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
THOUGHTS ON COMMUNICATION
COMMUNICATION AND lady friend miscommunication have been in the news a lot these days. E-mails and tweets, leaked, deleted and otherwise, are part of this. Nathan Heller’s article in the … Continue reading
ICELAND AND ALUMINUM
ICELAND IS a greater producer of aluminum than the United States. This and other tidbits are gleaned from The New York Times article, “American Companies Still Make Aluminum. In Iceland,” … Continue reading
