Tatha's Blog

Amazing research: connecting the dots between Physics and Economics

2014-10-12T10:11:00.001+05:30

This is how Eugene Stanley (Prof. at Boston Univ., H-index > 123) coined the term Econophysics at a conference in Kolkata. The Wall Street exploits the similarity between statistical physics and stock market to predict many things. A good read.

http://polymer.bu.edu/hes/hes14interview-managementreview.pdf

Be wary of "Impact Factors" ?

2014-01-21T04:04:00.001+05:30

Here is an interesting read:

"Impact factors" and the damage they do.

http://nanoscale.blogspot.com/2012/08/impact-factors-and-damage-they-do.html

An interesting talk by Prof. Dipesh Chakrabarti (U Chicago) -- Indian Modernity: Once Colonial, Now Global

2013-01-11T10:49:00.001+05:30

Just stumbled upon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ABmMC6zC8I

"Bears were used in test flights of world’s first supersonic jet bomber"

2012-12-22T22:01:00.001+05:30

Interesting read:

http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/bears-were-used-test-flights-world-first-supersonic-225331539.html

Gamers crack AIDS mystery

2011-09-20T22:19:00.001+05:30

Read more here at yahoo news: http://games.yahoo.com/blogs/plugged-in/online-gamers-crack-aids-enzyme-puzzle-161920724.html

Surely a lots of kids are going to show this article to their parents for obvious reasons.

Cute video: Obama a baby whisperer

2011-06-23T02:47:00.001+05:30

One of the best moments I liked about Obama: http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_theticket/20110621/pl_yblog_theticket/barack-obama-is-officially-the-baby-whisperer

Read this article to get some tips about how to remember your points in a presentation and how not to forget what to say

2011-05-26T20:54:00.001+05:30

Interesting read from HBR blog: http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2011/05/presenters_guide_to_remembering.html

Are we close to a breakthrough with HIV and Malaria?

2011-05-04T08:30:00.001+05:30

Livescience reports that a Superdrug could fight both HIV and malaria. This drug does its tricks by acting as an HIV protease inhibitor -- "preventing the deadly virus from constructing its proteins correctly".

Read more here http://yhoo.it/jtMwxX

Use your senses to detect problem in your car

2011-04-11T20:01:00.001+05:30

A must read at http://autos.yahoo.com/articles/autos_content_landing_pages/1805/avoiding-car-emergencies-with-your-senses/

Times Square in New York City was named "Tagore's Square" for one day to celebrate the Nobel Laureate's 100th B'day: please do it again

2011-01-26T02:29:00.001+05:30

Please sign the petition online to ask the NYC Mayor to rename the Time Square again on the poet's 150th B'day: http://www.petitiononline.com/rabin150/petition.html

acknldg.dipanjan.email

Science is Impossible

2011-01-07T22:01:00.001+05:30

Why? then read on....http://www.the-scientist.com/news/display/57903/

I love that part:

QUOTE
We use our senses and instruments to extend them to try to map reality (at least those bits we care about) onto our consciousness and perceive that the map we collectively share is the reality.

....
....

the "map" is not the reality. So the endeavor is, therefore, impossible.

UNQUOTE

acknldg.dipanjan

Amazing correspondence

2010-12-21T03:15:00.001+05:30

I always wondered looking at the facts that sometimes different disciplines in science/engineering have striking similarity in the final result : no matter what principles you are studying, the final equations look similar across multiple disciplines. One such example is the Arrhenius type dependence of many processes (generally if you have to overcome some energy barrier to do something then it is highly likely that you will end up getting an Arrhenius dependence). I just came across a simple relation called Amdahl's Law (https://computing.llnl.gov/tutorials/parallel_comp/) which states that if you are parallelizing a computer program/code, the potential program speedup (x) can be defined by the fraction of code (p) that can be parallelized or,

        1
x = ------------;
         1 - p

Now while taking the polymer engineering class, I learned about the special case of Carother's equation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carothers_equation) where the degree of polymerization (x_n) is related to the conversion (p) as follows:

            1
x_n = ------------
             1 - p

You need to have a very high amount of conversion (~ 99%) in order to get a really long polymer chain. What amazes me is the striking similarity between these two simple equations which are from two unrelated fields, but still analogous. Nature surely has only a few main principles or rules -- everything else can just be explained through analogy. We just have to unravel those simple rules -- are we there yet?

Bill Gate's Favorite Teacher : Salman Khan

2010-09-26T22:59:00.001+05:30

He has created an internet sensation by making education free for all through online teaching.

Some links:
http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/23/technology/sal_khan_academy.fortune/index.htm

http://www.khanacademy.org/

Khan Academy is also one of Google's 10^100 project winners
http://www.project10tothe100.com/

About Khan:

"
Born and raised in New Orleans -- the son of immigrants from India and what's now Bangladesh -- Khan was long an academic star. With his MBA from Harvard, he has three degrees from MIT: a BS in math and a BS and a master's in electrical engineering and computer science.

