tingilinde

a deeper look at an ancient document

Evidence for the lost Hipparchus Star Catalog.. and it's more accurate than Ptolemy's 

 

New evidence for Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue revealed by multispectral imaging

Victor Gysembergh, Peter J. Williams, and Emanuel ZinggView

Abstract
New evidence for ancient Greek astronomer Hipparchus’ lost Star Catalogue has come to light thanks to multispectral imaging of a palimpsest manuscript and subsequent decipherment and interpretation. This new evidence is the most authoritative to date and allows major progress in the reconstruction of Hipparchus’ Star Catalogue. In particular, it confirms that the Star Catalogue was originally composed in equatorial coordinates. It also confirms that Ptolemy’s Star Catalogue was not based solely on data from Hipparchus’ Catalogue. Finally, the available numerical evidence is consistent with an accuracy within 1° of the real stellar coordinates, which would make Hipparchus’ Catalogue significantly more accurate than his successor Claudius Ptolemy’s.

what's known about math education

It's a mess..  we all have our own ideas.  I think the Finns were on the right track when they elevated the teaching profession a decade  A highly-trained, well-paid teaching profession has made a difference.  Of course society has to agree to care about kids and on the idea that an education is a good thing.

 

 

 

predicting bat → human virus spillovers

It turns out it's possible to predict when spillover events may become more likely.

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Australian flying foxes are of interest because they host a virus called Hendra, which causes a very rare but deadly respiratory infection that kills one in every two infected people. Hendra virus, like Nipah, SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2 (the virus that caused the COVID-19 pandemic) is a bat virus that has spilled over into people. These viruses often reach humans through an intermediate animal, sometimes with deadly consequences. Scientists know that spillovers are associated with habitat loss, but have struggled to pinpoint the specific conditions that spark events until now.

After a detailed investigation, Eby and her colleagues can now predict — up to two years ahead — when clusters of Hendra virus spillovers will probably appear. “They have identified the environmental drivers of spillover,” says Emily Gurley, an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. And they have determined how those events could be prevented.

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And it's something we'll see increasingly as global warming and human incursion is leading to habitat loss.

a tip of the hat to Sukie

 

 

 

russian money and trump

Shocker!

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Elections “reflect the values and the priorities and the beliefs of American citizens,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Parikh said in her closing argument this week. “Jesse Benton by his actions did damage to those principles.”

The evidence at trial showed that Benton bought a $25,000 ticket to a September 2016 Republican National Committee (RNC) event on behalf of Roman Vasilenko, a Russian naval officer turned multilevel marketer. (Vasilenko is under investigation in Russia for allegedly running a pyramid scheme, according to the Kommersant newspaper; he could not be reached for comment.) The donation got Vasilenko a picture with Trump and entrance to a “business roundtable” with the future president.

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Of course this is just the tip of the iceburg.

 

 

om on ftx

Follow the money when looking at a criminal scam

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It might not seem so obvious, but if you follow the breadcrumbs trail — I did — this is a classic Ponzi scheme, where instead of mailed letters of the yore and the tattle of taxi drivers, FTX found suckers at network scale using YouTubers and Tom Brady. The icing on the cake came from media outlets such as Forbes and Fortune, the latter calling Sam Bankman-Fried the next Warren Buffett. Simply put, FTX is a textbook case of a massively successful content-based marketing strategy in the age of social networks.

“In general, the press goes along with the crowd,” said Andrew Odlzyko, a University of Minnesota professor who has written extensively about manias and bubbles. “Part of it is that journalists are part of the crowd and get caught up in the mass delusion. And part of it is ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ that is accentuated by the need to attract readers, which forces folks to emphasize the spectacular.”

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problems with american broadband

Many - and most of the providers have an issue or two.

a tip of the hat to Chris

 

hydrogen

More of an inefficient form of energy storage than anything..  any use down the road should be justified.

snnip

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Most hydrogen is currently made by processes — such as steam reformation of natural gas (methane) — that produce large amounts of CO2 as a by-product. Although ‘green’ hydrogen can be made by using electricity from renewable sources to split water molecules, this process is costly compared with more conventional production methods.

It can also be an inefficient use of renewable resources. Using green electricity to make hydrogen at times of peak demand, when that energy could be feeding the grid and displacing electricity generated from fossil fuels, could result in higher overall emissions than intended. Making hydrogen with electricity generated from unabated use of fossil fuels would be even worse.

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a nice piece on supernovas

if you're fleeing twitter

Or just setting up a shelter for when it explodes..  here's a piece on getting started in Mastodon.

 

 

are we prisoners of geography

Greg notes an interesting piece. Just how much has the world changed and how fast is it changing?

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Russia’s war in Ukraine has involved many surprises. The largest, however, is that it happened at all. Last year, Russia was at peace and enmeshed in a complex global economy. Would it really sever trade ties – and threaten nuclear war – just to expand its already vast territory? Despite the many warnings, including from Vladimir Putin himself, the invasion still came as a shock.

But it wasn’t a shock to the journalist Tim Marshall. On the first page of his 2015 blockbuster book, Prisoners of Geography, Marshall invited readers to contemplate Russia’s topography. A ring of mountains and ice surrounds it. Its border with China is protected by mountain ranges, and it is separated from Iran and Turkey by the Caucusus. Between Russia and western Europe stand the Balkans, Carpathians and Alps, which form another wall. Or, they nearly do. To the north of those mountains, a flat corridor – the Great European Plain – connects Russia to its well-armed western neighbours via Ukraine and Poland. On it, you can ride a bicycle from Paris to Moscow.

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