jcnemecek.com

Turing Centenary Celebration

Thu, 10 May 2012 13:32:20 -0400

The site for the Turing Centenary Celebration is a little headache inducing: http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/

Still worth checking out, headache or not. Of particular interest:

Turing Tapes Challenge: games based on the mathematical theory of cyclotomic polynomials.
Alan Turing’s Life in Posters
Turing Test Opera

Head to the sidebar on the left for other fun links.

The Black Queen Hypothesis

Sat, 31 Mar 2012 23:18:59 -0400

The Black Queen Hypothesis:

There was a new hypothesis published in mBio this week, if you’re in the mood for a bit of evolution talk.

Boiled down, the theory is this: If an organism can eliminate a function and get another organism to do that work instead, it confers a selective advantage. The two organisms cozy up next to each other and one organism gets a free ride.

The name comes from the game of Hearts—with the Queen of Spades being the dropped function in this analogy.

The Reality of Life as An Adjunct Professor

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:43:00 -0400

The Reality of Life as An Adjunct Professor:

The Adjunct Project is working to draw attention to the current situation of adjunct faculty in the U.S. The individuals who do the bulk of the teaching at our universities are paid very little compared to the number of hours they work and their level of education. These jobs are usually short-term appointments with minimal benefits.

As much as PhDs carp about the tenure track life, there are much worse things lurking in the adjunct job listings.

If you are an adjunct, add your salary and benefit data (anonymously) to the spreadsheet to help the project along.

There are also some interesting thoughts on the tenure track/adjunct relationship in the comment section of this Washington Post article: Do college professors work hard enough? The article itself is worth a read, as well.

Optimum temperature for using a banana to drive a nail

Mon, 26 Mar 2012 22:34:14 -0400

Optimum temperature for using a banana to drive a nail:

Reading Japanese might enhance this article but it isn’t necessary, I think. Seriously, it is about using a banana to hammer in a nail. What more do you need?

Raising Funds for Clean Safe Water Worldwide

Mon, 19 Mar 2012 12:09:14 -0400

Raising Funds for Clean Safe Water Worldwide:

The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 23:12:00 -0500

The Forgetting Pill Erases Painful Memories:

A possible drug treatment for PTSD:

For example, in a recent experiment, Sacktor and scientists at the Weizmann Institute of Science trained rats to associate the taste of saccharin with nausea (thanks to an injection of lithium). After just a few trials, the rats began studiously avoiding the artificial sweetener. All it took was a single injection of a PKMzeta inhibitor called zeta-interacting protein, or ZIP, before the rats forgot all about their aversion. The rats went back to guzzling down the stuff.

How long is the longest-running lab experiment?

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 17:28:00 -0500

How long is the longest-running lab experiment?:

You can actually watch the longest-running lab experiment in history live on a webcam. Note: it is not as exciting as you might think.

The experiment has been in progress for 85 years:

The pitch-drop experiment—really more of a demonstration—began in 1927 when Thomas Parnell, a physics professor at the University of Queensland in Australia, set out to show his students that tar pitch, a derivative of coal so brittle that it can be smashed to pieces with a hammer, is in fact a highly viscous fluid. It flows at room temperature, albeit extremely slowly. Parnell melted the pitch, poured it into a glass funnel, let it cool (for three years), hung the funnel over a beaker, and waited.

Eight years later, a dollop of the pitch fell from the funnel’s stem. Nine years after that, another long black glob broke into the beaker. Parnell recorded the second drop but did not live to see the third, in 1954. By then, his experiment had been squirreled away in a dusty corner of the physics department.

The Man Who Studies The Fungus Among Us

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 19:01:41 -0500

The Man Who Studies The Fungus Among Us:

A discussion with fungal researcher Nicholas Money about his new book Mushroom.

“As a biologist, there’s so much to revel in, when we really study the fungi,” he tells Fresh Air’s Terry Gross. “This is a fantastic kingdom of microorganisms, and far more interesting than the animals and the plants.”

Science Can Neither Explain Nor Deny the Awesomeness of This Sledding Crow

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 18:01:00 -0500

Science Can Neither Explain Nor Deny the Awesomeness of This Sledding Crow