CWL

Dances from Around the World: Children learn to program using KIWI robots

A robotics curricular unit integrating themes of dance, music, and culture with engineering, building, and programming. A research project directed Professor Marina Umaschi Bers at the DevTech Research Group at Tufts University.

The KIWI robotics construction set is designed to work with CHERP software (Creative Hybrid Environment for Robotic Programming). CHERP is a hybrid tangible/graphical computer language designed to provide an engaging introduction to computer programming for children in both formal and informal educational settings. CHERP was designed at Tufts University by the DevTech Research Group (NSF Grant No. DRL-0735657).

(Ready For Robotics)

blackcyborgs:

I’m a Scholar, Not a Criminal: The Plight of Black Students at USC

Instead of studying for the last final of my undergraduate career, I am writing this letter in protest of the University of Southern California’s latest atrocity. Last night, students gathered at a house near campus to celebrate their completion of another rigorous school year. Many attendees were graduating seniors. Almost all attendees were minority students: African-American and Latino.

I did not attend last night’s party, but I could hear the helicopter circling from my dorm room over a mile away. When the Facebook posts and photos started appearing on my news feed around 2:30am, I had flashbacks to an era I wasn’t even alive to suffer through. I was too scared to go outside, legitimately fearing that an officer would see me and arrest me for being Black and inquisitive. I can only imagine how my peers felt when they saw over twenty LAPD patrol cars pull up and release 79 officers to end a peaceful, congratulatory party.

It is inexpressibly disheartening to hear fellow students recount horror stories of police brutality two weeks away from being among the first in my family to graduate from a four-year university. To know that my college degree holds no weight in the face of institutional racism and discrimination is sobering. Since the three most recent shootings, all triggered by non-USC affiliated Black males, that occurred on and around USC, there has been an increased presence of LAPD and other security forces around campus. Amid the tense racial climate that followed, I patiently endured the ignorant comments, racist blog posts and suspicious stares, but the intolerance has reached a new high. Six of my friends spent the night in jail.

To be clear, I do not have a problem with increased protection or security. Who’s to say that a shooting won’t occur at the next student party? It could happen, God forbid, and I understand why USC wants to be prepared. My issue lies within the selective surveillance of minority-hosted parties, as if crimes only happen among high concentrations of melanin. Hundreds of criminal offenses, including sexual harassment, rape and assault happen every Thursday night on Greek Row, a undeniably white establishment. Yet, the culprits of the Department of Public Safety Crime Reports distributed to USC students and faculty, seem to be strictly limited to Black and Latino males (6’2-6’5 in dark hoodies). These reports, together with the newly constructed, other-izing gates around campus, have instilled an unhealthy amount of fear in students, administrators and safety officials. We have been trained to double check for USC logos on the sweatshirts of minority males on and around this campus to make sure that they’re “one of us.” It doesn’t surprise me that LAPD has adopted the same attitude. For them, it has been this way for decades.

If the USC Department of Public Safety feels justified in allowing nearly a hundred police officers to shut down a minority attended party due to the fact that African-Americans were responsible for the recent shootings, we’re in for a bigger battle than most students bargained for when they decided to enroll here. That ideology reeks of racial profiling and associates the behavior of a few criminals with the entire Black student body, a comparison that makes my stomach turn. While LAPD is busy sending all of their manpower to harass the future of America’s leaders, the real trouble lies within my campus’ freshly painted fences.

USC should not be permitted to reap the benefits of diversity without facing its complexities. You can’t help the hood without loving it first. When USC’s founders decided to break ground in South Central instead of Malibu, it signed up for a difficult and delicate community partnership that needs to be revisited.

To me, protection means opening our gates even wider for at-risk youth who are in desperate need of positive role models, not locking them out after 9pm. I will feel safe on this campus when I see DPS officers negotiating with LAPD, pleading with them to let students of color party in peace. I will feel welcomed when I see a public statement from President Nikias acknowledging the discrimination and blatant racism that my people have had to endure since we were first admitted into this school. I will become a proud Trojan when the USC community finally grows to reflect and embrace its resilient surroundings.

To my peers, I am sorry that we have to dedicate hours that should be spent studying to defend our freedom of assembly. None of us have the time to write letters, plan meetings and rally against injustice, but we must. The next generation of brilliant Black students is depending on us to guarantee their right to a dignified college experience.

Ways to Act:

Sign this petition to help end racial profiling at USC: http://www.change.org/petitions/stop-racial-profiling-at-usc

Attend the Sit-In at Tommy Trojan on Monday, May 6 from 12-4pm

Attend the DPS & LAPD Campus Discussion on Tuesday, May 7 at 6pm in Annenberg 204

*Meet in front of Annenberg at 5:30pm to pray over the meeting.

Chondrites and Chondrules

Chondrites are stony meteorites. They’re the most common and probably the most fascinating type of meteorite. The meteor/meteorite that broke windows in the Russian city of Chelyabinsk this past February was a stony chondrite.

