My dad is smart

Through a Google search, my dad found a physics research paper he wrote years ago. The title: “Nuclear magnetic resonance study of the diffusion of bound and free fluorine interstitials in alkaline-earth fluorides doped with trivalent impurities.”

The abstract:

When alkaline-earth fluorides are doped with trivalent impurities, interstitial fluorines are created to maintain charge neutrality. We have performed NMR dipolar-energy relaxation measurements over a wide temperature range and have observed the diffusion of both free and locally bound fluorine interstitials F−(i) in the extrinsic region. We have observed that these motions depend strongly on the host-crystal lattice parameter. In particular, we have observed that the motion of F−(i) which is at the nearest neighbor (nn) site to the trivalent impurity dominates the relaxation above room temperature in CaF2: Y3+ but is unobserved in BaF2: Y3+. In addition, a second type of bound F−(i) motion, characterized by a much smaller activation energy, appears over a very narrow temperature range (150-185°C) in CaF2: Y3+, but over a large temperature range (below room temperature to 130°C) in BaF2: Y3+. SrF2: Y3+ shows similar behavior over a temperature range (54-160°C), which is intermediate between that of CaF2: Y3+ and BaF2: Y3+. Possible explanations in terms of the motion of a more remotely bound F−(i) [e.g., at a next-nearest-neighbor (nnn) site] and the motion of F−(i) near clusters of dipoles are discussed. We measured activation energies for all these F−(i)motions. A comparison of our results with those by other techniques (specifically, EPR, ENDOR, optical spectroscopy, ionic conductivity, ionic thermocurrent, dielectric and anelastic loss) is also given.

It's a strange feeling realizing your dad will always be smarter than you by a wide margin. I still have to teach him how to use his new Mac, though.

Deliberate underexposure with Nikon DSLRs

Nikon has been killing it with its DSLR sensors in recent years in terms of how much detail can be pulled out of the shadows, and Deci Gallen has a great piece on a creative way of shooting that exploits that capability.

As photographers, we strive for correct exposure but the ability of modern Nikon cameras to find details in shadows opens up a debate as to what correct exposure actually is. More and more, I find myself technically exposing wrong with post-processing in mind.

As a wedding photographer, my wife and I often find ourselves shooting portraits when the sun is highest in the sky: conditions generally considered to be unfavorable in portraiture. In the past these situations were addressed with fill flash, reflectors or frantically searching for open shade. The current range of Nikons gives us another option – creative underexposure.

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Having the ability to draw details from shadows so cleanly has changed not only how we shoot and post-process, but also the equipment we need to take certain kinds of shots.

Our flash triggers have been mostly redundant for 2 years now and our flashguns only really come out on the dance floor. We don’t use reflectors at all. The extra couple of minutes spent in post is negated by the time saved setting up equipment while shooting — allowing us to spot and shoot scenes quickly, taking advantage of beautiful but often fleeting lighting conditions.

Check out the piece to see some examples of what's possible.

I had skipped some generations of Nikon DSLRs and found myself picking mine up less and less given the weight of a fully loaded body, but I just picked up a D750 recently and it has won back my mindshare from other cameras like my iPhone.

The D750 isn't in their pro line of DSLRs, with their built in vertical grips and magnesium body construction, but that means it's much lighter. I love that it has integrated WiFi so I can quickly get pictures from my DSLR to my iPhone. It's something Nikon should've added years ago and that all modern DSLRs should have as a default feature, and I doubt I'll ever buy another camera that doesn't mark that checkbox.

And yes, the shadow recovery is fantastic. I've pushed shadows in RAW photos out of the D750 up to 4 stops, and I've heard that 5 stops is possible. Even before reading Gallen's article I'd been shooting as he recommends, usually with exposure compensation of -0.3 to -0.7 turned on by default. To me, it's far more convenient to shoot this way and bring shadows up in Lightroom than to shoot two or three photos at different exposures and blend them using Photoshop or something like HDRSoft's Photomatix Pro. Call it the lazy man's HDR.

