Archive for category science
Chance discovery on random walk in Utrecht
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on December 11, 2023
Last week I taught a class on design of experiments to a biotech company in Leiden, Netherlands. Afterwards I spent a few days in Utrecht with some friends from Germany. Imagine my excitement (nerd alert!) when on my first walk from our hotel to the city center just a few hundred feet down the sidewalk I encountered this mural featuring a differential equation.
Not being a physicist, I did not immediately grasp the formula’s importance, nor the clue provided by the fellow high-stepping down a street. It turns out this fellow is a drunk whose walk has become random. The mural, as explained by Utrecht University, pays homage to their famous professor Leonard Ornstein who, in the early 1900s along with another physicist—George Uhlenbeck—developed an important variant of the “random walk”—a term introduced by pioneering statistician Karl Pearson. The Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process is used to derive models from “big” financial data, including inflation rates, commodity prices and stock values.
I did not expect to gain an education on a vacation expedition.
Very cool!
PS: I thought about asking my colleague Martin Bezener, a PhD statistician, for his opinion on the chances of coming across something so relevant to our mission at Stat-Ease while on a random walk. But I will not bother, because I already know what he would say: “One-hundred percent: It already happened”.
British system of messed up measures hilariously skewered
Upon graduation as a chemical engineer in 1975 I took a job as a process developer at a California oil company. There I learned that a barrel amounted to 42 gallons—not the 55 in the drums at my previous employer—a specialty chemical company. In the wacky British system of volumes, the number of gallons in a barrel depends on the material—31 for beer, 53 for rum (yo ho ho!), 60 for wine, etc. Their weights and distances are just as unfathomable (pun intended).
That same year of 1975 that I first became employed as a degreed engineer, President Gerald Ford signed the Metric Conversion Act, which went nowhere before being abolished in 1982 by President Reagan. Having endured all this measurement mess throughout my career, I thoroughly enjoyed this October 28 Saturday Night Live skit:
I raise my US pint (16 fluid ounces) of beer to SNL’s clever comedy writers, though a British pint (20 fluid ounces) would be more filling and a liter even sweeter. Let’s not get into US versus Imperial ounces (or gallons)—that would get us over our head by at least a fathom (equivalent to 4 cubits, by the way).
PS. This rant about measures brings me full circle to an outburst at the outset of this year involving a whimsical unit of distance called the ‘smoot’.
Data detectives keep science honest
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on October 6, 2023
An article in Wall Street Journal last week* drew my attention to a growing number of scientists who moonlight as data detectives sleuthing out fraudulent studies. Thanks to their work the number of faulty papers retracted increased from 119 in 2002 to 5,500 last year. These statistics come from Retraction Watch who provide a better, graphical, perspective on the increase based on percent retractions per annual science and engineering (SE) publication–not nearly as dramatic given the explosion in publications over the last 20 years, but still very alarming.
“If you take the sleuths out of the equation it’s very difficult to see how most of these retractions would have happened.”
Ivan Oransky, co-founder of Data Colada –a blog dedicated to investigative analysis and replication of academic research.
Coincidentally, I just received this new cartoon from Professor Nadeem Irfan Bukhari. (See my all-time favorite from him in the April 27, 2007 StatsMadeEasy blog Cartoon quantifies commitment issue.)
It depicts statistics as the proverbial camel allowed to put its nose in the tent occupied by science disciplines until it become completely entrenched.
Thank goodness for scientists like Nadeem who embrace statistical tools for design and analysis of experiments. And kudos to those who guard against faulty or outright fraudulent scientific publications.
*The Band of Debunkers Busting Bad Scientists, Nidhi Subbaraman, 9/24/23
Smoot points about measurements
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on January 4, 2023
Does it really matter that the calendar turned over from December 2022 to January 2023? From where I sit nothing much changed from one day—12/31/22—to the next—1/1/23. It’s just as cold here in Minnesota—below freezing (32 F or 0 C: Take your pick). Must we pay any attention to an irrelevant measure of time passing by? Of course, the answer is “yes” for everyone to party on a timely basis for the New Year, birthdays, and anniversaries. However, I feel badly for my niece’s daughter born on Leap Day 2020—no 1st birthday until 2024. That’s a measurement failure. Anyways, Happy New Year!
