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mspringer | June 1, 2009This is the conclusion of the Ritz variation discussion we've been doing. Tomorrow we'll get back to less arcane and more entertaining physics, I promise! We're capping things off today by demonstrating the actual technique in detail for an example where we already know the answer. What we're doing is finding the ground state of the 1-d square well.
Before we even start, we can look up the actual answer and use it to give us an idea of how accurate our Ritz approximation ends up being. The ground state energy of a particle in a 1-d box is:
Now that we know what the answer is, we can go…
jwilbanks | June 1, 2009Paul Miller and I recorded a chat last week that's now online as a podcast from Cloud of Data.
Paul is a smart guy and it was a fun interview. We first met when he was working with Talis, which is a very progressive company in the UK (they sponsored some of the development of the PDDL and currently host data in the public domain for free in the Talis Connected Commons) but he's now out freelancing. Check out the podcast and let me know your comments.
gregladen | June 1, 2009.. this is being reported by the BBC. The plane has 226 people flying out of Rio de Janeiro to france. An automatic mesage was received from the plan regarding a "short circuit" following turbulence, suggesting that the aircraft was struck by lightning.
Since this is a disappearance of an aircraft over the ocean, it is reminiscent of the Comet maneno, which you may know about.
Regarding the analysis of a Comet air liner near Elba in the 1950s ...
The Attorney General, Sir Lionel Heald QC, told the first day of the inquiry that initial suspicions of sabotage were unfounded.
He said the…
cwilcox | May 31, 2009All right all 300 or so listeners of mine (wow, that sounds like a lot). The voting link is up for the 3 Quark's Daily Best Science Blog Post. So go and vote for your favorite science blog post(s) - though, if you need suggestions, there are four down in the Os that I think are phenominal. The top 21 posts in terms of voting by June 8th get judged by the elite panel to determine the winner, so for me to have a chance at that year's supply of Ramen I'll have to hope to make it into the top 21!
There are some others that I could be OK (I guess) with you voting for. There are 3 by Southern Fried…
gregladen | May 31, 2009A true hero for women's rights and lives was murdered today. Dr. George Tiller, who endured countless threats, an assassination attempt, bombings and assaults on his clinic, and many legal challenges by anti-abortion extremists was murdered in his church by such an extremist today.
I am greatly saddened by his death and by the loss of a friend to me and countless women, but I am also outraged that this could have happened again. I and the Feminist Majority Foundation had the privilege of knowing and working with Dr. Tiller over the last two decades. He was a courageous, unassuming, and soft…
gregladen | May 31, 2009George Tiller was a physician who performed late term abortions. Apparently, this bothered someone enough that he was gunned down earlier today in church.
A 51 year old white male has been apprehended in connection with this murder.
There are some details here.
This is what the right wing does when it does not get its way.
UPDATE: I like PZ's suggestion of heading over to Feministe's site to check out the pro-choice charities.
UPDATE: Suspect drove a car with this on the back of it.
UPDATE: Suspect may have had "Operation Rescue" ties. That does not surpize me.
gregladen | May 31, 2009... is here.
... a monthly compilation of posts that are just good stuff. .. your best writing--writing being the key word here.
Enjoy.
gregladen | May 31, 2009repost
Cute baby lions. When they grow up, they will want to eat you. I'll never forget the first wild lion I ever saw. It was a pitch black night, on the savanna in the Western Rift Valley. I had climbed on top of the hood of the Land Rover, engine off, but headlights on. My plan was to search the horizon for lights indicating the presence of the research camp I was trying to find. Once I was on the hood, I was about to tell my colleague, still in the vehicle, to cut the headlights so I could see better. That's when she walked into view.
She was a fully adult lioness. Eventually…
gregladen | May 31, 2009Quo Computer plans to open its first retail location, selling Mac clones, on June 1. ..."It's exciting. We are trying to stay as close to Apple as we can with our products," Rashantha De Silva, Quo founder, told CNET News. "We are trying to mimic things as much as we can. I'm hoping that Apple sees the value in what we are doing."
