Environment
drorzel | June 28, 2010Josh Rosenau makes an excellent and important point regarding prayer meetings and the Gulf oil spill: that the point is not so much that God will stop the oil gushing into the Gulf, but that religious groups are a key community organization point for getting people together to work on the problem. He puts this into a larger context toward the end of the post, saying things I've said myself numerous times:
Most people attend church for a lot of reasons, and many of those reasons are self-reinforcing. Someone who goes to church with no particular views on theism (pro, con, or agnostic) could…
drorzel | June 3, 2010This may be a job for the MythBusters, but I'll throw this out as a puzzle for interested blog readers. I don't know the answer to this (though it wouldn't be all that hard to determine experimentally), I just think it's sort of interesting. There's a poll at the bottom of this post, but it requires some set-up first.
So, it's coming up on summer now, and I've been doing a bunch of errand-running this week, which means a lot of getting in and out of the car in sunny parking lots. Which raises the question: If you have an air-conditioned car, is it better to leave the car windows open a crack…
drorzel | April 19, 2010What's the application? The goal of laser ignition fusion experiments is to heat and compress a target to the point where the nuclei of the atoms making up the sample fuse together to form a new, heavier nucleus, releasing energy in the process. Nuclear fusion is, of course, what powers stars, and creating fusion in the laboratory has been the holy grail (well, a holy grail, at any rate) of nuclear physics research for the last sixty-plus years.
What problem(s) is it the solution to? 1) "Can we create fusion reactions in a laboratory setting on Earth?" 2) "How can we get more helium without…
drorzel | April 15, 2010A neighbor pointed out to me yesterday that there's a big hole in our clapboard siding that was made by some sort of bird. This morning, I got a picture of the culprit:
I'm not quite certain why the animal kingdom has decided to trash my stuff this year-- insane jealousy of Emmy?-- but I would like it to stop. I will call the contractor who did our garage conversion to replace the siding, but it would be very helpful if somebody with actual knowledge of birds could tell me what these little guys are, and whether this hole-digging is a fluke behavior (which would be just my luck), or…
drorzel | March 25, 2010I did one sketchy update from Portland last Tuesday, but never wrote up my impressions of the rest of the March Meeting-- when I got back, I was buried in grading, and then trying to put together Monday's presentation. And, for reasons that will become apparent, I was unable to write anything up before I left Portland
Anyway, for those who care, here are my impressions from the rest of the meeting:
Tuesday
In the 8am session, I went to the polymer physics prize talk by Michael Rubinstein, which was a sort of career retrospective, talking about how he wandered into the disreputable field of…
drorzel | February 16, 2010Boskone this past weekend was held at the Westin Waterfront in Boston, which has these funky double showerheads that they charmingly call the "Heavenly(R) Shower" (hype aside, they are very nice showers). The picture at right is courtesy of lannalee on Twitter, as I didn't bring a camera.
Why am I telling you this? Because there was a sign glued to the wall in the shower that read:
Refresh yourself, restore our world
One of your Heavenly(R) Shower heads has been turned off in an effort to minimize water usage and protect one of our most precious natural resources.
The smarmy enviroweenieness…
drorzel | January 10, 2010There's a Kenneth Chang article in the New York Times this morning on the ever popular topic of "If the globe is warming, why is it so darn cold?" It's a good explanation of the weather phenomenon that's making the morning dog walk at Chateau Steelypips so unpleasant.
This reminded me of something I've wondered about the public perception of climate change. There was a good deal of hand-wringing on blogs over some recent polls showing depressingly low numbers of Americans believing in global warming (see this one, for example). This was mostly attributed to the successes of the right-wing…
drorzel | December 17, 2009Yesterday's reason to love quantum was the CCD sensor, which relies on the photoelectric effect to take digital pictures. Sticking with the photoelectric theme, today's first quantum-enabled technology is the photovoltaic cell, the basis for solar panels.
Photovoltaic cells convert light into electricity, essentially via the same photoelectric effect used in CCD's. A photon of light comes along, and knocks an electron out of some material (typically something silicon-based), and that electron is used to create a current that can power electrical devices. There's some tricky business involved…
drorzel | December 9, 2009I just finished shoveling six-plus inches of snow off our cars and driveway (the forecast called for something like 3-5", but we've got more than that, with no slowing in the fall). In honor of the first significant snowfall of the year, a poll:
It's snowing:(survey)
This one has ticky-boxes, which will play hell with the percentages, but I'm too tired to deal with complaints about radio buttons.
drorzel | December 2, 2009The big topic-of-the-moment is the hacked stash of emails from a major climate research group. The whole climate change discussion is one of those "no upside" topics that I try to stay out of, but I have some thoughts and comments about issues surrounding the email incident. These are largely based on reactions to yesterday's posts by Derek Lowe and Coby Beck, so if you're looking for something to read to understand what I'm talking about, those are the two.
