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My picks from ScienceDaily

Men With Facial Scars Are More Attractive To Women Seeking Short-term Relationships: Men with facial scars are more attractive to women seeking short-term relationships, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found. It was previously assumed that in Western cultures scarring was an unattractive facial feature and in non-Western cultures they were perceived as a sign of maturity and strength. Scientists at Liverpool and Stirling University, however, have found that Western women find scarring on men attractive and may associate it with health and bravery. 'Orphan' Genes Play An…

When science bloggers publish, then blog about it ;-)

On Tuesday night, when I posted my personal picks from this week's crop of articles published in PLoS ONE, I omitted (due to a technical glitch on the site), to point out that a blog-friend of mine John Logsdon published his first PLoS ONE paper on that day: It's a updated and detailed report on the ongoing work in my lab to generate and curate an "inventory" of genes involved in meiosis that are present across major eukaryotic lineages. This paper focuses on the protist, Trichomonas vaginalis, an organism not known to have a sexual phase in its life cycle. Here is the paper (and check John's…

Open access and the last-mile problem for knowledge

Peter Suber, a thoughtful essay, as always: In telecommunications the "last-mile problem" is the problem of connecting individual homes and businesses to the fat pipes connecting cities. Because individual homes and businesses are in different locations, hooking up each one individually is expensive and difficult. The term is now used in just about every industry in which reaching actual customers is more difficult than reaching some location, like a store or warehouse, close to customers. We're facing a last-mile problem for knowledge. We're pretty good at doing research, writing it up,…

My Picks From ScienceDaily

Understanding Smooth Eye Pursuit: The Incredible Targeting System Of Human Vision: Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have shed new light on how the brain and eye team up to spot an object in motion and follow it, a classic question of human motor control. The study shows that two distinctly different ways of seeing motion are used - one to catch up to a moving object with our eyes, a second to lock on and examine it. Wolves Of Alaska Became Extinct 12,000 Years Ago, Scientists Report: The ancient gray wolves of Alaska became extinct some 12,000 years ago, and the wolves in Alaska…

I inform people against their will!

I've heard this one last year (02.16.2007) but heard it again today (it will probably re-air tomorrow - check your local NPR station) - the This American Life episode about Quiz Shows. It was composed of three stories: The first one is kinda weird - the guy was lucky with questions on the Irish version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, he was shy and this win gave him self-confidence, and he is using the money to live and to help other people. The third story totally floored me - I hope someone like Zuska or Amanda or Echidne does the analysis of it - it is about a failed quiz show for…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Ancient Cave Bears Were As Omnivorous As Modern Bears: Rather than being gentle giants, new research reveals that Pleistocene cave bears ate both plants and animals and competed for food with the other contemporary large carnivores of the time: hyaenas, lions, wolves, and our own human ancestors. More Chimpanzees May Build Their 'Cultures' In A Similar Way To Humans: Socially-learned cultural behaviour thought to be unique to humans is also found among chimpanzees colonies, scientists at the University of Liverpool have found. Historically, scientists believed that behavioural differences…

Lambert on Obama - the Obligatory Reading of the Day

When I put up a bunch of good election-related links about Iowa caucuses and the impending New Hampshire primaries last night, I have no idea how I missed this fantastic post by Lambert that everyone is apparently talking about. Right on. Much more elaborate and detailed and well-documented than this (a year ago), and more up-to-date than this (right after the 2004 election), but essentially the same argument and it is correct. Obamamania reminds me of Deanomania from four years ago - what is important to the young-uns is the excitement of being a part of the revolution, not the…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Journal of Visualized Experiments)

There are 19 days until the Science Blogging Conference. We have 200 registered participants and a few people on the waiting list. The Sigma Xi space accommodates 200 and we have ordered food for 200 and swag bags for 200. Apart from the public list, we also have a list with a couple of anonymous bloggers as well as about a dozen of students who will be coming with their teachers. So, the registration is now officially closed and all future registrants will be placed on a waiting list. The anthology should be published in time for the event. Between now and the conference, I am…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (NBC)

There are 21 days until the Science Blogging Conference. We have 200 registered participants and a few people on the waiting list. The Sigma Xi space accommodates 200 and we have ordered food for 200 and swag bags for 200. Apart from the public list, we also have a list with a couple of anonymous bloggers as well as about a dozen of students who will be coming with their teachers. So, the registration is now officially closed and all future registrants will be placed on a waiting list. The anthology should be published in time for the event. Between now and the conference, I am…