Read the details here.
gregladen | May 31, 2009Sometime this fall or early winter, they are going to turn the Large Hadron Collider back on. It may run for several minutes or hours and then break down again. In fact, expect that. This is a huge machine the like of which have never before been seen. Why would we expect it to work without several startups?
Absurdly, the LHC press office and others have been conversing about what is going to happen next without much (or any) mention of the likelihood of a repeat performance of last year's breakdown (though presumably with a different technological problem). When it comes to physics, De…
pharyngula | May 31, 2009Feministe has an excellent list of pro-choice charities. Want to do something to infuriate the women-hating anti-choicers and do something positive in honor of Tiller's work? Donate!
pharyngula | May 31, 2009While we're all feeling a bit shocked at the horrible event in Kansas, we can all turn to the Reagan legacy. Mike Reagan is giving away free copies of a book, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation, written by (or more likely, ghost-written for) his father, Ronald Reagan. The title is wonderfully ironic, since these people clearly don't have much of a conscience. Everyone order a copy, they're free; suck the money away from these enablers of killers, and put another copy of their trash into the trash.
These are the people who fuel the kind of self-righteous ignorance that encourages people…
gregladen | May 31, 2009May 31 - June 3, 2009
What's this all about?
Every species has a geographic distribution, and these are changing rapidly due to climate change and other factors. In fact, the environment is changing faster than professional scientists can monitor it, and the only way to understand this response is to recruit amateurs to make and report observations. "Citizen science" has a long history in biology, but, in many ways, it is now crucial to both science and conservation.
We are trying to demonstrate the concept of a "global human sensor net" as part of the eBiosphere informatics challenge.…
grrlscientist | May 31, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) blog carnival celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted to the public (instead of to other scientists) that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days. To send your submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (sometimes that widget doesn't upload when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include…
gregladen | May 31, 2009There is a very interesting discussion going on at Sandwalk regarding adaptationism vs. ... whatever that other thing is that Larry believes in.
But seriously, it is a very interesting discussion that is shaping up as a debate between John Hawks, who wrote a post on this topic recently, and Larry.
gregladen | May 30, 2009One of the authors of Ice Ages: Solving the Mystery (John) himself, Shackleton himself, and Emiliani himself were ushered into the building past the graduate students, the guards, and the members of the public who wandered the halls of the museum blissfully unaware that the powerhouses of paleoclimate research were brushing past them. They were Glynn Isaac's guests (and friends and colleagues) and were meeting with Glynn in preparation for an impromptu public conference that would be held the next day in the Geology Lecture Hall downstairs. These were the people who had put the climatic…
grrlscientist | May 30, 2009
Image: wemidji (Jacques Marcoux).
Nam et ipsa scientia potestas est (And thus knowledge itself is power)
-- Sir Francis Bacon.
The Scientia Pro Publica (Science for the People) blog carnival celebrates the best science, nature and medical writing targeted to the public (instead of to other scientists) that has been published in the blogosphere within the past 60 days. To send your submissions to Scientia Pro Publica, either use this automated submission form or use the cute little widget on the right (sometimes that widget doesn't upload when the mother site is sick). Be sure to include…
pharyngula | May 30, 2009New Hampshire is working on legalizing gay marriage, and has a bill pending…unfortunately, it is being compromised.
The new version, which is expected to come up for a vote Wednesday, adds a sentence specifying that all religious organizations, associations or societies have exclusive control over their religious doctrines, policies, teachings and beliefs on marriage. It also clarifies that church-related organizations that serve charitable or educational purposes are exempt from having to provide insurance and other benefits to same sex spouses of employees.
Lovely. The first part is fair…
mikethemadbiologist | May 30, 2009This is truly remarkable:
Hopefully, Jessica doesn't try to mark the house....