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martyb writes:

Let's talk about big numbers... really, Really, REALLY big numbers. Like infinity. That's pretty big, right? Well, there's infinity and then there's Large Countable Ordinals (Part 1) where John Baez explains the concept of infinity and that there are different sizes of infinity!:

I love the infinite.

It may not exist in the physical world, but we can set up rules to think about it in consistent ways, and then it's a helpful concept. The reason is that infinity is often easier to think about than very large finite numbers.

Finding rules to work with the infinite is one of the great triumphs of mathematics. Cantor's realization that there are different sizes of infinity is truly wondrous—and by now, it's part of the everyday bread and butter of mathematics.

Trying to create a notation for these different infinities is very challenging. It's not a fair challenge, because there are more infinities than expressions we can write down in any given alphabet! But if we seek a notation for countable ordinals, the challenge becomes more fair.

It's still incredibly frustrating. No matter what notation we use it fizzles out too soon... making us wish we'd invented a more general notation. But this process of 'fizzling out' is fascinating to me. There's something profound about it. So, I would like to tell you about this.

No advanced mathematics are required, but I'll here note that the exposition is pretty mind-blowing. In the "x", "x^(x)", and "x^(x^(x)))" kind of way. And that's barely getting started!

Anyone who enjoyed reading Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott (aka A Square) will find this right up their alley.

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fork(2) writes:

As reported everywhere, SpaceX successfully launched its Falcon 9 into orbit early this morning from Cape Canaveral and sent its Dragon capsule loaded with supplies en route to the International Space Station. SpaceDaily reports:

Following the launch, the rocket separated, sending the cargo to orbit. Then, the first stage of the rocket successfully fired its engines again to maneuver its way back to land on solid ground at Cape Canaveral.

SpaceX mission control erupted in cheers as live video footage showed the first stage of the rocket landing steady and upright, marking the second such solid-ground touchdown for SpaceX.

It first accomplished the feat in December 2015, as part of the California-based company's ongoing effort to re-use costly rocket parts instead of jettisoning them into the ocean.

[...] The Dragon cargo vehicle is expected to arrive early Wednesday, when astronauts will use the outpost's robotic arm to grab the incoming spacecraft and attach it to the station.

"The spacecraft will be grappled to the space station at 7 am (1100 GMT) Wednesday, July 20, by NASA astronaut Jeff Williams, supported by NASA astronaut Kate Rubins," said the US space agency.

SpaceNews (nice photos) says:

[Continues...]

mendax writes:

The ever-geeky, ever-reliable El Reg has published a story which indicates that NASA has given the go-ahead for the construction of the next Mars rover, due to be launched in 2020, just 4 short years from now.

All being well, NASA will launch the successor to Curiosity Rover in 2020. And this time the agency hopes to prepare samples for an as-yet-blue-sky manned mission that could one day return them to Earth for analysis.

NASA says its Mars Rover 2020 project has passed a "significant milestone" – Key Decision Point (KDP) C – which means it's ready for construction to start.

If they ever meet, Curiosity Rover will recognise the Mars Rover 2020 as a relative, since the agency's program executive for the project George Tahu notes that it uses a "significant amount" of "heritage components" from the older project (helping both with budget and timing).

One of those heritage components is an improved version of the "Sky Crane" that successfully landed Curiosity in 2012.

Other articles on this subject can be found here, here, and here. The last link is the NASA press release.

My take on this? Congress needs to fund NASA to build and operate a dozen of these rovers. Imagine the incredible science that could be done.

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tonyPick writes:

There's a report over at IFL Science discussing research which shows that the bulk of news links shared on social media have never been clicked.

Last April, NPR shared an article on their Facebook page which asked "Why doesn't America read anymore?". The joke, of course, is that there was no article. They waited to see if their followers would weigh in with an opinion without clicking the link, and they weren't disappointed.
...
A group of computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute looked into a dataset of over 2.8 million online news articles that were shared via Twitter. The study found that up to 59 percent of links shared on Twitter have never actually been clicked by that person's followers, suggesting that social media users are more into sharing content than actually clicking on and reading it.

In keeping with the spirit of the study the article is titled Marijuana Contains "Alien DNA" From Outside Of Our Solar System, NASA Confirms, and Yackler also have a summary under the title Scientists say giant asteroid could hit earth next week, causing mass devastation. Look forward to seeing both of those stories doing the rounds over the next week.

Also the Washington Post has more:

Worse, the study finds that these sort of blind peer-to-peer shares are really important in determining what news gets circulated and what just fades off the public radar. So your thoughtless retweets, and those of your friends, are actually shaping our shared political and cultural agendas.

"People are more willing to share an article than read it," study co-author Arnaud Legout said in a statement. "This is typical of modern information consumption. People form an opinion based on a summary, or a summary of summaries, without making the effort to go deeper."

