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Two winners from the same lab... by davids-world.com · 2003-10-07 02:47 · Score: 2, Informative · on Nobel Prize for Physics Announced

What's also astonishing is that one university (Dept of Physics and the Beckman Institute at University of Illinois at Urbana) can claim TWO nobel prizes this year -- Paul Lauterbur (Medicine, for MRI) and Tony Leggett (Physics). Quite impressing.

Two winners from the same lab... by davids-world.com · 2003-10-07 02:47 · Score: 2, Informative · on Nobel Prize for Physics Announced

What's also astonishing is that one university (Dept of Physics and the Beckman Institute at University of Illinois at Urbana) can claim TWO nobel prizes this year -- Paul Lauterbur (Medicine, for MRI) and Tony Leggett (Physics). Quite impressing.

VMD? by mixwhit · 2003-10-06 12:08 · Score: 2, Informative · on Free Software for Chemical Process Simulation?

Ok, not my field, but what about NAMD and VMD, a molecular dynamics program suite created by some people on the floor below me?

Very interesting by dragon8x4x · 2003-10-03 03:36 · Score: 1 · on Sony Lose Out - PS2 Not a Personal Computer?

That's cool!
I wish I had some mod points left.

Here is the home page: Scientific Computing on the Sony Playstation 2

Re:Poor argument by mikiN · 2003-10-01 01:52 · Score: 1 · on Sony Lose Out - PS2 Not a Personal Computer?

Just imagine a Beowulf cluster of them!

Scientists at the NCSA are actually trying to turn a bunch of PS2's into a supercomputer.
They are using the Sony's Linux Kit, so they probably need few if any mods to the PS2's.

Gravity waves != gravitational waves by ControlFreal · 2003-09-24 21:06 · Score: 5, Informative · on Renewed Gravity Research Could Soon Yield Results

Allright, IAAP (I Am A Psysicist), and I think it's good two debunk a common misconception here:

Gravity waves are not the same as gravitational waves

Gravity waves are matter density waves in fluidi (fluids or gases) caused by the interaction of two forces: bouyancy and gravity. Here, bouyancy is the upward-driving force, and gravity is the downward-driving force. The essence is that these waves require a medium to propagate (e.g. air).

Gravity waves can be found in the atmosphere, e.g. clouds which form in regular bands of cloud and clear sky, where the gravity waves carry momentum and energy from the troposphere to the middle and upper atmosphere Gravity waves can also be found on the surface of fuilds: think of the waves behind a boat. A good primer on gravity waves can be found here

Gravitational waves are a whole different ballgame! These waves have got nothing to do with matter densities as they don't require a medium to progagate: it is not matter that moves, and in that respect gravitational waves are like light (which, contrary to beliefs held at the beginnning of the century, don't require a medium such as "ether"). Gravitational waves are wacves in the spacetime-metric.

So what the hell does that mean? Well, in gravity waves, there is a wave in space (and time) in which the thing that changes over space and time is the density of matter. In gravitational waves, there also is a wave in space and time, but the thing that "wiggles" is not the density of matter (or the strength of electric and magnetic fields, like in light or EM radiation in general), but the properties of the fabric of space and time itself. You can think of it as if the coordinate system itself wiggles, so to speak. This "wiggling" results in the length of the arms of e.g. the LIGO interferometer to change ever so slightly, causing a phase shift between light beams send through both arms, which can (hopefully) be detected.

In more mathematical terms, the exact properties of space and time are called the metric. In a portion of space without any matter, the metric is flat (called the Minkovski metric), which means that the usual laws of geometry apply. In any circumstances with matter (and thus gravity) present, these laws to do hold up!

What?!, I hear you think. Yes sir, you've been lied to in geometry class! However, you've been lied to only very, very slightly. Example: if you measure the radius of a sphere (say: R), you expect to find a surface area of exactly 4/3 * pi * R^3. If the earth would be a perfect sphere (which it isn't), and you would be able to measure its radius and surface very accurately, you would find that the surface area is ever so slightly smaller than expected. Or, in other words, the radius seems to be a bit too large (in the order of 3 cm or 30 cm IIRC). Read more about space time curvature here/

A primer on gravitational waves can be found here. A more detailed description here.

Re:Why the Wrights needed the 25mph wind. by RapaNui · 2003-09-21 22:23 · Score: 1 · on Replica Flyer Foiled By Weather

Uh, no.

"McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II: Root:NACA 0006.4-64 mod Tip: NACA 0003-64 mod"

Via The Incomplete guide to Airfoil Usage (Dave Lednicer)

The *original* article by menscher · 2003-09-18 04:31 · Score: 4, Informative · on Testing the Five Second Rule

From Sep 2: If You Drop It, Should You Eat It? Scientists Weigh In on the 5-Second Rule.