New and Exciting from PLoS Biology and Medicine

Genetic Dissection of Behavioural and Autonomic Effects of Î9-Tetrahydrocannabinol in Mice and the accompanying editorial Understanding Cannabinoid Psychoactivity with Mouse Genetic Models: The fact that cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug has motivated a great deal of research aimed at understanding how it produces its psychoactive effects. Here I use the term psychoactive to describe the mild euphoria, altered perceptions, sense of relaxation, and sociability that often, but not always, accompany recreational cannabis use. Despite the difficulties inherent in working with…

DonorsChoose Update

The first week of the DonorsChoose fund-drive is up and the donations are coming in rapidly to a variety of school projects via my SciBlings' challenges. You can check out all the projects picked by my SciBlings here and my own here. You can get to my pledge also by clicking on the thermometer on my sidebar (scroll down a little bit) and watch how the mercury in all of our thermometers rise over time. As you can see, 37% of my challenge has already been funded! Thank you so much! If you continue being so fast and generous and we reach our goal too soon, I will add more projects to…

There is no Soul. Deal with it.

Galilei kicked us out of the Center of the Universe. Darwin kicked us off the Pinnacle of Creation Freud kicked the Soul out of our Brains. Few remain adherents of Geocentrism. The opponents of evolution are legion and very vocal (in this country, and a couple of Middle Eastern ones), but they have been defeated so soundly so many times, they had to concede more and more ground, and though they are getting sneakier with time, their efforts are becoming more and more laughable and pitiful. So, the last Big Fight will be about the Soul. The next area of science to experience a big frontal…

New on....

Too busy with the pseudo-moving right now, so just a quick set of links to other people's good stuff: An amazing, fantastic post on Laelaps about horse evolution (also noted by Larry Moran). While at first glance, this post on Pondering Pikaia on naturally occurring hybrids in fish is not related, I beg to differ - she does mention other instances of hybridism in nature, including those in Equids - the well-known mules and hinnies, and not so well-known zebroids and others. And I just finished reading a book Hemi: A Mule, which, IMHO, compares quite favorably to Black Beauty - after all, it…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (NC Sea Grant)

There are 27 days until the Science Blogging Conference. We have 200 registered participants and a few people on the waiting list. The Sigma Xi space accommodates 200 and we have ordered food for 200 and swag bags for 200. Apart from the public list, we also have a list with a couple of anonymous bloggers as well as about a dozen of students who will be coming with their teachers. So, the registration is now officially closed and all future registrants will be placed on a waiting list. The anthology should be published in time for the event. Between now and the conference, I am…

The World AIDS Day

Tomorrow is the World AIDS Day: The WAC's slogan for their work is "Stop AIDS: Keep the Promise". This is an appeal to governments, policy makers and regional health authorities to ensure that they meet the many targets that have been set in the fight against HIV and AIDS, and especially the promise of universal access to HIV treatment, care, support and prevention services by 2010. This campaign will run until 2010, with a related theme chosen for World AIDS Day each year. So, I hope you choose to blog about this tomorrow and raise awareness about the HIV/AIDS epidemic, rallying your readers…

Clock QuickLinks

A milestone for Abel PharmBoy and Happy Birthday to Olduvai George! Chris asks: how to get alienated kids from inner cities interested in nature? This year saw a sharp rise in the number of multi-author scientific papers. This reflects the increasingly collaborative nature of science - no more crazy loners tinkering in their basements. Thus, a better system for assessing scientific contributions (at least as it pertains to publication of research) is becoming more urgent. This Saturday is the World AIDS Day. Will you blog about it? 10 top researchers in the area of adolescent health,…

I want an e-Book, but Kindle is not it

Call me traditional, but I love books. I have about 5000 of them. If I see a long blog post or a scientific paper or an article that is longer than a page or two, I print it out and read it in hardcopy. I see why an e-Book is a good idea, though, and one day I am sure to have one for particular purposes (e.g., for travel, or for copying and pasting short quotes into my blog-posts as needed, or for sharing books with others), but not until I am the master of exactly what is on it and what I want to do with it - and apparently that time is far off. It may be even going backwards. Just see…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (English Teachers)

There are 71 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 119 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Kim Gainer teaches Literature at Radford University in Virginia. She also writes fantasy fan fiction. Her daughter Patty Gainer…

Science Blogging Conference - who is coming? (Bloggers are coming from all over the place!)

