2016年8月31日 星期三

“Fermi Remembered,” Fitch-Cronin effect, James Cronin, Who Explained Why Matter Survived the Big Bang, Dies at 84




Photo

James W. Cronin at the University of Chicago, where he taught physics, astronomy and astrophysics. With Val Fitch, he found “a fundamental asymmetry between matter and antimatter.” CreditUniversity of Chicago News Office

James W. Cronin, a physicist who shared a Nobel Prize for repudiating a fundamental principle of physics and explaining why the universe survived the Big Bang with anything in it, died on Thursday in St. Paul. He was 84.
His death was confirmed by the University of Chicago, where he was a professor emeritus. No cause was given.
In 1964, Dr. Cronin and Val Fitch of Princeton University were conducting experiments at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island involving matter and antimatter: particles that have the same mass but hold opposite (though equal) charges, either positive or negative, compelling them to destroy each other on contact.
The researchers found that for all their similarities, the particles obeyed slightly different laws of physics: that there was, as Dr. Cronin put it, “a fundamental asymmetry between matter and antimatter.”
This contradicted a bedrock scientific principle known as charge-parity invariance, which had assumed that the same laws of physics would apply if the charges of particles were reversed from positive to negative or vice versa.
The finding, known as the Fitch-Cronin effect, bolstered the Big Bang theory, mainly by explaining why the matter and antimatter produced by the explosion did not annihilate each other, leaving nothing but light instead of a residue that evolved into stars, planets and people.
“We now believe this tiny difference led to us,” Michael S. Turner, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, said last year after Dr. Fitch diedat 91.
Dr. Cronin and Dr. Fitch were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1980 for demonstrating charge-parity violation, which is brought about by decaying subatomic particles called kaons. But Dr. Cronin acknowledged that they had not completely solved a riddle of the universe.
“We know that improvements in detector technology and quality of accelerators will permit even more sensitive experiments in the coming decades,” he said at the time. “We are hopeful, then, that at some epoch, perhaps distant, this cryptic message from nature will be deciphered.”
Since then, scientists working at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California and at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva have made further strides in decoding the different laws that govern matter and antimatter.
Dr. Cronin “inspired us all to reach further into the unknown with deep intuition, solid scientific backing and poetic vision,” Angela V. Olinto, a professor of astronomy and astrophysics, said in a statement released by the University of Chicago.
James Watson Cronin was born in Chicago on Sept. 29, 1931. His father, also named James, met Dr. Cronin’s mother, the former Dorothy Watson, in a Greek class at Northwestern University. The elder James Cronin became a professor of Latin and Greek at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Dr. Cronin’s infatuation with physics began in high school. He graduated in 1951 from Southern Methodist, where he majored in physics and mathematics. He received a doctoral degree from the University of Chicago, where he studied under Enrico Fermi, Edward Teller and Murray Gell-Mann. His thesis was on experimental nuclear physics.
Dr. Cronin’s first wife, the former Annette Martin, died in 2005. He is survived by their children, Emily Grothe and Daniel Cronin; his second wife, the former Carol Champlin McDonald; and six grandchildren.
After collaborating with Dr. Cronin at Brookhaven, Dr. Fitch, the son of a Nebraska rancher, recruited him to Princeton. Dr. Cronin was lured back to the University of Chicago in 1971, attracted in part by one of the world’s most powerful particle accelerators, which was being built at what is now known as the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, operated by the university in partnership with a consortium of other educational institutions. He was offered a post teaching physics, astronomy and astrophysics.
Dr. Cronin was later a leader of the Pierre Auger Observatory, a global consortium of scientists studying the cosmic rays that bombard Earth. He also edited a book, “Fermi Remembered,” inspired by a symposium in 2001 to commemorate the centennial of Mr. Fermi’s birth. (The two shared the same birth date, Sept. 29.)
“What’s significant about Fermi is if you look through his career, he never just did the same thing,” Dr. Cronin once said. “He kept moving on to new scientific challenges.”
Dr. Cronin became a professor emeritus in 1997.
Working with Dr. Fitch and using instruments they had devised, Dr. Cronin conducted his groundbreaking experiments when he was in his early 30s, less than a decade after he had received his doctorate. Why did it take the Nobel Committee 16 years to recognize their achievement?
“I don’t think that people recognized that this had something to do with one of the most fundamental aspects of nature, with the origin of the universe,” Dr. Cronin said in the 2006 book “Candid Science VI: More Conversations With Famous Scientists,” by Istvan Hargittai and Magdolna Hargittai. “I think that it took a while to realize this.”
He added: “For me, this was actually a good thing. I was much too young at that time to deal with such a thing as the Nobel Prize.”


