Blogs of interest - UWA Graduate Research School

Problem: I have files on one computer at work and I want to access them at home or when I am travelling.

Solution: Dropbox (there are other services): Install the software, move the files into your dropbox folder and they get automatically synchronised to the server. Set up other machines (and your iPhone/Google Phone/PDA) and they can all synchronise from the same location.

It also works as a backup - and it will version  files if you add an option to the account.

Price: free for 2GB storage - money if you want more space 

In yet another procrastinative distraction, I have been trialling Office 2010 (yes, if you work or study at UWA you are probably considered pretty bleeding edge for using Office 2003). The technical preview is not drastically different from Office 2007 although apparently the ribbon is more uniform across all applications now. You have to wonder if we have come to the end of the road as far as office products go? What more can they actually do other than have a word processor that writes the documents for you?

The technologies that really need developing are the web-based office tools. The main attraction of this is that the storage is all online. I can then access the documents from my computer, phone, netbook or whatever. Sharing is much easier and you get over sending documents via email, cluttering up inboxes and disks. I do use Google Docs – mainly for the spreadsheet function. The word processing is basic and if you have tried to import a word document – forget any formatting it may have had.

I wonder if anyone has written a thesis on Google Docs yet (that is physically on it rather than about it which I am sure someone in the US must have already done...)?

A paper in Science (Real-Time DNA Sequencing from Single Polymerase Molecules) has reported a new technique that can sequence DNA 30,000 times faster than current techniques. The researchers are using tiny hollow metal cylinders (ZMW waveguides) on a chip to isolate single molecules of DNA and visualise the flourescing nucleotides as they are incorporated into DNA chains. There is a quicktime movie of this happening and a podcast interview with the researchers. The possibility of being able to sequence an entire human genome in under half an hour to 99.999% accuracy for under $1000 has become very real (at least this is what the biotech company conducting the research hopes).

The impact on bioinformatic research would be huge.

Researchers at Google have published a paper on the ability to identify people and their social network from "activity streams" on various sites even when people thought these were anonymous or not linked. Some of the problems have been publicised recently - like Face Book's Beacon technology where companies could insert their wares into a person's activity stream when they make a purchase, discuss a movie, etc. Not known is the ability to map social graphs to identify individuals even when they thought they were being anonymous - the example given is of Alice and Bob who are also Leatherboy and Vinylgirl - the correlation of Bob's personas results in Alice being "outed".

The upshot of all of this is that the old adage that "no one knows you are a dog" on the internet doesn't hold - everything is essentially public and the only slight security you may have is through the relative obscurity of being one of millions.

The BBC has a great summary of Bush's priorities during his terms of office analysed by the frequency of use of particular words visualised in the tag cloud below. Medicare hardly gets a mention in 8 years, foreign policy was all about Iraq (not Afghanistan interestingly) and surprisingly, "evil-doers" and other bushisms don't feature.

Now here's a challenge, in case you think this PhD business is getting too easy.

http://gonzolabs.org/dance/contestants/

A very interesting article on the ABC website today. See

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/11/2566534.htm

Climate: Science + Humanities

Graduate Perspectives from Australia, China, and the US

Information for Applicants

www.usyd.edu.au/graduate_studies_office/about_us

From James Lovelock’s Gaia thesis to Tim Flannery’s historical work, global discussion on climate and climate change spans the humanities and the sciences. This symposium will bring together c35 graduate students to exchange global perspectives from three very different national bases: Australia, China, and the US. It aims to highlight and sharpen work which displays genuine disciplinary crossover, and to extend local perspectives on global concerns. 16 Australian students will be selected and funded, one science and one humanities student from each University in the Group of Eight.

Convenor: Professor Alison Bashford, Chair of Australian Studies, Department of the History of Science, Harvard University, 2009/10.

Date: 3-4 March 2010

Venue: Dudley House, Harvard University, Cambridge Massachusetts, USA

Funding: 2 students from each G08 University will be funded, each to total of AUD2,500 travel + AUD800 accommodation.

Selection Criteria:

Excellence and innovation in research

Capacity to connect science and humanities on climate issues, broadly conceived.

Evidence of potential for research leadership

Eligibility:

Students must be enrolled in a research degree at a G08 University. Eligible students include those currently under examination.

Process:

3 copies of application form (from your School) + CV + 500 word abstract to be sent in hard copy to “Harvard Symposium” c/- Alison Bashford, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, A14, University of Sydney, NSW 2006. A selection committee chaired by Professor Bashford will notify successful applicants by 1 August 2009.

Application Due: 1 July 2009. Late applications will not be considered.

Associated Conference: “Climate: Science + Humanities” will be followed by “Changing Climate: historians and hemispheres in conversation” (5-6 March). Confirmed speakers include Professors Warwick Anderson (Sydney), Peder Anker (Oslo), Joyce Chaplin (Harvard), Tom Griffiths (ANU), David Livingstone (Queens University, Belfast), Iain McCalman (Sydney), Libby Robin (ANU), Charles Rosenberg (Harvard).

Jacques Hadamard, who lived from 1865 to 1963, was a French mathematician whose most important result was about the distribution of prime numbers - basically, the bigger the numbers, the more sparse are the primes (the number of prime numbers less than n grows as fast as n/log(n) ). However, he also wrote quite a famous piece on the way in which mathematicians' minds work in the process of uncovering mathematical results.

He says: "The distinction between (invention and discovery) is well known: discovery concerns a phenomenon, a law, a being which already existed, but had not been perceived. Columbus discovered America: it existed before him; on the contrary, Franklin invented the lightning rod: before him there had never been any lightning rod."

Hadamard says that artists' creations are generally inventions, whereas scientists work is mostly concerned with discoveries. Mathematicians are often caught between these two worlds: Hadamard's prime number result is a discovery. But is the square root of minus 1 a discovery or an invention?

Is the new knowledge you are uncovering in your thesis a discovery or an invention? Which sort of new knowledge best advances humankind?

Christmas has come and gone, and the University has been shutdown for two days now, so it's time to sum up the year with some GradStats.

Enrolments and completions are both up in 2008, with completions being at their highest ever point in a calendar year.

Here is a summary for the past three years: