What To Look For In The Next Ubuntu Release

The next Ubuntu release is scheduled for October 18, 2007. There are a few features I am excited for.

First Compiz-Fusion. Remember the wobbly windows and cube in the last release? That was an experimental snapshot of where they are in development. The next release will contain 6 more months of development and improvement. Here are some videos of the current state of things here, here, and here. (Remember, there is still months of improving left before October.)

Second, x.org 7.3. Currently x.org, which controls the graphics on your screen, needs configuration files to understand your hardware. This is a pain in the neck. With the next release, there will be a hotplug that will read your hardware and all attached hardware automatically setting everything up for you without and need for configuration files.

Third, a tool for configuring your X-Server on multiple displays such extra monitors and projectors. This tool will use the hotplug feature above. It will detect the new projector/monitor and set it up for you how you would like.

Fourth, kernel improvements should prolong your battery life by about 30 minutes.

There are other features you can read about here. I am excited for the next release already. It should be followed by a major release, with long term support and extra testing and debugging, about 6 months later.

Voluntary Punishment

Most social tendencies in people have easily identifiable evolutionary roots. For example, a group of psychopaths would have a hard time getting very far, while a group of altruistic people would ensure the survival of the group. Very simple mathematical models can be made of these types of dynamics that often show exactly the expected behavior. Some behaviors, however, are a little more tricky. Punishment is one of those. In group endeavor, there are those who will give up time and resources to punish those who they feel are not properly participating. Where is the advantage in taking time and effort to punish someone else?

A recent study published in the journal Science (click here for the Scientific American story) has, for the first time, mathematically modeled why punishment is important. Using a simple model, a group was divided into 3 sub-groups: cooperators, defectors (those who are trying to catch a free ride), and punishers. The cooperators tend to become defectors at a rate that is inversly proportional to the number of punishers and proportional to the number of defectors (no one wants to be working hard when everybody else is getting a free ride) and punishers at a rate that depends on how many defectors there are. The defectors become cooperators at a rate that depends on the number of punishers. The punishers become cooperators based on the number of defectors on the premise that defectors would resist punishment by putting pressure on the punishers to stop punishing them.

The funny thing is that in this model, the defectors always end up dominating. After transient behavior dies down, the steady state probability is 100% defectors. This would obviously be a big problem for anything the group tried to accomplish as it would be dominated by people who were trying to get a free ride.

The really interesting thing to me was that if you add a fourth group to the system, it changes everything. If you make another group of non-participants and make it so that defectors, cooperators, and punishers leave the group when it is not doing well (i.e. defectors dominate) and non-participants join the group when it is doing well (i.e. cooperators and punishers dominate), then a totally new dynamic emerges. Essentially, unless the punishers are too mean or the benefits of joining the group when it is successful are too small, a balanced distribution occurs where punishers and cooperators dominate, but small percentages of defectors and non-participants remain.

What really strikes me about this simple model is at it drives right to the heart of my opinions about free enterprise. In a forced model, it is in everyone's best interest to try to get as much as possible and contribute as little as possible, even if the organizers contribute tons to resources to punishing those who do that. For example, if you make doctor' visits free for everyone, what you'll end up with is everyone wanting to go to the doctor far more than they need to. On the other hand, if people have to chose to be a part of the group and potentially sacrifice to do so, they tend to appreciate what they have more. If people have to pay insurance premiums, they tend to be more careful with their doctor's visits.

I know this study was just a simple model, but I believe it hit a profound truth about human nature: if we are forced to do something we won't do it as well as if we chose to, even if there are obvious benefits to choosing to do that thing. Communism is not effective because no matter how much punishment there is, in the end it pays to slack off. Capitalism, on the other hand, works because it's voluntary. If it doesn't benefit you to be a part of a company or health insurance plan or book club, you can leave it. That freedom to leave seems to make all the difference in the world.

Happy Birthday Spencer Elden.

Spencer Elden (born on June 27, 1991) is the model who appeared on the cover of Nirvana's album Nevermind. Nirvana considered using a stock photograph of a swimming baby, but when that proved too expensive, they hired photographer Kirk Weddle. Weddle's friends, Renata and Rick Elden, allowed their son Spencer to be photographed for about $200. The hook, line, and dollar were superimposed later. After seeing the photo, Kurt Cobain (Nirvana's lead singer) and his wife Courtney Love agreed that they would take Spencer out to dinner when he got older.^[1]

Here he is at age 10 reproducing his former picture(Sorry I didn't include the original, I'm sure you can find it.):


Here is the song that was Nirvana's most popular. Happy birthday Spencer Elden.

