science

Literalists, progresives, and Lost A
Post Date:01/26/2010 17:30:32
thinkingreed.wordpress.com

Science Art: The U.S.S. Los Angeles moored on the U.S.S. Pakota, 1924 Click to embiggen. This is the US Navy’s airship Los Angeles, the most successful of America’s rigid-body airships, engaging in a maneuver that proved dirigibles like these could be fueled without landing. It was also designed (sort of) for use as an airborne aircraft carrier. Planes, you see, are awfully vulnerable on the ground, until they actually get up and start flying around. If you can make it so they take off in mid-air, then you don’t have to worry about someone else flying over and dropping bombs on them. I say “sort of” designed for this because this was a zeppelin, made by the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin engineers for the Allies as part of a reparations deal after World War I – an agreement that stipulated their creations would only be used for civilian purposes. Britain, you see, had too many memories of their airstrips (and everything else) being bombed by German airships like these. The Germans operated this ship with hydrogen, but the
Post Date:01/16/2010 23:33:31
guildofscientifictroubadours.com

?Why Bernanke?s Defense of Super Low Interest Rates Does Not Hold Up? By Richard Alford, a former economist at the New York Fed. Since then, he has worked in the financial industry as a trading floor economist and strategist on both the sell side and the buy side. A week ago, in Atlanta, Bernanke responded to his critics, including John Taylor of Taylor Rule fame (the Taylor Rule is a benchmark widely used by central banks in setting their “policy” interest rates). Bernanke asserted that monetary/interest policy has been appropriate-and was not? too low for too long? from 2001-2006. Taylor responded in a WSJ Op-Ed piece on January 11th reasserting his position that interest rates were ?too low for too long?. A very public debate has been joined. Taylor?s view is based on his chosen variant of the Taylor Rule, while Bernanke cites his own chosen variant of the Taylor rule. This post establishes that interest rates were ?too low for too long? (from 1996-2006) while dispensing with the Taylor Rule and its sensitivity to choices of inputs an
Post Date:01/13/2010 23:07:54
www.nakedcapitalism.com

USANA In 2005 Usana was ranked one of the 100 best small companies by BusinessWeek.2 Vote(s)
Post Date:01/13/2010 20:48:07
edutagger.com

the pursuit of intelligence in computer science Since the dawn of high tech electronics and robotics, we’ve heard an awful lot about artificial intelligence and countless tales about how it may just decide to enslave us all one of these days, or fuse with humanity into an unrecognizable homunculus of men, women, children and machines as in the end of Isaac Asimov’s classic short story The Last Question, which is probably my favorite science fiction tale for it’s amazing scope and it’s bizarre climax. But when we actually drill down to the actual requirements for making machines endowed with the kind of computing abilities we’d call intelligence, we’ll find that the definition of what actually constitutes an objective pattern of cognition we will recognize as intelligent is extremely vague and constantly being rewritten. An easy way to try and establish whether a computer program is intelligent or not would be to give it one of the many IQ tests we constantly use on ourselves. Surely if it can sco
Post Date:01/13/2010 16:10:14
worldofweirdthings.com

The science of a seismic storm Damian Dovarganes / AP Morgan Page, a seismologist at the California Institute of Technology, shows a map of Haiti's earthquake epicenter and population density at Caltech's Seismological Laboratory. Click on the image to see the map. Several factors came together to make Haiti's earthquake the most devastating seismic shock to hit the country in two centuries - ranging from sheer magnitude to sheer poverty. In purely scientific terms, the best comparison was the Loma Prieta earthquake that shook the Bay Area during the 1989 World Series. But the tragedy in Haiti isn't purely scientific....(read more)
Post Date:01/13/2010 15:45:00
cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com

We now know why galaxies have so many shapes: Collisions The evolution of galaxies has taken a diverse road over 13.7 billion years or so. Their shapes were classified by U.S. astronomer Edwin Hubble in the 1930s. Now, in the...
Post Date:01/13/2010 10:15:46
www.itwire.com

Winning more online poker hands causes loss of more money Although it sounds crazy, a Cornell University study found that the more hands a poker player wins while playing online Texas Hold'em, the more money the player loses in the...
Post Date:01/13/2010 07:34:39
www.itwire.com

