Thousands Stream From New Orleans Ahead of Storm

The mayor of New Orleans, who referred to Hurricane Gustav as “the storm of the century,” said that 14,000 to 15,000 residents had already evacuated.

read more | digg story

Obama Outwits the Bloviators

Frank Rich lays out the reasons why the Obama campaign is a beast that this country has never seen before.

read more | digg story

World record ($100,000) prime number found?

Researchers may have turned up the 45th example of a Mersenne prime—a type of prime number rare enough that months or years of computerized searching are required to pick one out among the throngs of mere primes.

read more | digg story

Champagne and Tears

For black residents in and around Detroit, Barack Obama’s nomination helped to redeem some of the grief of many years of racial humiliation and oppression.

read more | digg story

Mexico Court Is Set to Uphold Legalized Abortion in Capital

A ruling upholding the law would be a setback for the conservative federal government of President Felipe Calderón, which challenged the law approved last month in Mexico City.

read more | digg story

Why commodity prices are not done rising yet

The commodity bull market has a long way to go. This bull market is not magic. It's not some crazy 'cycle theory' I have. It does not fall out of the sky. It's supply and demand. It's simple stuff.

read more | digg story

Street Corner Science with Leon Lederman - Pt. 2

Leon Lederman, 1988 Nobel Laureate in Physics, answers science questionsfrom passersby on a busy New York City street. He discusses time travel,nuclear fusion, the Higgs boson, and the reliability of America as a globalpartner in science research.

read more | digg story

What am I doing?

Today we had an academic meeting. The issue was: What to teach Mathematics Education students for their bachelor's degree?

I found this online:

"Why Major in Mathematics Education?

Employment
prospects are excellent for mathematics education degree students. A
critical shortage of math teachers exists throughout the nation,
creating increasing demand for bright new instructors. Graduates of the
mathematics education degree program also have the basic background to
pursue careers in the mathematics industry.

The mathematics
education degree program joins faculty from two top-notch programs.
College of Arts and Sciences mathematics faculty provide mathematics
instruction while College of Education faculty teaches education
classes. Mathematics education degree students also receive appropriate
field experiences teaching in selected west Michigan high schools.

The
Ferris State University mathematics education degree program requires
classes in general education, mathematics major and professional
education. A teaching minor is also required. You cannot have a
mathematics teaching minor with this teaching major. Mathematics
education degree students complete one semester of directed teaching at
the high school level. Upon completion of the Mathematics education
degree program requirements, Mathematics education degree students may
apply for Michigan Secondary Provisional Certification. Candidates are
required to pass state-mandated Subject Matter Exams in selected
teaching major and minors prior to certification recommendation."

Here in Guerrero, it is only one academic group which is in charge of both, the education, and the mathematics parts.

Why is this so?

History.

I won't try to explain it here; suffice it to say, that what we are doing is not the only way to do things.

I have to learn more education material.

José Luis Morán López

You can read below on the fate of this Mexican scientist. I met Dr. Morán when we were both much younger. He went to Germany and after a very successful career became a leading force in scientific research in Mexico, and his home state of San Luis Potosí.

It is with sadness that I read today about his troubles organizing scientists.

Good luck José Luis.

Scientists rally to Mexican researchers' plea

Two nanotechnology researchers at the Institute for Scientific and Technological Research of San Luis Potosí (IPICYT) claim they are being persecuted by the organization's administrators, after they testified in a long-running probe into the former director, José Luis Morán-López, who was ousted for nepotism in April.

read more | digg story

Double first for Large Hadron Collider

Champagne corks popped at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) this weekend after one of the facility's four giant particle detectors tasted its first authentic data. Crammed into a stuffy control room on the afternoon of Friday 22 August, physicists tracked the debris produced by protons that had struck a block of concrete during a test of the €3 bil..

read more | digg story

New window on the gamma-ray Universe

NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST) was launched on 11 June and turned on its main telescope two weeks later. It was immediately blasted with gamma-rays from blazar 3C454.3 — visible in the lower left quadrant of the telescope's first map of the sky. "It's a good example of the kind of things that are in store for us," says ...

read more | digg story

Mexican Opposition Parties Submit Pemex Legislation

Aug. 25 (Bloomberg) -- A group of Mexican political parties led by the Party of the Democratic Revolution submitted an energy bill to Congress that calls for lower taxes, more investment and limits on foreign investment in the industry.

read more | digg story

A Mexican Review of Oil Prices and US Supply & Demand

America’s current spectator sports (following escalating oil costs and complaining about gas prices) gave consumers relief during late July and early August; but there are upsetting signs that lead me to consider that this reprieve will be short-lived. The price of a barrel of oil may make a turnaround before year end and reach all-time highs ...

read more | digg story

Lasty 7 Years: China vs. United States -- Who is Better Off?

As snapshots go, the one China presented through the Olympics was enormously powerful — and it’s one that Americans need to reflect upon this election season.

read more | digg story

Pencil

 

This was done with Pencil. Nice Tool.

Extend Firefox 3 Winners - Mozilla Labs

Mozilla Labs announces the winners of their official Extend Firefox 3 Contest, and they're an impressive crop of new and updated extensions for your favorite browser.

read more | digg story

Firefox to get massive JavaScript performance boost

Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. The code was merged today (but is not yet ready to be enabled by default in the nightly builds) and is planned for inclusion in Firefox 3.1, the next incremental update of the open-source web browser.

read more | digg story

Intel gets into the wireless electricity game: Scientific Am

Are we closing in on laptops that can recharge without those annoying power cords?

read more | digg story

Party Picks Bhutto Widower for Pakistan President

The country’s main ruling party put forward Asif Ali Zardari as its candidate for the Sept. 6 vote to replace Pervez Musharraf.

read more | digg story

Now That’s Rich

One thing’s for sure: Barack Obama isn’t planning to raise taxes on the middle class, by any reasonable definition.

read more | digg story

Chavez bashes Mexico's Cemex after nationalization - Forbes.