Relativistic Jets from GRMHD

For some time now it has been known that rotating black holes can produce extremely powerful jets of gamma rays and very high energy particles that shoot out along their axes of rotation. This phenomena is believed to be the power source for active galatic nuclei, pulsars, quasars, a number of other phenomena ending in -sars, and possibly some types of gamma ray bursts. The mechanism for creating these jets, however, remained mysterious. To complicate matters, whatever process is powering these jets appears to be extremely efficient in converting gravitational potential energy from the in-falling material into these high energy streams of photons and particles. So how does a black hole with an accretion disk swirling around it efficiently shoot jets out of its poles?

Nothing like this jumps out of either the linearized magnetohydrodynamics equations or the Einstein equations, so people knew that it had to be some kind of funky non-linear effect, but was it from the MHD equations, the Einstein equations, or some combination of the two? Since the jets were always created by in-falling plasma it seemed safe to say that MHD was involved. And because these jets were only observed around black holes, it seemed pretty reasonable to assume that GR played a role in creating these jets, but the real question was whether it was just the non-linear GR effects that were needed or was this something to do with the event horizon. As Joe mentioned in his post, there is reason to believe that event horizons are trickier than we generally expect, so could these jets be some sort of mechanism for the black hole to deal with matter trying to pass it's event horizon?

Well, the debate now appears to be settled. Researchers at MIT and the University of Wisconsin have published evidence for relativistic jets coming out of a binary star system with an accreting neutron star (pictured on the left). Since neutron stars obviously don't have event horizons the jets must be produced by the non-linearity in the GRMHD (General Relativistic Magnetohydrodynamics) equations alone and not by some trick of the event horizon.

As a side note, they also found that both the overall energy in the jets and the efficiency of the process decreased in the case of the neutron star, perhaps signaling that the effect scales with the gravitational field strength (i.e. curvature). That gives numerical people a good idea of where to look in the non-linear terms for the driving mechanism. GO NUMERICAL METHODS!!!

You can look at the pre-print or read the ScienceDaily summary for more details.

Qualified to be President?

Even though Election Day 2008 is almost a year and a half away, it seems like we're already in the middle of the hiring process for the next President of the United States. This job search, however, differs from pretty much every other job search in that hardly anyone seems to be interested in the candidates qualifications. If we restrict ourselves to the top tier candidates - the top 4 from each party that have a realistic chance at winning the presidency - that leaves us with Hillary Clinton, Barak Obama, John Edwards, and Bill Richardson for the Democrats (I'll assume Gore isn't going to change his mind and run) and Rudy Guliani, John McCain, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney for the Republicans. On average, their resumes don't strike me as terribly impressive.

On average, the candidates for the most powerful position in the world have 12.1 years of either federal or state-wide elected or appointed government experience, and that's including Hillary Clinton's 8 years as first-lady and Rudy Guliani's 8 years as mayor of a town that's bigger than most states. If we remove John McCain's 25 years of government experience and Bill Richardson's 23 years, that leaves us with an average of 8.3 years in major elected or appointed office. As far as experience goes, the top-tier candidates can be divided into 3 groups: the veterans, the qualified, and the "outsiders", as they like to call themselves.

The Veterans:
When you look at the numbers, there are two candidates that really stand out from the rest as experienced political veterans: Bill Richardson and John McCain. Richardson served as a congressman for 14 years, Secretary of Energy, Ambassador to the U.N., and, currently, as governor of New Mexico. John McCain has been in Congress since the early 1980's and is the only major candidate with military experience - which included five and a half years as a POW in North Vietnam. Clearly, these two stand head and shoulders above the crowd in terms of experience. This, however, doesn't seem to be helping them much as McCain has been loosing momentum recently and Richardson has yet to get out of the single digits in national polls.

The Qualified:
The next group consists of Hillary Clinton and Rudy Guliani, who have 15 and 14 years of experience, respectively. However, both of them have somewhat questionable backgrounds in terms of nation-wide, federal government experience. Clinton, of course, spent 8 years as First Lady before launching her own political career, but she has only actually been on a ballot twice in her life. Guliani gained his experience as a federal prosecutor and mayor of New York, but New York is a far cry from Anytown, USA. These two have done their time in public office, but they're not without questions about their experience.

