42 Questions for Particle Physicists

42 Questions for Particle Physicists

In a few days, scores of Italian post-doctoral researchers in experimental particle physics will get tested on their knowledge of the matter, without any promise of a position, but just to get one…
Save Newspapers by Banning Links?

Save Newspapers by Banning Links?

Someone's got issues with Web 2.0 - hell, with Web 1.0: Of all the misguided schemes put forth lately to save newspapers (micropayments! blame Google!), the one put forth by Judge Richard Posner has…
How Proteins Bind DNA (And How Not to Model Them)

How Proteins Bind DNA (And How Not to Model Them)

How proteins recognize specific stretches of DNA is one of the key questions of gene regulation. One would like to be able to look at the regulatory DNA sequence adjacent to a gene, and predict which…
Upthrusting Plates: Creating Washington

Upthrusting Plates: Creating Washington

Two hundred million years ago, Washington was two large islands, bits of continent on the move westward, eventually bumping up against the North American continent and calling it home. Even with…
Concept of Intelligence - Part 3

Concept of Intelligence - Part 3

As we saw in the previous posts, Part 1 and Part 2,many animals have the ability to abstract concepts and to abstract solutions to various problems. So what’s left? I am going to postulate that what…
The Meaning Of Tolerance

The Meaning Of Tolerance

The Meaning Of Tolerance Tolerance, the ability to 'live with' or 'put up with' something has wide-ranging applications in engineering, and is strongly parallel to the notion of error bars1 in…