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Domain: nobel.se
Stories and comments across the archive that link to nobel.se.
Stories · 24
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Top 100 Papers in Physics Ranked
Rob Carr writes "What do physicists care about most? Who are the greatest minds of our time? What physics papers have had the greatest impact? Sidney Redner attempts to answer that question by looking at the citations of all journals in the Physical Review Journals since 1893. He ranked the top 100 papers based on their 'impact': the number of citations times the average age of the citations. Einstein's Relativity papers, which were not in Physical Review journals, are the most stunning absence. 'Fan Favorites' are there - Einstein does make the list for the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper. Feynman, Dirac, Bethe, Wheeler are on the list. Stephen Hawking does not make the list. Yet Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who is virtually unknown to the general public, is an author on five of the 100 papers, including the top two and one of the top 15 'hot' papers. The paper goes into the statistics of the citations, a fascinating area in it's own right. Some papers make an immediate splash, while others might wait 50 years before their importance becomes apparent. The vast majority die a quick and quiet death. It's tempting to wonder if Redner's paper conclusively proves Sturgeon's Law." -
Top 100 Papers in Physics Ranked
Rob Carr writes "What do physicists care about most? Who are the greatest minds of our time? What physics papers have had the greatest impact? Sidney Redner attempts to answer that question by looking at the citations of all journals in the Physical Review Journals since 1893. He ranked the top 100 papers based on their 'impact': the number of citations times the average age of the citations. Einstein's Relativity papers, which were not in Physical Review journals, are the most stunning absence. 'Fan Favorites' are there - Einstein does make the list for the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper. Feynman, Dirac, Bethe, Wheeler are on the list. Stephen Hawking does not make the list. Yet Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who is virtually unknown to the general public, is an author on five of the 100 papers, including the top two and one of the top 15 'hot' papers. The paper goes into the statistics of the citations, a fascinating area in it's own right. Some papers make an immediate splash, while others might wait 50 years before their importance becomes apparent. The vast majority die a quick and quiet death. It's tempting to wonder if Redner's paper conclusively proves Sturgeon's Law." -
Top 100 Papers in Physics Ranked
Rob Carr writes "What do physicists care about most? Who are the greatest minds of our time? What physics papers have had the greatest impact? Sidney Redner attempts to answer that question by looking at the citations of all journals in the Physical Review Journals since 1893. He ranked the top 100 papers based on their 'impact': the number of citations times the average age of the citations. Einstein's Relativity papers, which were not in Physical Review journals, are the most stunning absence. 'Fan Favorites' are there - Einstein does make the list for the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paper. Feynman, Dirac, Bethe, Wheeler are on the list. Stephen Hawking does not make the list. Yet Nobel Prize winner Walter Kohn, who is virtually unknown to the general public, is an author on five of the 100 papers, including the top two and one of the top 15 'hot' papers. The paper goes into the statistics of the citations, a fascinating area in it's own right. Some papers make an immediate splash, while others might wait 50 years before their importance becomes apparent. The vast majority die a quick and quiet death. It's tempting to wonder if Redner's paper conclusively proves Sturgeon's Law." -
High-Temp Superconducting Tape
DrLudicrous writes "The NYTimes is running a little overview of the current state of mass produced superconducting materials. A company named Superpower (another blurb on them here) is making a layered superconducting tape out of ceramic materials- ceramics that are high-temperature superconductors (no resistance at liquid nitrogen temperatures, 77K). This is much cheaper to maintain than technologies based on superconducting metals, which tend to require liquid helium (~4 Kelvin) temperatures. A note of contention: the article mentions that superconductivity is not well understood -- high-temperature superconductors are not, but classical 'low-temperature' superconductors are well-described under the Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer (BCS) theory." -