The "Outsiders":
Half of the top-tier candidates fall into the last group: those who would like to be seen as Washington "outsiders". They are Barak Obama, John Edwards, Fred Thompson, and Mitt Romney. Between them, they average a whopping 5.3 years in public office ranging between a high of 8 years for Thompson and a low of 4 years for Romney. These four are banking on being seen as untainted by Washington. Personally, I can believe that for Obama and Romney, who are very new to national politics. Obama is a first term senator and Romney's only government experience was one term as governor of Massachusetts. Edwards and Thompson, however, are a different story. Although both served only one full term in the Senate, Edwards was a Vice Presidential candidate in 2004 and Thompson's career - aside from acting - mostly consisted of time as a D.C. lobbyist. These two, in my eyes, have the thoughest road of all because they lack both the freshness of Romney and Obama and the experience of McCain, Richardson, Clinton, and Guliani. While these four may want their lack of experience to be seen as being untainted by politics as usual, they certainly won't be elected be on their public service records.


I don't mean to say that we should all vote for Richardson or McCain because they have been in government for a while, but I do believe that experience is important in weighing a candidate. Is a few years as a senator or governor enough to make a good President? Ronald Regan would seem show the answer to be "yes", while the current president might be a good example of why the answer is "no". In any event, experience is definitely something to look at when choosing a candidate.

And if you're looking for a candidate with absolutely no major government experience, Ralph Nader is "seriously considering" running for President again next fall.

CERN Delayed. :(

Well, the LHC at CERN will be delayed until next may. Here is the announcement:

Geneva, 22 June 2006. Speaking at the 142nd session of the CERN¹ Council today, the Organization’s Director General Robert Aymar announced that the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) will start up in May 2008, taking the first steps towards studying physics at a new high-energy frontier. A low-energy run originally scheduled for this year has been dropped as the result of a number of minor delays accumulated over the final months of LHC installation and commissioning, coupled with the failure in March of a pressure test in one of the machine’s components.

The LHC is a scientific instrument of unprecedented complexity, and at 27 kilometres in circumference, the world’s largest superconducting installation. Cooling the first sector of the machine to a temperature of 1.9 K (-271.3°C), colder than outer space, began earlier this year and has provided an important learning process. The first sector cool down has taken longer than scheduled, but has allowed the LHC’s operations team to iron out teething troubles and gain experience that will be applied to the machine’s seven remaining sectors. Now cold, tests on powering up the sector have begun and the cool down of a second sector will soon be underway.

In March, a magnet assembly known as the inner triplet, provided to CERN as part of the contribution of the US to the LHC project, failed a pressure test. A repair has been identified and is currently being implemented.

“The low-energy run at the end of this year was extremely tight due to a number of small delays, but the inner triplet problem now makes it impossible,” said LHC Project Leader Lyn Evans. “We’ll be starting up for physics in May 2008, as always foreseen, and will commission the machine to full energy in one go.”

The new schedule foresees successively cooling and powering each of the LHC’s sectors in turn this year. Throughout the winter, hardware commissioning will continue, allowing the LHC to be ready for high-energy running by the time CERN’s accelerators are switched on in the spring. Commissioning a new particle accelerator is a complex task. Beams will be injected at low energy and low intensity to give the operations team experience in driving the new machine. Intensity and energy will then slowly be increased.

AIDS: It's Evolution's Fault

Usually, being more evolved than something else is a compliment. In the case of the HIV virus, it turns out evolution really left us hanging.

It has been known for some time primates have much greater resistance to HIV than humans. The disease is serious to primates, but it's more like the measles to them, whereas to humans, HIV is nearly 100% incurable and the human body is almost completely unable to mount any defense against the disease. Researchers from the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center have announced they may know why.

HIV is a retrovirus, meaning that it injects it's DNA into healthy cells, the viral DNA hijacks the cells and turns it into a virus factory. In the process, pieces of viral DNA can become embedded in the normal DNA of the host. Over millions of years, the viral DNA can actually become a part of the host's normal DNA. When researchers sequenced chimp DNA several years ago, they found that one of the major differences between chimp and human DNA is that chimp DNA contains pieces of viral DNA, probably from an ancient retro-virus. A team of "paleoviroligists" put the pieces of the ancient virus' DNA back together and then tested the million-year-old plague on chimp tissue. As expected, the chimp tissue was highly susceptible to the virus.

The researchers also tried the virus out on cat tissue that had been infused with several important sections of human DNA that control the immune system and differ from the chimp immune system. The human genes prevented the virus from doing much of anything, providing almost total immunity from the ancient virus. This confirmed the hypothesis that humans developed an immunity to the ancient virus, while primates did not.

What was really surprising, however, was what happened when they put HIV into the human-esque tissues. The HIV ran rampant in the human tissues, until they switched the human gene for the primate one, which caused the tissue to fight HIV in the same way that primate tissues do.

