"Psychic Octopus" picks Germany over Argentina

The "psychic octopus" (who lives in Germany but was born in the UK) has now picked Germany over Argentina. If the octopus's winning streak keeps up, the family is not going to be happy.

The octopus apparently took 45 minutes to make its decision this time, whereas it chose Germany over England in seconds. And then, sure enough, England got trounced.

We shall see what happens this time.

This hits way, way, way too close to the truth.

Here is a recent strip (6/25) from Ph.D Comics. It hits way, way, way too close to the truth.

(Tip of the cap to Justin Howell.)

Jamie Moyer is awesome!

I have been watching the baseball game between the Phillies and the Blue Jays, and I have been doing this for one very specific reason: to watch Jamie Moyer give up career homerun #506 to set a new all-time record. Well, he just gave up this homerun to Vernon Wells and has now allowed the most homeruns of any pitcher who has ever played Major League Baseball. The (currently-in-progress) box score for the game is at this website.

Back in 1986, I didn't exactly think that he'd still be pitching now. Moyer is an amazing baseball player, a late-bloomer (he wasn't immediately successful in the Major Leagues), and a freak. (Moyer is 47 years old, and I wonder if he might still be pitching at age 50.)

Oh, and by the way: Moyer also pitched his 4000th career inning in this game.

SklogWiki

Via some googling (because one of my articles is cited on one of the pages), I accidently found SklogWiki, a wiki dedicated to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics.

At the moment, it doesn't seem to be in particularly great shape. Scholarpedia seems to be in much better shape. (I really need to revise my soliton article and let the referees know that I have addressed their comments. That will have to occur after I return from Shanghai...)

Garden Party

I had a garden party today.

The weather, the games, the banter, the desserts, and (most importantly!) the company were all wonderful. This is really the best way to spend a summer's day. (Well, I was actually extremely productive with my work until 5pm, and then the party started at 5pm---so both lots of work and lots of play today!)

For those of you back home, I hope that someday you'll be able to meet my friends in Oxford, but in the meantime you can see this photoblog picture that I took at the party.

I love my friends.

Separated at Birth: UK Prime Minister David Cameron and Star Trek's Brent Spiner

How could I not notice this before?

The UK's new Prime Minister, David Cameron (as pictured in this article), looks very much like Brent Spiner (as he looked 20 years ago), who played Data in Star Trek: The Next Generation. Here is a picture of Spiner as Data (with makeup). And here is an even younger Spiner (without makeup).

I don't normally care about UK politics at all, but this resemblance is just way too awesome. How did I not notice this before? Separated at birth!

OK, back to work now...

Update: I came up with this on my own, but evidently I am not the first person to have noticed this. It's still awesome, though...

Remember Erick Carreira?

Well, I do. As you can see, he can be extremely classy.

I had him for Chem 41b (second term of organic chemistry). His lectures were very good and he did bring hydrocarbons to class for us to sniff (though I just got dizzy), but he can apparently cross the line. It's fine to be hard-core, and I remember how he was very annoyed when somebody got a 98 on one exam (and it was a hard exam; the rest of us did much worse---he should have been happy that there was somebody who had mastered the material to that extent), but there are also lines that one shouldn't cross. I myself am a demanding supervisor (I think that is very important), but I think that I am also a reasonable one. Neither the request nor the tone of that letter are even remotely reasonable.

Also, some of you might remember that there was a certain professor who went ballistic and crashed through Caltech's giant black plastic maze during my junior year. My memory is hazy now, but I'm pretty sure that was Carreira.

Update: It is important that I add the following note that I just got from Julius Su: "To be fair, I heard Carreira knew he'd gone too far with that letter soon after writing it, has been embarrassed by its wide circulation since, and that he and Guido patched up quickly and remain good friends to this day." This is very good to hear.

(Tip of the cap to Stephen Shepherd.)

Sometimes, I can't help myself.

At Somerville's SCR leavers party, one of our physics fellows (who is from Poland) was talking about Chopin wanting his heart removed after his death (well, it's actually a bit more complicated than this) to be returned to Poland. Naturally, my immediate reaction---which I couldn't hold in---was to bring up the song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco." Did I mention that I'm awesome?

The Wacky World of Sports

First, we have spontaneous concert-disrupting soccer matches breaking out and now this? At least we can still count on Jamie Moyer...

(Tip of the cap to Zifnab.)

Another Awesome Poster

So, which one of these do you think is The One?

Noodly Appendages in Nature

I so, so, so approve of this article title in the journal Nature.

Long live the FSM!

