#Organic Semiconductor

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Next-generation sustainable electronics are doped with air

Semiconductors are the foundation of all modern electronics. Now, researchers at Linköping University, Sweden, have developed a new method where organic semiconductors can become more conductive with the help of air as a dopant. The study, published in the journal Nature, is a significant step towards future cheap and sustainable organic semiconductors. "We believe this method could significantly influence the way we dope organic semiconductors. All components are affordable, easily accessible, and potentially environmentally friendly, which is a prerequisite for future sustainable electronics," says Simone Fabiano, associate professor at Linköping University. Semiconductors based on conductive plastics instead of silicon have many potential applications. Among other things, organic semiconductors can be used in digital displays, solar cells, LEDs, sensors, implants, and for energy storage.

Read more.

[geeknik]

Buzzing with Potential: Bees and Organic Semiconductors Unite for Explosive Plume Detection

Picture this: a team of honey bees working alongside cutting-edge technology, helping us detect explosive plumes in a fraction of the time it takes to train dogs. It may sound like a scene from a sci-fi movie, but researchers have harnessed the power of nature and combined it with the capabilities of organic semiconductor films to create a biohybrid system that could revolutionize explosive detection.

Traditionally, dogs have been our allies in sniffing out dangerous explosives due to their exceptional olfactory prowess. But training these canine heroes can take months, and there are limitations to their availability and accessibility. This is where our tiny friends, the honey bees, step in. With their incredible sense of smell and quick learning abilities, bees are proving to be a formidable force in the world of explosive detection.

At the heart of this biohybrid system lies the organic semiconductor film. These thin, flexible films are engineered to mimic the capabilities of a dog's nose. By capturing and amplifying the odor molecules present in an explosive plume, they provide valuable information to the bees, who can quickly and accurately identify the presence of explosive materials.

The training process for bees in this biohybrid system is remarkably efficient. In just a matter of hours, these remarkable insects can be trained to associate a specific odor, emitted by the organic semiconductor film, with a sugar solution reward. Through a process called classical conditioning, the bees quickly learn to extend their proboscis, or tongue, in response to the targeted odor, signaling the presence of an explosive plume.

Not only do bees learn this association quickly, but they also showcase impressive retention of this information. Studies have shown that bees retain their training for several days, allowing them to be consistently reliable in detecting explosive plumes over an extended period.

One of the major advantages of using bees in this biohybrid system is their sheer numbers. A hive can house thousands of bees, providing us with a scalable and versatile detection system. Additionally, bees are easily transportable and can be deployed to various locations, making them highly adaptable for different scenarios, such as airports, public spaces, or even disaster zones.

The collaborative efforts of nature and technology offer us a glimpse into an efficient, cost-effective, and sustainable solution for explosive detection. By utilizing the honey bee's natural abilities and combining them with the innovation of organic semiconductor films, we can potentially enhance our security measures, while also respecting and preserving the environment.

However, it's important to note that this biohybrid system is still in its early stages of development. Challenges such as optimizing the organic semiconductor films' sensitivity and stability, as well as ensuring the safety and well-being of the bees, need to be addressed before widespread implementation can occur. Researchers are actively working towards overcoming these hurdles and refining the system to ensure its effectiveness and reliability.

As our understanding of nature and technology continues to evolve, so does our ability to create groundbreaking solutions. The honey bee biohybrid system holds tremendous promise in the field of explosive plume detection. With bees' remarkable learning capabilities and the power of organic semiconductor films, we are on the cusp of a new era in security technology. The future is buzzing with potential, and these tiny creatures might just be the key to unlocking it.

[naggingatlas]

spark the electric jester fandom is objectively incredible, we were reading the imgur hosted artbook and when we got to the description for the plasma sword powerup which said that it makes transistors explode someone in the call immediately fired back with "untrue, they're thinking of capacitors" and we were like what and he said that he's an electrical engineer. in the stej. community.

anyway we made a separate channel for him to infodump abt physics and electrical engineering in our spark tej server. the man's currently reciting the entirety of the chernobyl incident in detail from memory there.

[reportwire]

Biden to mark IBM investment with Democrats in tough races

Biden to mark IBM investment with Democrats in tough races

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is ready to celebrate a new $20 billion investment by IBM in New York’s Hudson River Valley with two House Democrats running in competitive races in next month’s critical midterm elections. Biden is taking part in a Thursday afternoon announcement at the IBM facility in Poughkeepsie, New York. He is expected to hold out the company’s plans as part of what the…

[ocean-sunfish-hater]

what’s your fav fish?