The composition of chondrites is very similar to the composition of the Sun, except that they’re lacking hydrogen and helium. So, if you’d like to hold a piece of the Sun in your palm, chondrites are about as close as you can get. Their name is derived from the chondrules (spherical inclusions) observed in most of them. Chondrules are only found in meteorites.

They’re over 4 billion years old — older than the Earth and other planets. Scientists previously identified meteorites by the crystals found within chondrules, but later they realized that chondrules may recrystallize during weathering processes once they reach the Earth’s surface. Sometimes a broken face of a meteorite is weathered in such a way that 3-D chondrules are seen (above at upper right corner). However, chrondules can be more easily studied by cutting the parent chrondite into slices. Shown at center is a a microscopic image of a 3 cm slice of a chondrite that was found in northwest Africa. — Mila Zinkova

Albert Einstein, Civil Rights Activist

Here’s something you probably don’t know about Albert Einstein.

Image:Einstein with the children of Lincoln University Faculty, May 3, 1946

In 1946, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist traveled to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, the alma mater of Langston Hughes and Thurgood Marshall and the first school in America to grant college degrees to blacks. At Lincoln, Einstein gave a speech in which he called racism “a disease of white people,” and added, “I do not intend to be quiet about it.” He also received an honorary degree and gave a lecture on relativity to Lincoln students.

The reason Einstein’s visit to Lincoln is not better known is that it was virtually ignored by the mainstream press, which regularly covered Einstein’s speeches and activities. (Only the black press gave extensive coverage to the event.) Nor is there mention of the Lincoln visit in any of the major Einstein biographies or archives.

In fact, many significant details are missing from the numerous studies of Einstein’s life and work, most of them having to do with Einstein’s opposition to racism and his relationships with African Americans.

That these omissions need to be recognized and corrected is the contention of Fred Jerome and Rodger Taylor, authors of “Einstein on Race and Racism” (Rutgers University Press, 2006). Jerome and Taylor spoke April 3 at an event sponsored by the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research. The event also featured remarks by Sylvester James Gates Jr., the John S. Toll Professor of Physics, University of Maryland.

According to Jerome and Taylor, Einstein’s statements at Lincoln were by no means an isolated case. Einstein, who was Jewish, was sensitized to racism by the years of Nazi-inspired threats and harassment he suffered during his tenure at the University of Berlin. Einstein was in the United States when the Nazis came to power in 1933, and, fearful that a return to Germany would place him in mortal danger, he decided to stay, accepting a position at the recently founded Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J. He became an American citizen in 1940.

But while Einstein may have been grateful to have found a safe haven, his gratitude did not prevent him from criticizing the ethical shortcomings of his new home.

“Einstein realized that African Americans in Princeton were treated like Jews in Germany,” said Taylor. “The town was strictly segregated. There was no high school that blacks could go to until the 1940s.”

Einstein’s response to the racism and segregation he found in Princeton (Paul Robeson, who was born in Princeton, called it “the northernmost town in the South”) was to cultivate relationships in the town’s African-American community. Jerome and Taylor interviewed members of that community who still remember the white-haired, disheveled figure of Einstein strolling through their streets, stopping to chat with the inhabitants, and handing out candy to local children.

One woman remembered that Einstein paid the college tuition of a young man from the community. Another said that he invited Marian Anderson to stay at his home when the singer was refused a room at the Nassau Inn.

Einstein met Paul Robeson when the famous singer and actor came to perform at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre in 1935. The two found they had much in common. Both were concerned about the rise of fascism, and both gave their support to efforts to defend the democratically elected government of Spain against the fascist forces of Francisco Franco. Einstein and Robeson also worked together on the American Crusade to End Lynching, in response to an upsurge in racial murders as black soldiers returned home in the aftermath of World War II.

The 20-year friendship between Einstein and Robeson is another story that has not been told, Jerome said, but that omission may soon be rectified. A movie is in the works about the relationship, with Danny Glover slated to play Robeson and Ben Kingsley as Einstein.

Einstein continued to support progressive causes through the 1950s, when the pressure of anti-Communist witch hunts made it dangerous to do so. Another example of Einstein using his prestige to help a prominent African American occurred in 1951, when the 83-year-old W.E.B. Du Bois, a founder of the NAACP, was indicted by the federal government for failing to register as a “foreign agent” as a consequence of circulating the pro-Soviet Stockholm Peace Petition. Einstein offered to appear as a character witness for Du Bois, which convinced the judge to drop the case.

Gates, an African-American physicist who has appeared on the PBS show Nova, said that Einstein had been a hero of his since he learned about the theory of relativity as a teenager, but that he was unaware of Einstein’s ideas on civil rights until fairly recently.

Einstein’s approach to problems in physics was to begin by asking very simple, almost childlike questions, such as, “What would the world look like if I could drive along a beam of light?” Gates said.

“He must have developed his ideas about race through a similar process. He was capable of asking the question, ‘What would my life be like if I were black?’”

Gates said that thinking about Einstein’s involvement with civil rights has prompted him to speculate on the value of affirmative action and the goal of diversity it seeks to bring about. There are many instances in which the presence of strength and resilience in a system can be attributed to diversity.

