Cycle Quark

Cross Blogging

2006-01-16T21:09:00.000-05:00

I have started playing with Word Press so I have been putting my entries here and at Cycle Quark on Wordpress.com. I am certainly the type of person who will let technology get in the way of the message.

There are several features at Word Press that I have decided that I prefer. The selection of templates is better. I am using Regulus by Binary Moon. I like the categories feature. I like that it can track the number of hits that I get other than my own, which is currently 0. The links can be managed without modifying the template.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Neutrinos and Me

2006-01-13T21:23:00.000-05:00

I did my Ph.D thesis on a search for neutrino oscillations. Neutrino oscillations are a quantum mechanical phenomena where a neutrino is produced as one type but after it has traveled some distance it observed to be another type. In my thesis experiment we used a beam of neutrinos produced at the CERN PS that was almost purely muon neutrinos. We then looked for electron neutrinos in our detector. We found four of them, but that was also what we calculated to the
impurity of the beam, so nobody won a Nobel prize, but I still got my Ph.D in 1986.

Neutrinos were finally obcserved to oscillate by the Super K experiment in 1998.In this case muon neutrinos were produced by cosmic rays striking the atmosphere. Super K found that the number of muon neutrinos that came from the far side of the earth was smaller than those that came from directly overhead. If you do not know about neutrinos you might think that makes sense, but it turns out that very few neutrinos get stopped by the earth. Super K was able to look many different angles between straight up and straight down, which means the neutrinos went different distances through the earth. The pattern of neutrinos obcerved by angle was consistent with the muon neutrinos oscillating into tau neutrinos which are not recognized by the detector.

However, this oscillation was not of the type that I searched for so many years ago. That oscillation has still not been found. Two different groups hope to see that oscillation. One in the US called NOvA and one in Japan called T2K. These experiements are being planned and will use beams of neutrinosfrom accelerators and put detectors that are hundreds of kilometers
away.

Technorati Tags: physics

New Blogging Tool for Firefox

2006-01-12T22:29:00.000-05:00

I have only been partly happy with the web based blog editor that blogger supplies, so I have been looking for something better. I have just upgraded to Firefox 1.5 and there is an extension available called Peformancing for Firefox. This is my first post using it so I do not have an evaluation yet. You can check HOW TO: Using Performancing for Firefox | Performancing.com for more info.

It has a WYSIWYG editor with similar features to the blogger web tool. It has a interesting split screen feature. When you start it, it splits the window and the page that you were viewing appears on top. The editing window appears on the bottom. This is a nice feature that lets you continua to see the page that you are commenting on. The spell checker is still under development.

If you are daring, and don't mind installing a beta extension, then in-line spelling is a must have for any spelling idiot like me.
[Install Spellbound Development Version]
You need the latest Spellbound development version from here, once installed you will have built-in spell checking in both Firefox and PFF ...

Update: My first post broke my Haloscan trackbacks. When I edited the post with the blogger web based editor, they came back.

Technorati Tags: Blogging

Good Lay Explanation of Dark Energy

2006-01-12T17:06:00.000-05:00

In today's Wasington Post there is a story about using gamma ray bursters to measure the expansion rate of the universe. The discovery that the universe was expanding at an acclerating rate was a major discovery in 1999. Since we do not what is pushing the universe apart physicists have taken to calling it "dark energy".

It has kept physicists, cosmologists, and astronomers very busy trying to find new theories to explain the effect and design new experiments to give us more data on the effect. The story is about one new measurement that has just been announced and I will have to do more study to find out if it is a useful new technique, but I was very impressed by the Wasington Post article's explanation of the background to this new result. It was quite clear and correct.

Technorati Tag: Science, physics

Nikon Phases Out Film Cameras

2006-01-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post reports today that Nikon is getting out of the film photography business. The lineup of film cameras will be reduced from 9 to 2.

