Graduate School Burnout Quantified

For most graduate students in physics, a research focused career ranks more attractive than teaching, government work, or science outreach and writing. Most PhD physicists, however, will never attain a tenure-track position at a university. Upon entering graduate school, many students realize that the odds are against them, but they push forward regardless.

Students may not realize how their career perceptions will evolve throughout graduate school, however. A study published earlier this month has revealed that research careers become less attractive to graduate students as they progress through school.

This image shows the relative attractiveness of different careers for biology, chemistry and physics graduate students. Positive percentages represent the proportion of students who found a career more appealing over time, and negative percentages represent the proportion of students who found a career less attractive over time. Image Courtesy Henry Sauermann/Micheal Roach/PLOS One.

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Mayans End the World but Egyptians Give Us Data

The constellation Perseus and Algol, the Bright Star in the Gorgon's headJohannes Hevelius, Uranographia, 1690

As I think everyone must know by this point, the Mayans seem to have predicted the end of the world on December 21st, 2012.  Its an interesting thing to think about but there don't seem to be many people convinced enough by the prediction to be running around crossing off everything on their bucket list.  Though it might be a good excuse to finally try bull riding.  However, another ancient society gave us something more than a doomsday prediction, they gave us an invaluable data point in unraveling the mystery of eclipsing binary stars and how their mass changes over long periods of time.

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Kodak's Nuclear "Reactor" Explained

Correction: This blog post originally stated that Kodak's nuclear device was a nuclear reactor as was widely reported. This can be misleading. The device increased the output of neutrons from a radioactive source, but there was not enough material to initiate a chain reaction. The device was used in a very similar way to many research reactors found on university campuses. The post has been edited to reflect this.

This week, the Internet has been buzzing with news that Kodak had a nuclear facility housed in a basement at its Rochester, NY industrial park for over thirty years. Until 2007, Kodak used the device to check for impurities in samples, but the device wasn't widely known until the local Democrat and Chronicle newspaper ran an article late last week. Many have questioned why the company known for its photography products would need a nuclear device, and some alarmist articles have surfaced.

Gizmodo, for instance, began their article with extreme hyperbole while noting Kodak's recent bankruptcy:

"Kodak may be going under, but apparently they could have started their own nuclear war if they wanted, just six years ago."

Actually, Kodak didn't even have enough nuclear fuel to develop a single warhead. Refrigerator-sized nuclear devices like the one found in Kodak's basement have key differences with nuclear reactors found at power plants, and Kodak certainly couldn't have ignited World War III alone. In fact, the device is very similar to research reactors that can be found on several university campuses, and they are operated under strict guidelines without any nefarious intentions.
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Can NBA Timeouts Decide Games? Scientists Say No

The NBA playoffs are in full swing, and eight teams have survived the first round of basketball. My home team, the Denver Nuggets, were booted from the playoffs last week after a game seven showdown against the LA Lakers (boo!), prompting faithful Nuggets fans to question what our team could have done differently.

Did we lose too many turnovers? Was there something our coach could have done? Is Kobe simply an unstoppable force?

Although no one can pin down a single reason for NBA game outcomes, physicists have ruled out one explanation: the "momentum changing" timeout.

Image courtesy CT Snow via Flickr.

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Simulated Skiers Reveal Mountain Traffic Jams

Researchers incorporate physics, psychology and computer science in an effort to reduce congestion on ski slopes.

 

 Millions of skiers and snowboarders escape to the mountains every winter, but some everyday stresses -- like traffic jams -- are unavoidable even on the slopes. In plenty of time to prepare for next season, a team of Swiss researchers has combined GPS tracking data and a skier traffic simulation to help reduce collisions between skiers on the mountain.

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Liquid Levitation

Splash water on a hot skillet, and it will evaporate very quickly. But if you heat it up a little bit more, you'll start to see some new physics: the water droplets will skitter across the surface without evaporating. Upon contact, a protective vapor forms between the water droplet and the skillet, allowing it to levitate across the surface with very little friction.