So what does this mean? Besides being very interesting for people who study early human evolution, it means that humans today are susceptible to HIV because we evolved our way out of another virus millions of years ago. It also means that researchers have found exactly why monkeys' immune systems work so much better than ours when it comes to HIV.

We may have used evolution to dodge a bullet a couple million years ago, but it seems that even evolution can't save us from everything. You can read more about this at Scientific American or ScienceDaily.

Also, this is just one more piece of evidence that evolution isn't your friend and will turn on you if you give it the chance. If you don't want evolution to "naturally select" you for certain doom, I'd suggest checking out the new Creation Museum in Cincinnati, Ohio that shows you haw easy it is to find people who believe that humans and dinosaurs co-existed and other alternate theories to evolution. Good luck!

Why Does The Latest News About Giuliani Not Surprise Me?

Remember how a couple months ago Giuliani claimed, essentially, that unless a republican like him were elected president then our country would not be as safe? Remember how he has touted his expertise with "The War On Terror" because he was mayor of New York?

Guiliani was asked to be a part of the Iraq study group, the group that studied how to deal with Iraq and the middle east problem. Turns out Giuliani skipped the meetings so that he could give speeches that paid him personally over $100,000 each. He was then asked to choose: come to the meetings or quit so you can give your lucrative speeches. He choose to quit.

The man who claims he can make our country safer would rather give political speeches to make himself money then attend the very meetings designed to study the middle east issue? What in the world is he thinking?

This from the New York Times:

Rudolph W. Giuliani quit the high-profile Iraq Study Group after failing to attend the group’s meetings, and financial filings showed that he chose to give two lucrative speeches on days the panel was meeting...

Mr. Giuliani left the panel after being given an ultimatum to either show up for meetings or leave the group, according to Newsday, which first reported the story...

Newsday reported that on May 18, 2006, a day the panel was meeting, Mr. Giuliani delivered a $100,000 speech on leadership at an Atlanta business awards breakfast and later attended a fund-raiser for Ralph Reed. And on April 12 last year, again when the panel was meeting, he gave a speech to a conference in South Korea for $200,000.

Breaking: Black Holes May Not Even Form!

I recieved an email today from Los Alamos; since I am still on their mailing list. An article was just approved for publication in Physics Review D that states analysis shows that black holes cannot form.

As mass contracts on the way to black hole formation, you begin to have intense pre-hawking radiation which evaporates enough of the mass quickly enough that you never get a black hole. All structuers in the universe that should be black holes are objects trying to become black holes but will never fully get there.

The analysis suggests if black holes exist they had to have been formed immeadiatly at the Big bang. This is a similar to getting to the speed of light. No matter how hard you try, you never quite get there. However if a particle could be created at the speed of light it would be able to traverse that speed.

Here is a link to an article.

Here is a portion of the email.

BLACK HOLES AREN'T: CASE RESEARCHERS MAY HAVE SOLVED
Information loss paradox to find black holes do not form

"Nothing there," is what Case Western Reserve University physicists concluded about black holes after spending a year working on complex formulas to calculate the formation of new black holes. In nearly 13 printed pages with a host of calculations, the research may solve the information loss paradox that has perplexed physicists for the past 40 years.

Case physicists Tanmay Vachaspati, Dejan Stojkovic and Lawrence Krauss report in the article, "Observation of Incipient Black Holes and the Information Loss Problem," that has been accepted for publication by Physical Review D.

"If you define the black hole as some place where you can lose objects, then there is no such thing because the black hole evaporates before anything is seen to fall in," said Vachaspati.

The masses on the edge of the incipient black hole continue to appear into infinity that they are collapsing but never fall over inside what is known as the event horizon, the region from which there is no return, according to the researchers.

By starting out with something that was nonsingular and then collapsing that matter, they were determined to see if an event horizon formed, signaling the creation of a black hole.

The mass shrinks in size, but it never gets to collapse inside an event horizon due to evidence of pre-Hawking radiation, a non-thermal radiation that allows information of the nature of what is collapsing to be recovered far from the collapsing mass.

You Hate The Planet Earth Don't You?

Red Hat: Pretty Darn Secure

Nick has mentioned a couple of times that they use Red Hat where he is at.

I thought he may be interested to know that Red Hat received a security certification this week so high that no other mainstream operating system has it.

Some quotes:

Red Hat’s Enterprise Linux 5 software running on IBM servers can now be used at high level of U.S. government networks, the companies said Monday.

By receiving what is called Common Criteria certification, Red Hat’s product is certified for homeland security, command-and-control operations and throughout other government agencies.

The National Security Agency was among the agencies involved in the review process.

