Scientific computing in Python. Scientific computing in Python is expanding and maturing rapidly. Last week at the SciPy 2015 conference there were about twice as many people as when I’d last gone to the conference in 2013. You can get some idea of the rapid develop of the scientific Python stack and its future direction by watching the final keynote of the conference by Jake VanderPlas. I used Python for a while before I discovered that there were so many Python libraries for scientific computing. At the time I was considering learning Ruby or some other scripting language, but I committed to Python when I found out that Python has far more libraries for the kind of work I do than other languages do. It felt like I’d discovered a secret hoard of code. I expect it would be easier today to discover the scientific Python stack. (It really is becoming more of an integrated stack, not just a collection of isolated libraries.
One of the drawbacks of Python, relative to C++ and related languages, is speed. Deep Stuff sur Twitter : "Neuroscientists decipher brain’s noisy code #science... Neuroscientists decipher brain’s noisy code. By analyzing the signals of individual neurons in animals undergoing behavioral tests, neuroscientists at Rice University, Baylor College of Medicine, the University of Geneva and the University of Rochester have deciphered the code the brain uses to make the most of its inherently “noisy” neuronal circuits.
The human brain contains about 100 billion neurons, and each of these sends signals to thousands of other neurons each second. Understanding how neurons work, both individually and collectively, is important to better understand how humans think, as well as to treat neurological and psychiatric disorders like Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, autism, epilepsy, schizophrenia, depression, traumatic brain injury and paralysis. “If the brain could always count on receiving the same sensory response to the same stimulus, it would have an easier time,” said neuroscientist Xaq Pitkow, lead author of a new study this week in Neuron. Featured Image: Xaq Pitkow. Deep Stuff sur Twitter : "Building a Brain #science...
Building a brain. The plight of the postdocs: Academia and mental health. This is the story of a friend of a friend, a man by name Francis who took his life at age 34. Francis had been struggling with manic depression through most of his years as a postdoc in theoretical physics. It is not a secret that short-term contracts and frequent moves are the norm in this area of research, but rarely do we spell out the toll it takes one our mental health. In fact, most of my tenured colleagues who profit from cheap and replaceable postdocs praise the virtue of the nomadic lifestyle which, so we are told, is supposed to broaden our horizon. But the truth is that moving is a necessary, though not sufficient, condition to build your network. It isn’t about broadening your horizon, it’s to make the contacts for which you are later being bought in. I didn’t know Francis personally, and I would never have heard of him if it wasn’t for the acknowledgements in Oliver Roston’s recent paper: The main reason I’m still here is that I’m by nature a loner.
Yes, I was lucky. Scientific American sur Twitter : "Archaeologists take wrong turn and discover world's oldest stone tools: #science @sciamblogs. Archaeologists Take Wrong Turn, Find World’s Oldest Stone Tools. The views expressed are those of the author and are not necessarily those of Scientific American. Archaeologists have found 3.3 million-year-old stone tools at the site of Lomekwi 3 on the western shores of Lake Turkana (green) in Kenya. Image: via Wikimedia Commons SAN FRANCISCO–Archaeologists working in the Kenyan Rift Valley have discovered the oldest known stone tools in the world. Dated to around 3.3 million years ago, the implements are some 700,000 years older than stone tools from Ethiopia that previously held this distinction.
They are so old, in fact, that they predate the earliest fossils representing our genus, Homo, by half a million years. As such they suggest that stone tool manufacture began not with Homo, but with a more primitive member of the human family. A happy accident led to the discovery of the ancient tools. “The cores and flakes we recovered are clearly knapped and are not the result of accidental or natural rock fracture,” Harmand said. Lucy’s Baby. Neuroscience: The brain, interrupted. Illustration: Paddy Mills Fabienne never found out why she went into labour three months too early.
But on a quiet afternoon in June 2007, she was hit by accelerating contractions and was rushed to the nearest hospital in rural Switzerland, near Lausanne. When her son, Hugo, was born at 26 weeks of gestation rather than the typical 40, he weighed just 950 grams and was immediately placed in intensive care. Three days later, doctors told Fabienne that ultrasound pictures of Hugo's brain indicated that he had had a severe haemorrhage from his immature blood vessels. “I just exploded into tears,” she says.
Both she and her husband understood that the prognosis for Hugo was grim: he had a very high risk of cerebral palsy, a neurological condition that can lead to a life of severe disability. The couple agreed that they did not want to subject their child to that. That is just half the story. Early birthday Prematurity — also called pre-term birth — is extremely common. Source: H. FusionQuest sur Twitter : "Under the umbrella @PPPLab's #NSTXU. #FirstPlasma2015 #Fusion #Energy #Science #Plasma. NSTX-U Press Kit. How to read a scientific paper – if you’re not a scientist | UNder the C. If you don’t use phrases like heteroscedasticity, dynamic convection, or quantitative polymerase chain reaction in your everyday life, join the club.
