#edgerton

[railwayhistorical]

Edgerton, Ohio

here's a westbound manifest on Norfolk Southern's line to Chicago (through northern Ohio and Indiana—former New York Central). I was attracted to the vintage grain elevator here. Was hoping to find out when it was built and such but a quick search garnered no results.

One image by Richard Koenig; taken July 30th 2024.

[jcmarchi]

Erin Kara named Edgerton Award winner

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/erin-kara-named-edgerton-award-winner/

Erin Kara named Edgerton Award winner

Class of 1958 Career Development Assistant Professor Erin Kara of the Department of Physics has been named as the recipient of the 2023-24 Harold E. Edgerton Faculty Achievement Award.   Established in 1982, the award is a tribute to the late Institute Professor Emeritus Harold E. Edgerton for his support for younger faculty members. This award recognizes exceptional distinction in teaching, research, and service.

Professor Kara is an observational astrophysicist who is a faculty member in the Department of Physics and a member of the MIT Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research (MKI). She uses high-energy transients and time-variable phenomena to understand the physics behind how black holes grow and how they affect their environments.

Kara has advanced a new technique called X-ray reverberation mapping, which allows astronomers to map the gas falling onto black holes and measure the effects of strongly curved spacetime close to the event horizon. She also works on a variety of transient phenomena, such as tidal disruption events and galactic black hole outbursts.

She is a NASA Participating Scientist for the XRISM Observatory, a joint JAXA/NASA X-ray spectroscopy mission that just launched this past September, and is a NASA Participating Scientist for the ULTRASAT Mission, an ultraviolet all-sky time domain mission, set to launch in 2027. She is also working to develop and launch the next generation of NASA missions, as deputy principal investigator of the AXIS Probe Mission.

“I am delighted for Erin,” says Claude Canizares, the Bruno Rossi Professor of Physics. “She is an exemplary Edgerton awardee. As one of the leading observational astrophysicists of her generation, she has made major advances in our understanding of black holes and their environments. She also plays a leadership role in the design of new space missions, is a passionate and effective teacher, and a thoughtful mentor of graduate students and postdocs.”

Adds Kavli Director Rob Simcoe, “Erin is one of a very rare breed of experimental astrophysicists who have the interest and stamina not only to use observatories built by colleagues before her, but also to dive into a leadership role planning and executing new spaceflight missions that will shape the future of her field.”

The committee also recognized Kara’s work to create “a stimulating and productive multigenerational research group. Her mentorship is thoughtful and intentional, guiding and supporting each student or postdoc while giving them the freedom to grow and become self-reliant.”

During the nomination process, students praised Kara’s teaching skills, enthusiasm, organization, friendly demeanor, and knowledge of the material.

“Erin is the best faculty mentor I have ever had,” says one of her students. “She is supportive, engaged, and able to provide detailed input on projects when needed, but also gives the right amount of freedom to her students/postdocs to aid in their development. Working with Erin has been one of the best parts of my time at MIT.”

Kara received a BA in physics from Barnard College, and an MPhil in physics and a PhD in astronomy from the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge University. She subsequently served as Hubble Postdoctoral Fellow and then Neil Gehrels Prize Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Maryland and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. She joined the MIT faculty in 2019.

Her recognitions include the American Astronomical Society‘s Newton Lacy Pierce Prize, for “outstanding achievement, over the past five years, in observational astronomical research,” and the Rossi Prize from the High-Energy Astrophysics Division of the AAS (shared).

The award committee lauded Kara’s service in the field and at MIT, including her participation with the Physics Graduate Admissions Committee, the Pappalardo Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee, and the MKI Anti-Racism Task Force. Professor Kara also participates in dinners and meet-and-greets invited by student groups, such as Undergraduate Women in Physics, Graduate Women in Physics, and the Society of Physics Students.

Her participation in public outreach programs includes her talks “Black Hole Echoes and the Music of the Cosmos” at both the Concord Conservatory of Music and an event with MIT School of Science alumni, and “What’s for dinner? How black holes eat nearby stars” for the MIT Summer Research Program.

“There is nothing more gratifying than being recognized by your peers, and I am so appreciative and touched that my colleagues in physics even thought to nominate me for this award,” says Kara. “I also want to express my gratitude to my awesome research group. They are what makes this job so fun and so rewarding, and I know I wouldn’t be in this position without their hard work, great attitudes, and unwavering curiosity.” 

[schizografia]

[…]ciò che costituisce la natura della Fotografia, è la posa. Poca importanza ha la durata fisica di tale posa; anche se solo per un milionesimo di secondo (la goccia di latte di H. D. Edgerton), vi è comunque stata posa, poiché la posa non è qui un atteggiamento della cosa fotografata (il bersaglio) e neppure una tecnica dell’Operator, bensì il termine di una «intenzione» di lettura: guardando una foto, io includo fatalmente nel mio sguardo il pensiero di quell’istante, per quanto breve esso sia stato, in cui una cosa reale si è trovata immobile davanti all’occhio. Io trasferisco l’immobilità della foto presente sulla registrazione passata, ed è appunto questa sospensione che costituisce la posa. Tutto questo spiega che il noema della Fotografia si altera quando quella Fotografia si anima e diventa cinema: nella Foto, qualcosa si è posto dinanzi al piccolo foro e vi è rimasto per sempre (questa è almeno la mia impressione); nel cinema, invece, qualcosa è passato davanti a quello stesso piccolo foro: la posa viene travolta e negata dal continuo susseguirsi delle immagini: è un’altra fenomenologia e di conseguenza è un’altra Arte che ha inizio, benché derivata dalla prima.

