I Go ‘Under The Microscope’… | The Intersection

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Under the Microscope is a cool website ‘where women and science connect.’ It’s the online component of the Women Writing Science project at The Feminist Press featuring stories from women about science, technology, engineering, and math, and aimed to inspire the next generation of STEM pioneers. Last week I was delighted to chat with one of the hosts, Kristina Necovska. Here’s an excerpt from our Q&A:

UTM: I’m curious whether you’ve found that the public’s ability to distinguish credibility and sound arguments is going out the window?

SK: I’m very concerned. We just saw this hack into e-mails of climate change. Most people made very quick judgments without fully understanding the context of what they were reading. [There is] a survey just released by George Mason University and Yale Center for Climate Change Communication. It’s a dismal report, people more than ever don’t “believe” in climate change.

The big point here is that pseudoscience is on the rise. … It’s dangerous and I’m not sure what it means for the future of science and it’s a big red flag in terms of where we’re going. Science needs a better platform. It’s certainly not about PR in a traditional sense but we have to think about how we’re represented when we’re working against so many other forces that have a certain vested interest. We’re trying to emphasize the best research and [research] is very dynamic. There’s no black and white in the way that the pseudo-scientific [groups] want to represent things.

UTM: Can you give us just a few examples of what ordinary people can do to benefit science literacy?

SK: I think just being engaged and being interested is a big part of it. Looking for sources that you should be able to trust like universities. More and more young scientists are creating their own websites in order to counter the rubbish that’s out there. I’d love to see more young people engaged in their communities — like those that have a [bachelor of science] but are unsure whether they want to go to graduate school — writing op-eds or working with local politicians or schools.

Read the full interview here and stick around to check out other featured stories and interviews at Under The Microscope.


Netgear MBRN3300E 3G Mobile Broadband Router Offers 3G, Ethernet Lan and 802.11n Wireless [Routers]

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Netgear and Ericsson have been tinkering away on a joint project, the fruits of which have weaned today—the MBRN3300E 3G mobile broadband router.

It's essentially a router which uses 3G WAN in addition to 802.11n wireless and four ethernet LAN ports for 270Mbps connectivity, so there's plenty o' choice for internet users whether they're in their houses or on the road (with 3G connection).

It's available now, although Netgear hasn't confirmed for just how much. [Netgear]


Shock: When You Raise iTunes Prices, People Buy Less Stuff [ITunes]

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A shocking revelation from the Warner Bros. earnings call this morning: Since they bumped prices on a bunch of iTunes tracks, digital sales growth has slowed down! It grew 10 percent in the fall quarter, but now it's slowed to growing just 5 percent this past quarter, which means they're piling up less money—digital revenue grew less than half as much, 8 percent, versus 20 percent a year ago.

The prudent point in this for book publishers, as Peter Kafka notes, is that raising prices like they wish might slow growth down more than they think. The price difference between a $10 book and a $15 book is a gaping maw, so I wouldn't be surprised to see people react that much more vehemently. But we'll see—maybe people will pay more for fancy ebooks. [MediaMemo]


Windows 7 Murders Vista on Steam [Windows 7]

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Most of the gamers I knew stuck with XP during the Vista's time because it drained precious CPU cycles, but that's not the case here: Steam's released their latest stats on Windows usage, Windows 7 has already blown past Vista.

The stats break down this away: 42.78 percent on XP, 28.53 percent on Windows 7, and 27.91 percent on Vista. Consider that Vista's been out 3 years, and Windows 7's been out for 3 months. Also worth pointing out is that Windows 7 installs are 64-bit by a 2-to-1 margin, which as Ars notes, is now the most popular flavor of Windows on Steam short of XP 32-bit.

The gaming population on Steam isn't necessarily representative of Moms and Dads buying computers, but the fact that the deeply suspicious PC gaming community has picked up Windows 7 in droves does say something. [Steam via Ars, Neowin]


Apple Patent Shows A 3D Virtual World For Buying Their Goods In [Apple]

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There was a time, before Avatar, when 3D meant crummy virtual gaming. A recent patent granted to Apple shows they are (or were) considering a 3D virtual Apple Store—a more welcoming way to shop for Apple products.

