Today is Pi Day (March 14 or 3.14), celebrating history's most famous mathematical constant. Pi relates the circumference and diameter of a circle. It is an infinite and nonrepeating number. Pi has an intriguing history dating to ancient Egypt.
A new tool from Google Labs allows easy and automatically updated visualization of public data. Below is U.S. unemployment, click the play button to watch over time.
The Monty Hall problem is a blind spot in our rationality. No trouble for pigeons.
(image credit: broadwayworld.com)
Happy Birthday Chuck and Abe! Two of history's most consequential lives began this day 201 years ago. When the book on the most important days in human history is written, February 12, 1809 deserves a mention.
"The obvious truths of 1809, the kind that were taught in school, involved what could be called a "vertical" organization of life -- one in which we imagine a hierarchy of species on earth, descending from man on down toward animals, and a judge appraising us up above in heaven. Man was stuck in the middle, looking warily up and loftily down.
...People also believed, using what they called examples ancient and modern -- and the example of the Terror in France, which had only very recently congealed into Napoleon's Empire, was a strong case -- that societies without inherited order were intrinsically weak, unstable and inclined to dissolve into anarchy or tyranny. "Democracy" in the sense we mean it now was a fringe ideal of a handful of radicals."
Jamie Heywood discusses his brother and PatientsLikeMe. Frontline covered their story in 2007.
The short list of people who have had their complete genome sequenced includes James Watson, George Church, Craig Venter and a Greenlander who lived 4,000 years ago.
"Here comes a wave," Sybil said nervously.
NASA has introduced designs for a personal flying system.
Vampire Weekend, "Cousins" on Conan O'Brien. Here is Conan's letter, he really wasn't given a fair chance.
Old Timey Baseball is here. Hurl your best apple, hurler.
Neuroscientist VS Ramachandran on mirror neurons, the brain cells that some researchers believe instrumental to language, empathy and morality. More from Ramachandran on Edge here. I also recommend What's Next? edited by Max Brockman which includes an essay from neuroscientist Christian Keysers on mirror neurons. Wikipedia tracks the research and controversies.
Nature looks forward to 2020. Two entries focus on the 100 trillion microbes that you live with. There's also Peter Norvig on search, Jeffrey Sachs on global governance (Glenn Beck alert), Thomas Baer and Nicholas Bigelow on lasers and desktop accelerators, and George Church on synthetic biology:
The obvious application will be in manufacturing and delivering drugs more efficiently. However, these treatments might be superseded by smarter ones, such as oral vaccines and 'programmable' personal stem cells or bacteria (which exploit sensors, logic and actuators harvested from natural and lab evolution) that could, for example, sense a nearby tumour, coordinate an attack and drill into the cancer cells to release toxins. Another application is in the production of chemicals, biofuels and foods — for example, the development of parasite-resistant crops or photosynthetic organisms that can double their biomass in just three hours.
College football's champ is chosen tonight without any real idea of who was the best team in 2009. Boise State didn't play a great schedule in the WAC but they beat Oregon and TCU. TCU was undefeated in the regular season this year and beat Utah who of course beat Alabama (my pick tonight) in a bowl game last year. Of course, this is unfair. But it suggests the absurdity of the present system. I wrote about this a while back:
the current system maximizes the incentive to set a lame schedule, rewards teams that play in well-respected (even if bad) conferences, and insults the integrity of players and the notion of team. Football, by virtue of its violence, has less frequent and much more heavily scrutinized and intensely played games than other sports. Every down in a football game is a battle. A team is forged over a season - players emerge, strategies are refined, cohesion is hard-won. This suggests two often overlooked truths. 1) A loss can make a team better. 2) Apparently overmatched teams with lesser recruits can beat apparently superior teams through strategy, cohesion and sheer force of will. The present system rewards teams judged best in the preseason, necessarily on history and before any games are played. Those teams will remain on top if they don't lose and will receive substantial reconsideration even if they do lose. Opinions, often set in the preseason, are a horrible substitute for playing games. Despite myriad objections from athletic directors, college presidents and bowl game sponsors, a playoff system in college football is viable. A college football playoff might become the biggest sporting event in America. And it would restore to college football the immutable law of sports: Winning makes you the better team. People seem to have forgotten that.(image credit: Boise State celebrates, Jacobsohn/Getty, via nydailynews.com)
On Slate, Magnum Photos presents an In Memoriam slideshow. Above is John Updike in 1962, (C) Dennis Stock.
