Fauxtography spotting

Nice post on discovering forgeries in digital photographs.

Jurassic Crocodile In Eastern Oregon

Artists conception of the ancient creature.

An ancient sea-going crocodile has surfaced from the rocks of Crook County in eastern Oregon.

It's discovery by the North American Research Group (NARG), whose members were digging for Jurassic-age mollusks known as ammonites, is another confirmation that the Blue Mountains consist of rocks that traveled from somewhere in the Far East, says retired University of Oregon geologist William Orr, who was called in to examine the find for the state.

The remains - about 50 percent of a 6- to 8-foot reptile, including long, needlepoint teeth - were found imbedded in Jurassic rock on private property in the Snowshoe Formation of the Izee Terrane south of Dayville, Ore. Rocks containing the fossils were slowly cut out of the rock, after NARG members realized that the linear appearance of the fossils in the region's hard rocks suggested that a whole creature had been found, Orr said.

"This taxon was a crocodile-like creature but had a fish tail," said Orr, a NARG adviser and director of the Thomas Condon State Museum of Fossils at the University of Oregon. "This creature lived in Jurassic times, so it's 150 to 180 million years old. It probably lived in an area from Japan to East Timor, somewhere in the western Pacific in a tropical estuarine environment."

The fossils are generally found in Japan or China so that the finding in Oregon indicates that possible:

[T]he remains in Oregon migrated eastward in rock by continental drift, a theory of land movement in geological time now encompassed under plate tectonics. Terrane formations, such as those where these fossils were found, are believed to be portions of the earth's crust riding apart of a plate that is pushed upward at contact with another plate.

An incredible find.

Verification of Pollack's art with fractals

Richard Taylor from the University of Oregon reported 8-years ago that he found Jackson Pollack's artwork to have fractal qualities. Not that they are a fractal, because fractals have detail at all scales of magnification. So, some people wanted to use Taylor's approach to verify found paintings as original Pollack artwork.

Well, a graduate student at Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Katherine Jones-Smith

made some doodles on a page—"pretty ugly" ones, she says—she found that they shared the qualities of a Pollock, according to an analysis that follows Taylor's approach. "Either Taylor is wrong, or Kate's drawings are worth $40 million," says Jones-Smith's collaborator Harsh Mathur. "We'd be happy either way."

This started a discussion as to whether Taylor's approach can actually verify artwork.

Frankly, fractals are a mess when you try to define them because so many objects that you would like to be fractals don't fit in a single definition.

I think Michael Barnsley says it best:

For authentication, it doesn't matter whether it's legitimate to call Pollock paintings fractal, says Michael Barnsley of Australian National University in Canberra. Taylor has a reproducible technique that produces numbers from a painting, and he can correlate those numbers with different artists. "That doesn't allow you to authenticate or not authenticate a painting, but you could certainly add it into the collection of information that you have to say that it's more likely," he says.

Fractals are ill-defined now but the methods we use to measure fractal dimension have a place in our mathematical toolbox. A place, among many other tools, but not the only tool.

Astronomy Picture of the Day

I LOVE these pictures from NASA and the Hubble telescope. They never cease to amaze me and I marvel at their beauty. Just gorgeous.

What a picture from Hubble

It's like something out of photoshop with the imagination of an artist. EXCEPT, it's real. This is a picture from the Hubble Telescope, on the Astronomy Picture of the Day. Here's their explanation:

This stunning group of galaxies is far, far away - about 450 million light-years from planet Earth - cataloged as galaxy cluster Abell S0740. Dominated by the cluster's large central elliptical galaxy (ESO 325-G004), this sharp Hubble view takes in a remarkable assortment of galaxy shapes and sizes with only a few spiky foreground stars scattered through the field. The giant elliptical galaxy spans over 100,000 light years and contains about 100 billion stars, comparable in size to our own spiral Milky Way. The Hubble data reveal a wealth of detail in even these distant galaxies, including magnificent arms and dust lanes, star clusters, ring structures, and gravitational lensing arcs.

Wow, that one part (just a part) of the image is 100,000 light years across and contains approximately 100-billion starts. Read that again. The galaxy is enormous and it's only a small part of the image.

Staggering. Just staggering.

