Nobel Prize in Physics 2010

Wow! For Graphene! Excellent:

The announcement:

nobel_picture_physics_2010The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences has decided to award the Nobel Prize in Physics for 2010 to Andre Geim (University of Manchester, UK) and Konstantin Novoselov (University of Manchester, UK) “for groundbreaking experiments regarding the two-dimensional material graphene”

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Quark Constituents

quark_cheeseNoticed this on the shelves in a supermarket yesterday. (I was hunting for clotted cream, but that’s another story.) I can’t recall if I’ve known before that “quark” was also a kind of cheese.

I suspect that this might have potentially amusing physics joke uses in the future.

To further my education, I looked up quark cheese on Wikipedia. All very interesting. […] Click to continue reading this post

ArtWalk Saved?

Hmm. Well, after the kerfuffle of before, it seems that some people have got together and raised money to keep the monthly Art Walk going! So there will apparently be one this month after all, with certain aspects modified. Hurrah! In other news, the group that has broken off to set up a quarterly one that makes it all more about the art (after the shocking! (not) revelation! that the Art Walk had stopped being about […]

So, looks like a win for everyone. More people enjoying community and connection (whether they come for art, or just to hang out and connect) on the streets of downtown LA. Not seeing a downside here.

-cvj Click to continue reading this post

Soft Lights

p-1600-641-b0c2b19c-c025-46ff-bc2f-11db94b9158e.jpegIt has been a quiet week here on the blog, and there are many reasons for this. They are mostly all to do with me having a very busy week at work and at play. Work has seen a great deal on the usual fronts of teaching, research, and service, and I’ve also made some progress on The Project. Play has been good, varied, valuable and constructive.

Right now, I’m popping off to bed to get some sleep before getting up to go over to UCLA for the second day of the Southern California Strings Seminar. Today, day one, was excellent.

I will be giving you an update on various aspects of all those above things shortly, but right now I will leave you with a moody photo of some strings of lights at the Edison, that bar downtown I sometimes mention here. I had an excellent evening down there on Thursday night.

-cvj
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