California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology is a private doctorate-granting research university in Pasadena, California. Known for its strength in natural science and engineering, Caltech is ranked as one of the world's top-ten universities. Although founded as a preparatory and vocational school by Amos G. Throop in 1891, the college attracted influential scientists such as George Ellery Hale, Arthur Amos Noyes and Robert Andrews Millikan in the early 20th century; the vocational and preparatory schools were disbanded and spun off in 1910 and the college assumed its present name in 1921. In 1934, Caltech was elected to the Association of American Universities and the antecedents of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which Caltech continues to manage and operate, were established between 1936 and 1943 under Theodore von Kármán; the university is one among a small group of institutes of technology in the United States, devoted to the instruction of pure and applied sciences. Caltech has six academic divisions with strong emphasis on science and engineering, managing $332 million in 2011 in sponsored research.
Its 124-acre primary campus is located 11 mi northeast of downtown Los Angeles. First-year students are required to live on campus and 95% of undergraduates remain in the on-campus House System at Caltech. Although Caltech has a strong tradition of practical jokes and pranks, student life is governed by an honor code which allows faculty to assign take-home examinations; the Caltech Beavers compete in 13 intercollegiate sports in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference. As of October 2018, Caltech alumni and researchers include 73 Nobel Laureates, 4 Fields Medalists, 6 Turing Award winners. In addition, there are 53 non-emeritus faculty members who have been elected to one of the United States National Academies, 4 Chief Scientists of the U. S. Air Force and 71 have won the United States National Medal of Technology. Numerous faculty members are associated with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute as well as NASA. According to a 2015 Pomona College study, Caltech ranked number one in the U.
S. for the percentage of its graduates who go on to earn a PhD. Caltech started as a vocational school founded in Pasadena in 1891 by local businessman and politician Amos G. Throop; the school was known successively as Throop University, Throop Polytechnic Institute and Throop College of Technology before acquiring its current name in 1920. The vocational school was disbanded and the preparatory program was split off to form an independent Polytechnic School in 1907. At a time when scientific research in the United States was still in its infancy, George Ellery Hale, a solar astronomer from the University of Chicago, founded the Mount Wilson Observatory in 1904, he joined Throop's board of trustees in 1907, soon began developing it and the whole of Pasadena into a major scientific and cultural destination. He engineered the appointment of James A. B. Scherer, a literary scholar untutored in science but a capable administrator and fund raiser, to Throop's presidency in 1908. Scherer persuaded retired businessman and trustee Charles W. Gates to donate $25,000 in seed money to build Gates Laboratory, the first science building on campus.
In 1910, Throop moved to its current site. Arthur Fleming donated the land for the permanent campus site. Theodore Roosevelt delivered an address at Throop Institute on March 21, 1911, he declared: I want to see institutions like Throop turn out ninety-nine of every hundred students as men who are to do given pieces of industrial work better than any one else can do them. In the same year, a bill was introduced in the California Legislature calling for the establishment of a publicly funded "California Institute of Technology", with an initial budget of a million dollars, ten times the budget of Throop at the time; the board of trustees offered to turn Throop over to the state, but the presidents of Stanford University and the University of California lobbied to defeat the bill, which allowed Throop to develop as the only scientific research-oriented education institute in southern California, public or private, until the onset of the World War II necessitated the broader development of research-based science education.
