No Susan Boyle But Shining Brightly like a Star!

Willard Boyle

Willard Sterling Boyle, one of the Fathers of Digital Photography Born in Amherst, Nova Scotia, he was the son of a medical doctor and moved to Quebec with his father and mother Beatrice when he was three. He was home schooled by his mother until age fourteen, when he attended Montreal's Lower Canada College to complete his secondary education. Boyle attended McGill University, but his education was interrupted in 1943, when he joined the Royal Canadian Navy during World War II. He was loaned to the Britain's Royal Navy, where he was learning how to land Spitfires on aircraft carriers as the war ended. He gained a BSc (1947), MSc (1948) and PhD (1950) from McGill University. After receiving his doctorate Boyle spent one year at Canada's Radiation Lab and two years teaching physics at the Royal Military College of Canada. In 1953 Boyle joined Bell Labs where he invented the first continuously operating ruby laser with Don Nelson in 1962, and was named on the first patent for a semiconductor injection laser. He was made director of Space Science and Exploratory Studies at the Bell Labs subsidiary Bellcomm in 1962, providing support for the Apollo space program and helping to select lunar landing sites. He returned to Bell Labs in 1964, working on the development of integrated circuits.

In 1969, Boyle and George E. Smith invented the charge-coupled device (CCD), for which they have jointly received the Franklin Institute's Stuart Ballantine Medal in 1973, the 1974 IEEE Morris N. Liebmann Memorial Award, the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, and the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Boyle was Executive Director of Research for Bell Labs from 1975 until his retirement in 1979. In retirement, he settled in Wallace, Nova Scotia, and helped launch an art gallery with his wife Betty, a landscape artist.

Boyle and Smith will share the prize!

The day Boyle and Smith invented the CCD sensor

(AFP) – 9 hours ago

STOCKHOLM — The CCD sensor, the digital camera's "electronic eye" which earned inventors Willard Boyle and George Smith the Nobel Physics Prize on Tuesday, was drawn up in a few hours in October 1969.

It was 8:30 am, 40 years ago, and Willard Boyle was sitting in his office at Bell Laboratories in the US state of New Jersey. The videophone rang, and it was Jack Morton, Boyle's boss, according to an account on the Canadian website www.science.ca cited by the Nobel committee.

"What are you semiconductor guys doing? The heck with transistors. Try and come up with something different. I'll call tomorrow."

After lunch, Boyle was joined by his colleague George Smith, and together they worked on "an idea for handling little pockets of charge in a silicon matrix," the website explained.

The pair "fiddled with some math and drew some sketches on the blackboard," with Boyle declaring: "Okay, this looks pretty good," after about an hour and a half of brainstorming.

"We should name it something," suggested Smith.

"Well, we've got a new device here. It's not a transistor, it's something different," replied Boyle.

"It's got a charge. And we're moving the charge around by coupling potential wells," said Smith.

"Let's call it a charge coupled device," said Boyle.

"Sure,'CCD'. That's got a nice ring to it," Smith agreed.

The CCD was at that point only a theory, explained the website, which was quoted in the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences' press release announcing Tuesday's Nobel laureates in physics.

Boyle and Smith decided to take their invention one step further, and took the plans to the workshop down the hall to see if the CCD could be made.

"Some months later it was made, and it worked exactly as expected," the website said, noting that CCDs can, in addition to their use as image sensors, be used as computer memory, electronic filters and signal processors.

"As imaging devices, they have revolutionised astronomy; virtually every large telescope... uses CCDs because they are about 100 times more sensitive than photographic film and work across a much broader spectrum of wavelengths of light," said the website, run by a non-profit society based in western Canada.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5i5wGzY3SMvxR7KxtIwE-dCuKi5dQ

AND MORE...

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Willard Boyle

N.S. resident, father of digital photos, shares 2009 Nobel Prize in physics

Tue Oct 6, 6:04 PM

By Michael Macdonald, The Canadian Press



HALIFAX, N.S. - Willard Boyle was born in a small town in Nova Scotia and spent most of his childhood in a rough-and-tumble logging community in northern Quebec, where his mother home-schooled him in a log cabin.


His nickname was Butch.

It was an unlikely beginning for a man who would later help invent a complex gizmo that would lead to the birth of digital photography, earning him the 2009 Nobel Prize in physics.


Boyle, who learned of winning the prestigious award Tuesday at 5 a.m., said much of the credit for his groundbreaking work should go to his mother, who always inspired him to do great things.

"She liked to read about science and then ask me to explain to her how this worked ... 'How did they do this?' " the 85-year-old Halifax resident said in an interview.


"She felt I could do no wrong ... I knew differently, but that didn't bother her. She was convinced that I was the brightest thing on two legs. That helped, really."

When he was 14, he was sent to Lower Canada College, a private school in Montreal, where one teacher challenged him to excel at physics. He went on to earn a PhD in physics at Montreal's McGill University.


