Oh statistics
Yahoo! has a Buzz Log blog-type news (?) series, in which they post about some recent event of importance, and then how searches related to this event have gone up significantly. Frequently, the increase is huge.
Example – Megan Fox’s thumb-gate. Toward the end of the short – and not really worth a read – article is this passage:
Fingers flew on the Web, with one-day searches on Yahoo! for “megan fox hands” increasing an astounding 800%.
While an increase of 800% in anything sounds impressive, I’d like to know – how many searches for “megan fox hands” do they usually get? Is this something that a lot of people are interested in on regular basis? Now, I understand she is superbly attractive, but I would expect majority of Megan-Fox-related searches to be along the lines of “megan fox pr0n.”
Hands?
Does this mean there is an underlying and persistent hand-fetish community focused on Megan Fox? I suppose the Internet is big, so there probably is such a community. But it can’t be that huge.
Furthermore, I can’t imagine that there is a constant stream of new pictures of specifically her hands. This means that those in the Megan Fox Hand Fetish circle must, in frustration, constantly sift through dozen of her non-hand-centric pictures. “Ugh, lingerie again!”
My point is this. “800% increase” is meaningless without some context – such as an absolute number of searches, or regular variability in the number of searches.
Oh statistics. You’re such a whore sometimes.
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New thoughts
Sometimes, as scientists, we have to think mad thoughts.
We deal with things that are altogether new to humanity. We do things that have never been done before, and see things that have never been seen before. And in order to get to this point, we have to think thoughts that no one has ever thought before. Something entirely new and pristine and untouched by every other person who has ever lived. That’s the thrill of science.
And what is so wild and untamed is madness. And that we must embrace and understand.
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Unseen contrast
Over the last couple of weeks I’ve been working with an infra-red laser (an Nd:YAG at 1.6 microns), aligning a pump-probe measurement. For this, I had to put the beam through multiple bends and points on the table. To help in the alignment, I use target grids which I place around the table.
Working with IR is difficult for the obvious reason that it is invisible to the unaided eye. At the very least, UV makes starch glow a bright blue, so locating the beam involves simply sticking a piece of paper in front of it. If anything, the problem with UV is that it makes everything glow.
Catching IR is harder. Fortunately, IR viewers (a laboratory version of night vision goggles) are available. The difficulty with a laser, though, is that it is very bright. It is so bright, that when your adjusts to the brightness of the spot, it becomes difficult to see the grid. Basically, the problem is in viewing a very bright object next to a very dim object. Too much contrast.
I’ve been using a small LED flashlight with a flexible neck to brighten up the grid and reduce the contrast a little bit.
Finally, I’ve come up with the following hack: use an incandescent desk lamp to illuminate the target. Incandescent lights emit a lot of IR. Illuminating the target grid in this way reduces the contrast, bring the brightness of the spot and the grid closer together.
By the way, the IR viewer cards are terrible and I hate using them. The are only good for a very rough positioning of the beam.
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Tags: IR laser positioning, table-top optics
Gonzo punk science
The good Doctor’s appeal to pretty much anyone reading his books is undeniable. The raw feeling of being in the moment, the intense emotional presence of his writing is overpowering. The story, with facts and opinions woven haphazardly into it, is just one piece of the mad painting. This became known as “gonzo journalism,” foregoing an observer’s impartiality for the unbridled excitement of being part of the story. It’s more of an eye witness account than a sterilized retelling of the events.
Though decidedly partial, his version of the events offered a greater gut, visceral insight into what happened. Agree or disagree, reliving it through someone else’s eyes is bound to be interesting.
I would argue that such bits of mad inspiration, instinctual, careless creation exist in science, too. The Scientific Method is what comes after the secretive, mystical subconscious twists and turns by some unknown dynamics into an insight. Through some devilish talents, the improbably subconscious seeks out the single solid kernel of truth amongst a sea of half-truths and incomplete datasets. Somewhere, there is a truer pattern behind the dusty and rare windows, and discovering this pattern is not a reasonable or rational course.