The original paper is available, and provides information on the data collection method and analysis of the way news articles are distributed over social media.

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SpaceMan writes:

ARM Holdings, one of the UK's biggest technology companies, is set to announce it is being bought by Japan's Softbank for £24bn ($32bn).

More at BBC:

The board of ARM is expected to recommend shareholders accept the offer - close to a 50% premium on its closing market value of £16.8bn on Friday.

The Cambridge-based firm is arguably the most precious jewel in the crown of British technology. [...] The proposed takeover of ARM poses a dilemma for the new post-Brexit government. Along with high executive pay, Prime Minister Theresa May has put foreign takeovers on her radar of business dealings that may be bad for the national interest.

takyon: ARM's founder called the sale "a sad day for technology in Britain".

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butthurt writes:

The Hubble Space Telescope photographed Jupiter in ultraviolet light. Auroras can be seen near one of the planet's poles. Their fluctuations are illustrated in two time-lapse videos (1, 2). The observations are intended to complement measurements of the solar wind in the vicinity of Jupiter, made by the Juno spacecraft.

From Space.com:

Bright blue auroras at Jupiter's north and south poles are putting on a veritable fireworks show just before the July 4 arrival of the Juno probe.

Jupiter's colorful auroras have been imaged before, but a month of daily observations of Jupiter by the Hubble Space Telescope has allowed scientists to put together a time-lapse video showing how the auroras evolve.

"These auroras are very dramatic and among the most active I have ever seen," Jonathan Nichols, a researcher at the University of Leicester in England who is using Hubble's observations to study auroras on Jupiter, said in a statement. "It almost seems as if Jupiter is throwing a fireworks party for the imminent arrival of Juno."

coverage:

• ESA/Hubble press release
• New Scientist
• space.com

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

[...] The carrier wants to use drones as a way to temporarily boost LTE networks, said John Donovan, AT&T's chief strategy officer, in a blog post Wednesday.

While it is not a reality yet, AT&T has been working on using drones for various purposes over the past year. This week, the company also launched its national drone program. AT&T will be using drones to perform aerial inspections of cell towers, allowing the carrier to collect data and make real time changes to the networks.

The experience gained from the drone program could help AT&T launch a new drone feature called Flying COWs (Cell on Wings), which could enhance LTE coverage at large events like concerts and even provide extra connectivity during disasters and emergency situations.

It remains to be seen if the Flying COWs will be spherical.

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HughPickens.com writes:

Catherine Saint Louis writes in The New York Times that silver diamine fluoride (SDF), available in Japan for decades, has now arrived in the United States after Food and Drug Administration cleared SDF for use as a tooth desensitizer for adults 21 and older. Studies show SDF can halt the progression of cavities and prevent them, and dentists are increasingly using it off-label for those purposes. "The upside, the great one, is you don't need to drill and you don't need an injection," says Dr. Margherita Fontana.

SDF is already used in hundreds of dental offices and and at least 18 dental schools have started teaching the next generation of pediatric dentists how to use it. "Being able to paint it on in 30 seconds with no noise, no drilling, is better, faster, cheaper," says Dr. Richard Niederman. "I would encourage parents to ask for it. It's less trauma for the kid." In Japan, Australia, Argentina and other nations, dentists have been placing SDF on caries lesions for more than 80 years. The value of silver ions to treat tooth decay has been known in this country for well over a century. Silver nitrate was commonly used by the forefathers of modern dentistry.

When applied every six months, silver diamine fluoride arrests more than 90% of caries. In children, applying silver diamine fluoride on active lesions once per year prevents caries in other teeth better than fluoride varnish placed four times per year on all surfaces. Fillings, by contrast, do not cure an oral infection. Bacterial infections also cause acne, but a "dermatologist doesn't take a scalpel and cut off your pimples," says Dr. Jason Hirsch. Yet "that's how dentistry has approached cavities."

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takyon writes:

Yet another big messaging app maker, Line (owned by the South Korean Naver Corporation), is attempting an IPO:

There's a chance you might not have heard of Line but the Japanese messaging service is set to sell shares for the first time in an initial public offering (IPO) in both New York and Tokyo.

[...] Line is the most popular messaging app in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan. It is similar to the likes of Whatsapp, Facebook Messenger or WeChat in China. While it is close to those, it does have some features that set it apart: virtual stickers, cartoon-like animated emojis and games with mascots such as a bear called Brown and his rabbit friend Cony. You can make video calls, stream video or order taxis with it. It also offers a timeline much like Facebook does. Line has about 218 million monthly active users and makes its money from advertising and selling its virtual stickers and games.

