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Circumcision & AIDS

William Saletan has a roundup and commentary on the ruckus surrounding circumcision and HIV transmission. There are two issues here, The health & public policy The cultural angle The think the evidence is pretty clear from individual studies and cross-cultural comparisons: all things being equal, circumcision cuts down on the rate of HIV transmission (especially from female-to-male). On the other hand, there are the important cultural issues that are often not mooted with clarity, especially in the United States. You see, the USA is one of the few nations where adult circumcision…

More on what US scientists can learn from the Canadian War on Science

I've been thinking a lot about this the last week or so, with media appearances already out there and more to come. The list of links I've amassed is quite impressive, a significant number to add to the post highlighting Sarah Boon's advice. But that was a week or so ago, which seems like an eternity in Donald Trump years. So perhaps it's time to take another look at the issues around science advocacy and politics in the Canadian context. My advice? Don't bring a test tube to a Bunsen burner fight. Mobilize, protest, form partnerships, wrote op-eds and blog posts and books and articles, speak…

Last Week on ResearchBlogging.org

Researchers observed tiny voids forming in silicon used for solar panels; these voids provide physical evidence of the Staebler-Wronski effect, "which reduces the solar cell efficiency by up to 15 percent within the first 1000 hours." Using an online avatar with a skin color other than your own makes you less racist in real life; playing a hero makes you less cruel, and playing a villain less benevolent. Old mouse muscles exhibit "elevated levels of activity in a biological cascade called the p38 MAP kinase pathway" which prevents stem cells from dividing and repairing muscle damage.  By…

Did she or didn't she? Genetic testing and virgin birth

'Tis the holiday season and, according to ancient lore, the time when miraculous events are most likely to take place. One of those well-known and miraculous events of ancient days was the birth of a son to a young girl, who, although she was married (Okay, I'm not sure about this part of the story) she was said to be a virgin and the birth to be a miracle. Hmmm. How do you think the news would be received if that sort of thing happened today? Certainly, if the young girl were to produce a grilled cheese sandwich with a burn spot that vaguely resembled a woman in a robe, someone might be…

Mananimals in the news again

Not just in the USA. Visceral queeziness coupled with religious sentiment coupled with scientific ignorance appears in other parts of the world as well, as in the UK The Scottish Council on Human Bioethics, a professional group based in Edinburgh, has published a report on the ethical implications of the practice in the journal Human Reproduction and Genetic Ethics. The report is online at www.schb.org.uk. The article lists some examples of research: Later research has spawned human-animal creations, the report said. These usually die at the embryonic stage, but often survive if the…

My picks from ScienceDaily

Storing Digital Data In Living Organisms: DNA, perhaps the oldest data storage medium, could become the newest as scientists report progress toward using DNA to store text, images, music and other digital data inside the genomes of living organisms. In a report scheduled for the April 9 issue of ACS' Biotechnology Progress, a bi-monthly journal, Masaru Tomita and colleagues in Japan point out that DNA has been attracting attention as perhaps the ultimate in permanent data storage. More..... Epigenetics To Shape Stem Cell Future: Everyone hopes that one day stem cell-based regenerative…

Mental health research and a bikesharing system

DC's Capital Bikeshare program has had a fantastic first year. Stations full of sturdy red bikes have been popping up all over the city, and the system logged its one millionth ride one the eve of its first anniversary. Members can take a bike from any of the more than 100 stations, and the ride is free if they return it within half an hour to any station. (The system is still figuring out how to keep the most popular stations from being emptied out or completely full at rush hour, but the new stations that will come online over the next year should help.) Now I learn that Capital Bikeshare…

Yet more Exxon drivel

The drive to distract us from reality continues. Quite why otherwise sensible people are so keen on stuff like Pressure on Exxon Over Climate Change Intensifies With New Documents - I saw it via Stefan Rahmstorf's fb feed - I don't know, because it is utter drivel. To let Exxon have their rebuttal first, because they are right, Alan Jeffers, a spokesman for Exxon Mobil, called the new allegations absurd. "To suggest that we had definitive knowledge about human-induced climate change before the world’s scientists is not a credible thesis," he said. And now to quote the other side talking…