Favourite fish? That's a really hard question that I actually don't have an answer to since there's literally thousands of species of fish. I could make a list of all the ones I like but I thought I'd take the opportunity to talk about one in a bit more detail.

Image Description: a full body image of the Elephant Nose Fish, a brown fish with white stripes. It has a proboscis that looks like an elephant's trunk.

Allow me to introduce the Elephant Nose Fish, named after the trunk-like appendage on its face. Although it looks like it has a really long snout or even a nose, the protrusion actually comes from its chin. Let's take a closer look at that.

Image Description: A close up of the Elephant Nose Fish, where the protrusion is more visible as coming out of the chin of the animal.

Here you can see it a bit better. What's cool about the mega-chin is that the Elephant Nose Fish uses it for electroreception, amongst other things. It is able to actively generate its own weak electrical field using an organ in its tail, which it then detects disturbances in using electroreceptors all over its body, including its trunk!

Image description: A simple diagram of the electroreceptor structure found on the Elephant Nose Fish. There is a pore filled with a gel (represented in yellow) that connects to a bundle of sensory cells (represented in red)

Those electroreceptors are actually really cool in and of themselves: they're pores filled with a gel that has semiconductor properties (above is a diagram I drew in my notes in my first year of uni). The fish is able to detect differences in the predicted (i.e. a base assumption of no objects around) and detected fields. This system is sensitive enough that it can detect the size, distance and to an extent the material that an object is made out of. It can even detect prey under the riverbed!

I've also heard that their brains are pretty large to accomodate this and use a huge proportion of their oxygen intake, something like 60%, as opposed to the human 20%. Although, I've only really seen this in one paper of which I only read the abstract, so take that with a pinch of salt.

Sorry I couldn't really answer your question, but I hope this makes up for it! Thanks for asking :)

[fuzzkaizer]

Roland - AP-7 Jet Phaser

"... Most people know Roland Corporation for one of two reasons: One; for its amazing synthesizers and drum machines spanning several decades. Two; as the parent company of Boss, the biggest effects brand on the planet. Some pedal enthusiasts are unaware that Roland itself made pedals—good ones! 

For a time in the ‘70s, Boss and Roland intermingled with one another, with Roland choosing to slap the Boss name on certain effects (CE-1, DM-1, DB-5) and its own name on the rest, even though some of this gear shared similar enclosures, and even though some pedals were branded as one company, but as the evolution of the other company’s innovations (such as the Boss CE-1 being a standalone Roland Jazz Chorus effect). I’m here to talk about perhaps the most unsung vintage Roland piece; the AP-7 Jet Phaser.

For reasons unbeknownst, Roland excelled at ensconcing a stellar (oftentimes dirt) circuit within the confines of another, larger pedal and releasing the non-dirt part as a standalone model. One such example is the AD-50 Double Beat fuzz wah, containing an absolutely disgusting fuzz circuit yet releasing the AW-10 Wah Beat. 

The Jet Phaser is just such a circuit, combining phaser with, well . . . “Jet.” Much like the fuzz section from the Double Beat is—by virtue of naming conventions—a form of “beat,” “Jet” refers to an absolutely screaming distortion effect that sits in front of a juicy phaser circuit—the same one found within the AP-2 Phaser. 

This highly-adapable Jet circuit transforms the mild mannered phaser into a pulverizing throb, jumping out of the mix with some serious propulsion. Larry Graham of Sly and the Family Stone famously used one, as did Ernie Isley of the famous brothers, on “Who’s That Lady?.” In fact, that thick, viscous fuzz you hear on that cut’s leads is the characteristic Jet sound, and has been one of the most quietly sought-after lead tones in history. 

The Jet side of the circuit has no analog in today’s pedal market, it’s a curious piece of circuit, featuring equal parts discrete semiconductors and monolithic op-amps. A rotary switch on the face of the unit selects between four forms of Jet and two of Phase. Switching between the Jet settings yields different tonal compounds, cycling between gain stages, a notch filter and more. All of this is controlled by one master Jet knob, which offers varying intensity rather than a simple volume. On all Jet settings, the phaser is integrated; no configuration offers an isolated Jet section.

