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Displaying results 701 - 750 of 854
Fantasy is powerful, especially if you're a delusional idiot like Chopra
Wouldn't it be cool if after we died we didn't...die? Just like in the fairy tales, we could go to some place where we play harps on clouds and eat marshmallows for breakfast; we could play with our dead dogs, and somehow manage to live in harmony with all of our dead lovers. Unless we go to a place of flames and unending agony. Or maybe we become squid-like creatures in the oceans of Titan--all are equally (un)likely. Except to those so mired in thanatophobia and fantasy that they can no longer reason properly. It's not like this is a new problem, but my eyes were bleeding after…
An 'error' is not the same thing as an error
A UK High Court judge has rejected a lawsuit by political activist Stuart Dimmock to stop the distribution of Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth to British schools. Justice Burton agreed that "Al Gore's presentation of the causes and likely effects of climate change in the film was broadly accurate." There were nine points where Burton decided that AIT differed from the IPCC and that this should be addressed in the Guidance Notes for teachers to be sent out with the movie. Unfortunately a gaggle of useless journalists have misreported this decision as one that AIT contained nine scientific…
Around the Web: Resources on vaccination, anti-vaccination and why people don't trust science
Welcome to my latest "liberation bibliography" project. This time around I'm gathering resources concerning the recent rather worrying trend towards people not vaccinating their children. In particular the last couple of months have seen multiple cases where vaccination has been in the news, from statements by politicians, outbreaks among hockey players and at amusement parks and many others. There's been an awful lot written about vaccines and their safety recently and my aim here is to gather some of the best information, both in terms of outlining the main events as well as some commentary…
The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning: My TEDxAlbany Talk
So, yesterday was my big TEDxAlbany talk. I was the first speaker scheduled, probably because I gave them the title "The Exotic Physics of an Ordinary Morning," so it seemed appropriate to have me talking while people were still eating breakfast... The abstract I wrote when I did the proposal mentions both quantum physics and relativity, but when I actually wrote the talk, that made for a really awkward transition, so it's all quantum, all the time. I cover quite a bit of ground-- the no-animation-effects version of the slides is 42 slides and Word has it as just over 2500 words written out…
Moving Overseas, Part 8
The good news is that things are really falling into place now -- something I thought would never ever happen. First, I walked through icy winds and a light dusting of snow to bring my ailing lory to my veterinarian, Simon Starkey, on Thursday morning to get blood drawn so they could look again to see if she's diabetic. The blood tests came back Friday morning, showing that she had blood glucose levels that were twice the normal values, which is something that can result from stress or from mild diabetes. Since she was so ill when I initially brought her in (yay, for poverty for making me…
More than just Resistance to Science
In the May 18th issue of Science there is a revew paper by Paul Bloom and Deena Skolnick Weisberg. An expanded version of it also appeared recently in Edge and many science bloggers are discussing it these days. Enrique has the best one-sentence summary of the article: The main source of resistance to scientific ideas concerns what children know prior to their exposure to science. The article divides that "what children know prior to their exposure to science" into two categories: the intuitive grasp of the world (i.e., conclusions they come up with on their own) and the learned…
The Clock Metaphor
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is: In order to really discuss the physics of timekeeping, you need to strip the idea of a clock down to the absolute bare…
Eastern Equine Encephalitis: The Mosquito that bit the Snake
Guest post by Hillary Craddock Last week a new study regarding Eastern Equine Encephalitis (EEE) was published online (Bingham et.al.). EEE is a mosquito-borne virus that can cause serious, and sometimes deadly, disease in humans and equines. In warmer parts of North America, the virus is spread year-round, but in areas where mosquitoes get killed off in the winter it has been something of a mystery as to how the virus makes it from year to year. Humans and equines are both dead-end hosts, which means that a mosquito can not be infected from biting an infected person or horse. Researchers in…
The Clock Metaphor
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is: In order to really discuss the physics of timekeeping, you need to strip the idea of a clock down to the absolute bare…
The Clock Metaphor
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is: In order to really discuss the physics of timekeeping, you need to strip the idea of a clock down to the absolute bare…
The Clock Metaphor