Re:Tile based rendering by holt · 2003-09-17 21:26 · Score: 1 · on Digital Ink On Billboards

Actually, there is a project at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (through the NCSA) which does basically that. They have 32 off-the-shelf projectors, and each one handles like a 17in viewable area. Each is backed by a machine, which are in turn linked to a single control machine.

It's called the Display Wall, apparently. I remembered it being something different. It's been a couple of years since I've done any work over there. It's really pretty neat stuff.

Re:Tile based rendering by holt · 2003-09-17 21:26 · Score: 1 · on Digital Ink On Billboards

Actually, there is a project at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (through the NCSA) which does basically that. They have 32 off-the-shelf projectors, and each one handles like a 17in viewable area. Each is backed by a machine, which are in turn linked to a single control machine.

It's called the Display Wall, apparently. I remembered it being something different. It's been a couple of years since I've done any work over there. It's really pretty neat stuff.

Re:Tile based rendering by holt · 2003-09-17 21:26 · Score: 1 · on Digital Ink On Billboards

Actually, there is a project at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (through the NCSA) which does basically that. They have 32 off-the-shelf projectors, and each one handles like a 17in viewable area. Each is backed by a machine, which are in turn linked to a single control machine.

It's called the Display Wall, apparently. I remembered it being something different. It's been a couple of years since I've done any work over there. It's really pretty neat stuff.

Re:Tile based rendering by holt · 2003-09-17 21:26 · Score: 1 · on Digital Ink On Billboards

Actually, there is a project at the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois (through the NCSA) which does basically that. They have 32 off-the-shelf projectors, and each one handles like a 17in viewable area. Each is backed by a machine, which are in turn linked to a single control machine.

It's called the Display Wall, apparently. I remembered it being something different. It's been a couple of years since I've done any work over there. It's really pretty neat stuff.

CM-5? by grub · 2003-09-14 04:44 · Score: 1 · on Memory Activity LEDs

What were all the LEDs on the Thinking Machines CM-5 for?

Sorting Carbon Nanotubes Will Help the Space Eleva by rpiquepa · 2003-09-13 19:54 · Score: 2, Informative · on Space Elevator Going Up

The Guardian says: "The biggest technical obstacle is finding a material strong but light enough to make the cable; this is where the carbon nanotubes come in." But what about selecting the appropriate carbon nanotubes among the 56 known varieties? Two teams of chemists from Rice University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) have found a way to separate and manipulate these varieties of carbon nanotubes. Obviously, it will help to build the Space Elevator. More details are available on my blog.

Re:3D Directories for OS X (link update) by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-13 02:18 · Score: 2, Informative · on 3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize

Screenshots for above project are here:

Updated screenshots link

3D Directories for OS X by afflatus_com · 2003-09-13 02:14 · Score: 4, Interesting · on 3D File Manager on Linux Wins NSF Prize

If you are on OS X and would like to sample 3D navigation of disk drive content, there is a nice free project that does this, aptly named 3DOSX.

It uses Open GL to make the file system into 3D rotatable platters, and the platters are linked together. Can swim around the platters looking at the different documents.

Some screenshots are here:
3DOSX Screenshots

The project homepage is here:
3DOSX Homepage

It is an interesting look into alternative ways of doing things.

This is an Evil Plot by RIAA blackhats by trolman · 2003-09-11 19:14 · Score: 5, Funny · on Beer-Coated CDs are Optical Biocomputers

Jones says that he has yet to damage any of his discs or players with his pioneering work, but warns that the technique does crash CD players on computers because the software cannot cope.

This is an obvious attempt by RIAA blackhats to get everyone to buy new CDs while simultaneously destroying computer CD-RW. Time to grep for a good lawyer.

Linux on PS2 has been done many times :) by qmrq · 2003-09-11 06:32 · Score: 3, Interesting · on Gentoo Ported to PS2

This has been done before, and there is actually a cluster of PS2s.

Someone above said 'don't tell sony'. Sony sells the kit to do this! Anyone who wants to run Linux on their PS2 can easily do so by ordering it.

Re:Chain Reaction by j-beda · 2003-09-08 03:00 · Score: 1 · on 14 Years Later, Cold Fusion Still Gets The Cold Shoulder

They shine a laser through a chamber of water (which is being 'vibrated' or something, by this machined part that keanu makes at the start. big whoop) Anyway, this laser supposedly separates the water into hydrogen, and oxygen, which they burn for power.