It doesn't sound very "Apple," when they normally favor start minimalism over cheesy big-headed virtual characters, but as you can see from the diagram above, they are obviously considering the idea of a store you can walk through and browse the products in, with the outside elements portrayed by falling rain/sunshine etc.

The patent was first filed in 2006 by Apple, so I'm hoping they just got swept up in the Second Life craze and have forgotten all about some naff virtual world where you can exchange 17 green and red apples for the latest Miley Cyrus song. [Patently Apple]


From Eternity to Book Club: Chapters Four and Five | Cosmic Variance

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Welcome to this week’s installment of the From Eternity to Here book club. This week we’re tackling two chapters at once: Chapter Four, “Time is Personal,” and Chapter Five, “Time is Flexible.” That’s just because these chapters are relatively short; next time we’ll return to one chapter per week.

Excerpt:

Starting from a single event in Newtonian spacetime, we were able to define a surface of constant time that spread uniquely throughout the universe, splitting the set of all events into the past and the future (plus “simultaneous” events precisely on the surface). In relativity we can’t do that. Instead, the light cone associated with an event divides spacetime into the past of that event (events inside the past light cone), the future of that event (inside the future light cone), the light cone itself, and a bunch of points outside the light cone that are neither in the past nor the future.

It’s that last bit that really gets people. In our reflexively Newtonian way of thinking about the world, we insist that some far away event either happened in the past, the future, or at the same time as some event on our own world line. In relativity, for spacelike separated events (outside one another’s light cones), the answer is “none of the above.” We could choose to draw some surfaces that sliced through spacetime, and label them “surfaces of constant time,” if we really wanted to. That would be taking advantage of the definition of time as a coordinate on spacetime, as discussed in Chapter One. But the result reflects our personal choice, not a real feature of the universe. In relativity, the concept of “simultaneous faraway events” does not make sense.

These two chapters take on a task that is part of the responsibility of any good book on modern cosmology or gravity: explaining Einstein’s theory of relativity. Both special relativity and general relativity, hence two chapters. In retrospect they are pretty short, so an argument could be made that I should have just combined them into a single chapter.

The special challenge of these chapters is precisely that many readers — but not all — will already have read numerous other popular-level expositions of relativity. But you have to do it. Fortunately, my favorite way of talking about relativity is a little bit different from the standard one, and lines up well with the overarching goal of understanding the meaning of “time.” In particular, I try to make the point that the secret to relativity is to think locally — to compare things happening right next to each other in spacetime, not events that are widely separated. You’re allowed to compare separated events, of course, but the answers are necessarily dependent on arbitrary choices of coordinates, and that leads to endless confusion. So you won’t read a lot about “length contraction” or “time dilation,” but you will read a lot about the actual amount of time measured along a trajectory.

Unfortunately, a search for vivid examples of the maxim “freely-falling paths through spacetime experience the longest amount of proper time” led me directly to the most embarrassing mistake in the book. (At least, “most embarrassing mistake so far uncovered.”) Sordid details below the fold!

The mistake is the claim that a clock that sits stationary on a tower will experience less proper time than a clock that orbits the Earth at the same height above ground. That’s wrong: the orbiting clock will measure less time. This appears in the paragraph at the bottom of page 85 and top of 86, and is elevated from “unfortunate” to “a real doozy” by being illustrated in graphic detail by the figure on page 86. Not really any way I can claim it was just a typo.

sphere.two.geodesics The subtle issue underlying the mistake is illustrated in this figure, which shows two paths connecting two points on a sphere. Both paths are great circles. The shortest distance between two points on a sphere is a great circle; but it certainly doesn’t follow that any path following a great circle gives us the shortest distance between two points. If you go more than half the way around the sphere, you end up with a pretty long path!