There are 80 days until the Science Blogging Conference. The wiki is looking good, the Program is shaping up nicely, and there is more and more blog and media coverage already. There are already 112 registered participants and if you do not register soon, it may be too late once you decide to do so (we'll cap at about 230). Between now and the conference, I am highlighting some of the people who will be there, for you to meet in person if you register in time. Enoch Choi, M.D. is a Partner in Urgent Care at the Palo Alto Medical Foundation. He blogs on Doctor Geek, M.D. and Medmusings.…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Teenaged Dome-skulled Dinosaurs Could Really Knock Heads, Virtual Smash-ups Show: After half a century of debate, a University of Alberta researcher has confirmed that dome-headed dinosaurs called pachycephalosaurs could collide with each other during courtship combat. Eric Snively, an Alberta Ingenuity fellow at the U of A, used computer software to smash the sheep-sized dinosaurs together in a virtual collision and results showed that their bony domes could emerge unscathed. Squid Beak Is Both Hard And Soft, A Material That Engineers Want To Copy: How did nature make the squid's beak super…

Jane - the Journal/Author Name Estimator

Jane is the cool new tool that everyone is talking about - see the commentary on The Tree of Life, on Nature Network and on Of Two Minds. In short, the Journal/Author Name Estimator is a website where you can type in some text and see which scientific Journal has the content closest to the text you input, as well as people who published on similar topics. If you click on "Show extra options" you can narrow your search by a few criteria, e.g., you can search only Open Access journals. The idea is to discover journals to which you can submit your work. Most people know the journals available…

Senate votes for the Public Access to NIH-Funded Research

On Monday, the U.S. Senate voted to pass the FY2008 Labor, HHS, and Education Appropriations Bill (S.1710), including a provision that directs the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to strengthen its Public Access Policy by requiring rather than requesting participation by researchers. The vote was a veto-proof 75-19. However, the House version of the bill passed with a smaller majority, so the Presidential veto is still possible (perhaps likely). Still, this a big step in the right direction, and important battle won. Moreover, the real battle over this bill resides in some other…

wednesday morning at Lindau, part 2

This morning was a long session broken into two big chunks, and I'm afraid it was too much for me — my recent weird sleep patterns are catching up with me, which didn't help at all in staying alert. Robert Huber: Intracellular protein degradation and its control This talk was a disaster. Not because it wasn't good, because it was; lots of fine, detailed science on the regulation of proteases by various mechanisms, with a discussion of the structure and function of proteasomes, accompanied by beautiful mandalas of protein structure. No, the problem was that this listener's jet lag has been…

Gyroscopes Tell Moths How to Fly Straight

Manduca sexta, the tobacco hornworm hawkmoth, in flight. Image: A. Hinterworth. Researchers have discovered that moth antennae have gyroscope-like sensors to help them control their flight through the air. Because they fly at night, the source of their smooth and graceful flight was a mystery because they could not rely on visual cues. But a research team headed by Sanjay Sane, a biologist at the University of Washington, Seattle, found a structure at the base of the antennae that senses when the moth's body begins to pitch or roll, it relays this information to the brain, which causes the…

Relatives Found for the World's Stinkiest Flower

Rafflesia arnoldii flower. Image: source. The relatives of the largest and smelliest flower in the world, Rafflesia, have finally been found. This family, the Euphorbiaceae -- known for some of the smallest flowers in the world, too -- includes the poinsettia, Irish bells, the rubber tree, and castor oil plant. The plant is found on the Indonesian island, Sumatra. It is a parasite that steals nutrients from another plant while deceiving insects into pollinating it. Its blood-red flowers can weigh as much as 7 kilograms (15 pounds ) and they smell like decaying flesh. And they even can…

Harry Potter Book 7 Named

JK Rowling, author of the popular Harry Potter series, released the name of the seventh and last book in the series today. To learn the name of the book, you must go to her site and play a game of hangman. Rowling's U.S. publisher, Scholastic Inc., released a brief statement Thursday announcing the name of the world's most anticipated children's book, the finale to her phenomenally popular fantasy series. No publication date or other details were offered. Rowling is still working on the book, she explained on her Web site in an entry posted early Thursday. ''I'm now writing scenes that…

