As you can imagine as a mathematician, the bigger and harder the equations the happier I am. Not really, we look for pattens and elegance rather than just difficult equations, though of course difficult equations can be elegant and contain a lot of interesting structure.
Anyway, scientists now have an equation for happiness and here it is
Taken from [1].
Now we just need to apply some calculus to find the maxima (local or global I’m not fussy) and find out just how happy a mathematician can be!
Reference
[1] Robb B. Rutledge, Nikolina Skandali, Peter Dayan, and Raymond J. Dolan, A computational and neural model of momentary subjective well-being, PNAS 2014 : 1407535111v1-201407535.
On the 10th of May 1978 Jan Wolski, a local farmer, reportedly hand a close encounter of the Polish kind.
The claim is that Pan Wolski, who was 71 at the time, while out driving his horse-drawn cart near the small village of Emilcin, Poland was jumped on by two aliens. The description of these aliens is similar to the well-known grey alien, but a little greener.
They took him to their craft which is depicted below;
Once on board he was de-robed and thoroughly probed!
Monument
The story at the time did not course much of a stir. The only other witness was a six year-old boy and of course Polish farmers like vodka!
To commemorate the strange events of that day, in 2005 a memorial was constructed in Emilcin. The plaque reads “On 10 May 1978 in Emilcin a UFO object landed. The truth will astonish us in the future”.
I tried to convince my wife that we should see this monument, I think it is cool and a bit wacky!
You can find out more about the Polish abduction by following the link below.
One of the common problems that A-level physics students have is being slack with units and powers of 10. Often they neglect to include units in their final answers or are out by factors of 10, sometimes many factors of 10.
The BBC News Magazine has collected 10 such instances in the real word and not just in the homework of physics students.
The key message here must be take care with units and exponents!
Cardiff Science Festival 2014 is nearly here and will from run from the 14th to the 20th July at various locations across Cardiff.
Events include hands on workshops, live demonstrations, talks, discussion forums, performances, lectures, debates, exhibitions, guided tours and panel discussions.
A report commissioned by The Campaign for Science and Engineering (CaSE) provides quantitative economic evidence that Government funding in science and engineering can boost growth in the economy.
The report states that for every £1 spent by the UK government on R&D, the private sector R&D output rises by 20p.
The report was written by Prof. J.Haskel of Imperial College Business School, and Prof. A. Hughes and E. Bascavusoglu-Moreau, both of the University of Cambridge.
Astronaut Tim Peake. Image by the UK Space Agency.
The UK Space Agency is today (2 May 2014) launching a competition for school children between the ages of 7 and 14 to design a British-inspired, balanced and exciting meal for British ESA astronaut Tim Peake to eat during his 6 month mission to the International Space Station (ISS).
The globally important conservation and science work conducted at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew is under threat due to government cut backs. The deficit is about £5M and will lead to loss of over 120 posts.
If you are worried about this you can sign the petition below aimed at Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the Rt Hon Mr Owen Paterson MP;
According to the Royal Academy of Engineers Wales needs something like an extra 2,500 graduates by 2020 to cope with those leaving due to retirement.
Again, I just don’t know if this is really the case, given that we know that plenty of engineers are not finding suitable employment.
As soon as you look at the numbers, it is very hard to justify [claims of] a skills shortage
Marcus Body, head of research at Work Communications
Nearly a quarter of UK engineering graduates are working in non-graduate jobs or unskilled work such as waiting and shop work, a report suggests.
Katherine Sellgren (BBC) (2011)
I know I am starting to sound repetitive here, but what is really going on and how can we get to the truth? Do we really need more STEM graduates or not?
Image by DAVID ILIFF