The flash of genius is a lightning strike, and the few lucky enough to witness it are revealed a picture that no one has seen it before, and they are left o rediscover it, piece by piece, sometimes spending years, or their whole lifetimes, attempting to once again capture that single vision.
I say, the unquantifiable, unfathomable inspiration is a central part of what we, as scientists, do. The spark of the subconscious is as important to us as it is to artists. The Method to us is as mastery of the brush was to Dali, or skill with the guitar to Hendrix. They are the means to dress the original inspiration into a more physical manifestation that others can understand. With equations, we paint our beautiful, elegant truths.
So why not sex, drugs, and quantum mechanics?
Do we, perhaps, spend too much time honing the rational and the strictly sequential parts of our minds? Should we indulge the less structured parts of our soul, for they are the ones that will bear the more brilliant fruit?
After all, the unknown is our business. Some madness along the way is to be expected.
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Tags: drugs, science, sex
Quick UV detection
I’ve recently come across a problem – I needed to see if the lamp I was using had a lot of UV output (in particular, I’m interested in 250 nm – 350 nm range). Normally, you would get a spectrum analyzer, and simply measure the output. I had no such thing available to me, and yet I needed to know.
A useful thing to know is that starch luminesces bright blue when exposed to UV light (hence white cotton tshirts glow under black light). It is also useful to know that regular glass (such as a microscope slide) cuts off transmission at right around 350 nm.
So, I came up with a couple of tests.
Hack #1 (very crude)
Use a fused silica lens to focus the light, and then insert something sharp and opaque near the focal point. Some distance behind it, put a piece of printing paper. Distorted focal point will project something of a rainbow (as different wavelengths diffract at different angles). You will see a blue band. But – this could be actual blue! So, take a microscope slide and cover up the blue portion of the rainbow. If it disappears, it was due to UV. If it doesn’t, that’s actual blue.
Hack #2 (slightly more refined)
I’ve described before how inserting a microscope slide into a beam removes about 8% of light due to reflections on the surface. That is of course true only if there is no internal absorption.
So, put a detector (such as a Si detector with a UV-transmitting window) into the lamp’s output. If the slide attenuates the beam by about 8%, there is no UV. If it attenuates detector’s output by significantly more than 8%, there is a good amount of UV.
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Cheap, good power supply
In my recent tinkerings with various circuits, I have of course come across the problem of power supplies. Most opamps need a few volts of bias and a bipolar supply to operate properly (usually something like +/- 12-15 V and ground). Insufficient voltage can reduce bandwidth, and overall it’s not very good for the part.
Getting that much out of batteries can be difficult – no one wants to stack 10 AA. 9V and 12V batteries are of course better as far as space, but lose voltage over time, affecting circuit performance in sneaky ways.
That is why voltage regulators exist – for less than $2, they can deliver up to 0.5A of current with about 40 mV accuracy of line voltage in a tiny TO-220 case (even better if you use bypass capacitors). Good examples would be something like LM341 from National or MC78M00 from ON. And these are fixed regulators – you don’t have to fidget with setting them to desired voltage.
Of course you don’t even need a lot of current – opamps probably don’t need more than 30 mA to work anyway.
Similar to positive regulators, there are negative regulators. So together, you can have a regulated, stable powersupply from two batteries.
Of course if you know of a computer equipment recycling store (such as RISE in Tucson), you might be able to get a DC power supply in almost any voltage for about $5.
Transforming it into a bipolar supply is easy – daisy-chain two positive regulators. Simply use output of the first one as ground input for the second one. (Do make sure that a single regulator can handle the whole DC voltage as input.) Now, for $10, you have a solid bipolar power supply. Which is less than you’d spend on batteries alone (12V A23 batteries are usually $6-8 each – woe is you if you forget to switch off the circuit and leave for the weekend).
(Of course, a more standard way would be with a transformer with a center tap on the secondary winding – but it seems those are more difficult to find, and much more expensive. Stringing regulators probably won’t work very well for applications that require more power – the first one would probably overheat easily. This is a cheap hack.)
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While conversing about science
Still in San Diego.
Staying in a hostel.
