Proposed rules for long papers…
[Unfortunately things got busy before I had a chance to properly wrap up this blog… I hope to write up a proper `farewell’ post over the next couple of weekends.]
- If your paper is more than 30 pages long with multiple sections and subsections, it would be prudent to include a table of contents on the version you submit to the arXiv.
- If you are citing just one particular detail in such a paper, it would be very helpful if you included some note about which section (or at least page number) you expect your readers to read. This can be done using the “NOTE” tag in BibTeX.
Doing these things would be a huge help for people reading your papers. They would require a minimum of extra work on the authors’ part and can easily be edited away if a journal doesn’t like it. (Comment out the table of contents line and the journal’s BibTeX style file should already ignore “note” tags if they don’t like them.)
Note that the problem of not having a table of contents is somewhat ameliorated by using a pdf viewer with a “table of contents” panel, though this doesn’t really help if you’re looking at a print out, does it?
Filed under: Opinion, Student Life | 4 Comments
Just a random thought for the day:
I spent a couple of years as an undergrad doing research in a cond-mat/materials science building. It was the only place where people would consistently wash their hands before they went to the restroom.
Filed under: Just for Fun | 1 Comment
One of my favorite sources of background noise is Chicago Public Radio’s This American Life. The show recently replayed a nice episode called “A Little Bit of Knowledge,” which included a really nice piece on a physics crackpot (without being condescending). The piece starts at around the 31:10 mark. Here’s the blurb:
Bob Berenz had a good job as an electrician. But he wanted to do something bigger. He came up with an idea for an invention. But as he studied physics texts to see if his invention could work, he happened upon the biggest idea of his life: a revelation about physics that would disprove Einstein, and Newton. That is, if Bob’s right. Bob’s friend, Robert Andrew Powell, reports the story.
It’s a cute piece from a 3rd-person’s perspective, but a crackpot is a crackpot in any reference frame except their own.
Filed under: Just for Fun | Closed
[Kudos if you got the Schoolhouse Rock reference.] I’ve gotten a few messages now about the Graduate Junction, a social networking site developed to help postgraduate students. After noting it was endorsed by Durham, I decided to give it a try to see what it’s all about.
Update: see Dan’s comment below for further discussion.
The site’s goal is to facilitate academic networking, which is often an under appreciated aspect of academic professions. Users have a CV-like profile page describing their research interests and accomplishments. They are able to join groups reflecting their research and post to forums for advice about all aspects of PhD life. Users can send messages to one another and even (in the future) set up a calendar for conferences.
Does it sound familiar? It should. In many ways it’s just an academic version of Facebook. (“Academic” here means “without embarrassing photos.”) In fact, the whole interface can probably be reproduced on Facebook.
I support the community that Graduate Junction is trying to foster, but I have my reservations about whether it can successfully take off. It requires a large number of users to be useful. This is very much like Wikipedia. Why does Wikipedia have no competitors? Because of economies of scale. (Look it up in an econ textbook.) If there were two Wikipedias, each one would be worse off because they would only have half the capacity to develop articles.
In the same way, a lot of the social features in the Graduate Junction already exist elsewhere for theoretical physics PhDs, making it largely redundant:
- Social networking: “old style” networking through advisers and conferences. (I find this preferable to Facebook, see note below.)
- Profile/CV: Personal web page (you should have one), SPIRES HEP Names
- Advice forums/articles: PhD comics forums, also items at the AAAS, Chronicles of Higher Education, Institute of Physics, and many more
- Career Information: Rumor (Rumour) Mill, Postdoc Rumor Mill, SPIRES Jobs
- Conference Information: CERN Document Server
- Review Literature: String Wiki
Why not Facebook? Call me old fashioned, but I don’t think that searching for collaborators should work the same way that one searches for a new iPod. It should be more like finding the right pair of shoes: while reputation is a start, you actually need to try it out a bit with the guidance of an adviser. This is why we give talks and why conferences have discussion time. There’s much more to a good collaborator than a shiny CV. Research projects need to be taken seriously so that we can’t afford to find collaborators the way one would find an on-line date (which is itself is already somewhat dubious).
So with that I’d have to say that Graduate Junction still needs to develop a larger user base and determine what “new” feature it brings to the table before it can become useful.
For example, they could try to copy Facebook’s “poke” feature, only reimagined as “scoop.” (“You’ve been scooped by ___. Would you like to scoop back?“) 🙂
Filed under: Opinion, Student Life | 3 Comments
Only in America: According to the “Dallas City Hall Blog,” a Dallas County administrator was reprimanded after calling a collections office a “black hole” for losing papers. A judge and commissioner on hand deemed the commend racist, apparently. To make the story even better, they instead suggested that the office be called a white hole. Let’s review:
(Image as-is from Wikipedia)
I hope they had a chalkboard, because they’re going to need some Penrose diagrams to resolve that dispute. (From a physics perspective, I’m actually not sure which one would be a better analogy.)
This story really makes me smile because it’s a reminder that I’m actually home. America, I think, so desperately seeks racial equality (at least abstractly) that it often becomes hypersensitive to race. [And perhaps this is indeed progress.] As a result, the whole story is about race. And just in case people wise up and realize that it’s not about race, the blog post even explicitly names the ethnicity of each member involved, just to make sure it’s about race. After all, a story about race is more exciting than an embarassing shortcoming in science education.