CARACAS, Venezuela - President Hugo Chavez lashed out at Cemex SAB on Thursday, saying Venezuela is ready to put up a fight in international arbitration as the Mexican cement company seeks to challenge the nationalization of its cement plants

read more | digg story

Oil price hike shuts down 100,000 Mexican firms

MEXICO CITY : At least 100,000 small companies have been shut down in Mexico due to the soaring oil prices and new tax laws, the Latin American Organization of Small and Medium Companies (Alampyme) has said.

read more | digg story

Oil price surge helps Mexican peso; stocks sink

(Recasts throughout) MEXICO CITY, Aug 21 (Reuters) - The Mexican peso firmed on Thursday as oil prices surged, while stocks sank on worries about the U.S. credit crisis and as Mexico's economy grew less than expected in the second quarter. The...

read more | digg story

Gabino Barreda

I just finished reading "El positivismo y la circunstancia mexicana" by Leopoldo Zea. He analyzes Gabino Barreda's contribution to Mexican Public Education during Benito Juarez's government.

He changed the curriculum at the "Escuela Nacional Preparatoria" (National High School, Mexico City), from scholastic to positivist. This French Philosophy,Positivism, was created by August Comte. In Mexico Barreda saw a way to make it Mexican. Eventually it was the ideological basis for the emergent Mexican Bourgeoisie.

Porfirio Díaz and a group of "Científicos" led Mexico during a few years of Order and Progress, until the Mexican Revolution changed that old regime.

Gabino Barreda is the ideological father of that Mexican historic period; and Leopoldo Zea became the "authority" and Mexican Positivism.

The Huitzuco Mercury Mine that I mentioned below, was the property of Porfirio Diaz's wife, Carmelita Romero Rubio de Díaz. These "Scientists" so enraged the people of Huitzuco, that on February 28, 1911, they fought against the Diaz Army in Huitzuco, and as they say, the rest is History.

News Good Enough to Bury

An alternative to the standard news coverage of Africa is that it is going to be the success story of the next half-century.

read more | digg story

Venezuela Concludes Price Negotiations for Cement Nationaliz

Mérida, August 19, 2008 (venezuelanalysis.com)-- As the deadline for negotiations of indemnity for Venezuela’s nationalized cement industry passed Monday, the Venezuelan government announced that it had come to agreements with the French cement company Lafarge and Switzerland’s Holcim, but will unilaterally set the price for Mexico’s CEMEX, with..

read more | digg story

Mexico government raises gasoline prices again - Forbes.com

MEXICO-ENERGY/GASOLINE:Mexico government raises gasoline prices again

read more | digg story

Cubic Number Fields and Jacobi's Problem

"C. G. J. Jacobi (1804-1851) was the first mathematician who studied multidimensional continued fractions. His main objective was to find a generalisation of Lagrange's famous theorem which characterises quadratic irrational numbers as periodic continued fractions. He proposed an algorithm for number pairs in the hope that this algorithm will become eventually periodic if and only if both numbers belong to a cubic number field. Jacobi found some examples, but he could not show that Lagrange's theorem is true for this algorithm. In fact, the problem is still open!"

That is Professor Fritz Schweiger quote.

Hermite-Jacobi Problem

"In 1848, Hermite asked Jacobi for methods of expressing a real number as a sequence of integers such that the algebraic properties of the real number are reflected in the periodicity of its sequence. In other words, Hermite wanted a generalization to cubic and higher degree algebraic numbers of the fact that the decimal expansion of a real number is periodic if and only if the real is rational and, more importantly, of the fact that the continued fraction expansion of a real number is periodic if and only if the real is a quadratic irrational. Such attempts are called multidimensional continued fractions."

This quote is from:

Assaf et al.

This problem is still with us.

Peter Jackson & Guillermo del Toro Writing Hobbit Themselves

Peter Jackson and Guillermo del Toro have officially announced that they're writing The Hobbit and its follow-up themselves. I never thought so much buzz could come from an announcement about writing, but that's what happens when it's The Hobbit! There's not a single thing to be worried about here.

read more | digg story

Bell Labs

I worked there.

You can read below what is happening to Physics at that institution.

It was great while the money lasted. I came in the end, without the AT&T monopoly, money was running out, and some of us were let go. Our positions were terminated. It is sad to read that the Labs are having trouble. I met so many great people there. Young and not so young.

Now I have to make something big, back in Mexico. Some lose, some win. I read in Nature Magazine that the weather is changing in the US; maybe some of that water will fall further South, and our future will be brighter, and wetter. Who knows?

Fewer April Showers for U.S. Southwest as Climate Changes: S

Things could get uglier for desert flowers looking to bloom in May--and for the region's water supply, year-round

read more | digg story

Bell Labs bottoms out

It generated six Nobel prizes in as many decades, but after a string of staff departures, physicists claim that the once iconic Bell Laboratories has finally pulled out of basic science.

read more | digg story

æ And Other Special Symbols from ScribeFire on Shiretoko

ã ä å æ ç è é ê ë ì í î ï ð ñ ò ó ô õ ö ÷ ø ù ú û ü ý þ ÿ ...® ¯ ° ± ² ³ ´ µ ¶ · ¸ ¹ º » ¼

Mercury from Huitzuco, Mexico

"On Some Remarkable Mercury Ores from Mexico.

By F. SANDBERGER (Jahrb. f. Mineralogie, 1875, 874-876).

THE specimens examined by the author came from Huitzuco in the province of Guerrero. It was observed that there was a complete series of changes, viz., from fresh antimonite to pseudomorphs of cinnabar after antimonite, in which only a trace of antimony could be detected. The large-foliated radiating and columnar antimonite is attached to a very hard gangue of brownish massive quartz, and only exhibits now and then a formation of stiblite on the edges, but neither of these minerals contains a trace of mercury. When the decomposition has taken a firmer hold, the antimonite crystals appear to be almost completely changed into stiblite, and at the same time impregnated either partially or completely with dull, black, amorphous sulphide of mercury (metacinnabarite of G. E. Moore). In fact, this mineral sometimes has the appearance of a pseudomorph of metacinnabarite after antimonite, but its sp. gr. is only 5.39 at 18^o C., the hardness is 5.5, and the blowpipe reveals the predominating presence of stiblite, so that it is a mixture of a small amount of the sulphide of mercury with a large amount of stiblite. On igniting a small splinter of the dull black mineral before the blowpipe, its volume scarcely alters, but the colour changes to white and it remains infusible. On charcoal it gives only a weak sulphur reaction; but a little mercury is detected on heating a portion in a closed tube with sodium carbonate. A further stage is the passage of these black columnar masses into cinnabar, the change taking place in the spaces between the laminæ and gradually penetrating deeper. Some specimens consist of from ¹/₃ to probably ⁹/₁₀ cinnabar ; in the first case they are still hard, and mostly black or only streaked with red, whereas in the last they have an intense cochinealred colour, and are earthy and brittle. The characteristic cleavages of antimonite (parallel to ∞P and sometimes P) are still discernible on the most perfect crystals, and antimony can always be detected in the specimens, although it is sometimes present in minute traces only. It is certainly extraordinary that the original crystal form should be retained so tenaciously throughout the three changes which it undergoes before eventually becoming cinnabar, viz. : (1.) Oxidation to stiblite ; (2.) Impregnation by metacinnabarite and complete displacement; (3.) Alteration of the cinnabar into metacinnabarite. The author endeavours to account for these remarkable changes from the fact that gypsum is always in clefts and between the laminæ of the antimonite which is passing through the three stages given above. It seems therefore that there is a close connection between its presence and that of sulphide of mercury ; further it can be assumed that this gypsum was originally calcium sulphide, and this latter substance may have dissolved some of the sulphide of mercury and introduced it into the antimonite mass, the result being the formation of pseudomorphs.