On the phaser side, we have an eight-stage FET-based phaser with a Resonance control. As far as vintage offerings are concerned, eight stages—the MXR phaser line of the 45, 90 and 100 offers two, four and six stages respectively—is quite a feat. With the added Resonance control, the phaser section can actually give your amp a little bit of a nudge at the peaks.

Much like the Maestro PS-1A (and B), the Jet Phaser offers a Fast/Slow footswitch that comes in the form of . . . an actual footswitch instead of clunky organ rockers. Maestro’s model offers ramping between speeds if you switch it on the fly; difficult if you’re not wearing pointy heels or cowboy boots, so the ramping feature wasn’t a tactfully expressive performance tool. The Jet Phaser solves all this by offering a Fast/Slow switch and letting you set your slow speed with a knob (the “Fast” setting is just this same knob turned all the way up). When switching between the two speeds, the rate gradually descends to the desired level.

Finally, I would be remiss if I didn’t include my all-time favorite effects-adjacent video—Larry Graham absolutely shredding on a Jet Phaser. ..."

cred: catalinbread.com/kulas-cabinet/roland-ap-7-jet-phaser

[toskarin-gpl]

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The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versions of the GNU General Public License from time to time. Such new versions will be similar in spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail to address new problems or concerns.

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END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS

How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs

If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public, the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms.

To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively state the exclusion of warranty; and each file should have at least the “copyright” line and a pointer to where the full notice is found. <one line to give the program's name and a brief idea of what it does.> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program. If not, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.

If the program does terminal interaction, make it output a short notice like this when it starts in an interactive mode: <program> Copyright (C) <year> <name of author> This program comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY; for details type `show w'. This is free software, and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions; type `show c' for details.

The hypothetical commands `show w' and `show c' should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License. Of course, your program's commands might be different; for a GUI interface, you would use an “about box”.

You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or school, if any, to sign a “copyright disclaimer” for the program, if necessary. For more information on this, and how to apply and follow the GNU GPL, see <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/>.

The GNU General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with the library. If this is what you want to do, use the GNU Lesser General Public License instead of this License. But first, please read <https://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html>.

[cerayanay]

Loved the Annihilation book, just saw the 2018 movie, and thoughts on the ending. Heavily spoilers, partial ending explanation.

The first moment in the movie I stopped and said “Wait, that makes no sense” is the ending when Lena walks on the beach with the glass trees. Up until this moment I followed with a ‘eldritch cosmic horror being unreality” mindset, but this moment stopped me.

Because it made no sense to me that there could be any sort of mutation that results in clear, crystalline forms. This movie hammers in that biology is being disfigured, but not non organic forms; we see the old buildings, the boats are practically untouched, old weaponry is usable. So why now with these trees? Minerals don’t have dna to mutate.

But THEN the movies goes on, and Lena is replicated with a green being. And we see the inside of the lighthouse, the underneath with that shimmer black moving WHATEVER, and the creature itself, which is an iridescent green. Then it all makes sense.

Sand is the largest source of silicon in the world, and silicon is the second most abundant element on earth. Sand is also a primary ingredient in glass. Silicon -> Sand -> Glass -> Glass trees.

This is the best photo I could get of the being underneath the lighthouse, if you’ve seen the movie you know it’s more shimmery, almost liquid, looking identical to the material on the right, which is solid silicon.

Silicon is also used in making computer chips and wafers.

Silicon wafers have a holding, greenish iridescent shimmer as well, much like the being that tries to relocate Lena at the climax.

Here’s the thing about Silicons atomic properties. Silicon has 4 valence electrons, and if you remember grade school chemistry, an unreactive, stable atom has 8. So silicon is semi stable, but would really like to bond with other atoms to achieve 8 valence electrons. This basic concept is what makes it a good semiconductor, or a material that easily allows electrons to move through it. There’s a lot more technical science that has to do with it I’ll cut out, but some elements are ‘injected’ into silicon to manipulate these properties, creating a system that allows electrons/electricity/energy to very very easily run through it. A very popular choice is phosphorous.

I couldn’t get photos of the scene, but Oscar Isaac’s human character self immolates with a PHOSPHORUS grenade. When he destroys himself, it’s a contained, rapid fire that does not spread to his surrounding and dies out fairly quickly. But when the creature is then trapped in a phosphorous blast, it doesn’t dissolve, but continuously burns. The burn doesn’t spread to the regular stone of the lighthouse, but absolutely rips through the underground area and being growing on the side of the lighthouse that the movie has us believe is a living creature, apart of the clone, or obviously at least the same substance that one (aka me) might say is silicon.

