Science
drorzel | July 30, 2010The New York Times today has a story with the provocative title Getting Into Med School Without Hard Sciences, about a program at Mount Sinai that allows students to go to med school without taking the three things most dreaded by pre-meds: physics, organic chemistry, and the MCAT:
[I]t came as a total shock to Elizabeth Adler when she discovered, through a singer in her favorite a cappella group at Brown University, that one of the nation's top medical schools admits a small number of students every year who have skipped all three requirements.
Until then, despite being the daughter of a…
oracknows | July 29, 2010I've been a staunch defender of the ethical use of animals in research over the years. However, one area of animal research that I've always thought should be held to the highest standard is primate research. If there's one area of animal research that requires the most justification, it's research using primates as animal models. And, no, I'm not talking about Laura Hewitson's and Andy Wakefield's unethical abuse of primates.
Sometimes, however, there is the ethical use of primates. For example, the use of primates was instrumental in justifying a clinical trial of whether a microbicidal gel…
drorzel | July 29, 2010I was initially puzzled by the headline "Research-Assignment Handouts Give Students Meager Guidance, Survey Finds," and the opening sentences didn't help much:
Most research-assignment handouts given to undergraduates fail to guide the students toward a comprehensive strategy for completing the work, according to two researchers at the University of Washington who are studying how students conduct research and find information.
My initial reaction was "If I could give them a comprehensive strategy for completing the work, it wouldn't be research." Then I noticed the last three words, and…
drorzel | July 29, 2010I had intended to write up a recent paper for ResearchBlogging today, but I cleverly forgot to bring either the hard copy of the PDF home last night, which wrecked that plan. And I've got real lab work to do today, so it's not happening at work.
This seems like a good opportunity, though, to ask if there are things I ought to be explaining here that haven't occurred to me for one reason or another. So, as the post title says:
What topics in physics or related areas would you like me to write about here? This could be a recent paper, something from a recent news story ("I heard these guys in…
drorzel | July 29, 2010I'm going to be spending a good chunk of the rest of my day scrounging up adapters to connect two different classes of plumbing fittings. In honor of that, here's a poll question based on something that one research group used to do:
Sending a new graduate student to the lab down the hall to ask for a BNC to Swagelok adapter is:online surveys
Amusingly, I have seen something that easily could have been turned into a Swagelok to BNC adapter (in fact, I might still have one in my lab), that served a serious purpose.
(BNC is a type of electrical connection, Swagelok is a type of plumbing…
oracknows | July 29, 2010Funny how everything old is new again, isn't it?
Yes, if there's one thing I've learned over nearly six years of blogging, it's that, sooner or later, everything is recycled, and I do mean everything. At least, that was the thought going through my mind when I came across PZ's discussion of a clueless wonder who appears to be advocating a science section in that cesspit of anti-vaccine quackery and quantum woo, The Huffington Post, whose proclivities for pseudoscience have led its activities to be characterized as a war on medical science. It's actually more than just a war on medical science…
drorzel | July 28, 2010Back at the start of the summer, I asked a question about automotive thermodynamics: On a hot day, is it better to open your car windows a crack when making a short stop, or leave them closed? For a long term-- say, leaving your car parked outside all day-- I hope everyone will agree that leaving the windows slightly open is the better call, but the answer isn't as clear for a short stop. There might well be some time during which the open-window car heats up faster as warm air from outside gets in, while the closed-window car holds in the air-conditioned goodness longer.
It occurred to me…
drorzel | July 28, 2010On Twitter, I saw Graham Farmelo link to this Physics World blog post about Ed Witten's Newton lecture, describing it as "Edward Witten's clearest-ever overview of string theory for laypeople (i.e. most others)." Witten's a name to conjure with, so I thought "That might be worth a look."
So I went to the blog post, which has video embeds for the two halves of the talk (~30 min each), each with a single frame frozen as an example. Both representative frames show slides that are nothing but words-- one full paragraph each, starting in the very upper left of the screen, and ending at the bottom…
drorzel | July 27, 2010We have a summer student seminar series in the science and engineering departments here, running two days a week at lunchtime with three students each day giving 15 minute presentations on their summer research projects to other students and faculty.
The student talks are split almost 50/50 overall on whether to provide an outline at the start of the talk or not. About half of the students put up a slide listing the component parts of their talk ("First, I'll give some motivation for the experiment, then I'll talk about the apparatus, then..."), and about half jump right into the talk,…
pharyngula | July 27, 2010Well, this was a weird article in Nature that made me think, at least: A world without mosquitoes. I was surprised to learn that there are actually ecologists/entomologists who believe the world would be a better place if we could simply exterminate entire genera of winged pests — that mosquitoes fill a readily replaceable niche, that they make minimal positive contributions to ecosystems, and we'd gain immeasurably from removing animals responsible for so much human suffering. The one thing they also agree on, though, is that there is no way to do it.
