07/03/2008
Happy Independence Day
Happy holidays to all Americans, the most frequent visitors of this blog, many e-friends, and (hopefully still) the leaders of the civilized world......from Europe....
~ published: 07/03 at 22:05 ~ source: The Reference Frame ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Problems with some permalinks
Sorry to those hitting the site from old permalinks ending with a ".w" extension; I'm working on a rewrite rule to handle those now. In the meantime, all these pages are there, with the supported ".html" extension. ...
~ published: 07/03 at 21:56 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Paleolithic multimedia
Paleolithic multimedia?A trained vocalist was sent through the caves testing different sounds and pitches in various locations. Spots of maximum resonance, or places where the voice was most amplified and clear, were noted in each section and later laid o...
~ published: 07/03 at 21:38 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Interference in Memory
How memory works, and how we forget due to interference.read more...
~ published: 07/03 at 14:58 ~ source: Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Xian-Jin Li: a wrong proof of the Riemann hypothesis
Update, July 6th: The paper has been withdrawn due to the error on page 29, the mistake pointed out by Alain Connes and described in the following July 3rd text:Some readers who are interested in maths may have noticed a preprint by Xian-Jin Li,A proof of...
~ published: 07/03 at 14:16 ~ source: The Reference Frame ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Sewall Wright and migration
DavidB at Gene Expression continues his wonderful series on Sewall Wright with a detailed post on the population genetics of migration. ...
~ published: 07/03 at 13:24 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Li’s Preprint
Yesterday, everyone was all atwitter over a new preprint by Xian-Jin Li containing a purported proof the Riemann Hypothesis. The optics of it looked good (Li is clearly not a crank), but Terry Tao has identified an apparent error.More at Not Even Wrong....
~ published: 07/03 at 12:04 ~ source: Ars Mathematica ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Rubber 'snake' could help wave power get a bite of the energy market
A device consisting of a giant rubber tube may hold the key to producing affordable electricity from the energy in sea waves.read more...
~ published: 07/03 at 11:29 ~ source: Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. ~ permalink ~ points: 0
High-pitched voices are most attractive -- with a few exceptions
Have you ever seen Singin' in the Rain? One of the movie's most hilarious moments is when the beautiful silent movie star Lina Lamont is asked to start making "talking pictures." As soon as this gorgeous screen siren opens her mouth, the illusio...
~ published: 07/03 at 11:17 ~ source: Cognitive Daily ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Gary Marcus on Jindal, Intelligent Design
Gary Marcus contributes an article to the Huffington Post, reflecting on the new Louisiana creationism law:At this point, 30 years after the Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman and his late collaborator Amos Tversky started documenting a rash of fallacies in h...
~ published: 07/03 at 11:05 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Sherlock Holmes on the nonimportance of theories
R. Ford Denison: In A Study in Scarlet, [Holmes] expresses the opinion that it makes no practical difference whether the sun orbits the earth or vice versa. Yet, in The Musgrave Ritual, it turns out that incorrect theories make incorrect predictions.The ...
~ published: 07/03 at 10:37 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Resveratrol found to improve health, but not longevity in aging mice on standard diet
Scientists have found that the compound resveratrol slows age-related deterioration and functional decline of mice on a standard diet, but does not increase longevity when started at middle age.read more...
~ published: 07/03 at 10:34 ~ source: Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Ajit Varki profile
Reporter Bruce Lieberman profiles geneticist Ajit Varki in this week's Nature. It's a good summary of Varki's work in sialic acid evolution, focusing on one particular change in the N-glycolyl neuraminic acid (Neu5Gc), work that I touched on here around 3...
~ published: 07/03 at 08:35 ~ source: John Hawks Anthropology Weblog ~ permalink ~ points: 0
Woman aquires new accent after stroke
A woman in southern Ontario is one of the first cases in Canada of a rare neurological syndrome in which a person starts speaking with a different accent. This time it's Maritime Canadian English.read more...
~ published: 07/03 at 08:25 ~ source: Science Blog - Think. It's not illegal yet. ~ permalink ~ points: 0
UAH: June 2008: still negative anomaly
According to UAH MSU, the global temperature anomaly in June 2008 was -0.11 °C, up from -0.18 °C in May 2008.A similar warming from -0.083 °C in May 2008 to +0.035 °C in June 2008 has been reported by RSS MSU, too. On the other hand, GISTEMP and HadCR...
~ published: 07/03 at 08:19 ~ source: The Reference Frame ~ permalink ~ points: 0
LHC to be cooled down by July 14th
Exactly for 14 years, physicists have been waiting for the powerful 14 TeV machine. Finally, on July 14th, the French national holiday which is less than 14 days from now, the gadget should be cool enough to accelerate protons (or during the week that fol...
~ published: 07/03 at 07:46 ~ source: The Reference Frame ~ permalink ~ points: 0