Archive for September, 2007
In Part I: What, Me Wiki? I briefly introduced wikis as a different way of interacting with information on the web. In this second post, I’d like to connect those ideas to the `chores’ associated with science. In particular, I’ll speculate about applications to postgraduate reserach education. Fig 1. Wikis can contribute more than just […]
Filed under: Science 2.0 | 5 Comments
While blogs are great for journalism and outreach, I do not think their present form will significantly change the way we do science. The future, my friends, is in wikis. Fig 1. “Wikipedian Protester” by R. Munroe. Adapted with permission from xkcd comics. In this n-part sub-series of my “Web 2.0 Science” posts, I will discuss […]
Filed under: Science 2.0 | 3 Comments
Web 2.0 Science
I’m hoping to kick of a series of posts on the coming role of the Web 2.0 in science. I’ve been planning this for some time, but you know how it is when you’re busy. What is the Web 2.0? Fig 1. Web 1.0 vs. Web 2.0, an analogy with Johnny Five (Short Circuit) and […]
Filed under: Opinion, Science 2.0 | 2 Comments
I get a lot of traffic from people looking for introductory QFT literature, so I was excited to hear news via The Reference Frame that a fraction of the handwritten notes from Sidney Coleman’s Quantum Field Theory Course have been LaTeX’ed up into handy PDFs. They are available on Bryan Chen’s webspace, thanks Bryan! For […]
Filed under: Physics | 1 Comment
The Hewlett Foundation has donated a $113M grant to the University of California, Berkeley in what is the largest private gift in the public university’s history. The press release toots all the right whistles about supporting public education and keeping Berkeley competitive with private universities. There is also a nice article in the Los Angeles […]
Filed under: Berkeley and Stanford, Opinion | Closed
A better slogan for NASA
From the Wired Science blog: last month NASA updated it’s `message construct’ with the core message of: NASA explores for answers that power our future. This replaces the previous slogan, [NASA:] Explore, Discover, Understand. The NASA Office of Strategic Communications claims that the new message has been `proven to resonate’ with the public. Somehow this […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Opinion | 2 Comments
We’ve reached the phase in our project where we perform multiple cross checks on our calculations and code. I spent the better part of today and yesterday checking one particular calculation that had already been confirmed in the analytically, numerically, and in the literature. My task was to check that our code matched the analytical […]
Filed under: Just for Fun, Student Life | Closed
It’s all Greek to me
I previously mentioned in passing that I’ve been trying to pick up modern Greek in my spare time. These days, however, spare time has given way to deadlines and my linguistic pursuits have been put on hold. A few days ago, however, I met a Greek MSc. student and tested out my knowledge by trying […]
Filed under: Just for Fun | 3 Comments
An American Physics Student in England 