God Created the Integers, Man Created God

Michael Atiyah gives a presidential address on Mind, Matter, and Mathematics (good alliteration).  In it he discusses the difference between mathematical philosophy and natural philosophy.  It’s an interesting read throughout.
But, near the end he says:
Mathematical physicists believe that there are indeed simple and beautiful mathematical equations that govern the universe, and that the task of [...]

My new favorite way to waste time at work… without really wasting it

I think my job is a little uptight to let me bring my guitar in and start banging away. But I have this laptop sitting in front of me. I spent all of an hour or two playing around with Fruity Loops before. Not exactly the recipe for a virtuoso electronic composition. A friend that’s devoted a lot more of his life than I to creative pursuits recently turned me on to something better, though.

Mathematical Biology Seminar

Felicis and I are running a Mathematical Biology Seminar here at PSU. Felicis has been helping to bring us all up to speed on some of the basic Neuroanatomy of Hearing. (We’re starting with a paper co-authored by Lars Holmstrom of PSU entitled: Responses to Social Vocalizations in the Inferior Colliculus [...]

What to Know About Applying to Graduate School

The following link is to a PDF on the Portland State University Biology Department’s website. But, I think it’s full of a lot of basic information that should apply to any graduate program that is research oriented.
Graduate Program PDF

Science Data Storage, Google Comes to the Rescue!

The giant just keeps on growing.   Google will now be getting into the Science research field by offering data storage to scientists:
The storage would fill a major need for scientists who want to openly share their data, and would allow citizen scientists access to an unprecedented amount of data to explore. For example, two planned [...]

Intelligent Robots!

Check out PSU’s own Intelligent Robotics Lab
I particularly like the title of this publication:
“Use of Machine Learning based on Constructive Induction in Dialogs with Robotic Heads,” 

Some Post-Christmas Offerings

Hello everyone!
John Baez has some neat stuff for this week, including a whole slew of free online texts! You’ll find them immediately after the pictures of nebulae.
Also, John Wilkins has a blog called “Evolving Thoughts” and yesterday’s (26 December 07) post, “Basic Concepts in Science: A list” has some more neat links to follow, [...]

Journal Wars: Higher and Higher Prices Fan the Flames of Freedom

OK, I admit that the title to this post engages in extreme excesses of alliteration. But, the alliterative power behind the words is quite real in the world of scientific publishing and the ridiculously high prices journals (the disseminators of new ideas in science) charge.

Basic Math: Dumb as a Monkey

New study shows that even college students can perform as well as monkeys on an arithmetic test.
The results indicate that monkeys perform approximate mental addition in a manner that is remarkably similar to the performance of the college students. These findings support the argument that humans and nonhuman primates share a cognitive system for nonverbal [...]

More Human Evolution from John Hawks

John Hawks answers his “most rarely-asked Questions” about the Acceleration of Human Evolution.
I quote him over at Good Tithings.