Free Thought
drorzel | June 9, 2009
Connecticut District Tosses Algebra Textbooks and Goes Online - NYTimes.com
"Westport school officials say their less-is-more approach has already resulted in less review in math classes, higher standardized test scores and more students taking advanced math classes. The percentage of the districtâs 10th graders receiving top scores on state exams rose to 86 percent last year from 78 percent in 2006. Advanced Placement calculus and statistics classes enrolled 231 students this year, from 170 in 2006, and a record 44 students will be able to take multivariable calculus this fall, up from…
pontiff | June 9, 2009David Wineland runs a world class lab at NIST Boulder which has been at the forefront of ion trap quantum computing. William Phillips is a Nobel prizing winning physicist who also does quantum computing at NIST, this time at NIST Gaithersburg. To say that these are two top researchers in quantum computing, is a massive understatement. Both of the groups have produced their ground breaking work with the support of numerous alphabet soup government agencies throughout the years. Now comes word, via a Nature news article that IARPA, the intelligence community's version of DARPA, has decided…
goodmath | June 7, 2009
One mathematical topic that I find fascinating, but which I've never had
a chance to study formally is chaos. I've been sort of non-motivated about
blog-writing lately due to so many demands on my time, which has left me feeling somewhat guilty towards those of you who follow this blog. So I decided to take this topic about which I know very little, and use the blog as an excuse to
learn something about it. That gives you something interesting to read, and
it gives me something to motivate me to write.
I'll start off with a non-mathematical reason for why it interests me.
Chaos is a very…
drorzel | May 29, 2009
Could an iphone tell if your parachute didn't open with its accelerometer? | Dot Physics
"The first and simplest answer would be ânoâ."
(tags: physics education science technology gadgets dot-physics blogs)
Robert J. Lang Origami
Awesome origami art, and science as well.
(tags: art math science)
Don't Be Such a Scientist
Everybody with a blog has a book deal these days...
(tags: science politics blogs books society culture)
Who Can Name the Bigger Number?
"In an old joke, two noblemen vie to name the bigger number. The first, after ruminating for hours, triumphantly announces "Eighty-…
pontiff | May 28, 2009Recently I've been thinking it might be fun to set up some sort online weekly colloquia in quantum computing. Fun? Well, okay maybe that's not quite the right word. But it would be an interesting experiment. So I went out looking for good live webinar/videoconferencing software and well...I was a bit disappointed. Sure there are a lot of videoconference companies out there...which almost all have limited version for use for free. But these limited versions almost all seem to restrict to only a few participants. Anyone know of some software which might be appropriate for attempting to…
cpikas | May 27, 2009This is the third in a series of test essays I'm doing to prepare for
my comprehensive exams. The questions for these essays come
from 3 places: ones I've made up based on my readings, ones assigned to
previous doctoral students, and ones my advisor makes up based on my
readings. I'm assuming the advisor ones will be closest, but
I don't want to knock them all out in a row - it almost seems like a
waste when part of this is getting the timing right, practicing
writing, and test-taking.
Rules of the road are as follows: closed book, closed internet, all you
have is the question, a…
razib | May 27, 2009Return of the Quaternary
Jared Diamond hides behind the "it wasn't science" defense
Building your own Star
Opponent-Process Theory: Welcome to the dark side
Cloud Computing>
pontiff | May 26, 2009Here is an article at physorg.com about a result in quantum computing (see here for my own article on this result.) And here is an article on the website fudzilla describing this physorg result. How in the world do you get from the physorg article to fudzillas: "Top boffins who have been looking under the bonnet of Quantum computers are starting to think that they may not be the future of computing"?
Is the internet version of the game telephone more or less noisy than the spoken game?
drorzel | May 25, 2009
At NIF, a Quest for Fusion Energy (or Maybe Folly) - NYTimes.com
"The $3.5 billion site is known as the National Ignition Facility, or NIF. For more than half a century, physicists have dreamed of creating tiny stars that would inaugurate an era of bold science and cheap energy, and NIF is meant to kindle that blaze.
In theory, the facilityâs 192 lasers â made of nearly 60 miles of mirrors and fiber optics, crystals and light amplifiers â will fire as one to pulverize a fleck of hydrogen fuel smaller than a match head. Compressed and heated to temperatures hotter than those of the core of a…
aardvarchaeology | May 25, 2009Geocaching is a fun nerdy outdoors hobby where you hide tupperware under boulders in the woods and publish their GPS coordinates on the web for other geeks to go look for the tupperware. Sometimes when you look for geocaches in public spaces such as parks, you get funny looks from passing non-geocachers ("muggles", in potteresque geocacher parlance). Lone guys hanging around in parks and acting as if they're looking for something are probably interpreted either as drug customers or gay cruisers. Thus, back in 2005 I came up with the ultimate gay nerd pastime: geocruising, where you publish…
drorzel | May 24, 2009Friday morning at DAMOP was probably the thinnest part of the program, at least for me. Annoyingly, this was the day that my cold (or possibly allergies-- whatever it was that had my head full of goo) let go, so I was the most awake and alert I managed for the entire conference.
