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Celebrate Squid Babies

Celebrate Squid Babies

Jul 15 2011 | comment(s)

My paper on Squid Babies (which started out as a dissertation chapter) just got accepted!

Well, technically it's Accepted with Revisions, which, for the non-academics in the room, means my co-authors and I have to change a few things before it gets published. But still! It's going to get published! This calls for celebration!

So, in honor of Squid Babies, have a gorgeous video by pacificcoast101 on the embryonic development of the California market squid:


Why Quantum Statistics?

Why Quantum Statistics?

Jul 15 2011 | comment(s)

Consider the following scenario. An initial measurement indicates that two indistinguishable particles – particles of the same type, carrying no kind of identity tag – are headed northward and southward, respectively. The next (relevant) thing that is indicated by a measurement is that two particles of exactly the same type are headed eastward and westward, respectively. We also assume that the scattering is elastic – no particles are created or annihilated in the meantime – and that the pair of outgoing particles is in some sense the same as the pair of incoming particles: no other particle has entered or left the scene in the meantime.
JediBot - Clone Wars Coming To A Computer Lab Near You

JediBot - Clone Wars Coming To A Computer Lab Near You

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

Students are often driven by baser concerns and robotics students even more so - hungry all of the time?  Invent a robot that can cook.   Need to take over the Republic?   Build some robots that, oddly, use colored swords.   

The Experimental Robotics course at Stanford gives students a chance to show off their automated ideas to classmates in the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.     The course is a chance for students to take the math and programming skills they learned in the Intro to Robotics course and use them to direct a pre-fabricated robotic arm to perform a task in the real world.
McDonald's Going Vegan? Not Just Yet

McDonald's Going Vegan? Not Just Yet

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

Progressive kooks in San Francisco want to ban Happy Meals but they can't have a beef with vegan burgers, right?    Just down the road from 'Frisco, at Stanford, biochem professor (and founding co-director of PLoS - yayy, open access!) Pat Brown is trying to make vegan burgers that will appeal to humans and maybe keep McDonald's in business in the bay area.

Brown wants to make a vegan cheeseburger to replace what you get at fast-food franchises like McDonald's, his goal being to decrease the global impact of animal farming.   
History Mystery #3 - Land, Law And Science

History Mystery #3 - Land, Law And Science

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

History Mystery #3 - Land, Law and Science

"Words are to the Anthropologist what rolled pebbles are to the Geologist — battered relics of past ages often containing within them indelible records capable of intelligent interpretation..."
John Herschel
Microbe Feedback Contributes To Global Warming

Microbe Feedback Contributes To Global Warming

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

Global warming is a complex matter, with many effects interacting. This, of course, makes modeling it accurately a great challenge. Now, a new feedback mechanism has been identified. The quantity of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is rising. But how does this affect our world?

Recently, a research team has been looking into how higher carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere affect the soil and its ability to take up methane and nitrous oxide, or release these potent greenhouse gases. By gathering data from 49 experiments across the globe, the team went looking for general patterns. They found two strongly emerging patterns:

Daniella Martin Wants You To Eat Bugs

Daniella Martin Wants You To Eat Bugs

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

Pesky animal rights activists may complain if you eat veal but they can't complain if you eat larvae, right?    Those are bugs and people sitting in trees have to eat something while they keep the forest commission from clearing brush or removing dead trees to prevent wildfires.

The California State Fair is coming up in a few weeks.   It is earlier the last few years, because the old August dates were darn hot and with that sumbitch global warming it was only going to get hotter so they moved it back to July and, today, it is a balmy 70 degrees.   For residents of the once-hot Sacramento area, climate change has been a real boon, though drought in the South shows that they are not so lucky.
The Devil In The Digital? Winning And Losing Through The Modern Environmental Experience

The Devil In The Digital? Winning And Losing Through The Modern Environmental Experience

Jul 14 2011 | comment(s)

I’ve got to be honest.  Graduate student life comes with awesome perks: flexible schedules, fun-loving coworkers, and amazing travel opportunities.  But the green-eyed monster occasionally peers over my shoulder.
Sorry Ray Kurzweil, AI Hasn't Improved Much Since The 1960s

Sorry Ray Kurzweil, AI Hasn't Improved Much Since The 1960s

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Is there a 'Singularity', an ascension of man being able to become machines or machines becoming sentient, coming in 2045?

Given the current state of artificial intelligence and robotics, that would only happen if we were able to put a man on the Moon in a relative time scale of 3 minutes.  In reality, selling books and tickets to conferences showing "Man + (Black Box Full Of Magic) = SINGULARITY" not much progress has been made in decades much less anything leading us to believe the drastic inflection point needed will be happening any time this century.
The robotics pioneer Rodney Brooks often begins speeches by reaching into his pocket, fiddling with some loose change, finding a quarter, pulling it out and twirling it in his fingers.
Radical Leftists Target Bio-Med Students

Radical Leftists Target Bio-Med Students

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

An activist website called Negotiation Is Over is urging its followers to attack scientists.  

Left-wing kooks are no different than the right wing kind, just their issues are different.   Instead of global warming, they are anti-vaccine, instead of human embryonic stem cells, they are anti-agriculture.  

