Monthly Archives: October 2008

Prize Watch

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Don’t forget to be looking out for the other Nobel Prizes announced this week. Monday saw the Physiology or Medicine Prize go to Harald zur Hausen for work on the human papilloma viruses (which cause cervical cancer), and to Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier for work on the human immunodeficiency virus. Announcement and more details here. Meanwhile, today’s Chemistry Prize was to Osamu Shimomura, Martin Chalfie, and Roger Y. Tsien for the discovery and development of the green fluorescent protein, GFP. Details here.

No, no, no. The Chemistry prize was not for the discovery of a substance that’s just pretty and sparkly-glowy. (Although, you know… maybe that is a good reason on its […] Click to continue reading this post →

The 2008 Physics Nobel Prize

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The announcement has been made. It’s for spontaneously broken symmetry in particle physics and it is to Nambu (1/2 – “for the discovery of the mechanism of spontaneous broken symmetry in subatomic physics”) and Kobayashi (1/4) and Maskawa (1/4) (- “for the discovery of the origin of the broken symmetry which predicts the existence of at least three families of quarks in nature”). It’s all about what might be better termed “hidden symmetries” in Nature, showing that the world (the structure of fundamental particle physics, specifically) is in fact much simpler if looked at in the right way. It is a powerful technique that does not just propose what the hidden patterns (symmetries) are, but tells you what the consequences of those patterns are in the form of predictions such that physicists can go out and measure those predictions and verify the existence of those symmetries. In some sense, this type of approach is the driving force behind a lot of fundamental particle physics these days – finding the hidden, simpler structure that lurks under the surface.

Here’s the announcement:

[…] Click to continue reading this post →

An Accurate Summary

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I am, as you have noticed, somewhat averse to writing the political rants you find on a number of the science-oriented blogs you might frequent. As I’ve said before, I try to maintain a place you can visit to get away from the shouty nonsense (or the naive I-drunk-the-KoolAid hero-varnishing for that matter)… but this is hard to resist. Basically, I find myself a bit depressed that things have fallen so far in terms of presidential level politics in this country that a candidate for vice-president, in maybe the most watched debate of the season, can (a) avoid answering questions, (b) explicitly tell the moderator that they are not going to answer the questions, (c) dissolve into obviously prepared talking points when faced with difficult questions, (d) wink repulsively at the TV camera in an obvious attempt to appear likeable, and (e) make up random stuff so as to get their opponent to waste time denying it, and be declared by everyone as having done well in the debate. I did not think that we could sink lower than Bush the Younger in terms of appallingly bad candidates (who nevertheless do well in this climate), but I think I was wrong. Ok. That’s all I’m saying. I was pleased to see* a precise summary of my thoughts on Sarah Palin’s performance and so I’ll leave you with it, for your amusement (see a post accompanying it here):


sarah palin debate flowchart

-cvj

*Thanks Nick W! Click to continue reading this post →

Tales From The Industry XXIV – Equation Wrangler

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I’m sitting in one of my favourite cafes (Groundwork at Cahuenga) after a couple of hours work with some filmmakers. I’ve mentioned them to you before, you may recall. Eric Salat and Philip Shane are making what is gearing up to be a really fantastic documentary. I’m still not sure whether I’m supposed to talk about the content just yet, and so I won’t be to specific. As I mentioned before they are really trying to tell the science story in some depth. They’re illustrating the development of an idea, the wrong turns, the frustrations, the moments of elation, depression, and everything that goes into the process of doing the sort of work we do. And here, “everything” includes the confrontation of the ideas with the elation of seeing the success of a long struggle to understand Nature. I’ve spent some time chatting with Eric and Phil about the physics ideas, as have other scientists, and I have a good sense that they are so keen to tell the story well, and give the science and the scientific process a chance to shine – something that can often get neglected in some of these shows.

What was I doing today? […] Click to continue reading this post →

The Beet Goes On…

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Tomorrow I’ll be doing something a bit unusual, I’ve heard. I’ll be writing lots of equations (so far so normal), but I’ll be doing it on a stage and will be filmed doing it. Should be fun. It’s for an educational TV show that’ll be out some time soon. Will tell you more when I know more. My task later on is to figure out which equations they’d like on camera. It’s been a long day, so I thought I’d sit here with some camomile tea and blog a bit first.

It’s been a while since we’ve been to the kitchen together, hasn’t it? Let me tell you about Monday’s special dish. I was invited by a friend to go to their house and join some others for a Rosh Hashanah gathering. The instruction was to “bring a side dish of your choosing”. Excellent. Well, I’m out of figs now (the main tree has run out of them after a remarkable season), and so could not rely on that. The big problem was really that on Monday I teach until 7:00pm (ugh), and I’d have to go home first to get the food. I certainly could not rely on being able to cook a meal and take it immediately since I’d have about 15 minutes to make everything and get it to my friend’s place. So I needed something good, but something simple and fast.

For some reason I decided on oranges. I don’t really know why. I thought I might do something with oranges, sliced, and then maybe some fresh mint from my garden […] Click to continue reading this post →