"

About Khan Academy: http://www.khanacademy.org/about

Naturejobs on post-docs

2010-09-02T19:25:00.001+05:30

What to consider before taking up a post-doc position: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2010/100902/full/nj7311-120a.html

Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement talk 2005

2010-08-23T21:11:00.000+05:30

Truly inspiring:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

Whether you smoke one cigarette a week or more, the lung cells know it all

2010-08-20T22:11:00.001+05:30

More at yahoo news: Secondhand Cigarette Smoke Alters Genes, Study Says
http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/08599201210300;_ylt=Ao4fwiqudsIB0mU1dd.66NFH2ocA;_ylu=X3oDMTM1dXNia2FrBGFzc2V0A3RpbWUvMjAxMDA4MjAvMDg1OTkyMDEyMTAzMDAEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwM2BHBvcwM2BHNlYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDc2Vjb25kaGFuZGNp

On scientific career and more

2010-08-12T22:00:00.001+05:30

Nature has some nice articles on the following topics:

Scientific career renewal: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2010/100812/full/nj7308-893a.html

Metrics to measure productivity and to make decision for promotion etc: http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100616/full/465860a.html

About sabbatical: http://www.nature.com/naturejobs/2007/070816/full/nj7155-834a.html

Amazing predator videos from Nat Geo

2010-06-02T19:36:00.000+05:30

Here is the link:

http://video.nationalgeographic.com/video/player/animals/reptiles-animals/snakes/cobra_eatsratsnake.html?source=email_inside

Want to know about the History of Indian mathematics?

2010-05-12T03:09:00.001+05:30

Go here http://www-history.mcs.st-and.ac.uk/Indexes/Indians.html .

This sums it all:

QUOTE

The ingenious method of expressing every possible number using a set of ten symbols (each symbol having a place value and an absolute value) emerged in India. The idea seems so simple nowadays that its significance and profound importance is no longer appreciated. Its simplicity lies in the way it facilitated calculation and placed arithmetic foremost amongst useful inventions. the importance of this invention is more readily appreciated when one considers that it was beyond the two greatest men of Antiquity, Archimedes and Apollonius.

UNQUOTE

US DOE National Labs

2010-04-21T01:51:00.001+05:30

See the list here: http://www.energy.gov/organization/labs-techcenters.htm

See the anagram of your name

2010-04-20T21:08:00.001+05:30

Did you know New York Times can be reconfigured as "monkeys write" ? Check out what your name can be reconfigured as at http://wordsmith.org/anagram/index.html . This is an internet anagram server maintained by Anu Garg.

Got a spoiled kid? Take her to Indian slums

2010-04-06T02:29:00.001+05:30

An American mom took her spoiled shopaholic teen to Indian slums to change her perspective about life. See part of "lucky ducks", the documentary here (her mom made this) through yahoo news: http://news.yahoo.com/video/world-15749633/curing-a-spoiled-rotten-teen-18988491

See what Stroustroup has to say about C++ and grad students

2010-03-25T20:11:00.001+05:30

Dr. Bjarne Stroustrup is the inventor of C++ programming language.

Read the full interview here :http://www.app2us.com/interviews/bjarne_stroustrup.htm.

Excerpts:

about applications that use C++

"
app2us: We understand that C++ is used in a wide variety of devices like cell phones, cameras and elevators. What is the most interesting device or application that uses C++?
Dr. Stroustrup: I'd say the Mars Rovers. Those are most interesting "gadgets". The Mars Rover project is one of the most impressive engineering feats to date and I'm proud that C++ is a prominent part of the systems involved; not just on the Rovers themselves, but also in the communications systems, testing, and image processing, and more. Obviously, more mundane applications, such as photoshop, the iPod GUI, and google's search engine, are more important in everyday life, but I find something like the Mars Rovers most inspiring. For a short list of applications, see http://www.research.att.com/~bs/applications.html

"

and tips about grad students

"

app2us: What is your advice to graduate students aspiring to pursue a career in research?
Dr. Stroustrup: Focus on problems. Don't get obsessed with tools and convention; instead learn about some yet unsolved real-world problems and build a research program around principled approaches to solving such problems. Don't get obsessed with having a solution tomorrow. Learn to communicate well. It does not matter how good your ideas are if you cannot explain them to others. You need to communicate well (both giving information and taking it) both verbally and in writing. For those of us who do not have English as our native language, it is essential to get a good grasp of both professional and colloquial English. One nice thing about that is that there is so much good literature that can be of help: http://www.research.att.com/~bs/literature.html
I find that CS grad students *always* underestimate the importance of colloquial English and writing. They consequently loose out on much that could have been a pleasure as well as of great utility.

"

Truly, thoughts of a great mind indeed!

Matlab uses LAPACK for matrix manipulations

2010-03-23T01:45:00.001+05:30

Matlab, a commercial package for math calculations use many open-source libraries for calculations. Some of them are BLAS, LAPACK, CGAL, etc.

http://www.mathworks.com/company/newsletters/news_notes/clevescorner/winter2000.cleve.html

Complete UAV Guide

2010-03-22T21:14:00.001+05:30

Look at the current and future un-manned aerial vehicle technologies at Popular Science:
http://www.popsci.com/technology/gallery/2010-02/gallery-future-drones