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Freakishly good rant involving monkey urine

Posted on March 10, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

I won’t even post a summary. Just read Evil Monkey’s inspired rant over at NEUROTOPIA.

[tags]science, graduate school[/tags]

Posted in Fun, Science | Leave a comment

Allegra Goodman’s Intuition

Posted on March 9, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

I’ve known Allegra Goodman since she and her husband and I were all thrust into the same rainy and damp nine months in Churchill College, Cambridge. If I’d trust anyone to observe and write about life among scientists correctly, it would be Allegra. Scientists aren’t her usual subject matter, but she’s got such a great ear for how we really speak and what we really worry about, that I know she’s got it right.

I’m only a few pages in to Intuition so far, but I’ve put aside the mess of Dan Simmons’ Olympos until I finish with Allegra’s book.

Go buy it. She’s trying to tell our story.

Over at “Living the Scientific Life“, Hedwig the Owl has a much more comprehensive review but comes to the same conclusion.

[tags]books, science, fiction[/tags]

Posted in Science | 1 Comment

Best comic ever

Posted on March 1, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

Today’s Non Sequitir hits the nail on the head.

Posted in Fun, Policy, Science | 1 Comment

The Future of Higher Education

Posted on February 27, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

A number of people (including T. Daniel Crawford) have pointed me at an article by William Stuntz in The New Republic called What Summers’s fall says about the future of higher education.

Stuntz makes some interesting points, although this statement:

Teaching loads of senior professors have declined; probably teaching quality has declined with it.

seems at odds with the experience of many undergraduates…

I will give him this: there is definitely a tension between the dual missions of major research universities. The most interesting institutions are the ones that are trying to reconcile those tensions (i.e. by putting undergrads directly into research settings from an early stage, and by recognizing and rewarding good teaching by faculty). Stuntz’s article tells me that Harvard isn’t reconciling those tensions particularly well compared to some of the second-tier institutions.

The top tier places have never offered the best experience for the “formal” side of higher education (classroom experience, access to faculty, etc.) What the big bucks spent at the top tier will buy parents and students is a highly educated and well-connected peer group. This aspect of the “value calculus” of higher education in America is often overlooked (and Stuntz is overlooking it, I think).

Most of Stuntz’s article centers on the forces that brought down Larry Summers presidency of Harvard. He seems to be blaming over-specialized faculty who have forgotten that the core mission of the academy is to educate, train and enlighten the next generation. And I’ll agree that academic faculties can be extremely resistant to change. Stuntz is painting with an awfully broad brush, however. There are institutions that are trying to resolve the research-teaching tension in ways that benefit both the students and the faculty. And there are certainly academics who are deeply concerned about the direction of science and mathematics education in the US and about our eventual decline as a scientific and engineering superpower.

Anyway, the article is certainly worth a read.

Posted in Policy, Science | 3 Comments

IMTEK Mathematica Supplement

Posted on February 26, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

We have a new software link today to the IMTEK Mathematica Supplement, a set of Open Source Mathematica Add-Ons to do things like Electrical Circuits, Finite Element Methods, Quantum Mechanics, Solid Modelling, Game Theory, and all sorts of other nifty things. Check it out!

Posted in Software | Leave a comment

IMTEK Mathematica Supplement (IMS)

Posted on February 26, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

The IMS is an open source Mathamtica Add-On providing more than 650 functions to Mathamtica: a nD fintie element environment, a circtuit simulator, model orde reduction, unstructured plotting and visualization. Many tutorials for simulation, Quamtum Mechanics and interfaces to VTK, HDL, Ansys, Tetgen, Triangle and more
Find IMTEK Mathematica Supplement (IMS) at: http://portal.uni-freiburg.de/imteksimulation/downloads/ims

Posted in Engineering | Leave a comment

Reasonably good NYT article on ice

Posted on February 21, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

The New York times has a reasonably good article today on the mystery of ice skating, which is explained incorrectly in many (if not most) high school chemistry and physics textbooks. The canonical explanation is that pressure depresses the freezing point of the ice, and that the skaters are really skating along on a liquid film. Great story, but it is almost certainly incorrect. Pressure-depression of the freezing point can’t explain skating on extremely cold days, and the pressures that can be generated by a skater are not particularly high.

Another possible explanation for skating is that the skates use friction to create a liquid-like layer on top of the ice. However, this hypothesis can’t explain why ice is slippery even when a person is standing still.

The article cites another explanation for skating; ice has a thin liquid-like film at the vapor interface all of the time. This explanation was first put forward by Michael Faraday. This explanation is supported by the experiments by the Somorjai group at Berkeley, but the Salmeron group’s AFM experiments (which show a high degree of friction) appear to contradict this.

One hypothesis the article doesn’t cover is the role of entrapped gas molecules between the skate and the ice surface. I’ve seen simple friction models in the physics literature that show how a few entrapped gas molecules can act like “ball bearings” and can prevent two solid surfaces from sticking to each other as one slides over the other.

The article concludes with a summary of some of the other crystalline phases of ice (although they missed the most important one….)

[tags]ice, skating, friction[/tags]

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What is the Value of a Columnist, wallowing in ignorance?

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

Oy. Here we have Richard Cohen’s most idiotic column: “What Is the Value of Algebra?” in which he argues that basic mathematics is not nearly as important as, say, more classes in English. I’m an advocate of more education of all varieties, but basic algebra and geometry are fundamental skills in thinking quantitatively about the world. If Cohen can’t see that, then he’s more out of touch with the demands of the modern economy than I expected.

PZ Meyers, as usual, has the perfect response:

In Richard Cohen we have a 21st century man insisting that an 18th century education is too much for our poor students.

Posted in Policy | 1 Comment

VMD

Posted on February 13, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

Useful for viewing PDB files, etc. Relatively powerful configuration for graphical representation of molecule.
Find VMD at: http://www.ks.uiuc.edu/Research/vmd/

Posted in Molecule Viewers and Editors | Leave a comment

Pandora & The Music Genome Project

Posted on February 10, 2006 by Dan Gezelter

This isn’t directly related to Science or Software (the topics that usually occupy my writing here at OpenScience), but Pandora.com is changing how I listen to music. The Pandora site claims to be powered by something called The Music Genome Project. I can’t tell exactly how the MGP operates, but it looks like they have some pretty cool software that scans through music files looking for things like tempo, use of major chords, frequency ranges of vocals, mix of instrumentation. Once a song or artist has been “genotyped”, Pandora can use it to suggest (with a shockingly high degree of accuracy) other songs you might like.

The hit rate for my first Pandora “radio station” (featuring odd pop-punk bands like Sahara Hotnights, The Decemberists, and Hot Hot Heat) has been nearly perfect. After a few minutes of setup, I’m still listening an hour later.

I’d love to know more details on how the Music Genome Project actually works. I remember hearing about it on NPR a few months ago, but couldn’t tell from that report what was going on behind the scenes.

[tags]music, genomics, radio[/tags]

Posted in Fun | 1 Comment

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