Hypatia

 

Hypatia (born c. 350–370; died in March 415 AD)

Alejandro Amenábar * 31 March 1972

Science + Literature = i

"In the world there are various categories of scientists:
there are people of a secondary or tertiary standing;
there are also those of high standing
who make discoveries of great importance to science;
then there are geniuses like Galileo and Newton.
Well, Ettore was one of them."
Enrico Fermi

 

Ettore Majorana

Leonardo Sciascia

Pi

Well, irrational . . .

Laughing Lhursday *

Law of Urination

In case you wish to learn more about Mr Hu's trailblazing scientific efforts, just visit the Hu Laboratory for Biolocomotion in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, USA.

Meanwhile I am on my way . . .


* [For first time visitors]: 
Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let
a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration. 

Serendipity 25 years after

Unexpected Relevance: An Empirical Study of Serendipity in Retweets
Tao Sun, Ming Zhang, Qiaozhu Mei

Last modified: 2013-06-28

Abstract

Serendipity is a beneficial discovery that happens in an unexpected way. It has been found spectacularly valuable in various contexts, including scientific discoveries, acquisition of business, and recommender systems. Although never formally proved with large-scale behavioral analysis, it is believed by scientists and practitioners that serendipity is an important factor of positive user experience and increased user engagement. In this paper, we take the initiative to study the ubiquitous occurrence of serendipitious information diffusion and its effect in the context of microblogging communities. We refer to serendipity as unexpected relevance, then propose a principled statistical method to test the unexpectedness and the relevance of information received by a microblogging user, which identifies a serendipitous diffusion of information to the user. Our findings based on large-scale behavioral analysis reveal that there is a surprisingly strong presence of serendipitous information diffusion in retweeting, which accounts for more than 25% of retweets in both Twitter and Weibo. Upon the identification of serendipity, we are able to conduct observational analysis that reveals the benefit of serendipity to microblogging users. Results show that both the discovery and provision of serendipity increase the level of user activities and social interactions, while the provision of serendipitous information also increases the influence of Twitter users.

In case you wish to read more: Here's the pdf.

Who would have thought

Seven studies using experimental and naturalistic methods reveal that upper-class individuals behave more unethically than lower-class individuals. In studies 1 and 2, upper-class individuals were more likely to break the law while driving, relative to lower-class individuals. In follow-up laboratory studies, upper-class individuals were more likely to exhibit unethical decision-making tendencies (study 3), take valued goods from others (study 4), lie in a negotiation (study 5), cheat to increase their chances of winning a prize (study 6), and endorse unethical behaviour at work (study 7) than were lower-class individuals. Mediator and moderator data demonstrated that upper-class individuals’ unethical tendencies are accounted for, in part, by their more favourable attitudes toward greed.

More.

Laughing Lhursday*

Despite being busy
with proof-reading his 1669 pages short opus magnum
"Pre-Assyrian Philately in a Nutshell"
my friend Tetrapilotomos – after all –
gave 15 minutes of his precious time
to invent a wormhole.
Obviously. 
The evidence – thanks to Ashley Lily Scarlett –
is to be found in a courtyard downunder. 

Just go, check, come back, and thus
become witness of an unbelievable scientific seansation. 

Doubts? In case you have any question re this very fascinosum:
Just ask.
Tetrapilotomos will have all answers, easy to understand.

* [For first time visitors]:

Typo in the title?
Nah. It's just that I would not let a tiny T spoil an avantgardistic alliteration.

PS: Ah, coming to think of it, the title of this post could get understood as a tiny bit misleading, deceptive, if not  delusive, as it is – no more, no less – one about a scientific seansation.
Herewith it is changed. The new title reads: Chatting under the Hazel

Flying Dead Flies

There have so far about 1.000 human disease genes been found.
77 % of those have been found in drosophila melanogaster, too.
Following the 'logic' of 'intelligently designed primates'
humans are 77% fly.
... And now let us not start speaking about bicycles.

 

Hört, hört!

Hypatia and Medine

So-called International or World Days of whatsoever leave me cold.
Day of the book for me is on 365 days, and on 366 days in leap-years. Same goes for water, bread, animals, human rights etc. etc..

Thus it will not come as a surprise that the International Women's Day for me neither is anything special.

Do I hear anyone hissing "Damn macho!"?

Sshhh sshhhh ... :)

Anyway, Welshcakes over at Sicily Scene last Monday posted such a wonderful homage to a remarkable Italian woman (oh, just don't be too lazy to drop over; I am quite sure you will not regret) that I started to think about what woman in history I'd like to praise with an homage. Well, actually I did not have to think twice.

Thus, I checked the internet, ... and got delighted: Not only that I found a nicely done video about my heroine, but there got some other admirable women mentioned.