Anthony Watts Starts Up Cloud Based Anti-Science Organization

The Open Atmospheric Society Climate science pseudo-skeptic Anthony Watts recently bought and registered the domain "theoas.org" and has just announced the formation at that Internet address of a new society explicitly designed to organize people in meteorology and related areas intent on opposing the scientific consensus on climate change. And yes, there is a scientific consensus on climate change. Dr. Roy Spencer once said to me that trying to organize climate skeptics would be like “trying to herd cats”. While this Society is not trying to “herd” anyone, nor is it specifically focused on…

Short Story Club Wrap-Up

The first rule of Short Story Club is that you must talk about Short Story Club... So, the Short Story Club run by Niall Harrison over at Torque Control is finished, and Niall's asking for concluding thoughts. I meant to write this up last night, but SteelyKid had a major meltdown just before bedtime, so everything got scrambled. A perennial topic of discussion in science fiction and fantasy fandom is "the death of the magazines," with lots of hand-wringing about how nobody reads short fiction any more, and short fiction is where the novelists of tomorrow hone their craft, etc. This never…

Be afraid. Be very very afraid

In a story that caught the attention of only the more astute climate science journalists a few weeks ago, one of the more experienced oceanographers of our time, Peter Wadhams of Cambridge University, reported that the Arctic ice cap is melting much faster than we thought. How much faster? So fast that the rate made the story seem too alarmist to take seriously. As MSNBC's Alex Johnson reported, Scientists had previously predicted that the summer sea ice would disappear from the Arctic by 2040. But Wadhams' measurements indicate that the thinning was already approaching 50 percent and that…

Darwin Bibliography (Courtesy of Adam Gopnik)

Adam Gopnik writes in the Oct. 23rd New Yorker about Darwin's writing period after the Beagle and before Origins (which is to say, roughly through the 1840s and into the later 1850s). His essay is more or less an appreciation for Darwin's literary skill, that skill being that he could present his points in Origins in just the right way. Such a task was not trivial. With Gopnik's appreciation - which, I don't know entirely why Adam Gopnik, who generally writes about other stuff (you know, like France and stuff) is writing this, but be that as it may - you get a nice feel for the importance…

The Game is Over

John Maynard Smith has died. While many people know who Stephen Jay Gould was or Richard Dawkins is, Id bet few would be able to identify Maynard Smith. Thats a shame, because he played a key role in building the foundations of modern evolutionary biology. (Underlining this point, I only learned about his death from Science's online new service. As far as I can tell, no one else has run an obituary.) Maynard Smith came to evolution from a previous career as an engineer. In World War II he measured the stress on airplane wings. When he moved to evolution, he brought with him a gift to see the…

Like-Minded Discussion and Attitude Extremity about Science

Several colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have a new study out that shows not surprisingly that like-minded conversations drive attitude extremity relative to science policy. Analyzing data from a national panel survey conducted between 2002 and 2005, graduate student Andrew Binder and his collaborators find that after controlling for demographics and news use, like-minded discussion pushed respondents' position on stem cell research to the extreme ends of the distribution, either towards strong support or strong opposition. The study comes out of the research group at…

Does technology enhance or detract from the wilderness experience?

As an avid lover of the outdoors, I was super excited to see that there was an entire session at Science Online 2011 dedicated to discussing technology's place in the wilderness. All of the panelists are well versed in taking tech out of the city. Miriam Goldstein has used technology on multiple expeditions to study the Great Pacific Garbage Patch, taking the internet audience with her across the Pacific in search of trash. Danielle Lee is a passionate outdoor enthusiast, encouraging people in urban areas to experience the wilderness. Karen James is perhaps best known for her work with the…

#scio10 aftermath: my tweets from "Talking Trash: Online Outreach from the Great Pacific Garbage Patch".

Session description: Debris in the North Pacific Gyre received unprecedented attention in 2009 with voyages from the Algalita Marine Research Foundation, Project Kaisei, and the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. Each voyage integrated online outreach into its mission, but emphasized very different aspects of the problem. What are the challenges of creating a major outreach effort from one of the most isolated places on earth? How can scientists, journalists, and educators balance "exciting findings live from the field!" with "highly preliminary unpublished non-peer-reviewed data that our…