The promise of Throop attracted physical chemist Arthur Amos Noyes from MIT to develop the institution and assist in establishing it as a center for science and technology. With the onset of World War I, Hale organized the National Research Council to coordinate and support scientific work on military problems. While he supported the idea of federal appropriations for science, he took exception to a federal bill that would have funded engineering research at land-grant colleges, instead sought to raise a $1 million national research fund from private sources. To that end, as Hale wrote in The New York Times: Throop College of Technology, in Pasadena California has afforded a striking illustration of one way in which the Research Council can secure co-operation and advance scientific investigation; this institution, with its able investigators and excellent research laboratories, could be of great service in any broad scheme of cooperation. President S
Nanoscopic scale
The nanoscopic scale refers to structures with a length scale applicable to nanotechnology cited as 1–100 nanometers. A nanometer is a billionth of a meter; the nanoscopic scale is a lower bound to the mesoscopic scale for most solids. For technical purposes, the nanoscopic scale is the size at which fluctuations in the averaged properties begin to have a significant effect on the behavior of a system, must be taken into account in its analysis; the nanoscopic scale is sometimes marked as the point. Below this point, the properties of a material change, while the type of atoms present and their relative orientations are still important,'surface area effects' become more apparent – these effects are due to the geometry of the material, which, at these low dimensions, can have a drastic effect on quantized states, thus the properties of a material. On October 8, 2014, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Eric Betzig, William Moerner and Stefan Hell for "the development of super-resolved fluorescence microscopy," which brings "optical microscopy into the nanodimension".
The most complex nanoscale molecular machines are proteins found within cells in the form of multi-protein complexes. Some biological machines are motor proteins, such as myosin, responsible for muscle contraction, which moves cargo inside cells away from the nucleus along microtubules, dynein, which moves cargo inside cells towards the nucleus and produces the axonemal beating of motile cilia and flagella. "n effect, the is a nanomachine composed of over 600 proteins in molecular complexes, many of which function independently as nanomachines... Flexible linkers allow the mobile protein domains connected by them to recruit their binding partners and induce long-range allostery via protein domain dynamics. " Other biological machines are responsible for energy production, for example ATP synthase which harnesses energy from proton gradients across membranes to drive a turbine-like motion used to synthesise ATP, the energy currency of a cell. Still other machines are responsible for gene expression, including DNA polymerases for replicating DNA, RNA polymerases for producing mRNA, the spliceosome for removing introns, the ribosome for synthesising proteins.
These machines and their nanoscale dynamics are far more complex than any molecular machines that have yet been artificially constructed. Center for Probing the Nanoscale Center for Nanoscale Materials Nanomachines Nanomedicine
Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center
The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center is a USAF Named Unit, assigned to the Air Force Materiel Command at Kirtland Air Force Base, New Mexico. The AFNWC operates at the Center level of the AFMC, it is under the command of Major General Shaun Morris. The center's mission is to ensure safe and reliable nuclear weapon systems to support U. S. nuclear deterrence and the United States Air Force warfighter. The AFNWC’s vision is to be the Air Force’s Center of Excellence for all nuclear weapon systems activities; the responsibilities of the Center include acquisition and sustainment of nuclear weapon systems for both the Departments of Defense and Energy. Established on March 31, 2006, the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center is Air Force Materiel Command’s center of expertise for nuclear weapon systems; the AFNWC is the single AFMC voice for integrating nuclear weapon systems requirements and nuclear weapon system resource management. The Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center was formed as a post World War II outgrowth of the Manhattan Project, designed by the Army from the outset to be a temporary organization to produce an atomic bomb.
With the end of the war, the establishment of the "Z Division" at Sandia Base and the Sandia National Laboratory led to the establishment of an Air Force organization to coordinate military activities with the civilian research organization in 1946. Part of Continental Air Command and Air Material Command, the center was established as the Air Force Special Weapons Command as a Major Command of the United States Air Force on 1 December 1949, it was equal to the Air Defense Command, Strategic Air Command, Tactical Air Command. It assumed all functions of the World War II Atomic Tactical and Technical Liaison Committees, its mission was to provide an organization for the development and testing of atomic weapons; the nucleus of this organization was composed of the pioneering Air Force agencies which had located there to determine future employment of nuclear weapons. The SWC was headquartered at Kirtland AFB; the mission was to provide an organization for development testing of special weapons, including atomic and chemical weapons, to increase the efficiency of airborne vehicles to carry these weapons.