Open Source Awards 2004
An anonymous reader writes "The first Open Source Awards 2004 have been announced. These newly created awards aspire to be the Nobel Prizes of the open source world. Congratulations to the developers of Valgrind, VideoLAN, JACK, and Pango." -
Disintermediation and Politics
code_rage writes "Everett Ehrlich (capsule biography) writes an article in the Washington Post that examines Howard Dean's effective use of the internet to create a political organization. He says that Dean has created a 'virtual' party that has taken over the only remaining asset of value, the brand name of the Democratic party. His analysis refers to the theory of Nobel-winning economist Ronald Coase: that the size of an organization is determined by the cost of gathering information. Ehrlich's article makes some predictions about the effect that Dean's strategy will have on the political system." In a related story, there's an mp3 interview with Dick Morris, along with a couple of (appropriately) blog posts about it. -
Protein Researchers Win Nobel Prize In Chemistry
nucal writes "The 2003 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to Rod MacKinnon and Peter Agree for their work on proteins that form ion and water channels in cell membranes. In particular, solving the structure of potassium channels was a major achievement, since this was the first multispan transmembrane protein structure to be solved by X-ray crystallography. There is also structural information on aquaporins (water channels) as well." -
Nobel Prize for Physics Announced
what_the_frell writes "According to this Fox News article, two Americans and a Russian won the 2003 Nobel Prize for Physics for research in the field of quantum physics. The trio conducted research in superconductivity and superfluidity, detailed in this official Nobel article." -
Instrument on Mars Rover 'Spirit' Malfunctioning
deglr6328 writes "During the first in-flight checkout of both mars rovers this week it was found that the Mossbauer spectrometer on the first launched "Spirit" Rover was not functioning properly. The instrument is intended to be used on the surface of Mars to examine the composition and magnetic properties of Iron containing minerals in rocks. Mission engineers think they may be able to partially fix the spectrometer before it arrives in January. All other cameras and instruments on both rovers checked out ok." -
Nobel Prize Winners on Sci-Fi Flicks
scientistguy writes "In case you missed it, Harold Varmus, Nobel prize winning retrovirologist and cancer biologist, former NIH director, and current head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, has written a review of 28 Days Later in this weekend's New York Times. One would think that his time is more valuably spent running important medical institutions, searching for new cancer insights/cures, etc, but the dude's also an English lit major and has a penchant for sci-fi. 28 Days Later is the new flick from director Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, etc.) about a virus termed rage that is advertently released from a Cambridge primate research facility and goes on to devastate much of merry old England more rapidly than the dragons did in Reign of Fire. Although Varmus appears to go out of his way to be even handed, it's clear that he has a problem suspending disbelief on a topic (virology) that is near and dear to him. Reviews from professional movie critics on 28 Days Later have been mixed, but Ebert and another NY Times reviewer were into it. Good, clean summer fun - aside from 'the scenes of maiming, dismemberment, clubbing, shooting, bayoneting and shoplifting'." -
The New York Times On Neuroeconomics
ravenousbugblatter writes "The New York Times technology section has an article discussing the increasing attention that neurologists are devoting to the study of the human mind in relation to economics. It looks like John Nash's game theory could have yet another application." -
The New York Times On Neuroeconomics
ravenousbugblatter writes "The New York Times technology section has an article discussing the increasing attention that neurologists are devoting to the study of the human mind in relation to economics. It looks like John Nash's game theory could have yet another application." -
Larry Page: Google Was an Accident
DarklordJonnyDigital writes "Ars Technica is reporting that Google founder Larry Page has admitted that the Google project wasn't originally intended to be a search engine at all. "It wasn't that we intended to build a search engine. We built a ranking system to deal with annotations." ' Of course, happy accidents have often been the cause for advancement, technologically or otherwise. -
Who Owns Science?
