As a recent article from Wired Science puts it, “one way to get noticed as a scientist is to tackle a really difficult problem.” So, they interviewed Cal Tech physicist Sean Carroll about his talk at the recent meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Science.
Carroll’s latest book “From Eternity to Here: The Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time” is an attempt to bring his theory of time and the universe to physicists and non-physicists alike.
You can read the Wired interview here…
When I first saw this, I thought, “Yikes!”
But it’s the artistic creation of RoboSteel, an Ireland-based firm that creates sculptures from scrap metal (their website is www.robosteel.com, where they also make metal scupltures of Star Wars, Predator, and Terminator characters).
The large Alien Queen is only 4,500 Euros (what a bargain!)…
Here’s the article from Wired GadgetLab…
Ever wonder what controls your body clock? Well, according to scientists, it’s a grain-of-rice sized clump of neurons in the brain.
Here’s the Forbes article that tell us more…
I highlighted a really cool article from the latest Wired Magazine on compressive sensing in my previous post. But there are three other cool items that are worth catching your eyes on:
G. “These go to ____.” (from wired.com)
- If you dig movies (I mean, you doesn’t!?), then this is kinda fun to fill in the blanks on some famous movie lines. Here’s the article called Bit Parts (my favorites – G and H).
- Google has the corner on the world’s search market by developing the world’s best search engine. But they’ve won their dominant position by constantly improving their algorithms. Here’s an exclusive article describing their technology and their key advances over the years…
- What’s the smallest number n such that n and 2n end in the same digit (turns out it’s 14)? Wired points us to NumberGossip.com for interesting facts about every number from 1 to 9,999 (the website only likes to talk about “positive” things)…
- Bonus: Wired has a picture of Harry Hamlin from Clash of the Titans!
The Mandelbrot Set, Developed by Benoit Mandelbrot in 1980 (from bareinboots.com)
- Double Bonus: I never really heard (nor thought about) what the next advance in fractal geometries would be beyond the Mendelbrot set. However, in reading through Wired yesterday, I ran across the term “Mendelbulb“, which stands for the 3D representation of the 2D Mendelbrot set. Here’s a website with amazing 3D pictures (from artist Daniel White) of what the Mendelbulbs look like. Really cool…
(C) 2009 Daniel White from skytopia.com
From Wired.com
A very cool article on what’s called “compressive sensing” is featured in the latest issue of Wired Magazine. It turns out that our company (Areté Associates) has really been at the forefront of exploiting this technology (I’ve even worked with some great guys to develop a patent based on these approaches…).
Here’s the article on how amazingly impressive the technology is.
I’ve been reading a book by a well-known and successful consultant Alan Weiss (author of Million Dollar Consulting and about 30 other books), and he had an interesting anecdote regarding persistence (most likely of dubious authenticity).
As I paraprhase how Alan tells it, an organization had a sales team with one individual who, by most accounts, is a terrible salesperson. He doesn’t really have the skills needs to become a successful salesperson (doesn’t listen well to customer needs, etc.), and was predicted by many to be unsuccessful. However, this person always seemed to lead the team in sales – by at least two to three times the other staff.
At first, the managers thought his first year success was a fluke, but after two or three years of this performance, he was brought in to explain just how he does it.
So, the sales manager asks him, “When you meet with a customer, what do you do?”
The salesperson answers, “I put the catalog on the desk in front of him.”
And the conversation continues, “OK – so what do you do next?”
“I open the catalog to page 1 and ask if he wants to buy what’s listed.”
“So, what if they say no?”
“I turn to page 2 and ask if he wants to buy what’s listed.”
“OK – if they say no again, then what?”
“I turn to page 3 and ask if he wants to buy what’s listed.”
“Well, what happens if you get to page 147 and they still don’t buy anything?”
“I go back to the beginning and start over at page 1.”
This probably isn’t the easiest method to generate sales (and could lead to being kicked out of the customer’s office!), but the persistence is clear, and one could see how this could lead to better than average results – there are some people who would buy something merely to stop turning pages in the catalog!
This doesn’t mean that other methods wouldn’t work better (they probably would…). However, persistence is a key factor in leading to success, whether in sales or in any aspect of life.
Alan mentions this as an example of being omnipresent to your customers – always being there when your customer realizes that they need (your) help. However, it also is a good example of what persistence can bring.
You can read more about Alan Weiss at his blog Contrarian Consulting.
Here’s an article about a new International Space Station mission to look for proof of dark matter (the stuff that seems to make the universe work differently than we think it does…). The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is scheduled to be launched from the Space Shuttle in July 2010.
You can read the extensive article here.
Moon explorer Buzz Aldrin and Director of the Hayden Planetarium Neil deGrasse Tyson discuss the eightieth anniversary of Pluto’s discovery on The Takeaway. Too bad Pluto isn’t a planet anymore (it’s now merely a dwarf planet…), but it’s still worth commemorating.
You can listen to the audio here.
In an August 2009 New York Times article, here’s what a Google mucky-muck has to say about the world of math and science:
“I keep saying that the sexy job in the next 10 years will be statisticians,” said Hal Varian, chief economist at Google. “And I’m not kidding.”
Knowledge of statistics and, most importantly, how to exploit them will become an increasingly important part of tomorrow’s successful businesses.
You can read the article here…
