Category Archives: Other science

aka stamp collecting

Come on Down!

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Pigeons outperform humans at the Monty Hall Dilemma

Pigeons, on the other hand, rely on experience to work out probabilities. They have a go, and they choose the strategy that seems to be paying off best. They also seem immune to a quirk of ours called “probability matching”. If the odds of winning by switching are two in three, we’ll switch on two out of three occasions, even though that’s a worse strategy than always switching. This is, of course, exactly what the students in Hebranson and Schroder’s experiments did. The pigeons, on the other hand, always switched – no probability matching for them.

In short, pigeons succeed because they don’t over-think the problem. It’s telling that among humans, it’s the youngest students who do best at this puzzle. Eighth graders are actually more likely to work out the benefits of switching than older and supposedly wiser university students. Education, it seems, actually worsens our performance at the Monty Hall Dilemma.

Pigeons are also unwelcome at casinos, but this may not solely be due to their immunity to the gambler’s fallacy.

Programming Your S.O.

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A brief, yet helpful, lesson on elementary resource-locking strategy

I explained as politely as I could that separation of concerns is one of the most fundamental of all the principles of system design, and that for me to reschedule my own tasks and take on other agents’ responsibilities would be a gross violation of encapsulation. I explained that, instead, when she accepted the get-the-boys’-drinks interrupt, she should have relinquished her lock and passed the cheese back down to my end of the table before going swanning off off on the drinks mission.

Sadly, she was COMPLETELY IRRATIONAL and started talking as though I was some kind of selfish jerk who just wanted the cheese.

Live by the programmer’s POV, die by the programmer’s POV.

Brrrrrromine, et al

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Modeling Ultracold Chemistry

Atomic physicists have steadily improved their ability to cool atoms to temperatures where quantum effects reign, and in the past decade they have also trapped loosely bound pairs of atoms. But only in 2008 did they produce large numbers of ultracold pairs that were bound strongly enough to properly be called molecules. Each of these molecules is in its lowest possible state of vibration and rotation, and their overall motion corresponds to temperatures under a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Bose-Einstein condensation of ultracold atoms 14 years ago spawned a continuing flurry of physics experiments and garnered a Nobel Prize, but researchers expect even richer quantum behavior from ultracold molecules. Understanding how ultracold molecules interact is critical to the experiments.

Wrong Metric, Sir

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SciGuy: What is more important: Energy or healthcare?

What is clear is that Americans and American companies value health care over energy by at least a factor of five, and perhaps much more.

That’s pretty incredible considering that, in the modern world, energy is nearly as essential as good health care, and that substantial energy research is considered a requisite to meet future needs.

Or so I would argue.

I think SciGuy makes a mistake her in equating dollars spent with importance. I think one has to consider phase space and pregnant women.

There’s an adage in research that it takes one woman nine months to produce a baby. If one gathers nine women, they will not be able to produce a baby in one month. Research takes time, and there is a point at which adding more money to the problem does not yield improved results — you only benefit if there are new lines of research to be pursued, i.e. the “phase space” of the problem can’t be restricting you. Medical research has lots of problems that can be investigated, and a large number of drugs that can be researched, as well as improvements in diagnostic equipment.

Crap You Won't Believe

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Manure Raises New Stink

Dairy farmer has a pool of manure in his back yard, and methane bubbles are forming.

Mr. Goltstein asked state regulators to let him pop the bubbles. He said he and his 19-year-old son would slice them open with a knife from a paddleboat.

Bruce Palin, assistant commissioner for the office of land quality at the state environmental agency, said officials were considering the idea. But, he added, “not knowing how much volume of gas is there and how much pressure is on it, we’re concerned with just cutting a hole.”

Last year, a hog farmer in Hayfield, Minn., was launched 40 feet into the air in an explosion caused by methane gas from a manure pit on his farm. He sustained burns and singed hair.

Mr. Goltstein’s attorney, Glenn D. Bowman, acknowledged that the potential existed for an explosion: “We’re aware of that sort of common physics issue,” he said.

Yes, exploding shitbubbles apparently fall under the category of common physics issues.

Chemophobia

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Why ‘chemical’ has become a dirty word

Obviously, when dealing with more than 50 million known compounds, each requiring a unique name, complex terminology has to enter the picture. Chemists are thankful for the systematic nomenclature that has been worked out, but to the public, complex chemical names are frightening and tend to conjure up images of doom.

Some marketers try to capitalize on this fear by advertising “chemical-free” products. So we have “chemical-free” cosmetics, cleaning agents and, believe it or not, books about “chemical-free kids.”

The message is that chemical-free means safer, healthier, greener. Given that it is a nonsensical term, what are these products all about? Mostly, “chemical-free” refers to being free of synthetic chemicals. This insinuates that synthetic chemicals are more problematic than natural ones, an inference that is not valid.

Keep Left

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On the Periodic Table, that is. Fun with the alkali metals.

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I’ve witnessed a pretty nice Rubidium reaction, when I was cleaning out the oven we used to make an atomic beam. The oven was little more than a pipe with a hole in it, along with a removable plug for refilling/cleaning access, and heater wire wrapped around the outside. A little squirt of water into the tube, and BOOM! Turns out there was a macroscopic bit of unoxidized Rb left inside. Good times.