27 JUL 2018 by ideonexus
Shannon and Thorp Hack the Roulette Wheel
It was in this tinkerer’s laboratory that they set out to understand how roulette could be gamed, ordering “a regulation roulette wheel from Reno for $1,500,” a strobe light, and a clock whose hand revolved once per second. Thorp was given inside access to Shannon in all his tinkering glory:
Gadgets . . . were everywhere. He had a mechanical coin tosser which could be set to flip the coin through a set number of revolutions, producing a head or tail according to the setting. As a joke... 1 
notes
notes09 SEP 2016 by ideonexus
A Lack of Uncertainty Impacts Learning in Adults
Healthy aging can lead to impairments in learning that affect many laboratory and real-life tasks. These tasks often involve the acquisition of dynamic contingencies, which requires adjusting the rate of learning to environmental statistics. For example, learning rate should increase when expectations are uncertain (uncertainty), outcomes are surprising (surprise) or contingencies are more likely to change (hazard rate). In this study, we combine computational modelling with an age-comparativ...
1 15 JAN 2015 by ideonexus
Kantianism is a School and Not a Culture
Critical philosophy – Kantianism and neo-Kantianism – is also a school and not a solution. The Critique of Pure Reason can be said to deal with science or philosophy only within the narrow limits of an artificial, particularised experience (confined to laboratory or academic study). Similarly, the Critique of Practical Reason can be said to deal with life only within the narrow limits of personal affairs and within the kind of disunity that is not regarded as vice; it is a moral code fo...Folksonomies: cosmism
Folksonomies: cosmism
1 notes
notesIt ignores the need for a scientific culture of all people doing collective science always.
21 NOV 2013 by ideonexus
1945 Warning of Bacterial Antibiotic Resistance
But I would like to sound one note of warning. Penicillin is to all intents
and purposes non-poisonous so there is no need to worry about giving an overdose and poisoning the patient. There may be a danger, though, in
underdosage. It is not difficult to make microbes resistant to penicillin in the
laboratory by exposing them to concentrations not sufficient to kill them,
and the same thing has occasionally happened in the body.
The time may come when penicillin can be bought by anyone in the... 1 notes
notesAt his Nobel lecture for discovering penicillin, Alexander Fleming warns that if you use, use enough to kill. Maiming the bacteria will make it resistant.
08 OCT 2013 by ideonexus
The Individual Cannot Escape Reliance on Society
The individual cannot escape his dependence on society even when he acts on his own. A scientist who spends his lifetime in a laboratory may delude himself that he is a modern version of Robinson Crusoe, but the material of his activity and the apparatus and skills with which he operates are social products. They are inerasable signs of the cooperation which binds men together. The very language in which a scientist thinks has been learned in a particular society. Social context also determin... 1 notes
notesEveryone is connected to everyone else, no matter how secluded. Even our motivations, to become a CEO or a Scientist, stem from the society in which we are born.
09 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Bryan Would Lose His Religion if He Studied Evolution
Direct observation of the testimony of the earth ... is a matter of the laboratory, of the field naturalist, of indefatigable digging among the ancient archives of the earth's history. If Mr. Bryan, with an open heart and mind, would drop all his books and all the disputations among the doctors and study first hand the simple archives of Nature, all his doubts would disappear; he would not lose his religion; he would become an evolutionist. 1 notes
notesFor the evidence is so overwhelming in the book of nature.
07 JUN 2012 by ideonexus
Do Atoms Exist?
The question whether atoms exist or not... belongs rather to metaphysics. In chemistry we have only to decide whether the assumption of atoms is an hypothesis adapted to the explanation of chemical phenomena... whether a further development of the atomic hypothesis promises to advance our knowledge of the mechanism of chemical phenomena... I rather expect that we shall some day find, for what we now call atoms, a mathematico-mechanical explanation, which will render an account of atomic weigh...Folksonomies: metaphysics theory
Folksonomies: metaphysics theory
1 notes
notesThis is a question for metaphysics, but the theory of atoms is useful and works in the laboratory.
30 MAY 2012 by ideonexus
Where Scientific Ideas Come From
No Geologist worth anything is permanently bound to a desk or laboratory, but the charming notion that true science can only be based on unbiased observation of nature in the raw is mythology. Creative work, in geology and anywhere else, is interaction and synthesis: half-baked ideas from a bar room, rocks in the field, chains of thought from lonely walks, numbers squeezed from rocks in a laboratory, numbers from a calculator riveted to a desk, fancy equipment usually malfunctioning on expens... 1 notes
notesNot just study, but long walks, arguments in bars, and all the ways fine art is produced.
26 APR 2012 by ideonexus
"Peculiar Difficulties" of Geology
Geology has its peculiar difficulties, from which all other sciences are exempt. Questions in chemistry may be settled in the laboratory by experiment. Mathematical and philosophical questions may be discussed, while the materials for discussion are ready furnished by our own intellectual reflections. Plants, animals and minerals, may be arranged in the museum, and all questions relating to their intrinsic principles may be discussed with facility. But the relative positions, the shades of di...Folksonomies: geology
Folksonomies: geology
1 notes
notesOther sciences have clear demarcations and methods of experimentation, while Geology is more muddled. I think the author overestimates the certainty of species classification.
16 SEP 2011 by ideonexus
Hen's Teeth
Some atavisms can be produced in the laboratory. The most amazing
of these is that paragon of rarity, hen’s teeth. In 1980, E. J. Kollar and
C. Fisher at the University of Connecticut combined the tissues of two
species, grafting the tissue lining the mouth of a chicken embryo on top
of tissue from the jaw of a developing mouse. Amazingly, the chicken
tissue eventually produced tooth-like structures, some with distinct roots
and crowns! Since the underlying mouse tissue alone could not prod... 1 notes
notesAn experiment from 1980 that stimulated hens to grow teeth by triggering a gene holdover from their ancient reptilian ancestors.
