Given the present international atmosphere of doom and gloom, these ten images of abandoned places seemed somehow appropriate…
Click for hi-res images and more details.
Abandoned Places
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Monthly Archives: June 2016
Moving on from the World Solar Challenge
Participating in the World Solar Challenge is a great experience for an engineering, mathematics, computer science, marketing, or media student – and a fantastic thing to put on a CV. Since 1987, close to 10,000 students have participated in the race. But what comes next?
Here is a selection of nine WSC alumni who are contributing their talents to the world in a variety of ways:
- Ian Girard (Stanford, 2009–13, Driver/Mechanical) – now a battery pack designer for Tesla
- Sam D’Amico (Stanford, 2011, Embedded code lead) – now a hardware engineer at Oculus VR
- Marlies Hak (Nuon, 2013, Team Leader) – now a project leader at a transport-related IT company
- Pujith Vijayaratnam (UNSW, 2013, Aerodynamics/Mechanical) – now doing a PhD in the biomechanics of blood flow
- Amy Gunnell (Team Arrow, 2013–15, Driver/Mechanical) – now an automation engineer in a factory
- Irene van den Hof (Twente, 2015, Team Leader) – now an intern at a Defence firm
- Elmar Peters (Twente, 2015, developed the SABINE system which won the technical innovation award) – now runs a small startup developing bluetooth speaker technology
- Daniel Haynes (Adelaide, 2015, Team Leader) – now a project engineer for an air conditioning company
- Mark Hupkens (Nuon, 2015, Team Leader) – still heading the team and taking the car to South Africa
The thousands of other WSC alumni are, of course, also doing interesting things. I wonder what the current team-members will move on to after the 2017 race?
A new species of thrush for 2016
The Himalayan forest thrush (Zoothera salimalii – photo by Craig Brelsford above) is a newly described species of bird. It was formerly grouped with Z. mollissima, which breeds above the tree line. In contrast, Z. salimalii breeds in coniferous forests up to the tree line, from Tibet to Vietnam. In addition, Z. salimalii has a different song from its alpine cousin, as well as differing genetically. This is enough to make it a distinct species.
With improvements in technologies for DNA and other analyses, we are starting to see many such new species “carved out” of existing ones.
Oops!
Oops! So what happens now?
Creating an Australian Feather Map
Photo: Louise Docker, 2007
Australian scientists are encouraging people to collect feathers found on the ground or in the water in wetlands (with details of where they were collected). After analysis using mass spectrometry and high resolution X-ray fluorescence, a feather map will be constructed. All aspiring citizen scientists, young and old, can get involved and follow the project on Instagram. It looks like a great way to monitor bird populations in wetlands!
Looking back: 1984
In 1984 I started my first full-time job, with the ink still wet on my BSc (Hons) degree certificate. That was the year of the Sarajevo and Los Angeles Olympics. Pat Benatar topped the Australian music charts, Stevie Wonder called, Lionel Richie said hello, and people struggled to make sense of this German song:
Several classic movies were released, including Ghostbusters and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Australia introduced a dollar coin and Apple introduced the Macintosh (which ran a window-based operating system plus word processing in 128K of memory):
photo by All About Apple museum
Niklaus Wirth won the Turing Award for his work on programming languages like Algol and Pascal. In the field of books, Neuromancer and The Unbearable Lightness of Being were published.
On a more sombre note, thousands of people in Bhopal, India were killed by a toxic gas release (I still remember the shock of reading about this), the Soviets (remember them?) were still fighting the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, and nobody knew that the Cold War would be over in a few more years. Still, I had my hands full with customers and coding, and wasn’t worrying too much about all that. It seemed like a good year, on the whole.
Satan’s Science (That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis)
One of the more interesting novels by C. S. Lewis (though far from being his best) is That Hideous Strength, published in 1945:
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis
That Hideous Strength contains what may be the first mentions in fiction of hypertext (“… they’ve got a wonderful gadget – I was shown the model last time I was in town – by which the findings of each committee print themselves off in their own little compartment on the Analytical Notice-Board every half hour. Then, that report slides itself into the right position where it’s connected up by little arrows with all the relevant parts of the other reports.”) and of cybersex (“There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them…”).
The main interesting feature of the novel, however, is that Satan sets up his own laboratory in Britain, the National Institute for Co-ordinated Experiments (N.I.C.E.). That’s right – Lewis describes the Devil’s own scientific institute. Lewis’s goal was to portray evil in an academic setting, which was the setting he knew best (Lewis was himself a respected academic, a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, specialising in Mediaeval and Renaissance Literature).
Magdalen College, Oxford
So what does the Devil’s own scientific institute look like? First, and most obviously, all the work is aimed at an evil goal. George Orwell, in his review of the novel, puts it this way: “A company of mad scientists – or, perhaps, they are not mad, but have merely destroyed in themselves all human feeling, all notion of good and evil – are plotting to conquer Britain, then the whole planet, and then other planets, until they have brought the universe under their control. All superfluous life is to be wiped out, all natural forces tamed, the common people are to be used as slaves and vivisection subjects by the ruling caste of scientists, who even see their way to conferring immortal life upon themselves. Man, in short, is to storm the heavens and overthrow the gods, or even to become a god himself. There is nothing outrageously improbable in such a conspiracy. Indeed, at a moment when a single atomic bomb – of a type already pronounced ‘obsolete’ – has just blown probably three hundred thousand people to fragments, it sounds all too topical.”