"To use a car industry analogy, it would be the same as Ford saying it is no longer producing an internal-combustion engine. It's really that revolutionary," said Mark Greenberg, a professional photographer who has shot for National Geographic, Life and this week's People magazine. "Film is done. Digital rules the world now."

Many years ago when I was a poor graduate student, I yearned for a Trek bike, a Sony TV, and a Nikon camera. Well, for Christmas I received a Nikon D50 camera which is a digital SLR. My first Nikon camera is digital. I guess this is why Nikon is giving up on film.

Technorati Tag: Photography

Dispatches from the Culture Wars Has Moved

2006-01-11T09:58:00.000-05:00

Ed Brayton has moved his blog to scienceblogs.com. Dispatches is one of my favorite blogs. I am very impressed with the effort that Ed puts into understanding the evolution/creationism debate. I followed the Dover trial mostly through Dispatches. Ed dug into the transcripts to find all sorts of interesting details that you could not get in press reports. Ed plans no change in the content of his blog.

I have joined forces with a group of other popular science bloggers under the umbrella of Seed Media Group. As I've previously noted, all content here is still solely my responsibility. I will still write whatever I want about any subject I choose and no one has any authority over that but me.

In a previous post, Ed explained why he was moving.

Their plan is for all of us to move our blogs to their servers where they will handle all of the technical aspects of blogging and we would continue to do what we do. Each blog will remain independent of all the others, but they will be linked together in hopes of increasing everyone's readership. There will also be shared advertising, which will allow us each to be paid for our efforts.

I hope Ed will be comfortable at scienceblogs.com, because I fear that I will need to read Ed's blog for quite awhile.

Technorati Tag: Science

Trackbacks and Tags

2006-01-09T21:33:00.000-05:00

I have added trackbacks by using Haloscan. I am still using the native blogger comments though. I prefer to avoid having the comments in a popup whenever possible.

I used Haloscan to ping Cosmic Variance after I linked to them. It is not a convenient procedure. I may have to look for better blogging software, if I keep this up.

I have also started adding Technorati tags., which is also not very convenient either.

Technorati Tag:haloscan, Blogging

Theorists! Bah!

2006-01-09T21:11:00.000-05:00

The very interesting folks over at Cosmic Variance are selecting the Greatest Physics Paper ever written. My initial reaction was that the papers were all theory papers, and as an experimentalist myself I thought that seemed a little biased. The author of the post Clifford advised all to read the comments where the nominations were made before going off and ranting.

Before you write in with your terribly original observation that such a concept is silly, flawed, problematic, juvenile, etc, please consider reading my original post on the subject, and then the truly wonderful lively and informative 183-comment (to date) discussion that followed.

Well, I did, so now I can rant. The theory papers mentioned certainly outnumbered the experimental papers by a wide margin. Hubble's paper on the expansion of the Universe is mentioned as is Perlmutter's on the acceleration of the expansion of the Universe. While Noehter's theory paper on symmetries in physics ended up being in the five finalists, I saw no mention of the experimental discovery of parity violation or CP violation. The first set a pattern of searching for the limits of symmetery in the real world, and the second is needed to explain why we exist at all.

Oh, well what do you expect from a bunch of theorists.

Technorati Tags: Science, physics

Debate on the Origin of Life

2006-01-08T20:52:00.000-05:00

Joel Achenbach writes for the Washington Post. He has a humor column in the Post's Sunday magazine, and he has a blog that is mostly humorous. So when I saw that he was writing on the origin of life I expected a satirical look at inteligent design. It was in fact a serious article mostly about Robert Hazen a scientist that is looking for the first chemicals or cells that might be classified as life in the geothermal vents deep under the sea.

Perhaps life didn't begin at the surface of the Earth, they say, but rather deep beneath the sea around a hydrothermal vent. Such geysers form along mid-ocean ridges, spewing hot water into a dark, cold, pressurized realm that teems with bizarre organisms, like giant clams and 6-foot tube worms. The ventists say the disequilibrium between the hot and cold water is a natural driver of interesting chemical reactions. This would be a good place to cook up organic molecules from which life could emerge and evolve, they say. Moreover, the deep hydrothermal environment would have been protected from harsh ultraviolet sunlight and the meteor bombardments common at the surface of the young Earth.

