Archive for April, 2022
Will our boreal forests become a carbon bomb?
Leading up to Earth Day on Friday, last week’s CBS Mornings show featured several reports on environmental issues. One that caught my eye provided a birds-eye view of 10 giant octagonal glass chambers in northern Minnesota’s Marcell Experimental Forest operated by the U.S. Forest Service. They look very much like an alien colony!
It turns out, though, that this out-of-this-world complex is the home of the “SPRUCE” experiment, providing data on Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments. From what I saw on CBS, things do not look good for boreal trees subjected to the most extreme conditions of temperature and carbon dioxide. However, it will be best not to make any conclusions until this “largest climate change experiment on the planet” ends it’s 10-year run some years from now.
“Will deep belowground warming in future release 10,000 years of accumulated carbon from peatlands that store one-third of earth’s terrestrial carbon?”
– The ‘bombshell’ question that the SPRUCE experiment hopes to answer
Major League Baseball goes all in for humidors to dampen homeruns
As I reported back in 2018 in my blog on Boffins baffled by baseballs being bashed beyond ballpark borders, MLB experimentally imposed humidors in select stadiums with high rates of home runs, such as Coors Field in Denver and Chase Field in Phoenix. The moistening evidently worked well enough* to make humidors mandatory for all teams, including my home-town squad—the Minnesota Twins, this season.
Perhaps the humidors will dampen down the homers a bit, at least in the drier climates of Denver, Phoenix and the like. But, despite dealing with the reduced coefficient of restitution (?), our “Bombas” blasted 6 round-trippers on Sunday at Target Field in Minneapolis. So, I am skeptical (though happy for my Twins).
This will not be a big deal in most parks but the most humid parks (San Francisco, San Diego, Miami, Tampa Bay) may get an offensive boost as the humidors will dry the balls out a little.
Eno Saris, baseball analytics writer for The Athletic, Mar 25, 2022 tweet
I suggest that MLB try deadening bats to further reduce home runs. This worked well for the Little League—reducing homers by 70%.** The trick will be working out a way to do it with wood. Going to plastic and/or metal would be ruinous for the Grand Old Game.
In any case, it would be great to see MLB get back to fast moving shorter games. Though home runs are exciting, they do not balance off the boring plethora of strikeouts and the inaction of the 7 position players.
*For the statistics, see this Hardball Times April 26, 2019 blog by David Kagan on The Physics of Humidors: A Second Case Study at Chase Field.
** “Little League Slows the Home Run Revolution”, Wall Street Journal, Amanda Christovich, 4/19/19.
The Feynman Technique for mastering concepts
After I watched a statistics webinar on the Stat-Ease channel, YouTube laid out a series of further videos that ‘they’ (the artificial intelligence) thought I might like to see next. They did well by suggesting this simple explanation of “How to Learn Faster with the Feynman Technique”. Being an admirer of this famous physicist and his incredible ability to explain complex concepts, I am happy to now know that his secret is simple: Once you understand something, spell it out as simply as possible to an imaginary listener. In other words, teach what you’ve learned to someone else.
Though, thanks to the AI wizard at YouTube, I only just came across the Feynman Technique, it turns out that I inadvertently applied this approach in my first try at teaching statistical design of experiments (DOE). I understood DOE very well, or so I thought until I had to lay it out the first time for a group of industrial researchers. As soon as the questions started, I realized that I should have rehearsed a lot more with a dummy audience, such as a goldfish.
“The questions of the students are often the source of new research. They often ask profound questions that I’ve thought about at times and then given up on, so to speak, for a while. It wouldn’t do me any harm to think about them again and see if I can go any further now. The students may not be able to see the thing I want to answer, or the subtleties I want to think about, but they remind me of a problem by asking questions in the neighborhood of that problem. It’s not so easy to remind yourself of these things.”
Richard Feynman, Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!‘
To make matters worse, the class was held at a restaurant on stilts just off the shore of San Francisco Bay. During the first few hours of my class an earthquake hit. The whole building wobbled back and forth for a minute or so. That night another earthquake shook me out of bed.
Somehow, I made through the week-long class relatively intact, but with a vow to never again come in so unprepared for a presentation.
Lesson learned!