Deceased--George Shor Jr.

George Shor Jr.

June 8th, 1923 to July 3rd, 2009

"George Shor Jr. dies at 86; Scripps geophysicist studied the ocean floor"

Shor's work helped lay the foundation for the theory of tectonic plates and continental drift.

by

Thomas H. Maugh II

July 11th, 2009

Los Angeles Times

George G. Shor Jr., the Scripps geophysicist whose study of the ocean floor helped lay the foundation for the theory of tectonic plates and continental drift, died July 3 at his home in La Jolla from complications following a series of strokes. He was 86.

He helped develop the United States' fleet of ocean-going research vessels, was a principal in the abortive Project Mohole to drill a hole deep into the Earth and played a key role in the creation of the California Sea Grant program, which funds marine and coastal research.

"He mentored students ashore and at sea, but his strength was teaching people geophysics at sea," said geologist Robert L. Fisher, a professor emeritus at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego, where Shor spent most of his career. He was a talented administrator and experimenter, and if he saw something that didn't work in either area, "he would diddle with it to make it better," Fisher said.

Shor joined Scripps in 1953 at the beginning of what researchers have dubbed the golden age of oceanography, in which research vessels from Scripps, Columbia University, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and Cambridge University explored the oceans, trailing magnetometers and other sophisticated instruments to detect the overall structure of the ocean floor and anomalies beneath it. He began his work in the Gulf of Alaska, a region with a little known geological history, then led expeditions into the Indian Ocean.

During the International Geophysical Year in 1957 and 1958, he led expeditions to the Southeast Pacific.

His work and that of others eventually led to the conclusion that the planet's continents reside on massive tectonic plates that are adrift on an ocean of volcanic magma far below the Earth's surface, pulling apart in some areas to create deep trenches in the ocean and jamming together in others to create massive mountain ranges.

Near the end of his career, he coordinated the activities of Scripps' research fleet, scheduling voyages and allocating resources. He also helped create and served on the University-National Oceanographic Laboratory System, which coordinates operations of research ships throughout the world.

In the 1950s, he joined Project Mohole, which was designed to retrieve a sample of material from the Earth's mantle by drilling through the Mohorovicic discontinuity, which resides as much as three miles under the ocean floor and up to 25 miles below the surface of continents. Shor and Scripps geophysicist Russell W. Raitt identified the best location to drill the hole, off the coast of Hawaii, but the project was canceled by Congress because of cost overruns and poor management.

In the 1960s, Shor helped create the California Sea Grant program, headquartered at Scripps, serving as its manager from 1969 to 1973.

George Gershon Shor Jr. was born June 8, 1923, in New York City. He attended Caltech, where he was part of a program that trained students to be sailors. Upon his graduation in 1944 with a degree in mechanical engineering, he served as an electronics and communications officer on a Navy troop ship in the Pacific. He remained in the Naval Reserve until his retirement as a commander in 1983.

After the war, he returned to Caltech for graduate work in geophysics, then joined Seismic Explorations Inc. in Houston, for which he prospected for oil in New Mexico and West Texas. In 1951, he returned to Caltech to do graduate study with earthquake expert Charles Richter, receiving his degree in 1954.

After his retirement from Scripps in 1991, he developed an interest in bamboo as a structural material for flooring, furniture and other applications. He served as president of the American Bamboo Society for two years and helped establish the Southern California chapter of the organization.

Shor is survived by his wife of 59 years, Elizabeth Noble Shor; two sons, Alexander of Honolulu and Donald of Dixon, Calif.; a daughter, Carolyn Large of Dixon; and seven grandchildren.

Instant energy, marketing, money

This is nothing new. Back in my day it was NoDoz and similar products in tablet form. They did work but in the end--we all crashed. Natural sleep usually won out. I am sure some will indulge for, shall we say recreational purposes, for caffeine is on the low end of the speed spectrum. But what bothers me is the fact that the doses are quite expensive and habitual use may cause physical and psychological issues. College kids--OK; truck drivers and construction workers--maybe not OK. I'll stick with my four cup coffee maker and Folger's Brazilian blend.

