The Scian Melt # 12

The ribbon on the right is to condole the death of innocent souls in the dastardly attacks at Delhi’s market places. Please blog about this crime… i hope we don’t need desipundit’s calls for “… Day” to even have a post.
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Now to the 12th edition of the Scian Melt.

Starting with math stuff, Anand of Locana takes time out to explain an elegant property of the ever interesting Fibonacci series. And Sivakumar does not like the usual base-10 “long-division”. He prefers a base-2 method and feels that it brings home the idea of partitioning in a simpler way. He also has interesting comments on selling Science in general and Theoretical Computer Science in particular. And at Geomblog, Suresh falls silent when he meets a cab-driver enquiring about P-NP algorithms!..a must read.

Check out Abi’s(of Nanopolitan) post in memory of Richard Smalley, the Nobel Laureate who discovered fullerenes. Abi is also upset about the falling quality of the editorials in Current Science, India’s premier Science Journal. Given Current Science’s pre-eminent position amongst Indian Journals, this is a serious issue. And Resonance, the pedagogical cousin of Current Science made a curious appearance at CosmicVariance. In the comments section, a reader expresses doubts about the contribution of cultural inclinations to the title of the magazine. I couldn’t get at what he is trying to point out.. u can try!

Are we alone in this universe??..we might never know, but we have an equation which may help us in this regard!… the famous Drake equation. Sowmya has a post on it. Her fifth post on Einstein is also out. This time, it is the epochal explanation for Brownian Motion . Nandakumar argues against “comparative judgment” while doing research. The example he quotes is from his own experience as a physicist..but i guess it is true everywhere. More on Physics…check out my post on Physicists’ way with words. Electron Blue has an interesting experience of explaining Quantum Physics to an Indian. It is to do with the Deepak Chopra’s nonsensical package of Quantum Healing + Traditional Indian… Don’t we get into such situations pretty often??

In response to an email request, Selva at Scian tells us about how the rainbows that we see are unique to each of us! He also clarifies on the physics of earthquakes, while varnam (having been thro quite a few quakes) reiterates the importance of being serious about earthquake-proof buildings. Charu of indsight has an update on the status of HIV in India.

And now, to our regular science periodicals.. Sunil is out with the 4th edition of his wonderful “Everything Scientific”. And, in his new series of casual weekend discussions, Sunil points out that we have something to learn from those “lean, mean, fighting machines”. The recently started Science Fridays @ Sepia is now running to full houses! The second edition is about China’s Space mission while the third talks about Asians in the Science Policy-making hierarchy of the US. Both posts have attracted a large no. of comments.

If all of that was too much of serious science.. go over to Prashant’s (at Kyun) post on the most significant sci-flicks.

The Melt comes to an end with a hot discovery! CuriousGawker has found that The Center for Humanity and Underhanded Remote Control of Humanity has found a remote control for humans. See the post to learn more about this organisation and its competitors, closer home.

Hope U liked the Melt…and pple, I had nominations from just two people (Selva,Sowmya ). Do show more enthu for future melts. This melt is a great idea! Infact, the next melt is still up for grabs..show your interest by signing up with Selva (melt [at] thescian.com)