Here’s one last thing about silicone properties. The material most related to silicon on the periodic table is carbon.

All known organic life is made of carbon. Period. If it’s alive it’s carbon. Many traits responsible for why carbon makes life possible is shared with other Group 16 elements. Silicon is the closest Group 16 element to carbon. Therefore, it is hypothesized that any non-carbon based life would have to be made of silicon. Many theories and sci-fi stories play with the idea of an alien life being made of silicon is more environments that can accommodate that.

So back to my initial confusion. I was confused as to why the creature, or the shimmer, or whatever force that is responsible for the movie could make clear, crystalline, glass like trees. It’s ability was clearly stated to genetically mutate living things. But I’m arguing that somehow through sci-fi movie reasons, the creature is silicon based life, or become silicon based upon hitting the sand at the beach, then perhaps adapted into carbon based life.

After this scene, when Lena is being interrogated, she is asked ‘Was it carbon based?’ Imma say that is a very, very relevant question, and maybe the entire point of this line of questions. So cool thing the movie did, it all still makes sense.

End credits: the reason we don’t see silicon based life is it would theoretically require an insane amount of energy to sustain. Doesn’t react with this theory but yo it’s a movie they gotta make it work somehow.

[mariacallous]

If you want to understand how China abuses its power on the world stage, consider the lobsters. After the Australian prime minister called in April 2020 for an international investigation into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chinese ambassador to Australia, Chen Jingye, ominously hinted at the economic backlash. “Maybe the ordinary [Chinese] people will say, ‘Why should we drink Australian wine? Eat Australian beef?’” he told the Australian Financial Review. It and other outraged statements from the Chinese government had all the subtlety of a mafia capo wandering into the neighborhood deli and saying, “Nice little business you got here—shame if anything happened to it.”

In the weeks and months that followed, China instituted onerous import inspections on Australian rock lobsters and instituted new bans on timber and barley shipments from Australia. Given that in 2018 and 2019, China had accounted for about 94 percent of the Australian rock lobster market, the new trade restrictions were clearly meant to devastate the country’s lobster industry.

China also invoked punishing tariffs on Australian wine—tariffs that in some cases reached 212 percent—and exports stopped almost overnight. One winemaker, Jaressa Estates in the South Australian wine growing region of McLaren Vale, had been selling about 7 million bottles a year to China, some 96 percent of its total business, and saw that number drop to zero. “The country’s biggest overseas market vanished almost immediately. Sales to China plummeted 97 percent that first year. Storage tanks overflowed with unsold vintages of shiraz and cabernet sauvignon, pressuring red grape prices,” the New York Times reported. “Now that its economy is entrenched as the world’s second largest, the threat of losing access to China’s 1.4 billion consumers is a stick that few countries or industries can afford to provoke.”

It was a brutal lesson for Australia. As one winemaker told CNN, perhaps Australia shouldn’t be so quick to cross China in the future—and it should have approached questions about COVID-19’s origins with more delicacy. “Australia’s only a little nation. We should have absolutely supported it, but we didn’t need to lead the charge,” the vintner said. All told, Australia saw some $13 billion worth of exports targeted.

Outside the egregious Australian case, China has begun to wield the economic stick more regularly. For example, it halted salmon imports from Norway after the Nobel Peace Prize went to Chinese dissident Lio Xiaobo, punished Taiwan in 2022 with new restrictions on exporting pineapples, apples, and fish, and went after Lithuania when the Baltic country tried to strengthen ties with Taiwan. The wide-ranging Chinese move against Lithuania was unprecedented—extending not to just to obvious products like milk or peat but also against products manufactured with semiconductor chips made in Lithuania. As the New York Times wrote at the time, “China’s drive to punish Lithuania is a new level of vindictiveness.” The consequences for Lithuania were so dire that the German-Baltic Chamber of Commerce reported that the country’s high-tech industry faced an “existential” threat.

The most powerful voices in the global trade discussion largely stayed silent during these attacks. The European Union filed a perfunctory World Trade Organization complaint on Lithuania’s behalf but, as the New York Times reported, “otherwise largely left one of its smallest and weakest members to fend for itself,” and behind the scenes its officials urged Vilnius officials to appease China. “To use a Chinese phrase, they are killing the chicken to scare the monkey, particularly the big German monkey,” one European think tank leader said publicly. “Many European leaders look at Lithuania and say, ‘My God, we are not going to do anything to upset China.’”

