Copy, Paste

A couple of reviews and discussions about My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture by Susan D. Blum

It’s Culture, Not Morality

The book, about to appear from Cornell University Press, is sure to be controversial because it challenges the strategies used by colleges and professors nationwide. In many ways, Blum is arguing that the current approach of higher education to plagiarism is a shock and awe strategy — dazzle students with technology and make them afraid, very afraid, of what could happen to them.

I wrote this post myself, I swear

Prof. Says Plagiarism Is More Complex than We Thought

The Relppod Effect

Doppler effect reversed by metamaterial

This latest research takes the principles of negative electromagnetic refraction and applies them to acoustic vibrations. Here the parameters to be made negative are material density and modulus, the latter relating to a material’s elasticity. Until now engineers have only created metamaterials with either of these properties, but Kim and colleagues have successfully combined them to create the world’s first “double-negative” acoustic metamaterial (arXiv:0901.2772v2 ). Their acoustic tube is constructed from thin membranes under tension fed by a carefully controlled air flow, and this manages to create a negative phase velocity for sound travelling through.