[...] The company is set to raise up to $1.3bn (£1bn) when it lists its shares, after setting its flotation price at 3,300 yen ($33; £25) per share. It's being described as Japan's biggest tech IPO of the year but in fact it could have been significantly bigger. When Line was scheduled for an initial public offering two years ago, there was talk of a valuation of more than $10bn. But that was at a time when the user base was still growing at record pace, and those days are over.

The major revenue for the company? Selling sets of branded "stickers" (basically larger and more complicated emoji) to use in chat.

The company raised over $1 billion and was ultimately valued at $8.6 billion by the market. It was the best week for the Nikkei stock exchange since 2009.

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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Ford is already deeply involved with these sorts of investments, but its portfolio is growing once again with an investment in a company building maps for self-driving cars.

Civil Maps' goal is to create a set of high definition maps that self-driving cars can use to navigate. The company takes data from Lidar and cameras and translates it into a format cars can understand. It prides itself on having a small data footprint, making it easier to transmit data to and from vehicles.

"Autonomous vehicles require a totally new kind of map," said Civil Maps CEO Sravan Puttagunta in a statement. "Civil Maps' scalable map generation process enables fully autonomous vehicles to drive like humans do -- identifying on-road and off-road features even when they might be missing, deteriorated or hidden from view and letting a car know what it can expect along its route."

The company received $6.6 million in seed funding from Ford and five other investors. Civil Maps isn't a large company, with just 16 employees on the payroll. Ford's other recent work with startups includes a $182.2 million investment in software company Pivotal, and its Ford Fusion sedan is the basis for an autonomous test car Uber has deployed in Pennsylvania.

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tonyPick writes:

Ross Tucker over at The Science Of Sport has an in-depth and interesting piece on the debate over Olympic athlete Caster Semenya, a 400m and 800m runner, who has become a central figure in the issues of gender testing in women's sport, and the likelihood of continuing controversy at the Rio 2016 Olympics:

There is no more certain gold medal in the Rio Olympics than Semenya. She could trip and fall, anywhere in the first lap, lose 20m, and still win the race. There is also no more certain a controversy at the Rio Olympic Games than Caster Semenya. Her story began in 2009, with the sex-verification controversy of Berlin, and then it progressed over six years during which she was subject to a new rule that governed intersex athletes by limiting their testosterone levels.

CAS overturned that rule last year, when an Indian sprinter called Dutee Chand took her case to them. The result is that all intersex women no longer have a limit on testosterone. Semenya is certainly not the only one – rumours of other runners exist, though none were so shamefully "outed" as Semenya in 2009. However, she is proof of the benefit of testosterone to intersex athletes – having had the restriction removed, she is now about 6 seconds faster than she'd been over the last two years.

And the way that she is running those times suggests much more to come.

(The CAS referenced is the Court of Arbitration for Sports)

This article links to an earlier posting with more detail as well as some additional publications on the history and science of sex verification in athletics[PDF].

[Continues with an addition to the original submission with more background information...]

fork(2) writes:

The Mathematical Association of America reports that the U.S. team won first place at the 57th International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) in Hong Kong, July 6-16.

The IMO is the World Championship Mathematics Competition for High School students, where the brightest mathematics students from more than 100 countries compete. The winning U.S. team score was 214 out of a possible 252, ahead of the Republic of Korea (207) and China (204).

[...] The six U.S. team members were selected through a series of competitions organized by the Mathematical Association of America (MAA), culminating with the USA Mathematical Olympiad. The six team members joined 70 of their peers at Carnegie Mellon University in June to immerse themselves in problem solving for three weeks at MAA's Mathematical Olympiad Summer Program.

[...] Members of the winning 2016 U.S. team were Ankan Bhattacharya, Michael Kural, Allen Liu, Junyao Peng, Ashwin Sah, and Yuan Yao, all of whom were awarded gold medals for their individual scores. Team members Liu and Yao each earned perfect test scores. The team was accompanied by [Po-Shen] Loh [associate professor of mathematics at Carnegie Mellon University] and deputy coach Razvan Gelca, professor of mathematics and statistics at Texas Tech University.

IMO scores are based on the number of points scored by individual team members on six problems. On each day of the two-day competition, the teams have 4.5 hours to work on three problems. Liu and Kural are the only returning team members from last year's winning U.S. team.

Related:
Crunching Numbers in Hong Kong at the Math Olympiad

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AnonTechie writes:

The scientific process, in its ideal form, is elegant: Ask a question, set up an objective test, and get an answer. Repeat. Science is rarely practiced to that ideal. But Copernicus believed in that ideal. So did the rocket scientists behind the moon landing.

But nowadays, our respondents told us, the process is riddled with conflict. Scientists say they're forced to prioritize self-preservation over pursuing the best questions and uncovering meaningful truths.

