinking goes like this: If there are other technological, spacefaring civilizations in the universe, they will eventually develop interstellar travel and settle nearby stars. Those societies will settle new stars, and in the fullness of cosmological time, theyll hop from system to system until theyve settled the whole galaxy.

The Milky Way is around 13.6 billion years old, but we dont see evidence of any other technological civilizations in our neighborhood. So what gives?

Theres been no shortage of speculative answers to that question. But some of the earliest arguments took umbrage at the claim theres been enough time. That is, it would take a very, very long while to build interstellar spacecraft and travel the vast, empty spaces between stars.

The galaxy isnt old enough to have been fully settled yetor is it?

According to a recent addition to the Fermi debate, space and speed are no barrier to galactic empireeven without fancy tech like warp drives.

A 2019 paper, authored by Penn State and University of Rochester astronomers Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback,Adam Frank,Jason Wright, andCaleb Scharf, laid out an intricate model of galactic settlement, including the motion of stars, the fraction of habitable systems, the speed and range of ships, and other factors.

Now, in a new research note, the team present a visualization of just what that process might look like in action.

The simulation shows a significant fraction of a galaxy can be settled in a relatively short period of time, even with ships traveling no faster than the Voyager spacecraft. Further, the center of the galaxy could be a cosmic cantina thatd make even George Lucas blush.

The researchers found a key to speed was the motion of the stars themselves. Whereas older simulations relied on static configurations of stars, the galaxy is anything but stationary. Stars are in constant motion relative to the galactic center and each other.

In the simulation, ships (white cubes) in settled star systems (magenta spheres) wait for new systems (white points) to pass within their limited range (around 10 light-years) before launching a mission. Not all systems have habitable planets, and some that are habitable turn out to be unsettleable upon arrival (an outcome the researchers dub the Aurora effect after Kim Stanley Robinsons novel Aurora). And finally, settlement ships launch no more frequently than every 100,000 years.

These are all quite conservative assumptionsespecially the frequency of launchesand they dont rely on some future (possibly fantastical) propulsion technology.

This means were not talking about a rapidly or aggressively expanding species, and theres no warp drive or anything, Wright told Gizmodo.

Theres just ships that do things we could actually manage to do with something like technology we can design today, perhaps fast ships using solar sails powered by giant lasers, or just very long-lived ships that can make journeys of 100,000 years running on ordinary rockets and gravitational slingshots from giant planets.

And yet, despite all this, the timescale covered by the simulation is just a billion years, under 10 percent the age of the galaxy. Not only does leveraging star motion accelerate the process, so too does the density of starsnote the explosive exponential growth in the center of the galaxy (a place they suggest is ripe for SETIs attention).

How does the team account for the fact weve not found evidence of other technological civilizations yet?

In their 2019 paper, they explored a wide range of possible scenarios, given the model. The recently released simulation is only one. If the parameters are tweakedfor example, the fraction of settleable worlds is especially lowthe outcomes may look different, including scenarios where the galaxy is empty. Likewise, they note that in fully settled galaxies, the finite lifetime of civilizations may result in densely populated neighborhoods surrounded by population voids.

This range of possibilities is notable. A good model helps frame the debate, but many unknowns remain. Which is, of course, why the Fermi paradox is fun. Absent hard evidence, its fertile ground for speculation. Our knowledge of the galaxy is far from complete.

Still, like the stars, science isnt stationary. Unknowns in Fermis day are now on firmer footing. We know many star systems have planets resembling Earth and have evidence that liquid water may not be so rare.

NASAs Perseverance rover is preparing to drill into Martian soil in search of life. The James Webb Space Telescope will study exoplanet atmospheres for biosignatures. And NASA plans to send probes to promising outer-solar-system moons.

Finding even a few microbes in another part of our own solar system would be ground-shaking. If life has occurred more than once around the same starwhat are the odds its never arisen anywhere else?

More complicated are questions of how often simple life gives rise to technological civilizations, whether such cultures would be motivated and capable of settling other stars, and if they persist long enough to spread across an entire galaxy.

Still, every year, as we reach further into our solar system and look deeper into the universe, the answer to Fermis famous question gets a little bit clearer.

Image Credit: Jason T. Wright,Jonathan Carroll-Nellenback,Adam Frank, andCaleb Scharf / The American Astronomical Society

Excerpt from:

Fermi Paradox: Here's What an Alien Civilization Settling the Galaxy Looks Like - Singularity Hub