“With the certification, no mainstream operating system in the world offers a higher level of security certification,” IBM and Red Hat said in a joint statement.

"This is the highest level of security function that anybody has," Frye said. "We have delivered LSPP functionality in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and we have certified that at the EAL4 level of assurance."

So, the take home message: Red Hat is pretty darn secure. Even more than Windows. :)

More info here.

Mathematica 6.0 On Ubuntu Is Amazing

I finally got around to installing Mathematica 6.0 on the Ubuntu computers in N216. My first impression is that it's amazing. Seriously, there are so many cool features. If you open up the documentation center you have well written documentation of examples of all kinds of cool stuff.

Example: Mathematica will spit out your results in LaTeX for you. You can "listen" to how the plot is changing and "beating" through sound tools. You can set a variable parameter and use a scrollbar to see what happens as you vary the parameter. There really are a lot of nice features. Looks like I'm going to get myself a copy.

And, perhaps best of all, it is lightning fast, especially compared to Maple 10. (Sorry Maple).

This is, the Linux version of course. And it runs great on Ubuntu 7.04. Write a comment if you have any trouble installing it. You do have to mount as root.

Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

This is a book that offers a good explanation of reality and the scientific mind set. The book is well written and easy to understand even for people that are not trained in philosophy. It covers a wide range of topics from Metaphysics to its application to Capitalism, and everything in between. Many people do not like the Philosophy of Ayn Rand for various reasons:

1. She is not a trained philosopher. She never had a degree. To many of the elitist philosophers of today this is an unpardonable sin.

2. She did not present her philosophy in the form of a treatise or other comparable work. She did it through novels such as Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead.

3. She said that the vast majority of philosophy is fundamentally wrong (surprise, surprise). She called one of the most revered philosophers (Immanuel Kant) a "monster". And what made it worse is that she was able to prove that almost all other philosophies were wrong using reality and our everyday experiences.

The book covers the three basic axioms of reality.

1. Existence exists. (The Law of Existence)
2. Consciousness is conscious. (The Nature of Consciousness)
3. A is A. (The Law of Identity)

She argued that despite what anyone might say they have to use these three basic axioms to even begin thinking about anything, let alone philosophy. She used these ideas to show that Hume denied the Law of Identity when he questioned the Law of Causality (i.e. Just because it happened that way once doesn't mean it will happen the same way tomorrow). This blight on our philosophical understanding has resulted in countless, useless conversations and discussions that have not contributed to our understanding of the world in any way. She then went on to blast Kant's denial that we can never come to know reality.

This book certainly was a breath of fresh air after learning about all the other philosophers and their denials of reality, knowledge, causality, existence and other things which make life possible.

I would recommend reading this book, but keep in mind that you have to understand the book in the frame work of Objectivism, or else you will be lost and think that she is coming to some very strange and erroneous conclusions. I should also point out that she is one of the most out spoken Atheists of the 20th century. She gives many arguments as to why traditional Christianity and other religions are fundamentally wrong. I have to say that I agree with her. Fortunately I don't believe that God has the attributes that they say he has (which are the very things Ayn Rand disagrees with), which make him an impossible, unknowable, incomprehensible, disconnected and uncaring God. So you might say that I disagree with Traditional Christianity for the same things that Ayn Rand condemns them for. The only difference is that I know about the eternal nature of man, which now that Ayn Rand is dead, she knows about too.

Could Microsoft Be Going Open Source: Through Linux?

For a long time now I have been convinced that open source is the future. In the past, through things like FUD, Microsoft has actively tried to prevent this from being the case. Could it be that Microsoft is finally facing the reality that: the future is one of open source and if they act now, through deals, they can painlessly become a part of it?

If Microsoft wanted to get involved in the open source game they would have a couple options: First they could just open source Windows, Office, etc... I have a feeling this would be a major disruption to their business model.

Alternatively, they could take a much easier route: adopt Linux as their own. If Microsoft can continue to make deals with Linux distributions they would have an open source platform that is mature and well established throughout the world. If Microsoft could adopt Linux in such a way that the community support for it remains strong, the deal would work to Microsoft's benefit.

I'll give an example. What if Microsoft could extend the olive branch to a distribution like Ubuntu in such a way that the community, for the most part, would still support it? Microsoft probably sees that a well maintained community Linux distribution is fairly cheap to run. (I believe Mark has invested ~$10 Million). That's pennies for Microsoft. Furthermore, not only is Ubuntu a very solid community distribution, it has deals with major players like Sun and Dell and therefore has the potential of standing on its own two feet and making a profit in a commercial way.

