What Happens in Stockholm Stays in Stockholm (2025 Edition)

I am off to Stockholm to give a talk and visit Nordita!

What Happens in Richland Stays in Richland

I'll soon be visiting Pacific Northwest National Laboratory as part of a Directory Advisory Committee.

2020 Ig Nobel Laureates

This year's Ig Nobel laureates were announced in today's ceremony. 

 I have some fondness for the Physics prize (for exciting Faraday-like waves in earthworms), given that nonlinear dynamics and pattern formation are involved, and several of the other ones are also very amusing, but I think that my favorite one this year is the one in Management:

(奚广安) Xi Guang-An, (莫天祥) Mo Tian-Xiang, (杨康生) Yang Kang-Sheng, (杨广生) Yang Guang-Sheng, and (凌显四) Ling Xian Si, five professional hitmen in Guangxi, China, who managed a contract for a hit job (a murder performed for money) in the following way: After accepting payment to perform the murder, Xi Guang-An then instead subcontracted the task to Mo Tian-Xiang, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Kang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Yang Guang-Sheng, who then instead subcontracted the task to Ling Xian-Si, with each subsequently enlisted hitman receiving a smaller percentage of the fee, and nobody actually performing a murder.

"Community Matters"

Some art that arose from our research was published recently in the collection The Art of Theoretical Biology. Here are some details about our contribution.

Title: Community Matters

Authors: Anna C. F. Lewis, Nick S. Jones, Mason A. Porter, and Charlotte M. Deane

A Great 'Team' Page

The 'team' page at the Institute for Disease Modeling is spectacular!

Take a look at it for the short video clips!

(Tip of the cap to Carl Bergstrom.)

A Very Cool Science Cake about Soil

Because someone had to do it. 🔼

Thanks to all the students and faculty who helped bake cakes! I’ll share the assembly video below. #WorldSoilDay pic.twitter.com/pOtnyMHPgc

— Karen Vaughan (@vaughan_soil) December 5, 2019

(Tips of the cap to Anne Jefferson and Meghan Duffy.)

A New Paper (and a Great Meta-Acknowledgement) on the Cost of Formatting in Scientific Papers

I am very amused. :)

I Have "NoIDEA"

It turns out that there is a journal called "Nonlinear Differential Equations and Applications". The acronym it uses is "NoDEA".

I feel inspired!

I am going to start a journal called "Nonlinear Integro-Differential Equations and Applications", and its acronym will be "NoIDEA"!

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) September 18, 2019

What Happens at WorldCon Stays at WorldCon

I am heading over to Dublin for this year's WorldCon!

My schedule is below.

I'll be presenting a few mathematical and science things at #WorldCon2019 #Dublin2019 (@Dublin2019) in a couple of weeks, my first time presenting at a science-fiction convention!

Here is my schedule.

And the website for my academic friends: https://t.co/J4WQPQ1Q0t pic.twitter.com/Aoh6nDgYy7

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) August 1, 2019

Drosophila Karaoke

My students do so many awesome things!

My former doctoral student Birgit Brüggemeier, who got her doctoral degree as part of my group, has a very cool art project called "Drosophila Karaoke Bar" (which, I suppose, is the modern version of of her old Drosophila Disco).

In the installation, visitors can interact with flies by speaking into a microphone. Their speech is then electronically remixed with fruit fly song and played back to flies who visitors watch on a screen. Very cool!

Right now, it is being exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in Vilnius. Later this year, it will be exhibited at Ars Electronica in Linz, which is one of the world's largest media-art events.

Digital Archæoludology: Studying Ancient Games with Machine Learning

Digital Archæoludology is a new field that concerns the computational study of ancient game using tools like machine learning. Very cool!

Here is the arXiv paper that led to the above popular piece.

Game on!

Spot-On SMBC Comic about Scientific "Findings"

The comic-strip author this one.

Mouseover text: "Somewhere, there's a scientist reading this, wonder[ing] why I made a comic with no hyperbole."

Some scientists get all the breaks pic.twitter.com/l327NT5vFd

— Adam J Calhoun (@neuroecology) June 14, 2019

Life Imitates Jurassic Park

Naturally. That had to be done. ;)

Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should... https://t.co/oBKYZ9Ilsh

— Jeff Goldblum (@jeffreygoldbIum) March 9, 2019

(Tip of the cap to Richard Prather.)

My Attempt to Save the World

You can't say that I didn't warn you.

The Machines, powered by Artificial Intelligence, have taken over! And massive computations are all giving physically implausible solutions!

We need mathematical models—especially complicated ones with networks and nonlinear systems—to save humanity!

Oh wait... this is real. https://t.co/DljKjpaKSb

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 17, 2019

My Academic Valentine

This was my contribution yesterday.

Roses are red.
The nodes have heterogeneous degrees.
The network may be heavy-tailed;
but it's probably not scale-free.#ScienceValentine#AcademicValentine

(Technically, "The network's degree distribution may be heavy-tailed;", but that's less poetic.)

— Mason Porter (@masonporter) February 14, 2019

Self-Awareness and the Elephant in the Room

So, in other words, they first needed to see the elephant in the room? :)

Elephants failed the mirror test for self-awareness — until researchers made the mirrors big enough for elephants to see themselves alongside other elephants.https://t.co/GnI2Z1hsi7 pic.twitter.com/SA5oRE65NU

— Quanta Magazine (@QuantaMagazine) December 18, 2018

(Tip of the cap to Steve Strogatz.)

Scientific Journals are for Kids!

The journal Frontiers for Young Minds is very cool!

It is "an open-access scientific journal written by scientists and reviewed by a board of kids and teens."

Here is some text from their online blurb:

That is why distinguished scientists are invited to write about their cutting-edge discoveries in a language that is accessible for young readers, and it is then up to the kids themselves – with the help of a science mentor – to provide feedback and explain to the authors how to best improve the articles before publication.

As a result, Frontiers for Young Minds provides a collection of freely available scientific articles by distinguished scientists that are shaped for younger audiences by the input of their own young peers.

I approve!

(Tip of the cap to Petter Holme.)

The Paradox of PLOS One and Scientific Reports

Whenever I see somebody bragging about getting a paper published by a trashy journal like PLOS One or Scientific Reports, I inevitably wonder whether they're being serious (but naive) or whether they're trolling people. Seriously, I can't tell.

Also, remember the mantra: FIPO (= "Fuck it. PLOS One.")

Smurfy Peer Review

Resolved: I am going to start taking inspiration from The Smurfs when I write referee reports for articles that particularly annoy me.

To wit:

"Where did the authors smurf up this idea?"

"This figure is smurfed."

"The authors might want to consider smurfing the abstract a little bit more."

Update: I know; I know: this isn't very smurfy of me.

Update 2: "A total smurf job."

Scholarship: Part of the Scientific Reward System

I may have been slightly snarky. :)

Also: scholarship ;)

— DynamicalSystemsSIAM (@DynamicsSIAM) June 20, 2018