Also, why do we continue to favor English versus metric units here in the USA? That is a huge waste! Let’s begin the conversion by expanding the football fields to 100 meters. The players won’t even notice the 10 percent increase in required effort. My feeling is that this will be the breakthrough to the far more sensible and scientific metric system—a movement that seemed certain to succeed when Congress passed the Metric Conversion Act in 1975. Unfortunately, this became a political football when folks here in the Midwest resisted being told to post their distances in kilometers rather than miles.
The silliness of the archaic English anthropometric measures, such as height in feet and quantities of spices in pinches, came to a head in 1958 when frat brothers from MIT flipped a pledge named Oliver Smoot over-and-over the length of the Mass. Ave. bridge for a total of 364.4 Smoots (plus “one ear”*). In 2016, the MIT Alumni magazine published this April Fool’s joke that the Institute planned to recalibrate the Smoot to its namesakes current height (presumably a bit shrunken by the decades). What I find most interesting is that Smoot later served as chairman of the American National Standards Institute and president of the International Organization for Standardization. He went all out, literally, for the sake of measurements!
By way, it snowed 4 and 3/16ths of an inch yesterday according to my double Helix measuring ‘stick’. For my own purposes, I always use the metric side of this ruler—much preferring its decimal system (m/cm/mm, etc.) over the cumbersome fractions of inches. But to keep things simple, I pay the teenager next door by the inch.
PS It snowed another 6 inches overnight, bringing the total to 25 cm or so (deliberately mixing measurement scales to make my point). In any case, I need a taller ruler!
*Per Smoot in this 1995 interview. I first heard of him from the November 21st Wall Street Journal review of “Beyond Measure: The Hidden History of Measurement from Cubits to Quantum Constants.” For details and reader ratings (assuming you like accurate measurements!) of this new book, I recommend you go to this Goodreads site.
Spacecraft DART scores a direct hit on asteroid Dimorphos
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on September 27, 2022
It was amazing to see today the videos from NASA showing a direct hit by their spacecraft DART (an acronym for “Double Asteroid Redirection Test”) on the asteroid Dimorphos.
Here are some amazing statistics on this astounding feat of physics:
- DART traveled 56,000 miles to accomplish its $330 million suicidal mission against the 560-foot diameter Dimorphos.
- DART came in at 1,260 pounds to impact the 11-billion-pound Dimorphos, similar in scale to a house-fly smashing into an NFL running back. This seems harmless if not for the fact that the fly is going 15,000 miles per hour!
- NASA’s boffins predict that the impact will shift the orbit of Dimorphos around its bigger sibling Didymos by 1%–reducing it by 7 minutes from the current rate of about 12 hours per revolution.
The big question is: Could we really deflect an asteroid heading for Earth? Given the success of DART, I am now a lot more optimistic that, by the time a planet-threatening object comes our way, a defense system will be in place.
“We do not currently know of any object of “moderate” size which has a chance of impact in the next 100 years. …Please keep in mind that anything smaller than about 30 meters in size will have an airburst and is unlikely to reach ground (excluding metallic NEAs). Our atmosphere is very efficient at protecting us from small impacts.”
– Asteroid scientist Marina Brozovic
A very scents-able invention for detecting odors
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on January 23, 2022
I was impressed to see this recent New York Times ‘heads-up’ featuring a fellow chemical engineer from University of Minnesota, Chuck McGinley, who operates a lab just a few miles down the road from my home in Stillwater, MN. They got a great shot of Chuck using his Nasal Ranger to sniff around in South St. Paul, last summer. That area of the Twin Cities has emitted unpleasant odors throughout my lifetime—it being founded as a regional stockyard and still the home of a stinky rendering plant.*
“Some of the most recognizable and potent odors, like hydrogen sulfide (think rotten egg) can be sensed at even the tiniest concentrations, like 1 part per billion. ‘If you were to map out the distance from New York to Los Angeles, 1 part per billion would account for only a few inches along that route’.”
– New York Times quoting Professor Jacek Koziel, Iowa State
It turns out that there’s a surprising amount of science behind detecting and characterizing odors as detailed in this blog by St. Croix Sensory, where Chuck works as Technical Director. Unfortunately, the main focus of these experts on smelling must, by necessity, be on detection of ‘off-odors’, such as that emanating from kitty litter (yuk!). If I had a Nasal Ranger, it would be aimed at a rose garden or at a barbecue grill, that is, “on” odors.