As a result, the responsibility for biological-chemical warfare research was moved from Wright-Patterson AFB to the SWC at Kirtland. The SWC assumed all the functions of the old USAF Field Office for Atomic Energy and employed personnel who were transferred from that office to form the cadre of the HQ, SWC; the command was directed to provide personnel and equipment for development and proof testing of aircraft equipment and ground handling appurtenance to special weapons. Shortly after it was established, the SWC took over the host responsibilities for Kirtland from Air Materiel Command. SWC served as the primary source for scientific and technical information on special weapons development. To accomplish its mission, SWC redesignated numerous units, under the USAF Field Office of Atomic Energy with no change in station. SWC units at Kirtland in 1951 were: 4901st Special Weapons Wing 4925th Special Weapons Group 4905th Maintenance and Supply Group 4910th Air Base GroupIt appears that the 4901st Special Weapons Wing had administrative control over the groups, with the 4905th Maintenance and Supply Group and the 4910th Air Base Group serving as support and the base host while the 4925th Special Weapons Group was the group involved with atomic testing.
In January 1950 President Harry S. Truman directed the Atomic Energy Commission to emphasize thermonuclear research, with the prime objective to become operational in delivering hydrogen bombs; the primary USAF group to work on this mission was the 4925th Special Weapons Group. The 4925th Special Weapons Group was a mix of elite U. S. airmen and support personnel tasked with testing all aircraft in the USAF inventory for nuclear weapons delivery capability. The top bomber and fighter pilots in the USAF and expert support personnel were transferred to the 4925th Special Weapons Group. In July 1951, the 4925th Special Weapons Group was redesignated the 4925th Test Group and continued for 11 years as an important component of Kirtland ’s nuclear responsibilities. SWC’s responsibilities expanded in July 1951 to include monitoring the Military Weapons Effects Program, the ongoing series of full-scale nuclear tests, exercising overall control over participating USAF personnel; the 4930th Test Support Group was "a holding cadre for USAF participating personnel of overseas nuclear testing Joint Task Forces".
The command was redesignated the Air Force Special Weapons Center and assigned to Air Research and Development Command on 1 April 1952, losing major command status and became a subordinate unit of the Air Research and Development Command. As the AFSWC, it became one of development centers within the command, its mission was to ensure the atomic capability of aircraft and missiles. During the 1950s, assigned personnel and aircraft participated in atmospheric nuclear tests in Nevada and the Pacific Proving Grounds; the first Air Force scientific capabilities at the base were created during the mid-1950s. Biophysicists deliberately flew aircraft through nuclear clouds to determine radiation hazards. Engineers launched sounding rockets so physicists could study the effects of high-altitude nuclear explosions and the nature of the discovered Van Allen radiation belts around the Earth. From the early years of Cold War, the need to test and evaluate supersonic aircraft technologies, associated munitions, space systems, required the Air Force to
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. The earliest roots of science can be traced to Ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia in around 3500 to 3000 BCE, their contributions to mathematics and medicine entered and shaped Greek natural philosophy of classical antiquity, whereby formal attempts were made to explain events of the physical world based on natural causes. After the fall of the Western Roman Empire, knowledge of Greek conceptions of the world deteriorated in Western Europe during the early centuries of the Middle Ages but was preserved in the Muslim world during the Islamic Golden Age; the recovery and assimilation of Greek works and Islamic inquiries into Western Europe from the 10th to 13th century revived natural philosophy, transformed by the Scientific Revolution that began in the 16th century as new ideas and discoveries departed from previous Greek conceptions and traditions. The scientific method soon played a greater role in knowledge creation and it was not until the 19th century that many of the institutional and professional features of science began to take shape.
Modern science is divided into three major branches that consist of the natural sciences, which study nature in the broadest sense. There is disagreement, however, on whether the formal sciences constitute a science as they do not rely on empirical evidence. Disciplines that use existing scientific knowledge for practical purposes, such as engineering and medicine, are described as applied sciences. Science is based on research, conducted in academic and research institutions as well as in government agencies and companies; the practical impact of scientific research has led to the emergence of science policies that seek to influence the scientific enterprise by prioritizing the development of commercial products, health care, environmental protection. Science in a broad sense existed in many historical civilizations. Modern science is distinct in its approach and successful in its results, so it now defines what science is in the strictest sense of the term. Science in its original sense was a word for a type of knowledge, rather than a specialized word for the pursuit of such knowledge.
