Relevant History

From My Life as a Quant

Whenever I have a new problem to work on-- in physics or options theory-- the first major struggle is to gain some intuition about how to proceed; the second struggle is to transform this intuition into something more formulaic, a set of rules anyone can follow, rules that no longer require the original insight itself. In this way, one person's breakthrough becomes everybody's possession. (Emanuel Derman, My Life as a Quant: Reflections on Physics and Finance, p. 48)

[To the tune of Grateful Dead, "The Mighty Quinn," from the album "1991-04-05 - The Omni".]

Technorati Tags: physics

The majesty of science

Not safe for work, but very amusing. The back story is here.

Technorati Tags: humor, science

Paper Enigma machine

Sure, the Enigma was cracked in World War II, but it's still a pretty cool device. Did you know you can make a (very simple) paper version?

[via Bruce Schneier]

[To the tune of Perpetual Groove, "Get Down Tonight," from the album "Live at The Music Farm, 31 December 2006".]

Technorati Tags: mathematics, security

Closing doors

This (via Lifehacker) is an interesting game, and an interesting experiment.

ah, the future

From 41 Hilarious Science Fair Experiments:

It's like a cross between I Can Has Cheezeburger and Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

Frontiers of science!

I've recently been reading some brain science stuff, but haven't found anything as interesting as this:

Half Of 26-Year-Old's Memories Nintendo-Related

Nearly 50 percent of 26-year-old paralegal Philip Jenkins' encoded long-term memories involve button combinations, game-playing experiences, and spatial-cognitive maps of various levels and worlds from Nintendo's line of video-game consoles, a team of neuroscientists reported Tuesday.

[To the tune of Jethro Tull, "Cross Eyed Mary," from the album "Bursting Out: Jethro Tull Live".]

Technorati Tags: humor

I'll bet historians are the last ones to get into this, too

For years there's been anecdotal evidence, and a couple surveys, suggesting growing use of drugs like Ritalin and Provigil by undergraduates looking to get an edge over the competition. Now, some faculty are starting to claim that professors who study the brain have started doing it, too:

While caffeine reigns as the supreme drug of the professoriate, some university faculty members have started popping "smart" pills to enhance their mental energy and ability to work long hours, according to two University of Cambridge scientists.

In a commentary published in the journal Nature last month, Barbara Sahakian and Sharon Morein-Zamir revealed the results of their informal survey of a handful of colleagues who study drugs that help people perform better mentally....

But brain boosting raises hackles in some parts of academe. "It smells to me a lot like taking steroids for physical prowess," said Barbara Prudhomme White, an associate professor of occupational therapy at the University of New Hampshire, who has studied the abuse of Ritalin by college students. After recent revelations about the use of performance-enhancing drugs in professional baseball, she sees parallels between athletes and assistant professors. "You're expected to publish and teach, and the stakes are high. So young professors have to work their tails off to get that golden nugget of tenure."

The poll was not meant to be a comprehensive study, said Ms. Morein-Zamir, a research associate at Cambridge. Rather, the essay, "Professor's Little Helper," was intended to provoke a public discussion of whether society in general, and universities in particular, should regulate the use of available compounds and medications that might be developed in the future. "If a drug helps you be more alert but also make better decisions, how does society feel about that?" she asked.

The essay, published in Nature, is a rewardingly geeky piece that includes a long discussion of how these drugs work, and what dangers exist in their use.

Technorati Tags: brain, drugs, university

The march of science

Man's relentless desire to-- oh, never mind.

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday....

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer... cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says. "Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Only four positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance". The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

One of my 20-something colleagues pointed this out to me. I hate my colleagues

From the Reuters wire:

Alzheimer's memory loss faster among well-educated

Having more years of formal education delays the memory loss linked to Alzheimer's disease, but once the condition begins to take hold, better-educated people decline more rapidly, researchers said on Monday....

Every year of education delayed the accelerated memory decline that precedes dementia by about 2-1/2 months, according to the researchers at Yeshiva University's Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

But once this memory loss began, the rate of decline unfolded 4 percent more quickly for each additional year of education, the researchers said.

Someone with 16 years of schooling might experience memory decline 50 percent more quickly than another person with just four years education, based on the findings.

[To the tune of Neil Young, "Powderfinger," from the album "Weld".]

Technorati Tags: aging, biology, memory

Renyi Institute this morning

I'm going to go to the Renyi Institute, one of Budapest's most important centers for pure mathematics, this morning. (I know how to have a good time.) We're starting-- have started, really-- a new project on the future of science and technology, a kind of turbocharged, Web 2.0-ified version of the Delta Scan, and so I'm going to log a little time on the project by going over and talking to people there.

One of the things I'm really interested in is the big trend from Cold War brain drain-- where world-class minds tended to gravitate from the Third World (or global periphery, or global South, or whatever you like to call it), to Europe and the U.S.-- to brain circulation, where people tend to move back and forth between various countries.

Hungary has a pretty incredible tradition in pure mathematics, and the Renyi Institute is interesting to me for a couple reasons. First, I don't know that much about Hungarian science, and I figure mathematics is as good a place as any to start learning.

Second, Renyi runs a school for foreign students in mathematics, and I'm curious to understand why undergraduates come to it. I think I know the answer, but you'd think that mathematics, of all fields of inquiry, would be place-independent. After all, math is the same everywhere. It's all people standing in front of blackboards, or writing equations on pieces of paper. So why travel anywhere to do it? What's that about? Essentially, the school is a case study in brain circulation-- and conveniently for me, it's one in which Americans go abroad, rather than the other way around.

So this morning I checked the directions on the Web site, got out my map of Budapest (99% of the time the free maps you can pick up at tourist information desks or in hotel lobbies are good enough for my purposes), and spent a sleepy minute looking around for it. Turns out it's about 3 minutes' walk from here.

So I've got a little more time to shower and get some breakfast than I expected, which is cool. I'm pretty smoky, and didn't shower last night, as I got back from Tandem around midnight and was working on my end of cyberspace talk.

I'm now really excited about the talk, by the way. It's not all the time you get to come up with a new way of explaining a subject you've been working on for a couple years, but I think I've done it, and that's very satisfying. I'm going to get at least a chapter section out of it, plus an article in the conference proceedings. Mmmmm, c.v. lines...

[To the tune of Sarah Shannon, "I'll Run Away," from the album "Sarah Shannon".]

Technorati Tags: brain circulation, Budapest, end of cyberspace, future, mathematics, Renyi Institute, science, travel