An Amazing Feeling of Power

Nine times seven, thought Shuman with deep satisfaction, is sixty-three, and I don't need a computer to tell me so. The computer is in my own head. And it was amazing the feeling of power that gave him. -from "The Feeling of Power" by Isaac Asimov Before spring break, I received a packet in the mail from one of my readers--a member of the faculty. Inside I found a photocopy of "Superiority", a science fiction short by Arthur C. Clark, a memo from the FSU bookstore to the faculty addressing textbook ordering protocols and a note from the professor, believe it or not, that tied it all together…

Why you should read The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

This is a special shout out to the doctors and scientists out there. Everything we do in our fields has repercussions, often unexpected ones. Because of this, we strive to practice ethically to help prevent or minimize negative repercussions. This discussion comes up specifically as an epiphenomenon of the release of The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks (my full review can be found here.) How one reacts to this book would, I suppose, depend on your perspective. A neighbor of the Lacks's might react quite differently than a 22 year old doctoral student. And that's really the point. This…

Somewhat less gleeful Gleevec

When Gleevec hit the market in 2001 for chronic myelogenous leukemia , it was hailed as a major breakthrough in cancer treatment. Gleevec, which inhibits bcr-abl kinase, was the harbinger of targeted chemotherapy and represented a departure from the cytotoxics which, although effective, possess a broad array of adverse effects. A History of STI 571, written by Brian Druker, M.D., the principal investigator who championed the compound, not only illustrates the genesis of the drug itself but also the interdisciplinary teamwork required for drug discovery. Behind Gleevec came Iressa, Astra…

The Neuroscience of Admiration

I know the medium is the message, but does every message have to be about the medium? People on twitter love tweeting about twitter, just as people on facebook love writing about the facebook redesign. Sometimes, this navel gazing can get out of hand, which is what I think happened with a recent (and extremely interesting) PNAS paper on the neural substrate of admiration and compassion. The paper, by scientists at USC, has nothing to do with twitter or online social networks or even the internet, and yet that quickly became the main story. Before long, there were a flurry of posts with…

#scio10 aftermath: some thoughts on "An Open History of Science".

Here are some of the thoughts and questions that stayed with me from this session. (Here are my tweets from the session and the session's wiki page.) The session was led by John McKay and Eric Michael Johnson. John posted the text of his presentation and Eric posted his presentation a la YouTube. I'm going to take this as permission to skip doing a proper recap here. Instead, I'm going to write about the big ideas this session raised for me. First, I'm struck by how easy it is for those of us who were trained to do science to know very little about where scientific practices come from --…

Fast food = corn, corn and more corn

Half of all restaurants in the United States are fast food restaurants. They do $100 billion worth of business a year (that's one seventh of a Bailout, a new unit of expenditure). A lot of the fast food is in the form of beef (hamburgers), chicken (sandwiches, tenders or nuggets) and french fries. A new paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS, familiarly known in the trade as "penis") uses stable isotope analysis to trace the input materials in three large fast food chains. The results can be summed up in one word -- corn: We used carbon and nitrogen stable isotopes…

The Evolution of Imprinting

The phrase "genomic imprinting" has come to refer the turning off of a gene (a particular instance of a gene on a particular chromosome duplicated across the cells in a body) so that the gene is not expressed at all, with the turning off of the gene not caused in the body in question, but rather, during the previous generation by a process happening in the soma of one of the parents. A maternally imprinted gene is passed on to junior, but will not be expressed in junior. a paternally imprinted gene is passed on to junior, but will not be expressed in junior. Typically (as far as we know) a…

Teaching science in an anti-science country

The Washington Post has an opinion editorial by Paul Hanle, the president of the Biotechnology Institute in Washington. I recently addressed a group of French engineering graduate students who were visiting Washington from the prestigious School of Mines in Paris. After encouraging them to teach biotechnology in French high schools, I expected the standard queries on teaching methods or training. Instead, a bright young student asked bluntly: "How can you teach biotechnology in this country when you don't even accept evolution?" I wanted to disagree, but the kid had a point. Proponents of…

How bad can it get in my hometown?