In particular, it was the type of knowledge which people can communicate to share. For example, knowledge about the working of natural things was gathered long before recorded history and led to the development of complex abstract thought; this is shown by the construction of complex calendars, techniques for making poisonous plants edible, public works at national scale, such as those which harnessed the floodplain of the Yangtse with reservoirs and dikes, buildings such as the Pyramids. However, no consistent conscious distinction was made between knowledge of such things, which are true in every community, other types of communal knowledge, such as mythologies and legal systems. Metallurgy was known in prehistory, the Vinča culture was the earliest known producer of bronze-like alloys, it is thought that early experimentation with heating and mixing of substances over time developed into alchemy. Neither the words nor the concepts "science" and "nature" were part of the conceptual landscape in the ancient near east.
The ancient Mesopotamians used knowledge about the properties of various natural chemicals for manufacturing pottery, glass, metals, lime plaster, waterproofing. The Mesopotamians had intense interest in medicine and the earliest medical prescriptions appear in Sumerian during the Third Dynasty of Ur. Nonetheless, the Mesopotamians seem to have had little interest in gathering information about the natural world for the mere sake of gathering information and only studied scientific subjects which had obvious practical applications or immediate relevance to their religious system. In the classical world, there is no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, well-educated upper-class, universally male individuals performed various investigations into nature whenever they could afford the time. Before the invention or discovery of the concept of "nature" by the Pre-Socratic philosophers, the same words tend to be used to describe the natural "way" in which a plant grows, the "way" in which, for example, one tribe worships a particular god.
For this reason, it is claimed these men were the first philosophers in the strict sense, the first people to distinguish "nature" and "convention." Natural philosophy, the precursor of natural science, was thereby distinguished as the knowledge of nature and things which are true for every community, the name of the specialized pursuit of such knowledge was philosophy – the realm of the first philosopher-physicists. They were speculators or theorists interested in astronomy. In contrast, trying to use knowledge of nature to imitate nature was seen by classical scientists as a more appropriate interest for lower class artisans; the early Greek philosophers of the Milesian school, founded by Thales of Miletus and continued by his successors A
Air Force Life Cycle Management Center
The Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, headquartered at Wright-Patterson AFB, is one of six centers reporting to the Air Force Materiel Command. Led by a Lieutenant General, AFLCMC is charged with life cycle management of Air Force weapon systems from their inception to retirement; the AFLCMC mission is to support war-winning capabilities. AFLCMC was designed to provide a single face and voice to customers, holistic management of weapon systems across their life cycles, to simplify and consolidate staff functions and processes to curtail redundancy and enhance efficiency. In addition AFLCMC's operating structure provides an integrated framework for decision making and process optimization across the weapon system life cycle. AFLCMC personnel work with their counterparts at the other four AFMC centers. AFLCMC's portfolio includes: networks. AFLCMC executes sales of aircraft and other defense-related equipment while building security assistance relationships with foreign partner nation air forces.
26,000 AFLCMC airmen and contractor employees perform center missions from some 75 locations. Each Program Office reports to one of 10 Program Executive Officers who are accountable for the activities within their portfolio and who report to the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive at the Pentagon. AFLCMC execution directorates provide direct program support such as engineering, technical order management, developmental planning and source selection assistance; the execution directorates include: Technical Engineering Services. The Air Force Security Assistance and Cooperation Directorate oversees execution of the foreign military sales mission; the Airborne Laser Directorate executes a technology development mission for high altitude, anti-ballistic missile, directed energy capabilities and reports to the Missile Defense Agency. A Propulsion Directorate headquartered at Tinker AFB, Okla. oversees engine acquisition executed at Wright-Patterson and engine product support accomplished at Tinker.
The 66th Air Base Group at Hanscom AFB, Mass. and the 88th Air Base Wing at Wright-Patterson AFB provide base operating support at those locations and report to AFLCMC. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center Homepage Air Force Materiel Command Units
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. NASA was established in 1958; the new agency was to have a distinctly civilian orientation, encouraging peaceful applications in space science. Since its establishment, most US space exploration efforts have been led by NASA, including the Apollo Moon landing missions, the Skylab space station, the Space Shuttle. NASA is supporting the International Space Station and is overseeing the development of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Space Launch System and Commercial Crew vehicles; the agency is responsible for the Launch Services Program which provides oversight of launch operations and countdown management for unmanned NASA launches. NASA science is focused on better understanding Earth through the Earth Observing System. From 1946, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics had been experimenting with rocket planes such as the supersonic Bell X-1.