Today, scientists' success often isn't measured by the quality of their questions or the rigor of their methods. It's instead measured by how much grant money they win, the number of studies they publish, and how they spin their findings to appeal to the public.

Scientists often learn more from studies that fail. But failed studies can mean career death. So instead, they're incentivized to generate positive results they can publish. And the phrase "publish or perish" hangs over nearly every decision. It's a nagging whisper, like a Jedi's path to the dark side.

"Over time the most successful people will be those who can best exploit the system," Paul Smaldino, a cognitive science professor at University of California Merced, says.

Many scientists have had enough. They want to break this cycle of perverse incentives and rewards. They are going through a period of introspection, hopeful that the end result will yield stronger scientific institutions. In our survey and interviews, they offered a wide variety of ideas for improving the scientific process and bringing it closer to its ideal form.

Before we jump in, some caveats to keep in mind: Our survey was not a scientific poll. For one, the respondents disproportionately hailed from the biomedical and social sciences and English-speaking communities.

Many of the responses did, however, vividly illustrate the challenges and perverse incentives that scientists across fields face. And they are a valuable starting point for a deeper look at dysfunction in science today.

The 7 problems identified are:

1) Academia has a huge money problem
2) Too many studies are poorly designed
3) Replicating results is crucial — and rare
4) Peer review is broken
5) Too much science is locked behind paywalls
6) Science is poorly communicated
7) Life as a young academic is incredibly stressful

It seems to me, that, much of this is already known to most scientists. However, this cycle of publish or perish continues unabated. What do you think should be done to change this mindset ?

http://www.vox.com/2016/7/14/12016710/science-challeges-research-funding-peer-review-process

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fork(2) writes:

With SpaceX set to launch its ISS cargo mission, Rich Smith at the Motley Fool takes a look at Blue Origin's position in the space race. His conclusion? Blue Origin "doesn't plan to play second fiddle to SpaceX for long."

[...] Bezos has bigger ambitions than "just" launching tourists to the edge of space for a lookabout, then bringing them back down again. Like Musk at SpaceX, Bezos eventually plans to transform Blue Origin into a true orbital carrier, capable of launching rockets into space and keeping them there.

To facilitate that dream, last month Bezos broke ground on an "orbital vehicle manufacturing complex" in Florida, where Blue Origin will build the rocket ships of tomorrow. Billed in a press release as a "custom-built ... 750,000 square foot rocket factory," his new complex, says Bezos, will "accommodate manufacturing, processing, integration and testing" of entire rockets (except for the engines, which Blue Origin builds at another location).

That square footage, by the way, is nearly as large as SpaceX's own Hawthorne facility. Indeed, if you include the 260,000 square feet of the plant in Kent, Washington, where Blue Origin builds its engines, Blue Origin could soon have more factory floor space than the "almost 1 million"-square-foot factory that SpaceX operates.

[...] Current expectations are for Blue Origin's New Shepard spacecraft to begin manned test flights next year, and for Blue Origin to begin ferrying paying passengers to the verge of space by 2018. With the company's new factory expected to open just days before the calendar flips over to 2018, this suggests that Blue Origin has set itself a tight schedule. It also suggests that Jeff Bezos is serious about meeting it.

In another article on GeekWire, Allen Boyle reports that:

[Erika] Wagner [Blue Origin's business development manager] told the San Diego audience [at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference] that Blue Origin's payload manifest has been planned out for the next year, and would add biology experiments to the mix. The team is also looking at ways to modify the spacecraft so that experiments can be exposed to the space environment, rather than staying inside the pressurized New Shepard capsule throughout the flight, she said.

[...] Wagner said the suborbital space program was part of Blue Origin's long-term strategy of having millions of people living and working in space. "For us, success is people starting to make money on the back of our platform," she said.

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MrPlow writes:

Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956

Three police officers were killed and three others injured in a shooting Sunday morning in Baton Rouge, authorities said.

While police offered few immediate details about the exact origins of the incident, they say the violent incident unfolded early Sunday when officers responded to reports of a man carrying a rifle in an area filled with grocery stores and other businesses.

Col. Michael D. Edmonson of the Louisiana State Police, the agency taking the lead on the investigation, stressed Sunday afternoon that there was no active shooting situation and that police had killed the armed attacker, who died during a shootout with officers.

The attacker in Baton Rouge was identified Sunday afternoon as Gavin Long, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation. Authorities are exploring whether more than one person may have played a role in the incident, according to both officials, who asked not to be identified discussing an ongoing investigation. Sunday was long's 29th birthday, according to one official.

Two of the officers fatally shot were with the Baton Rouge police force, while the third was part of the East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office. Another deputy was in critical condition after the shooting, Edmonson said at a briefing.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2016/07/17/baton-rouge-mayors-office-at-least-2-officers-fatally-shot/

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