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Flattery?

Flattery?

Feb 23 2011 | comment(s)

A music project has cropped up that is very much like Project Calliope, if you swap out 'one man show' and replace it with 'crowdsourced'.  The core concept is Calliope's "convert space to music via detectors and send to ground for anyone to remix", and (perhaps due to the Tubesat design limitations) very similar in terms of approach, method and focus as well as intent.  Innovation?  Flattery?

Last week I said the mission of Calliope is that "hearing the levels and variety of activity in the ionosphere in real or near-real time, as ambient sound, will help people get an intuitive sense of the activity and change at the boundaries of space."
What Is A Geomagnetic Storm?

What Is A Geomagnetic Storm?

Feb 22 2011 | comment(s)

Concerns about geomagnetic storms are all the rage this week, so what are they? A geomagnetic storm is a disturbance in the magnetosphere due to near-Earth space weather that happens when the interplanetary magnetic field turns southward and remains that way.
LHC Excludes SUSY Theories, Theorists Clinch Hands

LHC Excludes SUSY Theories, Theorists Clinch Hands

Feb 22 2011 | comment(s)

Both the CMS and ATLAS collaborations have already started to exclude meaningful regions of the parameter space of Supersymmetric models with the data they collected in 2010. And Physics World is on the news today with a online article by Kathy Mc Alpine, the famous rapper physicist who wrote the lirics and interpreted one of the biggest Youtube hits in the category of science popularization. If you have not watched it yet, please rush to do so now. Six million people (and counting) have done so before you already.
Rivers are a

Rivers are a "living system"

Feb 22 2011 | comment(s)

Rivers have been worshipped as "mata " like "Jamuna mata" "Ganga mata" i.e. (mata = mother )and cosidered as a living entity in ancient scriptures . RIVERS ARE actually lifeline OF a nation. Once the rivers dry up a nation may face many problems. Climate change has caused untold miseries and revolts in human societies . Water is transported by rivers across a nation or nations globally. Increasing population, industrialization pressure , and waste disposal into river system has made rivers as " drainage " or municipal waste carriers. The old mythology to "worship rivers" was based on creating respect for the river system and avoid pollution in them. It was sin to put municipal waste or sewage waste in "holy river system" This has worked for many centuries.
Yamuna (Popularly called Kalindi or Jamuna )flows through holy towns of Vrindavan and Mathura before reaching city of Taj Mahal is dying.

Yamuna (Popularly called Kalindi or Jamuna )flows through holy towns of Vrindavan and Mathura before reaching city of Taj Mahal is dying.

Feb 22 2011 | comment(s)

Yamuna (Popularly called Kalindi or Jamuna )flows through holy towns of Vrindavan and Mathura before reaching city of Taj Mahal is dying. After its origin in Jamnotri in Himalayas the holy river flows through Saharanpur, Gaziabad, Noida and Yamunanagar of Haryana, Capital city of India Delhi , Vrindavan and city of lord Krishna Mathura before reaching to city of Taj Agra.
Olfaction Controversy - Flies Sniff Out Heavy Hydrogen

Olfaction Controversy - Flies Sniff Out Heavy Hydrogen

Feb 21 2011 | comment(s)

Fruitflies (Drosophila melanogaster) can smell the difference between hydrogen and its heavier counterpart, deuterium, according to recent research, which they say offers support for a controversial hypothesis of how olfaction works - namely that odorants are identified not according to molecular shape, but by their atomic vibrations.

The flies can also be conditioned by electric-shock treatment to exhibit aversion to either form of the molecule, and the researchers say that shows they can clearly distinguish between them. 
When Our Worldview Is Our Own Backyard

When Our Worldview Is Our Own Backyard

Feb 21 2011 | comment(s)

We all do it: we define things from our own perspective. One example I see over and over again is the idea that autism is whatever it looks like in our own kids, or own experience of it, not someone else's. If autism is accompanied with other problems, it's those problems, too.

Our natural tendency is to define things based on our personal experience. Even parents who argue they don't define their children by their autism will have the same tendency to define all symptoms and issues their children have as part of their autism. It's Gregory House writ small: the need to find one cause for all symptoms. The reality is that there are often multiple causes for the myriad of symptoms we may experience.
A New World Record In Scientific Output ?

A New World Record In Scientific Output ?

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

A nice piece of news in my mailbox today: it appears that the CMS collaboration, the experiment I work for at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, has got four different scientific papers approved for publication in the course of the same week. What is more, the four articles will be published on three different international magazines of clear authority. A true success !
Nice Win With A Grandmaster

Nice Win With A Grandmaster

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

Despite my chronic lack of time these days, I always manage to find ten minutes for a blitz chess game on the internet. It is a total waste of time and brain energy, but it never fails to provide some adrenaline shot in my veins. And at times some real satisfaction, when I play a good game and/or I get the better hand with a titled player.

Today I got a little of both, when I won with black against Grandmaster Lars Karlsson (elo 2466), a Swedish player. Not a super-Grandmaster, admittedly, but still a dangerous player with an expected score above 90% against me (I am rated in the 2050 range. Here is the game with minimal commentary.