Calcium sulphide easily decomposes in air, becoming eventually gypsum, but sulphide of mercury does not change.

Fleck and v. Wagner have proved that barium sulphide dissolves sulphide of mercury ; the author therefore supposes it to be probable that calcium sulphide will behave in a similar manner.

C. A. B."

The abstract above was taken form:

Mineralogical Chemistry.

Chemist Sandberger describes the special properties of Mercury from Huitzuco in this abstract. This text is from 1875.

Huitzuco 1942

Today I am telling you a story:

Sixty six years ago there was a beauty contest. Emma Uriza Castro (right) v.s. Beatriz Arizmendi Celis, (left) were the Beauty Queen candidates.

One was supported by the Huitzuco Mine (above) manager, and the other was not. Sources tell me that money was given to miners to vote for one of them. She won; the young people behind the losing candidate, that then became Princess, not Queen, were so outraged, that they decided to organize an alternative celebration. The Princess became a Queen, with a silver crown and all. In a really big hall, next door to the Real Queen's house, they had a Royal Celebration.

At the end good won over evil. Of course the Queen was my mother, (Emma Uriza Castro) and we kids broke that beautiful crown, without knowing all the passions that it arose.

You can see more beautiful girls at:

Huitzuco Queens and Princesses

What Did We Expect?

President Mikheil Saakashvili of Georgia gave Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin an excuse to exercise his iron fist.

read more | digg story

A Two-Dimensional Minkowski ?(x) Function

A one-to-one continuous function from a triangle to itself is defined that has both interesting number theoretic and analytic properties. This function is shown to be a natural generalization of the classical Minkowski ?(x) function. It is shown there exists a natural class of pairs of cubic irrational numbers in the same cubic number field that ..

read more | digg story

Beaver and Garrity

These authors have made some inroads in Jacobi's problem.

A Two-Dimensional Minkowski ?(x) Function

They write:

"The goal of this section is to show that δ(x, y) maps a class of pairs of cubic irrationals to pairs of rationals. Unfortunately, we cannot make the claim that δ maps all pairs of cubics (even in the same number field) to pairs of rationals."

To this day, one cannot go both ways. Not all pairs of cubics go to pairs of rationals. Only a class of pairs of cubic irrationals goes to pairs of rationals.

These authors end their paper thus:

"Finally, the initial Hermite problem remains open."

Cubic Roots of Irrationals

Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi tried to do for cubic roots of natural numbers, what Lagrange had done for square roots of natural numbers; classify the regularities found in the case the cubic roots were irrational numbers.

He did not find regularities. To this day mathematicians are looking for any regularities in one cubic root, or sets of cubic roots of natural numbers.

This generalization from power two to power three, reminds one of other apparently simple generalizations that did not happen. Perhaps the most famous one concerns Diophantine Equations of natural numbers. For power two, we have an infinite set of triplets satisfying Pythagoras Theorem:

[2k(k+1) + 1]² = [2k(k+1)]² + [2k + 1]²

for any natural number k.

When Fermat looked into the generalization to power three, he claimed to have proved it was impossible for this case.

It was only many years later, in the early nineties of last century, that Andrew Wiles finally proved that statement to be true.

In Physics we have the exact solution for the two dimensional Ising Model, found in the middle of last century by Lars Onsager. To this day physicists are hard at work; with nothing to show.

"Jacobi's Last Theorem", as Professor Fritz Schweiger calls it, is patiently waiting for a modern day Wiles to conquer it.

Henry Cejudo

Not everybody has their day in the Sun, but this kid did.

Here in Mexico we have thousands upon thousands of young people, as willing and able as this boy.

We have to give them opportunities.

To all Mexican children, they are the future.

American whiz kid Cejudo wins Olympic gold

BEIJING (AP) This Olympic medal, Henry Cejudo said, is for every kid whose life seemed hopeless, who went to sleep hungry, whose parents couldn't always buy food, let alone Christmas presents.

read more | digg story

U.S. Wrestling Prodigy Wins Gold in His 2nd World Tournament

Henry Cejudo, the 21-year-old wrestling prodigy who had wrestled in only one world-level senior tournament before Beijing, won the Olympic gold medal in men's freestyle 55-kilogram wrestling.

read more | digg story

The Struggle to Measure Cosmic Expansion

Astronomers have made the most precise measurements yet of the Hubble constant, which measures how fast the universe is growing.

read more | digg story

A World of Difference

Senator John McCain will tell you outright: “I am a Teddy Roosevelt Republican.” That’s about as elastic as the facts can get.

read more | digg story

Portal to Mythical Mayan Underworld Found in Mexico

Mexican archeologists have discovered a maze of stone temples in underground caves, some submerged in water and containing human bones, which ancient Mayans believed was a portal where dead souls entered the underworld.

read more | digg story

Dell introduces ten new laptops [with onboard Linux]

On is a flash-based barebones Linux install that gets you up and running, on the Net, and with much of what you need to run the computer in instantly. Dell went to great pains to avoid saying the L-word though, it might anger the very touchy gods atop mount Redmond.

read more | digg story

China takes lead in Linux education

Since the Chinese government began supporting domestic open source communities in 2005, hundreds of thousands of young people in the world's most populous country have become a part of the open source world.