Red State Babylon

This article is so good that I just had to quote a few choice bits here for you to read, but there's more of this if you follow the link below. If the blue states are sinkholes of moral decay, as right-wing pundits insist, how come red states lead the nation in violent crime, divorce, illegitimacy, and incarceration, among other evils? To a bus-riding innocent on Manhattan's stroller-filled Upper West Side, it looks like a case of hypocrisy meets stupidity. In contemporary lore, the good people of the red states walk in Jesus's sandals while the rest of us are following Satan into the…

Unprepossessing

I see words as power: words provide people with a deeper and richer meaning to their emotional and professional lives, especially because so much of our lives rely on words. So not every word that I use in this little feature is completely unfamiliar to you, or at least I hope it isn't, because teaching you obscure words is not my primary intention, although I do sometimes choose obscure words to give you some fun as well as improving your vocabulary. Instead, my goal is to demonstrate the beauty, versatility and subtlety of the English language and to acquaint you with the many wonderful…

A Suriname Tanager, the black-faced Dacnis

Male Black-faced Dacnis, Dacnis lineata lineata. Photo taken on the banks of the Corentyne River, which forms the Guyana-Suriname border (see map, below). Photo courtesy of Tony Henneberg. (Click image for larger view in its own window) The black-faced Dacnis, Dacnis lineata lineata [Family Thraupidae (Tanagers and Allies)], also known as the yellow-tufted Dacnis, is comprised of three disjunct populations, any or all of which might actually might be distinct species. One population is distributed throughout most of the Amazon Basin and the Guianas (the nominate lineata), while the another…

Ant Farm and Conehead Woes

Well, I know that all three of you, dear readers, have been eagerly waiting to hear the latest news about (1) the ant farm that I bought as a birdday gift for myself and (2) the ongoing power bill drama with the unreasonable coneheads at ConEdison. Good news first; the ant farm arrived today (yippee), sans ants (boo). The farm itself is smaller than I imagined it would be, which makes me wonder if this size discrepancy is directly related to the size of my eagerness to be an ant aunt? I know this sounds silly but I am really disappointed by the lack of ants: I wanted to spend the evening…

I Get Books ..

I receive a fair number of books to review each week, so I thought I should do what several magazines and other publications do; list those books that have arrived in my mailbox so you know that this is the pool of books from which I will be reading and reviewing on my blog. A Portrait of the Brain by Adam Zeman (New Haven: Yale University Press; 2008). Seed Media Group sent this book to me to review. Tomorrow's Table: Organic Farming, Genetics, and the Future of Food by Pamela C. Ronald and R. W. Adamchak (NYC: Oxford University Press; 2008). The authors contacted me about reviewing…

Best of April

I posted 153 times in April. First, importantly, I again committed scienceblogging in April, with the post Evolutionary Medicine: Does reindeer have a circadian stop-watch instead of a clock?. April focus appears to be Twitter - hence two posts specifically about it: Twittering is a difficult art form - if you are doing it right and More on mindcasting vs. lifecasting. Early in April, I introduced the Open Laboratory 2010 editor and made available the 'submit to Open Laboratory 2010' buttons. A science journalist curmudgeoned herself, so I felt compelled to collect all the responses, in For…

Now NASA Says It's Getting Warmer

The short story: it's melting!! Meltwater stream flowing into a large moulin in the ablation zone (area below the equilibrium line) of the Greenland ice sheet. Photo by Roger J. Braithwaite, The University of Manchester, UK. Well, despite the fact that the George Bush Gang has been shushing scientists who dare to disagree with his administration's fantastical world view, now an entire governmental agency has come out and stated that global warming is occurring. Two studies were recently published, documenting changes in the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets, confirming that climate warming…

