Thursday at DAMOP was a little more broken up than usual for me at one of these meetings, because the nagging cold I have was bugging me more, and also because I needed to check my email a few times. There was still some neat stuff, though. The early-morning session was the toughest call of the meeting: there was the undergraduate research session, a session on ultracold Rydberg atoms, and a session on complicated states in BEC, in widely spaced locations. I ended up skipping the undergraduate session in favor of hearing Chris Foot talk about a rotating optical lattice (which simulates some…

Kate here, reporting that SteelyKid says, "Being sick is fun! I get to take baths at 10 o'clock at night, and play on nice soft towels, and have Mommy's undivided attention all day long . . . " (She's fine, was sick last night but is rapidly improving over the day—her appetite is almost completely back to normal and she's in a good mood, as you can see (she looks a little bleary because she just woke up). Nevertheless, we both look forward to Chad coming home . . . )

Technically, 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,…

I made it to Charlottesville, and am all checked in to the Econo Lodge, which is a little more Econo than I was expecting. It's an old-school motel, with rooms that open right into the parking lot, the sort of place where the towels are tiny and scratchy, the pillows and mattresses are thin, and the tap water tastes like cigarette smoke. Still, it's not like I'm going to be doing much more than sleeping here. I promised some entertainment in my absence, so this seems like a good time for a Dorky Poll. I'm going to be spending a lot of time over the next few days listening to talks about the…

I'm leaving this afternoon for Charlottesville, VA and the 40th annual DAMOP conference. At this meeting, we will once again be confirming the prediction of the bosonic character of interesting talks. Bosons, as you know, are quantum particles that happily occupy the same state as other bosons, and as you can see from the meeting program, the most interesting sessions are bunched together in a few time slots on Wednesday and Thursday. Thus, interesting talks are clearly bosonic in nature. (The same basic physics has been demonstrated dozens of times previously, at other meetings and…

Solar charging an electric motorcycle - how long? | Dot Physics "Questions to be answered: How much energy would the bike need to go 50 miles? How much power (average) could you expect to get from the solar panels? Andâ¦how long would it take to charge this sucker. I am sure you can store enough energy in a battery to go 50 miles and even a tiny solar cell could charge this - but would it be practical?" (tags: science physics energy environment blogs dot-physics) New system for detection of single atoms | Eureka! Science News "Scientists have devised a new technique for real-time…

Confessions of a Science Librarian has joined ScienceBlogs. So, no more eating Chinese food in the stacks, and try to keep the noise down.

Thoreau offers without qualification some observations about the different approach to books taken by sciences vs. humanities. Specifically, he notes that despite frequent claims that it is the Most Important Book Ever, nobody actually reads Newton's Principia Mathematica This is totally different from humanities. In humanities, people make a point of reading the original thinkers. They don't just say "Well, philosopher so-and-so influenced lots of other people and got the ideas rolling, so let's read somebody influenced by him and maybe a Cliff's Notes version of the original." They…

This has nothing to do with the substance of Steve Benen's post about conservative preparations for judicial confirmation hearings, but the quote he used from a New York Times article is the proximate cause for this Grammar Nerd Poll: What is the plural of "memorandum"? A) "Memorandums" B) "Memoranda" C) "More than one memorandum" D) Some other option I will explain in the comments Leave your answer in the comments. Bonus nerd points for spotting the egregious grammar error in the text of the post. (I don't know what the egregious grammar error in the post is, but by the Iron Laws of the…

The Experimental Error blog considers the difference between disciplines (via Tom): I often contemplate the differences between these two areas of study. Also, I hear fellow undergrads argue for one or the other, usually divided along the lines of their respective major. Anymore, I think they're so interrelated that I find it hard to find a difference between the two, except for the phases of matter that they most often deal with. Back in the days when science was new, Physics dealt with understanding the fundamental laws of the universe, and it was Chemistry that was making the attempt at…

Tor.com / Science fiction and fantasy / Blog posts / Magic, family, uncertainty: Lisa Goldsteinâs <em>Tourists</em> A brilliant book that ought to be much better known than it is. (tags: culture SF books review fantasy tor) The Big Lebowski | Film | A.V. Club "Inspired by Raymond Chandler detective novelsâand the hazy L.A. vibe of Robert Altmanâs brilliant Chandler adaptation The Long Goodbyeâthe Coens have created a character not far removed from Elliott Gouldâs Marlowe in the Altman movie, a laid-back gumshoe dragged reluctantly into a case his conscience (and curiosity)…