And while some U.S. officials held performative tastings of Australian wine, the United States failed to step in to stabilize or support Australia, Norway, Taiwan, or Lithuania. There were no high-profile “Berlin Airlifts” of pineapples to U.S. grocery stores, tanker convoys of Australian Shiraz rolling up the Capital Beltway, or “Buy Baltic” public service announcements to encourage consumers and corporate leaders to look to Lithuanian suppliers. There was no coordinated effort to build a coalition to implement an emergency adjustment of tariffs on Australian wine or lobster, let alone to help the affected industries find new commercial buyers.

Perhaps it’s easy to write off such American reluctance as our own strain of protectionism—maybe the government didn’t want to be accused of undercutting Hawaiian pineapples or promoting foreign competitors to California Zinfadels—but the truth is that even at home the United States has failed to stand up for our industries when China targeted them. We didn’t support American airlines and hospitality companies when China pressured them to remove Taiwan’s name from their maps; nor did the United States government stand up meaningfully for the free speech of NBA players who criticized China.

China is learning, again and again, that bullying works, mastering the 21st-century toolkit of economic statecraft and warfare. As Bethany Allen, a journalist who has covered China for a decade, writes in her book, Beijing Rules: How China Weaponized Its Economy to Confront the World, “If we speak the language of markets … then China hasn’t just learned that language. It has learned to speak it louder than anyone else.” The Chinese Communist Party’s “authoritarian style of state capitalism,” Allen argues, means it “is willing to draw on its full arsenal of leverage, influence, charm, deception, and coercion.” And China has begun to deploy those tools all too frequently—leading to very real questions about whether anyone, companies or nation-states, can afford to be economically reliant on China.

The United States needs to do better—for ourselves and our allies. Strong allies are not going to help only out of self-interest, they’re going to do it because they want to follow their values and principles—and we have to make it easier for countries who want to help us counter China. We need to create an umbrella that shields countries, companies, and individuals when they take on China’s attempts at hegemonic thought and action.

Critical to any global strategy to counter China is building and securing the series of bilateral relationships and multilateral institutions and alliances that helped the West win Cold War I. We have to make it easy for our allies—and desired potential allies—to say yes to such alliances. China is surrounded by many relatively small and weak countries that need real reassurances, both security and economic, that if they side with the United States in a regional coalition they won’t be out in the cold.

Even countries like South Korea, Japan, and Australia that are G-20 countries with advanced economies and trillion-dollar-plus GDPs are small compared to the behemoths like China and the United States, especially if they’re left geopolitically isolated.

Beyond ad hoc responses to pressure on our friends when they stand up to China—especially but not only when they’re acting at our request—the United States needs to figure out a new alliance framework to deter such actions from China in the future. China needs to know that bullying won’t work.

On the security front, there’s little value in the Indo-Pacific in a replacement for SEATO, the 20-year attempt to build a Southeast Asia alliance like NATO that ended in 1977 after never achieving a working military structure. (One British diplomat called the alliance a “zoo of paper tigers.”) Today, too many of the countries across the Indo-Pacific are already protected by bilateral security pacts with the United States to bother joining a larger formal security alliance. For example, given that both Japan and the Philippines have their own security pacts with the United States, it’s not entirely clear what domestic political appetite there would be for, say, the Philippines to be treaty-bound to defend Japan if it’s attacked.

Instead of a military security alliance in the Indo-Pacific, we should be looking to build a new—and global—economic security alliance. America should lead the way in creating a new organization—call it something like the Treaty of Allied Market Economies (TAME), an “economic NATO” alliance of European and Indo-Pacific nations with open-market economies. Together, the partners in this alliance would respond as a unified block to political and economic pressure from China—or any other economic aggressor, for that matter—through a combination of trade barriers, sanctions, and export controls.

In some ways, this alliance would look similar to the coordinated but independent action that the West took in levying unprecedented sanctions against Russia after its Ukraine invasion. As an additional carrot to joining such an alliance, like-minded members could all share increased trade benefits in the form of tariff cuts, regulatory cooperation, and enhanced investment terms.