Chad wrote a neat history of (or should we say 'evolution of') clocks, as in "timekeeping instruments". He points out the biological clocks are "...sort of messy application, from the standpoint of physics..." and he is right - for us biologists, messier the better. We wallow in mess, cherish ambiguity and relish in complexity. Anyway, he is talking about real clocks - things made by people to keep time. And he starts with a simple definition of what a clock is: In order to really discuss the physics of timekeeping, you need to strip the idea of a clock down to the absolute bare…
Social Networks, danah boyd, and Class, Redux
Apophenia, danah boyd's blog is one of the first blogs I ever read and have been reading more-or-less continuously over the past 3-4 years (since she took a class on framing with George Lakoff and blogged about it). She is probably the most thoughtful analyst of online behavior. There are thousands who can write about technology and "killer apps", but she understand better than anyone the users' point of view: what works and what not and why. Her ethnographic/sociological/anthropological/psychological approach to the study of the Web is, to me, much more insightful than any technology…
We Don't Need No Stinkin' Theorems
There was a postdoc in my research group in grad school who had a sister in college. She called him once to ask for help with a math assignment dealing with series expansions. He checked a book to refresh his memory, and then told her how to generate the various series needed for her homework assignment. A week or so later, he asked how she'd done. "Terrible," she said. It seems that he had just plunged ahead with generating series terms without doing the convergence tests and other proofs that a mathematician would do for the same problems. She told him, "My professor said I answered all the…
PNAS: James Annan, Climate Change Researcher
(On July 16, 2009, I asked for volunteers with science degrees and non-academic jobs who would be willing to be interviewed about their careers paths, with the goal of providing young scientists with more information about career options beyond the pursuit of a tenure-track faculty job that is too often assumed as a default. This post is one of those interviews, giving the responses of James Annan) 1) What is your non-academic job? I'm a research scientist at a Govt lab, working in the field of climate change research. Currently I'm in Japan, which is probably a bit off-the-wall for most…
Undergraduate research changed my life
Lots of talk today about the joys of undergraduate research sparked by a recent study (the results of which can be found here). Chad has a post or two that I like on the matter. I thought I would throw my personal two cents in the ring as well, since undergraduate research has factored heavily into my career choices. When I got to college at a small liberal arts school in Illinois, I was unsure what career plans were. I had some vague interest in being a lawyer or potentially some sort of psychologist, but nothing tickled my fancy. My thoughts turned to science in my first year, and I went…
Historical Figure Meme - Reading Rocks
Wilkins just tagged me with one of those blog meme things. Apparently, he thinks that I've nothing better to do with my time (and, unfortunately, he's totally correct about that). This particular meme involves historical figures. The rules are simple: 1) Link to the person who tagged you.2) List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.3) Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.4) Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog. I'm going to do what both Wilkins and Myers did, and pick someone who probably wouldn't…
On shelving
While Matt Selman's rules of book shelving are clearly insane, Ezra Klein's response is clearly not quite right either. The basic rule, from which all the others follow like a pack of hallucinating baboons, is: It is unacceptable to display any book in a public space of your home if you have not read it. Therefore, to be placed on Matt Selman's living room bookshelves, a book must have been read cover to cover, every word, by Matt Selman. If you are in the home of Matt Selman and see a book on the living room shelves, you know FOR SURE it has been read by Matt Selman. No, no, no. Some…
New Travelers: Philosophia Naturalis #14
Fifty years ago today, the first tiny step was taken off planet. We may be more introspective nowadays, but we sure know how to Have Fun 2.0 Here is a selection of finds from the blogosphere, trawled up over the last few weeks. Some of these were sent in, some I picked as good examples of blog posts on physical science or related issues in the last month or so. Sputnik! The launch of Sputnik, fifty years ago today, inspired a generation of scientists and spurred a renaissance in science, education and technological development. Academia:Quantum Pontiff celebrates a great historical event…
"Greatest experiment" in microbiology/infectious disease
I'm late to the party, but Chad over at Uncertain Principles put out a call for great experiments/observations in our fields. Like others have said, that's a tough one, so I thought I'd first run through some of the highlights and big breakthroughs in the fields of microbiology and infectious disease epidemiology that have made the field what it is today, and then end with the one I think is most important. Feel free to disagree. Obviously, several early advances stand out that allowed for the field to really start to develop. In roughly chronological order: Antony van…
DonorsChoose Payoff: Where Do Ideas Come From?