PS: Sadly, the current coronaviruses not only cause the loss of smell but also a perverse reversal of olfactory senses called “parosmia.” This can make savory foods smell like rotting sewage as noted in a 1/18/22 report by CNBC on how Covid can turn kids into ‘fussy eaters’ if it changes their sense of smell.
*As reported in 11/22/21, Des Moines Register, ‘You can’t escape it’: Stench spoils downtown experience for some in Des Moines , the residents of South St. Paul won a settlement in 2020 for $750,000 for putting up with the off-putting odors.
Fly often, fail often, test often
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized on September 27, 2021
Being addicted to experimenting, I greatly admire the “fly often, fail often, test often” spirit of the University of Minnesota Rocket Team. On Thursday these student rocketeers updated us engineering and other U Mn alums on their latest exploits, including a win and Overall Award in the 30k bracket of the Spaceport America Cup 2021.
Having grown up during the Space Race and celebrated my golden 16th birthday the day Apollo 11 launched off to put the first man on the Moon, I am keen to see such great leaps in technology for amateur rocketry. It astounds me that a group comprised mainly of undergrad aeronautical engineers can design and build an aircraft reaching 30,000 feet (and much higher if not prohibited by the FAA). That beats my personal-best for rocketry by 29,970 feet or so, ha ha.
“It all looked so easy when you did it on paper — where valves never froze, gyros never drifted, and rocket motors did not blow up in your face.”
Milton W. Rosen, rocket engineer and project manager in the US space program between the end of World War II and the early days of the Apollo Program.
With such great “can do” spirit, willingness to fail, and the high-tech resources of our College of Science and Engineering, the flying Gophers will go far in future, I feel sure.
Archer’s Big Bounce Experiment
I am a big fan of University of Minnesota Athletics—even more so now after they sponsored a Science of Basketball project for grade schoolers. My 9-year-old grandson Archer jumped at the chance to put a variety of basketballs to the test with my help. For the results, see the video we submitted to the UMn judges.
Archer’s findings–wood being better than rubber for bounce–stand out in graphics generated with Design-Expert software.
Archer enjoyed doing this science project. I feel sure it helped him understand what it takes to design an experiment, do it properly and analyze the result. My only disappointment is that the high-tech cell-phone app for measuring height, which I used for my experiment on elastic spheres, failed due to too much echo in the gym, most likely.
However, I discovered another intriguing basketball-physics experiment at the Science Buddies STEM website. It determines where a bouncing ball’s energy goes . This requires deployment of an infrared-temperature gun with a laser beam. Awesome! Archer will like that (if he can wrestle the laser gun away from me).
“You touch the stupid object, you change the stupid object”
So, according to the Wall Street Journal*, says Jon Pratt, a mechanical engineer with the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). He was speaking about a cylinder of platinum-iridium forged in 1889, known as “Le Grand K”, which on May 20 went out of service as the kilogram standard.
Metrologists worldwide now will define this weight by non-physical methods based on non-changing constants of the universe. It will be measured by a high-tech tool called the Kibble balance.
For a detailed explanation of the new kilogram standard and a fascinating video of NIST’s Kibble balance in action, see the Wired magazine post by physics professor Rhett Allain on The Basic Physics of the Kilogram’s Fancy New Definition. Weighty stuff! (A bit too dense for me—I just like the Kibble…mesmerizing.)
*(“The Numbers” by Jo Craven McGinty, “The Kilogram Faces a New Test of Metal”, 6/8/19)
Chinese grow cotton on the far side of the moon
Early this year the Chang’e 4 (named for the Chinese Moon goddess) landed on the moon and sent out the Yutu 2 (Chinese for “jade rabbit”) for a short hop on the surface. The mission achieved a first by growing cotton. Never before has mankind grown plants on the surface of another world. Unfortunately, when the sun set (as it does every two weeks) they quickly died from the extreme cold—minus 62 F.
“Huddled together, the seedlings resembled a miniature, deep-green forest.”
– Marina Koren, “How Do Plants Grow in Space?” Jan 30, 2019, The Atlantic
The next step will be to build a sustainable garden on the moon or, better yet, Mars. Along these lines, NASA recently posted the finalists of the “BIG Idea Challenge 2019” to develop planetary greenhouse concepts. If you’d like to experiment on growing plants on the Red Planet, pick up some dirt from the Martian Garden. Students at Villanova who tried this in 2017 found that onions, garlic, kale and hops grew well, which would make an interesting diet for Mars colonists.