Just to make sure: To be admired (by me), a woman does not need to be scientist or famous for this and that. I have met and do meet many women who will never be mentioned in a history book, and still are lovely, remarkable, do admirable things. And some I know who are able to put better within one or two sentences what I would perhaps not be able to explain in 50.

And what is about the second name mentioned in your title? you might ask.

Well, yes, Medine.
Medine is not famous. And the sad realist in myself is sure she will not be mentioned in history books.
You see, Medine's no scientist, no artist, no philosopher. I don't know if she was a passionate reader; if she wrote poems. I don't even know if she was able to read, properly, ... if she was given the chance, if she got encouraged to discover the realm of the letters, numbers and symbols, supported to develop her talents.

And still I do wish that once she will be mentioned in history books!

Men who from generation to generation had been taught to believe (sic!), that - (perhaps) except of one's mother - girls and women are less worth, and that "a man who does not beat his wife is no man", suddenly perceived that it is of great advantage to have an excellently learned and educated daughter, to marry an excellently learned and educated wife, to get an excellently learned and educated daughter-in-law, as she will be able to excellently - with love and knowledge - support ... their son, their grandson to become an excellently learned and educated human being.

Medine will not have a son.
I'd like so much to know more about Medine.
Unfortunately, I do not know much more about her than that she's 16 and, that it's said she sometimes talked to boys, that complaining violence against her mother and herself she asked policemen for help and shortly afterwards disappeared - buried alive by her father and grandfather.

The peace of the night.

Who would have thought this?

A little bit of stress goes a long way and can have far-reaching effects. Neuroscientists from the University of Washington have found that a single exposure to uncontrollable stress impairs decision making in rats for several days, making them unable to reliably seek out the larger of two rewards.

Well, who - when reading this - wouldn't come to think of all those stressed bankers & brokers, politicians & other stressed out decision makers.

And right. The article ends:

"Decision making, both large and small, is part of our lives. People are prone to make mistakes under stress. Look at what has been going on with the stock market. People are under huge amounts of stress and we have to question some of the decisions that are being made."
Full Science article here.

Some people might call the following nitpicking, thus just to make sure: This blogger would take up the cudgel on behalf of basic research, whenever politicians would refuse tax-funded (sic!) support, as long as there would not at least the invention of a teflon pan be guaranteed.

Still, sometimes, I am ... well, surprised when coming to learn that certain scientists, i.e. ladies and gentlemen who - to slightly a great degree make a tax-funded living* - after years, sometimes even decades of research would come to a result ...
... and here, esteemed readers, I do once again feel reminded of a certain passage in Thoreau's Walden and particularly its last sentence: [...] which I seriously think a ready wit might write a twelvemonth or twelve years beforehand with sufficient accuracy.


* and may nobody tell me the very scientists whose exorbitant research result even made it into Science were able to acquire third-party funds for their "project". Please!

Take it easy, Venus

It's somehow amazing, yes.
Interesting anyway; both the find and - the enthusiastic way in which it's celebrated. Well, and the name it's given: Venus of Hohle Fels.

Well, when I am thinking of Venus, I do have another picture in my mind. :)

In so far, it's nice in today's NYT to read following lead:

No one would mistake the Stone Age ivory carving for a Venus de Milo. The voluptuous woman depicted is, to say the least, earthier, with huge, projecting breasts and sexually explicit genitals.

Full article here.

Tricky caterpillar: Dining like an ant-queen

Now, that's clever:

A kind of European caterpillar can garner royal treatment from ants by mimicking the ch-ch-ch-ch of their queen, says an international research team.

Ants of the species Myrmica schencki can be fooled into carrying certain caterpillars into the colony nurseries where the fakers enjoy full care and five-star dining, explains Jeremy Thomas of the University of Oxford in England. An interloper caterpillar gains most of its body mass while luxuriating in ant care, and then turns into a Maculinea rebeli butterfly.

Learn more 'antazing' details at ScienceNews.

And don't miss hearing the caterpillar and ant sounds

Njam njam njam: Living like god in Ants.

Two days after

Just in case anyone's conCERNed and fearing - or exulting - I might have been swallowed by a Black Hole.

37 laughable Popes

With the attack of Fort Sumpter, today 147 years ago the American Civil War began.

Exactly 100 years later, thus 47 years ago , Juri Gagarin happened to be the first human earthling in the orbit.

Well, and 375 years ago was the first day of the process Pope(s) versus Galileo Galileo.

And only 37 Popes or 359 years later, 23 years after Neil Armstrong set foot on the moon, the damned heliocentrist, got rehabilitated, which makes me still laughing. Ha. Ha. Ha.


Ah, anybody feeling offended?

So ... err ... No sorry. You see, I am agnostic. Thanks god? :) Oh well, anyway, I am.


... Well, yes :) Science by itself, cannot supply us with an ethic. [Bertrand Russell, 1950]

O tempora, o mores!

