AND, 500 Days of Summer is a gorgeous, wonderful movie that you must see. Now. Right after you play around with the Hello Graph Generator.
Maheen
I'm going to resume work on an open math problem related to Delauney graphs today. I'm very excited about it. In the meantime, here's a small component of a software I worked on this semester. It's called the Hello Graph Generator and is inspired by the Hello World programs of the world. The software version of it is called Concept Map Generator. I just made up the names. AND, 500 Days of Summer is a gorgeous, wonderful movie that you must see. Now. Right after you play around with the Hello Graph Generator. Maheen
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The day after my exams ended I went to watch New Moon - the sequel to the hit vampire romance Twilight. It was quite an experience. I haven't read the book so it was quite difficult to understand what the actors kept mumbling. It got better after a bit because the vampire-human couple broke up and so all the sickening, sentimental whispering ended. Also the female teenage population at the cinema did not help. They yelled each time Robert Pattinson (vampire) or Taylor Lautner (werewolf) appeared on screen. It was disgusting. And so I did not yell with them. No I didn't. Yes I did. Just once to see how it felt. Not how it felt to cheer for two handsome boys. Very handsome boys. No I did not yell for those two handsome boys. It is not important why I yelled.
Anyway, the movie. Interesting movie. If I overlook the "I'm too dangerous for you and I love you too much and that's why I need to leave you Bella, just don't do anything reckless" bit, I quite enjoyed the rest. The stunts and graphics were rather remarkable. And by remarkable I mean better than those of the first movie. Honestly though, I think its time movie-makers recognize that the meadow scene has gotten old. The one where Bella and Edward are sprawled out on the grass gazing intently into each others' eyes. Kinda nauseating, but I guess it works to get the attention of fifteen-year olds and a certain twenty-year old we are not going to speak about. Currently listening to: Eyes on Fire - Blue Foundation (Twilight OST) Wafa I recently got my hands on The Road to Reality: A complete guide to the laws of the Universe by Roger Penrose, a book I've wanted to read for a very long time. It's nearly 1200 pages long and the rather intimidating yet appealling contents tell me it might be a while(perhaps not until the end of my final year in college) before I am fully able to understand what the book has to offer. But hey, what claims to be a complete guide must have an intimidating element to it, no? Secretly, isn't that one of your reasons for loving science?Be honest.
In the meanwhile, lets talk about the author himself a bit. Roger Penrose is not an unfamiliar name to those excited by Physics and Mathematics.(At this point I am tempted to make a digression and quote our Modern Physics professor Dr.Sabieh Anwar:"But we are not Mathematicians.We are human beings!")Anyway, Roger Penrose is an acclaimed Mathematical Physicist and is particularly famous for his contributions to General Relativity and Twistor theory among many other things. He also holds interesting and sometimes questionable views on the connection between Physics, Maths and conciousness. He even came up with a theory linking microtubles and quantum gravity to explain human thinking; intense discussions on Artificial Intelligence are bound to bring up Penrose's views. Amongst his more trivial yet puzzling works is the development of the famous Penrose stairs shown below. The figure is aptly called the impossible staircase because the two-dimensional illusion implies that you can climb 'up' or 'down' round a 360-degrees turn and still be on the same level! Look closely, and if you ever come up with a 3-d replica of the object below let me know. Till then, it's the yummy Islamabad winter, steaming coffee and funny-scientist-thoughts for me:) Mehr The semester has (almost) come to an end. The reason why we've been avoiding blogging for so long is because we've been burning the midnight oil, or trying really hard to, studying for our finals which just ended. On the plus side, however, we have new recruits who you shall find out about soon enough! So in the next few weeks, we'll be trying to blog alot more, put up a few more essays in the Work section, and just generally revitalize the website to make it look grander. Do bear with us. Sadly, we are all college students prey to the pressures of examinations but mostly we're just lazy. We'll try to sort that out.
Have a fun semester break! Listening to: Willie Nelson - Angels Flying Too Close to the Ground
Let me just start by saying that we're really glad that we have finally gotten this website off the ground. The response has generally been brilliant and so far, our batchmates in SSE have seemed to like it, which is great because they're the people that matter most (har har). I emailed the link to The Box Move to Dr. Asad Naqvi, our Physics instructor who has fast established his status as almost-deity at SSE, and he seems to feel that we need to expand our network of bloggers so we can have more people contributing to the blog. If you want to contribute essays, or just be a blogger who would like to share interesting (read science-related) articles, cartoons, videos or anything really, do let us know. We don't have an email address for The Box Move just yet, but hopefully we will soon. Till then, please approach us whenever and wherever you can, and hopefully we can expand this project. In the interests of creating a trend, here is a link to an article published the The Economist recently in the Science and Technology section on how the oceans now absorb less and less carbon dioxide therefore leading to climate change. http://www.economist.com/sciencetechnology/displayStory.cfm?story_id=15009907 Climate change has been pretty big for a while now, especially now as countries gather for the post-Kyoto conference in Copenhagen. Here's to hoping the world sees more California-like climate change reforms. And if us Pakistanis grow more aware of the dangers of global warming, legislation may follow to deal with the problem. If you read the article, you'll know about the hypothesis published recently in Nature Geoscience that climate change is a bit like a positive feedback mechanism. The idea is that the more temperatures change and polar ice caps melt, the more oceans lose their ability to absorb CO2. If you want to read more, here's the actual article: http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n12/full/ngeo689.html I'm out for now. Finals loom and I do think I have been ignoring IDE for a very long time now. Again, we need all the help we can get, so if you want to be a part of The Box Move, just say the word and it'll happen. Kamil P.S: Yes, we are trying to upgrade to our own domain. Soon. Hey, so I was desperately trying to look for something online but only the official site kept coming up on Google searches. Plus, random, completely useless (though relevent) newspaper clips. So I searched Facebook and Orkut. I got a fair list of Community and Fan Pages. A direct search on Youtube also gave a better response than a simple Google search. On a side note, I really don't know why MSN puts up with Bing.
