Update for the O’Flaherty retreat benefit, 2006

Irish music fiddle playerAs mentioned here, there’s going to be a benefit for the O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat at the Trinity Hall Pub on September 22. It’s shaping up to be a hot (indoors) night.

Funds raised from this benefit will help offset the cost in bringing to Texas some of the most accomplished traditional players from Ireland and the US to teach. The retreat is produced by the Traditional Irish Music Education Society, a non-profit organization, and sponsored by the Southwest Celtic Music Association and Trinity Hall Restaurant and Pub. Thanks in advance for all of your support!

The following people have committed to play that night:

  • 5 p.m. Trinity Hall Session Players
  • 6 p.m. Irish Rogues
  • 7 p.m. Jigsaw
  • 8 p.m. Behan
  • 9 p.m. Beyond the Pale
  • 10 p.m. Shift (formerly Busker’s Gate)
  • 11 p.m. Rogers, Hicks and Alfonso
  • 12 a.m. Spriggan

Admission is free, there will be a raffle drawing for prizes and proceeds from meals purchased at the pub will be donated to the retreat.

Several of us are going to be there throughout the night and so there will also be some dancing. Come on out and have some fun!

Continue reading Update for the O’Flaherty retreat benefit, 2006

Blowing up rockets using lasers?

Apparently Israel, with the latest problems between them and Lebanon, have decided to revive the Nautilus project which has as its goal the ability to shoot down rockets using lasers.

Begun in 1996 by Israel and the US, the Nautilus project was meant to counter Hizbullah’s 122 mm Katyusha rocket attacks. TRW (now Northrop Grumman Space Technology) was awarded a contract to develop the THEL: a chemical laser gun designed to intercept short-range rockets and mortar bombs. However, despite several successful tests, and although Israel has since been under repeated attack by rockets from Lebanon and the Gaza Strip, Israel and the US decided to abandon the THEL development in January.

The THEL program is being revived. Look for really powerful lasers near you soon.

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Laser TV by 2007?

Hey Asheville Zumba dancers!

Something got messed up with the code I gave you and it’s sending you here.

Click this link for the Zumba class video!

Will we have full-color laser-driven TV next year? Some people think so. One company paving the way is Novalux of Sunnyvale, CA. They’ve been developing projection systems using lasers as their light source, which is much cooler running than equivalent halogen source and even have a cell-phone sized device in development.

NECSEL breaks new ground in miniature projection by providing high-power, efficient output from a compact, affordable package. In fact, current palm-top projectors based on LED lighting measure over 30 cubic inches, produce around 20 lumens, and cost in excess of $700.00. NECSEL prototypes display a light output of over 200 lumens with both device size and cost cut in half.

According to optics.org Novalux has

demonstrated its first Necsel laser arrays that emit more than 750 mW of red light. The company has also achieved a 3 W power output from its prototype blue and green arrays – double the power of previous devices.

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Laser-aligned pendulum

Image courtesy of WikipediaThanks to some undergraduate slave labor from the University of Buffalo, the Foucault Pendulum at the Buffalo Museum of Science is back in full-time service.

[John Cerne, assistant professor of physics] said the new-and-improved circuit at the Buffalo Museum of Science eliminates the loss of power that takes place as the pendulum oscillates by using an electromagnet to tug the weight or "bob" and restore momentum. The magnet is triggered in short bursts based on information it receives from two laser sensors. The original circuit at the museum used a less-efficient system that controlled the magnet with broken beams of light, rather than lasers.

Before the repair, the pendulum never ran for more than eight hours at a time. Now, as long as there’s power, it will run indefinitely.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any good pictures of the museum exhibit but UofB installed their own pendulum in Fronczak Hall and have published a number of images online, shown through the link below.

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Detecting electron spin with lasers

The Royal Society of Chemistry reports that Michael Romalis and colleagues at Princeton University found that the spin of atomic nuclei can be detected with polarised laser light.