Juggling light: It can be done

A pulse of light can be stopped, transported, and restarted again using a cloud of super-cold atoms, US researchers have shown. The technique could ultimately be used for advanced computing devices or gravity detectors.

The experiments demonstrate physicists' increasing ability to manipulate light. Being able to control it in this way could be useful for optical or quantum computers, the team suggests.

I didn't understand the details of the article, but if you do, please leave a comment about it.

NASA reviews policy after astronaut goes beserk

NASA is reviewing its psychological screening process for astronauts, following astronaut Lisa Nowak's arrest for allegedly attempting to murder a romantic rival.

Police in Orlando, Florida, US, say that Nowak drove 1500 kilometres to try to kidnap and possibly kill Air Force Captain Colleen Shipman (see Astronaut accused of attempted murder released on bail). Both women may have been vying for the affections of NASA astronaut Bill Oefelein.

In response to the shocking event, NASA Administrator Michael Griffin has requested an internal review of the psychological screening procedures used to admit new astronauts. He also asked for a review of any follow-up psychological evaluations of working astronauts, including who conducts the screening.

I've busy with work and unable to post for a while. But the news on Nowak is unbelievable. This woman is a disgrace to NASA and a disgrace to the United States Navy. What's worse is that NASA, and I bet the Navy, never bothered to see the signs of her deranged behavior.

Let's hope NASA changes their policies to screen out such people, and not just at the start of a career, but throughout an astronaut's career and the same goes for the Navy.

Getting close to mid-night: Bulletin of Atomic Nuclear Scientists

So, the famous Bulletin of Atomic Scientists believes we are two minutes closer to destruction than we have been in the past. Here's how they put it:

This deteriorating state of global affairs leads the Board of Directors of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists--in consultation with a Board of Sponsors that includes 18 Nobel laureates--to move the minute hand of the “Doomsday Clock” from seven to five minutes to midnight.

This is another example of people with a certain expertise in one area, thinking they have expertise in another area. Scientists are generally smart people, perhaps some of the smartest on the planet we call home. But being smart as a scientist does not mean one is competent in other areas.

For example, while Richard Feynman was a genius in physics, he was no politician. That is, Feynman's expertise in physics did not mean that he had any deep insight in politics. He may have insight of his own, of course, but if you want political opinion it's best to go with a politician.

What's this have to do with the time creeping closer to mid-night?

Just this: the catastrophe that the Bulletin is "predicting" is more of a political catastrophe and not a scientific one. It is a political question as to whether nuclear bombs will be detonated not a scientific one. If the world ends due to nuclear bombs that responsibility rests with our political leaders; scientists have done their part already in building the bombs.

This year, The Bulletin also cites "Global Warming" as part of the coming (five minutes away!) catastrophe. Once again, the scientists have no say in Global Warming (if it even exists and I don't believe it). The question of climate is beyond the control of any scientist. Sure, scientists study climate and have opinions but whether the world will "end" due to some climate change is beyond them.

To try to predict "the end" is to scare people into believing others who, while smart in one area, have no business in other areas.

Invisibility: Mathematically possible

November 30, 2006: The invisibility cloak recently built by scientists at Duke University and Imperial College in London has received enormous attention all over the world. This breakthrough cloaking device makes a copper disk invisible at specific microwave frequencies. As it turns out, Mathematics Professor Allan Greenleaf of the University of Rochester along with Matti Lassas, who is now at the Helsinki University of Technology, and Gunther Uhlmann of the University of Washington, started the mathematics behind invisibility several years ago in the context of medical imaging and quantum mechanics. Joined by fourth member Yaroslav Kurylev of Loughborough University, the team has announced the mathematics of full-wave invisibility at all frequencies (http://www.arxiv.org/abs/math.AP/0611185). In their latest work, they examine the problem of cloaking not just passive objects, but also active devices that are emitting electromagnetic waves, and show that this requires modifying the original constructions.

(hat tip: Ilachina)

Goldbach conjecture: Proved?

Here's a paper that the authors say proved Goldbach's conjecture. From Wikipedia:

Goldbach's conjecture is one of the oldest unsolved problems in number theory and in all of mathematics. It states:

Every even integer greater than 2 can be written as the sum of two primes.