read more | digg story

Dell, Intel give users what they want: to turn Windows off

Dell, Intel and their partners announced this week new technologies that represent major leaps forward for mobility. The companies seem to have discovered the secret to making such bold leaps: Cut Microsoft out of the deal. In one example, the sole benefit of the technology is to leave Windows off and boot Linux instead.

read more | digg story

World's Fastest Man, Usain Bolt, 100m in 9.69s(Photo Finish)

read more | digg story

Mission Accomplished: Phelps Great Eight in '08

Soviet-era gymnast Larisa Latynina, in a note, wrote to say, "You have shattered all sort of records with truly inspiring Olympic character."

read more | digg story

A Complete Guide to Setting Up Your Own Home Server

Setting up a home server running an open-source operating system is a popular and useful activity. Useful in what ways, you may ask. You could use it to run a website, collect and send e-mail messages, store your OpenID credentials or serve your music around the home.

read more | digg story

"..might be the beginning of the end of the American empire"

The economist who predicted the current economic crisis for the US, has more dire predictions.

read more | digg story

Musharraf Announces His Resignation

President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan, facing threats of impeachment on the grounds that he violated the Constitution in declaring a state of emergency in November, said in a televised address to the nation that he would resign the presidency.

read more | digg story

Paul Krugman: It’s the Economy Stupor

When it comes to the economy, Barack Obama’s campaign seems oddly lethargic.

read more | digg story

How About the Home Front?

Senators Barack Obama and John McCain must pay more attention to the nation’s neglected infrastructure needs.

read more | digg story

Phelps Wins 200 Individual Medley for Sixth Gold

Michael Phelps won his sixth gold medal in Beijing, this time winning the 200-meter individual medley.

read more | digg story

"El Tri"-Triste Cancion De Amor

La mejor interpretación de esta magnifica cancion.Si no te gusta este video, eres pendejo.

read more | digg story

Today 60 Years Ago

During the London Olympic Games in 1948, my uncle Rubén Uriza Castro finished second in Individual Men's Jumping, in equestrianism today sixty years ago. He got a Silver Medal.

He was also a good man.

Relevant Science 2

I have a new html server powered by Apache somewhere in Illinois. The IT manager installed me a WordPress page. When it is up, you can find it here:

http://science.dyndns.org/

It is a work in progress, and when I have something more presentable, I will post an announcement here.

And life goes on.

Dark Matter and Fifth Forces

The idea of a long-range “fifth force” is a popular one, although it’s hard to make compelling models that work. In this paper we focused in on one particular idea: imagine that there were a new long-range force that directly coupled only to dark matter. (An old idea: see Frieman and Gradwohl, 1993.) After all, there is a lot more dark matter ...

read more | digg story

Office OpenXML A Dead End, Microsoft Will Back ODF

During the LinuxWorld Expo in San Francisco, I met with Bob Sutor, IBM's vice president of open source and standards. We discussed document standards and the implications of ISO's controversial decision to grant fast-track approval to Microsoft's Office Open XML (OOXML) format.

read more | digg story

Spooky Physics: Signals Seem to Travel Faster Than Light

Strange events that Einstein himself called "spooky" might happen at least 10,000 times the speed of light, according to the latest attempt to understand them. Atoms, electrons, and the rest of the infinitesimally tiny building blocks of the universe can behave rather bizarrely, going completely against the way life as we normally experience it.

read more | digg story

Bohm's bummed: wave theory needs 10,000x light speed to work

Spooky action at a distance would need to surf a very fast wave. Researchers show that entanglement is indeed nonlocal and that, if a hidden underlying wave were maintaining entanglement, it would have to travel 10,000 times faster than the speed of light.

read more | digg story

USB 3.0 ready!

In the has put the final piece for USB 3.0 hardware development in place.

read more | digg story

A Boy’s Killing Prods a City to Stand Up to Kidnappers

Kidnappings are rising again, and the biggest increase appears to be in the kidnapping of children.

read more | digg story

Inflation Hits Annual Pace Not Seen Since 1991

Consumer prices were 5.6 percent higher in July than a year ago, all but assuring that the Fed will keep interest rates on hold.

read more | digg story

Inflation Hits Annual Pace Not Seen Since 1991

Consumer prices were 5.6 percent higher in July than a year ago, all but assuring that the Fed will keep interest rates on hold.

read more | digg story

Brazilian Stocks Rise, Led by Commodities

Mexico's Bolsa Gains Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Brazilian stocks gained for the first time in five days as a rally in oil and metal prices and the prospect of a recovery in demand from China lifted the country's biggest commodity producers.

read more | digg story

LATIN AMERICAN MARKETS: Commodity Stocks Lift Brazil

Mexico Moves Out Of The RedBrazilian equities broke a four-day losing streak Wednesday, led by a climb in commodity stocks, and Mexican stocks shook off declines that came after its largest trading partner said that retail spending sputtered last month.

read more | digg story

Mexico Will Propose $80 Oil for Budget, Carstens Says

Aug. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Mexico's government plans to draft its 2009 budget with the assumption exported oil will sell for $80 a barrel, more than $30 higher than this year's budgeted price, Mexican Finance Minister Agustin Carstens said.

read more | digg story

19 Most Essential Open Source Applications

19 Most Essential and useful open source applications that you probably want to know to use in your daily life. Most of them are top of the list projects that have an open source industry leading popularity and many of them are not listed here but over all the list has variety of projects for every one of you.

read more | digg story

ERPI

"Finalmente, la fuente aseguró que en los órganos de inteligencia del gobierno estatal era totalmente desconocida la presencia del supuesto lugarteniente del ex militar Pascual Monje Solís, aunque se cree que es información que se reservaron las fuentes de inteligencia militar. “Fue algo que no compartieron con nosotros”, estableció."

My translation:

Finally, the source said, that in the state intelligence apparatus, the presence of the alleged lieutenant of the ex soldier Pascual Monte Solís, was completely unknown, it is believed though, that military intelligence "kept that information away from us", he stated.

Now we find out that there is a war going on in Guerrero State. Federal forces are involved, and they cannot apprehend one man after sending several soldiers to do it.