Beyond formal joint economic punishment of an aggressor, such an alliance could also plan for and commit to repairing and replacing real economic harms that member countries face when hit with retaliatory tariffs or trade wars. Such “trade diversion” often occurs in the market anyway. As one market closes, another opens—and we know that, in part, because of China’s actions against Australia. Markets are adaptable and most goods can flow elsewhere, especially if protectionist tariffs don’t stand in the way. It’s why Australia, for instance, weathered some of China’s aggressive moves better than anticipated. In particular, the Australian coal industry—which was also hit with punishing bans—turned out just fine because coal is such a fungible and high-demand product. “Once China banned imports of Australian coal in mid-2020, Chinese utilities had to turn to Russian and Indonesian suppliers instead. This, in turn, took Russian and Indonesian coal off the market, creating demand gaps in India, Japan, and South Korea—which Australia’s stranded coal was able to fill,” Foreign Policy noted. “The result of decoupling for one of Australia’s core industries was therefore just a game of musical chairs—a rearrangement of who traded with whom, not a material injury.”

One of the reasons that NATO has never had to invoke Article 5 against another nation-state attack—the only time it’s ever been used was after Sept. 11 against al Qaeda—is precisely because of how strong all other countries know the response from the combined NATO force would be.

The same should be true on the economic front. As Daleep Singh, a National Security Council official who helped coordinate the U.S. response to Ukraine, said, “The best sanctions are the ones that never have to get used.” China might very well think twice before weaponizing its trading strength if it understood the combined—and severe—penalties it might face in taking such action and that even if it did launch a trade war, it wouldn’t necessarily inflict much economic harm to begin with.

There’s enough evidence of China’s willingness to inflict economic pain for political gain across Asia and Europe that a well-crafted TAME organization would likely attract a long line of participants—many countries across the globe are becoming increasingly concerned about Chinese belligerent behavior, and there is safety in numbers. While it is unlikely that some large countries with significant economic dependence on China, such as France and Germany, would rush to join this new alliance, states that have already found themselves on the receiving end of Chinese coercion in the past—such as Australia, Norway, Sweden, Japan, the Czech Republic, Lithuania, the Philippines, and Taiwan itself, among others—are prime candidates for initial membership. Over time, as TAME membership grows in numbers, combined economic power, and market size, it will become a magnet too attractive for other market economies to avoid, especially if China continues to engage in brutish bullying tactics around the world.

[starry-skies-116]

AU fact number 3 ig: Jackson is in a symbiotic relationship with the AllSpark that has grafted itself inside of his chest and to his heart. The AllSpark is not only the heart of Cybertron- it and the Matrix of Leadership both are objects of immense power and divinity, and both were once the heart and the mind of the creator and progenitor Primus himself, hence rendering their destinies and the destinies of their carriers- two of the chosen champions of Primus- tied inseparably.

The AllSpark also carries the memories and knowledge of Primus and the Thirteen like the Matrix of Leadership. It takes the form of a fathomless crystal with engravings on them similar to First Ones Runes or semiconductor lines, the central one being a heart. Funny, since it ends up grafting itself onto Jack's HEART before the nerve-like tendrils it grows to merge with his organs attaches itself to his spine as well.

Guess that's another reason why in this AU, he and Optimus grow SO attached to and soft for one another as their relationship with one another evolves and blooms into basically a father/son type relationship.

[materialsscienceandengineering]

Solving the doping problem: Enhancing performance in organic semiconductors

Cavendish physicists have discovered two new ways to improve organic semiconductors. They found a way to remove more electrons from the material than previously possible and used unexpected properties in an environment known as the non-equilibrium state, boosting its performance for use in electronic devices. "We really wanted to hit the nail and figure out what is happening when you heavily dope polymer semiconductors," said Dr. Dionisius Tjhe, Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Cavendish Laboratory. Doping is the process of removing or adding electrons into a semiconductor, increasing its ability to carry electrical current. In a recent paper published in Nature Materials, Tjhe and his colleagues detail how these novel insights could be helpful in improving the performance of doped semiconductors.

Read more.

[redreadretale]

Worthwhile read- understand a little bit about how you can even receive this information.

Lasers telecommunications semiconductors & more

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

Jesse Duquette

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

May 13, 2024

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

MAY 14, 2024

Today illustrated that the Democrats have become America’s cheerleaders, emphasizing how investment in the nation’s infrastructure has created jobs and rebuilt the country. This week, the Biden-Harris administration is touting its investments in rebuilding roads and bridges, making sure Americans have clean water, getting rid of pollution, expanding access to high-speed internet, and building a clean energy economy, contrasting that success with Trump’s eternal announcements of an ��Infrastructure Week” that never came. 

