How to Improve Plasma Cut Quality

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Plasma arc cutting (PAC), or plasma cutting, is a process by which a vortex of pressurized gas is ionized to heat and melt electrically conductive materials. The PAC system's parts are configured to constrict and focus the vortex of ionized gas on an electrically conductive material so that the

The growth of ScienceBlogs & science blogsGene Expression

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sbgrowthScienceBlogsTM just put out a release on their traffic growth. The trend is interesting because after a period of flattening out, 2008-2010 seems to have seen some robust growth again. As I said when I left I do wish SB and many of their bloggers well, and I continue to subscribe to several of their blogs in my RSS as well as the select feed. The network’s robust growth is a positive sign when it comes to the transition of science communication from dead tree to the internet. I know that there’s been a lot of stress on the part of science journalists as to the sustainability of their enterprise, though that is really just a domain-specific instantiation of the issues in journalism as a whole, but until that works itself out the growth and persistence of science blogging and science-related websites is a good thing. There is a calm after the storm of creative-destruction, and the current science blogosphere is laying the seedbed for future renewal. The outcome may be sub-optimal from the viewpoint of labor, but the consumer will benefit.

The growth of internet based science communication means that the pie is growing, and the tide is rising. It isn’t a zero-sum game between SB, Nature Networks, Scientific Blogging, Discover Blogs, etc. My main concern personally is that my readership is still strongly Anglospheric, literally hundreds of millions of Chinese have started using the internet while I’ve been blogging, but very few of them do and can read my content. Due to language constraints this may be a long term structural issue, though the utilization of Google translate + chart heavy posts may be a way to push beyond the Anglosphere a bit. If you want to see the geographic skew, sitemeter is sufficient even with a sample size of the last 100 visitors.

Note: Also, please note that the growth can’t be attributed only to non-science content. Obviously I can’t lay out specific numbers, but blogs which focus on science such as Tetrapod Zoology and Frontal Cortex draw lots of traffic.

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Forming LARGE Concrete Walls

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I am getting ready to bid on some concrete work, and am in need of some advice on forming large walls. They will be supporting mining equipment, the largest of which is a primary crusher weighing 365 tons. The wall structures I have found for similar equipment have been roughly 25' high, 40' long, a

Windows XP Validity Problem

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Hi friends

My windows xp received message from Microsoft indicating "it did not pass the validity check ", i do not why is that ? and i got a blue star at the bottom bar of the screen.

Is any way to remove that annoying blue star ?

Thanks for help.

Do doctors “look like America” (or not?)Gene Expression

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With the passage of health care reform, and the shift of the medical profession away from private practice and toward large institutions already, I wanted to revisit some data about the political orientation of medical students and recent graduates surveyed in the mid-aughts. One of the major issues among American elites has been the occupational bifurcation politically between liberals and conservatives, with the former concentrated in the professions which are often affiliated with the managerial state, and the latter within the business sector. Until recently I had assumed that medical doctors were an example of a profession which tended toward conservatism because of the bias toward private practice and the general lack of direct state involvement (as opposed to regulation) in their occupation, but this seems an older model. Political Self-characterization of U.S. Medical Students shows that medical students actually tend toward liberalism vis-a-vis the general population, and even young adults in their primary age group. No doubt this may change as they age, but I am skeptical of this because it looks as if medicine is going to resemble a public sector occupation more, not less, as we proceed. I reformatted table 1, removing a few rows which I felt were extraneous. Additionally, I added columns which show the proportions of medical students by ethnicity and religion (where they received close to 100% response) and the general population ~2008 (from the American Community Survey & Religious Landscape Survey).


NConserv. %Mod. %Lib. %Students % Population %
Total4918263341
Female226018324946
Male265433343354
Mother’s ed.
No HS diploma81174340
HS diploma240273538
Some college284333433
College625283835
Grad school549203546
Med school60173845
Father’s ed.
No HS diploma79224038
HS diploma178223642
Some college163234036
College420303435
Grad school696253441
Med school296233938
Ethnicity
Asian932174142194
Black38893358812
Hispanic201153253415
Native/Other2422340375-
White31413231386466
Religion
Atheist/None879929631816
Buddhist789424921
Hindu2318415150.5
Muslim11921433621
Catholic11053035352224
Jewish32317265872
Other Christian81431412817-
Protestant11024530262250
Other235930615-
Ever married
Yes100239313020
No388523344379
Specialty
Primary care1423253343
Emergency338253441
Family med477312841
General internal366243541
Ob/gyn268162460
Pediatrics537213643
Psychiatry116172756
Surgery647343729
Other437273142

There were a few religion categories which don’t seem to map well between what was asked in the survey of medical students and the general population, so I omitted them. Specifically, it seems that many medical students are nominal Christians who simply selected “Other Christian,” while in the general population this class consists mostly of heterodox groups such as Mormons, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Christian scientists. The “Other” religious segment also seems inordinately large, and I suspect that they would be “Unaffiliated” in the Pew survey (if the question is asked so that “Atheist” is part of the category that will scare away a substantial subset of those who aren’t members of organized religions but have some vague supernatural beliefs). Finally, it seems strange to me that they clumped “Native” and “Other” races together in the medical student survey, as it seems likely that many who didn’t want to respond or were mixed-race are in this group, so I didn’t compare it to anything in general population.

No great surprise that pediatricians are more liberal than surgeons. Perhaps I’m employing stereotypes that people may find scurrilous, but I don’t particularly care. Some of the trends among specialties are confounded with the fact that there are differences in sex ratio across them; specialists or those who wish to be specialists are more likely to be male than female, and females are more likely to be liberal than male. Correlations are not necessarily transitive, but I think that’s what you’re seeing here. The liberalism of Asian Americans is not that surprising, but notice that Hindus and Buddhists are even more liberal. The majority of young Asian Americans are now of non-Christian religions, or irreligious, but a significant minority are Christians, and often conservative ones at that. The higher proportion of conservatives among the whole Asian American group is probably a function of the fact that Christians are more comfortable with the conservative movement than non-Christians. If you are a racial minority being a non-Christian makes it very difficult to identify with the modern Republican movement; being a white person at least allows for racial solidarity, while being a conservative Christian allows for ideological solidarity. No matter the “family values” or high incomes of Asian Americans, those who are non-Christian are going to be deeply alienated from the party for reasons of identity for the foreseeable future (yes, I know there are secular libertarian Asian Americans who are Republican. When I was more politically engaged I was in that category).

Interestingly, non-Hispanic whites are represented in proportion to their numbers in the general population among young doctors and medical students, though a bit overrepresented in proportion to their age bracket. As older individuals are more likely to need medical care, and these are more often non-Hispanic white, it will be common for non-white doctors to interact with older patients who grew up at a time when America was an explicitly biracial, and implicitly white, country. I have talked to young Asian American friends who recount experiences with very elderly patients whereby it is difficult for these individuals to grok that they were born and raised in the United States because these patients have an image of America which is derived from their youth.

The prominence of ethnically Asian software engineers, or in scientific institutes, is a well known feature of the American landscape. But these are not occupations which require a great deal of interface with the general American public. Professions like medicine do require that interface, that is one reason that there is focus on getting underrepresented minorities into medicine, so that they can better serve their communities. When it comes to elderly white patients who are going through chronic illnesses at the end of their lives I think it is probably not practical or appropriate to expect too much consciousness raising in regards intercultural dynamics and sensitivity. Rather, I think the onus is going to be on young Asian American doctors to try and understand the perspectives of their patients and the America from which they came, an America which they and their parents have changed in fundamental ways by their very presence.