ERPI stands for Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo Insurgente (Insurgent People Revolutionary Army)

Energy: Fall in oil price comes with a warning

US demand for crude dips by 800,000 barrels a day· Market still jittery amid geopolitical uncertainties

read more | digg story

Population Bomb Author's Fix For Next Extinction: Educate Wo

It’s an uncomfortable thought: Human activity causing the extinction of thousands of species, and the only way to slow or prevent that phenomenon is to have smaller families and forego some of the conveniences of modern life, from eating beef to driving cars, according to Stanford University scientists

read more | digg story

Google Earth

This week I downloaded Google Earth. Right now I am taking a trip from the Google Headquarters in Santa Clara, to home, in Warrenville IL.

This is great!

Right now I am at 38° and 1/3 ' North Latitude, and 121° 1/3 ' East Longitude over North America; on a road 20 m above sea level, watching the road from a height of 711 m, entering the State of Utah.

In a car it will take me over one day.

Gmail Problems ??? Solved.

""We don't usually post about problems like this in our blog, but we wanted to make an exception in this case since so many people were impacted," Gmail Product Manager Todd Jackson posted. About 20 million users visit Gmail daily, and there are more than 100 million accounts in total."

One hundred million is the population of all of Mexico!

Google is a nation. GoogleNation?

Wireless to the People

The FCC used this weekend's pre-season football game between the Washington Redskins and the Buffalo Bill to test mobile wireless devices that harness vacant portions of the public airwaves, know as white spaces.

read more | digg story

Google 'feels your pain' after the latest Gmail outage

Yesterday, many Gmail users found themselves unable to access their mailboxes, as Gmail returned a "Temporary Error (502)." Google later posted an apology in the official Gmail Blog that gave a clue as to how big the outage was. "We don't usually post about problems like this in our blog, but we wanted to make an exception in this case..."

read more | digg story

1948 Olympics

My uncle got a Silver Medal on August 14, 1948. Sixty years ago, this coming Thursday. I was not even born, but he was a hit all over Mexico back then.

read more | digg story

Germany wins Eventing Team Jumping gold

Germany won the Eventing Team Jumping gold medal at the Olympic Games on Tuesday.Australia took silver and Britain got bronze.

read more | digg story

Equestrianism at the 1948 London Summer Games: Men's Jumping

Gold:MEX Humberto MarilesSilver:MEX Rubén UrizaBronze:FRA Jean, Marquis d'Orgeix

read more | digg story

Best of Beijing

Athlete of the day: Jason Lezak.UCSB Gaucho congratulations!

read more | digg story

Thoughts

My situation is interesting. I have reconnected with part of my family, now I know little Jalil Azar Cárdenas. He is not even five, I don´t think. He is going to kindergarten in Huitzuco, where my mother went to grammar school.

I feel well after visiting my relatives in Guerrero state. On the other hand my direct family, wife and kids, are in Warrenvile, you can read below that recently a storm caused havoc in the neighborhood.

I can help here, but I do not know if I'll make enough money to keep my family in the US.

Who is running Mexico?

You can read about the wild west style shoot out in Zirándaro, Guerrero, México, below. Also about a 14 year old girl killed in Acapulco. This is not right. Calderón's government is responsible. National Action Party has been governing several states ridden in violence, and they have not been able to bring more sanity to México.

In México City, run by the opposition, Democratic Revolution Party, also criminals recently kidnapped and killed a young man by the name of Martí.

I have written here before, that I believe part of the problem comes from the new rich, that is, young Mexican Indians, that have gone to the US, and come back with money, but no respect. If all Mexicans are not respected and taken care of, I can only expect more and more violence.

UNISUR is a ray of hope. Universities for Mexican Indians, enough is enough.

As you can read in this space, I recently went to Xalitla, for the land grant ceremony by an indian town, that wants a University. I repeat here, the Mexican Government of Felipe Calderòn is NOT helping. As long as this continues this way, I expect more Pascuales, like Pascual Monje Solís.

Teenage Girl, Man Die in Acapulco Shooting Attack

The latest victims in a string of shooting attacks in Mexico are a 14-year-old girl and a 35-year-old man.

read more | digg story

Storm blows through area

A tornado warning came and went Monday night with no funnel cloud sightings or touchdowns in the Naperville area, although heavy rain and strong winds caused significant damage and headaches for local fire and police departments.

read more | digg story

Pascual Monje Solìs

"El general retirado del Ejército agregó desde muy temprano, en los círculos policiacos corrió la versión de que Monje Solís logró romper el cerco porque se disfrazó de soldado y pudo burlar al Ejército y a los policías federales, estatales y municipales, porque físicamente nadie lo conoce."

My translation is:

"The retierd Army General added early on, among policemen there was the rumor that Monje Solìs was able to escape because, dressed as a soldier was able to deceive the Army and the federal, state,and county police, because nobody knows his face."

This report was taken from Marlen Castro of the newspaper: "La Jornada Guerrero".

This incident happened in "Las Mesas", Ziràndaro County, Guerrero.

The escapee had been trained in the US when he was in the Mexican Army, and now he serves other powerful Mexicans, not the rest of us that pay taxes to keep the Army.

I feel I am going back, not only home, but to the wild era of our country. One wonders if there is progress.

"Bandidos" running the place.

Flush With Energy

America needs to learn from Denmark, which responded to the 1973 Arab oil embargo in such a way that today it is energy independent.

read more | digg story

An Empty Promise

The contention that lifting restrictions on offshore oil drilling would somehow bring down the price of gasoline is bogus.

read more | digg story

Procure Treatment Centers Inc. sues NIU over plans to build

A private company that wants to build a proton therapy cancer treatment center in Warrenville on Tuesday sued Northern Illinois University, which in February got approval to build a similar facility in nearby West Chicago.

read more | digg story

AOL Bookmarks

This is an AOL Bookmarks code. I am checking it.

Gmail Problems ???

Google Inc (GOOG.O: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) said on Monday that many users of its Gmail service are having trouble accessing their online e-mail accounts due to a temporary outage in a contacts system used by Gmail.

read more | digg story

Amazon Honor System

There is a new Link to the Amazon Honor System, on the Link sidebar of this site.
Just in case you wanted to support Relevant Science.

Middle Sized Laptops and Cloud Computing

The OLPC initiative started interest in a, long forgotten space. More than a calculator, less than a laptop.

Cloud computing may close the loop for a completely new software-hardware combination. Imagine Linux in embedded hardware. Intelligence all over the place, embedding appliances.

These gizmos could be Telephone-PDA-Browser-Remotes, at least. A Swiss Army Knife with Open Source, and connected to the clouds.