The Royal Society has a timeline celebrating 350 years of publications. A 1770 paper reported on the study of 8-year-old prodigy Wolfgang Mozart years earlier. Uta Frith writes, "Barrington was convinced and wrote that the young boy's musical gifts were 'amazing and incredible almost as it may appear'". Read the letter here.
NPR lists their 50 most important recordings of the decade.
The Large Hadron Collider is particle smashing
They have not made observations . . . yet. But they will soon.
The Large Hadron Collider is back on and powering up. If all goes according to plan, bringing the beam up to the power it needs to be at will set a world record for beam energy, surpassing by.2 trillion the record set by the Tevatron in Illinois at 1 trillion electron volts.
As Steve Cern, director of accelerators has said, "We've learned from our experience, and engineered the technology that allows us to move on. That's how progress is made."
No comment yet from Doc.
Two types of gamma-ray photons emitted after a star crash long before the Earth was formed have reached the Fermi Space Telescope. After traveling 7.3 billion light years, the photons met at the detector within nine tenths of a second, affirming (with caveats) the constancy of light and rejecting some alternative theories of gravity. Physicist Peter Michelson is quoted in Science Daily, "To one part in 100 million billion, these two photons traveled at the same speed. Einstein still rules."
The University of Utah has a cool model scaling from a coffee bean to a carbon atom (h/t Andrew Sullivan). They also have an interactive cell model and some other great stuff. To give an idea of the size of a nanometer, it's roughly the amount a man's beard grows as he lifts a razor to shave it.
Footage of the giant of American sports, Babe Ruth, is rediscovered.
Henry Markram discusses the extraordinary Blue Brain Project - using the mathematics of neurons to understand perception and reverse engineering the brain in 10 years.
Dennis Overbye relates the much discussed and ridiculed theory that the possible future creation of the Higgs boson may be sabotaging the LHC, as Overbye writes, "like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather". Physicists Holger Nielsen and Masao Ninomiya suggested the fantastic theory and a cinematic test - see if the one "shut down the LHC" card is pulled from a million-card deck. Sean Carroll (quoted in the article) discusses the theory and the controversy here.
(image credit: CERN, simulation of the decay of a Higgs particle following collision of two protons)
Discover interviews physicist Roger Penrose on his father, M.C. Escher and his view of the wrongness of modern physics. More on impossible objects here.
(image credit:
I.B.M. is trying genomics. CEO Sam Palmisano will outline their approach in a health care talk at the Cleveland Clinic tomorrow. Quoting nytimes.com:
"The I.B.M. approach is based on what the company describes as a “DNA transistor,” which it hopes will be capable of reading individual nucleotides in a single strand of DNA as it is pulled through an atomic-size hole known as a nanopore. A complete system would consist of two fluid reservoirs separated by a silicon membrane containing an array of up to a million nanopores, making it possible to sequence vast quantities of DNA at once."
More on nanopores here.
(image credit: IBM simulation of the "DNA transistor", J. Michael Loughran, via nytimes.com)
Ardipithecus ramidus, our 4.4 million-year-old ancestor, is introduced. Carl Zimmer outlines some of the revelations.
(image credit: C 2009, J.H. Matternes)
I taught my 3-year-old son that birds evolved from dinosaurs and "birds come from dinosaurs" has become one of his favorite science facts ("gravity makes you go down" and "mars is a red planet" are some others). Now there's more confirmation of that extraordinary theory as fossils of feathered dinosaurs have been found in China. Researcher Xu Xing: "The fossils provide confirmation that the bird-dinosaur hypothesis is correct, and supports the idea that birds descended from theropod dinosaurs (the group of predatory dinosaurs that includes allosaurus and velociraptor)." The fossils predate archaeopteryx, the formerly oldest bird/dinosaur. We discussed other bird-like dinosaurs as part of the Extinct Series.
(image credit: impression of Achiornis huxleyi, Hu Dongyu/AP)
Personal genomics is its infancy but very exciting work is happening now. Tech Review covers researchers using genomic studies to understand genetic diseases and cancer.