Now, in reality, Ubuntu has not announced any deals with Microsoft. However, I believe the same logic applies to the distributions they have cut deals with. They are established open source platforms, cheap to maintain because of community support, and have proven they can make it in the commercial world. Furthermore, If Microsoft could could find a way to get all these Linux distributions to collaborate and work together, Linux would be a much more standard platform across the various distributions. This might actually be good for Linux and open source as well.

This would give Microsoft an open source future in a very painless way: adopt the already established Linux platforms as your own. Extend the olive branch, give them their new GPL 3 and reap the benefits of Linux in the commercial market, the future commercial market based on open source.

When Squirrels Attack

This is just too funny to avoid posting. This comes from a real Reuter's new story that can be found here.

Squirrel goes on rampage, injures 3

BERLIN (Reuters) - An aggressive squirrel attacked and injured three people in a German town before a 72-year-old pensioner dispatched the rampaging animal with his crutch.

The squirrel first ran into a house in the southern town of Passau, leapt from behind on a 70-year-old woman, and sank its teeth into her hand, a local police spokesman said Thursday.

With the squirrel still hanging from her hand, the woman ran onto the street in panic, where she managed to shake it off.

The animal then entered a building site and jumped on a construction worker, injuring him on the hand and arm, before he managed to fight it off with a measuring pole.

"After that, the squirrel went into the 72-year-old man's garden and massively attacked him on the arms, hand and thigh," the spokesman said. "Then he killed it with his crutch."

The spokesman said experts thought the attack may have been linked to the mating season or because the squirrel was ill.

Stem Cells Going Over to the Dark Side

stemAs we all know from all of the superhero movies that Hollywood has been churning out over the last few years, whenever someone gains superpowers, there are two options: either become a selfless hero and save the world from evil or use your powers for evil and selfish motives and try to destroy the world. In Star Wars terms, there is a light side and a dark side to the force. Will you become Luke Skywalker or Darth Vader?

In the past decade, stem cells have been touted as potential superhero cells that may cure everything from heart disease to Alzheimer's. New research, however, shows that some stem cells have already gone over to the dark side and become supervillians. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have discovered that cancerous tumors also have stem cells - and that these cancerous, evil stem cells are resistant to almost all forms of medication that target cancerous cells. This resistance occurs because the stem cells use their "become any cell in the body" superpowers to develop the same exterior markers that normal, non-cancerous cells have. Diabolical!

It's a good thing that there are some stem cells that choose to use their powers for good or else the world might be destroyed by stem cells with evil in their nuclei. Maybe that would make a great movie - The Battle of the Stem Cells!

For more on this, see the article in ScienceDaily here.

New Discoveries In DNA

The human gnome project was completed in April 2003. Since then there has been a collaboration of 80 different research groups in an effort known as the ENCODE project who wants to study DNA on a much closer level then was done by the human genome project. They have selected 1% of the known human DNA for serious investigation and they have come across some remarkable findings.

Before this study it was thought there two two types of DNA: that which actively was involved in replication and transcription and the other, dubbed "junk" DNA, which was thought to do nothing but sit there. To their astonishment, they found that, though "junk" DNA is not directly responsible for replication and transcription, it very much acts like a regulatory processes governing cells. Furthermore the study learned: "'epigenetic' factors outside of genes are probably big players behind many diseases."

Here are two articles on the subject form The Washington Post and Science Daily.

How Low Is Secondary Science Teacher Production?

I knew the number of math and science teachers who graduate each year specifically to teach in secondary education was low, but I didn't know how low. Apparently BYU, according to the journal Science, is the country's top producer of secondary science teachers about which the Daily Herald had this to say:

But it was disturbing to be informed that BYU's 16 physics education graduates this spring constitute five percent of all the national output -- many more than any other institution and more than even some states. That means that the United States turned out only about 320 physics educators for the secondary schools this year? Shameful! And frightening!

Only 320 secondary educators are being produced each year out of hundreds of universities in the USA! Holy Cow. Five percent come from BYU alone with CU Boulder and UT Austin also high on the list.

Why two major reasons. First many universities actually discourage science students from going into secondary education:

Heather McKnight, who after being discouraged at Cornell and Carnegie Mellon from pursuing a career in physics teaching, transferred to BYU and "loved it." Now freshly graduated, she is, unsurprisingly, evaluating several job offers.

Second the reality of the matter:

A graduating engineering student at University of Colorado-Boulder, who'd like to teach, tells why: He's evaluating the $60,000 starting salary he'll command as an engineer, versus the $35,000 he'd get as a teacher.