"‘Energy Shots’ Stimulate Power Drink Sales"

by

William Neuman

July 11th, 2009

The New York Times

COLLEGE PARK, Md. — The power drink of the moment costs 20 times as much per ounce as Coca-Cola, comes in a tiny bottle and tastes so bad that most people hold their noses and down it in a single gulp.

Despite all that, sales of "energy shots" are soaring in the middle of a recession. The two-ounce drinks, which give people a concentrated dose of caffeine, B vitamins and amino acids, were all but unheard-of four years ago. Today they are the hottest drink category in the country, with sales expected to almost double this year from last, to about $700 million.

The shots are meant for people who want a jolt of caffeine without having to drink a big cup of coffee or one of the 16-ounce energy drinks that have become ubiquitous. They go down fast, more like medicine than a beverage. That is part of the appeal to their most devoted consumers: students cramming for exams or partying into the night, construction workers looking for a lift and drivers trying to stay awake.

Near the University of Maryland the other day, students thought nothing of paying $3 or more for a shot. That is $1.50 an ounce; at that price, a 20-ounce bottle of Coca-Cola would sell for $30.

"It helps me stay up all night when I have work to do," said Matt Sporre, 20, a sophomore chemical engineering major who said he drank shots three or four nights a week when school was in session. "Those things are going to be the death of my generation," he added. "Too much caffeine."

Mr. Sporre and several others students said the shots worked well in combination with Adderall, a prescription drug for attention deficit disorder that is popular on college campuses. The Adderall helps them focus, they said, and the shot keeps them awake.

Several students said they sometimes downed an energy shot before going out drinking. Others said the shots helped them stay awake during long drives home from school. Two members of the university’s wrestling team said some of their teammates drank the shots before matches to get an energy lift.

A 7-Eleven store on Knox Road, just off the Maryland campus in College Park, has become one of the top sellers of energy shots among the 5,700 United States stores in the 7-Eleven chain. The store's owner, Million Mekonen, said that sales spiked during finals in May, when the store sold close to 400 shots in a week.

But students are not the only users. Steve Cisko, 26, a construction worker renovating a dormitory, stopped in at the 7-Eleven and bought a shot made by AriZona Beverage for $3.99.

"I do demolition; it wears you out," he said. "Sometimes I'll take two at a time in the afternoon. Every guy I work with uses them."

Sales of the shots are rising even as sales of traditional energy drinks like Red Bull have flattened out. Bill Pecoriello, chief executive of Consumer Edge Research, estimated that shot sales could reach $700 million this year, nearly double last year's $370 million, not counting sales by Wal-Mart Stores. The estimate was based on sales data collected by Information Resources, a market research firm.

The market is dominated by a tiny company in suburban Detroit called Living Essentials, which began test sales in late 2004 of a product called 5-Hour Energy, packaged in small plastic bottles. Today, 5-Hour Energy accounts for about 80 percent of the rapidly expanding market, according to Mr. Pecoriello.

The company's unlikely success — it has only one other product, an antihangover pill called Chaser — has forced the big beverage makers to play catch-up. Last month, Red Bull introduced a two-ounce shot, and Dr Pepper Snapple began test-marketing a three-ounce version of its Venom energy drink, called Venom Bite. Coca-Cola introduced a shot last year based on its NOS energy drink.

Many smaller companies have jumped in too, often offering products with similar names, like 6 Hour Power, Fuel 7 Hour Energy and Mr. Energy 8-Hour Energy.

Living Essentials has spent heavily on advertising to build the market and hold its position against newcomers. It expects to spend $60 million this year on television advertising for 5-Hour Energy. It has also gone after several of its competitors in court, challenging labels or product names it said were too close to its own.

The most vigorous legal battle pits Living Essentials against a Texas company called Custom Nutrition Laboratories and includes accusations of betrayal, stolen secrets and other skullduggery.

The two companies worked closely together from 2004 through 2007. At Living Essentials' request, Custom Nutrition developed the formula for 5-Hour Energy and then manufactured and bottled it. Living Essentials handled the marketing, distribution and sales. Then, in late 2007, Living Essentials fired Custom Nutrition and replaced it with another manufacturer.

Now both companies claim ownership of the product’s secret recipe, although only Living Essentials continues to produce it. Last month a federal magistrate judge ordered the two sides to try to mediate their dispute.