We Feel Fine

"Why do I feel most alive when I am working myself to death?" "I feel like I am missing some pieces of the puzzle." "I don't even feel 39." Since August 2005, We Feel Fine has been harvesting human feelings from a large number of weblogs at LiveJournal. Every few minutes, the system searches the world's newly posted blog entries for occurrences of the phrases "I feel" and "I am feeling". When it finds such a phrase, it records the full sentence, up to the period, and identifies the "feeling" expressed in that sentence (e.g.; sad, happy, depressed, etc.). Because blogs are structured in…

iPod iChing - in the dark

Friday, and I need to pack up this computer and move in the next 4 hours. So, oh mighty iPod one, we ask the The Serious Astronomy Question of the Week, having presciently disposed of Pluto last week... So, iPod, d00d, wazzup with this Dark Matter shit? Whoosh goes the randomizer. Whoosh. The Covering: Sexuality - Billy Bragg The Crossing: Bill - Talking Heads The Crown: Marteinn Semur Lö Fyrir Dýrin - Torbjorn Egner The Root: Body of Water - Billy Bragg & The Red Stars (live) The Past: Baby Can I Hold You - Tracy Chapman The Future: Wild Wild Life - Talking Heads The Questioner:…

Change is gonna come

Remember in the early '90s, when people were all up at arms about the destruction of the rainforest? I haven't heard or read anything about it in the longest time. Are the rainforesets still being destroyed wholesale? Are they all gone? Is it still important? Is the coffee I drink contributing to the destruction of the rainforest? Is "free trade" and/or "shade grown" coffee better for the environment? The forests are big, but they are still being cut. Just because the issue is not in the headlines in the US media does not mean the problem has gone away. It will be back some other news cycle…

iPod iChing - Thar She Blows

It is a sticky friday and news are mixed... So, we ask the Mighty iPod One: will RS Ophiuchi in fact become a type Ia supernova? Whoosh goes the randomizer... Whoosh. The Covering: Funky Kingston - Toots and the Maytals The Crossing: Walking Back - Cranberries The Crown: Learning our Long Vowels - Twin Sisters The Root: Three Little Birds - Bob Marley The Past: Minstrels - Claudio Arrau The Future: Scenes From Childhood: An Important Event - Schumann The Questioner: Ghost Town - Specials The House: The Long Way Around - Dixie Chicks The Inside: You Can Call me Al - Paul Simon The Outcome…

Deans are not so easy to impress...

deLong explains why academic blogging is good for the soul I would not have dared to blog openly before tenure (and, no, I did not blog anonymously back then), basically it would not have been well received by most of the tenure committee, or the Dean. Strangely, if I had been writing a regular short column for SEED magazine or equivalent it would probably have counted as a mild plus for most of the committee, but the web equivalent, not so much. I started the blog as an experiment - the possibility had been tossed about as an outreach exercise for a particular project I was involved in, and…

Evolution in Action: Lebanon and Pakistan

Sometimes Lamarckian evolution does operate... - click through to read Ralph Peter's article also. Hezbollah learned over 25 years of conflict, and has adapted. Israel has put itself in a real bind by acting hastily and without thinking things through. To "win" all Hezbollah has to do is survive as an foundational entity - Israel can't occupy Lebanon indefinitely and they just made sure Lebanon itself can not take control of the South. Even if all the Hezbollah members are killed and their weapons and infrastructure destroyed, their younger brothers will step up in a few years. No political…

Even in France...

Fast food sales now outnumber sit-down restaurant food sales in the home of gastronomy: More than half of all French restaurant sales now take place, sacrilegiously, at fast food chains, according to a new survey by food consultancy firm Gira Conseil. This is the first time fast food sales have surpassed sit-down restaurant sales in France —  you know, the the country that gave us cafes, bistros and the Michelin star. It also makes France the world’s second-biggest consumer of fast food, NPR reports, with 1,200 McDonalds franchises alone. That number is only growing (much, it must be said,…

NOW I Understand Who Caused the Banking Crisis...

Mark Steel at the Independent has a great column on the root cause of our economic instability - poor folks and all the trouble they cause by not quite appearing to do the evil deeds they do! It’s a tricky argument to pull off, that the poor caused the debt so they should pay it back. Maybe that’s why most weeks there are stories in certain newspapers about a woman with 45 kids on benefits, who then bought a giraffe and now that’s on benefits but she said it was cramped so the council has put it up in the Shard, and two of the kids have got Compulsive Potting Disorder so they’ve been given a…

dib dib dib

Once a scout, always a scout... I was, really, in Iceland - learned useful skills, like how to make a snow cave when a sudden summer blizzard catches you on a hike, how to make a fire in a country with no trees, and how to make "flour bombs". Excellent. Especially when by court order the scouts went co-ed (1977 I think) and subsumed the girl scouts. Camping trips became something else entirely. So now that World's Fair and a host of others has established the Order Of The Science Scouts Of Exemplary Repute And Above Average Physique Since I, more than most, do deeply grieve for the slow…