As promised, an answer to a question from a donor to this year's DonorsChoose Blogger Challenge. Sarah asks: Chad, can I get a post about how you (or scientists in general) come up with ideas for experiments? You've covered some of the gory detail with the lab info posts, but I think it would be useful for your readers to see where the ideas come from. The answer is obvious: Ideas come from Schenectady. Which, not coincidentally, is where I live... More seriously, in my area of experimental physics, I think there are two main ways people come up with ideas for new experiments:…
Elsewhere on the Interweb (5/5/08)
Happy Cinco de Mayo everyone! Down with that imperialist aggressor Napoleon III! (The painting to the right is Manet's Execution of Maximillian. Supposedly, the chap on the right looks like Napoleon III, in a zinger to his administration which Manet viewed as responsible for Maximillian's death.) Cosmic Variance has a great post on the physics of chocolate and why it doesn't always solidify the way you want it to: If you've ever tried to use chocolate in its melted form, you've probably discovered that chocolate has a number of peculiarities that frequently thwart your best culinary…
On Universities, Wealth, and Research Funding
A couple of years ago, I went to a meeting for junior faculty at Vanderbilt about the tenure process. The ostensible goal of the meeting was to help us feel more comfortable by letting us better understand the process. The practical upshot for me, at least, was to ratchet up the tenure stress another notch or two, as well as add to the growing sense of despair I had about the whole thing. Today, Chad points to an article in Inside Higher Ed about the size of university endowments. You know, those universities that have been increasing student tuitions at rates much faster than the rate of…
a book meme!
Woo hoo! I've been tagged with a book meme! The rules: boldface the books on this list that you've read, and italicize books you started but never finished. Okay. . . 1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen 2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien 3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte~ 4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling 5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee~ 6 The Bible - I think I've read over 75% of this, so I'm going with it. The begats don't count. 7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte~8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell 9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman 10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens~…
Undergraduate research : a key (essential?) component of a college science education
Following Chad and Jake, I want to jump off from an article in Science about undergraduate research. It's always nice when some sort of survey confirms one's preexisting biases.... In short, the survey found that performing research increased undergraduates' interest in science and technology fields (so-annoyingly-called "STEM" disciplines, for Science Technology Engineering Mathematics). Such undergraduates were also more likely to go on to advanced degrees, although here the causality isn't necessarily clear. The survey did find that students with higher grades tended to be more likely…
What I like, not what I should like
That long list of books is making the rounds again (Jennifer, Chad, Jessica, John, and Bora have already jumped in), yet I can't bring myself to join in the fun. The list reminds me of something one of my high school English teacher once told my class. He was very concerned that we be "cultured" (no, not that way) and steeped in the classics, having us cut our teeth on Shakespeare and Dostoyevsky before hopefully starting up subscriptions to The New Yorker someday. I didn't particularly care; his culture was not my culture, then or now. Indeed, glancing over the selections putting the book…
Creation of an Ultracold Neutral Plasma