Dubious Origins of the Word "Seminal"

In retrospect, I really should have realized a long time ago that the origin of the word "seminal" is dubious.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a letter in APS News commenting on why the word "seminal" shouldn't be used in formal publications, and I can definitely understand the point that the author is making. I don't agree with the conclusion---the word "seminal" is hardly alone in this respect---but it's at the very minimum worth pausing and thinking about it.

And, in case you haven't figured it out yet, seminal originally meant to be of seed or semen rather than full of possibilities (and 'foundational', which seems to be the current predominant meaning).

Sowing the seeds of science, indeed. (Yes, that song by Tears for Fears was indeed seminal---in at least three senses of the word, and I would arguably include a fourth if you want to include the music video.)

Aflac!

I think that this poster is hilarious!

Of course, it helps that I have seen a huge number of Aflac commercials (and in-game quizzes) while watching baseball games.

Maybe they'll hire me eventually?

I meant to blog about this a while ago, but I forgot the name of the guy in question and then I forgot about the story entirely...

Anyway, for several years, the Dodgers apparently hired Russian physicist-healer Vladimir Shpunt to send positive vibes to the team in order to boost wins. Now that's rocket science!

You know, I've been sending the Dodgers positive vibes for over three decades, and I've been doing it for free! And I even have physics cred.

"Internet Remarks Doom Pierogi"

Best. Article title. Ever.

I like to call this "pierogi-gate".

Simpler times?

Um, wow... I was trying to figure out the year that the advertisement depicted in this demotivational poster came out. Surely this wouldn't have gotten through nowadays? The product of a simpler time, I suppose.

"Discrete Breathers in One-Dimensional Diatomic Granular Crystals"

A new paper by my collaborators and me has just appeared in Physical Review Letters. This is my 4th paper in PRL. The concerns discrete breathers in granular crystal, and it includes theory, numerical simulations, and (especially!) experiments. In fact, this paper gives the first experimental demonstration of intrinsic localized modes (these are the discrete breathers) in granular crystals, which is a rather exciting result. I believe that Caltech is going to be issuing a press release, so I'll pass along that and any ensuing press coverage later.

Title: Discrete Breathers in One-Dimensional Diatomic Granular Crystals

Authors: N. Boechler, G. Theocharis, S. Job, P. G. Kevrekidis, Mason A. Porter, and C. Daraio

Abstract: We report the experimental observation of modulational instability and discrete breathers in a one-dimensional diatomic granular crystal composed of compressed elastic beads that interact via Hertzian contact. We first characterize their effective linear spectrum both theoretically and experimentally. We then illustrate theoretically and numerically the modulational instability of the lower edge of the optical band. This leads to the dynamical formation of long-lived breather structures, whose families of solutions we compute throughout the linear spectral gap. Finally, we experimentally observe the manifestation of the modulational instability and the resulting generation of localized breathing modes with quantitative characteristics that agree with our numerical results.

"Revisiting Date and Party Hubs: Novel Approaches to Role Assignment in Protein Interaction Networks"

My first paper on biological networks has just been officially published.

Title: Revisiting Date and Party Hubs: Novel Approaches to Role Assignment in Protein Interaction Networks

Authors: Sumeet Agarwal, Charlotte M. Deane, Mason A. Porter, Nick S. Jones

Abstract: The idea of ‘‘date’’ and ‘‘party’’ hubs has been influential in the study of protein–protein interaction networks. Date hubs display low co-expression with their partners, whilst party hubs have high co-expression. It was proposed that party hubs are local coordinators whereas date hubs are global connectors. Here, we show that the reported importance of date hubs
to network connectivity can in fact be attributed to a tiny subset of them. Crucially, these few, extremely central, hubs do not display particularly low expression correlation, undermining the idea of a link between this quantity and hub function. The date/party distinction was originally motivated by an approximately bimodal distribution of hub co-expression; we
show that this feature is not always robust to methodological changes. Additionally, topological properties of hubs do not in general correlate with co-expression. However, we find significant correlations between interaction centrality and the functional similarity of the interacting proteins. We suggest that thinking in terms of a date/party dichotomy for hubs in protein interaction networks is not meaningful, and it might be more useful to conceive of roles for protein-protein interactions rather than for individual proteins.


As you can see from the discussion in this paper, the idea of "date" versus "party" hubs has been controversial ever since it was introduced in 2004. We started this project as agnostics regarding whether or not such a sharp distinction exists. We used a different perspective from what was previously in the literature, and we ended up concluding after lots of work that this kind of sharp distinction does not really exist (despite claims to the contrary).

Some Like It Hot

Apparently, baseball players become more aggressive as temperature increases. The heat is on...

(Tip of the cap to Justin Howell.)

Congratulations to Somerville's new mathematics graduates!

Congratulations to Somerville's new mathematics graduates! (Now your choice is to either go to grad school or make money and give some back to us. Such is life.)