Interesting.

Linux everywhere: mobile Internet devices and the cloud

During the LinuxWorld expo in San Francisco, I met with Linux Foundation president Jim Zemlin to talk about the future of the open-source Linux operating system and the impact it will have on emerging mobile and embedded technologies.

read more | digg story

Forget the '$100 Laptop' ... Try $12!

As the prices of educational laptops for children in developing countries creep upward, a group of researchers attempts to create a new, even lower-tech computer that would cost as little as $12.

read more | digg story

APOD: 2008 August 11 - Black Hole Candidate Cygnus X 1

read more | digg story

Intel and Microsoft tried to kill OLPC

This is the story of the OLPC project since it was announced in January of 2005. Intel and Microsoft are monopolies that used brute force to delay the OLPC non-profit open-source project from starting the cheap laptop revolution, taking away the profit margins from a multi-hundred-billion dollar laptop and PC industry.

read more | digg story

Search Wikipedia The Pro Way

I thus have found some of the best and most accurate Wikipedia search engines to help you get the most accurate information whenever you need it. Here are just some of them (in no particular order):

read more | digg story

Xalitla

San Luis Acatlán, Santa Cruz del Rincón, Xalitla, Xochistlahuaca, and Cuajinicuilapa.

These are the locations of UNISUR (Universidad Intercultural de los Pueblos del Sur). Yesterday I went to the official ceremony for the land grant, by the Government of Xalitla. Something like six acres.

They fed us and several children from the Upper Balsas Region in Guerrero State performed. Initially they will start up classes at the Carlos Darwin Junior High School building in Town next month.

The State of Guerrero is not financing the effort, but it seems to me that if the people of Xalitla really want a University Campus, they'll have one.

I wouldn't be surprised if they ask me to teach there, first though, somebody from around here has to pay me.

Bush's Rebuke in Beijing

While criticizing Chinese authorities for lack of religious and political freedom, President Bush was caught flat-footed by the rebuke issued by Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who responded, “We firmly oppose any words or acts that interfere in other countries’ internal affairs, using human rights and religion and other issues.”

read more | digg story

Can It Happen Here?

The history of the pursuit of universal health care in America is one of missed chances.

read more | digg story

Chew's Meaning of Mass

Geoffrey F. Chew has proposed an alternative to the "Standard" view that Theory must give all scales in Physics. One can read:

"Intervals within our c-based Feynman paths are straight and positive lightlike. These paths propagate wave functions that, in representing massive particles, exhibit ‘zitterbewegung’ (zbw) --fluctuating positive-lightlike 4-velocities-- in a sense recalling that displayed by Dirac’s single-electron wave function which lacked a relativistically-invariant norm. Our massive particles, both bosons and fermions, emulate in certain aspects Dirac’s electron, although the latter's wave-function norm was boost dependent and its mass was regarded as a given scale-setting parameter. We here depict electron mass, through a ‘physical’ infinite-dimensional unitary Poincaré-group representation, as a ground-state energy whose value is dynamically determined, along with that of all particle masses, by wave-function stationarity over macroscopic intervals of ‘universe time’. We recognize an extended meaning for ‘zitterbewegung’—as parity-dictated fluctuation of any massive particle’s ‘substructure’, in both velocity and momentum."

Mass then is "dynamically determined". I understand from that phrase, that Chew views "fundamental physics", with a humble position. S Matrix Theory, expressed observations with the tools given to us by the mathematics of space time, here Gelfand-Naimark, provide the finite answers that were not possible before. Besides that, we have two different scales, cosmological and quantum, Chew just lives with both, and leaves for a future, maybe "Number Theory" based, physical theory, the task of getting those numbers. Some kind of stability condition, may in some future time tell us: Why the electron has the mass it has?

Minnesota baby born 8/8/08 at 8:08; 8 pounds, 8 ounces

Hailey Jo Hauer was born on the eighth day of the eighth month in 2008 at 8:08 a.m. So it wouldn't make sense for her to weigh anything other than 8 pounds, 8 ounces.

read more | digg story

Drink it or Drive it: The Promise of Agave for Ethanol

Corn has given ethanol a bad name and scientists are searching far and wide for alternative feedstock. Agave has been getting attention lately and looks very promising, although tequila connoisseurs may not be cheering. Here’s why agave is so much appealing.

read more | digg story

First protons injected into the LHC

The Large Hadron Collider saw its first protons today, around 6:30 p.m. at CERN (12:30 p.m. US EDT), as scientists conducted the first beam injection test in one section of the collider.

read more | digg story

Selección Natural Coherente

Selección Natural Coherente

Eduardo Cantoral

Centro de Investigación en Matemática Educativa

Unidad Académica de Matemáticas

Universidad Autónoma
de Guerrero

Chilpancingo, Guerrero

39080, México

Resumen

Parece ser que la idea clásica de Selección Natural, ya se puede generalizar.—Darwin no conoció la no-localidad inherente en la Mecánica Cuántica. — el azar no tiene suficientes elementos formativos. Es difícil entender como el mismo principio de Darwin, puede incorporarse a la idea de Gaia de Lovelock.Parece que la dificultad de los contemporáneos de Lovelock,es la falta de un principio de selección generalizado. Para aumentar la dificultad ahora se sabe que los sistemas solares del Universo están regidos por principios de organización que se usan para hacer los códigos numéricos que predicen una gran cantidad de planetas como nuestra Tierra, que están siendo descubiertos por los astrónomos. Más aún, parece haber un patrón de formación de galaxias conectadas en una Gran Red Universal que parecen un organismo Cósmico.

Introducción

La similaridad de las estructuras en escalas que van de lo cósmico a lo local puede ser debido a más elementos, que la clásica invariancia de escala de la gravedad. Lo que se propone aquí es otro elemento de esta similaridad, a saber: la no-localidad cuántica. A este principio se le llama, Selección Natural Coherente (SNC).

El siglo pasado Aspect et al., observaron la primera evidencia de no-localidad. Ahora ya son varias las observaciones de este importante aspecto del mundo. Generalmente se tratan las cuestiones de la Biología como clásicas, no cuánticas. Pero es evidente desde ya hace muchos años el efecto en la mutación genética de la radiación que afecta a las regiones más locales de que somos conscientes; las vecindades de los electrones y protones de que está hecho el Ácido Desoxirribonucleico (ADN). Aquí se propone entender el carácter coherente de la materia, i.e., su aspecto no-local, como formativo; es decir, azar más coherencia es igual a forma.