This is the last of the papers I was an author on while I was in grad school, and in some ways, it's the coolest. It's rare that you get to be one of the first people to do an entirely new class of experiment, but that's what this was. It kicked off a new sub-field (or sub-sub-field...), the history and status of which was written up in Physics a little while back. The ultracold plasma experiment may be the ultimate version of what we jokingly called the "NIST Paradigm" of cold-atoms physics research, which could be summarized as "I wonder what will happen if we stick this other laser in?" It…
Time-Resolved Studies of Ultracold Ionizing Collisions
This paper is the third of the articles I wrote when I was a grad student, and the first one where I was the lead author. It's also probably my favorite of the lot, not just because of the role it played in my career, but because it packs a lot of science into four pages. The whole thing is summarized in this figure from the old NIST web page, which is a simplified version of Figure 2 from the paper itself: This shows the collision rate as a function of time after we hit a cold sample of atoms with a 40ns pulse of laser light tuned near the atomic resonance frequency. As discussed in the…
Meeting My Sciblings
This weekend, Seed Media, our benevolent and beloved corporate overlords, sponsored a Scibling gathering: ScienceBloggers from all over the country (and outside) all gathered in New York, ate, drank, and partied. It made for quite an interesting weekend. I didn't end up being able to hang around nearly as much as I would have liked (I missed the drunken Karaoke! As someone who never gets drunk, watching my drunken sciblings singing badly would have been a kick!) Alas, as the father of two small kids, I'm subject to the schedule of family/babysitters, so I couldn't hang aronud. (Plus, to…
"The Vapidity of the Whole Meme Thing"
Over at Uncertain Principles, Chad writes: He [Dawkins] rubs me the wrong way when he talks about science (I wish I could find the old post somebody on ScienceBlogs did about the vapidity of the whole "meme" thing), and really gets up my nose when he talks about religion. I don't know if he's referring to my critique of the meme concept, but I figured it gives me an excuse to resurrect this post about memes from the old site: I've mentioned in several posts that I can't stand the word meme. I suppose it's time I explain myself. (You can find several definitions of the word meme here). It…
Habitable Zone Planet Finder Funded
New high resolution near infra-red spectrograph, designed to find earth like planets in the habitable zone around low mass cool stars, is funded by the National Science Foundation Penn State Awarded $3.3 Million to Build Instrument for Finding Planets in Habitable Zones Around Nearby Stars University Park, PA -- A new state-of-the-art instrument -- a precision spectrograph for finding planets in habitable zones around cool, nearby stars -- is being developed at Penn State with support from a new $3.3-million grant from the National Science Foundation. "This new Habitable Zone Planet Finder…
The Phantoms of the OPERA
If 3σ results are wrong half the time, does that mean 6σ results are wrong all the time? The social networks are a-buzz over the claim of a significant detection by the OPERA experiment of a neutrino pulse propagating superluminally over a 750 km baseline from CERN to the Gran Sasso lab. arXiv paper here (submitted) You heard the claim - neutrino pulse generated 400 GeV protons fro the old Super Proton Synchrotron. Every 6 secs a kicker magnet bumps two 10.5μs wide proton pulses, separated by 10ms. These crash into a 2m graphite target (that is 7 ns travel time through target); the mesons (…
Bazell says "quit whining"
NBC's science and health correspondent, Robert Bazell, has an opinion piece today on MSNBC: Stop whining about intelligent design. Scientists should stop whining about threats to the teaching of evolution and spend more time discussing values. I should note here that most of the piece is strongly supportive of teaching evolution. Bazell presents a very brief overview of the history of anti-evolutionism in America, and notes that "serious efforts in biology and medicine can no more ignore evolution than airplane designers can ignore gravity." So, he's not messing around or giving any…
Weekend Diversion: Damning with Faint Praise?
"Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer, And without sneering, teach the rest to sneer; Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike, Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike." -Alexander Pope As you know, last weekend I was on vacation at a certain music festival, and of course, a good time was had by all. Image credit: my new buddy Chad. Also, R.I.P., Macho Man. There were a huge number of great bands there with big names, like Death Cab for Cutie, Modest Mouse, The Flaming Lips, Wilco, and the band that I'll pick this week's song from, Foo Fighters and their hit, Learn to Fly.…
The Mythical Republican Climate Pivot
Every now and then, I hear someone giving the Republican Party credit for finally starting to get on board with 20th (or even 19th) century science, and 21st century eyeballs, to accept the idea of climate change. That is annoying whenever it happens because it simply isn't ever true and never will be. Media Matters for America has a piece critiquing a recent Politico assertion that the tide is turning. Here is some of what they say, click through to the rest. ... Politico's story...offers two main examples to support its argument: First, the bipartisan House Climate Solutions Caucus "has…
Black Holes Won't Incinerate You, After All
“You wait for a gem in an endless sea of blah.” -Lawrence Grossman On the one hand, we have General Relativity, our theory of space, time, and gravity. Image credit: Wikimedia commons user Johnstone; Earth from NASA's Galileo mission. It describes the Universe on both large and small scales perfectly, from the hot Big Bang to our cold accelerating expansion, from vast superclusters of galaxies down to the interiors of black holes. Image credit: NASA, ESA, M. Postman (STScI), and the CLASH Team. But General Relativity doesn't tell us everything. It doesn't tell us, for example, about…
String Experiment: Capillary Action is Complicated
As I've mentioned here before, I do a lot of work these days in my local Starbucks. This is slightly ironic, as I don't like coffee-- instead, I order tea, which I put in an insulated travel mug. I tend to get the tea, carry the mug back to the table, and let it steep while I boot up the laptop, then pull the teabags out. I get a hot water refill after I finish the first mug, and take it over to campus if I'm going in that day, and those generally carries me through the morning. At some point, I noticed that when I had the cap on, I tended to end up with a small puddle of liquid next to the…
Drug Risk: Benadryl® (diphenhydramine) overdoses in Oregon, Robotripping, and Purple Drank
DrugMonkey just had an interesting post about the potential influence of cocaine use trends following the 1986 death of Maryland college basketball player, Len Bias, just days after his being selected in the NBA draft by the Boston Celtics. DM's post and the ensuing discussion got me thinking tonight about a variety of issues in substance abuse, realistic assessment of risk and, ultimately, parenting. In the comments, I mentioned that Heath Ledger's recent death might be a trigger for pop culture to pay more attention to the risks of recreational use of prescription and over-the-counter…
Stepping away from silence.
This month, Sheril Kirshenbaum and Dr. Isis are spearheading a blogospheric initiative to call attention to a continuing epidemic of mass rapes in Liberia even six years after the end of its 14 year civil war, and to try to do something about it. Last month, Nicholas Kristof described the situation in the New York Times, touching on the particular case of a 7-year-old rape survivor named Jackie: [S]omehow mass rape survived the end of the war; it has been easier to get men to relinquish their guns than their sense of sexual entitlement. So the security guard at Jackie's school, a man in his…
Let my people (let themselves) go.
Blogging has been light because grading has been heavy. But Chad has a post that started me to thinking. (Danger! Danger!) And, since he has stated his desire to avoid a flamewar at this time, it seems only fair that I do that thinking over here so his space can be unscorched. The question at hand, initially posed by Scott Aaronson, is whether there might be a shortage of women in science because women are more prone to be "repelled by nerd culture" than men. What do we mean by "nerd culture" here? This is Scott's characterization of it (along with his preferred strategy of making the…
Women in science--and ramblings thereof
So, Chad posted a link to this post last week. As a woman in science myself, I have to say I don't 100% buy this argument: Most people go to work primarily in order to earn a paycheck. Workers prefer a higher salary to a lower salary. Jobs in science pay far less than jobs in the professions and business held by women of similar ability. A lot of men are irrational, romantic, stubborn, and unwilling to admit that they've made a big mistake. With Occam's Razor, we should not need to bring in the FBI to solve the mystery of why there are more men than women who have chosen to stick with the…
contempt in physics
The Angry Physicist is really irate He read Jacques' recent Musings on things Exceptionally Simple and was not amused. Can I please first note that Lisi's infamous title is a PUN! It is a joke, folks, and it is funny. See, E8... it is an exceptional Lie group, and it is simple... argh. Never mind. Now I might have let this slide, but even Chad is getting perturbed by all the negative vibes, so may I please remind people of some history. Once upon a time: there were some bold imaginative young theorists, somewhat fresh out of grad school. There was a newish theory around, that boldly proposed…
Guest Post: Choosing the Nobel Prize winners is not an exact science
Some time back, commenter HI won a guest post by predicting the Nobel laureates in Medicine. He sent me the text a little while ago, and I've finally gotten around to posting it (things have been crazy around here): Since Chad gave me the right to guest blog as a prize for correctly predicting the Nobel Prize winners, I thought it would be appropriate to write a post about the Nobel Prize. (It would have been more timely if I had written this sooner. This is why I'm not a real blogger.) It was fun to be able to predict some of the Nobel Prize winners this year and last year. It is more…
Less Than Absolute Zero
I'm sitting in a hotel in Utah at the PQE 2013 conference. As I write this, the temperature is a rather brisk 19F. (For everyone else in the world, -7.2C) That's not cold at all to some of you, but some of you didn't grow up in south Louisiana. Once a year they let us grad students out of the basement! Either way, on the Kelvin scale the weather here is still a balmy 267 degrees above absolute zero. Which is as cold as it gets, right? Right. As a result, I've seen a lot of hubbub online about a new result published in the journal Science: Negative Absolute Temperature for Motional Degrees…
Are chemists really grinches?