Having been born in Detroit and raised both in the city and one of its suburbs, news like this distresses me: DETROIT (Reuters) - With bidding stalled on some of the least desirable residences in Detroit's collapsing housing market, even the fast-talking auctioneer was feeling the stress. "Folks, the ground underneath the house goes with it. You do know that, right?" he offered. After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!" As Detroit reels…

Great customer service redux

Some of you may remember back in May 2008 when I discussed the unexpectedly good customer service provided by Mill Creek Entertainment, the company busily mining public domain (and otherwise minimal-license) flicks and TV flicks to create really inexpensive bundles of movies on DVD. (That's not all the company does, to be sure, but I know them most for the "50 Movie Packs"--50 movies on 12 DVDs--of which there are now 23 examples. The company's motto is "changing the face of value entertainment!" and they're also doing other things, including TV series and documentary compilations.) The gist…

The High Cost of College Textbooks

We're a couple weeks into the semester and the ever-popular subject of the cost of textbooks has raised its head. Along with my students, I often wonder why they shell out so much for these works. I think there are several things at play here, but first a little background: I've been teaching at the college level for over 25 years and I've written a few textbooks myself, for two different publishers: West and Delmar/Thomson Learning (including the ever-exciting Op Amps and Linear Integrated Circuits mentioned on the sidebar, complete with color-coordinated matching laboratory manual). The…

A Farewell to Scienceblogs: the Changing Science Blogging Ecosystem

It is with great regret that I am writing this. Scienceblogs.com has been a big part of my life for four years now and it is hard to say good bye. Everything that follows is my own personal thinking and may not apply to other people, including other bloggers on this platform. The new contact information is at the end of the post, but please come back up here and read the whole thing - why I feel like I must leave now. Sb beginnings Scienceblogs.com started back in January 2006. On that day, several of my favourite science bloggers moved to this new site, posting the URL on their farewell…

Reed Elsevier Is Stealing My Words

This displeases us greatly. I received an email from ScienceBlogling Mike Dunford that Reed Elsevier had excerpted one of my posts. No problem there--I like it when people read my stuff....except for one thing: The fuckers copyrighted my words. MINES!!! Lookee: (click to embiggen) Mike Dunford lays out why this is such a fucking shitty thing to do: This blog, like almost all blogs, is an open-access publication. There's no charge to read this blog. If you've got an internet connection and time to waste, you can scroll through the things I've written to your heart's content. The thing is,…

Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, October 9 - 16, 2006

Today marks the second Pandemic Flu Awareness Week, launched by my colleagues over at The Flu Wiki. The good news is that in the year since the first effort to raise the awareness of the blogosphere, much has happened in the way of increased recognition of the pandemic threat. Communities around the world have started to plan for the possibility of a pandemic and the planning process will pay dividends. More good news is that a pandemic strain of H5N1, the leading candidate for a disastrous flu pandemic, has yet to come into the open. The bad news is that there is much, much more that needs…

Winners of the 2011 Lane Anderson Award Celebrating the Best Science Writing in Canada

This past Thursday evening I was honoured to attend the awards ceremony for the 2011 Lane Anderson Award which celebrates the best science writing in Canada. The winners were announced at the end of the evening. This is from the press release, which doesn't seem to be online yet: Toronto. 2thth September, 2012: The two winners of the 2011 Lane Anderson Award were announced today by Hollister Doll and Sharon Fitzhenry, Directors of the Fitzhenry Family Foundation, at an intimate dinner in Toronto. The annual Lane Anderson Award honours two jury-selected books, in the categories of adult and…

Around the Web: Ada Lovelace Day, Wikipedia & Women in Science

My library is hosting a Ada Lovelace Day event tomorrow (ok, a little late...). Continuing in a tradition of having Women in Science Wikipedia Edit-a-thons, we're hosting our own Wikipedia Women in Science Edit-a-thon! I've been doing a fair bit of reading over the last couple of years about Wikipedia culture and especially how it relates to the under-representation of women both as editors and as subjects of articles. So I thought I'd share some of my readings here with all of you. Of course, this list is in no way comprehensive or complete. I welcome suggestions for further readings in the…

Charismatic cephalofauna

Christine Huffard sent me a note alerting me to the publication of her latest paper, and she thought I might be interested because I "seem to like cephalopods". Hah. Well. I've noticed that Dr Huffard seems to have some small affection for the tentacled beasties herself. The paper follows on an old tradition and an old problem. While people have no problem distinguishing human individuals, we have a tough time telling one individual animal from another. This perceptual difficulty complicates problems of studying variations in behavior or physiology, or monitoring numbers and behavior, in…