Recientemente Hartle, Hawking, y Hertog (HHH), propusieron una regla para obtener el Universo que tenemos con la condición inicial, de que no hay frontera, y estudiaron el caso de un mundo semiclásico en el presente. Estos autores encuentran una probabilidad notable de que el Universo pase por una contracción que no termine en singularidad.

Stephen Hawking demostró hace muchos años, junto con Roger Penrose (HP), que con unas suposiciones razonables los colapsos gravitacionales terminan en singularidades. Lo que HHH nos dicen ahora es que al incorporar principios de Mecánica Cuántica con hipótesis extras, se violan las condiciones usadas por HP. Sin la inevitable singularidad clásica, parece que ahora se puede se puede usar el principio de SNC.

Recientemente el matemático ruso, Grigory Perelman, demostró que cualquier variedad diferenciable completa, es una esfera en tres dimensiones. Otra forma de decirlo es: cualquier variedad compacta y simplemente conexa es una esfera en tres dimensiones. En esta demostración Perelman usó una variable auxiliar que parametriza las posibles métricas. Al derivar el tensor métrico con esta variable obtiene una ecuación localmente parabólica que le permite demostrar que en un número finito de pasos puede modificarse adecuadamente la variedad para eliminar todas las singularidades.

Este parámetro juega el papel del tiempo en este formalismo. Un tiempo dirigido, que marca puntos de partida y direcciones de cambio. La demostración consiste, entre otras cosas, en demostrar que el radio de curvatura de Ricci está acotado. Para Perelman este parámetro es una herramienta útil para su demostración; pero uno lo puede considerar el verdadero tiempo, que junto con las tres dimensiones de espacio, forman el espacio-tiempo de la física.

Una posible conceptualización de esta construcción es la de Julián Barbour. Para este físico inglés el tiempo no es físico, sini mas bien una manera en que los seres humanos organizamos patrones en tres dimensiones. Así como en una película, el tiempo transcurre para nosotros cuando la siguiente imagen es casi igual a la anterior. Así en el mundo físico, todas las fotos ya están, nosotros sólo las ponemos en orden. La Información, ésto es, la expectativa de lo que sigue, es lo que permite la percepción del tiempo en nuestra mente. Desde esta perspectiva, Perelman y Barbour, nos dan herramientas para resolver un problema conceptual de la Gravedad Cuántica, al clarificar la categoría de la Información en la física. El Universo es un grupo de objetos relacionados entre sí, en cúmulos de tres dimensiones, con un orden de cercanía de patrones; la similaridad entre patrones está dada por la Información, o mejor dicho, la similaridad entre patrones es la Información.

En esta cosmovisión, la cantidad de movimiento, o inercia, es covariante con las tres dimensiones del espacio, y la Información, es covariante con el tiempo. Perelman define cantidades auxiliares para su demostración, que recuerdan al concepto de entropía, la cuál desde el trabajo de Boltzmann, está asociada con expectación, o probabilidad; como Claude Shannon mostró algunos años después.

El concepto de covariancia es importante aquí. Percibimos el cambio en el espacio de tres dimensiones, y lo etiquetamos con el tiempo. Covariante se entiende, como la percepción de que el tiempo también cambia, al cambiar la imagen en tres dimensiones. En la geometría diferencial, este concepto está formalizado, pero esencialmente se entiende, como los cambios de una variable, asociados con los cambios en otra. El cambio pues, es esencial, en este esquema, no tanto el aproximarse a un límite, o tener una curva continua, sino percibir el cambio. Con Heráclito de Éfeso podemos decir que todo es cambio.

Slow Motion Lightning Video is Mindblowing

Well, this is just about the most amazing thing I've ever seen. It's a lightning bolt that's shooting down from the sky, shot in slow motion. I'm not sure exactly how fast this camera is, but it's got to be shooting at a speed faster than the Casio EX-F1 can shoot at, at least at a resolution this high. Whatever, who cares?

read more | digg story

How Cloud Computing Is Changing the World

A major shift in the way companies obtain software and computing capacity is under way as more companies tap into Web-based applications

read more | digg story

Earth like planets should be quite common in the universe

A new study by Northwestern University astronomers, using recent data from the 300 planets discovered orbiting other stars, turns that view on its head.The study illustrates that if early conditions had been just slightly different, very unpleasant things could have happened - like planets being thrown into the sun or jettisoned into deep space.

read more | digg story

Eccentricity Revives Vermont’s River Towns

The entrepreneurial eccentricity of Vermont described in a depression era travel guide is resurfacing today, as exhibited along the Connecticut River in the southeastern sliver of the state.

read more | digg story

Cubic Irrationals

Hermite problem is:

"Peut-être parviendra-t-on à déduire de là, un système complet de caractères pour chaque espèce de ce genre de quantités, analogue par exemple à ceux que donne la théorie des fractions continues pour les racines des équations du second degré"

Another way to state this concern is:

"Find methods for expressing real numbers as sequences of positive integers so that the sequence is eventually periodic precisely when the initial number is a cubic irrational."

Another description of the problem is:

"In 1848, Hermite asked Jacobi for methods of expressing a real number as a sequence of integers such that the algebraic properties of the real number are reflected in the periodicity of its sequence. In other words, Hermite wanted a generalization to cubic and higher degree algebraic numbers of the fact that the decimal expansion of a real number is periodic if and only if the real is rational and, more importantly, of the fact that the continued fraction expansion of a real number is periodic if and only if the real is a quadratic irrational. Such attempts are called multidimensional continued fractions."

Jacobi tried unsuccessfully to solve this problem.

Periodicity in Cubic Number Field

Jacob Jacobi in 1868 published his studies in Number Theory. Professor Fritz Schweiger writes:

"Maybe he was warned off by the long calculations for (1; 5^¹/³; 25^¹/³) and the obviously never ending calculations on (1; 4^¹/³; 16^¹/³). In fact, it is still not known if periodicity occurs at all!"

I am curious to understand the problems Jacobi run into.

Reason

Prædiciere

The current crisis is a test to our intelligence. Other mammals do not spend their time finding a way out of the world crisis. I myself have problems. People around me go about their lives with a business as usual attitude. I feel unsettled.

The Latin word I have in this note means to predict, to say it before it happens. That is what reason is for.