immerrath writes "The New York Times has an article [Sorry, tomorrow's article, no Google link yet] on a movement that is rapidly gaining support in the scientific community: the Public Library of Science(PLoS). The founders, Nobel Laureate Harold Varmus, Stanford biologist Pat Brown and Berkeley Lab scientist Michael Eisen, argue that scientific literature cannot be privately controlled or owned by the publishers of scientific journals, and must instead be available in public archives freely accessible by anyone and everyone. This has very important implications for the fundamental principle that Science must transcend all economic, national and other barriers. For a while now, PLoS has been trying to get scientific journals to release the rights to scientific papers; many major journals have not complied -- in response, PLoS is starting PLoS-standard-compliant journals (for which they received a $9 million grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation), to demonstrate the validity of the idea and persuade academic publishers to adopt the free access model. They even have a GPL-like open access Licence, and their journals have some very prominent scientists on the editorial board. Here is the text of an earlier Newsweek article about PLoS, and here is a Nature Public Debate explaining the issues. Michael Eisen received the 2002 Benjamin Franklin award for his work on PLoS. Don't forget to sign the PLoS open letter!" -
Nobel Prizes for Physics Awarded to Smart People
bobol6 writes "The 2002 Nobel Prize for Physics is out. The $1 Million is split two ways: Riccardo Giacconi gets half for building the first X-Ray telescopes, and Raymond Davis, Jr and Masatoshi Koshiba split the other half. Davis invented the water tank neutrino detector, and Koshiba used a more sophisticated one to discover neutrino oscillation. The original press release is available . News articles can be found at Science Daily and The New York Times. (Free Blah di Blah)" -
Cell Death Nets 2002 Nobel Prize in Medicine
An anonymous reader writes "The recent press release at the Nobel website details the first of the 2002 Nobel Prizes. This year the Medicine prize goes to Sydney Brenner, H. Robert Horvitz, and John E. Sulston for their discovery of programmed cell death (also called apoptosis). Their seminal work in the model organism C. elegans established the foundation of cell suicide as a normal physiologic process. The implications are wide ranging including understanding organ development and cancer." -
Doubting the Existence of Black Holes
The Good Reverend writes: "It seems that there's a growing movement that doubts the existence of black holes, going against most of the rest of astrophysics. They suggest the existence of gravastars, "star-size agglomerations of "wavelike" substance" (space-time fabric, if you will). Different scientists claim to have created the "wavelike substance" in a lab, called Bose-Einstein condensates." I understand gravastars taste terrific with cream cheese and red onion. -
Nobel Prize In Physics For Bose-Einstein Condensate
LMCBoy writes "The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences announced the 2001 Nobel Prize in Physics today. The award went to scientists who managed to construct a Bose-Einstein condensate from Rubidium and Sodium atoms. The process involves cooling the atoms to about 20 nanoKelvin. From the press release: 'A laser beam differs from the light from an ordinary light bulb in several ways. In the laser the light particles all have the same energy and oscillate together. To cause matter also to behave in this controlled way has long been a challenge for researchers. This year's Nobel Laureates have succeeded - they have caused atoms to "sing in unison" - thus discovering a new state of matter, the Bose-Einstein condensate.'" This is the same reasearch that Hemos recently posted about. -
Nobel Prize in Medicine Awarded for Cell Research
bigfatlamer writes: "The Nobel committee has awarded the Prize for Physiology or Medicine to Leland Hartwell of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Paul Nurse and Timothy Hunt both of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in London. The award was given for their seminal work on cell cycle control in yeast. Those of us who work in the field knew that it would only be a matter of time before these people won a Nobel." -
Slashback: Dyn-O-Mite!, Paper, Sploits
Here is your regular irregular dose of Slashdot story updates and obsessive compulsion -- some of it sad, some amusing, some utterly neutral and of no caloric value. For instance: You can win more than 50 of Roblimo's personal dollars if you work really hard, and wait a really long time."Kilby ... Kilby .. Kilby ..." [WHACK!] BMagneton writes: "The Nobel Prize for Physics was just awarded to several electronics pioneers, notably Alferov and Kroemer, who invented a bunch of semiconductor device construction methods, and Jack Kilby, who pretty much invented the microchip. The Nobel seems to have gone to a more practical/applied achievement than it usually does." And sconeu writes: "Wired News reports that Jack Kilby have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for his part in the invention of the IC. The prize was split with Herbert Kroemer of UC Santa Barbara and Zhores Alferov of Russia who worked on semiconductor development as well."
