Category Archives: Science

Science

Don’t get carried away by the rain

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Whilst it’s good to be happy about the water levels going up in our catchments it’s easy to forget that Melbourne is still in a worse position with water today than it was at this time last year. As the summary for the week of the 12th July puts it:

However, while our storages are now at the one third full mark, at the same time last year storages were closer to half full at 47.6%.

That’s a large difference, though it is nice that the climb back up has started earlier than last year…

Graph of historical water levels as of 12th July 2007

Now if only we could redirect some of the rain that the UK is suffering from at the moment..

Alfred Deakin Innovation Lecture – Science, business and the law: Locking up innovation or sharing and harvesting it – which way to go?

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Details on the websites of the State Library (the venue) and DIIRD.

Science, business and the law:

Locking up innovation or sharing and harvesting it – which way to go?

Venue Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria
Date Monday 16 July
Time 6.30 pm – 8.00 pm
Cost Free Event
Seating General Admission - No booking required
Speakers Richard Jefferson, Prof Brian Fitzgerald, John Wilbanks, Robyn Williams

As open source software continues to transform the Internet – underpinning the phenomenal growth of businesses like Google, Ebay and YouTube, what can science learn from the computing revolution? Are we missing out on the full benefits of science and technology because of outdated ideas about copyright and patenting?

This lecture will consider whether in our rush to protect intellectual property we are locking it up and damaging our capacity to deliver solutions for the critical issues of the 21st Century.

Melbournes water storages finally more than 1/3rd full!

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Yay, today the Melbourne Water website tells me:

Melbourne’s water storages are currently 33.7% full

Bring on the rest of the rain, please! The picture at the moment is rather sad, with the summary for the week of the 5th July (latest to date) saying:

However, while the wet weather and rise in storage levels this week has been welcome, our reservoirs are still comparatively low following 10 years of below average inflows and the driest year on record in 2006. Storages at the same time last year were 47.8% (847,229 million litres) full.

Graph of Melbourne Water storages for 10 years up to 5th July 2007

The Sun is not causing Climate Change (Updated)

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For those who may be puzzled by the issues raised by the ABC showing of “The Great Climate Change Swindle” you might like to read this BBC News Report detailing research published in one of the Royal Society’s journals (you can read a PDF copy of the paper free of charge).

A new scientific study concludes that changes in the Sun’s output cannot be causing modern-day climate change. It shows that for the last 20 years, the Sun’s output has declined, yet temperatures on Earth have risen. It also shows that modern temperatures are not determined by the Sun’s effect on cosmic rays, as has been claimed.

You may also like to read New Scientist’s “Climate change: A guide for the perplexed” and “The 7 biggest myths about climate change” to get an idea of the facts behind the issues.

Update: John Dalton has a nice writeup from his point of view called “Who’s Being Swindled ?“

Getting Some Perspective – The Earth from Space

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The Planetary Society has some amazing images & animations of Earth taken by planetary spacecraft.

My favourite at the moment has to be the image of Earth from the surface of Mars, taken by the Spirit rover in 2004 and the first image taken from the surface of an object beyond the moon.

You Are Here

Shades of the Total Perspective Vortex, for those HHGTTG fans out there.

Speaking of which, Paulo Ang has a rather wonderful Flash animation entitled “The Total Perspective Vortex” which makes powerful use of planetary and astronomical imagery alongside music and a liberal smattering of Hitch Hikers quotes.

Warmest May on Record

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An ABC news report called “Climate report: record temperatures, not enough rain” says that:

The warmest May on record in the eastern states of the country will be the subject of a special climate statement to be released by the Bureau of Meteorology on Monday.

The eastern states of Australia have had temperatures about 2-3C above normal for the start of the year, and the Bureau of Meteorology’s head of climate analysis (Dr David Jones) said:

“If you look at Victoria, for example, there has been almost no frost despite the fact here we are at the start of winter,” he said. “That’s really almost an unheard of phenomena.”

Whilst we have had some rain recently the fact that the ground is so dry just means it’s getting sucked straight in without making it to rivers, or reservoirs..

A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing On the Playstation 3

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Eugen Leitl has just posted on the Beowulf list a message with a link to a draft of a paper by Alfredo Buttari, Piotr Luszczek, Jakub Kurzak, Jack Dongarra and George Bosilca called A Rough Guide to Scientific Computing On the Playstation 3. It’s a 74 page PDF looking at the possibilities and problems with using the PS3 for scientific computing (there is already a PS3 Linux cluster at NCSU).

The introduction to the paper lets you know that this isn’t going to be easy..

As exciting as it may sound, using the PS3 for scientific computing is a bumpy ride. Parallel programming models for multi-core processors are in their infancy, and standardized APIs are not even on the horizon. As a result, presently, only hand-written code fully exploits the hardware capabilities of the CELL processor. Ultimately, the suitability of the PS3 platform for scientific computing is most heavily impaired by the devastating disproportion between the processing power of the processor and the crippling slowness of the interconnect, explained in detail in section 9.1. Nevertheless, the CELL processor is a revolutionary chip, delivering ground-breaking performance and now available in an affordable package. We hope that this rough guide will make the ride slightly less bumpy.

Of course, it’s unlikely you’re going to see the PS3 being used in production clusters anyway, so the interconnect shouldn’t be such a problem there.. 🙂

The paper covers the hardware, Linux support and how to get it onto a PS3, programming methods and models, MPI, performance, etc. The paper isn’t complete as I write, but it is still a very interesting read. HPC folks will certainly want to read section 9.1 “Limitations of the PS 3 for Scientific Computing”, especially the part that says:

Double precision performance. Peak performance of double precision floating point arithmetic is a factor of 14 below the peak performance of single precision. Computations which demand full precision accuracy will see a peak performance of only 14 Gflop/s, unless mixed-precision approaches can be applied.

Compare and Contrast – Pre-entrance Chinese University Question and First Year UK University Question

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For anyone who doubts that graduates in China are going to be more than a match for the rest of the world, go and read this BBC news article comparing a maths question set to first year chemistry students in the UK with a maths question that is set to students wishing to enter university in China.

The Royal Society of Chemistry in the UK is running a competition offering a GBP500 prize to a winner who can correctly answer the question from China. This is because of their concerns about the poor level of mathematics that Chemistry students in the UK have:

Increasingly, universities are mounting remedial sessions for incoming science undergraduates because their maths skills are so limited, with many having stopped formal lessons in mathematics two years earlier at the GCSE level.