2016年8月28日 星期日

Doctor Can 'Telepathically' Train Subjects With fMRI Machines

The science of telepathy? Here's some interesting research.http://ht.ly/8nt33033gSV
Brain imaging technology can induce associations in the mind, projecting…
INVERSE.COM

S. F. Mason, A History of the Sciences, 1956 /1962


Ref. Stephen F. Mason『自然科學發展史』陳譯,台北:廣文出版 ,【出版約30年後,台灣某大學圖書館資料www.lib.nhlue.edu.tw/Reader_service/04哲學 竟然是1998年版 …..
我或許應該翻譯 “With Recollections and Reflections by Robert K. Merton” (1988) in The History of Science and the New Humanism (1962) by George Sarton ( 這位著名的科技史家是趙元任先生的老師趙先生的早期留美回憶錄中提到,Sarton在哈佛大學草創時的授課情形。
0829 2007 周三 晴


2012.01.01
陳寬仁教授寄放的第0批書小記
(參考陳寬仁教授寄放在鍾漢清處的第2批書小記。由於疏忽第一批書只記得有本 A. V. Feeigenbaum 博士名著 Total Quality Control 的譯本:《全面質量管理》北京:機械工業,1991──此書的第2,台灣的孫教授翻譯過 (台北: 中國生產力)A. V. Feeigenbaum 是現在僅存的品質管理的大師,他的思想是我在80年代初奉為「品管聖經」的。約7年前中原大學頒 N. Kano 博士榮譽博士的典禮餘絮中,王晃三教授說下一位是A. V. Feeigenbaum 博士。雖然後輩Kano博士有地利之便先取得,我相信真正的大師不會計較。只可惜他真的年事已高。)
我在2006年有一blog : simon university 第二部
812日的 陳寬仁來訪一文中有這樣的記載
……他說晃三兄可能採用 Stephen F. Mason/『自然科學發展史』陳寬仁譯 台北廣文出版, 1969 當通識教材。
我向它示範如何在GMAILGOOGLE/DESKTOP 找資料,以及如何編「台灣戴明圈年度紀事」、主題索引等。
我找到他在『風嶺 34── 承先啟後- 119 -校友感言』,很有意思……
廣文書局.台灣60年代的出版業之驕傲,我1976-77在步兵學校當排長時,經常讀其出版品。80年代初我還在那兒買過書。陳寬仁老師在廣文有兩本譯書:
《雕塑藝術》我已提過;與Stephen F. Mason* 1969年的自然科學發展史(4) ( History of the Sciences 1953). 2006年,陳寬仁教授將此書複印兩份,一本送玉燕,另一本請她送台北市某教育大學的圖書館。
根據陳寬仁老師的說法,廣文的老闆王道榮先生是師範大學國文系畢業,他們以整理古籍和出版起家,每年也一定做些明知會虧本的書。可惜,後來因投資豬的飼養而虧損累累
*由現在網路上的資料The science and humanisum of Linus Pauling (1901-1994) ,可以知道Stephen F. Mason是倫敦大學的King's College 的化學系教授兼劍橋大學的歷史與科學哲學教授。

2012.7.20 今天我處理一些陳老師的部分譯作相關的資訊

Obituary of Emeritus Professor Stephen Mason CChem FRSC FRS

www.rsc.org/Membership/AboutRscMembership/Obituaries/SMason.asp

  • Paperback: 638 pages
  • Publisher: Macmillan General Reference; Reissue edition (March 1, 1962)
  • Language: English

自然科學發展史 / (英)梅遜(Mason, Stephen F.)撰 ; 陳寬仁譯
台北市 : 廣文, 民58 1969
S. F. Mason, A History of the Sciences (New York: Collier/Macmillan, 1956)  據陳寬仁譯者序,根據 1966增訂版

Main currents of scientific thought; a history of the sciences [by] S. F. Maso

LANGUAGE
English.
IMPRINT
New York, Abelard-Schuman [c1956]
PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION
520 p. 22 cm.
SERIES



Life of science library no. 32
Mason, Stephen F. (Stephen Finney), 1923-2007


Emeritus Professor Stephen Mason CChem FRSC FRS


6 July 1923 - 11 December 2007
Emeritus Professor Stephen Mason
Stephen Mason was born in Leicester in 1923 and brought up in the village of Anstey.  He won a scholarship to Wyggeston Grammar School and from there took up an open scholarship in natural sciences at Wadham College , Oxford.
 He graduated BA in 1945 and completed his D. Phil. with D.Ll.Hammick in 1947 on the physico-chemical factors underlying the biological properties of some antimalarial agents. Mason had become interested in the history of Wadham college and in particular of John Wilkins, who was a founder member of the Royal Society. An essay on the history of protochemical ideas led to the offer of a departmental demonstratorship in the Museum for the History of Science, Oxford (1947-53) which he held concurrently with a college tutorship at Wadham. The lectures on science history given as part of the demonstratorship were augmented and published as A History of the Sciences (1956), a pioneering work which treated the development of science in the context of economic and social factors. It has never been out of print and has been translated into at least seven languages. 
...
In 1988 Stephen and Joan retired and moved to Cambridge where he held an extraordinary Fellowship at Wolfson College (1988-90). His final book, Chemical Evolution: Origins of the Elements, Molecules and Living Systems, was published in 1991.
He was an active member of the Chemical Society (later the RSC) having joined on graduation in 1945. He served on Council twice (1964-69 and 1978-81). In 1991 he founded the Historical Group of the RSC and served as its chairman for the first three years.
Stephen's principal interest outside chemistry was the history and philosophy of science. He had begun a major revision of  A History of the Sciences when Joan died in 2004, which hit him extremely hard. He died on 11 December 2007 and is survived by his sons, Oliver, Andrew and Lionel.
Robert D Peacock FRSC, Brian Stewart FRSC