For example,

4 = 2 + 2
6 = 3 + 3
8 = 3 + 5
10 = 3 + 7 = 5 + 5
12 = 5 + 7
14 = 3 + 11 = 7 + 7
etc.

It's a very old problem and one that if solved, would be welcomed news in mathematics.

Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications

The University of Maryland is having a two-day seminar on Fourier Series in February. As part of the program you can get a trial copy of the Journal of Fourier Analysis and Applications free, just follow link above.

The journal is math-oriented but worth perusing. Enjoy.

Junk science

Ian Gilmartin, 60, has invented a mini water wheel capable of supplying enough electricity to power a house - for free. The contraption is designed to be used in small rivers or streams - ideal for potentially thousands of homes across Britain.

It is the first off-the-shelf water-wheel system that can generate a good supply of electricity from as little as an eight-inch water fall.

Have a laugh and read the article.

Dark Matter: What matters to the universe

The study, published in Nature journal, provides the best evidence yet that the distribution of galaxies follows the distribution of dark matter.

Scientists have mapped a small part of the sky in terms of the distribution of dark matter. There is reason to believe that this will show that the evolution of galaxies follows this distribution and that dark matter does, indeed, play a unique role in the development of our universe.

Additional article here, original article from Nature here.

Addicted to the 'Net? You're not alone

Ever feel that you have to publish something as often as possible on the Internet? Crazy to see your name on the screen, in Google listings or on Yahoo!? If so, you're not alone.

Hello, my name is Richard and I am an egosurfer. The habit began about five years ago, and now I need help. Like most journalists, I can't deny that one of my private joys is seeing my byline in print. Now the internet is allowing me to feed this vanity to an ever greater extent, and the occasional sneaky web search has grown into a full-blown obsession with how high up Google's ranking my articles appear when I put my name into the search box. When I last looked, my best effort was a rather humiliating 47th place. You know you have a problem when you find yourself competing for ranking with a retired basketball player from the 1970s.

Not that I'm alone in suffering from a dysfunctional techno-habit. New technologies have revealed a whole raft of hitherto unsuspected personality problems: think crackberry, powerpointlessness or cheesepodding (see "Modern maladies", bottom). Most of us are familiar with sending an email to a colleague sitting a couple of feet away instead of talking to them. Some go onto the web to snoop on old friends, colleagues or even first dates. More of us than ever reveal highly personal information on blogs or MySpace entries. A few will even use internet anonymity to fool others into believing they are someone else altogether. So are these web syndromes and technological tics new versions of old afflictions, or are we developing fresh mind bugs?

Developing a bad habit is easier than many might think.

No argument here.

Phase change memory

A team of scientists has announced a breakthrough in computer memory technology that heralded more sophisticated and reliable MP3 players, digital cameras and other devices.

Scientists from IBM, Macronix and Qimonda said they developed a material that made "phase-change" memory 500 to 1,000 times faster than the commonly-used "flash" memory, while using half as much power.

"You can do a lot of things with this phase-change memory that you can't do with flash," IBM senior manager of nanoscale science Spike Narayan told AFP.

"You can replace disks, do instant-on computers, or carry your own fancy computer application in your hand. It would complement smaller technology if manufacturers wanted to conjure things up."

Technical details of the research were to be presented to engineers gathered at the 2006 International Electronic Devices Meeting in San Francisco.

Interesting and exciting. The quest for better memory devices never ceases, and never ceases to amaze me.

(hat tip: Ilachina)

The Three-Body Problem: Book Review

The following review was posted to the Mathematical Association of America's website.

The Three-Body Problem by Mauri Valtonen and Hannu Karttunen

Publisher: Cambridge University Press (2006)
Details: 345 pages, Hardcover

Price: $80.00
ISBN: 0521852242

Category: Monograph
Topics: Mathematical Physics, Dynamical Systems, Classical Mechanics, Celestial Mechanics

MAA Review

[Reviewed by David Mazel, on 12/20/2006]

An undergraduate, having taken calculus and some physics, comes across the two-body problem. Specifically, what is the motion of two bodies in space acting under their mutual gravitational attraction? She quickly finds that she can solve the equations, and for given initial conditions, the solutions are conic sections. Then, the natural question to ask is: What is the solution if we now expand the system to three bodies? Here the problem is not so easy. In fact, it is impossible to solve in closed form.