The hostel has a permanent smell of sweat and booze. It’s like a permanent college party, but not annoying. And there’s free all-you-can eat cereal. And a sadly idle waffle-maker.
The better sections.
Only here you’ll hear things like, “What the founding fathers of quantum mechanics have all missed is this…” And for once, it’s not the time-cube guy.
The industrial exhibit.
The whole thing is brought to you by words “innovative” and “solutions”. I’m pretty sure every company slogan and self-description is some convoluted form of those two words.
“While conversing about science” is a more accurate title, I think.
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While doing science
I’m currently at an SPIE conference in San Diego. Just had my first day, and must say, in some ways – the most interesting conference I’ve been to. Being a grad student I haven’t been to a lot, but been to a few. Including one SPIE before.
I’m staying in a hostel.
Our grants have run out and I’m pretty poor, so I couldn’t afford to stay in a real hotel, so I’m back to dorm life, basically. The first night was pretty awful, on account of a locked window and lack of AC. Somehow, I still managed a decent night’s sleep. The window is open this time, so maybe it’ll work out better. My roommates have been pretty cool so far.
The better sections.
I am pretty convinced that in the future, I should go to the sections that explore the most esoteric and hypothetical parts of nature. Maybe some of the stuff is over my head, by participation is much more interesting, dialogue is more genuine and engaging, and there is endearing and awesome craziness about.
The hidden variables are hidden behind the cows.
There was a talk that claimed to be about hidden variables. They were not mentioned other than in the title, but there were lots of pictures of cows.
Wikipedia cited as references
At least four times now. Come on, scientists! If you cite Wikipedia, it pretty much means you were too lazy to look up sources cited on Wikipedia. I particularly enjoy when there is a bibliography page at the end of someone’s presentation, which lists several sources in proper bibliographical format, and one of the entries is simply “Wikipedia.”
That’s it for the moment. Maybe more later.
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Tags: conferences, cows, science
Similarities
I know pretty much just enough about information and complexity theory to get myself in trouble. So, well, here we go.
What appeals to me is the implication that vastly different systems can operate according to the same laws. That there is some basic governing mechanic of systems. In particular, that this can cross from unliving systems to living ones, and in fact societies can act on the same principles as systems composed of unintelligent agents.
One such similarity is between our societies and our anatomies. The way we behave is probably connected to function of our biology – and in fact at some basic level, all life functions on the same behavior pattern, whether it has intelligence and self-awareness or not. I’m not just talking about evolutionary psychology, but something more fundamental.
The particular point that got me on this track was watching a 30 Days episode about incarceration. That was the starting point, but I think the problem of the American prison system (the prison-industrial system) is nothing new. The jails are generally hugely over-crowded, and a huge proportion of those on the inside are repeat offenders. People who keep committing crimes and going to prison, often after just a short time on the outside. Real rehabilitation is minimal.
Anyway, my point is not about problems of the American system, but rather how it is similar to a body’s response to infection, and how similar problems arise in both.
When our bodies detect an infection, white blood cells are sent out to deal with it. They mostly work by simply ingesting the intruders by special hunter cells called neutrophils. However, it is possible for a neutrophil to take on too many intruders. It cannot effectively digest them and dies, releasing those it has captured.
Which sounds remarkably like our society’s attempt to deal with criminals. We isolate them in jails in hopes of neutralizing their threat. And I suppose it can, or has worked to an extent. Dangerous elements are taken away and isolated from the rest of the society, and when they come out, hopefully it is in the form of a reformed citizen.
Presently, this has mostly failed. Inmates without access to proper rehabilitation frequently end up in the same lifestyle and simply go back to jail again having committed more crimes. And once someone spends most of their time on the inside, you have to wonder if the prison life is the one they’re psychologically more accustomed to. Therefore, the prison system loses its ability to effectively “punish” and correct behaviors.
In fact, the terrible overcrowding has created conditions where prison gangs arise to considerable power on the inside, and many criminals are able to continue their actions from the inside. Being in prison sometimes can act as training grounds for the next generation of criminals.
Prisons have consumed too much.
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