Quantum mechanics tells us that probability underlies all things, that atoms exist in a haze of uncertainty. This allows the strangeness of superposition, in which atoms or molecules can exist in two states simultaneously. Researchers are now trying to test superposition of living things, starting with viruses (sort of alive). They might then advance to the extraordinary tardigrade, the microscopic "water bear". From wikipedia, "Tardigrades are polyextremophiles and are able to survive in extreme environments that would kill almost any other animal. Some can survive temperatures of -273°C, close to absolute zero, temperatures as high as 151 °C (303 °F), 1,000 times more radiation than other animals such as humans, nearly a decade without water, and even the vacuum of space." That's like evolution's NASA astronaut program. Check out video of the water bear.
(image credit: tardigrade, Ralph O Schill, via newscientist.com)
Tech Review lists 2009 Young Innovators under 35. There's some amazing stuff. Check out Jorge Conde of Knome.
(image credit: Bryan Christie Design, nanoparticle mimicking HDL)
PBS NOVA's program (originally The Quest for Tannu Tuva on BBC Horizon) on physicist Richard Feynman and his search for Tannu Tuva. Part 1 below. More Feynman here.
Tod Machover's great talk on music, technology and letting kids write symphonies. Hyperscore site here.
Eric Giler talks WiTricity, the realization of Tesla's dream of wireless electricity.
Nicholas Wade on new anti-aging research and the focus on sirtuin activators and resveratrol. He even mentions Super Collide favorites the bristlecone pine and the hydra. More on anti-aging.
(photo credit: G. Baden/Corbis, via nytimes.com)
Francis Collins was sworn in today as head of the NIH. Sam Harris's full response to Collins's appointment here.
And Collins's 5 priorities for the NIH.
A new study finds that 90% of U.S. bills have small amounts of cocaine. That's up from 67% two years ago. It's a pretty amazing finding, even if it was from a small sample size. If it makes you feel any better, the contents of your wallet may have figured prominently in this guy's social life. Follow the cocaine here.
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, sometimes called a latter-day Nostradamus, uses game theory to predict moderation in Iran and a halt to their pursuit of nuclear weapons (h/t Patrick Appel). I find this plausible, but I still think that picture looks like the result of a frat party.
(image credit: Ethan Hill, goodmagazine.com)
The Edge Master Class 2009 features George Church and Craig Venter on synthetic genomics. There are six lectures available on edge.org, addressing (from Edge):
What is life, origins of life, in vitro synthetic life, mirror-life, metabolic engineering for hydrocarbons & pharmaceuticals, computational tools, electronic-biological interfaces, nanotech-molecular-manufacturing, biosensors, accelerated lab evolution, engineered personal stem cells, multi-virus-resistant cells, humanized-mice, bringing back extinct species, safety/security policy.
Watch it all.
(photo credit: George Church (left) and Craig Venter (right), edge.org)
News on the restart of Large Hadron Collider is expected this week.
(photo credit: Valerio Mezzanotti, nytimes.com)
DARPA is working a 100 knot submarine (3-4x the current top speed) that could revolutionize military (and perhaps commercial) sea travel. The sub works via supercavitation, in which an underwater bubble is established that minimizes drag. (h/t Andrew Sullivan).
(Photo credit: theday.com, via popsci.com)
Part 1
There is a force today that is pulling America apart at the seams. It stifles debate, drags the argument into the deep weeds of obscure contention, and continuously rejects coalition. It is blinded to its own arrogance, heedless of the cries of its closest kin, smug in the assurance of its rightness. It is not the force that motivates the Republicans, or inspires the religious right. I refer not to financial technocrats, Wall Street, or Foreign Policy Hawks. I mean to tell you that people who care about reform should awaken to the scourge of Neo-Puritanism.
CONTINUE "ON NEO-PURITANISM"
Chinese researchers have made mice from skin cells. Adult skin cells were reprogrammed to pluripotent cells and grown into mice - the first mouse born was named Xiao Xiao ("Tiny"). This is an overt demonstration of the full flexibility of reprogrammed adult cells. It's probably also a little weird for the mice.
(image credit: Dr. Qi Zhou, via timesonline.co.uk)
Here is Sam Harris's New York Times op-ed on Francis Collins's nomination.
Nouriel Roubini's caveat-laden endorsement of Ben Bernanke. It would be great if the country could have a real debate about our economic future. Instead we have the abject imbecility of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck and the stealth tyranny of Clinton era top marginal rates.