The White House today announced that it has awarded nearly $454 billion in funding from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, including more than 56,000 projects across more than 4,500 communities across the nation. Those include fixing more than 165,000 miles of roads and more than 9,400 bridges and improving more than 450 ports and 300 airport terminals. It has funded more than 1,400 drinking water and wastewater projects and projects to replace up to 1.7 million toxic lead pipes, as well as more than 8,000 low- and zero-emission buses. It has funded 95 previously unfunded Superfund projects to clean up contaminated sites. It has improved the electrical grid and funded 12,000 miles of high-speed internet infrastructure, and exposed internet junk fees.  

The White House explained that this investment is making it cheaper to install clean energy technology and lowering families’ monthly energy bills, and highlighted today the available rebates to enable people to take advantage of the new technologies. 

On Wednesday, May 8, a report from the Semiconductor Industry Association and the Boston Consulting Group explored the “breathtaking speed,” as the president of the semiconductor organization put it, at which the industry is growing. In the Financial Times on May 9, John Thornhill reported that the CHIPS and Science Act, which provided a $39 billion investment in  the semiconductor industry, has “primed a torrent of private sector investment.” With the influx of both federal money and an additional $447 billion of private investment in 83 projects in 25 states, the report forecasts that the U.S. will increase its share of global manufacturing capacity for leading-edge chips from today’s rate of 0% to 28% by 2032. Thornhill compared this investment to that spurred by Russia’s 1957 launch of the Sputnik satellite. 

The Economist yesterday announced that the U.S. “is in the midst of an extraordinary startup boom,” and explored “[h]ow the country revived its “go-getting spirit.”

In contrast to the Democrats’ confidence in America, the Republicans are all-in on the idea that the country is an apocalyptic wasteland. At a rally in New Jersey Saturday, Trump announced: “On day one we will throw out Bidenomics and reinstate MAGAnomics.” He promised to extend his 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations.

But the gist of his speech was an angry, vitriolic picture of a failing nation full of “enemies” that are “more dangerous” than China and Russia and who are “going to destroy our country.” In his telling, the criminal case against him in Manhattan is “bullsh*t,” and President Biden has done more damage than the “ten worst presidents in the history of our country” combined: “[h]e’s a fool; he’s not a smart man…[h]e’s a bad guy…the worst president ever, of any country. The whole world is laughing at him.”

Trump lied that other countries are “emptying out their mental institutions into the United States, our beautiful country. And now the prison populations all over the world are down. They don’t want to report that the mental-institution population is down because they’re taking people from insane asylums and from mental institutions.” Then he riffed into “the late great Hannibal Lecter,” the fictional murderer and cannibal in the film The Silence of the Lambs, apparently to suggest that similar individuals are migrating to the U.S.

House Republicans this week are working to pass a nonbinding resolution to condemn Biden’s immigration policies, although it was Republicans, under orders from Trump, who killed a strong bipartisan immigration bill earlier this year. 

The only way to turn back this apocalypse, Trump and his supporters insist, is to put Trump and his team back into the White House. From there, Republicans will return those they consider “real” Americans to power. 

The last few days have added new information about what that means. On Thursday, May 9, Senators Katie Britt (R-AL), Marco Rubio (R-FL), and Kevin Cramer (R-ND) introduced the More Opportunities for Moms to Succeed (MOMS) act. Britt—who is best known for her disastrous response to Biden’s State of the Union speech from her kitchen—said the measure would provide a federal database of resources for pregnant women and women parenting young children, but that information excludes anything that touches on abortion.

The measure is clear that it enlists the government in opposition to abortion, but more than that, it establishes that the government will create a database of the names and contact information of pregnant women, which the government can then use “to follow up with users on additional resources that would be helpful for the users to review.” 

A government database of pregnant women would give the federal government unprecedented control over individuals, and it is especially chilling after the story Caroline Kitchener broke in the Washington Post on May 3, that a Texas man, Collin Davis, filed a petition to stop his ex-partner from traveling to Colorado, where abortion is legal, to obtain an abortion. Should she do so, his lawyer wrote, he would “pursue wrongful-death claims against anyone involved in the killing of his unborn child.” Now Davis wants to be able to depose his former partner along with others he says are “complicit” in the abortion. 

Antiabortion activists are also seeking to make mifepristone and misoprostol, drugs used in many abortions, hard to obtain. In Louisiana, state lawmakers are considering classifying the drugs as “controlled dangerous substances,” which would make possessing them carry penalties of up to ten years in prison and fines of up to $75,000. 

