math geek with no social life

laboratoryequipment: High School Math Solves Astronomical...

Fri, 24 May 2013 10:47:42 -0400

High School Math Solves Astronomical Mystery

Sometimes astronomy is like real estate – what’s important is location, location and location. Astronomers have resolved a major problem in their understanding of a class of stars that undergo regular outbursts by accurately measuring the distance to a famous example of the type.

The researchers used the National Radio Astronomy Observatory’s Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) and the European VLBI Network (EVN) to precisely locate one of the most-observed variable-star systems in the sky – a double-star system called SS Cygni – at 370 light-years from Earth. This new distance measurement meant that an explanation for the system’s regular outbursts that applies to similar pairs also applies to SS Cygni.

Read more: http://www.laboratoryequipment.com/news/2013/05/high-school-math-solves-astronomical-mystery

Creedence Clearwater Revival dining at Taco Bell in 1969

Fri, 24 May 2013 09:19:21 -0400

Creedence Clearwater Revival dining at Taco Bell in 1969

"Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Fri, 24 May 2013 08:56:30 -0400

“Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon.”

- The philosophy of immortality (via explore-blog)

scientiststhesis: quasi-normalcy: Society has a tax on mathematical illiteracy. It’s called “the...

Thu, 23 May 2013 14:23:58 -0400

scientiststhesis:

quasi-normalcy:

Society has a tax on mathematical illiteracy.

It’s called “the lottery.”

Wow that’s actually brilliant o.o

astrodidact: Planck Time What is the smallest unit of time you...

Thu, 23 May 2013 07:55:09 -0400

astrodidact:

Planck Time

What is the smallest unit of time you can conceive? A second? A millisecond? Hard to say seeing as how time is relative. Under the right circumstances, hours can fly by and seconds can feel like a lifetime. But unfortunately for physicists, time is not something that can be delt with so philosophically. And since they deal with cosmological forces both infinitesimally large and small, they need units that can objectively measure them. When it comes to dealing with the small, Planck Time is the measurement of choice. Named after German physicist Max Planck, the founder of quantum theory, a unit of Planck time is the time it takes for light to travel, in a vacuum, a single unit of Planck length. Taken together, they part of the larger system of natural units known as Planck units.

Originally proposed in 1899 by German physicist Max Planck, Planck units are physical units of measurement defined exclusively in terms of five universal physical constants. These are the Gravitational constant (G), the Reduced Planck constant (h), the speed of light in a vacuum (c), the Coulomb constant(ke or k), and Boltzmann’s constant (kB, sometimes k). Each of these constants can be associated with at least one fundamental physical theory: c with special relativity, G with general relativity and Newtonian gravity, with quantum mechanics, with electrostatics, and kB with statistical mechanics and thermodynamics. They were invented as a means of simplifying the particular algebraic expressions appearing in theoretical physics, especially in quantum mechanics.

Ultimately, Planck time is derived from the field of mathematical physics known as dimensional analysis, which studies units of measurement and physical constants. The Planck time is the unique combination of the gravitational constant G, the relativity constant c, and the quantum constant h, to produce a constant with units of time. They are often semi-humorously referred to by physicists as “God’s units” because eliminate anthropocentric arbitrariness from the system of units, unlike the meter and second, which exist for purely historical reasons and are not derived from nature. Some challenges to Planck’s Time have been mounted. For example, in 2003 during the analysis of the Hubble Space Telescope Deep Field images, some scientists speculated that where there are space-time fluctuations on the Planck scale, images of extremely distant objects should be blurry. The Hubble images, they claimed, were too sharp for this to be the case. Other scientists disagreed with this assumption however, with some saying the fluctuations would be too small to be observable, others saying that the speculated blurring effect that was expected was off by a very large magnitude. A unit of Planck Time can be expressed (in the third picture).

Read more

"There’s no tradition of scientists or atheists picketing outside of churches, saying ‘That might not..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 17:04:42 -0400

“There’s no tradition of scientists or atheists picketing outside of churches, saying ‘That might not necessarily be true!’ That’s never happened. You don’t see scientists banging on the Sunday school door, telling the preacher what to teach. That doesn’t happen. I simply cry foul when you have people who believe that their religious text has science in it, and they want to put that in the science classroom.”

- Neil Degrasse Tyson (via always-blorft)

laughingsquid: Teenage Girl Nonchalantly Plays Van Halen’s...

