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“There are seven SI base units: meter (m), kilogram (kg), second (s), ampere (A), kelvin (K), mole (mol), and candela (cd). The other SI units are derived from these seven: acceleration is m/s^2, density is kg/m^3, magnetic field strength is A/m, etc.
According to the International Bureau of Weights and Measures (BIPM), the keeper of the units, the SI is “a living system which evolves, and which reflects current best measurement practice.”
Here is a quick rundown of the basis for the SI base units, as defined by the governing body, the General Conference on Weights and Measures.”
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“Apparently, there’s a company that employs people in India with graduate degrees to grade papers for American professors. For twelve bucks a paper, they’ll give not just a letter grade, but comments. The idea is to free up faculty to focus on instruction (or, more accurately, research), rather than grading. It also saves the university money, since outsourcing the grading allows you to run classes at much larger sizes.
From the comments to the article, you’d think that this had never been done before. You’d think that professors have always done their own grading, and that the grading was a form of deep examination of each student’s soul, resulting in unparalleled insight and bonding.
Um, no. And I have the scantron invoice to prove it.”
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“About 120 baryons and baryon resonances are known, from the abundant nucleon with u and d light-quark constituents up to the Îbâ=(bsd), which contains one quark of each generation and to the recently discovered Ωbâ=(bss). In spite of this impressively large number of states, the underlying mechanisms leading to the excitation spectrum are not yet understood. … In this review, issues are identified discriminating between different views of the resonance spectrum; prospects are discussed on how open questions in baryon spectroscopy may find answers from photoproduction and electroproduction experiments which are presently carried out in various laboratories.”
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In which Matt Springer saves me a whole bunch of typing about one of the stupidest articles ever written about quantum physics.
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“For a long time now, my day job has been “theoretical physicist,” as a quick glance at my papers will confirm. But it was not always thus! Very few people are actually born as theoretical physicists. When I was an undergraduate astronomy major at Villanova, I wasn’t thinking about quantum field theory or differential geometry; I was working on photometric studies of variable stars. My personal favorite star was Epsilon Aurigae, a mysterious eclipsing binary. One of the very few stars out there that has both a Facebook page and a Twitter feed. And now Epsilon is in the news again!”
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“I don’t think I know a single writer who doesn’t struggle with sleep. Maybe it’s because we so rarely can support ourselves sufficiently to “give up the day job.” There always has to be a way to squeeze writing in alongside everything else, and sleep suffers. On the other hand, American society generally seems to be out of touch with the need for sleep – why else would coffee shops be cropping up in so many places?
So I thought I’d share some tidbits on sleep that I’ve picked up from my own experience. You can apply these to writing your characters’ experience… and you may recognize them from your own.”
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“Adam Ruben wants to help. His Surviving Your Stupid Stupid Decision to Go to Grad School is just out from Random House and offers advice — tongue in cheek but with plenty of truth — for those who want a doctorate. Ruben earned his Ph.D. in molecular biology from Johns Hopkins University in 2008, so the material comes from his personal experience — although the attitude comes from his moonlighting as a stand-up comic. He covers everything from selecting professors to work with to figuring out when you need to finish up already (the latter in a chapter appropriate for the Passover season, “Let My Pupil Go.”)”