News from Digg

As I have said before, I can find interesting stories on Digg.com. One is about a Canadain man who has been ordered not to have a girlfriend for three years, and the other is what you would get if you took a picture of the sun at the same time each day for a year:

The New Microsoft/Linux Threat: Deals

Last year Novell, who manages Suse Linux, signed a deal with Microsoft which allows the two to work together in building a Windows/Linux platform for businesses who need both. (Or think they need both) Microsoft gave hundreds of millions to Novell. (Who needed it)

This sparked outrage among almost all Linux communities. The problem is the deal was made in such a way that made it look like Microsoft would be able to now have some control over Linux. People ware claiming Microsoft knows it cannot crush Linux, so plan B is make deals with Linux distributions to control Linux in such a way that keeps themselves safe.

Linux communities have fired back by trying to put up measures to block any Microsoft control over Linux. One such thing is they are rewriting the GPL license to keep Microsoft from hijacking Linux.

The new scare is Microsoft is making more deals. Just this month they have made deals with two more major Linux distributions: Xandros and Linspire. Linspire also has recently made a deal with Ubuntu. This is getting people to ask: is Ubuntu going to cave into Microsoft's deal too?

I think not for this reason:

Novell, Xandros and Linspire have been in the game for a while and are not doing that well compared to Ubuntu and Red Hat. They see their business model can't compete so they changed it: "Let Microsoft give us hundreds of millions. If we can't get that kind of money from people, let's get it from them."

I don't think Ubuntu or Red Hat are that desperate. They are doing well and I believe will not sell out.

Interesting PhD Thesis

I found a thesis that may be interesting since it deals with String/M Theory at the Electroweak scales. (Ie. at scales we can measure). The title is:

Connecting String/M Theory to the Electroweak Scale and to LHC Data

I haven't read it yet but am excited to since a thesis usually has more detail than a journal article. If I were to use string theory I would want to use it on measurable scales, so this thesis may be interesting.

Quote Of The Day

This from "Cosmology and the Landscape" part 2 given at TASI 2007 by Raphael Bousso:

If Lambda [cosmological constant] had been > 10^(-120) we would not be here [Weinberg 1987]

The paper is refering to is: S. Weinberg, Anthropic Bound On The Cosmological Constant,Phys. Rev. Lett. 59, 2607 (1987).

If Lambda was too large the universe would have expanded too fast for life to exist, if it was too negative, it would collapse too quickly.

My Book Endorsement

Jared endorsed a string theory book so I decided to endorse a couple books of my own. For those looking to learn Quantum Field Theory I would suggest two, the two which have been the most helpful to me:

1. A Modern Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Michele Maggiore. This book is nice since it is short and to the point. If you wanted a quick yet good explanation of a topic this book is good to consult. This book is also fairly inexpensive, for a textbook, if you get the paperback version.
   
2. An Introduction to Quantum Field Theory by Peskin and Schroeder. This book is probably the "standard" and has all the technical details. I personally think the book makes some very good points which really are helpful.

This is how I use them. First I would read section X from Maggiore to get a good feel for the material. Again, this book will quickly inform you of the important details and results. Then I would read the corresponding section X from Peskin and Schroeder to get all the technical details and extra insights. Then I would go back to Maggiore and reread section X to make sure you have mastered all the important details and results.

Of course you should also work the problems. Maggorie has outlines on how to work the problems in the back. They are helpful especially if you are trying to learn the subject on your own.

Still No Agreement In Iraq

This from the front page of the New York Times:

BAGHDAD, June 12 — Iraq’s political leaders have failed to reach agreements on nearly every law that the Americans have demanded as benchmarks, despite heavy pressure from Congress, the White House and top military commanders. With only three months until progress reports are due in Washington, the deadlock has reached a point where many Iraqi and American officials now question whether any substantive laws will pass before the end of the year.

Yet again we see the leadership in Iraq doesn't want to agree. They tell our leaders they will get x and y done by date z to make us happy. As long as we are there giving them all the time in the world they just don't care about coming to the table and making an agreement.

Will Colin Powell Shift His Political Support?

Colin Powell announced the other day on Meet the Press that he thinks we need to close down Guantanamo Bay, "not tomorrow, this afternoon." (A view almost all republicans are against. See Video Below) Furthermore, he has met a couple times with Barack Obama and has now said publicly:

1. He will support the best person despite political party. (This is a change from his strong republican support.)
   
2. He is open to serving again in government, not as an elected official but as an appointee. (Again, making his visits with Obama the more interesting.)

I will be the first to admit I am going out on a limb with speculation here, but perhaps Powell is testing his ability to make a political rebound, this time with the "Other Party."

