Cannibalism in Crickets

The Mormon cricket will eat its own to gain nutriets such as salt and protein. The stronger crickets (they aren't really crickets, but that's the name) will resort to cannibalism to satisfy their needs but once the needs are satisfied they don't eat each other.

This is rather interesting because it reminds me of chess. That is, the idea of sacreficing a piece to gain a strategic advantage on your opponent. You may allow a knight, say, to be captured if that'll give you a better position to win the game. While you have lost a knight you may win the game. The price is worth it. Likewise the swarm may lose some members but the swarm itself survives.

Math trek: A Blog by Ivars Peterson

Ivars Peterson has a blog for mathematics.

I didn't know about it until I was reading his recent post on Galois on the Mathematical Association of America's website.

The blog has only one post today about a book with more puzzles from Martin Gardner, but given what I know of Peterson his blog will be worth visiting time and again.

Quantum computer: Turn if off to turn it on

Even for the crazy world of quantum mechanics, this one is twisted. A quantum computer program has produced an answer without actually running.

The idea behind the feat, first proposed in 1998, is to put a quantum computer into a “superposition”, a state in which it is both running and not running. ...

With the right set-up, the theory suggested, the computer would sometimes get an answer out of the computer even though the program did not run. And now researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have improved on the original design and built a non-running quantum computer that really works.

This is too much to believe, the computer works best when it's off, too.

This scheme could have an advantage over straightforward quantum computing. "A non-running computer produces fewer errors," says Hosten.

Quantum computers, quantum physics, it's too surreal to believe.

Photography as art: Something special

I wish to give you a special gift: a link to a truly wonderful blog. It's a blog of a dear friend who loves taking pictures with digital cameras.

I am sure you have a friend that takes pictures of people and places. While these photos are lovely and capture a moment or place, you probably wouldn't call them art. This blog though is about digital photography as art. And Andy Ilachinski knows digital photography. He is an artist who snaps pictures and then processes them, not always but often, to bring out features and feelings that he sees in the scene. The scenes are real, the pictures are his artistic vision of what he would like to others to see that isn't readily apparent.

From his blog profile:

Photography became a life-long pursuit for me the instant my parents gave me a Polaroid instamatic camera for my 10th birthday (35 years ago). I have been studying the mysterious relationship between inner experiences and outer realities ever since. My creative process is very simple. I take pictures of what calms my soul.

I have many of his art works on my walls and all of them bring new joy and contentment each time I view them. If you'd like to see his work, and not just read his thoughts, check out his website.

Here's just one example:

43rd Mersenne prime

This link is to an article. I've already posted about this earlier.

Ants teaching ants

No insult intended to human teachers, but a research team in England says that the first clear demonstration of true teaching among other animals comes from a species without much of a brain—an ant.

It's a little strange, and much unexpected, but ants teach other ants. If you think about this a little more, beyond what is in the article (linked above) it really shows something of where complexity and cellular automata research may go. Presently, these areas look at how local rules bring out emergent behavior and what kinds of patterns these local rules give. Yet, I've not seen work done where the agents (think ants!) are modeled to teach each other how to behave and maximize their "opitimization function." This could be a whole new area of study. It's (pardon the pun, vis-a-vis the ants) food for thought.

Social networks

In the Jan. 6 Science, Gueorgi Kossinets and sociologist Duncan Watts of Columbia University describe a study in which the researchers analyzed 14,584,423 messages exchanged by 43,553 students, faculty, and staff at a large university over the course of a year. What they discovered was a turbulent sea of constantly changing relationships among individuals yet remarkable stability in the properties of the network as a whole.

It's almost as if people were behaving randomly, with individual changes more or less canceling each other out. "In the absence of global perturbations," Kossinets and Watts concluded, "average network properties appear to approach an equilibrium state, whereas individual properties are unstable."

Interesting article about how your email activities are a reflection of your social activities. In a way, this obvious, but now there's a large study that quantifies what you probably knew instinctively.

Evolution: Is it really random?

"SHOCKING CONVERGENCE: Two groups of South American and African electric fish, whose lineages diverged 200 million years ago, independently evolved similar ways to generate electricity, according to a new study. In a paper published online this week by the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, researchers report that both groups converted existing sodium channel proteins used for muscle contraction into sodium channels that can generate electricity. Pictured above are Eigenmannia virescens from the Amazon (top) and Brienomyrus vadamans from Africa."

So, two different fish take the same evolutionary path to the same end. It makes me wonder just how random evolution may be. Thoughts?

Dogs and calulus: The two go together

We always believed that dogs were extremely clever and thus "man's best friend." Now we see that there's evidence dogs can perform calculus.

In 2003, mathematician Tim Pennings of Hope College in Holland, Mich., revealed to the world that his Welsh corgi, Elvis, appears to be solving a calculus problem when finding the optimal path to fetch a ball. In this case, optimal path means minimizing travel time.

What's more, dogs perform their calculations in unusual circumstances:

...Pennings insists that Elvis [photo above] appears to make global decisions rather than instantaneous decisions when retrieving a ball.

The following experiment suggests why. "Playing fetch with Elvis, I decided to throw the stick while standing in the water, about 10-12 feet from shore, and with Elvis right beside me," Pennings reports. "When I threw the stick in a path parallel to the beach, Elvis swam in to shore, ran along the beach for a sizeable distance, and then dove back into the water to retrieve the stick."

Dogs, we just love 'em.

Your partner's death tie to you

If your marriage partner is hospitalized for an extended period, that increases your risk of death.

Among elderly people, a spouse's hospitalization for certain ailments substantially raises his or her partner's likelihood of dying, according to the largest study ever to quantify such effects. The risk is especially great within the first month after the spouse enters the hospital.

Still, other studies show that marriage, overall, increases the participants life spans. This is more the case for men than women, by the way.

Photos of an atomic blast

This is one of several photos from early atomic weapons testing. (Hat tip: Ilachina)

Infinite minimal surfaces

Ivars Peterson, a favorite writer of mine, reports in Science News about the discovery of a two-dimensional minimal surface.

Testing String Theory

Scientists at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC) have a theory on how they can measure the number of dimensions of space.

I read the news item in the link above but it doesn't say how this would work. I'm skeptical this can be done, but then I don't understand string theory either!

Introduction: Inter-planetary highway

Here's a site to explain the inter-planetary highway that the paper I just mentioned details. This site is easy to read and has figures to explain the phenomenon.

Celestial mechanics: An Excellent Paper

Click on the link above to go to a page introducing the paper:

New Methods in Celestial Mechanics and Mission Design by Jerrold E. Marsden and Shane D. Ross

Then, go to the pdf icon and click there for the entire paper.

This paper is a terrific introduction into how space missions are planned based on numerical solutions to N-body problems in gravitation. Worth your time.

P.S. Don't let the few equations in the paper deter you; the text is self-contained without needing to work with the equations.

Common cold: A cure for bird flu?

Can the common cold virus help keep you safe from bird flu? Looks like it might just do that.

Feynman talks light

Great video of Richard Feynman discussing light.

(Hat tip: Andrew)