Karlsson-Dorigo,  20-2-2011
(Jesper(GM)-tonno)
Former Taliban Town Shows Big Gains

Former Taliban Town Shows Big Gains

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

Girls in schools, wheat crops instead of poppy?  This ain't your daddy's Afghanistan.   

No one believed meaningful change in Afghanistan would happen over night but, as in Japan and Germany and Korea, the longer the US stays and makes people who like democracy feel safe, the more gains there will be.    Though the cost is obviously quite high.

Marjah is a good example of what will be.   Obviously some there remain skeptical.  "If the Marines left, the Taliban would be back in two weeks," said Sidar Mohammad, the 25-year-old owner of a bakery in Marjah's Loy Chareh market.
The Gravity Of Free Will

The Gravity Of Free Will

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

Some subjects I try to avoid in this blog. But this one seems to become increasingly difficult to escape. Since my interview at Philosophy-To-Go, I regularly get questions about the physics of free will. These questions range from
"Does free will exist given that the laws of physics are deterministic?"
to the more suggestive
"Is our free will based on quantum indeterminism?"
and the more confrontational
Witwatersrand Basin - The World's Oldest Water?

Witwatersrand Basin - The World's Oldest Water?

Feb 20 2011 | comment(s)

A new study accepted for publication in Chemical Geology says deep saline groundwaters in South Africa's Witwatersrand Basin may have remained isolated for perhaps millions of years.

The Witwatersrand Basin covers approximately 400 kilometers, some of which is subcrop of the Witwatersrand Supergroup sedimentary and sub-ordinate volcanic sequences and is well-known for tourist expeditions to search for gold.

The researchers found the noble gas neon dissolved in water in three-kilometer deep crevices and the unusual neon profile, along with the high salinities and some other unique chemical signatures, is very different from anything seen in molten fluid and gases rising from beneath the Earth's crust.
The Evolution Of A Vaccine Textbook And The Arrogant Ignorance Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement

The Evolution Of A Vaccine Textbook And The Arrogant Ignorance Of The Anti-Vaccine Movement

Feb 19 2011 | comment(s)

One of the fairly common things out of the "pro-safe" vaccine crowd insists is that there's inadequate research on vaccines. What better way to look at how information has grown over time than to look at the evolution of a vaccine textbook and how it has grown over five editions.

In 1988, Vaccines was one third the size of the present edition, published 20 years later.

Product Details (from Amazon)
"Hardcover: 656 pages 
Publisher: Saunders (W.B.) Co Ltd; 2nd edition edition (August 1988) 
Language: English 
ISBN-10: 0721619460 
ISBN-13: 978-0721619460"
If Content Farms Die, Science 2.0 Will Win

If Content Farms Die, Science 2.0 Will Win

Feb 19 2011 | comment(s)

If a site like the Huffington Post takes a fair use snippet of your article here and then links to you, their snippet will rank higher in Google than your actual article in keywords related to your article.

A little crazy but okay, you might say, they earned that, right?   With content and quality.
And Another One Throws The Towel And Leaves Science

And Another One Throws The Towel And Leaves Science

Feb 19 2011 | comment(s)

“Yesterday night I was in my office in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge packing my stuff, resolved to not go back to research again …”


This sad story is another warning to all those enthusiastic about getting into science. One more outtake:

Extremist Domination Even In The Science Nation

Extremist Domination Even In The Science Nation

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

We'd like to believe the political blogosphere, and certainly the political populace, has confrontational overtones science does not, but who are we kidding?   If you get on the wrong side of a science blogging mullah's pet position, they will whip the faithful into a militant frenzy that would make any cult leader proud.

It's the science way; science is about clarity and facts and that means going after someone if they are wrong (and sometimes just if they disagree but that is less common) - the downside to that is it means everyone thinks they can tee off on scientists, including if the critics know nothing at all.
Lolcats vs CompSci

Lolcats vs CompSci

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

Ran into this ironic juxtaposition of 2 webcomics, released at nearly the same time.  Which to share?  They negate each other.


vs

use mouseover, also

Alex
The Latest From Down South

The Latest From Down South

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

I've been tracking the Illex argentinus fishery for a while now--remember 2009 was the worst year ever, and while 2010 was better it was still far from a complete recovery. How's 2011 shaping up?

In Argentina:
Evolution As Natural Theology?

Evolution As Natural Theology?

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

Science and religion have always been in something of a conflict.   Science seeks to explain the world according to natural laws while religion leaves larger questions as articles of faith.    There is some overlap - 40% of AAAS member scientists in their recent survey are also religious - but AAAS covers a broad cross-section of scientists whereas biology is ground zero for a conflict with religion over man as we exist today and how we came to be.  So there is less overlap in the life sciences but there have been ongoing attempts to reconcile the two camps, usually with scientists conceding that whatever 'sparked' life has no basis in current data so it is left to philosophy or religion as well.
Jumbled Thoughts, Pinching Worries, And Failing Memories

Jumbled Thoughts, Pinching Worries, And Failing Memories

Feb 18 2011 | comment(s)

Balancing the demands of work, parenting, blogging, autism advocacy and more can at times be daunting. My mind is a whirring jumble of thoughts, pinching worries that eat away at me, and an apparently failing memory. I'll start with the failing memory, as it, at least, is amusing in a terrifying "oh you might have more on your plate than you can handle" way.