The CDC and WHO are giving us good advice on what do in this Plague Year. The Research Collaboratory for Structural Bioinformatics (RCSB) is showing us the molecule causing the havoc. Check out the structures of the various flavors of Coronavirus at The Protein Database (PDB). Click on the images, most of which will go to detailed pages including 3D models that can be spun in the browser. Knowledge will be power in dealing with this beast and let’s offer thanks to the research groups who took the lead in characterizing it which must have come at considerable risk to themselves. When it mutates, and it will, they and others will undoubtedly don their capes and do the measurements again.
It is damnably, horrifyingly beautiful in David Goodsell’s artistic rendering of it infecting a lung:
The web’s archive of older industrial films is a recurring delight. Jam Handy, Coronet, and other firms crafted these with an attention to detail, calm explanation, and rigorous science that is harder(*) to find today when most equivalents are about sales rather than fundamentals. Jeff Quitney (**) has uploaded a wonderful 1954 cleaned-up film to his Vimeo page on color theory and practice by the Interchemical Corporation. It begins with the importance of color to society – especially in packaging goods and people – and then gives a marvelous account of the optics involved. I’ve worked in the field for years but I learned to see things (pun intended) differently thanks to it.
The second film from 2016 looks at color in packaging through its emotional impact and its influence on design and designers. ‘Color In Sight’ resembles like Hustwit’s ‘Helvetica.’ A number of prominent designers talk about how they use and think about color in order to evoke a response, surface a memory, or reveal a part of the spectrum to the color-blind. I have no idea what I’d say to a nail-polish maker but Suzi Weiss-Fischmann (8m18s in) comes off as a fun seatmate on a long plane trip. I had a similar feeling about Helvetica’s Paula Scher. Interestingly, it is produced by TeaLeaves, a Canadian company specializing in very high-end teas for hotels. Judging by their Youtube page, they must spend a fortune on short films – many of which have little outward bearing on their products. I’ve never understood the appeal of tea but the videos are well worth a look.
(*) But not impossible by any means.
(**) 24 November 2023: Video link updated due to Jeff Quitney’s channels being taken down
Modern ejumacation has gone multimedia and Powerpoint, often multimedia within Powerpoint. Some like 3Blue1Brown are brilliant at it (the multimedia, not Powepoint), others less so. Here’s a random assortment of lectures where good old chalk and boards prevail: E&M from IIT Madras, chemistry and cryptography from Ruhr Universität, Bochum, Fields Medalist Cédric Villani on something-or-the-other, and an early calm-for-him presentation by Jens Fehlau on the Leibniz integration rule made famous by Feynman. Finally, a tribute to a popular chalk, recently discontinued.
The mere detection of gravitational waves two years ago was cause for celebration and, for those of us skeptical of LIGO, eating of crow. Now gravitational wave detections regularly cue electromagnetic observatories on the ground and in space with tighter integration to come.
Youtuber skydivephil puts the camera on several researchers active in developing the next generation GW systems and the ever more ambitious cosmological probing that these observatories will enable.
Skydivephil and the unnamed narrator are self-effacing providing few details about themselves, not even their names in the nonexistent credits. They also have enviable access to many leading physicists and institutes, largely on the theoretical side. The style is simple: Let the speaker speak. It is a refreshing antidote to the modern space documentary which highlights the doom-and-gloom with an explosion and visual effect every fifteen seconds. Whatever one may think about string theory, loop quantum gravity, or their alternatives, it is refreshing to hear about them from the purveyors. Here’s the “Before the Big Bang” playlist with an assortment of views on modern cosmology (note that the episodes are in reverse chronological order.)
Memo to self: Always check to see if a playwright is <nationality>’s Chekhovbefore buying the ticket.The sinking feeling sets in early with Open Fist‘s otherwise attractive ‘Dancing at Lughnasa’ and by 75 minutes into a seemingly interminable first act, plans are setfor an intermission escape.Then things happen for about 10 minutes and the coin flip comes up as stay to see how it pans out.We get another 5 to 7 minutes of explanation in the remaining hour as we learn what happens to the hard-luck, bad-luck if any luck at all Mundys of fictional Ballybeg, County Donegal.In the meantime, five sisters and a cleric brother may be poor but they have one another, then the fast moving world of change rolls over them.
Open Fist brings its traditional craftsmanship and smart casting to Brian Friel’s highly praised but unbalanced memory play.Lane Allison and Christopher Cappiello stand out as lively, optimistic Maggie and Father Jack, the latter recently returned from decades in Uganda where he found the existing customs and community much more to his liking than the Catholic faith he was sent there to sell.He’s not the only rambler in the mix as Christina’s (Caroline Klidonas) baby-daddy (Scott Roberts) shows up occasionally to see her and their son (David Shofner) whois narrating the piece from… the future. The Mundys are hanging on the edge of society. Breadwinner Kate (Jennifer Zorbalas) loses her teaching job due to Jack’s apostasy not sitting well with the church school. Industrialization eliminates a pittance that Agnes (Ann Marie Wilding) and Rose (Sandra Kate Burck) earn from piecework. The world just stomps on their knuckles until they finally let go. Burck has an especially fine moment in the second act as developmentally-disabled Rose is cruelly used by an unseen admirer despite the loving protection of Agnes –Friel’s hat-tip to Tennessee Williams, perhaps?We guess early on that every flicker of light these characters see is just the streamer for the next lightning bolt to hit them but the waits between the strikes are too damned long.The set, lights, and sounds (James Spencer, Matt Richter, and Tim Labor) do hang well over the production.