This book begins by recounting what the student would have learned in that physics class and then goes into specifics of the three-body problem. Not only is the problem unsolvable in closed form; the solution, in general, involves chaotic dynamics. Nonetheless, there is much that can be learned by studying various forms of the problem under differing conditions. This book goes a long way to exploring these forms and explaining how the different scenarios can be approached.

The authors begin with a presentation of Newtonian mechanics and the solution of the two-body problem. The authors use physics to motivate the mathematics and derive the equations of motion — here, and throughout the book. Thus, the discussions are complete and present the ideas from the view of mathematical physics.

After discussion of the two-body problem we are introduced to Hamiltonian mechanics and some restricted three-body problems such as satellite orbits, and scatterings of bodies from a binary orbit. Other topics include escapes, three body scattering, and capture. The final topics deal with perturbations and various astrophysical problems such as black holes and the evolution of comet orbits.

Throughout the book the authors present diagrams to illustrate their points but these diagrams are limited in their utility. The authors could have presented more illustrative diagrams and figures to better qualify the text.

When I started reading I thought the book would discuss chaos and its relationship to the three body problem. After all, that's the first thought that comes to mind today. There is mention of this phenomenon, but very little, and no attention given to simulating orbits of three-body motion. For me, this was a disappointment.

Finally, the spirit of the book is mathematical physics; consequently, the authors often leave it to the reader to sort through the mathematics. I often found, for example, that I had to review earlier parts of the text and search for the equations — always present somewhere in the text but not explicitly noted nor cited — needed to follow the derivations and fill in many of the steps.

In short, this is a good text on the mathematical physics of the problem for the experienced practitioner. Everyone else, I'm afraid, will find it a challenge to read and follow the mathematics.

Mathematics in the court room

Ivars Peterson writes of two cases where mathematics comes to light in court.

Robots as Transformers

Remember as a kid how you could take a robot and with a few twist and changes make the robot into something else? The robot wasn't actually a robot and while it didn't move by itself, you had a pretty good idea of how, if you had the technology, that robot could move. A little imagination and your play robot was the real thing. Then, if you had a little sadistic bent to yourself, you could pull off a limb of your robot. Now, could you imagine how to make this deformed robot move? I bet you could.

Fast forward to the present and meet Victor Zykov from Cornell University. He and he colleagues have built a robot that, when it loses a limb, is able to visualize itself (not as seen by a child playing with the robot) and determine how to move with the limbs it has left.

So, this robot can remake itself in terms of mobility when it's damaged.

Read the article, it's fascinating and is a leap forward in robotics.

Wireless power: No more extension cords?

1) Power from mains to antenna, which is made of copper 2) Antenna resonates at a frequency of 6.4MHz, emitting electromagnetic waves 3) 'Tails' of energy from antenna 'tunnel' up to 5m (16.4ft) 4) Electricity picked up by laptop's antenna, which must also be resonating at 6.4MHz. Energy used to re-charge device 5) Energy not transferred to laptop re-absorbed by source antenna. People/other objects not affected as not resonating at 6.4MHz

It's not the end of extension cords, but it is the beginning of looking at how we might use the concept of resonance to delivery electricity to electronic devices.

The answer the team came up with was "resonance", a phenomenon that causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied.

"When you have two resonant objects of the same frequency they tend to couple very strongly," Professor Soljacic told the BBC News website.

Resonance can be seen in musical instruments for example.

"When you play a tune on one, then another instrument with the same acoustic resonance will pick up that tune, it will visibly vibrate," he said.

Instead of using acoustic vibrations, the team's system exploits the resonance of electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic radiation includes radio waves, infrared and X-rays.

hat tip: Ilachina

Images by Neutrinos

This a photo of the sun. Not taken with the usual medium for viewing the sun (photons), but taken with neutrinos. Partly at night. Through the earth. It was photographed by the Super-Kamiokande experiment in Japan with 503.8 days and nights of exposure.

More on neutrios here.