Finding Your Way

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Here’s a map of science*!

map of science

map of science keyThe work, by Richard Klavans and Kevin Boyack, shows aspects of the connectivity of relations between scientific disciplines (colour key to the left), based on analysis of about 1.6 million scientific articles. Rather pretty isn’t it? And, yes, of course, very interesting to see the connectivity visualized like that.

Please visit their website to see how to visually slice all of this to highlight areas of the map by (a limited selection of) countries, regions, institutions, blue vs red state (!), etc.

There’s more information about the relationships in this Seed article, where there’s a Click to continue reading this post →

Barbed

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agent takes questionWhile listening this morning to President Bush splutter and stumble his way through a bunch of mostly softball questions from the press at the Whitehouse (as usual), I was put in mind of this recent excellent Onion article, entitled “Heroic Secret Service Agent Takes Question Intended For Bush”.

It’s brilliantly funny. There’s analysis of the event, interviews, etc.

Have a read.

-cvj

The First Green Shoots of Recovery?

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From the BBC*, I learned that there’s been an unexpected turn around in science education in the UK:

The latest statistics from the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service on applications to join full-time degree courses, show double-figure percentage rises compared with the same time last year for physics, chemistry, mathematics, engineering and technology.

The speculations have begun:

While admission officers admit that they are baffled by this sudden and unexpected surge in interest, many secondary school and university tutors are convinced this is a result of long hard work by many working our education system.

“We really make a point of doing fun, practical things with all pupils when it comes to the sciences,” said Richard West, the head of science and physics at St Peter’s Collegiate School in Wolverhampton.

“We are encouraging after school science activities like astronomy and animal clubs and taking part in national competitions.”

Various other possible reasons are discussed as well, such as:
Click to continue reading this post →

Cyrus Chestnut Rocks and Rolls

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Sunday night, after a long afternoon of intense work in the garden (digging holes and improving soil for planting new budlea plants, standing on the tall ladder for trimming one of the tall palm trees, and more) I went to the Jazz Bakery to see the second set of pianist Cyrus Chestnut with his trio (Dezron Douglas on bass and Neal Smith on drums):

cyrus chestnut

They were excellent. As usual, there was hardly any audience for this extremely talented pianist (20 of us max?) – the triple whammy of (1) Los Angeles – people just seldom seem to make the effort, in great numbers (2) after 10:00pm in LA – see (1), and (3) Sunday night – see (1) again. The club would have been packed, were this taking place in New York, or London. Anyway, not my loss, I suppose, although it does take away a bit from such an event if the crowd is depleted like that. Musicians often feed off the crowd’s responses. In any case, it was an excellent show, as I said. Unexpectedly, they interspersed various standards with some recently reharmonized Click to continue reading this post →

Namesake

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the namesakeSaturday night, after a quick trip to catch the end of a pleasant reception down at the Santa Monica Art Studios (they’re featuring a new set of artists), I went to the Arclight (hurrah! – it’s been a while) and saw a quite wonderful film: Mira Nair’s “The Namesake”.

I laughed and cried in turn at the joy and the sadness of it. It’s a very simple film about so many key things, explored marvelously: Family, home, leaving home, leaving your country, loss of family, love, loneliness, joy, togetherness, parents, children, youth, age, aging…

I thoroughly enjoyed it. Mira Nair has done it again, and the performances are wonderful, too. The film grabs you and tugs you in within the first few seconds of the start, engages you with great characters, and holds you close right through the end.

-cvj

Best Of The Day

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So far today, the three best April Fool’s Day jokes I’ve heard or read have been as follows:

  • On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, they had a good piece about new regulation to limit mobile phone ring tones in New York:

    mobile phoneThe city’s Center for Reduction of Noise Pollution issued a public call to action last month, citing an increased number of confrontations spawned by a new phenomenon: It’s called “ring rage,” and it involves strangers getting into fights over obnoxious cell phone ringtones.

    David Yassky, a member of the New York City Council for the 33rd District in Brooklyn, has proposed a bill to regulate cell phone rings.

    Distracting ringtones in the workplace cost the economy more than $1.2 billion each year, says Yassky. His bill mandates that New York residents choose between four more palatable rings, custom-made by the city.

    The audio of the interview is here (along with the funny ringtones). NPR almost completely ruined the idea by being too obvious (you could almost hear them going “eh!?”, “eh!?”, after every sentence), not choosing a credible-sounding interviewee as the main subject, and then immediately reminding you of the date at the end of the interview. Are they afraid people will sue? It’s such a shame they had to be so obvious.