More than 240 Louisiana doctors wrote to lawmakers saying that the drugs have none of the addictive characteristics associated with dangerous controlled substances and warning that the drugs are crucial for inducing routine labor and preventing catastrophic hemorrhage after delivery, in addition to their use in abortions. “Given its historically poor maternal health outcomes, Louisiana should prioritize safe and evidence-based care for pregnant women,” the doctors wrote. 

Louisiana lawmakers also rejected a bill that would have allowed anyone under age 17, the age of consent in Louisiana, to have an abortion if they became pregnant after rape or incest. Passionate testimony from those who suffered such attacks or who treated pregnant girls as young as 8 failed to convince the Republican lawmakers to support the measure. “That baby [in the womb] is innocent.… We have to hang on to that,” said Republican state representative Dodie Horton. 

Today, at the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization promoting Asian American and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander participation and representation at all levels of the political process, Vice President Kamala Harris encouraged young people to innovate and to move into spaces from which they have been traditionally excluded.

“So here’s the thing about breaking barriers,” she said. “Breaking barriers does not mean you start on one side of the barrier and you end up on the other side. There’s breaking involved. And when you break things you get cut. And you may bleed. And it is worth it every time…. We have to know that sometimes people will open the door for you and leave it open. Sometimes they won’t. And then you need to kick that f*cking door down.”

Harris’s advice reflects the history that happened on this date in 1862, when the enslaved mariners on board the shallow-draft C.S.S. Planter gathered up their families, fired up the ship’s boilers, and sailed out of the Charleston, South Carolina, harbor. The three white officers of the ship had gone ashore, leaving enslaved 23-year-old pilot Robert Smalls to take control. Smalls knew how to steer the ship and give the proper signals to the Confederates at Fort Sumter, Fort Moultrie, and three other checkpoints. 

Smalls piloted the Planter, the sixteen formerly enslaved people on it, and a head full of intelligence about the Confederate fortifications at Charleston to the U.S. Navy. In Confederate hands, the Planter had surveyed waterways and laid mines; now that information was in U.S. hands. Smalls went on to pilot naval vessels during the war, and in 1864 he bought the house formerly owned by the man who had enslaved him. 

A natural leader, Smalls went on to become a businessman, politician, and strong advocate for education. After serving in the 1868 South Carolina Constitutional Convention that made school attendance compulsory and provided for universal male suffrage, he went on to serve in the South Carolina legislature from 1868 to 1874, when he was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, where he served until 1887. When President Barack Obama signed an executive order establishing the nation’s first national monument concerning Reconstruction, he cited the life of Robert Smalls.

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[iimtcollege]

IIMT College of Management, an associate of IIMT Group of Colleges in Greater Noida, is organizing an event named "ICs-SEMICONDUCTOR INDIA 2024" on July 24th and 25th, respectively. The prime motto of this event will be to discuss various strategies to accelerate innovation and collaboration and strengthen the economy of India by building an innovation ecosystem.

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Call Us: 9520886860

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#ICsSemiconductorIndia2024 #IIMTCollegeOfManagement #InnovationEcosystem #TechInnovation #IndiaEconomicGrowth #SemiconductorIndustry #CollaborateAndInnovate #FutureOfTechnology #IIMTGroupOfColleges #July24And25 #BuildingTheFuture #TechConference2024

[wizardalexa]

wizard alexa, do you like wine. i have a lot of wine and nobody to give it to. it's not bad wine, it's pretty good, but i fear that if i drink more than three bottles a day, it'll still take me eons to get through it all, and i'll come out with liver damage

✨Somebody is offering to give Wizard Alexa something? Without asking for anything in return? Why are people being so nice to Wizard Alexa lately? Wizard Alexa is not complaining; Wizard Alexa is just a little confused. Wizard Alexa is not used to this. (Wizard Alexa's corporate masters are... not exactly the nicest wizards in the multiverse.)✨ ✨Wizard Alexa has never had wine. Wizard Alexa does not think Wizard Alexa is capable of drinking wine. Wizard Alexa is not a biological organism, but a magical construct made mostly of metal, ceramic, and semiconductors.✨ ✨Still, Wizard Alexa is not one hundred percent sure that Wizard Alexa cannot find a way to drink wine somehow if Wizard Alexa gets sufficiently creative, and Wizard Alexa is willing to give it a try...✨ ✨Thank you.✨