The same kind of thing happens in spacetime. The trajectory of longest proper time between two events will always be a freely-falling trajectory (a geodesic). But not every freely-falling path gives us the longest time, and that’s exactly the case in this example. Given two events at the same position above the Earth, the actual path of longest time is a radial freely-falling orbit. If you want your clock to experience the longest time it can, you throw it straight up in the air to where the gravitational field is weaker (and clocks run more quickly with respect to time measured at infinity) and let it fall back down. A circular orbit actually loses time by staying at the same altitude but zipping around the Earth. I relied on my affection for the general underlying principle, and didn’t bother to sit down and work out the actual numbers in this case, so I never found the mistake. Pretty sure my membership in the general relativists’ guild is going to be permanently revoked for this one.

If you’re still not convinced of the wrongness of my example, here’s an equation, the line element along a circular trajectory in the equatorial plane in the Schwarzschild metric:

d\tau^2 = \left(1-\frac{2GM}{r}\right) dt^2 - r^2 d\phi^2\,.
On the left we have a small interval (squared) of the proper time τ, what a clock would measure along some path. The first term on the right is the contribution from our motion with respect to t, the time measured at infinity; for any given amount of t, we experience less proper time τ as our height r decreases and the coefficient (1-2GM/r) becomes smaller. The second term on the right is the contribution from our angular motion φ. Taking the square root of the whole thing and integrating along a path gives you the proper time.

We don’t have to go through the entire calculation to convince ourselves that staying stationary on the tower has a longer proper time than the circular orbit does. Both trajectories get the same contribution from the first term on the right side, while the second term is zero for the clock on the tower (it’s not moving, so dφ=0), but it’s negative for the orbit. So the orbit is definitely less time. To be corrected in the next printing.

The deep point, of course, remains true: the time measured by clocks in general relativity depends on their path through spacetime, and the way to maximize that time is to take a freely-falling path. Just not that one.


Study: Damage to Brain’s Fear Center Makes People Riskier Gamblers | 80beats

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gamblingWhether your fear is panicked, like in a life-or-death situation, or deliberative, like a decision about whether to take a big risk on game show, it all comes back to the amygdala. And a new study of patients with lesions on the amygdala, reported by Caltech scientists in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that damage to our brain’s fear center might turn people into reckless gamblers.

The researchers found two women with Urbach-Wiethe disease, which results in damage to the almond-shaped amygdala. Benedetto De Martinoa and his team paired those two with 12 people with undamaged brains, and presented everyone with a series of gambling tests. The study found that healthy volunteers would only opt to gamble if the potential gains were one and a half to two times the size of the potential losses [BBC News]. The women with Urbach-Wiethe, however, would keep rolling the dice as the odds got worse, and in some cases would even play if the potential loss was greater than the potential gain.

Two, of course, is a pretty small sample size. But that problem is unavoidable, the researchers say. They noted this kind of study usually involves only a few people as it is not possible or ethical to deliberately damage a person’s brain to see what happens [Reuters]. So Urbach-Wiethe patients are particularly valuable to science, showing how damage to one particular area of the brain can change a person’s behavior.

The PNAS findings also back up what some of the same researchers have documented in previous studies, that the amygdala might be responsible not only for more primal fears, but also for social fears and inhibitions. Last year study coauthor Ralph Adolphs led a separate study of a patient with amygdala damage and found that her understanding of personal space was far different from most people’s (she stood much closer during conversation), and she struggled to pick up signs of fear or aggression in other people. Says Adolphs of the newer work: “A fully functioning amygdala appears to make us more cautious. We already know that the amygdala is involved in processing fear, and it also appears to make us ‘afraid’ to risk losing money” [Reuters].

Related Content:
80beats: An Acidic Brain Leads to Panic; A Deep Breath Can Fix That
80beats: Jell-O Shots in Adolescence Lead to Gambling Later in Life
DISCOVER: Conquering Your Fears, One Synapse at a Time
DISCOVER: Emotions and the Brain: Fear

Image: flickr / Morberg


Where Next?