Turns out that this is far from a settled question and there is a very active debate. At times it has been a very nasty debate. Hazen has described it all in a new book. In addition to informing people about this fascinating research, he is also trying to show that science is a human enterprise in hope that it will make science more accessible to nonscientists.

I fear that this example is not the best to choose, because the great success of the scienitific enterprise is that debates do get resolved, and this one is not yet settled. Science is about a set of rules about how to argue and how to collect data so that people can convince one and another that there is a correct answer. The debates can be pretty unruly until a critcal mass of high quality data can be collected.

If I were trying to show a interesting scientific debate, I would want to choose an example where there was a great disagreement and then new data was obtained from experiments or observations that clearly demonstrated that one side was right. This would be a great example of just what science is.

The problem that scientists have in explaining what we do is that once there is agreement that the correct answer has been found no one talks about the debate anymore.

Technorati tag:Science

Is High School Science Turning Off Bright Kids?

2006-01-05T14:10:00.000-05:00

A NY Times contributor explained how the study of evolution helped make the seemingly random facts of a high school biology class into a coherent whole. This was picked up by the blogosphere and discussed on some biology blogs. Then at Uncertain Principles the topic was turned towards physics, where Chad Orzel explained how a student who is successful at high school physics can be in for a rude shock when he starts college physics. The limitations of teaching physics without calculus mean that there is more memorization of formulas in high school physics. Since it is not possible to derive the right formula without the benefit of calculus one must memorize when each formula is appropriate. Once these students hit college the problems become more complex and not every applicable formula can be memorized. As Chad explains:

You can spot those students in the intro classes, because they struggle mightily with dynamics problems-- all those damn frictionless blocks sliding on frictionless planes connected by massles ropes over frictionless pulleys. Again and again I get asked "What equation do we use for this?," and the answer is always the same: "F = ma." Those aren't problems that can be solved by rote memorization-- each problem is slightly different, and there's no finite set of equations that can cover all of them. What they require is knowledge of the essential concepts that let you break a complicated problem down into a few simple equations.

Meanwhile the brightest kids who do not want to memorize things get frustrated that they cannot see the big patterns. Some get turned off by high school physics and don't give college physics a chance.

Just yesterday, I ran into a similar problem while helping my daughter with her math homework. She is working on the graphs of polynomial functions. She was given two concepts to work with. The sign of the coefficient of the highest power tells you whether the graph becomes infinitely positive or infinitely negative as x goes to positive infinity, and whether the highest power of x is a even or odd power tells you what will happen as x goes to negative infinity. She was trying to memorize the patterns and I told not to. I explained why the rules worked. If x gets very large the highest power term dominated the polynomial, and that is why it matters whether its coefficient is postive or negative. For the odd or even power part I said just think about the simplest cases. For f(x)=x the function goes in different directions at plus and minus infinity. For f(x)=x^2 the function goes in the same direction for both plus and minus infinity.

She was somewhat frustrated that I was telling her something differtent than she had been taught, but today she told me that it helped her on her quiz.

Technorati tag: Science

Comment Settings Changed

2006-01-01T19:08:00.000-05:00

I changed the comment settings so that people who are not Blogger members can also comment.

Will There be Another Einstein?

2006-01-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

The World Year of Physics has ended. The year 2005 was the 100th anniversary of the year that Einstein wrote five groundbreaking papers in quantum mechanics, relativity, and thermodynamics. This was a remarkable performance and is certainly the reason that Einstein is revered by physicists, but John Horgan in an essay in the New York Times points out that Einstein is the most well known and perhaps respected scientist of all time, because of he was also concerned with the moral and philosophical implications of science.

