Tales From The Industry, IX

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Friday saw me involved in the shooting of two more segments for a television show. Seems that the ones from last time did not work out too badly, so the program makers wanted to do more. Hurrah!

Friday shoot

This session was also a lot of fun, and one of the segments (especially) could end up being a particularly good example of getting a good chunk of a whole science story – showing the actual processes involved in doing science – on TV, er, depending upon how it is edited, of course. This is one of the major reasons that I do this sort of thing. At least as important (in my opinion) as talking, as I also sometimes do, to the press about the fancier things we do (perhaps involving the origin of mass, and whether the universe may or may not have extra dimensions, etc) is the process of getting involved with people in the media (the “Industry”) to help them bring the foundations and cornerstones of science to a general audience. No fancy stuff, just the basic but ever so important connection between the physical world around them and simple scientific reasoning. This achieves some very important things, which I bet will last longer in a person’s mind and everyday life than Click to continue reading this post →

A Tasty Phase Diagram?

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I love making pies. I perfected my current pie-making technique when I was a graduate student in Southampton. I was in a rented house with four other students, and the house had a splendid apple tree in the back garden. I could not bear to see them all go to waste when it was in full crop. So I made apple pies. Lots of them.

A crucial part of the process of making a good pie is the making of the pastry that will constitute the crust. Very important indeed, unless you are cheating and buying a ready-made crust, in which case you are not making a pie any more – the actual work has been done for you. (Ok, sure, go ahead – shout at me…)

Well, I don’t need to do one of my long cooking posts about this just yet, since the Lab Lemming is concerned about these issues too, I noticed, and has gone to the trouble of preparing what looks like a careful study of the process (including the pitfalls) just in time for the beginning of the primary pie-making season (Thanksgiving, etc…). Here’s a phase diagram from that discussion, which made me laugh quite a bit:

pie crust phases

Here’s a bit of the discussions below it, to whet your appetite…

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The Lion’s Share

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Remember the Orionids? Well, it is the turn of the Leonids, this Saturday and Sunday (although those are just the peak days). These comets are the result of us passing through the debris left by comet Tempel-Tuttle. The peak will be on the 19th November…. Viewing and other information here (Armagh Observatory), here (a NASA site), and here, from Gary W. Kronk’s site (as is the diagram below). Here’s a nice Space.com article by Joe Rao.

There is expected to be quite a spike in the viewing rate this year… enhanced by a factor of ten to maybe as many as 100 or 200 per hour. This is for the lucky viewers in Western Europe (and the British Isles 🙂 ), North Western Africa, North Eastern USA and Eastern Canada, Click to continue reading this post →

Further Information on Dark Energy

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So the press conference is over. I did not listen to it, but the gist of it, from the press release, seems to be that they’ve observed several more supernovae to pin down even more accurately what the universe’s expansion rate was at very early times (up to nine or ten billion years ago). Image below from their site:

supernovae from hubble

From the site, we learn (for background):

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Less In The Dark Than Before?

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From NASA, tomorrow, at 1:00pm EST: An announcement about Dark Energy. If the pattern of last time is to be followed, there must be new evidence from the space telescope team (represented by Riess and Livio at the press conference) in favour of one interpretation or another. Since they are saying that they will “announce the Click to continue reading this post →

Out of Step, Out of Arguments and Out of Time

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Those are the words of Kofi Annan at the UN conference on Climate Change earlier today (see AP story by Charles Hanley). His speech emphasized the “frightening lack of leadership” in forming strategies for how to tackle the huge task that lies ahead for our planet with regards emissions. Getting the job done here of course means us realigning our entire global culture’s priorities, taking our eyes off short term gain and looking to prospects for the future. The typical stance of the current US government that strong emissions controls (and treaties to enforce them, such as the Kyoto protocol) will hurt economies is one example of the short-sightedness that we are up against. Their delegates at the conference continue to reject arguments such as Click to continue reading this post →

We’re Not Doomed

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video gamerUSC has launched a Bachelor’s degree in video games. I know what you’re thinking. Stop it! No, civilisation is not doomed. (Image on right grabbed from Chip Chick). In fact, this could be rather wonderful, as it will create the opportunity to develop the potential of this medium in so many wonderful ways. It will not be about kids sitting there blowing up stuff and shooting up people. Why do I say this?

