Cookie Cutter Lot

Give your cherry pie some Ba da Bing!

23.02.38

When I spied the first Bing cherries of the season the other day, I delightedly stashed a few pounds in my cart. I know it's still early for them to be at their peak, but after being cherry-deprived for nearly a year, I couldn't resist stocking up.

Later, when I plucked a few out to snack on, I realized that, as pretty as they were, they were not the sweet, juicy, intensely flavored Bings I'd been pining for. Still, at $7.99 a pound, I wasn't about to waste them. I've learned that roasting or baking mediocre fruits improves their flavor, so I decided to bake my cherries up in this scrumptious Ba da Bing Cherry Pie.

To make the pie filling, the cherries are mixed with sugar, cornstarch, lemon juice, cherry preserves and a dash of almond extract. Almond really enhances the flavor of cherries. Fresh cherries work better than frozen ones in pies, as the latter tend to give off more liquid while baking – and who wants a watery pie?

Source: Tbo.com

Embracing physics as a returning student

23.02.60

I graduated out of our gifted program in high school in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, when I was 16. I did two years of college at Louisiana State University [LSU]. By the time I was 18, I noticed that all the woman I was working with were either not married or did not have children. I come from a very family-oriented family—my mother wanted to know how long I would take to go to school, and when she would have grandchildren.

So, I decided to marry the guy I was dating. We had my two sons, and I followed his career. He was in the military, and we spent time in Germany. While we were overseas, I got DA—Department of the Army—training and a photography job. Back in Georgia, I did family photography for Sears for three years. At that time my first husband and I separated, and I moved back to Louisiana with my boys, who were six and four. Then I got a medical assistant certificate. I taught at a vocational school and worked for a podiatrist. Later, after my daughter came, I realized I really needed to go back to school and do what my initial calling was, science.

Source: PhysicsToday.org (blog)

Is The Future Of Nuclear Power In Minireactors?

23.02.73

"We've been calling it the economy of small," says Jose Reyes, who runs a company called NuScale Power. Reyes has designed a reactor about one-tenth the size of current reactors. It looks very different, though, kind of like a 50-foot-plus thermos.

"The concept is that you can't take a large reactor with all of its pumps and valves and piping and just shrink it down and expect to see an economic advantage there," he says.

In a standard reactor, there are pipes running everywhere, and pumps and valves to circulate water to the reactor core. The hot fuel creates steam that is piped out of the reactor vessel to run a turbine. If pumps or valves fail to keep the water moving, you can get a Fukushima-style meltdown.

Source: NPR