John Stachel, a physicist and editor of "Einstein's Miraculous Year," a reissue of Einstein's seminal 1905 papers, rejects the notion that no scientist will ever again evoke our awe and admiration the way Einstein did. "I hope and believe that the combination of technical, philosophical and, yes, moral concerns and talents, although extremely rare, will not prove to be unique," Stachel told me recently. The budding scientists and engineers I encounter in my job give me hope that science has a bright future. But I suspect that we will never see Einstein's like again, because he was the product of a unique convergence of time and temperament. Besides, Einstein didn't think he lived up to his own reputation either. "I am no Einstein," he once said. Of course, such modesty only makes us admire and miss him more.

I am hopeful, but it may take awhile. The time that Einstein lived was ripe for breakthroughs. Experiments were demonstrating problems with classical physics in both the realm of the very small where quantum mechanics applies and in the realm of light and electromagnetic radiation where special relativity would provide the solution.

Today we have a very interesting problem that most of the universe is made up of matter and energy that we do not understand. There appears to be matter that we cannot detect with telescopes but is responsible for holding galaxies together, and there is a force or energy that is driving the expansion of the universe faster than four known forces, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak and strong nuclear forces can explain. If someone made breakthroughs in both these areas, we would have a candidate for the next Einstein. Now if that person would take a high profile in international affairs we would have it.

Technorati Tag: Science

Man with a New Camera

2005-12-29T00:30:00.000-05:00

If you receive a new camera for Christmas, what should you do with it. Well obviously you should take a picture of a tree. After that you can take pictures of the family, but soon they are tired of having their pictures taken. At that point all you have left is to take your own picture in a mirror.

It is a pretty good camera. This is just a small fraction of the actual shot. It is hand held in available light, since flash photography does not work well with mirrors.

I use Picasa to manage my photos. I find it easy to use, and it does 90% of what I need. It also has a "Blog this" button which makes adding photos, even stupid ones to the blog easy.

I am still investigating if any of the web photo services is useful. I have tried webshots, snapfish, and Yahoo photos. I can't say that I find anyone service clearly better than any other so far.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

2005-12-23T20:08:00.000-05:00

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

Getting into Graduate School in Physics

2005-12-21T11:44:00.000-05:00

It has been over 25 years since I applied to graduate school, and it has been over 5 years since I have read graduate school applications, so I was happy to see that Sean Carroll has posted a nice entry over at Cosmic Variance on how to get into graduate school in physics and/or astronomy. He starts off with the obvious.

So, here goes: have great grades, perfect GRE scores, significant research experience, and off-scale letters of recommendation. Any questions?

But he then does give some very sensible advice on somethings can help you get into the best school for you. I feel that his discussion on getting to know your professors well enough that they can write good letters of recommendation for you is probably the most useful advice.

Also check out the comments. That are a lot of knowledgable people contibuting to the discussion.

An Outloook Annoyance Fixed

2005-12-20T09:48:00.000-05:00

I made the mistake of sending an email from my personal email account to my boss. Now Outlook keeps suggesting that email address to her when she sends me email. She has caught it most of the time, but sometimes in a rush she forgets.

I have had the same problem myself, but I never bothered to find the solution. Now I feel obligated to fix it, so I googled Outlook remember address and I found this site. The answer turns out be fairly simple.

By the way, deleting an address from the nickname list is also very easy: when you see it being suggested, use the up or down arrow keys to highlight it, and then press delete.

Reading the Sunday Paper

2005-12-19T08:07:00.000-05:00

They were two articles on the opinion page yesterday that caught my attention. The first was by David Broder on a congressional proposal to improve the country's performance in math and science. Recent reports have shown a disturbing decline in scientific research and the training of scientists and engineers.

They all recite similar warning signs that America's current economic health conceals significant long-term threats to our prosperity. There has been a steady erosion in investment in the kind of brainpower that keeps a nation competitive -- and a consequent decline in American inventiveness.

As a scientist, I have been aware of these trends for years. Many smart people are naturally interested in science and will pursue that career if they believe that they can achieve a comfortable middle class lifestyle. If there are no job prospects then they will go into professional schools. People smart enough to do scientific research are also quite smart enough to become doctors, lawyers, and business leaders. When the internet was booming many of the potential scientists went into computing.