Wed, 22 May 2013 15:14:27 -0400

laughingsquid:

Teenage Girl Nonchalantly Plays Van Halen’s ‘Eruption’ Guitar Solo

"We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 13:49:10 -0400

“We spend the first year of a child’s life teaching it to walk and talk and the rest of its life to shut up and sit down. There’s something wrong there.”

- Neil deGrasse Tyson
(via tijanatkc)

wolframalpha: Today marks the bicentennial of the birth of...

Wed, 22 May 2013 12:00:46 -0400

wolframalpha:

Today marks the bicentennial of the birth of Richard Wagner, the great composer of operas.

laughingsquid: Parallelogram Doormat

Wed, 22 May 2013 11:58:44 -0400

laughingsquid:

Parallelogram Doormat

Laboratory Equipment: Research Makes Quantum Encryption Practical

Wed, 22 May 2013 10:54:37 -0400

Laboratory Equipment: Research Makes Quantum Encryption Practical :

laboratoryequipment:

One of the many promising applications of quantum mechanics in the information sciences is quantum key distribution (QKD), in which the counterintuitive behavior of quantum particles guarantees that no one can eavesdrop on a private exchange of data without detection.

As its name implies, QKD is…

nietzschecats: Thus Spoke Zarathustra 287/3112

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:38:40 -0400

nietzschecats:

Thus Spoke Zarathustra 287/3112

"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a..."

Wed, 22 May 2013 09:28:59 -0400

““We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living.””

- Buckminster Fuller
I really needed to read this. —TO (via tobia)

I just unlocked the I’ve Gotten Hairier sticker on...

Tue, 21 May 2013 20:14:08 -0400

I just unlocked the I’ve Gotten Hairier sticker on GetGlue

77566 others have also unlocked the I’ve Gotten Hairier sticker on GetGlue.com

You’re watching a lot of comedy. Have you thought about taking a break? Maybe taking a shower or getting a haircut? No? OK, you can always head back to YouTube.com/ComedyWeek for more new comedy. Share this one proudly. It’s from our friends at YouTube.

"We can tell our children that school is important until we’re blue in the face, they’re not stupid...."

Tue, 21 May 2013 14:00:08 -0400

“We can tell our children that school is important until we’re blue in the face, they’re not stupid. They see the loudest applause is for the kids on the field. They know teachers are paid poorly and don’t drive fancy cars. They know people plan Super Bowl parties but mock the National Spelling Bee. In other words, they see the hypocrisy, and we can’t expect society to correct itself. If we want to have any lasting influence on the way our kids approach education — the way future generations approach education — then we have to grab our pom-poms and paint our faces and celebrate intellectual curiosity with the same vigor we do their athletic achievements.”

- Why I’m raising my son to be a nerd - CNN.com

(via crocbonker)

Yes.

(via artfulartsyamy)

"There was no keyboard player on the planet more appropriate to support Jim Morrison’s words. Ray, I..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 23:26:35 -0400

“There was no keyboard player on the planet more appropriate to support Jim Morrison’s words. Ray, I felt totally in sync with you musically. It was like we were of one mind, holding down the foundation for Robby and Jim to float on top of. I will miss my musical brother.”

- John Densmore (via acmenes)

neurosciencestuff: The Fractal Nature of the Brain: EEG Data...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:34:06 -0400

neurosciencestuff:

The Fractal Nature of the Brain: EEG Data Suggests That the Brain Functions as a “Quantum Computer” in 5-8 Dimensions

The brain has been traditionally viewed as a deterministic machine where certain inputs give rise to certain outputs. However, there is a growing body of work that suggests this is not the case. The high importance of initial inputs suggests that the brain may be working in the realms of chaos, with small changes in initial inputs leading to the production of strange attractors. This may also be reflected in the physical structure of the brain which may also be fractal. EEG data is a good place to look for the underlying patterns of chaos in the brain since it samples many millions of neurons simultaneously. Several studies have arrived at a fractal dimension of between 5 and 8 for human EEG data. This suggests that the brain operates in a higher dimension than the 4 of traditional space-time. These extra dimensions suggest that quantum gravity may play a role in generating consciousness.

(Image courtesy: Kookmin University)

"Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me,..."

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:32:23 -0400

“Don’t mistake my kindness for weakness. I am kind to everyone, but when someone is unkind to me, weak is not what you are going to remember about me.”

- Al Capone (via mrcheyl)

newsweek: PSA: Help victims of the tornadoes in Oklahoma by donating $10 to the Red Cross. Text...

