Today in lecture, I heard an amusing proof of Ramsey’s Theorem which I reproduce here. The terminology used in it is quite … entertaining.
Notation: X is a set, then [X]k is the set of k-element subsets of X.
Ramsey’s Theorem: for all integers k ≥ 1, if X is an infinite set and F is […]
One of my professors is from Greece. Unfortunately, it seems that over the thousands of years since the Greek alphabet was invented, the version of the Greek glyphs used by Greek-speaking Greeks has diverged quite a bit from the version inherited by LaTeX-speaking mathematicians. Thus, when a Greek-speaker writes on the board about a mathematical […]
Stumbled on an article in Harvard Magazine about Mark Lehner’s archaeological studies of pyramid builders. Lehner’s team uncovered a town where the workers who had build the three great pyramids of Giza lived. The town contained enormous (by ancient standards) granaries, a fish processing hall, various food-preparation facilities, and barracks for housing a total of […]
As two British restaurant patrons recently, found out, some fish are hallucinogenic. The two men ate some Salema porgy, a fish found in the Mediterranean Sea and in the Atlantic around European and North African coasts. One man suffered from 36 hours of visual and auditory hallucinations; the other went through hours of hallucinations and […]
BoingBoing had an interesting post about nontransitive dice.
Say you have four dice, A, B, C, and D, which are labeled as follows:
A = {1, 1, 1, 5, 5, 5}
B = {2, 2, 2, 2, 6, 6}
C = {3, 3, 3, 3, 3, 3}
D = {0, 0, 4, 4, 4, 4}
Then, 2/3 of the time, B […]
Very interesting post about Ampulex compressa, a species of tropical African wasp. Like many other solitary wasps, A. compressa lays its eggs on another insect, which is then used as food by the wasp’s larvae. However, our wasp has picked Periplaneta americana, an African cockroach (not American, despite the misleading name), as the host for […]
(Via Ars) René Weber of Michigan State University, Klaus Mathiak of RWTH Aachen, and Ute Ritterfeld of University of Southern California claimed to have found a “causal link” between a violent video game and brain activity indicating aggression. Their study has not yet been published. However, the press release indicates that the researchers performed fMRI […]
Xioayun Wang is a professor at Shandong University, China. She is one of the leading cryptographers of today; she helped break (well, not quite break, but drastically reduce the complexity of) MD5, SHA0, and SHA1 hash functions. Thanks to her, projects that currently rely on MD5 and SHA1 for verification of data (like BitTorrent, Portage, […]
The Dept. of Commerce wants to treat foreign researchers’ access to scientific technology as export to hostile nations. Which is to say, if you have the misfortune of being an Indian student or a Russian scientist, and you want to say, use a microscope, you will need to fill out a request (complete with your […]
It is a well-known fact that the adverse health effects of radioactivity were not well-known until the 1930’s, which led to the deaths of a number of scientists who pioneered radiation research. However, I did not realize that in the 1920’s radiation was actually considered good for your health. It seems incredible, from the modern […]
It’s official: if you are a Democrat-supporting scientist, you are not fit to represent American science abroad.
I have no words.
OK, I have some words. The last time American citizens were banned from scientific bodies for their political party affiliation was during the McCarthy witch hunts of the 1950’s. However, McCarthy at least had a […]
Read an interesting take on a possible mechanism for how low-intensity microwave radiation (e.g. cell phones) could lead to DNA damage. The /. discussion is here. Basic summary:
absorbing microwaves could make a large organic molecule change to a different spatial structure or stereoisomer;
absorbing microwaves affects rates of reactions catalyzed by enzymes and metal atoms, […]