The play has won all the awards and feels calculated to do so, much like ‘Anna in the Tropics’ which preceded it. Both will be good box office for years to come.
It took me a year and an email to understand how merging neutron stars could generate heavy elements. For this you need protons and from where do these protons come. The year was for intermittent research and the email due to failing in that research. As it happens, neutron stars are chock full of particulate goodness, far more than their name implies. On the one hand it is good to know how it works, on the other hand it shows that my research skills could use some improvement.
We have megapixel cameras in our phones and gigapixel cameras on our telescopes. Before digital took over photography (and the world,) we had film. Light struck silver and made a mark and behind it all was some marvelous physical chemistry. It is still awe-inspiring to think of how these processes came about when knowledge and instrumentation were not nearly as advanced as today. Each step could have millions of alternatives and sorting them through brute force would take the age of the universe. Yet somehow it all came together and spawned industries. The American Chemical Society takes us through the science as it was in 1940.
The Event Horizon Telescope team announces its major discovery following two intense and quiet years of data analysis on top of a longer period of development. A nice testament to aperture synthesis and international collaboration as the rest of the world spirals into madness. Damn!!!
We routinely use ultrasonic cleaners to decontaminate all kinds of surfaces. A little solvent, some buzzing, and jewelry, electronic parts, and pen nibs get degunked effectively. Cavitation is responsible. It is also responsible for damaging surfaces such as ship propellers and pump impellers. The first video explains the physical chemistry behind the process and its (mostly) destructive effects. The second shows it applied to cleaning vegetables which, surprisingly, is a research problem funded by the National Science Foundation. Both videos show closeups of bubble collapse making the cleaning/damage mechanism much easier to understand.
Addendum 25 September 2020: EPFL has reorganized its webpages and the cavitation videos have disappeared. Here is an American Physical Society report on that research.
You say CarMEEna, I say CarMYna You say BurAHna, I say BurAYna CarMEEna, CarMYna, BurAHna, BurAYna Let’s Carl the whole thing Orff — Unknown
The outsized impact of Teutonic peuples on the sciences requires the rest of the world to get acquainted with the nuances of German pronunciation what with the umlauts, diphthongs, capitalizations, and veryLongwordscomposedofötherwordswIthnospacesinbetwëën. Berkeley chemistry majors of my vintage needed to take two terms of German so that we could read the older literature before English more-or-less took over as lingua franca. Some of us actually enjoyed it, most cursed it. Speaking of franca, the French were/are no slouches when it comes to scientific impact but we were not required to take French as part of the curriculum.
Vacky Deutscher JensFehlau offers a basic pronunciation course in typical vacky, flammable, and completely not-safe-for-work idiom forgoing his usual chalkboard for a MySpace page come to life. He vents justifiable rage against those profaning the great Leonhard Euler as ‘Youler’ or even ‘Wheeler’. For an existence proof of the former, see UCL mathematician Hannah Fry deadpan it repeatedly in a discussion of map projections. What in the actual f, indeed? The definitive guide to speaking the insufficiently known Emmy Noether is a major service.
Let us now consider other Wheelers (not Youlers or Oilers) that have loomed in the physical sciences. Most famous is Princeton’s late John Archibald, coiner of terms (black hole, wormhole, it-from-bit) and who begat Feynman, Thorne, and other luminaries. There is also Reed’sNicholas Wheeler whose lecture notes have become the stuff of legend. Now the A. A. Knowlton Professor Emeritus of Physics, Wheeler created many courses over a six decade career developing first his own approach to a topic, writing about it, and then taking his students through it. It is a pedagogical road taken by a select few. He writes,
I learned early on in my undergraduate education that while it is instructive to read, and to attend to the words of informed speakers, I cannot gain the feeling that I “understand” a subject until I have done my best to write about it. So much of my time these past sixty years—even when seemingly involved with other things—has been spent pondering the outlines of what I would write when I returned to my desk, “composing the next sentence.”
Which means that I have been engaged more often in trying to write my way to understanding than from understanding
…
When thinking through a subject in preparation for a class I have no option but to write my way through the subject, and then to lecture from my own notes. I find it much more pleasant and productive to spend an afternoon and evening writing than arguing with the absent author of a published text.
Reed has placed the original handwritten notes in their Special Archives for consultation. Fortunately, Wheeler also took pains to meticulously typeset a large fraction of these notes in and put them on his website. It is heady stuff this idiosyncratic guide through the highways, byways, and backroads of mathematical physics. Wheeler’s writing is alternately informal then precise, rigid then fluid, purposeful and then digressive. Each polished chapter contains seeds and fruits from all the others just as pieces of a hologram recapitulate the whole. There are treasures enough for many lifetimes. We can only marvel at undergraduates who had both the fortune to experience this ‘drawing out and not a putting in,’ as well as the ability to absorb and understand so much material coming from so many directions. Click the image to go the site and rejoice in each folder and its branches.
and put them on his website. It is heady stuff this idiosyncratic guide through the highways, byways, and backroads of mathematical physics. Wheeler’s writing is alternately informal then precise, rigid then fluid, purposeful and then digressive. Each polished chapter contains seeds and fruits from all the others just as pieces of a hologram recapitulate the whole. There are treasures enough for many lifetimes. We can only marvel at undergraduates who had both the fortune to experience this 