Mon, 20 May 2013 21:17:40 -0400

newsweek:

PSA: Help victims of the tornadoes in Oklahoma by donating $10 to the Red Cross. Text REDCROSS to 90999, or visit redcross.org.

neuromorphogenesis: Computational tool translates complex data...

Mon, 20 May 2013 18:26:23 -0400

neuromorphogenesis:

Computational tool translates complex data into simplified 2-dimensional images

In their quest to learn more about the variability of cells between and within tissues, biomedical scientists have devised tools capable of simultaneously measuring dozens of characteristics of individual cells. These technologies have led to new challenges, however, as scientists now struggle with how to make sense of the resulting trove of data. Now a solution may be at hand. Researchers at Columbia University and Stanford University have developed a computational method that enables scientists to visualize and interpret “high-dimensional” data produced by single-cell measurement technologies such as mass cytometry. The method, published today in the online edition of Nature Biotechnology, has particular relevance to cancer research and therapeutics.

Researchers now understand that cancer within an individual can harbor subpopulations of cells with different molecular characteristics. Groups of cells may behave differently from one another, including in how they respond to treatment. The ability to study single cells, as well as to identify and characterize subpopulations of cancerous cells within an individual, could lead to more precise methods of diagnosis and treatment.

“Our method not only will allow scientists to explore the heterogeneity of cancer cells and to characterize drug-resistant cancer cells, but also will allow physicians to track tumor progression, identify drug-resistant cancer cells, and detect minute quantities of cancer cells that increase the risk of relapse,” said co-senior author Dana Pe’er, PhD, associate professor of biological sciences and systems biology at Columbia. The other co-senior author is Garry P. Nolan, PhD, professor of microbiology & immunology at Stanford.

The method, called viSNE (visual interactive Stochastic Neighbor Embedding), is based on a sophisticated algorithm that translates high-dimensional data (e.g., a dataset that includes many different simultaneous measurements from single cells) into visual representations similar to two-dimensional “scatter plots”—the simple graphs with X and Y axes that many people first encounter in high school math and biology. “Basically, viSNE provides a way to visualize very high-dimensional data in two dimensions, while maintaining the most important organization and structure of the data,” said Dr. Pe’er. “Color is used as a third dimension to enable users to interactively visualize various features of the cells.”

The viSNE software can analyze measurements of dozens of molecular markers. In the two-dimensional maps that result, the distance between points represents the degree of similarity between single cells. The maps can reveal clearly defined groups of cells with distinct behaviors (e.g., drug resistance) even if they are only a tiny fraction of the total population. This should enable the design of ways to physically isolate and study these cell subpopulations in the laboratory.

Although the algorithm underlying the method is complex, Dr. Pe’er expects that all researchers, no matter their level of mathematical expertise, will be able to use viSNE.

To demonstrate the software’s utility, Dr. Pe’er and her colleagues used mass cytometry and viSNE to study bone marrow cells from patients with acute myeloid leukemia. Currently, clinicians can incorporate at most 4 to 8 markers to assess the cells. Because mass cytometry and viSNE can incorporate many more markers, viSNE is able to identify more subtle differences between cells. Using the algorithm, Dr. Pe’er and her colleagues were able to reveal previously unrecognized heterogeneity in the bone marrow cells they studied.

The researchers also showed that viSNE could detect minimal residual disease (MRD) — extremely small quantities of cancer cells that persist after chemotherapy and raise the risk of recurrence. “In blinded tests, we were able to find as few as 20 cancer cells out of tens of thousands of healthy cells,” said Dr. Pe’er. Such a small quantity of cells is extremely difficult to detect, even by the most experienced pathologist.

“The ability to detect MRD is critical for curing cancer,” added Dr. Pe’er. “Eliminating even 99.9 percent of a tumor doesn’t bring about a cure. You have to be able to find, and then eliminate, the tiny populations of cells that can survive therapy and lead to disease relapse.”

Image: viSNE reveals the progression of cancer in a sample of cells taken from a patient with acute myeloid leukemia. In figure a, the contours represent cell density in each region of the map. Each point represents a cell from the diagnosis sample (top, purple) or relapse sample (bottom, red). In figure b, cells from both diagnosis and relapse samples are shown in each map. Cells are colored according to intensity of expression of the indicated cell markers, enabling the comparison of expression patterns before and after relapse. For example, Fit3 is expressed primarily in the diagnosis sample, while CD34 emerges in the relapse sample. Credit: Dana Pe’er, PhD/Columbia University