    • Much better was the following:
    Click to continue reading this post →

Hummers

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hummingbirds

I mean the good type of Hummers: Hummingbirds! (Some types of which are already visiting the garden even though the flowers they like are most not ready yet. One of my Budlea plants died – from the frosts I think – and another is ill. I expect to get three more of them from the market this week. The hummingbirds like them (butterflies love them), although they prefer the Mexican Sage plants which are right Click to continue reading this post →

End Notes

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Well, it’s Friday, and the end of the week of standard work days, although not of course the end of the working week. I’m sure I do not speak only for myself when I say that this job does not really get switched off at a specific time every day (as you’ve seen), and it certainly is not contained to any specific days of the week. But I do scale things back quite a bit on Saturdays and Sundays and try to focus more on other things in my life (there are exceptional circumstances, of course). So this will be the last in this short series of “day in the life” posts describing my work day. (The last one was here. You can find all the others listed at the bottom.)

  • 8:30am Finally I managed to get a lie-in! Unfortunately this is probably due to poor sleeping due to the fact that I accidentally fell asleep with the radio on (with no sleep function set) and so my entire night was full of the BBC and NPR. Getting ready this morning I realize that every story on NPR is familiar because I probably heard it at 4:00am already. I have poor reception in my bedroom, and so I listen to the radio over the web on a computer. It did not go to sleep, since the radio streaming keeps it active. If I want to fall asleep listening to something, I usually overcome this shortcoming by listening to a podcast, but this time I did not get to starting it before I dozed off. Anyway, tea, cornmeal porridge, coffee. No shirt ironing as I don’t need to be terribly professorial-looking today, much (see below).

    I’ll be in semi-stealth mode again today (like Wednesday), in order to focus on research matters, but only semi. Again, I’ve avoided scheduling any meetings today (except one – see below). Although I do not leave for work, I settle down to dealing with various administrative matters. This starts with emails about next week’s colloquium, a future colloquium, and things of that nature. Also check blog, and add entries and begin to clean up the post about yesterday for later appearance.

  • 10:00am – 12:00pm Basically a mixture of reading some more research papers, some more email exchanges about next week’s colloquium, and reading the research blog in preparation for the meeting with the team later today.
  • 12:15pm. A bit panicked again since I do not have any idea how it got so late! Need to shower, dress, make a sandwich, pack my bag and get to campus by 1:00pm. And it normally takes me 45 minutes if I’m lucky with the buses.
  • 12:30pm. Now leaving home. Decided that the bus is not the way to go in view Click to continue reading this post →

Thursday Notes

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Continuing the week, here’s Thursday:

  • 6:45am Look out the window toward the sun. Another lovely day seems to be starting, at least with regards the weather. Next hour and a half is spent on similar things to the last three days. Go back and look at the earlier posts (listed at bottom). Except cinnamon-raisin bagel with cream cheese and cherry jam instead of oatmeal, in case you were wondering.
  • 8:15am Not quite ready (shower time warp –see earlier– and other things delayed me), but have 9:00am meeting and should have left by now. Should *just* be able to make it if I’m lucky with the bus, but send quick email to tell the person I’m meeting with I might be ten minutes late.
  • 8:32am I made the bus after all. Saw that other faculty member who rides to the bus stop as I passed her on my way and waved. She made a sort of “Nih!” noise of either recognition or surprise or both. I even took a gamble on the bus and jumped off bike, got newspaper from vending machine (thereby missing a cycle of the lights) and got back into the traffic. Always good to have a bit of derring-do in the morning.

    I really only get the LA Times on Thursdays, with any regularity. Mostly because I like the Weekend section, which has listings of events coming up, and some interesting feature article or two about some LA thing or person or other. They’ve been interesting to me more often than not, on balance. Not always hugely interesting, but enough for a good 25 minutes read on the bus. The Home section can be good too. So I get it just in case there’s something good. Indeed, it pays off, and there are some good things. I’ll point two of them out in some later blog posts, I hope.

  • 9:00am Meet with a bright and enthusiastic student who wants to do a Click to continue reading this post →

Notes from Stealth Mode

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Continuing, here’s a short notebook on Wednesday.

  • 6:45am A tad annoying that I woke up at this time. I deliberately did not set the alarm so that I could have a bit of a lie-in. Of course, my system woke me up at the usual time anyway. Similar morning ritual to last two times (yes, oatmeal again since I’ve run out of cinnamon-raisin bagels), but no shirt-ironing was involved. I’ve decided to be in stealth mode for most of the day, which means stay entirely away from the campus and work at home.
  • 8:15am Decide to first tinker a bit with the Tuesday diary post. Turns into a bit more of an epic than I intended. Tinker with it and catch up on email for an hour or so.
  • 9:30am Start reading one of the papers I planned to read today. It’s an excellent one from the early 90s by Greg Moore. I’d never appreciated it back Click to continue reading this post →

A Fair Cop

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RibenaSoon time to sign up to help judge the California State Science Fair. I hope I can make it. Just to reassure you that not every entry is another trebuchet (just the physics, mechanics, etc., section and you’ll know what I mean), here’s a story about two schoolgirls from New Zealand, Jenny Suo and Anna Devathasan, who decided to test the claims of GlaxoSmithKline that their product – cartoned ready-to-drink Ribena – has high Vitamin C content. They set out to show that cheaper drinks were less healthy than Ribena, and found to their surprise that there were only trace amounts of Vitamin C at best.