"We invented the product," said Baxter W. Banowsky, a lawyer in Dallas for Custom Nutrition. "Whatever profits they've made from the sale of the product encompassing our formula, they should be turned over to us."

Carl F. Sperber, a spokesman for Living Essentials, said the company would not comment on the litigation, which involves cases in state and federal courts in Texas.

Unlike older energy drinks, 5-Hour Energy and most other shots do not contain sugar. Their crucial ingredient is caffeine. But Living Essentials and many of its competitors will not reveal exactly how much of it is in the products, saying only that it is about as much caffeine as in a cup of coffee. The caffeine in coffee can vary widely, from about 80 to 175 milligrams in an eight-ounce cup.

Living Essentials makes broad claims for 5-Hour Energy, saying that it is "packed with B vitamins for energy and amino acids for alertness and focus."

Nutritionists were skeptical of such claims, however.

Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University, said that while some of the nutrients in 5-Hour Energy were known to play a role in the body's metabolism, most people got enough of those nutrients in their regular diet and that ingesting elevated amounts had not been shown to have any beneficial effect.

"It sounds like a great placebo to me," she said. "You can gulp this down and you feel like you're doing something. And I’ll bet you ask people and they say they feel better. It's got caffeine — why not?"

One thing is certain: people are not buying the shots for the taste.

"Terrible!" said Barry Ray, a 21-year-old from Hyattsville, Md., as he sampled a Red Bull shot. "But it's good. It wakes you up."

Joe Gere, a New Jersey entrepreneur who produces a shot called Xfuel, said there was not enough water in a two-ounce shot to dilute the bitter taste of the caffeine and nutrients. But shot makers concede that a medicinal flavor and the small, pill-bottle size are all part of a shot's appeal.

"Five-Hour Energy's not supposed to taste fantastic," said Mr. Sperber, the Living Essentials spokesman. "This is supposed to be a functional product, not something for flavor or something for refreshment."

"For All Mankind"...40 years after Apollo 11

Al Reinert's For All Mankind won the Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1990 covering the Apollo 11 mission [including Apollo 1 and Apollo 7 through 10]. The film is available as a restored high-definition digital transfer from The Criterion Collection or you can watch it for free from NASA .

For All Mankind

"Telstar"...anniversary today

AT&T's communication satellite was launched July 10th, 1962.

On July 10, 1962 NASA launched AT&T's Telstar 1 satellite. The satellite was designed to relay television and telephone signals between the United States and Europe. Shortly after orbit was achieved, a test signal was sent from the U.S. ground station in Andover, Maine of the American flag outside the station with the Star Spangled Banner music. The French ground station at Pleumeur-Bodou received and sent back the signal to prove the system worked. The second test involved a long distance telephone call between Vice-President Lyndon Johnson and AT&T chairman Fred Kappel.

Telstar

by

The Tornados

1962

Galileo's discovery of Neptune

Wikipedia:

Galileo's drawings show that he first observed Neptune on December 28, 1612, and again on January 27, 1613. On both occasions, Galileo mistook Neptune for a fixed star when it appeared very close—in conjunction—to Jupiter in the night sky, hence, he is not credited with Neptune's discovery. During the period of his first observation in December 1612, Neptune was stationary in the sky because it had just turned retrograde that very day. This apparent backward motion is created when the orbit of the Earth takes it past an outer planet. Since Neptune was only beginning its yearly retrograde cycle, the motion of the planet was far too slight to be detected with Galileo's small telescope.

"Galileo's notebooks may reveal secrets of new planet"

July 9th, 2009

University of Melbourne

Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date, according to a new theory by a University of Melbourne physicist.

Professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics, is investigating the notebooks of Galileo from 400 years ago and believes that buried in the notations is the evidence that he discovered a new planet that we now know as Neptune.

A hypothesis of how to look for this evidence has been published in the journal Australian Physics and was presented at the first lecture in the 2009 July Lectures in Physics program at the University of Melbourne last week.

If correct, the discovery would be the first new planet identified by humanity since deep antiquity.