With well known and respected open science projects coming out of chemistry as well as cool tools like pubchem and emolecules... it seems a bit unfair of me to ask if chemists are grinches. But there has been and there continues to be a lot of study of data/information/knowledge sharing in chemistry - or, really, the lack thereof. In general, pre-prints are not passed around or self-archived, there is very little data sharing (there are counter examples in crystallography), and details are withheld from conference presentations or the conference slides are not made available (Milo used to…
"Foo!" to "Are we shortening the Universe's life by observing it?"
(I know I'm not doing this any more, but I couldn't resist.) An article in New Scientist reports on musing by two reasonable and respected cosmologists— indeed, ones whom I've met myself— that our discovery of dark energy may have shortened the life of the Universe. To which I can only say "foo". And I say "foo" on two levels. Primarily, on the sensational way in which this is described by New Scientist. But secondarily, on the interpretations of quantum mechanics that respectable cosmologists are promoting. First of all, for a bit of perspective. The actual research paper on which this…
Silence is the Enemy
A sexual violence victim recovers in Goma, Congophoto by Endre Vestvik A few weeks ago, the NYT published a horrifying account by Nicholas Kristof of the pervasive sexual violence left over from Liberia's civil war. A major survey in Liberia found that 75% of Liberian women had been raped - most gang-raped. And many of the victims are children: Of course, children are raped everywhere, but what is happening in Liberia is different. The war seems to have shattered norms and trained some men to think that when they want sex, they need simply to overpower a girl. Or at school, girls sometimes…
Best Biology Experiment/Discovery
Chad at Uncertain Principles, one of my ScienceBlogs siblings, is requesting his co-bloggers suggest the most important experiment or discovery in their field. There are a disproportionate amount of "bio-bloggers" -- though we each have our own niche -- and he's asking us to nominate "the most important experiment or observation in biology". I'm expecting that because of our diverse interests, you'll see some differences in how we interpret "important". This leads me to wonder why we have so many life-sciences types at ScienceBlogs and so few math/physics/chemistry types, but that's a…
More evidence supporting old adages
Here's more proof that there's "one born every minute" and that "nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public" (yes, I know I'm mixing quote sources): A man named Monte Bowman is selling a product called Photoblocker that is designed to be sprayed on auto license plates in order to confound cameras at intersections designed to photograph the license plates of cars running red lights. Given that these devices have proliferated like weeds across the U.S. over the last few years, allowing towns to supplement their income in addition to the usual speed traps, you…
"Savanna" does not mean "Desert, grassland, woodland, and forest"
Yesterday was a little light on posts as I was in transit for most of the day to a lecture at NYU by Kevin Hunt of Indiana University called "The inferred forest home of the earliest hominins: Firm foundation or house of cards?" The talk was much more narrow in scope than what it might sound like from the title however, and there were good points and relatively weak points made throughout the presentation. Here I present a few thoughts from notes I took during the lecture and conversations with the Rutgers professors and grad students that also attended after the lecture; When I hear the term…
Taxonomy of the Sciences
Yesterday I posted something on that great graphic of scientific literature and paradigm clustering, it reminded me of a serries of posts from last year on a taxonomy of scientists for the layman. I'll repost each entry and the author (below the fold): THE LIFE SCIENCES Biochemist: Basically biochemists play with proteins. Usually this involves fancy machines that cost a ton of money. Proteins are subjected to centrifugation, electrophoresis, fast protein liquid chromatography, gel exclusion chromatography .... Incidentally these techniques are just sophisticated ways of pushing and shoving…
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