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Space politics

Britain is successfully playing catch-up with America in promoting politicians who speak knowingly about the vast, mostly empty depths of the universe.

Andrew Griffiths – the UK’s new space minister – is his official title. Minister of State for Science, Research and Innovation – Granted one The interview Applause to Fraser Home Magazine

Griffith apparently gave him a demonstration of how to teach: “He points to a suspended globe in the Science Museum that changes from planet to planet and declares, ‘Now we’ve got Mars. !’ Only for an employee to gently inform him that it was in fact the sun. Undaunted, Griffiths exclaimed ‘That’s Saturn!’ As the planet changes. The employee interjects: ‘No, no, that’s Jupiter’.

In 1991, one of the first IG Nobel Prizes was awarded to then US Vice President Dan Quayle. Coyle was given additional duties, becoming head of something called the National Space Council. He was often in the news for educating the masses. Statements such as the following:

“[It’s] It is time for the human race to enter the solar system.

“We have seen the pictures. [of Mars] Where there are streams, we believe and water.”

“People who are really, really weird can get into sensitive positions and have a tremendous impact on history.”

Reference to IG Noble described Coyle praised him as a “consumer of time and occupier of space” and “for demonstrating, better than anyone else, the necessity of science education”.

The feedback is encouraging to see the educational vibe spreading from country to country. The sky, wherever that may be, is the limit.

Bass note

Andy Howe praised the somewhat musical discovery about a fish that spends most of its time at the bottom of a muddy ocean. Does Andy Howe find joy in the details? And how! He says: “I draw your attention to ‘A midbrain node for context-specific vocalization in fish’ (published in the journal Nature Communications) which is clearly related to the fish noise of the plainfin midshipman, a species also known as ‘The singing fish of CaliforniaEndowed with a ‘sonic swim bladder’, they can communicate with modulated, trumpety hums or grunts. There is a double resonance here, because the main author is a boss.

“A Boss” is Andrew Bass, professor of neurobiology and behavior at Cornell University in New York. When not at sea chasing fish, Bass spends time in his office, which is indoors. Mid hall. A boss, feedback can’t help but notice, stands in organic determination.

Light entertainment

Retired physician John Innes rallied to the Feedback Call (December 9, 2023) for the first time to give testimony that disproves or confirms the old adage “The art of medicine consists mostly of entertaining the patient while Nature cures disease”.

He first set the scene: “In the 1890s a Faroese/Danish physician, Niels Finsen, showed that UV light could cure tuberculosis (TB) of the skin. Finsen was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903 for this work. Awarded the prize.Finson’s original work used artificial UV light and it was widely used in the treatment of TB in the 1920s and 1930s.

“But it was already known that natural UV light was present in sunlight. This was one of the factors that spurred the development of Sanatorium for the treatment of TB. Once antibiotics were developed in the 1950s, The introduction changed the treatment of TB, consigning UV light therapy to history.

John then describes his experience as a physician in Birmingham, UK, in the 1980s, specializing in infectious diseases: “I was asked to see a 17-year-old boy who had recently began training as a nurse. At that time all new entrants to nurse training were offered a vaccine against TB, if they did not already have it. In her case, her injection An ulcer appeared at the site and it gradually grew to about 8 cm wide over two months. I suggested a course of antibiotics. But she was going on leave the next morning and had to collect the prescription. There was no time. So I asked her to stop her treatment and come back to see me in four weeks.

“She returned after spending two weeks in the sun on a beach near Tangiers. The ulcer was healed and nothing more was needed. So, she amused herself while nature healed her illness. was given.”

Loop soup

What is loop soup? It’s hard to say. Hard to say in short, that is.

Wojciech Furmanski and Adam Kolawa at the California Institute of Technology apparently inserted the phrase in the middle of a 35-page paper in Physics World in 1987 called “Yang-Mills Vacuum: An Attempt at Lattice Loop Calculus“, published in the journal Nuclear Physics B.

They only mention loop soup once. These are his words: “The medium is still far from an asymptotic ‘loop soup’, which is intolerable to our methods.”

This sentence may be incomprehensible to anyone without a deep study of nuclear physics. Yet the phrase caught on. Just 33 years later, Valentino Foote and Matthew Kleban at New York University wrote a paper called “New Brownie Loop Soup Recipes.“, which sounds positively appetizing.

Mark Abrahams created the Ig Nobel Prize ceremony and co-founded the magazine Annals of Improbable Research. Before that, he worked on unusual ways to use computers. It has a website. improbable.com.

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