Galileo was observing the moons of Jupiter in the years 1612 and 1613 and recorded his observations in his notebooks. Over several nights he also recorded the position of a nearby star which does not appear in any modern star catalogue.

"It has been known for several decades that this unknown star was actually the planet Neptune. Computer simulations show the precision of his observations revealing that Neptune would have looked just like a faint star almost exactly where Galileo observed it," Professor Jamieson says.

But a planet is different to a star because planets orbit the Sun and move through the sky relative to the stars. It is remarkable that on the night of January 28 in 1613 Galileo noted that the "star" we now know is the planet Neptune appeared to have moved relative to an actual nearby star."

There is also a mysterious unlabeled black dot in his earlier observations of January 6, 1613, which is in the right position to be Neptune.

"I believe this dot could reveal he went back in his notes to record where he saw Neptune earlier when it was even closer to Jupiter but had not previously attracted his attention because of its unremarkable star-like appearance."

If the mysterious black dot on January 6 was actually recorded on January 28, Professor Jamieson proposes this would prove that Galileo believed he may have discovered a new planet.

By using the expertise of trace element analysts from the University of Florence, who have previously analyzed inks in Galileo's manuscripts, dating the unlabelled dot in his notebook may be possible. This analysis may be conducted in October this year.

"Galileo may indeed have formed the hypothesis that he had seen a new planet which had moved right across the field of view during his observations of Jupiter over the month of January 1613," Professor Jamieson says.

"If this is correct Galileo observed Neptune 234 years before its official discovery."

But there could be an even more interesting possibility still buried in Galileo's notes and letters.

"Galileo was in the habit of sending a scrambled sentence, an anagram, to his colleagues to establish his priority for the sensational discoveries he made with his new telescope. He did this when he discovered the phases of Venus and the rings of Saturn. So perhaps somewhere he wrote an as-yet undecoded anagram that reveals he knew he discovered a new planet," Professor Jamieson speculates.

"The Age of Wonder"...new book

The Age of Wonder: How the Romantic Generation Discovered the Beauty and Terror of Science

by

Richard Holmes

ISBN-10: 0007149522
ISBN-13: 978-0007149520

"When Poets Were Scientists and Nature Their Mysterious Muse"

by

Janet Maslin

July 9th, 2009

The New York Times

William Herschel, the German-born, star-gazing musician who effectively doubled the size of the solar system with a single discovery in 1781, was not regarded as a scientist. That word had not been coined during most of the era that will now be known, thanks to Richard Holmes's amazingly ambitious, buoyant new fusion of history, art, science, philosophy and biography, as "The Age of Wonder." And Mr. Holmes's excitement at fusing long-familiar events and personages into something startlingly new is not unlike the exuberance of the age that animates his groundbreaking book.

In Herschel's day (and that of his sister, Caroline, who functioned as his doting assistant to the point of feeding him like a baby bird), science was deductively methodical. And astronomy was no amateur's game. But Herschel charted the skies as if making musical notations. And when he lacked instruments with enough precision, he painstakingly invented a telescope with startling new powers of magnification.

Looking through it, he noted a starlike object, twice as far from the Sun as Saturn, that appeared to be moving yet did not have a comet's tail. He identified this as the planet Georgium Sidus, first named for George III of Britain but later known as Uranus. (Mr. Holmes is much too spirited a writer to resist making a bon mot about the English pronunciation of that name.)

Beyond enlivening the story of Herschel's discovery into a gripping narrative, this book speculates fascinatingly about the ramifications of such a breakthrough. Thanks to Herschel the idea of a fixed universe was challenged, replaced by a cosmos in flux. Was that cause for wonder or terror? What were its theological implications? How would it influence a future generation of poets? (The thrill of this breakthrough would later figure in one of Keats's most famous sonnets, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer.") Where would it figure in the relay race of scientific discoveries?

In order to structure his big, sweeping book about such issues, Mr. Holmes uses two exploratory voyages as bookends. The first, a trip to Tahiti in 1769 led by Capt. James Cook, brought the eager young botanist Joseph Banks to a place he would regard as a paradise, botanical and otherwise. (Mr. Holmes quotes deftly from Banks's delightfully candid journals, noting that Banks wrote with "gentlemanly jeu d’esprit.") The book then follows Banks back to England, where, at the age of 35, he became president of the Royal Society in 1778. He would hold that post for 41 years and encourage the other young pioneers whose stories Mr. Holmes has told.

