http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000100~ISSUE~0804~RELTYPE~PR~ORIGRELTYPE~EDNT~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~JW.html

Earth Day: another inconvenient truth
April 22, 2008

Today is Earth Day, the one day of the year that people come together, sing Kumbaya, and recite the platitude that every day should be Earth Day. News outlets the world over will give simple suggestions on how we all can be more green in our daily lives. But once all of the Earth Day celebrations and activities are over, reducing, reusing, and recycling will, to a large extent, be forgotten until mid-April of next year.

Why is it so difficult to get people to adopt simple practices that can help save our environment? It all comes down to convenience. While it's just as easy to use paper grocery bags as plastic, one would have to make more trips out to the car to shuttle all of the groceries into the house, which is inconvenient. While it's just as easy to walk to the corner store as it is to drive (and get exercise to boot), it takes longer to walk, and that is inconvenient. And while it's just as easy to replace burned-out incandescent lightbulbs with compact fluorescents, which have 10x longer lifespan while using about 75% less energy, their initial cost is more, which, again, is inconvenient. And that's not even mentioning such things as taking public transportation, recycling plastic, paper, aluminum, and steel, or setting the thermostat a bit lower in the winter and a bit higher in the summer, all of which, while simple fixes that could help sustain our environment, are just a bit too inconvenient for the average American.

"Give a hoot, don't pollute" is a tagline that I remember from childhood, and one that I try to live by. But until the general public adopts this attitude as well, convenience will reign, and Earth Day will remain the one day out of the year when we are able to see just how good things could be if people in fact believed that every day should be Earth Day.

http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000100~ISSUE~0804~RELTYPE~PR~ORIGRELTYPE~EDNT~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~GK.html

April 15, 2008

Bringing fun into science

A team of European scientists has deliberately triggered electrical activity in thunderclouds for the first time. At the top of South Baldy Peak, N.M., during two passing thunderstorms, the researchers used laser pulses to create plasma filaments that could conduct electricity. No air-to-ground lightning was triggered because the filaments were too short-lived, but the laser pulses generated discharges in the thunderclouds themselves up to several meters long.

So basically, a bunch of scientists were standing at the top of a mountain, shooting lasers into clouds, just to see what happened. While this research has real-world applications (triggering lightning strikes is an important tool for basic and applied research), it also sounds like lots of fun. Who wouldn't want to shoot lasers at stuff in the name of science, just to see what would happen?

More kids would be interested in science if it was fun for them, so we need to bring fun into the science classroom. My high school physics teacher made physics fun by letting us run toy trains up and down the halls to measure velocity, acceleration, and momentum. We had a contest to see which student could build the best container to absorb the impact from a two-story fall so a raw egg inside the container would remain intact. We sprinted up and down those same two flights of stairs to see who could generate the most horsepower. Not only did Mr. Z make learning fun, but by actually seeing science in action as opposed to just reading and solving equations from a textbook, we were able to better grasp the concepts of physics and how it all worked in the real world.

Now I'm not recommending that we just let kids shoot lasers at anything they want (or scientists for that matter), but by making science fun, we can encourage a whole new generation of scientists.

http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000100~ISSUE~0804~RELTYPE~PR~ORIGRELTYPE~EDNT~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~CU.html

March Madness without the madness
April 8, 2008

After watching the Kansas Jayhawks push the game into overtime and then fight to win the men's NCAA basketball national championship last night, I scratched my head and wondered who would have picked Kansas to be the national champion at the beginning of the tournament. LRMC, that's who. LRMC (logistic regression/Markov chain) is a computer model for predicting the outcome of the NCAA tournament games that was developed by three engineering professors at Georgia Tech. Not only did LRMC correctly predict all four teams in this year's Final Four as well as the eventual winner of the tournament, over the past nine years it correctly identified 30 of the 36 Final Four teams, which was significantly more accurate than the AP poll of sportswriters and the ESPN/USA Today poll of coaches (23 correct predictions), the Ratings Percentage Index (21 correct picks), and even other computer models.

How does LRMC do it? The system is designed to use only basic scoreboard data, including which teams played, which team had home court advantage, and the margin of victory. It also uses the quality of each team's results and the strength of each team's schedule to rank teams. Using this system, LRMC also correctly identified several over-rated and under-rated teams as potential upsets.

LRMC is a great tool to use for picking brackets, but for me, the fun in the tournament isn't so much in being right with all my picks, but in the actual tournament play. One such example was in last night's title game, where I found myself sitting on the edge of my seat when Chalmers shot that clutch three-pointer with 2.1 seconds left on the clock to push the game into OT, which might prove to be one of the biggest shots in NCAA history. Although LRMC was correct in picking Kansas as the winner, it can't predict the drama and excitement of the tournament, without which it wouldn't quite be March Madness.

http://www.rdmag.com/ShowPR~PUBCODE~014~ACCT~1400000100~ISSUE~0803~RELTYPE~PR~ORIGRELTYPE~EDNT~PRODCODE~00000000~PRODLETT~JH.html

He is now free to wander the universe
March 25, 2008

As you no doubt know by now, Arthur C. Clarke passed away last week at the age of 90. Clarke, who wrote more than 100 books and short stories, will not only be remembered for his writings but also for his visions of technologies of the future. In Oct. 1945, he proposed the idea of satellites in geosynchronous orbit as communications systems. Although he got some details incorrect--he foresaw the satellites being huge and manned, with only three satellites necessary to handle all of the Earth's communications--he lived to see many of his visions of the future become reality.

My dad introduced me to the works of Arthur C. Clarke when I was a young teen. After watching, but not quite comprehending, the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, I dove right into the book, followed by Rendezvous with Rama, The Fountains of Paradise, along with books by Asimov, Heinlein, Niven, and Pournelle. Thus began my love of science fiction, and along with it, my love of science. Clarke, through his books and stories, had the ability to inspire budding scientists and engineers as well as ordinary people. In his reflections on his 90 "orbits around the sun", Clarke explained how he most wanted to be remembered: "as a writer--one who entertained readers, and, hopefully, stretched their imagination as well." That, Sir Clarke, you have. And wherever you are now, I know it's full of stars.