I remind you that in 1929 USC founded the first film school (at least in the USA)…. I imagine that people turned up their noses at this. Film is now recognized as a major art form, and a powerful tool for education and expression, with USC continuing to lead the pack in educating artists, visionaries and technicians in that area, feeding the local Industry and well beyond.

Doing a degree in film or movie-making (or “The Cinematic Arts”, as we are supposed Click to continue reading this post →

When Chaos Goes Quantum

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Mark SrednickiNot many Mondays ago we had a Departmental Colloquium here at USC entitled “Quantum Chaos and the Foundations of Statistical Mechanics”, by Mark Srednicki, of UCSB.

This was a double treat for me, since I’ve known Mark since my days in Santa Barbara, and remember many happy lunchtimes sitting at lunch with him overlooking the lagoon talking about everything from physics to Bablyon 5. That was during those truly amazing days of being a postdoc in string theory at the time when D-brane technology was turning the field upside down, and a lot of the torque needed for this was being generated right there in Santa Barbara, sometimes in lunchtime conversations. I was reminiscing about those days just a week before in Cambridge, having run into Karl Landsteiner and Roberto Emparan, two other postdocs from those fantastic times. The reason for us all being in Cambridge was to attend the Andrew Chamblin memorial conference, which I told you about in an earlier post. Andrew was also a postdoc there, around the same time as us, and we rapidly forged the good friendships that you’ve read about in a number of earlier posts linked from the previous link.

Mark used to tell me a bit about Quantum Chaos back then too, and I found it interesting, but always wanted to hear the story laid out properly, and to hear what he Click to continue reading this post →

More Uncertainty

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walt disney concert hallYou may recall the very successful event called “Uncertainty”, back at the end of August. I blogged about it here and here, among other places.

Well it is time for the second one in the series. Recall that it is part of the Provost’s Visions and Voices series, which has been running since August, with a huge program of events of all sorts.

Here are some words about the event:
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Better To Burn Out, Or To Fade Away?

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On the site Space.com, I found a nice article by David Powell about the Cassini spacecraft’s future. (Cassini has done some wonderful work recently, including bringing us wonderful images such as the one below of Titan and Epimetheus, and Saturn’s rings.)

cassini-titan-epimetheus

Cassini’s NASA handlers are wondering about what they will do with it when its mission is over. Here are some of the options they are considering: Click to continue reading this post →

Little Urchin

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sea urchinNo, not pictures of little urchins doing science, as I sometimes have on this blog.

Instead, it’s a story about the sea urchin’s genome being completely mapped out by researchers. Quite a story, and an important one, since about 70 percent (I learned) of the creature’s genes have analogues in human. This is more overlap than we have with Drosophila, for example, the fruit fly being another well-studied system.

Lots to read about (try here , here, and here for example -the latter is where I got the nice image by Alexandra Eaves, above), and a nice piece on NPR to listen to. So I’ll leave you to it.

-cvj

The 2006 Nobel Prizes: Who, What and Why!

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Not long after the colloquium on the Fields Medal work, we had a joint presentation by three colloquium speakers on the topics of the three science prizes awarded from the good folks in Stockholm this year. This was another very popular Monday talk, with people from various other departments joining us, given the topics being discussed. The speakers talked about the science of the prizes, and also reflected upon how it drives or interfaces with future research, perhaps their own research program.

First up was Lin Chen, of Chemistry and Molecular and Computational Biology. He told us about the Chemistry prize, awarded to Roger Kornberg, “for his studies of the molecular basis of eukaryotic transcription”.

lin chen

Starting out by reminding us about the basic chain of relationships within organisms concerning the movement of genetic information, (the “Central Dogma”) he explained Click to continue reading this post →