continuing resolution

Congress today takes on an omnibus continuing resolution spending bill for 9 out of the 11 appropriations for the current fiscal year. The bill proposes to continue funding for agencies at the 2006 level, with all earmarks stripped out. PS: I was wrong, House used earmark funding to bump a few programs, especially NSF and DoE. NSF did really well. NASA not so much. On the one hand, this is sensible - it bypasses the trap left by previous Congress of dumping impossible draft appropriation bills on the new Congress part way into the financial year; and it cleans house by stripping out billions…

Global Security: Iran timeline

Global Security has a Iran "strike time line", including countdown clock to earliest possible time for strike, they think (seen on Gilliard's News Blog) So, er, what they say. They identify early Feb as the first opportunity, if Stennis moves out soon. They identify Nimitz as the third carrier available (or Kitty Hawk could move up and Nimitz rotate in behind her, but I think it is more likely Nimitz would go straight in, and Kitty Hawk kept between Japan and Korea, they know that region). March is clearly the crisis time, new moon is mid March, USAF like to strike just after new moon to…

NASA Wise Council

NASA Advisory Council met with AAS members in Seattle this morning. It was an interesting meeting; some harsh things said, some nice things said and some things unsaid. This is my personal interpretation of what I heard... Some very harsh things were implicitly said about recent NASA management, some deserved, but lets see some actual grown up action from the current crowd before we get all superior, because to be honest the administration of NASA right now is not exactly smooth runnings. The advisory council structure has now nominally been restored, and there are meetings and reports, but…

Mollyfication, and some temporary changes

Have you been wondering who won the Molly for July? It goes to … Owlmirror, OM. Let's hear some applause for the worthy champion. In other news, you may recall that I'm going to the Galapagos Islands, and I'm leaving tonight! I shall be spending the next week and a half bobbing about in a boat in the Pacific, 600 miles off the coast of mainland South America, and while I'll still be able to access the internet in a limited way, I'm going to be somewhat distracted. "Oh, no," you're thinking, "Pharyngula will go all silent and boring, and there will be no biological ejaculations from a godless…

ObL - now what

IF reports that US assassinated Osama bin Laden are true, then the big question is how this affects US relations with Pakistan. Particularly if, as rumoured, ObL was well housed near Islamabad. Abottabad near Khyber? Now with bonus maps! Now with actual correct bonus maps. Details on Wiki: Death of Osama bin Laden This is probably more important in the long run than Afghanistan, the Taliban, or even the effect on US public morale. Heavy firing near Pakistan Military Academy (thenews.com.pk) "ABBOTTABAD: Three loud blasts were heard near the Pakistan Military Academy (PMA) Kakul Road late…

linkedy links xvi

more occasional link fodder from the recent past 'cause y'know, linking is an inherent good Jay Bookman reports on a editorial in the IBD which notes: "People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K..." "...where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless," Stupid blighters, the IBD. Don't they know Stephen is a fellow of Caius... Actually, good thing he got that dual appointment at the Perimeter Institute on this side of the pond, eh. That way the Canadians can step in as…

KITP: Statistical Mechanics of Money

Another topical colloquium here at the Kavli Institute for Theoretical Physics... "Money, It's a Gas" New Developments in Statistical Mechanics of Money, Income, and Wealth (podcast, video, slides) by Victor Yakovenko, University of Maryland. Paper in Rev. Mod. Phys. (arXiv:0905.1518) Money, of course, is not conserved. It can be created, with some work, and, famously, it can be destroyed. Makes for interesting statistical mechanics, eh? It turns out that putting a lower bound on net money per person was unphysical... there is some interesting literature out there on the instability of…

an astronomy tale of terror

climate catastrophe, turbidity and academic angst on campus Did I mention it is the deadline for Hubble cycle 17 observing proposals today. On these days, the ghost of Major Murphy haunts astronomy departments everywhere. So.. recently the northeast region of the USA has seen a chain of storms rolling from the Pacific, dipping south to pick up some Gulf moisture, and then dump it somewhere between Michigan and Maine (and allegedly in some strange other country called Canada). Earlier this week, the precipitation took the form of rain, copious sustained rain, with localised flooding. The Penn…