ScienceBlogs.de Now in Beta

December 10 is a big day for ScienceBlogs. Today, Hubert Burda Media, one of the largest media companies in Europe, and our partner in Germany, launches a beta version of ScienceBlogs.de, a German-language website that brings the ScienceBlogs idea and spirit to Europe. I've had the pleasure these past few months of working with the team behind ScienceBlogs.de, and I'm delighted to let my editorial counterpart in Germany, Beatrice Lugger, introduce ScienceBlogs.de in her own words. Dear ScienceBlogs Community, Just three months after ScienceBlogs.com and the German publishing company Hubert…

Testing new regulatory czar's commitment to transparency with OSHA's silica proposed rule

President Obama's regulatory czar, Howard Shelanski, has been on the job for a month.  During his confirmation hearing Shelanski expressed his commitment to transparency.  He suggested it was one of his key priorities within the White House's Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA) which is housed within the Office of Management and Budget (OMB).  As noted, however, by CPR scholar Sidney Shapiro and his colleague James Goodwin, OIRA has a long history of secrecy with respect to its role in the centralized review of agencies' regulatory activities.  Many in the open-government…

Bat development

It always gives a fellow a warm feeling to see an old comrade-in-arms publish a good paper. Chris Cretekos was a graduate student working on the molecular genetics of zebrafish at the University of Utah when I was a post-doc there, and he's a good guy I remember well…so I was glad to see his paper in Developmental Dynamics. But then I notice it wasn't on zebrafish—Apostate! Heretic! Except…it's on bats. How cool is that? And it's on the embryonic development of bats. Even cooler! I must graciously forgive his defection from the zebrafish universe since he is working on an organism that is…

Getting OSHA Right

Nearly four decades after the passage of the Occupational Safety and Health Act of 1970, it is difficult to find anyone who will argue that it has delivered on its promise to provide safe and healthful working conditions. In 2005 and 2006 I traveled across the country and met with people experienced in worker health and safety to share ideas about what we can do to protect workers better. There was considerable agreement about the need to strengthen OSHAâs basic functions and use them more creatively â more inspections, stronger enforcement, renewed rulemaking, and a strategic focus on the…

Discourse give me hives

But a fascinating lesson in scientific discourse is currently underway in the blogosphere. It all started with a harmless little analysis of a letter published in NEJM. The strange part (to those of us who live here) was that the authors responded. On the blog. For real. And they were kinda pissed (in the American sense of the word; I have no idea if they'd been drinking, but probably not. After all, they're not bloggers). Communication in medical research is slow. In general, this can be a good thing. Before research is published in a respected journal, it should be thoroughly…

Palin, autism and fruitflies - it does not add up

You have probably heard that Governor Palin, in a recent speech contradicted herself within a span of a couple of sentences. So, she said that "Early identification of a cognitive or other disorder, especially autism, can make a life-changing difference.", then in the next breath dissed that same research: "You've heard about some of these pet projects they really don't make a whole lot of sense and sometimes these dollars go to projects that have little or nothing to do with the public good. Things like fruit fly research in Paris, France. I kid you not." You can see that part here: This…

Is OSHA expecting too little from violators?

What kind of deal should OSHA cut with an employer after one of his workers has a foot amputated because of an improperly guarded conveyor? A couple of years later at the same worksite this happens: Both legs of another employee are amputated because of unguarded equipment. What should the deal be this time? These are the questions in my mind after recently reading an OSHA news release about Seaford Ice during the same week I read the report "OSHA's Discount on Danger." Seaford Ice in Seaford, DE has been the scene of horrific injuries to some of its workers. An employee lost a foot in a…

Lamprey's Spinal Cord Modelled

[More blog entries about neuroscience, lamprey, computationalmodeling; neurovetenskap, nejonöga, datormodellering.] In Stockholm on 14 June, my psychedelic friend and fellow honorary Chinese Mikael Huss will present his PhD thesis in engineering (available on-line). He has built software models of bits of the lamprey's spinal cord. The book's title is Computational Modeling of the Lamprey CPG. From Subcellular to Network Level -- CPG means "central pattern generator". I understand little of this. I just want to eat the lamprey. Thesis abstract below the fold. Due to the staggering complexity…

The Beginning of The End of [Donald Trump/Tea Party/Fox News] UPDATED

Select one and only one. Or two if you like. --- see down below for update --- Megyn Kelly of FOX news went after Donald Trump, the apparent winner of the FOX-GOP Fauxbate. Donald Trump at first declared that he has no time to be politically correct. Later he proved that he does have time to be politically incorrect, when he seemed to imply that Kelly was out of sorts during the debate because she was having female problems. This led a conservative organization to dump Trump from a keynote speakers spot. We see a crack in the armor form as Erick Erickson, who had invited Trump to…

Ruh Roh. Universe may not be what we thought it was.