It is based on a real effect called "sonoluminescence" (that was the first link I could find, there are many others). When you send the proper type of sound waves through water (and other fluids?) with the proper type of bubbles in it, the bubbles give off flashes of light. I do not know what the current understanding of the effect is, but it has been theorized that very strange things are going on. The type of light flashes indicate, how long they last and what frequencies of light they contain are quite unexpected. There are indications that the tiny tiny bubbles get very very very very hot, very very very quickly. Some have talked about high enough temperatures to start nuclear effects. Otheres have researched possible medical applications, using the bubbles in people's blood system to blast clogs or somehow deliver drugs (or maybe I am confusing it with something else...)

Anyhow, in "Chain Reaction", it was fun seeing Keanu Reeves as some supposedly brilliant grad student on a motorcycle.

I was at a sonoluminescence physics lecture at UIUC in which the speaker mentioned that the Chain Reaction people had used some of the old equipment from their labs for the movie set so all the people from the lab took the afternoon off to see the movie. He said that they were glad that they did not recieve any written credit for their equipment since the movie science was so bad, but it was nice to get some $$ for the university for some useless lab materials.

Here is a link to an article about "working with Hollywood". UIUC's K.S.Suslick says "The movie is about a Nobel laureate professor and his graduate student who discover the use of sonoluminescence to produce unlimited quantities of hydrogen (the ultimate clean fuel) from water, catalytically. (Minor technical errors -- such as violations of the Laws of Thermodynamics -- are obviously no problem for Hollywood.) "

destroying an imac with a sledgehammer (video) by htmlboy · 2003-09-07 04:36 · Score: 4, Interesting · on Step-by-Step Computer Destruction

i had the opportunity to take a sledgehammer to a burned-out imac for work this summer. the footage was used in a commercial for the dorm cable channel reminding students that they can get help for their computers before they get aggravated enough to take a sledgehammer to them. but the full video's kind of boring (and a big download), so here's the footage of the smashing:

http://tuxedo.housing.uiuc.edu/~ckuehn/imac.mov

if anyone's curious, it felt pretty good.

Re:Who? by dipipanone · 2003-09-05 01:11 · Score: 1 · on The Most Famous Geek in IT

Gopher? Gopher? You can still find the occasional Gopher site. eg

gopher://wiretap.area.com/

I wanna know what happened to WAIS.

window's main advantage over linux on the desktop by Anonymous Coward · 2003-09-03 14:22 · Score: -1, Offtopic · on Managing Linux and Virtual Machines?

I've been doing some research about various operating systems (OSes), and I thought I'd search through some edu sites, since most valuable information about OSes comes from there. I ended up finding a study that applied traditional statistology techniques to try to determine what the main advantages various OSes had:
(edu site, reputable)
The reference to freecell hardware acceleration confused me at first, but I assume it has to do with proprietary extensions to the latest graphics hardware. Obviously it doesn't refer to dedicated freecell expansion cards, since we don't have the necessary technology yet (though I'm sure someone is working on it).

In any case, there you have it. With its high freecell quotient, windows has the main advantage on the desktop (server applications for freecell are strictly research for now, I believe).

Re:Pressure = opportunity by Dolly_Llama · 2003-08-28 05:20 · Score: 1 · on Razor Blade Games?

In the future we may even get around to laser scanning real objects. Hire a cheap sculpter, contract with a laser scanning company and BAM!, cheap graphics.

You mean like this?

Re:Half the time, it would be easy to fix! by SeanAhern · 2003-08-25 08:23 · Score: 2, Informative · on Sci-Fi Movies and 'Bad Science'

isn't that because we have huge oceans for light to reflect off of, and cast a blue hue through the atmosphere?

No.

In fact, Mars does have blue skies when red dust storms aren't obscuring the view of the atmosphere. See here

LED traffic signals by frostyboy · 2003-08-25 04:24 · Score: 5, Interesting · on Light Bulb Replacements

I must say that Color Kinetics gear rocks. Their color-mixing LED arrays not only look cool, but are a neat toy to program for fancy light shows.

Also on the LED front, the city where I currently reside (champaign, IL) recently passed funding and a proposal to replace all of the old incandescent traffic signals with LED arrays. Should cost a lot of money originally, but will save big on electricity bills in the long run. Here is an interesing EPA EnergyStar paper talking about the potential energy savings that cities can get from this technology -- 1 Million kWh and nearly $70,000 per year per 100 intersections! Also, LED based traffic signals are (IMHO) easier to see both at night and during the day.

One complaint from a study is that the green traffic lights are actually too bright.

worlds oldest currently operating college webcam

In this case Resveratrol is in the grape by leonbrooks · 2003-08-25 00:09 · Score: 4, Informative · on Life Extending Chemical Is Found In Certain Red Wine

See for example this University of Illinois page on the topic.