The unifying thing in all of these is the intersection of science and politics. Most of what's described is normal scientific behavior…
drorzel | November 4, 2009It's November now, which means we're edging into winter, and my morning ritual has been expanded to include scraping the frost off the cars when I get back from walking the dog. I've had to do this half a dozen times already, and I've noticed a puzzling pattern.
Our driveway is aligned almost exactly east-west, with the cars facing east when they're pulled in at night. This means that one set of side windows faces north, and the other south. And here's the thing that puzzles me: the frost layer is significantly thicker on the south-facing side windows than on the north-facing side windows. I…
drorzel | November 3, 2009We're going to host the New York Section meeting of the American Physical Society next spring (joint with the New England Section, which will tax our resources), with the theme of the meeting being applications of nuclear physics. We've divided up the job of finding speakers for the meeting, and I'm supposed to be inviting people who can talk about nuclear energy, either fission or fusion.
This is not exactly in my wheelhouse, but I have a couple of ideas. It occurs to me, though, that I have access to a global audience which presumably includes some people who either could give a good talk…
drorzel | September 28, 2009This book is, in some ways, a complement to Unscientific America. Subtitled "Talking Substance in an Age of Style," this is a book talking about what scientists need to do to improve the communication of science to the general public. This is not likely to make as big a splash in blogdom as Unscientific America, though, both because Randy has generally been less aggressive in arguing with people on blogs, and also because while he says disparaging things about science blogs, he doesn't name names, so nobody is likely to get their feelings hurt.
Olson is a scientist-turned filmmaker, who…
drorzel | June 17, 2009Whether because I'm a blogger, or because I'm a previous recipient of their money (I suspect the latter), I recently got email from the Research Corporation announcing their new Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion program:
Scialog will focus on funding early career scientists and building research teams to undertake groundbreaking studies in solar energy conversion. This initiative will be entitled Scialog 2009: Solar Energy Conversion.
Scialog 2009 will accept proposals describing fundamental research at the molecular and nanoscale level that show high potential to impact advanced energy…
drorzel | May 27, 2009Tuesday night was the annual Sigma Xi induction banquet on campus (I'm currently the president of the local chapter, and have been scrambling to organize the whole thing in between all my other responsibilities these past few weeks). Sigma Xi, for those not familiar with it, is the scientific research honor society-- like Phi Beta Kappa for science nerds. We had thirty-odd students nominated for membership based on research they have done as undergraduates, and had a little banquet and induction ceremony to celebrate their accomplishments.
Tradition for this sort of thing calls for an after-…
drorzel | May 11, 2009A former student asks about water contamination:
My mother went and had
our water tested and discovered that we have high uranium and radon
levels. Radon is not a big deal, its a gas, and as I have read you would
need to take a shower for somewhere around 4 hours to suffer damage from
it. The Uranium is a different story. They are no government set minimums
set for Uranium, what is an appropriate amount of radiation for a year?
Also wouldn't Uranium pass through our bodies before it decayed? Also how
would I calculate how much Uranium would be dangerous, in a how many parts
per water?
I…
drorzel | April 4, 2009Over at his new digs, Chris Mooney talks about efforts to re-launch the OTA:
I’m starting to detect some buzz on this very important front, which I wrote about in detail in 2005’s The Republican War on Science and elsewhere. Basically, the story is this: In 1995 the Gingrich Republicans, looking to slash budgets–and looking askance at science in general in many areas–got rid of their scientific advisory office, which had been in existence since 1972 and had become world renowned not only for accurate studies, but for far-ranging analyses that forecast future science and technology problems…
drorzel | March 26, 2009As a scientist with a blog, I am apparently contractually obligated to link to the New York Times Magazine profile of Freeman Dyson. If I don't, they'll take away my privileges as a scientist. (Of course, since those consist mostly of the right to review grant applications for the NSF, maybe it'd be worth the risk...)
I don't mind linking to it, though, because it is a nice piece of work. The focus is mostly on Dyson's (relatively) recent climate skepticism, because that's a high-profile offbeat opinion to have these days, but it gives a nice sketch of his background and accomplishments.
One…
drorzel | March 12, 2009There's a really good article from Martin Rees in the latest issue of Seed, on the scientific challenges that won't be affected by the LHC:
The LHC hasn't yet provided its first results, the much-anticipated answers to questions we've been asking for so long. But they should surely come in 2009, bringing us closer to understanding the bedrock nature of particles, space, and timeâ--âtoward a unified theory of the basic forces. This would push forward a program that started with Newton (who showed that the force that made the apple fall was same one holding the planets in orbit), and continued…
drorzel | March 4, 2009A couple of weeks ago, I moderated a global warming panel at Boskone. The panel was recorded by Richard Amirault, who has now posted the video on his Boston fandom website (Episode 41, if it moves off the front page before you click that link). I haven't watched the video, but I listened to the audio while grading papers, and it's pretty good.
So, if you're kicking yourself for not getting to that panel, here's your chance to see what you missed.