Month: July 2010

Links for 2010-07-10

Energy Secy advances nano science in spare time – San Jose Mercury News “This is Chu’s second such meaty scientific paper in recent months, both published in the journal Nature. The first, published in February, was following Albert Einstein’s general relativity theory and better measuring how gravity slows time. Both were published while he has… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-10

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Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought

The big physics story at the moment is probably the new measurement of the size of the proton, which is reported in this Nature paper (which does not seem to be on the arxiv, alas). This is kind of a hybrid of nuclear and atomic physics, as it’s a spectroscopic measurement of a quasi-atom involving… Continue reading Protons: Even Smaller Than We Thought

Academic Poll: See Longer Blog Post (Forthcoming) for Details

Thoreau offers without qualification some complaints about a paper in a glamour journal, ending with: All of this might have been excusable if the big flashy Glamour Journal paper had been followed up with more detailed papers in other places (a common practice in some fields). However, when I searched to see what the authors… Continue reading Academic Poll: See Longer Blog Post (Forthcoming) for Details

Links for 2010-07-09

Using the General Social Survey | Gene Expression | Discover Magazine Notes on how you, too, can be a social scientist. Or at least noodle around with statistics. (tags: social-science blogs statistics surveys) Science in the Open » Blog Archive » It’s not information overload, nor is it filter failure: It’s a discovery deficit “We… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-09

Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?

Kevin Drum has done a couple of education-related posts recently, first noting a story claiming that college kids study less than they used to, and following that up with an anecdotal report on kids these days, from an email correspondent who teaches physics. Kevin’s emailer writes of his recent experiences with two different groups of… Continue reading Kids These Days: Is Our Learning Measure Valid?

Links for 2010-07-08

slacktivist: The Indignant Household Budget “[T]he pitiable thing is that here in reality — as opposed to the smug fantasy world of this stock speech — overtime and second jobs are exactly what many of those poor cheering fools in the audience are actually doing to try to make ends meet. The indulgent spendthrift luxuries… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-08

Are Communications Skills Holding Science Back?

Over in yesterday’s communications skills post commenter Paul raises a question about priorities: I wonder to what extent good writers, public speakers and communicators are being promoted in science in place of good thinkers – people who can challenge prevailing dogma, invent promising novel approaches to old problems, and who have the intuition needed for… Continue reading Are Communications Skills Holding Science Back?

Links for 2010-07-07

Physics – Keeping atoms synchronized for better timekeeping “Atomic clocks often have a limited coherence time due to the interactions between the constituent atoms. While it is usually very easy to use fewer atoms to reduce the interactions, this leads to lower signal-to-noise and less precise measurements. This tension between strong interactions and noise seems… Continue reading Links for 2010-07-07