The Subtle Fear of Being Scooped

My current UROPS project is on post-Markovian open quantum systems, extending an idea from one paper published some three years ago. The idea basically uses some tricks to bypass some difficulties in non-Markovian systems. While the idea has yet to gain widespread acceptance, I constantly see new papers published which cited the original article.

Whenever I come across such an article, especially one that resembles very much my project, there is a pang of fear of being scooped. Naturally, with the scale of my project, it won't be as disastrous as actual research projects where being scooped can very well mean a severe loss in one's academic/research record, but nonetheless there would be a deflated feeling that results from the news. It's as if I am reproducing someone else's results (although independently) instead of coming up with it.

Fortunately, none of these papers are anything close to my project. One did come close though, even citing the paper I'm basing my project on, but they used another model instead. On the flip side, it isn't so bad for my UROPS if I get scooped, since I can use that paper to verify my results.

Unless my results are wrong, of course...

Term Tests and Term Break

Phew! What a week it has been! Two tests on two consecutive days... my mind feels completely deflated... Actually, having two tests wasn't that bad. It's the fact that one of the tests was a super killer that's really strangling. The difficulty of Englert's tests are legendary.

To be honest, I'd be quite satisfied if I can secure 10 marks (out of 100) and elated if I hit 20. Usually, the mark distribution of his tests has two bumps and zero everywhere else. One bump is at the top end, which is usually occupied by those with Mathematica and MatLab and all those pirated softcopy textbooks installed in their brains. The other bump - typically larger than the first - is near the zero marks. Oh, and don't ask me how he moderates the marks... Lorentz transform, maybe?

Well, at least they're all over and now with the semester break, I can enjoy a nice rest I will have time for other pending stuff like my UROPS, which is seriously lagging behind and, if I don't speed up, I might as well hand in a report with only literature review, and my PC3193 Experimental Physics, which has taken a backseat throughout the semester. And I need to read up on the projects that the two SPS groups I'm mentoring are doing - Brownian motors (statistical mechanics) and graphene (materials science/solid states). And the first group is intending to go into the biophysics application of that field, meaning I may need to beef up my bio knowledge as well. Oh, and I need to clear my IPPT.

Yay term break!

Put Your Full Stops

I was scanning through some of my Australia photos for my SEP testimony, when I came across this photo I ought to have posted here when I got the chance, but probably forgot about it.



This shows that if you need to vandalise for a cause, make sure you do it such that no one can "correct" them.

International Philosophical

Just came across this beauty of a Monty Python sketch on philosophy, and it tickled me thoroughly. For all those who know about philosophers and certain philosophies like those of Nietzsche, Kant, Marx and Hagel, this will be quite a beautiful nonsense. For all those who don't, it's still excellent nonsense anyway, just that the nonsense has less meaningful nonsense in it.

A Questionable Silliness

One of the Monty Python's most popular sketches, The Minstry of Silly Walks, featured John Cleese acting as a government official whose department specialised in... well... silly walks (do a Youtube search to see the ridiculous style of movement). And then I just came across this news article entitled "Maths explains why 'silly walks' are silly" published about half a year ago.

The news article suggested that a recent paper in the Royal Society (a reputable scientific journal) has shown, through mathematics, that the "silly walk" style of walking is, surprise!, not efficient. In fact, in the lead of the article this was written:

SCIENTISTS have explained mathematically why the famous "silly walks" of Monty Python's John Cleese have never caught on in the long history of Homo sapiens.

The first thought that came to my mind was the utter duh-ness in the entire issue. It takes no brains to figure out that "silly walk" hinders mobility and any creature that evolved silly walks would be brutally murdered by natural selection.

I was curious enough to search for the supposed article, and guess what? There is no reference whatsoever to the Monty Python sketch. The article, entitled "Idealized walking and running gaits minimize work", studies two forms of human movement and evaluates their efficiency. In fact, the abstract is as follows:

Even though human legs allow a wide repertoire of movements, when people travel by foot they mostly use one of two locomotor patterns, namely, walking and running. The selection of these two gaits from the plethora of options might be because walking and running require less metabolic energy than other more unusual gaits. We addressed this possibility previously using numerical optimization of a minimal mathematical model of a biped. We had found that, for a given step-length, the two classical descriptions of walking and running, 'inverted pendulum walking' and 'impulsive running', do indeed minimize the amount of positive work required at low and high speeds respectively. Here, for the case of small step-lengths, we establish the previous results analytically. First, we simplify the two-dimensional particle trajectory problem to a one-dimensional 'elevator' problem. Then we use elementary geometric arguments on the resulting phase plane to show optimality of the two gaits: walking at low speeds and running at high speeds.

So it hardly needs to be said that silly walk was added into the news article to grab attention, in the process of which the original research article was made to look rather silly in itself.

Happy Chinese New Year

Yay! As title says...

The CNY Tutorial

It appeared, last week, as if my PC4242 Electrodynamics tutorial on Wednesday 1600 - 1700 is set to go on this week. That is because when the tutor asked the class, it turned out that only three students (out of 20+) - all Malaysians - won't be around. The tutor felt that it's not very fair to everyone to cancel class just because of three people, and what's more it's an official school day.

But luckily Englert decided to give us a break and cancel it. Which means I no longer have to rush home right after the tutorial (which tend to drag past 1700, by the way) to catch dinner with my family. In return, he expects the tutorials and assignments to be very good, since we have two weeks to work on it.

But doesn't he know that no homework ought to be done on CNY? It's bad luck you know... no? Craps...

NUS Mail Spam Filter

I must admit that the NUS mail spam filter is pretty effective. It has quite successfully junked all the spam mails that has been arriving into my email account recently. Certainly, it was much better than about a year ago, when erectile dysfunction pills and cheap watches ads still found their way into my inbox.

However, it may be working a little bit too effectively. While I never had any important mail being redirected into the spam folder, I found that some of my subscriptions to mailing lists has been considered as spam. And they're not those "useless" kind of subscription, but email alerts to journals like Physics News and Physical Review.

I thought that NUS mail would recognise the sender from a reputable organisation (@aps.org, or American Physical Society), but it seems that I may have to move them out manually. And to be honest it's feels quite queer rummaging through my spam folder, amongst the "sexual enhancements" and "designer apparels" mails for stuff on science.