Psychologically profile your blog!
TYPEALYSER
Typealyzer parses the content of your blog and gives you a Myers-Briggs style result as to the ‘personality’ of your blog. P&C comes out as INTJ scientist type. What jolly good fun.
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Think you know topology? Try to get your head around this:
How to turn a sphere inside out
(via The [...]
Archive for April, 2009
Coffeebreak links 240409
Posted in links, web on April 24, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Lowering the magnet assembly
Posted in experimental insights on April 20, 2009 | 1 Comment »
After installing some magnetic shielding, and reinstalling the superconducting magnet, I thought I’d put a picture of the entire dilution fridge assembly being lowered into the dewar, as it looked quite impressive.
At the bottom you can just see the top of the outer mu-metal shield. It’s actually quite a lot longer than this, I’d already [...]
Circuit diagrams of real neural systems
Posted in BCI, cool physics, learnin' stuff, psychological ponderings, sci-fi, transhumanism on April 16, 2009 | 4 Comments »
Via WIRED
How to Map Neural Circuits With an Electron Microscope
“This giant, and potentially revolutionary, task requires custom software, electron microscopes and an incredibly sharp knife. If everything goes right, the team may be the first to create a circuit diagram that explains how mammals see.”
Photo Credit: Marc Lab / Moran Eye Institute
This is just too [...]
The experimentalist’s whiteboard
Posted in experimental insights, expt vs theory showdown on April 16, 2009 | 1 Comment »
Everyone’s seen the steroetypical image of the theorist’s whiteboard, so I thought I’d show a couple of pictures of the experimental version.
These are bona-fide lab white boards with real physics-working-stuff notes… Look, there’s even equipment lying around nearby!
An Inconvenient Truth
Posted in controversial..., film / tv / music, outreach on April 14, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I’ve recently watched the film AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, directed by Davis Guggenheim, featuring Al Gore.
I’d highly recommend watching this film. I found it really moving. Here is the Wikipedia entry for the film, including quite a few opinions from film critics. Trying to normalise away any potential political spin here, Al Gore seems like a [...]
Reporting on the Blogosphere
Posted in learnin' stuff, web on April 13, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Here is a link via Hake’s EdStuff:
“Over two-hundred education & science blogs”
A nice report mainly consisting of a compilation of educational blogs, with notes about advantages and problems arising from the use of the growing blogosphere as a tool for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. Each listed blog has a blurb, a weblink, and a [...]
Reconfigurable spacecraft parts from superconductors
Posted in cool physics, superconductors on April 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Via Next Big Future
This is a really cool and novel use of superconductors:
Reconfigurable Spacecraft as Kinematic Mechanisms Based on Flux-Pinning Interactions
Matryoshka mumetal shields and superconducting magnets
Posted in experimental insights, superconductors on April 10, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Fun with magnetic shielding:
Mu-metal shields help screen the experiment from magnetic fields, both varying (such as from local sources of interference) and static (e.g. the earth’s field). Nesting them increases their effectiveness. Mu-metal workings by ’sucking’ in field lines – they prefer to go through the high permeability material than through air (or free space), [...]
Savoie experimental superconducting electronics workshop
Posted in RSFQ, conferences on April 8, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
At the moment I’m attending an S-Pulse superconducting electronics (SCE) workshop at the University of Savoie in Chambery, France.
So far we’ve had talks about single photon detectors, hot electron bolometers, junction measurements, ballistic readout of qubits, Terahertz imaging, modelling inductances and superconducting circuits, cryocooling and cryopackaging, and plenty of RSFQ related information.
Yesterday morning we had [...]
Potential science funding policy review
Posted in controversial... on April 4, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
This is slightly worrying:
“Funding of science must be reviewed, say Tories”
The basic idea is that the Haldane principle needs reviewing. This is the idea that researchers and scientists themselves decide what research should be funded, as opposed to a higher (governmental) system. The Haldane principle seems like a sensible idea to me. The fact that [...]