And as "Boo," acclaimed international film star Keanu Reeves! Godzookie2k writes: "I was bored out of my mind the other night, and stumbled to boo.com's old site to see what would pop up. Mouth agape, I read: 'Boo.com returns, October 30, 2000.' yippie, you can download the official "boo" screensaver and enter some contest. See for yourself."
Some things are worth bringing back (Old Coke, bermuda shorts), and others may not be. Frankly, I'd never heard of Boo except maybe vaguely in the background until they went bust, time number one. On the other hand, our friend Pee-Wee was pretty funny in Mystery Men, so maybe anything is possible.
A browser for your naked (P)PC; combine with image filtering, stir. Mozilla keeps getting better -- I'm not afraid to show it to anyone right now, for instance -- but it's not exactly lightweight. Anyone who's been following the progress of Galeon may be interested when Markos writes: "Tired of waiting for a lightweight browser, that supports https, frames and all the other good stuff? BrowseX may be what your looking for. 'BrowseX is an Open Source, cross-platform Web Browser written primarily in Tcl.' You can check out the screenshots, features, and download." Or, for those of the Motorola persuasion, you'll be happy to hear that, as sephus writes "Opera for Linux PPC is now available at http://opera.online.no/linux/tgz/ - by popular request from Slashdot readers :) Opera"
Remember, retailers, you better not install these on computer that you know full well are going to be loaded with a god-fearin' American OS-thingie, like Innernet 'Splorer!
"OK, Mr. Gates, Meet Mr. Ponzi. Howdya do?" robl writes "There was a suprisingly under-ranked comment in the Microsoft story yesterday [about Microsoft and Taxes], pointing to the Fool's take on Microsoft's tax situation. It does a great job of clarifying the sfgate article yesterday. You see, Microsoft exercises it's stock options by printing more stock certificates. So they really only lose the cost of the paper and toner to print the stock, and they gain the money from the employees who exercise the options."
In fairness, this is approximately the same system used to fill the hypothetical coffers of the Social Security administration, but MS probably doesn't pay $534.55 for each toner cartridge ;)
My god! And they claim to be secure!? sporri writes: "The OpenBSD homepage has been updated (or downgraded) and now announces "Three years without a remote hole in the default install!" after a root hole was discovered and exploted in a library used by chpass. The sad thing it was fixed in the "current" source tree in June.UpsideToday has an interview with Aaron Campbell." If that's the worst you can say about an OS's security, it's a pretty strong endorsement for it being exemplary in that regard. OpenBSD and Debian get my vote for Most Serious Projects. Comments on the strongest security for (any particular) default Linux distro? Makes me think about Bastille Linux ...
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1999 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
Andrew Childs writes "The 1999 Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been announced. The physics prize goes to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." The chemistry prize goes to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." And the prize in physiology or medicine goes to Gunter Blobel "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell." " -
1999 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
Andrew Childs writes "The 1999 Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been announced. The physics prize goes to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." The chemistry prize goes to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." And the prize in physiology or medicine goes to Gunter Blobel "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell." " -
1999 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
Andrew Childs writes "The 1999 Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been announced. The physics prize goes to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." The chemistry prize goes to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." And the prize in physiology or medicine goes to Gunter Blobel "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell." " -
1999 Nobel Science Prizes Announced
Andrew Childs writes "The 1999 Nobel Prizes in the sciences have been announced. The physics prize goes to Gerardus 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman "for elucidating the quantum structure of electroweak interactions in physics." The chemistry prize goes to Ahmed Zewail "for his studies of the transition states of chemical reactions using femtosecond spectroscopy." And the prize in physiology or medicine goes to Gunter Blobel "for the discovery that proteins have intrinsic signals that govern their transport and localization in the cell." "
