Category: Science

Simple Answers to Complex Medical Questions

There’s a new medical study of the effects of alcohol consumption that finds a surprising result: Controlling only for age and gender, compared to moderate drinkers, abstainers had a more than 2 times increased mortality risk, heavy drinkers had 70% increased risk, and light drinkers had 23% increased risk. A model controlling for former problem… Continue reading Simple Answers to Complex Medical Questions

Without Experiment, There Is No Theory

A lot of people have been blogging and Twittering about this subway map of science, which puts various branches of science in the place of the lines on the London Underground map, showing connections between them. It’s a huge graphic, but a kind of cool image. I do, however, have a problem with it, which… Continue reading Without Experiment, There Is No Theory

Backyard Fluid Dynamics Revisited

Back in July, I did a post looking at how the fountain in our ornamental backyard pond shoots higher when the level of the pond drops. I set up a simple model of the process, which worked surprisingly well, but I said at the time that I really needed more data to say whether that… Continue reading Backyard Fluid Dynamics Revisited

Bad Universe, No Biscuit

Sunday was a really long day around Chateau Steelypips, and I couldn’t see staying awake to watch the premiere of Phil Plait’s Bad Universe on the Discovery Channel, so I’m way late in writing about it. I DVRed it, though, and watched it last night. The theme of the premiere/ pilot was killer rocks from… Continue reading Bad Universe, No Biscuit

Indirect Excitation Control: Ultrafast Quantum Gates for Single Atomic Qubits

Last week, John Baez posted a report on a seminar by Dzimitry Matsukevich on ion trap quantum information issues. In the middle of this, he writes: Once our molecular ions are cold, how can we get them into specific desired states? Use a mode locked pulsed laser to drive stimulated Raman transitions. Huh? As far… Continue reading Indirect Excitation Control: Ultrafast Quantum Gates for Single Atomic Qubits

Nobody Ever Remembers Being a Cow

There was a deeply silly New York Times article about “Past Life Regression” over the weekend: In one of his past lives, Dr. Paul DeBell believes, he was a caveman. The gray-haired Cornell-trained psychiatrist has a gentle, serious manner, and his appearance, together with the generic shrink décor of his office — leather couch, granite-topped… Continue reading Nobody Ever Remembers Being a Cow

Grenade Tossing About Grade Inflation

Via Thoreau, a paper from a physicist in Oregon that’s pretty much a grenade lobbed into the always-explosive grade inflation discussion: We use four years of introductory astronomy scores to analyze the ability of the current population to perform college level work and measure the amount of grade inflation across various majors. Using an objective… Continue reading Grenade Tossing About Grade Inflation

Dorky Poll: Favorite Force?

I’m pretty sure I’ve used this topic before, but not with PollDaddy. And while I really ought to do a ResearchBlogging post today to make it a clean sweep for the week, I just don’t have the energy. So here’s a poll: what’s your favorite fundamental force? What’s your favorite fundamental force?online surveys Those of… Continue reading Dorky Poll: Favorite Force?

Measuring Gravity: Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thing

There’s a minor scandal in fundamental physics that doesn’t get talked about much, and it has to do with the very first fundamental force discovered, gravity. The scandal is the value of Newton’s gravitational constant G, which is the least well known of the fundamental constants, with a value of 6.674 28(67) x 10-11 m3… Continue reading Measuring Gravity: Ain’t Nothin’ but a G Thing