“In the natural world, for example, when a population is under the influence of a stressful environment, diversity ensures its survival,” Gates said.

On a cultural level, the global influence of American popular music might be attributed to the fact that it is an amalgam of musical traditions from Europe and Africa.

These examples have led him to conclude that “diversity actually matters, independent of the moral argument.” Gates said he believes “there is a science of diversity out there waiting for scholars to discover it.”

Airglow, Gegenschein, and Milky Way

As far as the eye could see, it was a dark night at Las Campanas Observatory in the southern Atacama desert of Chile. But near local midnight on April 11, this mosaic of 3 minute long exposures revealed a green, unusually intense, atmospheric airglow stretching over thin clouds.

Image Credit & Copyright: Yuri Beletsky (Las Campanas Observatory, Carnegie Institution)

Unlike aurorae powered by collisions with energetic charged particles and seen at high latitudes, the airglow is due to chemiluminescence, the production of light in a chemical reaction, and found around the globe. The chemical energy is provided by the Sun’s extreme ultraviolet radiation. Like aurorae, the greenish hue of this airglow does originate at altitudes of 100 kilometers or so dominated by emission from excited oxygen atoms.

The gegenschein, sunlight reflected by dust along the solar system’s ecliptic plane was still visible on that night, a faint bluish cloud just right of picture center. At the far right, the Milky Way seems to rise from the mountain top perch of the Magellan telescopes. Left are the OGLE project and du Pont telescope domes.

How do rockets move in space?

If space is basically a vacuum and void of atmosphere, how do rockets alter the direction and speed of space craft? In other words, how do they “push off” against nothing?

This is a very good question. Isaac Newton worked out the solution and published it in 1687 in his Principia Mathematica. It is phrased as Newton’s 3rd law. I’ll include all 3 below just in case!

1st: A body will remain at rest or at motion with a uniform speed unless it is acted on my an external force. 2nd: The acceleration of a body with a force acting on it is that force divided by the mass of the body (F=ma) 3rd: Every action has an equal and opposite reaction.

So the third law basically says that if you shoot out stuff in one direction you will move in the other direction. This is how rockets work in a vacuum. They have a source of fuel which is heated up so that it expands and is pushed out of the rocket. In order to change direction in space rockets have to have little ‘thrusters’ on all sides (you need 6 in total to maneuver completely in 3 dimensions).

Newton’s 3rd law seems contrary to our intuition because on Earth there are lots of sources of friction - providing much easier methods of propulsion, however you might have seen it in action if you have ever blown up a balloon and then let go of it before tying it up. What pushes the balloon all around the room is the air you blew into in escaping.

Balancing Rocks in Central Oregon

“Geologists explain that the formations are the result of the aging, tilting and erosion of two layers of consolidated volcanic ash, known as tuff.

These ash flows originated from the Cascade volcanoes to the west many thousands of years ago. The top layer of tuff was tougher so to speak than the bottom layer, so as the ground tilted and cracked and the softer bottom layer was eroded by wind and water, top-heavy rock pedestals remained.

Discovered by surveyors way back in the 1850s, the unusual rocks were known to only a handful of people for many decades. They remained hidden in a forest of pine and juniper until a forest fire in 2002 denuded the area. Visible now from Forest Service roads and from boats on the popular Lake Billy Chinook below, the rocks are visited more frequently. Sadly, the formations pose an irresistible temptation to immature vandals and a few of the pedestals have been toppled. Fortunately, most are far more massive, stable and durable than they appear.”— Brad Goldpaint

Neil deGrasse Tyson Connects with Rapper The GZA

Have you seen the episode of StarTalk on the Nerdist Channel where Neil interviews GZA from the Wu-Tang Clan? If not, you can watch it below.

In case you didn’t know it, Neil is not a Hip Hop fan. No, Neil is into the Blues, in a big way. And so he didn’t know much about GZA going into the interview. I watched as our producer and a Hip Hop aficionado (who also happened to be a postdoctoral researcher in physics at MIT) briefed Neil on “The Genius.”

Then GZA came in to the studio, and I watched him and Neil get to know each other. On paper, the two don’t appear to have much in common, and at the start of the afternoon, it wasn’t certain that they’d end up that way, either.

But then they got into the studio and the interview began. Slowly, GZA got comfortable with Neil, and they started to connect. And it turns out that they both have one very powerful thing in common: the universe is their muse.

Listening to two people who have influence over others – who inspire those they touch to learn, to explore, to question – who are so very different in some ways, watching them come to understand and respect each other was a powerful experience, and I think it comes across in the video. I know everyone in the studio felt it that day.

At one point Neil asks GZA how science factors into his creativity and what scientific idea is most intriguing. And GZA answers, “How everything is connected.”

Clearly, one of the things that connects Neil and GZA is their love and awe for science. But there is something else that connects them, something that GZA puts best in the interview:

“That’s one of the unique things about being an artist. That you have a voice that people hear and listen to, so it’s important to say something that’s important.”

Interview Can Be Found Here