Filed under: Just for Fun | 2 Comments
It seems like the powers-that-be at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center are considering changing the lab’s name. Besides reflecting the broader spectrum of science done at the lab since its 2005 reoganization, apparently there’s some issue with the DOE registering for ownership of the lab’s title. Stanford University, who operates the lab, objects to anyone else owning something officially branded ‘Stanford.’
For those with a vested interest, you can make comments and make name suggestions directly to the naming committee using this form. [My suggestion: Fundamental-Understanding-of-Nature Discovery MachinE, or FUNDMe]
As an undergraduate at Stanford, SLAC played a big role in shaping my passion for particle physics, so nostalgia prevents me from agreeing with the name change. What am I supposed to say now? “I developed a love for particle physics at the DOE Lab formerly known at SLAC” ??
(It pains me to think that there are undergrads who are too young to get that joke.)
There is, notably, one group who will celebrate a change in the lab’s name: the Stanford Labor Action Coalition, a student group that has shared SLAC’s acryonym since 1998. This has led to a history of confusing Stanford Daily headlines whenever the student group or the lab made big news. I mean, really, who could tell which one was holding a minimum wage protest and which one was probing CP violating in the B meson. (Actually, given the caliber of the university’s campus workers and the state of science funding, you really never know…)
(Thanks to Inna for pointing this out.)
Filed under: Just for Fun, Opinion, Physics | Closed
The good folks at the Guardian have put together a nice interactive presentation about the LHC. Unfortunately, they continue to deny that ‘CERN’ is an acronym by spelling it as ‘Cern.’ [edit:see comments.] If you’re willing to forgive their editor, the presentation is a really nice introduction for non-physicists.
Filed under: Just for Fun | 6 Comments
I’ve gone on–and–on about wikis in the past, and so I was very happy to see (via OpenWetWare) a very nice article in the May 08 issue of MAA Focus by Ethan Duckworth (see page 17). Dr. Duckworth describes how he set up a 
In addition to providing an instant transcription of your lectures, students can use the wiki’s built-in discussion pages to offer opinions about sections that weren’t clear. Having the wiki open to the entire course also allows students to fill in gaps and correct mistakes. The process of creating a set of notes also forces the students to think about the subject in a pedagogically helpful way and is more exciting than traditional coursework. (Though it’s certainly not a replacement for problem sets.)
I should probably note that this is a system that lends itself more to the American-pedaogical style rather than the UK/European style since it relies on regular and collaborative coursework.
Filed under: Science 2.0 | 6 Comments
Richard recently asked for instructions for enabling wmv files to be played on Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron). This is important since TASI has uploaded its summer school videos in wmv format. After reinstalling Ubuntu, I followed the instructions at Ubuntu Geek and that seems to have worked well. Here’s a summary.
First enable “Universe” and “Multiverse” repositories. (No anthropic jokes today.) You can do this by going to system > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager > Settings > Software Sources > Ubuntu Software and making sure that the appropriate boxes are checked. Alternately, command line jockeys can manually modify the sources.list file: type in
sudo gedit /etc/apt/sources.list
and append the following two lines at the end of the file:
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy universe multiverse deb-src http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu hardy universe multiverse
Save and close.
Next update the source list with the following command: (for absolute beginners, you type these commands in at the Terminal, which you can access from Applications > Accessories > Terminal. Note that you can copy and paste these commands into the Terminal. Insert your password when prompted and respond ‘y’ when given the option.)
sudo apt-get update
Now install Win32 video codecs package. Note that the commands might be slightly different for those with older Ubuntu versions. Use the following commands:
sudo wget http://www.medibuntu.org/sources.list.d/hardy.list -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/medibuntu.lis sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install medibuntu-keyring sudo apt-get update sudo apt-get install w32codecs
The last line is for “i386” (Intel) chips. If you’re using an AMD 64-bit chip, replace the last line with
sudo apt-get install w64codecs
Please note that there may be issues with the Win64 codecs and their support for wmv files, c.f. this series of forum posts.
Ok, that’s it for the codecs… but you’ll still need to install MPlayer to view the files properly. For some reason the default player (Totem) had very poor resolution and no audio. Using the Synaptic Package manager (or Applications > Add/Remove) you can just install the mplayer and mozilla-mplayer packages. If you want to be fancy and use the Terminal, you can use the commands
sudo apt-get install mplayer sudo apt-get install mozilla-mplayer
You’ll need to be sure to use MPlayer when opening the wmv file. When you download your first wmv file, right click and go to Properties > Open With and select MPlayer Movie Player (not “Movie Player” which is Totem).
And with that, you should be able to watch the TASI videos—and any other wmv files—using Ubuntu 8.04.
But seriously, if you have any influence on the University of Colorado Physics Learning Laboratories people who host the TASI videos, please urge them to use more reasonable file formats. Flash is accessible using any modern browser and any modern operating system. The files stream very well and take up a fraction of the space on the server.
Filed under: Science 2.0, Student Life | 2 Comments
I’ll miss you, Woolies.
I’m going to miss people referring to shops like “Woolies” or “Marks and Sparks.” The only shops here that have such widely-accepted nicknames are fast food joints: “Mickey-D’s” or “Jack-in-the-crack.” … though that last one might only exist for undergrads who have the late-midnight munchies.
Perhaps what I’ll miss most are the pub names. Cheers to the Baron of Beef, the Flying Pig, the Man on the Moon, the Swan & Three Sygnets, the Hogs Head, the Lord Gort, the Dun Cow, and many, many, many others.
Filed under: Expatriate Life, Just for Fun | 1 Comment
An American Physics Student in England 