BBC: The Haiti earthquake A salute to BBC’s Jonathan Amos for moving fast on news of the terrible quake near Port Au Prince in Haiti. He seamlessly integrated sensitivity to the damage and casualty toll with technical information on building standards and the geological structures that spawned the temblor. Also blended nicely at the on line site are good-looking graphics attributed to the U.S. Geological Survey as their info source. Rather than leave it to a brief link in Grist at the bottom of this post, it is worth highlighting USGS’s fast production of a podcast and interview with one of its lead scientists. The researcher rather vividly describes how two tectonic plates have caught and are “shearing…crushing…grinding” the island of Hispaniola, whose western end is Haiti, between them, popping off inevitable earthquakes. He provides concise, clear detail on the specific faults, their mechanics, and the shallowness of the rupture. Other stories: AAAS ScienceNow: Richar
Post Date:01/13/2010 06:09:08
ksjtracker.mit.edu

"The Black Cloud" - Could Life Exist in Clouds of Interstellar Dust? [del.icio.us] Physicists have discovered over the past few years intriguing evidence of life-like double-helix structures formed from inorganic substances in space which raises the question of whether extraterrestrial life could be composed of corkscrew-shaped formations of interstellar dust. The findings hint at the possibility that life beyond Earth may not necessarily use carbon-based molecules as its building blocks and they may also point to a possible new explanation for the origin of life on Earth.
Post Date:01/13/2010 02:24:59
www.blahblahtech.com

Monsanto GM Corn Linked to Organ Damage in Animals One of my friends is a biomedical engineer who gave up doing science because it involved too much drawing of lines through scatter diagrams to claim the existence of relationships in order to keep the grant money coming in. She got a law degree, and worked for the National Institutes of Health, Big Pharma, a buyout firm, and served as general counsel of a public company before joining a firm with a well regarded FDA practice. She is also the antithesis of a health food neurotic. She believes red wine and cheese are major food groups, likes chips, eats candy now and again. But if the subject of genetically modified food comes up, she will sputter for a minute or two and and bite her tongue. “That stuff should be banned. They are conducing a massive experiment on the public with no consent and no controls.” She argues that the research on the safety of GMOs are far too short in duration to conclude that they are safe. Moreover, she went to some lengths to try to avoid GMOs,
Post Date:01/12/2010 23:44:59
www.nakedcapitalism.com

Algebra Project at a Local School According to California's math standards, Algebra 1 is generally taken in 8th grade. So what is Robert Moses' Algebra Project doing being taught at nearby average-performing elementary school?Beats me. But let's sample some choice quotes from California Educator:Recognizing that their students needed more support in math, the Allison teachers sought out and developed the Algebra Project at their school site - initially as an after-school program, and then as part of their curriculum. The teachers not only implemented the program, they've worked to make sure it is aligned with state standards.So they're teaching "algebra" to elementary students who need extra support in math? That pegs out my cynicism meter.The Algebra Project was founded in 1982 by Harlem-born and Harvard-educated civil rights leader Dr. Robert P. Moses, who once said, "Becoming literate in mathematics is a life-and-death issue for the black community. If we don't get it, we're headed for a new form of serfdom."No a
Post Date:01/12/2010 20:48:00
rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com

Robert Gibbs Explains Climate Change No matter what the weather is, it is evidence for Mann-made climate change. (HT: Hot Air Pundit, The Pirate's Cove, JW.)
Post Date:01/12/2010 10:10:00
www.mwilliams.info

Is The Latest Unusual Cold Outbreak a Sign of Things to Come? The UK's Daily Mail reported Sunday that certain climate scientists say that the bitter winter affecting much of the Northern Hemisphere this season is only the start of a global trend towards cooler weather that could last 20-30 years. I suggest you read the whole article to understand what they are talking about. Anyway, one of those scientists that was mentioned in the Daily Mail article is Professor Mojib Latif, a leading member of the IPCC and a lead researcher at the Leibniz Institute at Germany's Kiel University. ----------- According to the Daily Mail......... The scientists' predictions also undermine the standard climate computer models, which assert that the warming of the Earth since 1900 has been driven solely by man-made greenhouse gas emissions and will continue as long as carbon dioxide levels rise. They say that their research shows that much of the warming was caused by oceanic cycles when they were in a 'warm mode' as opposed to the present 'cold mode' But, i
Post Date:01/12/2010 07:23:19
global-warming.accuweather.com

