Crib Notes on a Fingernail (with \latex Notation)

If I were going to put mathematical formulas on my fingernail as crib notes, I'd also use \latex notation. :)

My favorite is the use of " \; ", which would allow the cheating student being modeled by the picture to ensure legible symbol spacing when writing exam solutions.

When will academics get rid of tests, quizzes and exams?

Cheating at UK's top universities soars by 30%https://t.co/46R8UZHS6I pic.twitter.com/KUDg0RGGCX

— Republic of Math (@republicofmath) April 29, 2018

Number of Spaces and Periods

Let the debating commence.

Hurray! Science vindicates my longstanding practice, learned at age 12, of using TWO SPACES after periods in text. NOT ONE SPACE. Text is easier to read that way. Of course, on twitter, I use one space, given 280 characters. https://t.co/4xI6sVbF88 Will arm-wrestle @Neuro_Skeptic pic.twitter.com/XpEr4KFR4x

— Nicholas A. Christakis (@NAChristakis) April 28, 2018

New XKCD: Mathematicians Would Never Behave this Way

I swear.

Nice Footnote Notation for a Paper about Bribery Networks

I am amused by the notation for the footnote superscripts in this paper. :)

Balloon Skeleton Animals

These are amazing!

Mind-blowing balloon animal skeletons made by Japanese artist Masayoshi Matsumoto https://t.co/K5dvN7WPlt pic.twitter.com/tMXZtHMega

— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) April 24, 2018

"Nanoptera in a Period-2 Toda Chain"

One of my papers recently came out in final form (with its volume and all of its other publication coordinates). Here are some details.

Title: Nanoptera in a Period-2 Toda Chain

Authors: Christopher J. Lustri and Mason A. Porter

Abstract: We study asymptotic solutions to a singularly perturbed, period-2 Toda lattice and use exponential asymptotics to examine "nanoptera," which are nonlocal solitary waves with constant-amplitude, exponentially small wave trains. With this approach, we isolate the exponentially small, constant-amplitude waves, and we elucidate the dynamics of these waves in terms of the Stokes phenomenon. We fi nd a simple asymptotic expression for these waves, and we study con figurations in which these waves vanish, producing localized solitary-wave solutions. In the limit of small mass ratio between the two types of particles in the lattice, we derive a simple antiresonance condition for the manifestation of such solutions.

Manifolds Lying in a Higher-Dimensional Space

We often view manifolds as lying in some higher-dimensional space, but shouldn't we also consider ones that are telling the truth? 🤔

Tales from the ArXiv: "26 pages and 10 gorgeous figures"

The authors of this paper, in the comments field, advertised their paper as having "26 pages and 10 gorgeous figures".

They’re not bad. I wouldn’t call them gorgeous, though.

Resistance is for the Birds

Damn right. #resist

👊 pic.twitter.com/8QQ2UCN1pT

— Scott Kerr (@scott_kerr) April 17, 2018

Shopping for Groceries and Solving the Reimann Hypothesis

I love it!

Look at the back of this bag, look carefully at the bottom left corner … 🤩 pic.twitter.com/P5SusNDYtY

— Nalini Joshi (@monsoon0) April 16, 2018

Awesome Journal Idea: Young-Researcher, First-Author Interviews for Accepted Papers

Today, one of my papers was accepted by Biology Open, with which I didn't previously have any experience.

As part of their correspondence today, they also let the first author (my former doctoral student) know about the option of a young-scientist, first-author spotlight. They wrote the following (which you can also find on their website):

Congratulations on acceptance of your article in Biology Open. To help early-career researchers promote themselves alongside their papers, we have launched a series of interviews with the first authors of a selection of papers published in BiO. If you would like to be included in this interview series, please tell us more about yourself by answering the questions below. You can answer all or just some of the questions, and you may also suggest additional questions and provide your answers to them if you wish.

How interesting! I have never seen a journal do this before. What a great idea! We really need to do something like this in the mathematics and physics communities.

Here are their suggested questions:

What is your scientific background and the general focus of your lab?

How would you explain the main findings of your paper to non-scientific family and friends?

What are the potential implications of these results for your field of research?

What has surprised you the most while conducting your research?

What, in your opinion, are some of the greatest achievements in your field and how has this influenced your research?

What changes do you think could improve the professional lives of early career scientists?

What's next for you?

They then added the following:

So that we can create a short biography to accompany your interview, please ensure that you include your job title, the name of the Principal Investigator of your lab, your contact address and a one-line synopsis of your research interests. Include your Twitter handle, if you have one, so we can tag you in any related tweets.

They also asked for a picture of the first author and "a particularly striking, interesting or unusual image" from their research (along with a caption describing it).

Tales from the ArXiv: Centenary of Emmy Noether's Invariante Variationsprobleme

This article commemorates the centenary of Emmy Noether's article Invariante Variationsprobleme.

Title: On the Wonderfulness of Noether's Theorems, 100 Years Later, and Routh Reduction

Author: Raphaël Leone

Abstract: This paper is written in honour of the centenary of Emmy Amalie Noether's famous article entitled Invariante Variationsprobleme. It firstly aims to give an exposition of what we believe to be the most significant and elegant issues regarding her theorems, through the lens of classical mechanics. Despite the limitation to this field, we try to illustrate the key ideas of her work in a rather complete and pedagogical manner which, we hope, presents some original aspects. The notion of symmetry coming naturally with the idea of simplification, the last part is devoted to the interplay between Noether point symmetries and the reduction procedure introduced by Edward John Routh in 1877.

XKCD: "Right Click"

The new XKCD is another one of those that needs to be mapped out. I'm looking forward to seeing the resulting network. We should calculate some properties of it. :)

While navigating the menus, I managed to get eaten by a grue.

There are errors in some of the D & D categorizations.

Some April Fool's Day Stuff

I'll try to keep a running tab of some of the April Fool's Day stuff I notice. As I write this, I haven't tried to look very much.

The first one that I want to mention is ThinkGeek's catalog. (Tip of the cap to Jennifer Ouellette.)

As usual, there are some special papers on the arXiv, including this one and this one.

Here is another joke arXiv paper. (Tip of the cap to Chad Topaz.)

Here is a roundup of Google's jokes, including the ability to play "Where's Waldo?" on Google Maps.