Called the Leidenfrost effect, this phenomenon occurs at temperatures much higher than a liquid's individual boiling point. Now, researchers have transferred the Leidenfrost effect from the kitchen to the lab. By controlling liquid oxygen droplets with magnets, scientists have uncovered some of the physics behind these dancing droplets.

Video courtesy of Keyvan Piroird, Baptiste Darbois Texier, Christophe Clanet and David Quéré.

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I'm a Good Person so I Trust Facts

Photo courtesy of Wikipedia

NPR is a great way to spend a commute and often they talk about some great, new research.  Sometimes it is unpublished or questionable, but still gets you thinking.  This morning NPR was talking about how when presented with facts that contradict strongly held opinions most people will hang on to their opinions in the face of solid facts.  This has been seen specifically when people are interviewed about the president's ability to control gas prices.  A majority of republicans say he can and a majority of democrats say he can't.  However, if the peson polled was made to feel good about themselves they were more likely to listen to the facts and possibly changing their opinion.  This is pretty impressive and an odd connection.  If this is a true phenomenon it would apply to facts outside of just gas prices or politics in general.  What would the effect be on controversial politicized science concepts or how we teach science in school?  Is the key to teaching counterintuitive material or convincing a school board that intelligent design is not a science making everyone start the day by looking into a mirror and saying "I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, I occasionally don't cut people off in traffic and I am kind to small animals." 

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What is Science? Philosophy Has Answers (sort of)

Homeopathy vs. modern medicine. Astrology vs. Astronomy. Intelligent design vs. evolutionary biology.

Debates between scientists and pseudoscience supporters have increasingly infiltrated the public domain. Intelligent design proponents want the theory to be taught as a science; homeopathy practitioners claim to cure illness with highly diluted ingredients despite contrary scientific findings; and astrologers make constellation-based predictions found in the back page of newspapers worldwide.

Most experts tend to agree on what areas constitute pseudoscience, such as the three listed above. But what criteria should we use to differentiate between science and pseudoscience or the broader category of non-science?

Called the demarcation problem, this question has kept philosophers and scientists busy for over a century. So what is science? What test can we apply to a theory to see if it's scientific? No one has unambiguously answered these questions, but philosophers of science have made some headway in the debate over the last 50 years.
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Statistical Analysis Hints at Voter Fraud in Russia

Today, Vladimir Putin was inaugurated to his third term as the Russian President after a landslide victory in March elections. Putin has bounced between his roles as Prime Minister and President for 12 years, but many have accused Putin and his United Russia party of rigging elections in the past.

While voter fraud can be hard to detect, a group of researchers has carefully analyzed the official election data for clues and posted their analysis on the arXiv preprint server. The researchers found several questionable anomalies in the data that always seemed to support Putin and his party, casting doubt on the integrity of the recent elections.

Dmitry Kobak, an engineering graduate student at Imperial College in London, lead the team's analysis of government provided election data. The team found several major aberrations in data for the Presidential election held in March and the parliamentary election held late last year.
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Scientists on trial in Italy . . . again.

Italian officials have put a group of seismologists on trial for failing to adequately warn the people of L’Aquila of a magnitude 6.3 earthquake that struck on April 6, 2009.

Seismologists who failed to warn of an earthquake that struck the town of L'Aquila, Italy on 6 April 2009 are on trial for manslaughter.Credit: RaBoe/Wikipedia

There is no question that the L’Aquila earthquake was a horrific event. It resulted in massive destruction and the deaths of 308 people. I completely understand the urge to find someone to blame for the tragic outcome of this terrible act of nature. But under no circumstances should scientists be prosecuted for holding or expressing scientific opinions, no matter how wrong they turn out to be.

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May The 4th Be With You

So today is apparently International Star Wars Day (May the 4th, "May the force...," get it?). It's an amazing work of science fiction that draws on science fact, myth and good old fashioned storytelling. Or at least the first two and half movies did. Because the Dark Lord himself, George Lucas, is master of all copyrights we can't really show you anything from the films without incurring the wrath of his dark forces. So instead, here's a picture of something in science that LOOKS like something in Star Wars; Saturn's moon Mimas totally looks like the Death Star.

"That's no space station, that a moon!"

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