I attended two Genetics classes last week and it was all pretty straightforward. Rugby match against UCL this Sunday at 3! Its their first ever 15's game! Come support them, although they always get a ridiculous amount of UCL support with them every time they come to play. Their crowd is rather entertaining (from a distance). SPADES didn't register for the society volley tournament. pfft. We have a winning team, will try to crash it. Cheers Hassan Mood: frankly emo
Listening to: Kelly Clarkson - Already Gone Hey welcome to the blog! We're really excited and you should be too. Because NOW not only do you get to read our limited but enthusiastic ramblings about science, you also get to sample our taste in questionable music (not me, I have great taste) and dodgy TV shows! Yay! A world of wonder awaits you (did I mention that we also alliterate?) Current talent: really long sentences and overuse of exclamation marks Cranky Bio Major signing out. Live long and prosper. Nimra |
The Box Move blog is no longer active since the founding team has graduated. The archives will remain online.
AFFILIATES: The SPROJ Forum for the SSE 2012 batch. Discuss potential Senior Projects here.
Brain Talk is an online resource and forum for all things Psychology and Neuroscience.
MUSIC FOR GEEKS:
Featured: Art Tatum Three Letter Word ON THE FRINGE:Learn something
The story of a how a YouTube video of a blind man biking down a mountain inspired good non-fiction writing on echolocation. You may find it useful for your own writing. Read here. An awful waste of space?
Amidst NASA's budgetary cuts and scientists' renewed vigor in justifying Space Programs, it is important to shed some light on the background. Click here for a succinct overview of the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence(SETI) project. Manto ka Muqaddama
Pakistaniat.com publishes, on the anniversary of Saadat Hasan Manto's death, a sampling of his works, a tribute to him as well as articles chronicling the obscenity trial he was tried for. Read all three parts of the series here. Not Another 2010 List
The folks over at The Last Word put up their list for the best non-fiction in the past year, including 'The Mind's Eye' which is very hard to find in bookstores, indeed! Read the full list here. Bird Conspiracies
Leslie Kaufman at The New York Times tells us exactly why those birds flying above are dropping to their deaths. Click here to read the article. Spontaneous Solar Growth!
Reported at MadScience, scientists at MIT have found a way to create solar cells that can regenerate themselves like living organisms. Read more here. Lessons from Chernobyl
Decades after the radiation disaster at Chernobyl, scientists elucidate how plant life has been thriving in the highly radioactive environment. Read more here. Rolling Ribbons
MIT Scientists revisit Galileo's famous inclined plane experiment, this time with polymer ribbons and discover complex results. Read here. A Lifetime, Washed Away
Pakistani author Daniyal Mueenuddin writes in the NY Times about the aftermath of the flood and displaced people. Read more here of the article posted by 3QD. On String theory and Materials Science
Click here to find out how physicists at MIT are using ideas of gauge/gravity duality to explain properties of superconductors. That's why you're irrational!
Newsweek's Sharon Begley provides a fascinating argument for why evolution may favor irrationality. I particularly liked the examples she picked. Read here. Just when you wanted a gene kit
The US Food and Drug Administration held hearings n the 19th and 20th of July to talk about the validity of tests which were sold directly to the public which gives consumers direct access to to their genomes. Should it be regulated? Read more here. On Trees and Prisons
In a 6 minute talk on Ted.com, Nalini Nadkarni (shown above) talks about her ideas of incorporating conservation into prison programs. Watch the talk and read Nadkarni's fascinating biography here. These Lungs are made in USA
Stem Cell Biology takes huge leaps forward with the new advances made in lung transplants based on using the lungs extracellular architecture. Read more from Nature here. Economist Special Reports
Ten years after Craig Venter revealed the first working draft of the entire Human Genome, this special report demonstrates how Biology is now at the brink of something brilliant - just recently, the draft of the entire genome of the Neanderthal was revealed. Suck on that, sceptics! Orbit Stories
Bobby Satcher, astronaut, the first orthopedic surgeon in space. Read all about his tales here on MITnews. Craig Venter Creations
Researchers create world's first fully synthetic self replicating, living cell. Massive fuss about limitless monster potential possible. Read the NewScientist article here. Watch the Ted.com talk by Craig Venter here. TAGS
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