Roland Barthes

[detournementsmineurs]

"Boys in the Boat" biopic de George Clooney (2023) - basé sur le livre éponyme de Daniel James Brown (2013) racontant l'histoire de l'équipe d'aviron de l'Université de Washington qui a représenté les Etats-Unis aux "Jeux Olympiques" de Berlin (1936) - Callum Turner, Joel Edgerton, Peter Guinness, Luke Slattery, Jack Mulhern et Hadley Robinson, février 2024

[whatsyourghoststory]

Top 10…or 12 Haunted Sites visited in 2023

The most amazing, unique, creepy (and simply coolest) haunted places we visited around the world in 2023.

[greengableslover]

THE GREEN KNIGHT (2021) dir. David Lowery

[relmint-draws]

You know I had to do it to em

[dilfgifs]

JOEL EDGERTON as NATE NASH Red Sparrow (2018) dir. Francis Lawrence

[thephotoregistry]

Moving skipping rope, 1952

Harold Edgerton

[artvmisia]

"It's called swing. When all eight are rowing in such perfect unison, no single action is out of sync with the rest of the boat."

The Boys in the Boat (2023)

[losthavenmine]

Warrior (2011)

[luckyricochet]

In which Al Ulbrickson is a whole mood

THE BOYS IN THE BOAT (2023)

[jcmarchi]

MIT team wins grand prize at NASA’s First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/mit-team-wins-grand-prize-at-nasas-first-nations-launch-high-power-rocket-competition/

MIT team wins grand prize at NASA’s First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition

The members of the MIT First Nations Launch team had never built a drone before when they faced the 2024 NASA First Nations Launch High-Power Rocket Competition. This year’s challenge invited teams to design, build, and launch a high-power rocket carrying a scientific payload that deploys mid-air and safely returns to the ground, integrating Indigenous methodologies.

The eight-student team of all Indigenous students earned the compatition’s grand prize, as well as first place in the written portion.

Deploying a drone from a rocket

Building even the simplest drone demands precise calculations of weight, power, and functionality. But this drone had extra layers of complexity. It needed to fold inside the 7.5-inch diameter rocket and deploy to a full 16 x 16-inch configuration. Team captain and rising junior Hailey Polson explains: “The arms of the drone, which hold the propellers, need to lock in place. Once it unfolds, you don’t want it to re-fold while you’re trying to fly it around. Therefore, you need to have some kind of locking mechanism, as well as a mechanism to ensure it extends and unfolds properly.”

Deploying the drone from the rocket presented a significant challenge. The competition required that the drone’s separation from the rocket could not rely on gravity. To ensure successful deployment, the students planned to use a black powder charge to push the drone from an interior rail, but they had no prior experience testing explosives to see if it would work as intended. So, the team enlisted the expertise of their friends from the MIT Rocket Team, who helped conduct black powder testing in the MIT blast chamber.

Despite all these difficulties, the team decided to rise to the challenges of the competition yet again by designing their own parachute release mechanism, while many teams opted for commercial ones. They used an Arduino controller, a servo, and a special snap shackle. “We tested around 15 different ones because it’s pretty difficult to find something that a servo motor can easily pull and actually release in the correct way,” Polson says.

Once the parachute is released, the drone must be piloted to a safe landing. Nicole McGaa ’24 and second-year student Alex Zhindon-Romero took the FAA Part 107 drone pilot exam so they could legally pilot the drone.

The advantages of an all-indigenous team

According to a 2021 report from the U.S. National Science Foundation, Native Americans formed only 0.6 percent of the STEM workforce.

Polson grew up on the Cherokee Nation Reservation of Claremore, Oklahoma, where she enjoyed being surrounded by other people in her tribe and celebrating her rich culture. “I want to set an example for other people from my background that they can attend MIT, be a rocket scientist, and do basically anything they want and still feel connected to their community.”

Polson planned to join an Edgerton Center build team when she came to MIT, “but I never imagined there would be enough interest for an all-Indigenous build team,” she says. “It’s special because any build team forms a unique bond between the members and fosters a great sense of community. However, having that extra layer of shared values, aspirations, and backgrounds has really gone a long way in driving us towards the same goals. We are not only committed to excellence in engineering and achieving the tasks they ask of us, but also to helping each other and finding excellence within ourselves as engineers.”

The MIT First Nations Launch team was formed in 2022 to participate in the annual NASA Artemis student challenge. The team uses Indigenous methodologies and structures to learn and understand how engineers can shape the world through aerospace and beyond. Polson describes their Indigenous approach as “prioritizing both the human aspect, focusing on the interactions between our teammates, and making sure that they are getting everything they need out of this, as well as on the impacts beyond that, with outreach, education, and the environment.”

Professor J. Kim Vandiver, director of the Edgerton Center, says, “We non-Native American engineers have a lot to learn from these students. I am particularly drawn to their more holistic view of life and the interconnectedness of everything we do and the world in which we live.”

[cumberbatchcom]

[GALLERY UPDATE] Benedict Cumberbatch attending the 'Aston Martin Vanquish' launch event last night in Venice. LINK

[greyghost689]

He's so lead poisoning 🎀

[skylessknights]

GAWAIN and GALAHAD King Arthur | dir. Antoine Fuqua

KA20TH CELEBRATION | Day 2 - Love

AN: For today's @ka20th prompt I decided to focus on an underrated pairing. I know that a lot of people ship Galahad with Tristan because of Hannibal but there's something about these two that make me ship them instead. Maybe it's the little smiles that they share, or Gawain's glances, or the fact that they're always side by side on screen. I can't put my finger on it!