Detecting nuclei spin with a laser

Romalis’ team measured what happened to polarised laser light as it passed through samples of either liquid xenon (129Xe) or water in which the alignment of the spins was controlled. They observed that the polarisation of the light was rotated, and that the degree of rotation is related to the extent to which nuclear spins are aligned with one another. Conventional NMR is measured as a property of the bulk sample, but this measurement is specific to the small part of the sample that the light is shining through. In this way it can give precise details about the spatial distribution of spins in the sample.

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Securing information with noisy light

Northwestern University and BBN Technologies of Cambridge, Mass have demonstrated a technique for encrypting data with a little help from lasers.

The volume and type of sensitive information being transmitted over data networks continues to grow at a remarkable pace," said Prem Kumar, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Northwestern’s Robert R. McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science and co-principal investigator on the project.

Continuity Central reports:

The combined QKD/AlphaEta system has been demonstrated in a nine km link between BBN headquarters and Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass. The AlphaEta encrypted signal carried OC-3 (155Mb/s) SONET data between the two nodes. A fresh encryption key of about 1 kilobit was repetitively loaded every three seconds. In a separate test, the AlphaEta encrypted signal was looped back multiple times to create an effective 36 km link where more than 300 consecutive key exchanges were demonstrated.

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Following that speeder too closely?

Not only do you have to worry about getting tagged with a laser while speeding but now you might just get a ticket for following too closely if you’re using someone in front of you as a shield.

The Oregon Mail Tribune reports that they’re testing a new system that will report the speed of a car as well as the distance between it any any car following it.

Dace Cochran, a patrol sergeant with the Jackson County Sheriff’s office writes:

Here’s what the updated lasers will be able to tell us:

  • The speed of the first car.
  • The distance from the laser operator to the first car.
  • The speed of the second car.
  • The distance from the laser operator to the second car.
  • The distance between the two cars (front bumper to front bumper).
  • The time difference between the two cars.

Once this comes to your state, assuming you aren’t in Oregon now, be careful about using other people as ticket shields. Of course, you could always just slow down.

Continue reading Following that speeder too closely?

Laser bomb sniffer

Electronics Weekly reports that Cascade Technologies, based in Stirling Scotland has developed a system capable of detecting explosives in tightly sealed packages, without opening them.

At the lab, we were sent a sample of explosives in a glass phial in an aluminium package, and that package had been through the post, company CEO John Fuller told Electronics Weekly. We could detect the explosives without opening it.

From the company’s web site:

One such technique, known as Intra pulse spectroscopy, uses the laser in pulsed mode to facilitate its use over the wide range of environmental conditions typically associated with industrial monitoring. Pulsing the laser for up to a microsecond at a time causes instantaneous localised heating within the device, which results in a large frequency chirp. This chirp is harnessed to provide a near instantaneous frequency sweep through many spectroscopic features of interest.

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Dolphin sub sunk

Not literally, but budget cuts are taking it out of action.

Why do you care? Because it achieved a few firsts using lasers!

Less than a year after completing a $50 million project to repair and upgrade the San Diego-based research vessel, the Navy will decommission it Sept. 22. It is the country’s last diesel-electric sub… The Dolphin had other notable firsts: sending the first successful submarine-to-aircraft laser communication and the first sub-to-surface e-mail.

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2006 O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat

It will be held October 27-29, 2006 in Midlothian, Texas, just 30 minutes south of Dallas, at a comfortable camp and conference center there.

There will be classes in fiddle, flute, harp, uilleann pipes, tinwhistle, bodhran, guitar, piano accordion, button accordion, piano, concertina, harp, mandolin, tenor banjo, bouzouki, singing (English and Gaelic), dancing and our staff includes some of the best players in the Irish tradition, including John Carty, Daithi Sproule, Jerry O’Sullivan, Randal Bays, Shannon Heaton, Roger Landes and others. Online registration in now underway.

For more info, please visit the retreat website at http://www.irishtradmusic.org/oflaherty.htm.

Continue reading 2006 O’Flaherty Irish Music Retreat