How does public funding for science work in the United States? How much money is there? Who gets it, and how? How much does a graduate student cost? Even normally, science funding is a rich topic worth exploring, and now, as the president is attempting to radically change the structure of science in the U.S. … Continue reading An Informal Overview of US Science Funding
Many days are a blur of activity, but the Thursday before last (October 10, 2024) my pinball-like bouncing from one task to another, often with little connecting them other than being part of my job, seemed slightly more ridiculous (or interesting) than usual, so I wrote things down. Events Start the morning (breakfast, coffee) revising … Continue reading What I did on Thursday
I’m always interested to hear who won the latest Physics Nobel Prize, and today’s announcement was particularly exciting: John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton “for foundational discoveries and inventions that enable machine learning with artificial neural networks.” Is it surprising? Is it controversial? Apparently yes. I predicted Hopfield in response to a friend’s poll a few … Continue reading The 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics — Yes, Physics!
Insulin is an abomination. Sure, injecting it saves the lives of millions of diabetics, but that injected protein is unnatural and abhorrent, the product of a genetically modified organism! And it’s not even necessary: Rather than playing God to coax single-celled creatures never designed for insulin production to make the stuff, we could be harvesting … Continue reading Insulin is an abomination: Recent bad news about food
Suppose someone told you that they were deeply concerned about environmental issues, the consequences of fossil fuel use in particular, and that they would therefore take concrete action to reduce their energy footprint. The action: driving one mile per hour more slowly than usual — 54 rather than 55 mph. You would probably be unimpressed. … Continue reading If you care about the environment, and you don’t care about numbers, do you care about the environment?
In science there are experiments that try to construct simple, tractable models of complex phenomena, with the goal of developing insights that will be relevant to the more complicated systems. Alternatively, there are experiments that try to infer insights amid a flurry of coexisting factors. Each of these approaches has its merits and flaws. I … Continue reading How to build a gut microbiome in 119 easy steps
A more technical post than most. If the symbol and the equation look familiar to you, you’ll be fine. If not, you may still like the post, but in case you’re about to depart I’ll put my customary link to my pop-science biophysics book’s description here, and also share this week’s news that it will … Continue reading What does the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle have to do with microscopy?
A terrible question to ask in science is unfortunately quite common: Does something affect something else? It seems innocuous enough — after all, one might want to know whether exposure to sunlight affects one’s risk of skin cancer, or whether the location of the moons of Jupiter affects the stock market. The answer, however, is … Continue reading Pushed around by stars
I’ve thought more about CRISPR and genome editing over the past year than ever before, ending up devoting a chapter to it in my upcoming popular science biophysics book. The ability to cut, paste, and edit strands of DNA inside living cells is truly amazing, an advance that deserves all the hype that it’s received … Continue reading CRISPR, the Nobel Prize, and the “Forgotten Man”
Update May 12, 2020: I intend to start the course during the week of May 18, 2020. If you’re interested in taking it, please do the following by May 15, 2020: (i) Get the up-to-date syllabus here; (ii) Write your name and email address on this sheet if you haven’t already contacted me; (iii) Note … Continue reading An informal image analysis course
The Eighteenth Elephant 