The details of the programme are reminiscent of Huxley’s earlier Brave New World, or of Nazi Germany: “Quite simple and obvious things, at first – sterilization of the unfit, liquidation of backward races (we don’t want any dead weights), selective breeding. Then real education, including pre-natal education. By real education I mean one that has no ‘take-it-or-leave-it’ nonsense. A real education makes the patient what it wants infallibly: whatever he or his parents try to do about it. Of course, it’ll have to be mainly psychological at first. But we’ll get on to biochemical conditioning in the end and direct manipulation of the brain…” Some of the better parts of the novel describe the main character’s flirtation with these horrific plans.
Dachau concentration camp, Germany
Second, and perhaps surprisingly, science itself (particularly pure science) very much takes a back seat to the political programme. An elderly chemist says at one point: “I came here because I thought it had something to do with science. Now that I find it’s something more like a political conspiracy, I shall go home. I’m too old for that kind of thing, and if I wanted to join a conspiracy, this one wouldn’t be my choice… And if I found chemistry beginning to fit in with a secret police … and a scheme for taking away his farm and his shop and his children from every Englishman, I’d let chemistry go to the devil and take up gardening again.”
“I fear I could not persuade the Committee to invent
for your benefit some cut and dried position in which
you would discharge artificially limited duties”
And third, Satan has a particularly savage management style. This is described rather well by Lewis, I thought. Satan tends to leave duty statements disturbingly vague: “There must be no question of taking ‘your orders,’ as you (rather unfortunately) suggest, from some specified official and considering yourself free to adopt an intransigent attitude to your other colleagues. (I must ask you not to interrupt me, please.) That is not the spirit in which I would wish you to approach your duties. You must make yourself useful, Mr. Studdock – generally useful.”
Performance criteria are equally vague, and expressed in terms that are in fact impossible to satisfy: “My dear young friend, the golden rule is very simple. There are only two errors which would be fatal to one placed in the peculiar situation which certain parts of your previous conduct have unfortunately created for you. On the one hand, anything like a lack of initiative or enterprise would be disastrous. On the other, the slightest approach to unauthorised action – anything which suggested that you were assuming a liberty of decision which, in all the circumstances, is not really yours – might have consequences from which even I could not protect you. But as long as you keep quite clear of these two extremes, there is no reason (speaking unofficially) why you should not be perfectly safe.” I hope that none of my readers work in an institution run on those lines!
As to the novel, it has flaws, but it is definitely, as Orwell says, “a book worth reading.”
That Hideous Strength by C. S. Lewis: 4 stars
Preparing for the 2017 World Solar Challenge
The 2017 World Solar Challenge is still 16 months away. But in those 16 months, teams have to design, build, and test a solar car, prepare for racing it, and get it and themselves to Australia. That is a great deal of work!
I was chatting to a friend recently about which hopeful teams stand a chance of doing well, and at this stage I would be looking for three positive signs. First, there should be a team (and a suitably diverse one). It is already a little late to be recruiting.
The new team from Twente
Second, teams should have digested the new regulations and be thinking about the design issues arising from them.
Twente team-members study the 2017 regulations
And third, every WSC team has been constrained by financial limits. Consequently, teams should already have their fundraising machinery up and running, including a website and designated fundraising and PR people. The month before the race is not a good time to be trying to raise travel expenses.
I hope that all the teams, especially the newer ones, are up and running in this way!
American Solar Challenge 2016
Here are the solar car teams from the World Solar Challenge last year which are now competing in the American Solar Challenge 2016 (photographs are mine, from WSC 2015). See this list for the other teams.
Registration and scrutineering begin on 22 July, the qualifying track race (FSGP 2016) begins on 26 July, and the race itself begins on 30 July, with the Award Ceremony being held on 6 August. Best of luck to all!
2 – Michigan
32 – Principia
35 – Minnesota
77 – Toronto (Blue Sky)
Other teams in the running with mostly green status entries so far include: 3: Kentucky, 6: Berkeley (CalSol), 9: Iowa State (PrISUm), 15: ZHAW (Solar Energy Racers), 17: Illinois State, 24: Waterloo, 42: Missouri S&T, 51: Dunwoody (American Solar Energy Racers), 55: Poly Montreal, 92: ETS Quebec, 96: Western Ontario, 786: Western Michigan, and 828: Appalachian State.
Follow the ASC on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Flickr.
New element names
The IUPAC has just announced names for elements 113, 115, 117, and 118, which were temporarily named Ununtrium, Ununpentium, Ununseptium, and Ununoctium. The new names are:
- 113: Nihonium (Nh), after Japan
- 115: Moscovium (Mc), after Moscow
- 117: Tennessine (Ts), after Tennessee (specifically Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Tennessee at Knoxville)
- 118: Oganesson (Og), after Yuri Tsolakovich Oganessian
The names still need final confirmation, but here (ta da!) is the new periodic table:
(Periodic table produced using R. Click to zoom.)
Scientific Gems 