And so, while humans inadvertently drive…
drorzel | July 27, 2010When one of the most recent issues of Physical Review Letters hit my inbox, I immediately flagged these two papers as something to write up for ResearchBlogging. This I looked at the accompanying viewpoint in Physics, and discovered that Chris Westbrook already did most of the work for me. And, as a bonus, you can get free PDF's of the two articles from the Physics link, in case you want to follow along at home.
Since I spent a little time thinking about these already, though, and because it connects to the question of electron spin that I talked about yesterday, I think it's still worth…
drorzel | July 26, 2010A few years ago, we ended up trading some classroom space in the Physics part of the building to Psychology, which was renovated into lab space for two of their new(ish) hires. This turned out to be a huge boon not only for the department (the lab space we got in the swap is really very nice), but for our majors. Most of the psychology experiments on campus use student volunteers, and pay a small amount to boost participation. Since the new psych labs were right next to the physics student lounge, our majors were taking part in four or five studies each, and racking up the study participation…
drorzel | July 26, 2010The subject of the "spin" of the electron comes up again and again, so as pointed out in a comment, I really ought to do a post explaining what it is and how it works. As a bonus, this gives me the opportunity to do the dorkiest thing anyone has ever done with a cute-toddler video, namely this one:
(That's an early version of SteelyKid's new favorite game. I'll put a clip of the final version of the game at the end of this post.)
So, electron spin. Electrons, and all other fundamental particles, have a property known as "spin." This is an intrinsic angular momentum associated with the…
drorzel | July 25, 2010The vanity search this morning turned up something I hadn't seen before:
That's the Japanese edition of How to Teach Physics to Your Dog. I knew one was in the works, but hadn't heard when it would be out.
Of course, I can't read any of it other than my own name (rightmost column of the cover text, from top to bottom). So I turn to Google Translate, which does wonders with the product description:
Dogs have been collected by Professor Chad Emmy physics, quantum physics interested in all of the owner. Amazing ideas of quantum physics, every day, "honoring" significant useless wanted to apply…
pharyngula | July 24, 2010
Most of you don't understand evolution. I mean this in the most charitable way; there's a common conceptual model of how evolution occurs that I find everywhere, and that I particularly find common among bright young students who are just getting enthusiastic about biology. Let me give you the Standard Story, the one that I get all the time from supporters of biology.
Evolution proceeds by mutation and selection. A novel mutation occurs in a gene that gives the individual inheriting it an advantage, and that person passes it on to their children who also gets the advantage and do better than…
drorzel | July 24, 2010Climate change is a major crisis, don't get me wrong, and it's something that needs to be discussed extensively in both scientific and policy circles. We're pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere at rather too high a rate, and getting something done about that is a key priority.
It's possible, though, to take the obsession on climate and CO_2 a little too far, though. Such as this news story from Physics World:
A cosmic gamma-ray burst striking the Earth could be harmful to ocean plankton at depths of up to 75 m, according to a team of Cuban researchers. These organisms account for up to…
drorzel | July 23, 2010Earlier this week, there was some interesting discussion of science communication in the UK branch of the science blogosphere. I found it via Alun Salt's "Moving beyond the 'One-dinosaur-fits-all' model of science communication" which is too good a phrase not to quote, and he spun off two posts from Alice Bell, at the Guardian blog and her own blog, and the proximate cause of all this is a dopey remark by a UK government official that has come in for some justifiable mockery.
Bell and Salt both focus on the narrowness of the "dinosaurs and space" approach-- a reasonably representative quote…
lbock | July 23, 2010 As a founder and organizer of the upcoming inaugural USA Science & Engineering Festival, I'm in frequent contact with a wide range of teachers, students, innovators, community leaders, entrepreneurs and decision makers in science and technology across the country.
One thing that I continue to learn from these experiences: There is a growing need out there, even a grassroots desire, among average Americans to understand and connect in meaningful ways with the vast array of science and technology impacting their lives today -- provided that this information is presented to them through…
drorzel | July 23, 2010This week's big story in physics is this Science paper by a group out of Austria Canada (edited to fix my misreading of the author affiliations), on a triple-slit interference effect. This has drawn both the usual news stories and also some complaining about badly-worded news stories. So, what's the deal?
What did they do in this paper? The paper reports on an experiment in which they looked at the interference of light sent through a set of three small slits, and verified that the resulting pattern agrees with the predictions of the Born rule for quantum probabilities.
What does Matt Damon…
oracknows | July 23, 2010Even after having been at this skeptical medical blogging game for nearly six years, every so often I still come across woo about which I had been previously unaware. It's hard to believe, but it's true. In fact, I'm beginning to think that, even if I were to keep blogging until I drop dead (hopefully at least thirty or forty years in the future), as I type out my last extra cantankerous bit of not-so-Respectful Insolence (my cantankerousness merely increasing with advancing age, of course), I would come across some new and spectacular form of woo that somehow had been missed during my forty-…