From Tuesday to Saturday, I will be at the 2009 DAMOP meeting at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville, VA. I have been to Charlottesville three times before, and based on that experience, I know these things: The White Spot is worth a visit if you're a fan of greasy spoon diners. Getting stuck in an elevator with half a rugby team kind of sucks. It's damnably difficult to find good bagels in the South. Getting stuck in an elevator on your way to bed after a wedding reception really sucks. Yes, that's right, I have been stuck in an elevator in Charlottesville, VA not once, but twice…

The Trouble with Double X | The American Prospect "In the site's introductory video, one of the editors, Hanna Rosin, says, "If you take something like Slate and you have it edited by three women, instead of the people it's edited by, well that's the kind of magazine that we want to turn out." She goes on to say that the articles they publish "don't have to be 'women's issues'" -- she bends her fingers to make air-quotes -- "in the way that people have always defined women's issues. There can be a whole range of issues and you just put them through a slightly different lens." Color me…

Speaking of conferences (as we were a little while ago), the Female Science Professor has a post on the phenomenon of logos in talk slides: Do you put your institution's logo in your talks and on your posters at conferences? If you put a logo in your talk, do you put the logo on every slide or just on the title slide? Is institutional logo-ing more common on some continents than on others? Logos on slides are one of those things that in principle, ought to be annoying. In practice, I'm usually just grateful that they're not using one of the godawful default slide layouts that come in…

Malcolm Gladwell has a number of public responses to the sort of thing I ranted about the other day-- not to me specifically, mind, but to the same general points-- on his own blog and on ESPN's Page 2. It's pretty much the same argument others made in the comments to my post. Taking a fairly representative bit from his blog post: The press is not for everyone. But then the piece never claimed that it was. I simply pointed out that insurgent strategies (substituting effort for ability and challenging conventions) represent one of David's only chances of competing successfully against Goliath…

DAMOP is next week, and Tom uses this to talk about socialization at conferences: The DAMOP conference is coming up, and that reminds me of a conference-related phenomenon related to gathering a group to go off to a meal. This doesn't manifest itself when the conference provides meals, so it wasn't an issue last fall; when the meals are being served you can just grab some people that you know and sit, or if you are so inclined, sit with some strangers and strike up a conversation. "What is your research" is a pretty safe way to begin. (etiquette tip: if your conversation partner has a really…

News: Students as Lemmings - Inside Higher Ed "The researchers find "clear evidence that peer driven students on average perform worse than the ability driven in terms of both average and final grade," though they acknowledge that the "effect is small in magnitude" -- about two-tenths of a grade point on a 30 point grade scale." (tags: education economics academia social-science business inside-higher-ed) Mythbusters, please share your data | Dot Physics Taking the "Open Science" movement to television... (tags: science blogs culture television dot-physics) Rules for Time Travelers |…

This is Week 40 of Thursday Baby Blogging, meaning that SteelyKid has nominally reached the point where she has been out in the world as long as she was gestating. Let's see what she thinks: SteelyKid says "Huh? I thought that wasn't for another couple of weeks..." And it's true, she was late in arriving. So, the official celebration of gestational breakeven will be a couple of weeks from now. In the meantime, let's just leave her to wrestle her bison...

I watched Jonah Lehrer on the Colbert Report a few months ago, and thought he did a really good job. So, when we were offered free copies of his new book, How We Decide, I asked for one, even though it's not my usual sort of thing. The main point of the book is that what you think you know about thinking is wrong. Through both interesting historical anecdotes and summaries of the latest in cognitive science research, Lehrer shows that our usual decision-making process is nowhere near as rational as we would like to believe. And, moreover, that's not such a bad thing-- without contributions…

I'm a little surprised that I haven't seen bloggers commenting on Tom Hanks's appearance on The Daily Show, in which he talks about CERN: The Daily Show With Jon Stewart M - Th 11p / 10c Tom Hanks thedailyshow.com Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor Everything he says is pretty much true, but garbled and exaggerated for comic effect. People at CERN have to be shaking their heads, though. Or maybe they don't bother watching the interview segments... At any rate, it's not nearly as good as their earlier segment with John Oliver at CERN The Daily Show…