Comet Holmes went from seventeenth magnitude to 2.8 magnitude on October 24th. Okay Seattle time to clear up your skies so I can get a view of the sucker.
NSF Power
NSF loses power. No, not politcal power silly: electrical power!
Speaking of which, this is what writing a grant proposal looks like to me:
Only 20 Light Years? Lets Go!
New Planet. Closer to it’s star than Earth, but the star is cooler. Gliese 581c here we come!
SFI Postdocs
Postdocs at the Santa Fe Institute:
Postdoctoral Fellowship Opportunities at the Santa Fe Institute
The Santa Fe Institute (SFI) is selectively seeking applications for Postdoctoral Fellows for appointments beginning Fall 2008.
Fellows are appointed for up to three years during which they pursue research questions of their own design and are encouraged to transcend disciplinary lines. SFI’s unique structure and resources enable Fellows to collaborate with members of the SFI faculty, other Fellows, and researchers from around the world.
As the leader in multidisciplinary research, SFI has no formal programs or departments and we accept applications from any field. Research topics span the full range of natural and social sciences and often make connections with the humanities. Most research at SFI is theoretical and/or computational in nature, although some research includes an empirical component in collaboration with other institutions.
The compensation package includes a competitive salary and excellent health and retirement benefits. As full participants in the SFI community, Fellows are encouraged to invite speakers, organize workshops and working groups and engage in research outside their field. Funds are available to support this full range of research activities. Applications are welcome from candidates in any country. Successful foreign applicants must acquire an acceptable visa (usually a J-1) as a condition of employment. Women and minorities are especially encouraged to apply.
For complete information and application instructions, please follow the link to http://www.santafe.edu/postdocapp08. The online application process opens October 15, 2007. Application deadline is November 15, 2007.
I recently heard someone describe the SFI as “the academic tower” which is a spot on description. A great place to do research. (Damn I miss green chiles.)
No Open Access Advantage in ApJ
Interesting, arxiv:0709.0896, “Open Access does not increase citations for research articles from The Astrophysical Journal” by M. Kurtz and E. Henneken:
We demonstrate conclusively that there is no “Open Access Advantage” for papers from the Astrophysical Journal. The two to one citation advantage enjoyed by papers deposited in the arXiv e-print server is due entirely to the nature and timing of the deposited papers. This may have implications for other disciplines.
It would be interesting to know if the same can be said about much less prestigious journals than ApJ.
Out of Body
From a New York Times article:
Using virtual reality goggles, a camera and a stick, scientists have induced out-of-body experiences — the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body — in healthy people, according to experiments being published in the journal Science.
Link to links to articles here.
Doesn’t this make you want to go out and buy some VR goggles, a camera, and a stick? Seriously if someone set up a stand in a mall to do this, I’d want a ride. Reminds me of a story my dad told me about how he would sell electric shocks to the local kids instead of lemonade. It makes me worry, however, whether someday they will be able to induce Alien abduction experiences as well. Might not be quite as pleasant.
Seventy Four Versions on the Wall, Take One Down, Pass it Around…
Is gr-qc/0504083 the world record holder for number of versions on the arXiv? Seventy four is a lot of versions.
ARPA is the New Lowercase Letter "i"
It looks like the America COMPETEs act is making its way out of Congress (See here). One interesting part of the science and technology legislature being considered is the creation of ARPA-E, an Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (initial budget of $300M.) Similarly, a while back (former) Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte discussed an intelligence effort called IARPA. Both of these names are in reference to DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which used to be called just ARPA and was responsible for funding the ARPANET which eventually became the Internet (A minor funding sucesss, you might say 🙂 )
Hmm, it seems to me that ARPA is the new lower case letter “i” (“i” being the new lowercase “e”, of course.) Anyone seen any more ARPAs out in the wild? More importantly, when will I get my ARPAphone?
Power Laws, Power Laws, Everywhere, and Not a Ball to Kick
Boy reading the physics section of the arxiv sure has given me much amusement lately:
arXiv:0706.1758
Statistics of football dynamics
Authors: R. S. Mendes, L. C. Malacarne, C. Anteneodo
Abstract: We investigate the dynamics of football matches. Our goal is to characterize statistically the temporal sequence of ball movements in this collective sport game, searching for traits of complex behavior. Data were collected over a variety of matches in South American, European and World championships throughout 2005 and 2006. We show that the statistics of ball touches presents power-law tails and can be described by $q$-gamma distributions. To explain such behavior we propose a model that provides information on the characteristics of football dynamics. Furthermore, we discuss the statistics of duration of out-of-play intervals, not directly related to the previous scenario.
In related power law news, if you’ve got the data and want to know whether it’s power law distributed, you’d better read this:
arXiv:0706.1062
Power-law distributions in empirical data
Authors: Aaron Clauset, Cosma Rohilla Shalizi, M. E. J. Newman
Abstract: Power-law distributions occur in many situations of scientific interest and have significant consequences for our understanding of natural and man-made phenomena. Unfortunately, the empirical detection and characterization of power laws is made difficult by the large fluctuations that occur in the tail of the distribution. In particular, standard methods such as least-squares fitting are known to produce systematically biased estimates of parameters for power-law distributions and should not be used in most circumstances. Here we describe statistical techniques for making accurate parameter estimates for power-law data, based on maximum likelihood methods and the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic. We also show how to tell whether the data follow a power-law distribution at all, defining quantitative measures that indicate when the power law is a reasonable fit to the data and when it is not. We demonstrate these methods by applying them to twenty-four real-world data sets from a range of different disciplines. Each of the data sets has been conjectured previously to follow a power-law distribution. In some cases we find these conjectures to be consistent with the data while in others the power law is ruled out.
Blog post about this paper at Structure and Strangeness here.
Pontiff and Evolution
That other Pontiff has declared that he “believes in evolution.” Am I the only one who read “[reclaim] a dimension of reason we have lost” and thought of string theory? (That’s a joke peoples, so don’t get your stringy hair in an uproar!)