The Royal society has a new website making freely available a selection of classic papers from the history of science. (h/t Luboš Motl’s The Reference Frame): I am just looking at an Isaac Newton’s letter about light and colors sent to the editor of Cambridge University Press 😉 in February 1671/72. It describes some Newton’s… Continue reading Royal Society classic science papers
(or a little physics about climate change. Or at least a few clarifications about some of the points being raised.) In the wake of Climategate, a wide variety of mistakes and misapprehensions are being circulated on the Internet (as if that weren’t happening before). For example, in this article from the Telegraph: Phil Jones, the… Continue reading Eine Kleine Nachtphysik
Raw data are important in validating scientific work. Even so simple an operation as smoothing by time-averaging can have counter-intuitive effects, such as Simpson’s Paradox: For a simple and homey example, here are the batting averages of Derek Jeter and David Justice in 1995, 1996, and 1997: in 1995, Jeter had 12 hits in 48… Continue reading Why raw data are important
Just for fun: (h/t Roger Pielke, Jr.) (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-VRBWLpYCPY) (h/t Megan McArdle)
“Science advances, funeral by funeral.” (often attributed to Timothy Ferris) The blogosphere has been abuzz over the past week or so with the release of data — emails and program source and documentation — from the Climatic Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, one of the premier climatology research institutions in the world.… Continue reading Climategate, or, how science works
From the protein crystallography beamline at Berkeley Labs Advanced Light Source: an action shapshot the Rho transcription factor from E. coli. The orange spiral in the middle is a strand of RNA, and Rho is everything else. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPQ0OnlfkkA) (h/t Technology Review blog)
Peptides control crystal growth with switches, throttles and brakes. From Physorg.com. (PhysOrg.com) — By producing some of the highest resolution images of peptides attaching to mineral surfaces, scientists have a deeper understanding how biomolecules manipulate the growth crystals. The research, which appears in the Nov. 23 online edition of the journal Proceedings of… Continue reading Peptides control crystal growth with switches, throttles and brakes
This year is the 20th anniversary of the original Foresight Conference on Nanotechnology. The neat, clear vision of nanotechnology we had in 1989 rested on two key aspects that would make it a transformative, rather than merely an evolutionary, technology: The ability to construct and observe at the atomic scale, and the construction of machines… Continue reading Foresight 2010: the Synergy of Molecular Manufacturing and AGI
In Popular Mechanics, longtime Foresight friend Prof. Glenn Reynolds looks at the future of nanotech and artificial intelligence, among other things looking at safety issues, including one call that potentially dangerous technologies be relinquished. He takes a counterintuitive stance, which we’ve discussed here at Foresight over the years: But I wonder if that’s such a… Continue reading Reynolds advocates faster nano/AI R&D for safety reasons
Over at Nanoclast, Dexter Johnson writes: It seems when nanotech is applied to photovoltaics it can either boost their efficiency to new heights or it can cheapen their manufacturing process. But it never seems to provide a solution to both of these. It’s always a tradeoff: increased efficiency but difficult manufacturing processes or a cheaper… Continue reading Nano PVs: cheaper or better?