I watched a few talks in the ultracold molecules session, where I heard about the remarkable progress being made in producing large numbers of ultra-cold molecules, generally diatomic alkali molecules (Rb2, KRb, LiCs, etc.). This is an area where relatively standard techniques seem to work surprisingly well. This is…
ddobbs | May 22, 2009
Having lived with fire ants, stepped in fire ants, laid down with fire ants, and been bit just about everywhere by fire ants, the news that parasitic flies turn fire ants them into zombies by eating their brains pleases me immensely.
Speaking of pleasure: Vaughn whacks the dopamine = pleasure meme.
Sharon Begley says Obama may get a lot done, but he can't erase stereotype threat (so far).
We may be dozing, but Europe is ordering its swine flu vaccine. D'oh! Update: We're getting a start too.
"Good night, sleep tight, I love you." Why consistent bedtime routines work.
Why the best…
jdupuis | May 21, 2009Lots of great articles in this issue! Pretty well every one is worth checking out:
Percentile-Based Journal Impact Factors: A Neglected Collection Development Metric by A. Ben Wagner, University at Buffalo
A Subject Librarian's Guide to Collaborating on e-Science Projects by Jeremy R. Garritano and Jake R. Carlson, Purdue University
What Engineering Sophomores Know and Would Like to Know About Engineering Information Sources and Access by Zorana Ercegovac, InfoEN Associates
The 2007 STS Continuing Education Survey: Continuing Education Needs of Science/Technology Librarians by Jo Ann…
drorzel | May 21, 2009Technically, the meeting started Tuesday, but all that happened was a welcome reception, which I missed due to travel. The real beginning of the meeting was Wednesday morning, with the traditional unscheduled half-hour welcome from local dignitaries. That was followed by the Prize Session, featuring the frighteningly smart Misha Lukin, who was awarded the I.I. Rabi Prize for being really freaking brilliant. The abstract he sent in was kind of vague, but he mostly talked about stuff related to the quantum computing in diamond stuff that I've blogged about before.
I'm fighting a bit of a cold,…
goodmath | May 20, 2009
In general, I try to keep the content of this blog away from my work. I don't do
that because it would get me in trouble, but rather because I spend enough time on work, and blogging is my hobby. But sometimes there's an overlap.
One thing that's come up in a lot of conversations and a lot of emails it the idea of cloud computing. A lot of people are interested in it, but they're not really sure of what it is, or what it means.
So what do we mean when we talk about "cloud computing"? What's the cloud? How's it different from good old-fashioned client/server computing?
The idea of cloud…
jrosenhouse | May 18, 2009One of the nice things about summer vacation is the chance to visit beautiful and scenic locales. Like Bowling Green, Kentucky. That is the home of Western Kentucky University, which in turn is hosting the 22nd Annual Cumberland Conference on Graph Theory, Combinatorics and Computing. Figured I'd drop in, give a talk, see some old friends, and do some serious hanging out. Sadly, this means I will be out of town for the rest of the week and therefore will not be blogging. Regular blogging will resume upon my return.
Who knows? Since I'm going to be in-state I just might stop off at my…
pontiff | May 15, 2009Via the CCC Blog, an announcement concerning an NSF funded opportunity for new PhDs in Computer Science, CIFellows (http://cifellows.org):
The Computing Community Consortium (CCC) and the Computing Research Association (CRA), with funding from the National Science Foundation, are pleased to announce an opportunity for new PhD graduates in computer science and closely related fields to obtain one-to-two year positions at host organizations including universities, industrial research laboratories, and other organizations that advance the field of computing and its positive impact on society.…
thusspakezuska | May 15, 2009Hat tip to reader James Ramsey...
What do women really need in computer? Because, what with our vaginas and all, our computing needs are so, so different from those of men. Thank the goddess Dell is looking out for us, with its helpful marketing strategy that emphasizes "color schemes, cases and dieting tips". Oh my god, I can accessorize my laptop? I must have died and gone to heaven! Here's a "Tech Tip" from the Della site (isn't that so cute??? get it? Dell, the real site, is gendered "guy", while Della is for us girls. I mean, who would want to buy a laptop from a guy site, right…
goodmath | May 15, 2009 In my Dembski rant, I used a metaphor involving the undescribable numbers. An interesting confusion came up in the comments about just what that meant. Instead of answering it with a comment, I decided that it justified a post of its own. It's a fascinating topic which is incredibly counter-intuitive. To me, it's one of the great examples of how utterly wrong our
intuitions can be.
Numbers are, obviously, very important. And so, over the ages, we've invented lots of notations that allow us to write those numbers down: the familiar arabic notation, roman numerals, fractions, decimals,…
pontiff | May 11, 2009Physics is an new APS initiative to highlight select articles for Physical Review journals, very much in the model of the commentaries that appear on articles in journals like Science. Many (all?) of the articles are written by researchers in the field, and are meant to be readable by a wide audience of physicists and serve as a sieve for what a good broad physicist should know about what is currently going on in physics.
Today, a highlight I wrote about two recent PRLs has appeared: Too entangled to quantum compute one-way. This paper highlights two recent papers on entanglement in one-…