He was a fighter pilot during the Second World War and later spent one year at Canada's Radiation Lab and two years teaching physics at the Royal Military College in Kingston, Ont.

He joined Bell Labs in New Jersey in 1953.


"There were many times when we stayed up late in the lab ... nine o'clock, 10 o'clock at night," he recalled. "We might have had a beer at the end. That was it."

He co-invented a type of laser, worked on the Apollo space program, and in 1969 helped develop an image sensor, later hailed as a scientific breakthrough.


The charge-coupled device or CCD, developed with the help of American scientist George Smith, transforms light into a large number of digitized image points, or pixels, in a split second.

Today, the device is used in most digital cameras and camcorders, including the tiny, delicate ones found in operating rooms and the heavy-duty versions inside massive telescopes.


The stunning deep-space images from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Mars Rovers came from CCDs.

"Digital cameras are big and everyone has one," Boyle said Tuesday. "It's having a tremendous effect on how we live and how we do things."


He said the CCD enabled people to handle light in the same way the transistor allowed them to handle sound.

"That's something you couldn't do with plain film," he said. "Before that, with good old Kodak films, you had to wind them up, put them in the baths and all the rest of it."

In its citation, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said: "CCD technology makes use of the photoelectric effect, as theorized by Albert Einstein and for which he was awarded the 1921 year's Nobel Prize."

The academy said the CCD "revolutionized photography, as light could now be captured electronically instead of on film."

But Boyle, who retired in 1979 and spends most of his time at his cottage in Wallace, N.S., remains humble about his accomplishment.

"These things come and go," he said, adding that he still enjoys dabbling in digital photography.

"It's like lady's fashions. Everybody's all excited about a certain technology ... and in a few years, a lot of the stuff we have today will be superseded in some way or other."

Boyle said he knew the Nobel Prize was about to be awarded but thought it was taking too long and he had written off any chance of winning.

"You know how it feels when the phone rings at 5 a.m.," said Betty, his wife of 62 years. "You think emergency or wrong number."

Boyle, who was born in Amherst, N.S., was incredulous when he heard a woman with a Swedish accent tell him he had won.

"I thought, 'Oh, God. Not that same old joke ... And then in the sweetest voice she said, 'I'm in Stockholm and I want to tell you about the Nobel Prize.' "

The award's US$1.4-million purse will be split between the three men who shared the prize Tuesday.

Boyle and Smith will get US$350,000 each. American scientist Charles K. Kao gets US$700,000 for his breakthrough involving the transmission of light in fibre optics.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper congratulated Boyle and his colleagues on receiving the Nobel Prize in physics, calling it "a remarkable accomplishment."

"Thanks to the work of Dr. Boyle, people in Canada and around the world benefit in their everyday lives and the boundaries of science have been expanded," Harper said in a statement.

The prize ceremonies will be held in Stockholm on Dec. 10, and Boyle plans to attend.

Boyle is the second graduate of McGill to receive a Nobel Prize this week.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/capress/091006/national/eu_nobel_physics_cda

Seal it with a Kiss!

Great News! Seal Hunting Take WAY down in 2009!
Global recession and plummeting pelt prices among reasons for decline.

updated 1 hour, 20 minutes ago

ST. JOHN'S, Newfoundland - The global recession, plummeting pelt prices and the prospect of a European ban on seal products dramatically lowered the number of seals killed in this year's hunt, Canadian officials said Thursday.

About 70,000 harp seals were hunted this year out of a commercial quota of 273,000 animals, said Fisheries and Oceans Canada spokesman Scott Cantin. The seven-month long hunt ended earlier this week.

The tally marks a significant drop from last year's hunt, in which 217,857 harp seals were hunted out of a commercial quota of 275,000.

Frank Pinhorn of the Canadian Sealers Association said many hunters decided not to take part this year because pelt prices have fallen to 14 Canadian dollars ($12) from a high of over CA$100 ($88) per pelt several years ago.

"Anything under CA$35 ($31) would be low and they won't participate because they won't recover their costs," he said.

The industry is also carrying about 60,000 pelts from the previous year in a market that is drying up due to the recession, the depressed value of the Russian ruble and growing international distaste for seal products.

Sealers are also grappling with the near certainty that the European Union will ban importing seal products, which could take effect in October.

Animal rights activists, Inuit seal hunters, fur traders and authorities from Canada and Greenland lobbied hard ahead of the vote. Activists call the hunt barbaric, while proponents say it provides crucial jobs and food for villagers in isolated northern communities.

Canada's East Coast seal hunt is the largest in the world, killing an average of 300,000 harp seals annually, before this year's drop.


Europe bans products made from seals


The EU bill targeted the Canadian hunt because of the size of the annual slaughter and the way seals are killed — either clubbed or shot with rifles. In the past, they have also been killed with spiked clubs, or hakapiks.