The second article by Leonard Glantz of the Boston University School of Public Health describes a plan by the World Health Organization to stop hiring smokers. I am a non-smoker who appreciates much of the regulation that has kept smoking away from me in public places, but this initiative is going to far. If employers can regulate employees behavior away from work in this instance, where will it end?

One can only imagine WHO's reaction to a tobacco company that requires all its employees to smoke or a gun company that requires them all to keep a gun and ammunition in their homes. The position that WHO has adopted would neatly support such ludicrous employment requirements.

I am happy that I can go into smoke free restaurants, airplanes, hotel rooms, and workplaces. That doesn't mean that smokers have to be penalized on the job front, if they continue to smoke at home.

Enough War on the War on Christmas

2005-12-08T15:45:00.000-05:00

I can't seem to get away from Bill O'Reilly's war on the people who he thinks are fighting a war on Christmas. Of course, I never watch O'Reilly so I was not aware of this until all media decided to tell me about it. Apparently, retailers say "Happy Holidays" rather than Merry Christmas, and O'Reilly thinks this is important. A piece in the Sunday NY Times was the first that I became aware of this.

The Christmas that Mr. O'Reilly and his allies are promoting - one closely aligned with retailers, with a smack-down attitude toward nonobservers - fits with their campaign to make America more like a theocracy, with Christian displays on public property and Christian prayer in public schools.

It does not, however, appear to be catching on with the public. That may be because most Americans do not recognize this commercialized, mean-spirited Christmas as their own. Of course, it's not even clear the campaign's leaders really believe in it. Just a few days ago, Fox News's online store was promoting its "Holiday Collection" for shoppers. Among the items offered to put under a "holiday tree" was "The O'Reilly Factor Holiday Ornament." After bloggers pointed this out, Fox changed the "holidays" to "Christmases."

Lastnight on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart decided to defend himself from an attack from O'Reilly that showed a year old clip that made fun of Christmas. Jon did a good job, but he forgot to mention that George W. Bush sent out Christmas cards that did not include any mention of Christmas.

I then found it on one of my favorite blogs, Dispatches from the Culture Warts. Ed Brayton has been so turned off by O'Reilly, et al' s whining that it is running his own appreciation of Christmas.

And now I'm against what I'd be for normally because they're a fucking nitwit." That's how I feel about this "War on Christmas" crap that we are being bombarded with from every corner of the right wing media.

I feel sorry for Mr. O'Reilly if thinks either "Happy Holidays" or "Merry Christmas" contains any sincerity when expressed by a large corporation, he probably also thinks that Fox News actually is "Fair and Balanced".

It's Intelligent Design Day

2005-12-03T22:57:00.000-05:00

Over at Cosmic Variance, Sean writes about an interesting biology course taught at Central Washington University. Instead of just talking about facts that scientists have learned. The class tries to address what science is and how it is conducted. As part of this strategy, intelligent design and the problems with treating inteligent design as science are discussed.

I also read about this class at Pharyngula.org, but Sean had an interesting additional point. John Wells from the Discovery Institute was invited to make a presentation to the class. He arrived with a PR person who distributed DVDs. This is relevant to my last post that discusses how Intellignet Design is more PR than science.

NY Times on Intelligent Design

2005-12-03T22:36:00.000-05:00

OK. I did find something to read on the NY Times website. This article discusses the intelligent design (ID) movement and concludes that it is running into trouble. While ID's supporters claim that the science will determine their ultimate success or failure.

"The future of intelligent design, as far as I'm concerned, has very little to do with the outcome of the Dover case," Mr. West said. "The future of intelligent design is tied up with academic endeavors. It rises or falls on the science."

But it appears that they are not actually trying to do the science. The article says:

The Templeton Foundation, a major supporter of projects seeking to reconcile science and religion, says that after providing a few grants for conferences and courses to debate intelligent design, they asked proponents to submit proposals for actual research.