I don’t either. But words like these can make scientific articles seem abstract and inaccessible. Have no fear, dear readers, I am here to tell you that you too can enjoy the pleasure derived from a leisurely skimming of the latest in the Annual Review of Fluid Mechanics. Just kidding, I don’t know anyone who likes to read scientific articles for fun on a daily basis. 1) The Abstract is your friend.
I won’t claim to do this, but I think it’s pretty common discuss a paper having read only its abstract. 2) Skip the Methods section. Unless you already know a little bit about whatever the science is you’re reading about, this probably isn’t going to do anything for you. 3) Study the figures. Unless the paper’s topic is already pretty familiar, the Results and Discussion sections might be a little hard to understand. 4) Read the conclusion.
157 – Fusion at ITER | omega tau. This episode is about ITER, the international project to build an experimental fusion plant in southern France. While on vacation in that area, I had the opportunity to visit the site and talk to Richard Pitts about many aspects of the project. We focus mostly on the physics and the engineering challenges, but also address some of the organizational aspects of this huge scientific project. Note that this episode is essentially a continuation of omega tau 022 – Nuclear Fusion at MPI für Plasmaphysik; I recommend to listen to this episode first, if you haven’t done so yet. Just when we published this episode, Lockheed Martin published some news of a breakthrough in fusion technology. So we ask Richard what he thinks about this. Below is his reponse. Please note that this is his personal opinion and not an official statement or position of ITER: The answer I have for you is that I have no idea because no science is discussed in the articles we have seen.
A star INSIDE a star: Scientists discover neutron star within a supergiant 200,000 light-years from Earth | Daily Mail Online. Astronomers have found a strange hybrid star using a telescope in ChileThe so-called Thorne-Żytkow object consists of a neutron star that was swallowed by a much larger red supergiantSuch objects were first predicted to exist in 1975 by astronomers Dr Kip Thorne and Dr Anna ŻytkowThey are thought to occur when a neutron star collides with a red supergiant and is absorbedThe exact process by which this happens though is not well understoodHV 2112, the object that was found, is 200,000 light-years away By Jonathan O'Callaghan for MailOnline Published: 16:08 GMT, 17 September 2014 | Updated: 19:12 GMT, 17 September 2014 In 1975 astronomers Dr Kip Thorne and Dr Anna Żytkow predicted the existence of a star within a star, dubbed a Thorne-Żytkow object.
They suggested one would form when a neutron star collided with a supergiant, being swallowed inside its huge companion. Astronomers have found a strange double star using a telescope in Chile. Source: nasa.gov. Orion's Arm - Encyclopedia Galactica - Muna Kipasi Incident. 10 Physics Facts About Summer | Perimeter Institute. Middle East and North Africa focus group report by SciDev.Net. In praise of early independence. Many factors influence success in a science career. Hard work, ambition, flair, and luck played a role in the success of Tim Hunt, who won a share of the 2001 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine (along with Leland Hartwell and Paul Nurse) for his discovery of cyclins, key regulators of the cell cycle. We caught up with Hunt—now a group leader emeritus at the Clare Hall Laboratories of Cancer Research UK's London Research Institute—during Postdoc Day at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine.
Hunt's career demonstrates the importance of two additional success factors: playfulness and early independence. This interview was edited for brevity and clarity. Q:After a Ph.D. at the University of Cambridge, you did a postdoc at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. “You must somehow get independent when you are really young, and take responsibility.” Q:You stood by your results when they were controversial. Q:Can young scientists nowadays work as independent postdocs?
A:I think so. Witter / ? 31 Essential Science Fiction Terms And Where They Came From. Hesgen : Today is National Women in ... National Women in Engineering Day (NWED) | Women's Engineering Society. National Women in Engineering Day - 23 June 2014 - a day dedicated to raising the profile and celebrating the achievements of women in engineering. Get involved and help create as many events and opportunities as possible to spread the word that engineering offers as many opportunites for women as men.
Simply organise an event on o r around this day. Have a look at the NWED website for further details and to see all of the events. This page contains advice and links to access more information that you can also download as a pdf at the bottom of the page: Overview of NWEDEventsPress informationHow to get involved? Advice for schools, universities, companies, PEIs and other organisationsHow to find a woman engineer to speakFeedback form for event organisersFeedback form for event participantsEvent notification formStickers and logosUseful StatisticsCareers information We suggest organisers get as much publicity for their events as possible, to get ‘engineering’ and ‘girls’ (or women!) S. James Gates Jr.: A Story in Science. Marie et Pierre Curie.
PUBLIC LECTURE SERIES | Perimeter Institute. Behind the Scenes of the Universe: From the Higgs to Dark Matter Dr. Gianfranco Bertone, University of Amsterdam WEDNESDAY, May 7, 2014 AT 7:00PM Waterloo collegiate institute - 300 hazel st. waterloo The Universe is filled with an unknown, elusive substance that is fundamentally different from anything we have ever seen with our telescopes or measured in our laboratories. It is called dark matter, and identifying its nature constitutes one of the most pressing challenges of modern science.
