Dmitry Podolsky has got his PhD from Landau Institute for Theoretical Physics. He currently works as postdoc at Case Western Reserve University. He is also one of the editors of NEQNET.

334. How much should you publish?

As far as I remember, it was believed that one has to publish about 2-3 papers/year during glorious and relaxing PhD years (i.e., about 1 paper per 4-6 months, not a too heavy burden indeed)… This would give necessary 6 publications in the end of the term (in Russia, getting your PhD takes 3 years) [...]

333. Periodic table of elements: video of the day

I’ve just discovered Tom Lehrer for myself – you all certainly knew about this guy, didn’t you? He is just plain amazing… I am trying to learn the song by heart, but failing so far – the rhythm is too fast for me.

332. NEQNET: last two weeks of March

Finally… This freezing March has come to the end. Why freezing? Well, for example, it featured snow storms stronger than the ones in January/February, how is that? Or temperature dropped below -15 on March 25th. Global warming? Not in Helsinki, Mr. Gore. In the mean time, the audience of NEQNET has reached 300 people (email [...]

331. Interview with Bogzabraloff brothers: science and religion

Dear friends, I have just returned from the two-day trip to sunny (well, compared to Helsinki) Italy, where I was kindly invited to interview Bogzabraloff brothers, two of the deepest thinkers of our time. I have also had a chance to take a closer look at rather nice facilities of the Vatican Observatory, by this [...]

328. Yield curve: video of the day

If you were unable to figure out the physics behind the a treasury yield curve, here is a very nice explanation: By the way, if you are interested in economics and are familiar with YouTube, I highly recommend subscribing to khanacademy. The guy is just great.

327. Global crisis and one more plot to think about

The following quantities are plotted here – total US GDP, investments, SP500 index and so called treasury yield curve, By definition, the yield curve is the relation between the interest rate and the time to maturity of the debt, and the yield curve above is the one for US treasury securities and US dollar interest [...]

326. House market bubble: brief update

As usual on Sundays, science will be temporarily forgotten, because I would like to share many other things with you. This Sunday I am going to talk about again only global financial crisis. You are probably eager to know how US house market is currently doing, since the it was the bubble burst on this [...]

325. Scientist’s gadgets: desktop software

Desktop software? What is this supposed to mean? – you may ask. Well if you are a fellow scientist – theoretician, to be more precise – you know very well how much time we usually spend in front of our computers. Once upon a time I have tried to make a personal estimation in my [...]

324. Video of the day: nice visualizations of elementary particles

Happy early Saturday, science geeks! Here is a little gift for you which will hopefully help you to sleep better (that’s what I am going to do now ) – nice visualizations of elementary particles It is not like they have anything to do with reality, but I liked the idea very much. The set [...]

322. Video of the day: “Boston Dynamics”

I think it is worth posting about… I’ve noticed the BigDog project (by Boston Dynamics) about a year ago. It seems that their robot is now good enough for U.S. military to use it in Afghanistan. The first video in the playlist is BigDog’ test in March 2008 (very impressive), the second shows that sometimes [...]