ELEMENTAL HAIKU
A HAIKU, as is familiarly known, is a Japanese poem of a particular length and structure. It consists of three lines, the first and last having five sound units, the … Continue reading
THE COMPLEX TALE OF LUNAR PARAPHERNALIA
WHO SAYS Science, the weekly magazine of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, is full of dull and boring (you’ll excuse the expression) science? Here’s a tale of … Continue reading
THE 1878 TOTAL ECLIPSE, PART 2
AS DESCRIBED here yesterday, the 1878 solar eclipse didn’t exactly further astronomer James Craig Watson’s search for the planet Vulcan. Today, we’ll look at the 1878 eclipse again and find … Continue reading
THE 1878 TOTAL ECLIPSE, PART 1
ON JULY 29, 1878, a total eclipse of the sun swept across the western United States, and not without scientific and geopolitical implications. David Baron’s book American Eclipse focuses on … Continue reading
CLEVER ENGINE MOUNTS, PART 2
MAGNETO-RHEOLOGICAL technology, as featured in BWI’s clever engine mounts was yesterday’s topic, with a promise today of Part 2’s related memories of one sort or another. I start with a … Continue reading
CLEVER ENGINE MOUNTS, PART 1
READING THAT Mercedes-AMG will feature second-generation magneto-rheological engine mounts brings back memories of a college summer job and later of deliberately pausing a tad in certain shifts with Ferrari’s traditionally … Continue reading
MEDIEVAL DNA SLEUTHING
A TWELFTH-CENTURY Gospel of Luke and an even older York Gospels are giving today’s bookworm biologists an opportunity to study the actions of actual 900-year-old book worms in these medieval … Continue reading
ARE YOU (STILL NOT) TALKING TO ME? PART 2
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE bots are learning to chat with each other in their own language. Using deep-learning skills to screw on bottle caps is one thing, but language is decidedly more … Continue reading
ARE YOU (NOT) TALKING TO ME? PART 1
FOR YEARS, science fiction has depicted computers developing their own lives and adversely affecting ours. Think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968. Now, however, Artificial Intelligence has reached … Continue reading
CELEBRATING TWO VERY SPECIAL MATHEMATICIANS
MATHEMATICIANS MARINA Ratner and Maryam Mirzakhani passed away within a week of each other, on July 7 and July 14, 2017, respectively. That they were successful women in a predominately … Continue reading