2016年8月27日 星期六

melanin(黑色素) 或可當體內用電池

melanin黑色素

Batteries have been made from many things, from copper to lithium. Never melanin, a skin pigment—until now
A bodily pigment may have industrial uses
ECONOMIST.COM

2016年8月26日 星期五

A new antenna induces a conversion from surface plasmons to photons and back to surface plasmons


A new antenna induces a conversion from surface plasmons to photons and back to surface plasmons, letting chips talk via visible light.
Plasmonic nanoantennas are 60 percent faster than previous plamsonic…
SPECTRUM.IEEE.ORG

電漿子(Plasmon)是電漿震盪的量子,電漿子是從電漿震盪量子化而產出的準粒子,正如光子聲子分別是光和機械震動的量子化一樣(儘管光子是基本粒子而不是準粒子)。因此,電漿子是自由電子氣密度的集體震盪。例如,在光學頻率上,電漿子可以和光子偶合來創造另一種叫作電漿子-電磁極化子的準粒子。
由於電漿子是古典電漿震盪的量子化,它們的大多數性質可以直接從馬克士威方程式中導出。

2016年8月25日 星期四

Speech recognition faster at texting

Talking to Siri is three times faster than typing, according to a study led by Stanford computer scientists. It's also more accurate.
Smartphone speech recognition software is not only three times faster than human typists, it's also more accurate. The researchers hope the revelation spurs the development of innovative applications of speech recognition…
NEWS.STANFORD.EDU|由 STANFORD UNIVERSITY 上傳

The Evaptainer uses an ancient technique for keeping food cool to supply

An idea over 4,000 years old may hold the key to the future of refrigeration without electricity.
The Evaptainer uses an ancient technique for keeping food cool to supply…
TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM|由 CATHERINE CARUSO 上傳

2016年8月20日 星期六

China is using technology abandoned by the U.S. to build the nuclear plant of the future

Weekend Reads: Chinese scientists are breathing new life into fail-safe nuclear energy technologies invented by American scientists—and then all but abandoned—50 years ago.
____________________________________________
Some of the largest technological ambitions—and challenges—are coming out of China. Clean nuclear energy, fleets of robot workers, and deep-learning search engines are some of the Chinese innovations we look at this weekend.
Cheaper and cleaner nuclear plants could finally become reality—but not in the United States, where the technology was invented more than 50 years…
TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM|由 RICHARD MARTIN 上傳

2016年8月18日 星期四

Particle therapy

Toshiba will tap its nuclear power know-how to fight cancer.
TOKYO -- Toshiba has joined a project to develop a next-generation particle beam radiation treatment for cancer by drawing on its expertise in nuclear
ASIA.NIKKEI.COM
Particle therapy is a form of external beam radiotherapy using beams of energetic protons,neutrons, or positive ions for cancer treatment. The most common type of particle therapy as of 2012 is proton therapy. Although a photon, used in x-ray or gamma ray therapy, can also be considered a particle, photon therapy is not considered here. Additionally, electron therapy is generally put into its own category. Because of this, particle therapy is sometimes referred to, more correctly, as hadron therapy (that is, therapy with particles that are made of quarks).
Neutron capture therapy might be considered a type of particle therapy, but it is not discussed here, as the damage it does to tumors is mostly from energetic ions produced by the secondary nuclear reaction after the neutrons in the external beam are absorbed into boron-10 (or occasionally some other nuclide), and not due primarily to the neutrons themselves. It is therefore a type of secondary particle therapy.
Muon therapy, a rare type of particle therapy not within the categories above, has occasionally been attempted.

重粒子線がん治療(じゅうりゅうしせんがんちりょう、英語heavy particle therapy,charged particle radiotherapyheavy ion therapy, など)とは、線量局在性の高い治療が可能という性質を持つことから、炭素イオン線がん病巣をピンポイントで狙いうちし、がん病巣にダメージを十分与えながら、正常細胞の有害事象を最小限に抑えることが可能とされる最先端の放射線療法のうちの一つ。