"The Age of Wonder," a book with a distinct taste for high times, next moves to the golden age of ballooning, which began as an offshoot of paper-bag manufacturing. Gorgeously illustrated, "The Age of Wonder" captures the full gaudiness of early French ballooning experiments in Easter-egg-colored airborne specimens. And it finds an element of bawdy comedy in the era's gossipy whisperings about what might happen up in the air. ("So the first Mile High Club was also formed," Mr. Holmes writes of one such story.)

A wild anecdote about one American-British collaborative effort says of the two balloonists that "quite early on, each accidentally managed to drop the other’s national flag over the side of the basket and then profusely apologized." As to the rest of what was spilled overboard, Mr. Holmes's attention to detail raises the question of how exactingly such scientific endeavours really need to be documented.

But this book also understands the seriousness of these early experiments and the confusion they engendered: Was the eagerness to make a first crossing of the English Channel a sporting, scientific or diplomatic matter? What could balloon flight be used to measure? What would be its legacy? (The first test pilot with "the right stuff" can be found here.) And why should this kind of story not be told as enthusiastically as stories about artists and historical figures are? Over all "The Age of Wonder" makes a splendid case for treating the history of science in a bright new way.

Much of the book is also devoted to Humphry Davy, whose reputation is multifaceted. He wrote poetry; he had lively friendships with some of the best-known writers of his day; he invented a lamp that would prevent methane gas from exploding and save the lives of countless miners. Best immortalized here, though, are Davy's experiments with nitrous oxide, tests in which he eagerly served as guinea pig. Inhaling that substance gave him "a thrilling all over me most exquisitely pleasurable," he recorded. "I said to myself I was born to benefit the world by my great talents."

That Davy did not benefit the world by realizing surgical patients could be anesthetized is symptomatic, Mr. Holmes writes, of the strange, uncharted world that this book explores. Davy knew he was discovering something; what he did not know was what its practical applications might be. And with the kind of throwaway brilliance that makes this book so enthralling, Mr. Holmes uses only a footnote to conjure one of science’s least documented realms: that of failure. The cliché of the "Eureka!" moment easily obscures the doubt and uncertainty that are also part of the discovery process.

A particularly inspired section of the book relates Mary Shelley's "Frankenstein" to dissection, to the debate about the existence of a life force, and to the way fiction writers and poets could invoke spiritual power while avoiding making reference to God. But by the time the book reaches the Age of Wonder's concluding event, Charles Darwin's five-year voyage on the Beagle beginning in 1831, it has raised both the antecedents and ramifications of today's most enduring scientific debates, on subjects from global warming to extraterrestrial life to intelligent design. It is impossible to understand where these arguments are headed, "The Age of Wonder" maintains, without knowing where they began.

Death of an "atom smasher"

"Historic Atom Smasher Reduced to Rubble and Revelry"

by

Alexis Madrigal

July 8th, 2009

Wired Science

BERKELEY, California — What was once the world's biggest atom smasher will soon be nothing more than a collection of old photos and the dust beneath the next big science machine.

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s Bevatron, built by the Atomic Energy Commission for $9 million in the early '50s, is slowly being demolished in the hills overlooking San Francisco Bay. In a few years, all traces of it will be gone.

The Bevatron was a marvel, that, when compared to the rest of the human world drew ridiculous comparisons. Popular Science called it a "10,000-Ton Cracker for Invisible Nuts" and rapturously listed its dimensions. For boys of all ages, the Bevatron's stats were the 36-24-36 of physics.

"It is 135 feet across, cost $9,500,000 and contains more than 9,500 tons of iron, 225 miles of wire, and 2,400 vacuum tubes," wrote Darrell Huff in Popular Science. "This is the bevatron, just completed, the most powerful atom-smasher yet built."

The Bevatron occupied 125,000 square feet of land at the center of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. It was once the crown jewel of the lab, of the National Lab system and of the particle physics world.

Read the rest of the article and view the many photographs

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory


Columbia's cyclotron--gone