Even if not, kudos to Gen. Powell for coming forward and admitting Guantanamo is a bad thing for America and needs to be shut down now. Also, kudos to the Federal court today who ruled what we do in the name of "enemy combatant" is unconstitutional. Things like this might begin to restore honor, respect and a sense of morality to The United States of America.

More From Despair.com

Just a little update (and a book endorsement)

So for the first month here at Baylor I am supposed to learn string theory. (sounds unlikely, huh?!)
Well Dr. Cleaver (my adviser here and academic 'son' of John Schwarz!-see this wikipedia article), has me working through Zwiebach's "A First Course in String Theory." If I knew how good this book was, I would have gotten a long time ago. It's really geared for advanced undergrads and so with a knowledge of GR this is ideal for me! It builds upon the principles taught to you in your undergraduate experience layer by layer in a logical progression. Zwiebach offers great explanations for difficult concepts and his homework questions are insightful. You're not expected to have a working understanding of QFT either. Just the other day I was able to see how E(r) and the gravitational constant, G, are different in higher dimensional spaces and how a compactified extra dimension changes the solution to the infinite square-well problem in QM. Sure I am only a hundred pages into the book, but I am already having my questions answered about string theory; I also get to answer these questions for myself through the homework problems.
Honestly, for those interested in learning string theory, then Zwiebach actually makes it exciting. Maybe that's just the nerd-in-me talking but I think that you will all understand.
It's also pretty excited to be taught by 'second-generation' string theorist!

The Internet Is Destroying The Pornography Industry

That's right, because of the internet, sales for pornographic material such as DVD sales and rentals are down 15 to 25 percent in the last year, according to industry estimates. This is because the "Internet 2.0" is now filled with file/video/picture sharing sites such as YouTube, Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, etc... People these days would rather go to those sites to view content then official pornographic sites. And these sites are free. Anything you can find on playboy.com eventually gets onto some other sharing site.

I actually find this ironic, since, only a little while ago and the pornographic industry thought the web was a dream come true. Turns out the internet is becoming a bombshell on their business model. Their gross income is starting to take a big hit.

PS. I didn't know what picture to use. Sorry.

Major Stem Cell Advancement

(Click on Picture Above)
This has been in the news enough that you might have already heard this. However, as it made the front page of the New York Times, it is a very important advancement.

Scientists for a long time now have been trying to find a way to get adult cells to "become" stem cells since there are so many ethical battles over using embryos. The best way to do this is nuclear transfer which takes the nucleus of an adult cell and puts it into an egg. This process is still controversial since it involves an egg and very difficult and expensive.

The new technique is to take an adult cell and replace only four genes. Changing these four genes works with mice who are very similar to us genetically. If they can find a way to effectively do this with humans it would be easy, inexpensive, and noncontroversial since it doesn't involve an egg in any way. (However, so many people have become fanatically against stem cells they will probably find new reasons to complain. :( )

Bob Barker Says Goodbye

This from CNN:

LOS ANGELES, California (AP) -- Blowing kisses to the camera, Bob Barker signed off on 35 years on "The Price Is Right" and 50 years in daytime TV in the same low-key, genial fashion that made him one of daytime TV's biggest stars.

Barker, who had said before the taping on Wednesday of his final appearance that he would try to act as if it was "just another show," stuck to that promise. He ended the program as he always has, signing off with the words: "Help control the pet population, have your pets spayed or neutered. Goodbye everybody."

After the cameras stopped rolling, he told the studio audience, "I thank you, thank you, thank you for inviting me into your home for more than 50 years. I'm truly grateful and I hope that all of you have enjoyed your visit to 'The Price Is Right.' "

The hourlong taping began with the show's 83-year-old host entering the studio to a standing ovation from an adoring public and a giant shower of colorful confetti from his colleagues. The program is scheduled to air June 15.

The Kerr spacetime: A brief introduction

There is a new paper on arxiv.org which gives a good review of the Kerr Spacetime. Enjoy.

The TASI 2007 String Cosmology Lectures Are Online!!!

I really wanted to go to Colorado this summer to attend TASI 2007 since this year's topic is String Cosmology. Unfortunately I can't but there is still hope! They have all the lectures online! What a great bunch of people. :)

You should check up their line up. There are some really good talks. Anyone who happens to be in Boulder and not there would be missing out. :)

More Exciting Particle Rumors!

Tommaso Dorigo, a collider physicist and blogger, is letting out a rumor that there may have been a 4-5 sigma detection of a particle around 180 GeV of mass. If tis is the case, as he explains, it could very well be a supersymmetric particle. I am excited to see if this is more than a rumor since 4-5 sigma is serious business.