Astronomers have discovered something that should not be there. It is an arc of light. The arc is the effect of gravitational lensing which happened as light passed by a massive galaxy about 10 billion years ago in space-time. In other words, in this universe, but very far away and a very long time ago, when our universe was a mere toddler. The galaxy that supplies the light is even farther away. (UPDATE: See this post by Phil Plait for a detailed writup on this observation: The galaxy that shouldn’t be there) Here's the problem. A very massive galaxy...the one that is farthest away...…

Gravity's Engines by Caleb Scharf

The last week or so of silence on the blog has been due to my trip to Ohio (which was very enjoyable), and a lack of child care for the early part of this week. A day and a half home with both kids was just exhausting, but the trip was useful in that it provided me time to read Gravity's Engines by Caleb Scharf, on the plane to and from Columbus (I got the paper edition at Science Online, and figured as long as I had a printed book I wanted to read, I might as well dodge the stupid argument about whether my Nook is likely to interfere with the plane's navigation systems). This book comes with…

Is Bond Dead?

With classes set to start on Monday I am not in the mood for heavy fare. So how about some entertainment blogging! Like all sensible people I am a big fan of the James Bond movies. That none of them, let's face it, are actually all that good, does not affect my inability to change the channel when I notice that one is on. I used to feel strongly that Roger Moore was the best Bond, but that is partly because, given my age, he was the first Bond I encountered. Lately I have moved on to a more ecumenical approach that recognized the strengths and weaknesses of all the Bonds (including…

I've Got Silica on Silicon on My Quantum Stereo

Linear optics quantum computing, where one combines linear optics with the nonlinear processes of single photon creation and single photon detection, is a relative newcomer onto the scene of possible routes toward quantum computing. Whenever I think about these schemes, what jumps into my head is a crazily filled optical bench, like the one below from the Zeilinger group: Now, I'm but a mere theorist, but I think even theorists like me understand that trying to build a large scale version of this scheme, which has considerable overhead behind it in terms of the number of modes needed, is a…

Is our bacteria learning?

This is a cool story, but not for the reason the authors are attributing. Researchers at Princeton showed that bacteria can evolve to anticipate future environmental changes. Here is the coverage in Science: Researchers already know that microbes can mount simple responses to changes in their environment, such as acidity fluctuations, by altering their internal workings. If the changes are regular enough, bacteria can respond ahead of time. But systems biologist Saeed Tavazoie of Princeton University wondered if microbes were capable of more sophisticated reasoning. Could they, for example…

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that some very smart people just don’t know how the web and browsers work

Back when I was working at the public library, I used to do the "introduction to the internet" classes. These were typically at 9 - before the library opened- and so attracted stay at home moms and retirees. Attendees usually picked things up pretty quickly. For one thing, they admitted not knowing how anything worked so would listen and take notes and then stay to practice on the public systems. We assume that "kids today" and indeed all educated adults are fluent in the use of browsers and the web. Not so. There is a strange example recently that demonstrates this point.  I assumed everyone…

Finding Information in Books

I've talked about this a bit at sessions I taught at my library and also at Web Search University but it's still a favorite.  Plus, you asked for posts on finding information. Oh, and one of the tools just released some updates so this is fairly timely. This is not how to use the catalog to see if a book you want is available in your library and to get a shelf location!  Also not about finding something good to read (frankly, I'm completely out of practice with reader's advisory, so can't help you there). Books are useful containers for information, data, and stuff you need to make new…

Comps readings: community detection

Last set of comps readings, I talked about sense of community: belonging, having influence, fulfillment of needs, and emotional support.  Now, let's talk about the physics version of "community" - cohesive subgroups.  In a graph, these are groups of nodes in a graph that are more connected to each other than to other parts of the graph. Clumpy spots.  If you read old href="http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/30594217">Wasserman and Faust, you'll probably think of cliques, cores, and lambda sets... some how these didn't do it for me - literally, when I was trying to href="http://terpconnect.…