Gianfranco Bertone is an Associate Professor at the University of Amsterdam, where he investigates topics at the interface between Particle Physics and Cosmology. Tickets Available Online MONDAY April 21 at 9:00 am. NOTE: Max of 2 tickets may be ordered per account Public Lectures are held at Waterloo Collegiate Institute. PLEASE NOTE: Tickets are available online starting at 9:00 am on the specified date and sell out very quickly. 4 Things Science Fiction Needs to Bring Back. It's tempting to look around at today's literary scene, with its Twilight and its Fifty Shades of Grey, and wonder if we shouldn't just flush the whole goddamn concept of written language down the toilet -- maybe start again with some sort of hybrid colorwheel/odor system for communicating thoughts. Strangely, the one genre thriving in the swamp of modern literature seems to be science fiction.
It's kind of appropriate, actually: All of our crazy high technology has made publishing and distributing books about crazy high technology much more approachable and widespread than ever. But even the best works could stand to learn a little something from the past, so here are a few things that I miss about old science fiction, and would like to see come back. Note: You know I'm probably going to whore the newest and final episode of my science fiction serial novel, Rx - Episode 3: Industry, up in this piece, right? This is something we authors must do. . #4. The Optimism Getty #3. Getty. iLogPi : (WIMP) #DarkMatter detection... Research on interstellar physics and Galactic center activity, based on space radio spectroscopy. Experiment. Twitter. Images of Big Bang experiments inside particle accelerators at CERN.
Dirac Lecture 3 (of 4) - Magnetic Monopoles. 9 Reasons Why Running A Science Blog Is Good For You. What If Science Fiction Were Boringly Real? In surprise advance announcement, 2013 Nobel Prize in physics awarded to Higgs boson | The Curious Wavefunction. A proton-proton collision which may or may not produce the Higgs boson (Image: Wikipedia Commons) In a stunning and premature decision that is a first in the 113 year history of the august institution, the Nobel Prize Committee in Stockholm today announced the awarding of the 2013 Nobel prize for Physics to the Higgs Boson. Originally scheduled for October 8, the announcement instead came more than a week in advance. The change in date was guarded with the same secrecy that has always guarded the nominations for the coveted prize. The award has sparked immediate and intense controversy and speculation, both because of its premature announcement and because of the highly unconventional nature of the recipient.
According to Prof. The Higgs boson thus becomes the first particle, and the first non-human entity, to be awarded the Nobel Prize in any field. The seven human candidates (five theorists and two experimentalists) have had mixed reactions to the surprise announcement. Limpkin's blog. Diy Physics Blog - Experimental Modern and Quantum Physics for Do-It-Yourself Science Enthusiasts. Can We Resolve Quantum Paradoxes by Stepping Out of Space and Time? [Guest Post] | Critical Opalescence. Next month will be the 100th anniversary of Bohr’s model of the atom, one of the foundations of the theory of quantum mechanics. And look where we are now: we still don’t know what the darned theory really means. One of the most radical interpretations (which is saying something) has got to be the so-called Transactional Interpretation, whereby particles send a type of signal backward in time.
This past fall, University of Maryland philosopher Ruth Kastner published a book that tries to make sense of it. I’ve invited her to guide us through it. In the June issue of Scientific American, physicist and writer Hans Christian von Baeyer describes the current state of “deep confusion about the meaning of quantum theory” and discusses one proposal—a denial that the theory describes anything objectively real—for rendering some of the quantum perplexities “less troubling.” Cramer’s original version of the interpretation, although promising, did not receive widespread acceptance. How to Build the World’s Simplest Particle Detector | Critical Opalescence. In about 10 minutes, using stuff you probably already have lying around your house, you can watch atomic nuclei and elementary particles for yourself using a diffusion cloud chamber—a rudimentary particle detector.
There are lots of websites and YouTube videos giving step-by-step instructions to build such a chamber, but all require some component that’s hard to come by, such as dry ice or a high-voltage power source. I’ve gotten around that by merging a cooling technique devised by Canadian high-school student Olivia Donovan with the chamber designed by Australian particle physicist and science communicator Suzie Sheehy. It’s not super-great as a cloud chamber, but it definitely reveals particles whizzing through it. You’ll need the following: spongerubbing alcohol (92%)clear plastic cuptapeblack construction paperfoil cupcake linerblu-tackfoil trayair duster (one of those spray cans you use to blow crumbs off computer keyboards)bright LED flashlight YMMV, so play around.
How to Build Your Own Quantum Entanglement Experiment, Part 1 (of 2) | Critical Opalescence. Blending Art and Science › From The Lab Bench. 'Holographic Duality' Hints at Hidden Subatomic World | Wired Science.