I’m a bit shocked by this since I love Ribena, and grew up with it for years. I seem to remember that some of the largest writing on the packaging is about the huge amount of Vitamin C that you’re going to get. Admittedly, it’s not the vitamin C aspect that attracted me to it, of course -I just love the taste! But all the same, it’s a bit disappointing….

From an article by Mike Steere*:
Click to continue reading this post →

Not all Noteworthy

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Continuing, this was the Tuesday:

  • 6:45am… Get up and look outside. Huh. Super clear and sunny. Unexpected, after yesterday. Cup of tea. Check email (delete 30 spams). Look at blog. Slow steady getting ready ritual while listening to NPR: Oatmeal again today, coffee for bike bag and journey in, sandwich for lunch…ironing a shirt…
  • 7:50am Have five-minute shower.
  • 8:05am Get out of shower. Aarrrrrgh! This is one the great mysteries we must solve concerning time, space, life, the universe. There’s nothing in Einstein’s GR about this: Why, when you go into a shower and spend five minutes – in your frame of reference – has 15 or 20 minutes passed by in the outside world?!
  • 8:17am Having gone from leisurely pace to frantic (since I have a 9:00am meeting) I leave home muttering something like “show me the meaning of haste” to the B as I point it toward the bus stop. (As usual, I make a mental note to not turn the haste into a misstep, so I go along my cycle route with purpose, but not abandon. I should make the bus that leaves about 8:27 or so.
  • 8:32am I did. On the bus I plan a future lecture for the string theory course about the role of various dualities in understanding strings. This is from both an historical and physical perspective. The history is interesting, but I’m also keen to present various physics perspectives to give a clear platform to help the younglings see further than what has been seen before. Yes. I said younglings. I know, it was deliberate, because it just sounds so silly.
  • 9:00am Technically this is on the the office hours for the E&M course, but nobody every shows up since (a) It is not the day when, or day before a Click to continue reading this post →

Married to the Physics?

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Well, it starts out:

When physicists marry physicists, the beginning may be a ‘big bang,’ but issues of life, love, and family gravitate toward the universal.

reider hahn wedding cakeOk. Stop there. That’s way too many physics puns and double entendre in one sentence. It’s a nice article by Mike Perricone in Symmetry magazine about physics couples. Physicists who marry physicists.

Physics, families, careers, children… it’s all in there. Have a read.

Best of all, perhaps, there’s this wedding cake to the left, which is just – Wow! (Click for larger view. More in the article itself.) I wonder what my mum will think of this? She makes cakes – wonderful ones, and can decorate them with flowers and leaves made of sugar. But I’m pretty sure that she has not tried equations of any sort.

-cvj

(Thanks Sara T!)

Notes From the Day

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The other day (some weeks ago now) I started a sort of “day in the life” post, to give you more of an idea of what a typical day was like at work (and maybe also a bit at play). Somehow I never finished it, and then I looked at it a while later and could not remember the rest of the day, and so just deleted it.

I’ve decided to do something different. There really is no typical day. So I will try to do a series of days instead. Of course, I’m not going to have tine to sit and do a long, detailed entry about these days, and so instead I’ll just do a sort of sketchy notebook, with some time stamps. From time to time during the day I’ll stop in and add to it, and then post the whole thing at the end of the day before going to sleep. I won’t include all details (I’ll spare you bathroom breaks, personal grooming, and things of that nature, you’ll be pleased to know), but will try to give you some impressions of how the day goes. If people are interested (and people did ask for such a “day in the life post” before), I might try to do them more frequently. But for now, I’ll try and do one for each day of this week. Average over them to get the typical day.

So here goes.

Well, this work week really started on Sunday night.

  • 11:15 – 11:48 pm (Sun): Thinking about structure of E&M course. When to set the next midterm (we agreed that the previously announced date was too soon). Also thought about what homeworks to set for the last part of electromagnetic waves in dispersive media, and though wave guides. Sent email to whole class about this.
  • 12:30am (Monday) After reading a random entry or two at the ever-brilliant Girls Are Pretty blog (e.g. here), I fall asleep listening to podcast of the BBC’s wonderful Broadcasting House (radio 4). I still miss the excellent Eddie Mair, but this new guy seems pretty good.
  • 7:15am (Monday) (Later rising today since it is Monday and I don’t have any early appointments and I try to get a good night’s sleep when I can.) Over cup of tea, read email. Delete about 30 spam messages that have arrived overnight. I note the kind letter from Dean X at institution Y acknowledging receipt of the long detailed letter in support of a promotion for candidate Z, and thanking me. Good that he/she did that. Took a good chunk of Friday and Sunday afternoon to write that epic.
  • 7:45am Not in a rush to go in yet, I have a longer breakfast – cooked some Click to continue reading this post →