New Record In Pi Eating Contest Stories like this interest me not because of how many digits we can get to, but because of the creativity and work required to get those digits:PARIS (AFP) ? A French software engineer said on Friday he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that has fascinated mathematicians for millennia.Fabrice Bellard told AFP he used an inexpensive desktop computer -- and not a supercomputer used in past records -- to calculate Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion decimal places.That is around 123 billion digits more than the previous record set last August by Japanese professor Daisuke Takahashi, he said.Takahashi, using a T2K Open Supercomputer, took 29 hours to crunch Pi to 2.577 billion digits.Bellard took 131 days, comprising 103 for the computation in binary digits, 13 days for verification, 12 days to convert the binary digits to a base of 10 and three final days to check the conversion..."It is a completely standard PC. The only unusual thing is that it has five 1.5-teraoctet ha
Post Date:01/10/2010 10:54:00
rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com

Math In Politics "I'm never going to need math. I'm going into politics."Boo-yah! If you don't know enough math you can't understand the references in this article:Here's the secret to this: Politics runs in cycles. Like a sine wave - about half the time the wave is above the mid-point line; about half the time it is below the line...We are inside of 300 days until the November elections. The Democratic sine wave is on the way down and without doing much of anything, because it is a zero sum game, Republicans are on the way up. Not a glowing recommendation for the GOP, and deservedly so, but right now the Republicans are least worst. Here's to a good November!
Post Date:01/08/2010 17:52:00
rightontheleftcoast.blogspot.com

Quotables Minn. math teacher to Obama: "Don't explain..."As part of her recognition, Barbara Stoflet met with Obama for three minutes, time they took to talk about the importance of math and science for girls, she said. Obama asked her how best to explain math problems to his daughters, and her response was: "Don?t explain it to them. Let them explain it to you." (Politico44)On the backs of teachers?A lot of charter schools are doing their work on the backs of teachers willing to work their hearts out,? says the University of Chicago?s Timothy Knowles, whose Urban Education Institute manages a handful of charter schools. ?Class sizes are big, numbers of classes taught are often excessive, basic working conditions are poor, salaries are low, and benefits are worse than those in the traditional public system.? (Russo article in Harvard Education Letter)Rockford teacher diversity?The Caucasian population in the district is the minority,? [Executive Director of Schools Earl] Hernandez said. ?We?re
Post Date:01/08/2010 08:24:00
michaelklonsky.blogspot.com

Obama's $250 million for math/science Looking back, it seems that whenever we are at war, school funding shifts from humanities to math/science and from small to large schools. This shift has less to do with pedagogy than it does with production.
Post Date:01/08/2010 08:11:00
michaelklonsky.blogspot.com

Holograms Going along with the fractals, comes this link from a friend:Our World May Be a Giant HologramIsn't it a fascinating world!
Post Date:01/07/2010 05:51:00
rainydaythought.blogspot.com

GOVERNMENT APPOINTED EXPERTS This is a comment I put on John Redwood's blog. He had been talking about the lack of respect for experts & I broadly agreed but made some specific points:The problem is how expert are ?experts?. As a rather silly example BBC news last night did a feature on paganism which stated with the line ?experts say there are 100,000 pagans in Britain? which may be a true & conceivably even meaningful figure but how is somebody qualified to be an expert on thje figure.The problem with MPs not being respected is the assumption that they are experts on government. The bankers appear to less deserving of the title than thought. We recently saw a drugs advisor fired, not because his advice wasn?t factual but because it disagreed with the minister?s & possibly popular opinion. This is the root of the trouble. In many disciplines government chooses ?experts? & often does so for advice which reflects their wishes rather than genuine expertise.The CRU presents a particularly concerning development wher
Post Date:12/24/2009 05:40:00
a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com