"They never came in," said Charles L. Harper Jr., senior vice president at the Templeton Foundation, who said that while he was skeptical from the beginning, other foundation officials were initially intrigued and later grew disillusioned.

The lawsuit in Dover, PA is also mentioned. A decision in the case is expected in four to five weeks.

Are You Still Reading NY Times online?

2005-11-30T21:56:00.000-05:00

I have read the NY Times in print and online for over twenty years even though I have never lived in New York City. I read it for the national news coverage, the opinion pages, business, science, and technology news. When I lived in Ithaca, NY we got the regional price which is lower then the national price, and when I worked at Carnegie Mellon University, I could get it at a reduced price at the campus bookstore.

In recent years I have read it online. I would start with the columnists, then move on the most emailed stories list before digging deeper. Since the start of Times Select the new paid subscription service, I find myself reading the NY Times less and less. I go less often to the website, and I read less when I get there. I find myself going to the Washington Post's website more and spending more time there.

I have noticed that the columnists who are now only available on Times Select are less present on the most emailed list and when they do appear they are lower ranked. I do not know if the Times is making money on Times Select, but I would be very curious how much traffic they losing on the rest of the site.

Brian Greene on the Colbert Report

2005-11-29T00:08:00.000-05:00

The Colbert Report had several bits about science, including Stephen settling the debate between science and religion once and for all with a coin toss. He also interviewed the string theorist Brian Greene, the author of the Elegant Universe.

Greene tried to explain what strings are in his five minute segment, but he has some trouble doing so, and Colbert commented that strings make intelligent design seem appealing. There is a lot less thought involved in "God did it."

The show will be on again on Tuesday at 8:30 PM Eastern time.

Identity Theft

2005-11-28T10:58:00.000-05:00

There is an interesting post on identity theft at Political Animal. The argument that Kevin Drum makes is that the cost of identity theft should be put on the business that lose the information by forcing them to notify those who have had their personal information stolen. This seems very sensible to me. The businesses can then weigh the cost of adequate security against the cost of losing information. It seems like a very simple solution. Much less complicated than having the government create security standards for the information.

In the comments on the post there was rather vacuous comment by someone named Al about how free market solutions would be best, but it did not really address what the free market solution was. That comment set off a fire storm of replies, and most did point out that people getting hurt by identity theft are not the customers of the information brokers that are responsible for losing the information, so the free market cannot punish those who are doing a bad job.

What Can Popular Science Books Teach Us?

2005-11-21T21:25:00.000-05:00

I have a background in physics, including a Ph.D., 20 years of research experience, and 10 years of university teaching. Despite all of that background, I can still enjoy and learn from a well written popularization of physics. A good example is Brian Greene's, Elegant Universe, which attempts to explain the beauty and possibilities of string theory. I have wondered what someone who does not have my background might get out of such a book. Clearly they will get less, but since the book was a bestseller they must be learning something.

I think I have begun to understand what an intelligent but non-expert reader might learn from a popular science book, when I read Endless Forms Most Beautiful by Sean B. Carroll. The book discusses recent developments in evolutionary development biology. I took a variety of things from this book. It is the first book where I recognized the science in biology in the same that I see science in physics. Carroll talks about the geometry of an embryo. Biologists have been able to learn how different genes operate in different parts of an embryo to make the parts of the fully grown animal. There are even pictures of frog and fruit embryo showing stripes. These stripes correspond to structures in the adult animal.

I was left with two questions after that section. One is how is the gene action turned on only in the correct places? The other is how did they get it colored? The first is a very fundamental question of science, while the second is about experimental technique. Being an experimental scientist I find both questions interesting.

Clearly, a well written popular science book can impart useful information even if it cannot make us all into practicing scientists. I will continue to read books about biology and other sciences as well as physics books. My daughter is a sophmore majoring in biology, so we will have something to discuss over Thanksgiving vacation.