When the film “Citizen Kane” came out in 1941, William Randolph Hearst gave it an unequivocal two thumbs down.

The press lord kept ads for the film out of his many newspapers. Just before its release, one of his allies in Hollywood tried to buy the footage in order to burn it. Another approached FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, who launched a decade-long investigation of Orson Welles, the film’s 26-year-old director, producer, co-writer and star.

But rosebuds bloom in unlikely places. Seventy-one years after Hearst’s effort to derail it, “Citizen Kane” will be shown at Hearst Castle’s visitors center, with the blessings of the Hearst family.

L.A. Times | Read the Full Article

There’s a lot from creativity to motivation to take away from this talk.

The following is Brené Brown’s Houston Talk on Vulnerability.

Brene Brown studies human connection — our ability to empathize, belong, love. In a poignant, funny talk at TEDxHouston, she shares a deep insight from her research, one that sent her on a personal quest to know herself as well as to understand humanity. A talk to share.

Khan Academy in the classroom
School administrators Alyssa Gallagher and Jeff Baier of the Los Altos, California, school district are testing out Khan Academy software in their classrooms.

Google’s Eric Schmidt on Khan Academy
Eric Schmidt, the chairman of Google, explains why he’s backing the work of Sal Khan and Khan Academy.

Khan Academy’s “world-changing” plan for schools
Khan Academy’s core team – Sal Khan, Shantanu Sinha, Sundar Subbarayn, Ben Kamens and Jason Rosff – say they hope to revolutionize education.

Khan Academy: School of the future
In Sal Khan’s vision of the school of the future, the traditional classroom, school day, and even school year don’t look like anything like our current system.

This is a real shot of the atoms in a Nitrogen molecule (N2).

Press Release Below

COLUMBUS, Ohio – Using a new ultrafast camera, researchers have recorded the first real-time image of two atoms vibrating in a molecule.

Key to the experiment, which appears in this week’s issue of the journal Nature, is the researchers’ use of the energy of a molecule’s own electron as a kind of “flash bulb” to illuminate the molecular motion.

The team used ultrafast laser pulses to knock one electron out of its natural orbit in a molecule. The electron then fell back toward the molecule scattered off of it, analogous to the way a flash of light scatters around an object, or a water ripple scatters in a pond.

Principal investigator Louis DiMauro of Ohio State University said that the feat marks a first step toward not only observing chemical reactions, but also controlling them on an atomic scale.

“Through these experiments, we realized that we can control the quantum trajectory of the electron when it comes back to the molecule, by adjusting the laser that launches it,” said DiMauro, who is a professor of physics at Ohio State. “The next step will be to see if we can steer the electron in just the right way to actually control a chemical reaction.”

A standard technique for imaging a still object involves shooting the object with an electron beam – bombarding it with millions of electrons per second. The researchers’ new single-electron quantum approach allowed them to image rapid molecular motion, based on theoretical developments by the paper’s coauthors at Kansas State University.

A technique called laser induced electron diffraction (LIED) is commonly used in surface science to study solid materials. Here, the researchers used it to study the movement of atoms in a single molecule.

The molecules they chose to study were simple ones: nitrogen, or N2, and oxygen, or O2. N2 and O2 are common atmospheric gases, and scientists already know every detail of their structure, so these two very basic molecules made a good test case for the LIED method.

In each case, the researchers hit the molecule with laser light pulses of 50 femtoseconds, or quadrillionths of a second. They were able to knock a single electron out of the outer shell of the molecule and detect the scattered signal of the electron as it re-collided with the molecule.

DiMauro and Ohio State postdoctoral researcher Cosmin Blaga likened the scattered electron signal to the diffraction pattern that light forms when it passes through slits. Given only the diffraction pattern, scientists can reconstruct the size and shape of the slits. In this case, given the diffraction pattern of the electron, the physicists reconstructed the size and shape of the molecule – that is, the locations of the constituent atoms’ nuclei.

The key, explained Blaga, is that during the brief span of time between when the electron is knocked out of the molecule and when it re-collides, the atoms in the molecules have moved. The LIED method can capture this movement, “similar to making a movie of the quantum world,” he added.

Beyond its potential for controlling chemical reactions, the technique offers a new tool to study the structure and dynamics of matter, he said. “Ultimately, we want to really understand how chemical reactions take place. So, long-term, there would be applications in materials science and even chemical manufacturing.”

“You could use this to study individual atoms,” DiMauro added, “but the greater impact to science will come when we can study reactions between more complex molecules. Looking at two atoms – that’s a long way from studying a more interesting molecule like a protein.”

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Coauthors on the paper included Anthony DiChiara, Emily Sistrunk, Kaikai Zhang, Pierre Agostini, and Terry A. Miller of Ohio State; and C.D. Lin of Kansas State. Coauthor Junliang Xu pursued the theoretical side of this research to earn his doctorate at Kansas State, and will soon join DiMauro’s lab as a postdoctoral researcher.

Funding came from the U.S. Department of Energy Basic Energy Sciences Program.

When you mention The Wizard of Oz, your average moviegoer’s mind turns to such disparate topics as Judy Garland, ruby slippers, and apocryphal hanging munchkins.

But there were several Oz adaptations that preceded the 1939 film, such as the 1902 musical penned by L. Frank Baum himself. Here are some photographs of the 1902 and 1903 productions. Although Dorothy and the Lion look charming and quirky, the Tin Man and Scarecrow own a time share in the deepest recesses of your nightmares.

i09 | Read the Full Article