In the early 1950s, there was challenge to launch an artificial satellite for the International Geophysical Year. An effort for this was the American Project Vanguard. After the Soviet launch of the world's first artificial satellite on October 4, 1957, the attention of the United States turned toward its own fledgling space efforts; the US Congress, alarmed by the perceived threat to national security and technological leadership, urged immediate and swift action. On January 12, 1958, NACA organized a "Special Committee on Space Technology", headed by Guyford Stever. On January 14, 1958, NACA Director Hugh Dryden published "A National Research Program for Space Technology" stating: It is of great urgency and importance to our country both from consideration of our prestige as a nation as well as military necessity that this challenge be met by an energetic program of research and development for the conquest of space... It is accordingly proposed that the scientific research be the responsibility of a national civilian agency...
NACA is capable, by rapid extension and expansion of its effort, of providing leadership in space technology. While this new federal agency would conduct all non-military space activity, the Advanced Research Projects Agency was created in February 1958 to develop space technology for military application. On July 29, 1958, Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act, establishing NASA; when it began operations on October 1, 1958, NASA absorbed the 43-year-old NACA intact. A NASA seal was approved by President Eisenhower in 1959. Elements of the Army Ballistic Missile Agency and the United States Naval Research Laboratory were incorporated into NASA. A significant contributor to NASA's entry into the Space Race with the Soviet Union was the technology from the German rocket program led by Wernher von Braun, now working for the Army Ballistic Missile Agency, which in turn incorporated the technology of American scientist Robert Goddard's earlier works. Earlier research efforts within the US Air Force and many of ARPA's early space programs were transferred to NASA.
In December 1958, NASA gained control of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a contractor facility operated by the California Institute of Technology. The agency's leader, NASA's administrator, is nominated by the President of the United States subject to approval of the US Senate, reports to him or her and serves as senior space science advisor. Though space exploration is ostensibly non-partisan, the appointee is associated with the President's political party, a new administrator is chosen when the Presidency changes parties; the only exceptions to this have been: Democrat Thomas O. Paine, acting administrator under Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson, stayed on while Republican Richard Nixon tried but failed to get one of his own choices to accept the job. Paine was confirmed by the Senate in March 1969 and served through September 1970. Republican James C. Fletcher, appointed by Nixon and confirmed in April 1971, stayed through May 1977 into the term of Democrat Jimmy Carter. Daniel Goldin was appointed by Republican George H. W. Bush and stayed through the entire administration of Democrat Bill Clinton.
Robert M. Lightfoot, Jr. associate administrator under Democrat Barack Obama, was kept on as acting administrator by Republican Donald Trump until Trump's own choice Jim Bridenstine, was confirmed in April 2018. Though the agency is independent, the survival or discontinuation of projects can depend directly on the will of the President; the first administrator was Dr. T. Keith Glennan appointed by Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower. During his term he brought together the disparate projects in American space development research; the second administrator, James E. Webb, appointed by President John F. Kennedy, was a Democrat who first publicly served under President Harry S. Truman. In order to implement the Apollo program to achieve Kennedy's Moon la
Naval Undersea Warfare Center
The Naval Undersea Warfare Center is the United States Navy's full-spectrum research, development and evaluation, engineering and fleet support center for submarines, autonomous underwater systems, offensive and defensive weapons systems associated with undersea warfare. One of the corporate laboratories of the Naval Sea Systems Command, NUWC is headquartered in Newport, Rhode Island, has two major subordinate activities—Division Newport and Division Keyport. NUWC controls the Fox Island Facility and Gould Island. NUWC employs more than 4,400 military personnel, with budgets of over US$1 billion. In 1869 the U. S. Naval Torpedo Station was founded in Newport on Goat Island, the site of a military fort since 1703. During the 1890s Charles Munroe and John Bernadou worked at Newport, patenting a formulation of nitrocellulose colloided with ether and alcohol used as smokeless powder for United States naval artillery through the World Wars; the United States Army adopted the Navy formulation in 1908 and began manufacture at Picatinny Arsenal.
