In the previous blog post we discussed entropy. I provided you with a less well-known perspective on entropy and demonstrated that this generic perspective is fully compatible with the more traditional (and more narrow) thermodynamics view on entropy.

I promised you a toy model to elucidate the information-theoretical entropy that was introduced. You have been waiting patiently, and you get your new toy today. But before we start playing, let's test your patience for a few more minutes, and first expand upon the results obtained in the previous blog post.

Trivializing The Second law

Researchers have discovered a new nanometer-scale atomic structure in solid metallic materials known as metallic glasses, filling a gap in understanding of this atomic structure.

Glasses include all solid materials that have a non-crystalline atomic structure. They lack a regular geometric arrangement of atoms over long distances. "The fundamental nature of a glass structure is that the organization of the atoms is disordered—jumbled up like differently sized marbles in a jar, rather than eggs in an egg carton," says Paul Voyles, a University of Wisconsin-Madison associate professor of materials science and engineering and principal investigator on the research. 

A few hundred thousand billion free-floating, Earth-sized planets may exist in the space between stars in the Milky Way, argues an international team of scientists in Astrophysics and Space Science.

Because it's required for astronomy claims this decade, they make note that those planets could have alien life.

Since "spacetime" is simply a term for a space that has a component we call "time", we need only concentrate on spaces in a somewhat general sense.  Now, as Derek Potter, on this site, pointed out to me, a little while ago, "To us, a space is somewhere to put a box :)"  So, let's take a short "detour" to address what we will mean by a space, in this series.

Athletes sometimes 'choke' - succumb to pressure and underperform - in key situations. How can an athlete be among the top 1,000 participants in the world at a task and be paralyzed by situations in a game they play with expertise?

Choking happens to lots of people.  We've all heard people say they can't take tests, for example.  A new analysis from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) suggests that when there are higher incentives to succeed, people can become so afraid of losing their potential reward that their performance suffers.

It's no surprise that tattoos and piercings have been linked to other risky decisions but capped Internet bandwidth?  

People who claim to see the 'aura' of others - and subsequently claim they can modify them - may actually have synesthesia, according to new research.

Synesthesia is believed to occur due to cross-wiring in the brain; synesthetes have more synaptic connections than 'normal' people and some are interconnected in ways others are not, including across brain regions. Since the brain regions responsible for the processing of each type of sensory stimuli are intensely interconnected, synesthetes see or taste a sound, feel a taste, or associate people with a particular color.

CONTENTS
PART A: Introduction: does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?
PART B: The Toolkit: mathematical and physical assumptions 
PART C: The Thought Experiment and the Word Problem
PART D: The Derivation. Solving the Word Problem
PART E: Conclusion: Einstein's Style or How to not be a Crack Pot

Today I read with pleasure a paper on Supersymmetry which is surprisingly well written and clear. I can only warmly advise anybody seriously interested in the phenomenology of SUSY (in particular, the version called "constrained minimal supersymmetric extension of the Standard Model", cMSSM for friends) to give it a close look.

The cMSSM is a very attractive "minimal" option to extend the Standard Model with a minimal addition of parameters (still, quite a few, as in any Supersymmetric theory). Its appeal lies in the fact that one may basically study the resulting predicted phenomenology by just investigating five crucial parameters.

PITTSBURGH and LYON, France, May 11, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- Mylan Inc. today announced that it has launched Atorvastatin Calcium Tablets, 10 mg, 20 mg, 40 mg and 80 mg in France, Belgium, the UK, the Netherlands and Ireland. Mylan has received marketing authorization from each country's respective health authority to begin selling its product immediately. Atorvastatin Calcium is the generic version of Pfizer's Lipitor® Tablets. This product is indicated for the prevention of cardiovascular disease and hypercholesterolemia.