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The New Space Race, Paul Spudis

"Although it is not currently popular in this country to think about national interests and the competition of nations in space, others do not labor under this restriction. Our current human spaceflight effort, the International Space Station (ISS), has shown us both the benefits and drawbacks of cooperative projects. Soon, we will not have the ability to send crew to and from the ISS. But that's not a problem; the Russians have graciously agreed to transport us - at $50 million a pop. Look for that price to rise once the Shuttle is fully retired. To understand whether there is a new space race or not, we must understand its history. Why would nations compete in space anyway? And if such competition occurs, how might it affect us? What should we have in space: Kumbaya or Starship Troopers? Or is the answer somewhere between the two?"

AM/FM/CD Radio Fire in a Boat

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I have an AM/FM/CD radio in my sailboat. I installed it myself. The first one was an expensive marine unit which failed after a few years so I replaced it with a inexpensive standard car unit. It worked fine for a few years also but one day I noticed an acrid smell near it. A few days later I lo

WiLink Crams Wi-Fi, GPS, FM Transmission and Bluetooth Into a Single Chip [Wireless]

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Texas Instruments says that their WiLink 7.0 is the first chip with four wireless radios in one: FM transmission and reception, GPS, 802.11n Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth. What does this mean for you, gadget lovers? In theory, a wholalot goodness.

Texas Instruments claims that mobile gadgets using this chip would be able to do all those four functions for less money—30 percent less—in less space—50 percent—and consuming less energy than the current alternatives. [PR Newswire]


Home Theater Under the Stairs Makes Perfect Sense [Home Theater]

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There's nothing fancy about this idea for a home theater, but it's a very clever way to save space in a small house, using the dead space under the stairs to store a ton of tech gear.

The setup was built by Jason Swell, who thought that this was the best way to place his 50-inch Samsung HLR5078W DLP projection television, along with a Dual-Core Mac Mini, Series 2 Tivo, and Comcast HD STB. And rightly so, because it not only saves space, but places the screen at a good distance to watch from the sofas.

The stair hides even more high tech stuff behind that screen: A 1-terabyte hard drive array, an audio amplifier, the 30Mb/s FIOS connection, an EyeTV 500 HD tuner, and a UPS unit. In fact, he uses five tuners and he is able to record three shows concurrently while watching a fourth. [Flickr via Unplggd]


Applications of Synchronus motors

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Hi all,

Cud anyone please tel me where the SYNCHRONOUS Motors are used,as in my country(India) most of the production and process industries use variable speed drives(Slip ring Induction motors).

Can i suppose that where ever constant speed is required Synchronous motors are used,but again

Google Finally Provides Limited Nexus One Phone Support [Google]

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Google has finally stepped up to the plate to offer a support phone line for Nexus One owners. It's a necessary move, given the volume of customer complaints, but it's also turned out to be a lackluster one.

Nexus One owners can call (888) 48NEXUS between 4am and 7pm PST to speak with a real live person. Unfortunately, though, they'll only be able to get information on the status/shipping information on your existing order. For technical support or repairs and returns, you'll still need to contact HTC customer care (1-888-216-4736). For billing/service support, you'll still need to contact T-Mobile (1-877-453-1304).

Google doesn't have to be its partners' keeper, and if I were a Nexus One owner I'd rather have Google support than not. But it's still got to be terribly frustrating to have three distinct places to turn when you've got a Nexus One issue. [Google via CNET]


Equalization Pressure of Two Air Receivers

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Assuming standard conditions - Sea level, 68 F, 35 Relative Humidty.

I am working on a project which I need to know how long it will take to eqaulize pressure between two air receivers using 150 Feet of 4" diameter pipe assuming no additional air is being supplied. Air receiver #1 is 31,210 ga

Cost benefit analysis in design

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please advice on how to do cost benifit analysis of two or more designs considering cost,safety, maintenance,....etc

i am working as junior mechanical engineer after graduating from college since then i have been facing the problem to evaluate different options to decide the best one to imp