Pinhorn said he believed the drop is only temporary because people in the industry are hoping to expand the market by using seal products for different purposes, such as seal heart valves for medical procedures or omega-3 products made from seal oil.

"Have we given up on the seal industry? Not a chance," he said. "The seal industry will come back."

WELL I HOPE NOT! -Beth

Man Serious Threat to Pig Safety

Farmer may have given swine flu to pigs, Canada says


(CNN) -- More than a week after the swine flu outbreak rattled the world, with cases of infected people popping up from Mexico to South Korea, the new virus strain has shown up in a herd of swine.

The catch, Canadian officials say, is that the animals may have caught the flu from a human.

Canadian officials on Saturday said they have quarantined pigs that tested positive for the virus -- scientifically known as 2009 H1N1 -- at an Alberta farm in what could be the first identified case of pigs infected during the recent outbreak. They said the pigs may have been infected by a Canadian farmer who recently returned from a trip to Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak that has sickened nearly 660 people.

The farmer "may have exposed swine on the farm to an influenza virus," said Dr. Brian Evans of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

"We have determined that the virus H1N1, found in these pigs, is the virus which is being tracked in the human population," he added. Learn about the virus »

Evans and other officials said it is not uncommon for flu viruses to jump from humans to animals, and that it does not pose a risk for consuming pork. The number of pigs infected was not disclosed.

The infected farmer had flu-like symptoms and is recovering, Evans said.

Meanwhile, as the number of confirmed swine flu cases reached 659 worldwide, the World Health Organization said Saturday it had started distributing 2.4 million doses of a common anti-viral drug to 72 nations. So far, 16 countries have confirmed cases of swine flu, the WHO said. Watch latest developments as swine flu sweeps world »

Dr. Michael J. Ryan, the WHO director of its global alert and response team, said the doses of the drug Tamiflu came from a stockpile that was donated by Swiss health-care giant Roche in 2005 and 2006.

Roche, which produces the common anti-viral drug Tamiflu in a statement said it was working with the WHO to prepare for the virus. The drug should be taken within 48 hours of experiencing symptoms, according to the drug's Web site.

Mexico has the most confirmed swine flu cases, with 397 infected people and 16 deaths, the WHO said. Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos reported that the country has confirmed 421 cases and 19 deaths.

Several other countries, including Canada and Italy, had confirmed additional cases that had not yet been added to the WHO's total.

The United States has the second-highest number of confirmed cases, with 161 sickened and one death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the WHO.

President Barack Obama spoke with Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Saturday afternoon to discuss both countries' "efforts to limit the spread of the 2009 H1N1 flu strain and the importance of close U.S.-Mexican cooperation," the White House said in a statement.

Other than Mexico and the United States, the WHO confirmed cases in 14 other countries: Canada, with 51; the United Kingdom with 15; Spain with 13; Germany with six; New Zealand with four; Israel with three; France, with two; and Austria, China, South Korea, Denmark, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Costa Rica, each have one. See where cases have been confirmed »

Ryan said the WHO was still preparing for a pandemic.

"At this point we have to expect that phase six will be reached," he said, referring to the organization's highest pandemic threat level. "We have to hope that it is not reached." And he noted that a pandemic describes "the geographic spread of the disease, not its severity."

The latest developments come as parts of Asia discovered they were not immune to the spread of the virus.

Hundreds of guests and staff were under quarantine in China on Saturday after health officials determined that a hotel guest had contracted the H1N1 virus.

Nearly 200 hotel guests and 100 staff members were ordered to stay in Metro Park Hotel in Hong Kong for seven days to stop the spread of the H1N1 virus, a government spokesman said.

The quarantine was ordered after a 25-year-old Mexican man stayed in the hotel and became sick, according to the spokesman. It is the first confirmed case of the virus in Hong Kong, local medical officials said.

South Korean officials on Saturday confirmed their first case -- a 51-year-old nun who recently traveled to Mexico for volunteer work.

In the United States, the CDC announced 19 additional cases, in 21 states. Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health for the agency, said 13 people are hospitalized. Go behind the scenes at the CDC »

She said one-third of the U.S. cases were linked to exposure in Mexico; the others were infected in their own communities.

New York has the highest number of confirmed cases, with 50. Texas has 28 and California has 24.

The other states include: South Carolina with 13; Massachusetts with eight; New Jersey with seven; Arizona and Delaware with four each; Illinois and Indiana with three each; Colorado, Florida, Kansas, Michigan and Virginia with two each; and Connecticut, Kentucky, Missouri, Minnesota, Nevada, Ohio and Rhode Island each have one.


New York's health department on Saturday confirmed another dozen cases, bringing its total to 62 -- though the additional cases were not reflected in the CDC's tally.
Connecticut also announced an additional confirmed case, while Iowa and New Mexico and reported their first cases -- though neither were immediately included in the CDC total.