Entered Apprentice
On Harvard – again
By the way, why Harvard is called Harvard? Who is it named for? I guess, everybody knows that, but for me – it was a discovery of the day.
It was named for English clergyman John Harvard. Mr. Harvard together with his wife has moved from London to America in 1673. He became a clergyman there and has died of tuberculosis a year later.
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Saturday’s photoguess: what are they doing?
and where are they located? (take a careful look at the lower part of the photo.)
The full answer is: they took a tour at the Sultan Hassan Mosque in Cairo, Egypt. The date was June 4, 2009. The mosque is one of the largest in the world (it was built in 1256).
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Biocentrism: book review
I was asked to review the book by Dr. Robert Lanza called “Biocentrism: how life and consciousness are the keys to understand true nature of the Universe“.
If you are a scientist good enough in your area of expertise, at some point you start wondering whether you can explain everything around you, every single event, physical phenomenon, consciousness, human nature etc. etc. by using methods from your area of expertise.
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Harvard near bankruptcy
Just wanted to finally end my day and go to sleep (way too much work today), but heard some news and cannot help sharing it with you.
According to Boston Magazine Harvard University is to face some very serious problems. The University currently spends about 1.5 billion USD/year, it has lost several billion during crisis – including 500 million thanks to Larry Summers, super feminist fighter (essentially, he presented those 500 million as a gift for GS). If only Dr. Summers spent more time thinking about what he was supposed to think about… but he is clearly not the person to blame as they want him to be.
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Small amphibian collider
Art by immortal Abstruse Goose, poetry by @Yarbo 
Michio Kaku on artificial intelligence
Nowadays, it is fashionable to hypothesize that an advanced AI, when it appears, will wipe pathetic humans out of the face of the Earth (risk of unfriendly AI, as transhumanists like to call it). I think, what’s not taken into account in these considerations is that humans will evolve as well, will be willing to technologically upgrade themselves as well.
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How many scientists fabricate or falsify their research?
This is the title of a rather intriguing paper recently published in PLos ONE. As it turns out, approximately 72% of researchers have seen at least once how their colleagues used inappropriate or incorrect methods of research.
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An exoplanet near ultracool star
New record in astrometry and exoplanetology – the authors of 0906.0544 are talking about discovery of the planet in the vicinity of a very light star. The mass of the star is about 0.07 Solar masses, i.e., equivalent to 3-9 Jupiter masses – it is actually near the lower mass limit for an object to be called a star 
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Jim Simons and C.N. Yang interviewed by Bill Zimmerman
… about math (geometry)/physics interplay.
Yang: there are two types of modern math books – the ones which you cannot read beyond the first page and the ones which you cannot read beyond the first sentence. Stinrood is of the latter kind.
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How might one design a nano-machine?
Trinh Xuan Hoang is currently a postdoc at Penn State University. He is also a researcher at Institute of Physics, Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology. Dmitry.
Significant advances in laboratory techniques in tailoring and processing materials at the atomic level have resulted in nanotechnology becoming an increasingly mature field. One of the exciting goals of nanotechnology is the design of powerful nano-machines, i.e. functional entities at the nano-scale that work like macro-world machines. A simple nano-machine would be an entity that is able to switch between two distinct conformations under some kind of external perturbation. In fact, molecular switching of various kinds has been the subject of many recent studies.
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Google Wave
Everybody (Terence Tao for one) seems to be excited about forthcoming Google Wave, and so am I. Here is the video demonstrating some of the product’s features:
I think, we are yet to see whether Google Wave is to become ultimate science collaboration tool (I signed up on their site – and hope they’ll get me into beta testing). My current opinion is that Google Wave provides you functionality similar to forums rather than wikis: in collaboration projects, I’ve found that messages tend to group into project categories, not conversations – since it is also good to see also conversations which ended up long time ago, not just recent ones, if the topic of the conversation is the same. And of course, I would love if a collaboration platform naturally would support TeX formulae (embed them as fugures, MathML or in some other – not terribly ugly – way) (nobody among big players seems to be interested to satisfy needs of little egghead nerds – scientists)
The coming collapse of the middle class
As usual on Saturdays, discussion of physics is forbidden (why? check out Old Testament). Let us talk a bit about global financial crisis instead , namely about work of Elizabeth Warren, professor of Harvard Law School.
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Correcting the initial vacuum state in quantum gravity
Emre Kahya is a postdoc at Koc University, Turkey (he is a former graduate student of Richard Woodard). Dmitry.
Cosmology is becoming the most active area of research in theoretical physics for the last 10 years. We now understand that initial quantum fluctuations are reasons of our existence with in the context of Inflation. This brings the following question: Can we make quantum gravity calculations and expect to test them by some means? Naively one would say no. One reason is the smallness of the coupling constant:
quantum gravity effects have the order of magnitude ![0^{\rm th}{\rm Order} [1+\alpha_1 G + \alpha_2G^2 + ...]](http://www.nonequilibrium.net/latexrender/pictures/99bb619d901560bc9c639f1c44ea6834.gif "0^{\rm th}{\rm Order} [1+\alpha_1 G + \alpha_2G^2 + ...]")
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One week to spend in US
At this very moment – when you are reading this – I am flying to US, where the final destination of my trip is Cleveland. The plan is to take part in the 3-day Workshop on tests of gravity and gravitational physics at Case Western Reserve U.
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On gun politics and culture in US
In Russia, any talk about personal weapons/gun policy gets immediately reduced to the question of how actually effective are guns for personal self-defence on the street. On the other hand, in US general attractor seems to be discussion of the statement that personal weapons is your defence against tyranny, i.e., “armed man=free man” etc. etc.
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