One way fringe kooks on the left outdo their counterparts on the right is calls to violence.   They're even willing to pay students if they will target biomedical students who use animals in research.  Check this out:


Squid School Surprisingly Near Surface!

Squid School Surprisingly Near Surface!

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Check out this photo, taken a few weeks ago in La Jolla, Southern California. What do you think is most striking about it?



Some people might be surprised by the sheer number of squid in the photo--but rest assured, that's quite normal. This is the California market squid, a gregarious creature that often travels in large shoals. (Or should I say schools? They certainly seem to be swimming in a coordinated manner.)
Women Fake It Less Than Men

Women Fake It Less Than Men

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

I just finished watching the Women's World Cup semifinal football match, USA versus France, and am currently preparing to watch Japan versus Sweden and an important difference is immediately noticeable about womens' matches compared to men's.

A lot less flopping.

If you are not up on complex technical sports jargon, flopping is when, after a minor collision, you fall down and grasp a body part with a look of excruciating pain on your face, milk the drama to see if it draws a penalty and then look indignantly at the opposing team while you bravely resume as if nothing was wrong.   If you don't watch soccer, think NBA.
Arctic Ice July 2011

Arctic Ice July 2011

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Arctic Ice July 2011

For much of the written history of the Arctic, exceptional extents of open water were reported in terms of what the explorer, fisherman, whaler or sealer had previously experienced.  That would make such events likely every 20 to 30 years.  However, for each report of open ice in a specific area there is likely to be found in the archives a report from 180 degrees opposite across the pole of a greater than usual ice extent.
Dawn Redwood: Oregon's State Fossil

Dawn Redwood: Oregon's State Fossil

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Metasequoia, a deciduous conifer, and one of the common fossils found in many of the Eocene sites of the Pacific northwest, flourished in Oregon's forests for millions of years. In honor of this long history, Oregon has named it their official state fossil. 
Goodbye Tuna?

Goodbye Tuna?

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Recently, all species of scombrids and billfish have been assessed by the IUCN to determine their ranking on the Red List of Threatened Species. And for tuna specifically, the results weren't good at all. Five of eight species aren't doing well.

Critically endangered: Southern Bluefin (Thunnus maccoyii).
Endangered: Atlantic Bluefin (T. thynnus).
Vulnerable: Bigeye (T. obesus)
Near threatened: Yellowfin (T. albacares), Albacore (T. alalunga).


First Dimuon Decays Of B_s Mesons Observed By CDF ?

First Dimuon Decays Of B_s Mesons Observed By CDF ?

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

I was waiting for the announcement in the Fermilab seminar of next Friday, but apparently despite I am still a member I am not well enough informed of what happens inside CDF, the experiment at the Tevatron proton-antiproton collider of Fermilab. So the paper is now public, and you can read the news in the Cornell arxiv: CDF sees an excess of muon pairs which is compatible with originating from the decay of B_s mesons.
How To Activate A Supermassive Black Hole

How To Activate A Supermassive Black Hole

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

There were concerns among people who don't understand physics that the LHC might create a black hole and swallow the Earth.    Obviously in an infinite Universe anything can happen but the precautionary principle taken to such extremes is really only used by groups like anti-environment crusaders, pro-environment crusaders and also anti-vaccine people, etc.  In reality, the energy couldn't kill a fly (see Shut Down The LHC? I'd Rather Not Hurt A Fly).
Pasta Sieve Religious Head Cover In Driver License

Pasta Sieve Religious Head Cover In Driver License

Jul 13 2011 | comment(s)

Niko Alm has after a three year wait finally gotten permission to wear his religious head covering in his driver license photo - progress for religious freedom everywhere.


In Austria, a license or ID photo cannot show the person with her head covered, except if the person is religious, in which case law and order are not so important. Niko Alm, an entrepreneur and blogger, belongs to the holy church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which is the one and only true god, praise it and kill all infidels. Niko cannot possibly ascent to the one true Italian-mushroom sauce heaven if his driver license would show him naked. A pasta sieve must be worn.

Kickstarter Science Catches On

Kickstarter Science Catches On

Jul 12 2011 | comment(s)

Must be a zeitgeist thing.  Our own Ground Station Calliope kickstarter fundraiser succeeded, to help fund our Science 2.0 Project Calliope.  Now the NY Times is reporting that other scientists have also been using kickstarter to fund science.  They cite missions in the $4-15K range, and give it the catchy term 'substitutional funding'.
(Squid) Brains Are Actually Not Computers

(Squid) Brains Are Actually Not Computers

Jul 12 2011 | comment(s)

New neurological research, using, of course, the ever-popular giant axon of squid, shows that neurons are pretty darn clever at picking signal out of noise. And what's more, they're sensitive to context:
Neurons are often compared to transistors on a computer, which search for and respond to one specific pattern, but it turns out that neurons are more complex than that. They can search for more than one signal at the same time, and their choice of signal depends on what else is competing for their attention.
Take that, transistors! Neurons are way smarter than you.

Well, at least squid neurons are.