Today German lawmakers agreed to allow broader embryonic stem cell use. But they signaled their ambivalence by refusing to completely do away with restrictions.

Germany's science minister, Annette Schavan, said reforming the law was key to fostering research in Germany.

“This is a good day for both protecting life and also for research in Germany,“ Schavan, of the Christian Democratic Union, said after the vote Friday. *

Hear hear!

And may I add it is a good day for Mrs. Schavan et al.: Here questions like this one will not be asked.

There was, however, a German philosopher whose name is being pronounced like one of the words you could read in the devil's title: Kant.
And I am quite sure Kant would agree: What a bunch of hypocrites, per se!

Having followed the discussion about stem cell research from its beginning in the past milennium, I am not surprised, though.

To give you at least a glimpse, of what made me come to call hypocrites hypocrites, I commend reading this article.




* Full article here.

A fine excuse

During the past decades, whenever it happens - and I got the feeling it does happen quite frequently - I do wonder what Mrs. J. could mean by stating I know why the devil beat his mother-in-law.*

Anyway, why would I not write at least ten or twenty posts these days, why not even visiting regularly my 'seldom borings', let alone leaving comments?

I suppose it's just due to that my brain's not (yet) able to perform around 167 trillion calculations per second.



* She'd not find a proper excuse, you know. :)

Eyes travelling 23 million light years

What would an astro-physicist do in a starlit night?
Sleeping?
No. He'd let his eyes travel. Last night it was a 23 million light years trip to M51.



Object details

NGC Number:
5194/5195

Object Type:
SA(s)bc
(HII: Sy2.5)

Constellation
Canes Venatici

RA/Dec:
13h 29m 52.7s
+47° 11' 42.62''

Distance:
23 kly

Apparent Dimension:
11.2' x 6.9'

Visual Brightness (V):
8.1 mag

Date:
16.02.2008
01:50 bis 03:15

Equipment:
Cass. 50cm f/10
SBIG STL-6303E

Detail screens:
L: 4 x 300sec
R: 4 x 300sec
G: 4 x 300sec
B: 4 x 300sec
(Binning: 1x1)

Temperature:
CCD-Chip: -25°C
Draußen: -3°C

Software:
CCD-Soft
ESO-MIDAS
IRAF
MaxIM DL

Apropos mathematicians :)

Efficiency test.

Task: Putting up a simple fence.

Participants: An engeneer, a physicist, a mathematician.

At their disposal: four stakes, wire.

Problem: Who would need the least material quantity?

The engineer would have a short look, drive the four stakes successively into the ground, twist wire around the square and - Bob's your uncle.

The physicist would ponder two minutes, drive three stakes into the ground, twist wire around the triangle and - Bob's your uncle.

The mathematician would see about the material given at his disposal - deliberate what to do - think - think twice - cogitate - consider and reconsider - contemplate - reason and reflect.

After four hours out of the blue he'd enthusiastically wrap the wire around his body and ... define himself outside.'

*

And what did Einstein say?
'As far as the laws of mathematics refer to reality, they are not certain, and as far as they are certain they do not refer to reality.'

That I am allowed to experience this!

Imagine you have missed the bus or the tramvai by a hair; and, alas, today of all days Flann O'Brien's The third Policeman is not at hand. So, what next? Boring yourself for some twenty minutes or ... rather walking to the next stop, on the risk of not walking fast enough and thus again missing the bus/tramvai?

To be on the safe side, all you need is but a bit knowledge of advanced probability and integral calculus.

Mathematicians Scott Kominers, Robert Sinnott (Harvard University) and Justin Chen (California Institute of Technology) derived a formula for the optimal time that you should wait for a tardy bus at each stop en route before giving up and walking on.

The research group found that the solution was surprisingly simple, as you will surely agree:



Now, are you grateful that you are allowed to live experiencing this magic moment, in which one of the last most brainteasing and riddling conundrums of all mysteriously puzzling enigmata has been solved, or are are you grateful to live experiencing this magic moment, in which one of the last most brainteasing and riddling conundrums of all mysteriously puzzling enigmata has been solved?

I thought so.

And now you'd like to get closer to the essential inheritent interior essence which is hidden in the root of the kernel of everything?

I thought so.

Here you are.


And here one anticipatory reaction:

'Science knows only one commandment: contribute to science.'
Bertold Brecht, Galileo, 1943

And one reactionary anticipation:

'The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of mankind than the discovery of a star.'
Brillat-Savarin, The Physiology of Taste, 1825


In case you miss it, I can't serve you with a quotation from Tetrapilotomos. He'd not be amused if I disturbed Calvagh O'Seanacháin and him while celebrating the 126th anniversary of their friend's birthday.

?

Ah, yes, of course, it's James Joyce.