My reason is hard at work to find a valid prediction, for me and for the world.

Discrete Quantum Cosmology

One can read from Chew:

"Although consistency requires slice width to be an integral multiple of arc step, the huge-integer ratio will not be addressed by the present paper—which ignores arc steps and number theory. Before attending to path arcs this paper chooses to address the single-preon Hilbert-space path basis. Nevertheless the termination of path arcs at exceptional (ray-age) hyperboloids might be taken as defining the path basis of preon Fock space."

This is one place where number theory may enter into play for Chew's Theory.

Google - Bookmarks

Google - Bookmarks

Geoffrey F. Chew

This UC Berkely Professor believes that:

"number theory may eventually render non-arbitrary the integral ratio of spacetime-slice width to path step. Particle scale would thereby, like path step, become set by the trio of universal parameters G, h and c, whose values Planck realized do not require ‘explanation’."

I do not yet understand what Professor Chew is saying. I know that he has looked into the conundrums of particle physics longer than I have. Nevertheless I also believe that number theory has something to tell us about why the world is as it is.

For me the main problem of Physics today is to explain stability. Why in a Hydrogen atom is an electron always moving around a proton and never going inside the proton? To say that that is forbidden by Quantum Mechanics, is philosophically a poor practice. What is first stability, or Quantum Mechanics?

Totally-Relativistic Elementary Particles

Macroscopically-Discrete Quantum CosmologyGeoffrey F. ChewGreat Physicist proposing new ideas

read more | digg story

Amateur Astronomer Spots ‘Cosmic Ghost’ Unknown Until Now

A Dutch primary school teacher and amateur astronomer has discovered what some are calling a "cosmic ghost," a strange, gaseous object with a hole in the middle that may represent a new class of astronomical object

read more | digg story

Mexico and Brazil Now Top 10 Creditors to US Government!

As the US external debt continues to spiral out of control, nations that were previously severely indebted to the US are now lending money to their former creditor.So when will the American public come to its senses and DEMAND major budget cuts and an end to the war?

read more | digg story

Ubuntu wins “Best Desktop Solution” at Linux World Expo 2008

I just wanted to extended a huge “thank you!” to all of the Ubuntu community. Today Ubuntu won the “Best Desktop Solution” Product Excellence Award at LinuxWorld Conference and Expo 2008 in San Francisco, California for a second consecutive year.

read more | digg story

24,000+ signatures for Mexico's iPhone 3G Petition (English)

Telcel's plans include a ridiculous 100-200 MB for data. Once you go over, they start charging you $4 dollars per additional MB. Plus, their 'unlimited' plan offers you 3GB @ 3G speeds, then slows down to a crawl (128Kbps). The national media is ignoring us. Help us Digg, you're our only hope!

read more | digg story

Physicist's Verified Quantum-"Uncollapse" Hypothesis

In 2006, Andrew Jordan, professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, together with Alexander Korotkov at the University of California, Riverside, spelled out how to exploit a quantum quirk to accomplish a feat long thought impossible, and this week a research team at the University of California at Santa Barbara has tested the

read more | digg story

Strong Bad coming to Wii and PC

It's a little later than everyone expected, but Strong Bad's Cool Game For Attractive People is finally coming to both the Wii and PC next week. Adventure Gamers is reporting that Telltale has announced the game's imminent arrival, which is sure to have Homestar Runner fans chomping at the bit.

read more | digg story

Olé! This Spanish Summer

As the Olympics begin, Spain is reveling in an extraordinary string of sporting triumphs that owe something to the knowledge that sports are also a fight to the death.

read more | digg story

Ubuntu

My son revived an old Dell computer that had gone out of commission some time ago. He made two partitions one for Microsoft, and the other for open source. He has "some" old games, and he needs the MS partition.

He is using the Ubuntu distribution for the Linux side, and XP for the MS side.

I guess I'll hear about the distribution quarrels from now on.

I am proud of him.

Learning to Speak Climate

The three phrases of climate change are easy to learn. The first is: “Just a few years ago ...”

read more | digg story

An Illegal Immigrant, in Need of Care

To the Editor:.

read more | digg story

Shiretoko Alpha

I am experimenting with the alpha version of the Mozilla browser. Also I see that my ScribeFire looks different, I guess I have not used this combination before.

I see a right window with Blogs, Entries, etc.. The Entries Section shows me other pieces I'd written in this blog. The Options Section allows me to add Technocrati tags, and TrackBack URLs. The Blogs Section allows me to add other Blogs. I just added my other Blog. It is in Spanish if you are interested:

Matemática Educativa

OK, here you have it.

Mexican Peso Continues Dramatic Surge Against US Dollar

And beleive it or not, the United States Government now OWES MEXICO money. You know that the US is making bad monetary decisions now. "Mexico's peso firmed to a six-year high on Monday as lower oil prices eased some economic fears and investors bet on higher local interest rates, while stocks sank to a six-month low."

read more | digg story

Going to Mexico? Better pack more dollars

The Mexican peso’s value surged against the dollar today and crossed a milestone: At the official exchange rate (i.e., the rate for big-money transactions) one dollar now buys fewer than 10 pesos.

read more | digg story

Curvature

Long ago I thought that curvature was a deep concept we owe to Carl Friedrich Gauss. Then I saw that phase-space was deep also. It seems that now more people are coming to the same conclusion. Here I try a simple interpretation in my understanding of Julian Barbour's ideas.

Pattern is time. We know what comes next because of our expectations. The arrow of time is as real as the persistence of objects. Linear predictions are called common sense, but Ray Kurzweil has shown us to extrapolate with non-linear functions. Gauss then is the master of prediction. If we know the curvature in a local region, we know if linear or non-linear predictions are needed. Einstein also saw in curvature the key to a theory of physics.

Thermodynamics, General Relativity, and now Perelman's Theory of Ricci Flows, must be related. The relation may be Barbour's idea that there is no time, only patterns.

More to come.

Poincaré's Conjecture 1

"This conjecture states that the only compact three dimensional simply connected manifold is a three dimensional sphere."

Also we can say:

"that every compact and simply connected 3-manifold is a 3-sphere".

I am back. I was away from a nice place where to think and write. I found this statement in:

Christina Sormani's, piece on this intriguing piece of Mathematics.

I hope I can understand the General Relativity and Thermodynamics implications of Perelman's work.