The Loh-Down on Science

Posted on December 5, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

I’ve been a fan of Sandra Tsing Loh’s NPR & Marketplace commentaries for years. I had no idea she had training as a physicist. And now, via Cosmic Variance, I find out she’s got a new show called The Loh-Down on Science. There are planned podcasts of the show. This is great news!

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Yacas

Posted on December 5, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

YACAS is an easy to use, general purpose Computer Algebra System, a program for symbolic manipulation of mathematical expressions. It uses its own programming language designed for symbolic as well as arbitrary-precision numerical computations. The system has a library of scripts that implement many of the symbolic algebra operations; new algorithms can be easily added to the library.
Find Yacas at: http://yacas.sf.net/

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K3DSurf

Posted on December 1, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

We have a new software entry today for K3DSurf in our Mathematics section. K3DSurf is a program for visualizing and manipulating multidimensional surfaces by using Mathematical equations. It’s also a “modeler” for POV-Ray in the area of parametric surfaces. It features 3D, 4D, 5D, and 6D HyperObjects visualization, full support for all functions (like the C language), support for mouse events in the drawing area, animation and morph effects, Povscript and mesh file generation, and support for VRML2 and OBJ files.

Check it out!

[tags]mathematics, visualization, software[/tags]

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Let data speak to data

Posted on December 1, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

There’s a wonderful editorial in Nature titled Let data speak to data, which starts the conversation on more open methods of communicating results including:

Go read it!

[tags]open access, science[/tags]

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Best. I. D. Post. Ever.

Posted on November 27, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

Adam Felber delivers a great version of the incompetent design argument here. Just an excerpt from the masterwork:

GOD: THOU SHALT TELL ME YOUR GRIPES!

[Thunderclap.]

STAN: Okay, okay. Uh…

GOD: Go on.

STAN: Okay. Putting the reproductive stuff so close to the waste systems is going to cause a lot of infections, see? And look at this thing, this “appendix’ – you just left that in there from your horses and whatnot and it’s not even going to do anything except occasionally explode and kill its owner, right? And I hate to harp on the upright thing, but couldn’t you have reimagined these “feet” to be a little more durable, or do you actually want their arches to collapse and the whole thing to hurt? And this whole genetic system opens the door for spontaneous and/or hereditary mutations that can cause devastating diseases and defects that can be passed down and physically or mentally cripple some of their offspring right outa the gate.

[Pause.]

STAN: I guess what I’m saying is that with you being all-powerful and all-knowing, why would you use 98% of your chimp design and cut corners on your most important creation?

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The Royal Society lays a big one

Posted on November 26, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

What are they thinking? The Royal Society wants to keep science off the web because it might hurt the society journals in some disciplines. Although I might have some sympathy for the plight of society journals, the journals that will die off first due to public access are the vastly overpriced for-profit journals, while the society journals (which are usually priced more reasonably) will do quite well. I’ve said before that peer review and editing is worth the money we pay for society journals; public access won’t alter this.

Didn’t they read the DC principles stuff before they made this statement? It seems like a reasonable middle ground between the for-profit journals and the science-wants-to-be-free ideologues.

[tags]open access, science[/tags]

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http://k3dsurf.sourceforge.net/

Posted on November 25, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

K3DSurf is a program for visualizing and manipulating multidimensional surfaces by using Mathematical equations. It’s also a "modeler" for POV-Ray in the area of parametric surfaces. It features 3D, 4D, 5D, and 6D HyperObjects visualization, full support for all functions (like the C language), support for mouse events in the drawing area, animation and morph effects, Povscript and mesh file generation, and support for VRML2 and OBJ files. More than 100 examples are provided.
Find http://k3dsurf.sourceforge.net/ at: http://k3dsurf.sourceforge.net/

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The Tryptophan Myth

Posted on November 24, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

tryptophan to serotonin Happy Thanksgiving! I thought I’d post and give everyone some ammunition for the inevitable arguments with distant relatives over the cause of post-turkey sleepiness:

  • Myth: Eating turkey makes you sleepy – discusses the sleep-inducing property of purified tryptophan, but points out that Turkey isn’t particularly rich in this amino acid.
  • Is there something in turkey that makes you sleepy? – discusses the pathway from tryptophan to niacin and then to serotonin, and points out the obvious cause of post-Thanksgiving drowsiness: heavy carbohydrate consumption and alcohol.
  • The Big Sleep – points out that milk, beans, and beef are richer in tryptophan than is Turkey, but also mentions the FDA’s ban on L-tryptophan supplements due to an outbreak of eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome in 1989.
  • Thanksgiving, Turkey, and Tryptophan – the ACS weighs in with the actual metabolic pathway between tryptophan and serotonin

Have a great feast but don’t blame the turkey for your sleepiness.

[tags]turkey, tryptophan, urban legends[/tags]

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Incompetent Design

Posted on November 23, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

Seed magazine is going to be very very very good. Here’s their article on Incompetent Design Theory, and their great Force Diagram of Bill Frist.

Found via Not Even Wrong

[tags]magazines, science[/tags]

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Intelligent Evolution

Posted on November 23, 2005 by Dan Gezelter

Edward O. Wilson has a wonderful article titled Intelligent Evolution in the November-December 2005 issue of Harvard Magazine. It is largely an introduction to a new four-volume set of Darwin’s writings. In it, we find this beautiful quote from On the Origin of Species

There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

And Wilson’s own quote on the interaction between science and religion:

So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faith-based religion.

Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. In the early part of this century, the toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.

[tags]evolution, religion[/tags]

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