Category Archives: Science

Science

If they outlaw evolution, only outlaws will evolve…

My friend Alex from Back In The Day™wrote an interesting post about his hope for the future of Humanity based on the democratizing effects of technology and the Internet. Except that he put it a lot more poetically. Here’s a snippet:

earthbound01: the internet is wide

broadly, there’s some kind of metaphorical Library of Alexandria here, it’s depth of knowledge wide and deep. Virtually all human learning is available here if you have the right passwords and authorization. I’m able to read scholarly journals now from a little terminal. All of our culture is slowly being uploaded, explained, digested. Perhaps one day all cultures will be there. Just think for a minute how sweet the future is going to be now that information is available broadly. Think of it though- all knowledge, all art, all human creation and technology available, or at least explicable. And communication! Instantaneous text, sound, or video transmission. Amazing!

…

There’s some kind of air-strike going on in Iraq, and I’m worried about “collateral damage”, and our soldiers, and really everyone involved. Wars are great for stopping nazis, but I am starting to think they aren’t very good for stopping concepts like or terrorism. Still, these things are temporary, and I think people aren’t stupid and are learning.
Life goes on.
and adapts.
Maybe we can tell the creationistas that if they outlaw evolution only outlaws will evolve.

Electronic Journals and Cost

Post-Katrina we are definitely having journal access issues at Tulane. The sheer cost and lack of thought toward online access from Elsevier (as mentioned in the linked article) and its peers are a continual aggravation when looking for papers to read.

Over on Kalimna there’s an interesting look at what I hope is a new wave in academic publishing — purely electronic publication. Honestly, when you can print a PDF of any article you want, and customize search feeds to aggregate articles you’re interested in as they’re released, why do you want paper journals that you often have to go to the library for and that cost a fortune?

Kalimna

Let’s get some perspective on publication costs. As BEP point out there is a cost crisis in most university libraries stemming from the monopoly pricing power, based on reputation and prestige, of large ‘for-profit’ publishing houses. For-profit publishers in economics charge around 83 cents per page of a journal article whereas not-for-profit publishers associated with universities charge around 17 cents per page: See here for data. BEP costs 36 cents.

Happy Pi Day!

It’s 3/14, also known as Pi day! Take time today to appreciate the magical number that goes on forever and comes from the ratio of a circle’s area to its radius, (and other similar relationships).

Implementing and Studying the Conjugate Gradient Method

When I start up a simulation on our cluster, I’m used to seeing this after some information scrolls by:

Solver = Conjugate gradient
preconditioner=block Jacobi with ILU(5) on each block

I knew before that this was some way of solving a big matrix representing the problem at hand, but never knew how it was done. (Un)luckily, my midterm project in one of my classes this semester is to implement and play around with the conjugate gradient method. We were given a little introduction to the method of steepest descent, then sent on our merry ways to the Mardi Gras and subsequent break.

I was terrified.

I started reading the course notes that we’re using for the class, but they used a bunch of terminology I’ve never heard of before. They were extremely concise. Attempts at understanding the information on MathWorld and other sites ended in confusion. And then, I came upon this title on google:

An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain

With the agonizing pain still acutely in my mind, I clicked on the link and gave it a try. It’s excellent! The author, Jonathan Richard Shewchuk, writes with clarity, knowledge that I’m probably not a numerical analysis professor, and a little dry humor here and there. After searching for him on google, I discovered why the name looked so familiar — I used his Triangle software to generate my 2D cross-section of our model of the rabbit ventricles! The CJ paper has pretty much saved me, and perhaps more importantly has shown me just how cool and clever numerical analysis can be.

If you want to learn about the CJ method, you really must read his paper.

Florida schools choose between bad and worse with new, ID-influenced textbooks

Due to pressures from the Discovery Institute (I.E. creationist propagandists — look them up) the only choices considered were a textbook that flaunts “Intelligent Design” and one that is merely tainted by a watering-down of its coverage of evolution. Fantastic.

Broward selects biology text with watered-down passages on evolution: South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Previous editions of the textbook said Darwin’s theory “is the essence of biology.” In the Broward edition, students will read instead that Darwin’s theory “provides a consistent explanation for life’s diversity.” The county plans to spend $1.2 million for 20,000 copies of the book. It will be required reading in Biology I classes until 2013. “We’re very pleased,” said Rick Blake, spokesman in Chicago for Holt, Rinehart and Winston. “Science is a very strong area for Holt.”

Science was a very strong area for Holt.

ADDENDUM: The ReDiscovery Institute plans to take the success the Discovey Institute in applying Design “Science” to biology, and extend it to other disciplines. They also plan to follow the Discovery Institute’s political strategy:

“Until we gain total control, keep the old testament part of our agenda quiet because it frightens normal people.”