KAREN UHLENBECK WINS THE ABEL PRIZE!
LET’S ALL congratulate Dr. Karen Uhlenbeck. She’s the first woman to win the Abel Prize, one of the world’s top awards in mathematics. One of her mathematical specialities, briefly put, … Continue reading
MATHEMATICAL INDUCTION: DOMINOES OF LOGIC
THE WORD “INDUCTION” has a whole bunch of meanings: Merriam-Webster starts with “the act or process of inducting (as into office),” which is sort of a definitional cop-out: What’s “inducting”? … Continue reading
GETTING ANSTY ABOUT NAVIGATION
AT SUPERFICIAL GLANCE, ants seem to alternate between random walks and purposeful straightline travel. Scientists at Aix Marseille University in Marseille, France, have created an AntBot that delves beyond the … Continue reading
EARTH PHOTOBOMBS THE BAD SIDE OF THE MOON
LINK THE FOLLOWING: Chinese space engineers, professors and students at China’s Harbin Institute of Technology, Dutch amateur radio astronomers, and Bernie Taupin. Back in 1970, poet/lyricist Bernie Taupin wrote “Bad … Continue reading
THE VERY LARGE AND THE VERY SMALL
AT FIRST GLANCE, 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 should be large enough. And, at the other extreme, 0.000,000,000,000,000,000,000,001 would seem small indeed. Nope. Within a couple of decades, global data storage may exceed 1024, … Continue reading
STEADY THE TOOL; SPIN THE WORK
IT MAY SEEM odd: Hold the carving tool in one place and move the object being carved. Yet, historians of manufacturing say the ancient potter’s wheel led not only to … Continue reading
TUBER TIDBITS
JUST AS MY Lithuanian ancestors worshipped trees, Wife Dottie’s side of the family worships potatoes. We even have a couple Christmas tree ornaments honoring the tuber. Thus, I read with … Continue reading
HAPPY 150TH—THE PERIODIC TABLE!
THE UNITED NATIONS celebrates 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table. This familiar array is more than a collection of chemical elements. As described in Science, February 1, … Continue reading
SCIENCE AND EVIDENTIAL TRUTH
SCIENCE CONSISTS of following evidence in seeking truth. This succinct characterization comes from comments made by Rush Holt, in his editorial “Democracy’s Plight,” in Science, February 1, 2019. “Observers,” Holt … Continue reading
MARY JANE AND VOC EMISSIONS
I ENJOY CALLING it Mary Jane for old times sake. Marijuana is in the news these days because its production could worsen the emissions of VOCs, volatile organic compounds. Jason … Continue reading