Wanderers

Wanderers is a very short film about what it might be like when humans move into outer space, and “The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available.” It's like a highly condensed version of Interstellar, without the expository dialogue, though I think at one point if you squint or possess a 5K iMac display you can see Matthew McConaughey floating around Saturn.

For more information and stills gallery, please turn to: www.erikwernquist.com/wanderers (Just in case my website runs slow, here is a link to an imgur album version of the gallery: http://imgur.com/a/Ur5dP) Wanderers is a vision of humanity's expansion into the Solar System, based on scientific ideas and concepts of what our future in space might look like, if it ever happens. The locations depicted in the film are digital recreations of actual places in the Solar System, built from real photos and map data where available. Without any apparent story, other than what you may fill in by yourself, the idea of the film is primarily to show a glimpse of the fantastic and beautiful nature that surrounds us on our neighboring worlds - and above all, how it might appear to us if we were there. CREDITS: VISUALS - Erik Wernquist - erik@erikwernquist.com MUSIC - Cristian Sandquist - cristiansandquist@mac.com WORDS AND VOICE - Carl Sagan COLOR GRADE - Caj Müller/Beckholmen Film - caj@beckholmenfilm.se LIVE ACTION PHOTOGRAPHY - Mikael Hall/Vidiotism - mikael@vidiotism.com LIVE ACTION PERFORMANCE - Anna Nerman, Camilla Hammarström, Hanna Mellin VOCALIST - Nina Fylkegård - nina@ladystardust.se THANK YOU - Johan Persson, Calle Herdenberg, Micke Lindgren, Satrio J. Studt, Tomas Axelsson, Christian Lundqvist, Micke Lindell, Sigfrid Söderberg, Fredrik Strage, Johan Antoni, Henrik Johansson, Michael Uvnäs, Hanna Mellin THIS FILM WAS MADE WITH USE OF PHOTOS AND TEXTURES FROM: NASA/JPL, NASA/CICLOPS, NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, ESA, John Van Vliet, Björn Jonsson (and many others, of which I unfortunately do not know the names)

Giving Tuesday

Just in time for Giving Tuesday, GiveWell has updated its list of top charities:

Our top charities are (in alphabetical order):

We have recommended all four of these charities in the past.

We have also included four additional organizations on our top charities page as standout charities. They are (in alphabetical order):

In the case of ICCIDD, GAIN-USI, and DMI, we expect to learn substantially more in the coming years (both through further investigation and through further progress by the organizations); we see a strong possibility that these will become top-tier recommended charities in the future, and we can see reasons that impact-minded donors could choose to support them today.

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Based on this allocation, for any donors looking to give as we would, we recommend an allocation of $5 to AMF, $1 to SCI, $1 to GiveDirectly and $.50 to DtWI for every $7.50 given.

It's worth reading through the entire post to understand how they make their decisions and to learn about key principles such as diminishing marginal returns and the funding gap.

Why the suicide epidemic in Utah?

Utah is the number one state for antidepressant use and has disproportionately high rates of suicide. Perry Renshaw, a neuroscientist, believes he knows why.

Utah residents and experts are aware of the paradox, often attributing gun use, low population density and the area's heavy Mormon influence as potential factors. But Renshaw thinks he's identified a more likely cause for the Utah blues: altitude.

Renshaw believes that altitude has an impact on our brain chemistry, specifically that it changes the levels of serotonin and dopamine, two key chemicals in the brain that help regulate our feelings of happiness. America's favorite antidepressants (and party drugs) work by controlling the level of these chemicals in the brain. The air in Utah, one could say, works just like this.

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Utah lies in a region of the country commonly known as the Rockies, the mountain states or even just "out west." To those who analyze violent death data, it's known as the "suicide belt."

According to the National Violent Death Reporting System, a surveillance system run by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Utah and other states in the Rockies consistently have the highest suicide rates in the country aside from Alaska. In the map below, the block of red — states with suicide rates over 14 per 100,000 people — is hard to miss.

Of course, correlation isn't causation, but the article delves into lots of evidence that, at a minimum, is eye-opening and compelling.