A factory was built in 1907 to manufacture steam torpedoes for the United States Navy. The torpedo factory became a major employer in the Newport area as Rhode Island congressmen protected the factory from competition; the Torpedo Station designed the Mark VI magnetic influence fuze for torpedoes during the 1920s. Fuze design and production was undertaken in great secrecy for the newly designed Mark 14 torpedo. Economies of the Great Depression limited torpedo production and prevented adequate testing of either the Mark 14 torpedo or the new Mark VI fuze. Skilled craftsmen at the torpedo factory unknowingly produced a nonfunctional design. Newport's torpedo factory was unable to produce enough torpedoes to match combat use through the first year of World War II, was reluctant to use scarce torpedoes in tests. Newport Torpedo Station's unjustified confidence in their precision-crafted torpedoes delayed recognition of problems being reported by submarines using the torpedoes in combat. Testing which might have been efficiently completed at the Torpedo Station was less undertaken by operational submarines.
Acknowledgment of inaccurate depth settings was delayed until August 1942, recognition of Mark VI fuse malfunctions was delayed until June 1943. The Naval Torpedo Station researched and tested underwater weaponry through World War I and World War II creating additional facilities on Rose Island, Fox Island and Gould Island. In 1951 the station on Goat Island was reorganized: For the next 15 years, it was the Underwater Ordnance Station, the Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station until 1970; that year, the Underwater Sound Laboratory from New London, Conn. was combined with the Newport facility to form the Naval Underwater Systems Center or NUSC. In 1992, the command was reorganized as Division Newport; the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory had its origins in the establishment of two sonar research facilities in 1941. The Connecticut office concentrated on passive sonar systems and devices while the Massachusetts office developed active systems and devices. Significant accomplishments during World War II included the development of improved surface ship and submarine sonar systems, acoustic homing torpedoes and acoustic mines.
This work contributed to the success against U-boats in the Battle of the Atlantic and the near-total destruction of the Imperial Japanese Navy and merchant fleets in the Pacific War. In 1941 the United States Navy established the Underwater Sound Reference Laboratory in Orlando, Florida; the lab was built on the archeological site of Fort Gatlin on the shore of Lake Gem Mary because the sinkhole-formed lake is deep. The Orlando lab closed in 1997 and the building was turned over to civil administration thereafter. By 1946, the sonar efforts of the Harvard and Columbia labs were combined at Fort Trumbull as the Navy Underwater Sound Laboratory under the Navy's Bureau of Ships, now Naval Sea Systems Command. Research intensified during the Cold War, as much a technology race with the Soviets as it was an arms race; the Sound Lab's efforts were key to the further development of both submarine and anti-submarine warfare. In 1970 the Sound Lab was organizationally combined with the Naval Underwater Weapons Research and Engineering Station at Newport, Rhode Island to form the Naval Underwater Systems Center.
In 1996 the facility at Fort Trumbull was closed and activities were merged at Newport. Naval Undersea Museum AUTEC - Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center Mission Data Interface Official website Historical photos of NUWC activities in Newport, from Wyld, Lionel D.. The Navy in Newport. Charleston, S. C.: Arcadia Publishing. P. 103. ISBN 0-7385-3550-8. Historic American Engineering Record No. CT-180, "Naval Undersea Warfare Center, New London, New London County, CT", 9 photos, 78 data pages, 3 photo caption pages HAER No. CT-180-A, "Naval Undersea Warfare Center, Bowditch Hall", 41 photos, 10 data pages, 7 photo caption pages HAER No. RI-38, "Naval Torpedo Station, Coddington Cove & Gould Island, U. S. Naval Reservation, Newport County, RI", 11 data pages HAER No. RI-38-A, "Naval Torpedo Station, Firing Pier", 45 photos, 13 data pages, 8 photo caption pages