"Some of these moves have raised important questions: Did the Fed help bail out institutions that should have been allowed to fail? Did it cause moral hazard as reckless lenders and investors were effectively bailed out? How and when will the Fed mop up the excess liquidity that its actions have created? Will these actions eventually cause inflation and a sharp fall of the value of the dollar? Has the Fed lost its independence as it has accommodated the fiscal needs of the government by bailing out banks and printing money to cover large fiscal deficits?
Still, the basic point remains: The Fed’s creative and aggressive actions have significantly reduced the risks of a near depression. For this reason alone Mr. Bernanke deserves to be reappointed so that he can manage the Fed’s exit from its most radical economic intervention since its creation in 1913."
(image credit: Vivienne Flesher, nytimes.com)The Economist graphs American economics since WWII. And now the question, where will new growth come from? (h/t Andrew Sullivan)
Exxon Mobil is investing possibly $600 million with Craig Venter's Synthetic Genomics on the effort to gather fuel from algae. Synthetic Genomics scientists are modifying algae to take in more carbon dioxide and put out more lipids, with the hope of providing large-scale, homegrown, sustainable and less polluting biofuel.
(photo credit: Craig Venter, Eyevine, economist.com)
Merge Records is a great independent music success story. The label was started in Chapel Hill, NC (later moved to Durham) by Superchunk members Mac McCaughan and Laura Ballance. They have gathered an extraordinary collection of talent including Neutral Milk Hotel, Arcade Fire and The Magnetic Fields and put out some amazing albums. SCORE! is a box set of Merge songs covered by other bands you can listen to here. Algonquin is publishing Our Noise: The Story of Merge Records in September. Bob Boilen talks with the founders and plays some great songs here. Merge artists on Super Collide here and here.
(photo credit: Merge Records logo, wikipedia.org)
More from Michael Lewis, on A.I.G. Financial Products unit head Joe Cassano, "The Man Who Crashed the World". Quote:
Oddly, this dramatic increase in the amount of risk A.I.G. F.P. was assuming came at exactly the moment when it lost the reason for its existence. The day after Hank Greenberg was forced to resign, in March 2005, the credit-rating agencies downgraded A.I.G. from AAA to AA. The AAA rating was the competitive advantage; without it, the natural course of action would have been to close or dramatically shrink A.I.G. F.P.’s business. Instead, Cassano grew it.
Toward the end of 2005, Cassano promoted Al Frost, then went looking for someone to replace him as the ambassador to Wall Street’s subprime-mortgage-bond desks. As a smart quant who understood abstruse securities, Gene Park was a likely candidate. That’s when Park decided to examine more closely the loans that A.I.G. F.P. had insured. He suspected Joe Cassano didn’t understand what he had done, but even so Park was shocked by the magnitude of the misunderstanding: these piles of consumer loans were now 95 percent U.S. subprime mortgages. Park then conducted a little survey, asking the people around A.I.G. F.P. most directly involved in insuring them how much subprime was in them. He asked Gary Gorton, a Yale professor who had helped build the model Cassano used to price the credit-default swaps. Gorton guessed that the piles were no more than 10 percent subprime. He asked a risk analyst in London, who guessed 20 percent. He asked Al Frost, who had no clue, but then, his job was to sell, not to trade. “None of them knew,” says one trader. Which sounds, in retrospect, incredible. But an entire financial system was premised on their not knowing—and paying them for their talent!
At We Choose The Moon, you can follow the Apollo 11 mission live, 40 years later.
(photo credit: Buzz Aldrin, taken by Neil Armstrong, NASA)
NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter shows remnants of the lunar trips 40 years ago.
(photo credit: NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center/Arizona State University, via nytimes.com)
Richard Feynman was an extraordinary guy. From his Wikipedia page:
"...an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world.
He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing, and introducing the concept of nanotechnology (creation of devices at the molecular scale)."
Bill Gates fell in love with Feynman's 1964 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. He purchased the rights and has put the lectures online at Project Tuva, remastered and with supplemental materials/diagrams (h/t TierneyLab). You do have to install an add-on. It's an amazing project and a great gift to lovers of physics.
(photo credit: Feynman (center) with Robert J. Oppenheimer (right) at Los Alamos during the Manhattan Project, wikipedia.org)
The Hudson Union Society interview with Michael Lewis (from Fora.tv). He's a smart guy and all of it is pretty entertaining. Around 39:00 minutes, he talks about his new book (previewed in this article) on the people who recognized the insanity and anticipated (and bet on) the financial collapse and discusses the astonishing political influence of Wall Street.
