It is an unfortunate reality in America that medical societies have an outsized influence on government policy.

When you are making a model it is common to make assumptions about the physical systems often assume that measurable features of the system. Temperature or chemical potential can be specified. The real world is messier than that, and uncertainty is unavoidable. Temperatures fluctuate, instruments malfunction, the environment interferes, and systems evolve over time.

Statistical physics address the uncertainty about the state of a system that arises when that system interacts with its environment but a new paper says that uncertainty in the thermodynamic parameters themselves — built into equations that govern the energetic behavior of the system — may also influence the outcome of an experiment.

University of Kentucky political science Professor Stephen Voss, who was plagiarized by Harvard President Claudine Gay, said it was no big deal. It was even expected she would use his work without attribution? He seems to think so. “It would have been quite natural for her to borrow ideas from me."

He didn't tell me that personally. I instead cited the source. Like you are supposed to do. It ain't that hard. She could have done it but did not, and yet he has no issue with that. He seems to be more upset that her plagiarism is going to lead to more investigations of humanities scholars' academic work, including by people 'not qualified' to do so.

Sarah Green Carmichael, in a Bloomberg News item titled “You don’t need more resilience, you need friends, and money” debunks the business gurus who tell us all resilience comes from inside us. Sarah’s thesis is that our environments determine our resilience, or at least can shield us from the traumas that necessitate resilience.

From tomorrow onwards (once or twice a week until February 5), I will be giving an online course on the topic of "Statistical Methods for Fundamental Science" for the INSTATS organization. This is a 5-day, 15-hour set of lectures that I put together to suit the needs of students and researchers who work in any scientific discipline, who wish to improve their understanding and practice of statistical methods for data analysis.

A job interview, some years back, at No Name University (NNU). I was the candidate. The diversity question, pitched right on schedule. The surprise was who asked it. Of the seven search committee members (plus the search firm rep) only one was a person of color, and guess who they stuck with asking the diversity question? A clear signal I would not want to work at their institution, but I gave it my best game anyway.

Politics is about trade-offs. Perhaps a reason President Biden isn't better-regarded is because if Congress didn't give him what he wanted, he circumvents them with agencies he controls, such as OSHA with vaccine mandates, the CDC with rent control, and EPA to ban safe weedkillers and pesticides.

He can take a page out of Presidents Clinton and Bush 43 on how to do better if he wins again this fall.

If a doctor declares that they are going to another country on vacation to provide free medical care, they get a great deal of social currency from that. Ask a San Francisco doctor to travel to rural California to do the same and you'll be dismissed.

This is a companion piece to “Enough: Toward A Sustainable Economics” 

https://www.science20.com/fred_phillips/enough_toward_a_sustainable_economics-256755.

It is commonly said that Neptune is azure blue and Uranus pale cyan green – but a new study shows the two ice giants are actually far closer in color than typically thought. Because Uranus’ appearance and color has changed over the decades in response to the weirdest seasons in the Solar System.