#graphing calculator invariably

[tactile-vedic-math]

You said: Has the Wolfram Physics Project proven any laws of Fundamental Physics? ChatGPT said: As of now, the Wolfram Physics Project has not yet proven any laws of fundamental physics in the traditional scientific sense — that is, it has not derived known physical laws like the Standard Model or general relativity from its models in a fully rigorous, universally accepted way. However, here is what has been achieved so far:

Framework Creation Stephen Wolfram and his team have developed a formal computational framework based on hypergraph rewriting systems, proposing that space, time, and physics arise from the evolution of discrete structures according to simple rules.

Derivations of Known Features The project has heuristically derived or simulated features that resemble known aspects of physics, such as: • Causal invariance, a property related to relativity. • Emergent spacetime and Lorentz invariance under certain assumptions. • Indications of quantum behavior via multiway systems and branchial space. • A reformulation of Einstein's equations in terms of causal graphs (though not derived from first principles in this model yet).

Mathematical Insights The effort has produced new mathematical ideas in the areas of: • Graph theory and rewriting systems. • Causal structure and foliations. • Category theory and homotopy applied to physics.

Exploratory Status The project is in an exploratory and foundational stage, focusing on mapping how known physics might emerge from extremely low-level computational processes — essentially suggesting a new paradigm, but not yet establishing it in a way that matches or replaces existing physics frameworks.

Summary While the Wolfram Physics Project is a bold attempt to discover a unified computational foundation for physics, it remains speculative and has not yet produced falsifiable predictions or rigorous derivations of existing laws from its core principles. It is more accurate to say it proposes a path toward such a foundation, rather than having proven one. Would you like a visual or technical example of how one of its models relates to relativity or quantum mechanics?

You said: Are Feynman diagrams causal graphs? ChatGPT said: Great question — Feynman diagrams are not causal graphs, although they share some superficial similarities. Here's a breakdown of the differences and relationships between them:

🔹 What Are Feynman Diagrams? • Feynman diagrams are computational tools in quantum field theory (QFT), used to visualize and calculate probability amplitudes for particle interactions. • Each diagram represents a term in a perturbative expansion of a quantum amplitude. • The axes are not spacetime coordinates in a strict sense; the vertical axis is usually time (heuristically), but the diagrams are mainly symbolic. • Vertices represent interaction points, and lines represent particles propagating, not trajectories in spacetime. ➡️ Feynman diagrams are not literal depictions of what happens in spacetime. They help organize terms in quantum field calculations using a mathematical formalism.

🔹 What Are Causal Graphs? • Causal graphs (in the context of the Wolfram Physics Project and elsewhere) are networks where nodes represent events, and directed edges represent causal dependencies between them. • They explicitly encode the causal structure of a physical system: if event A causes or influences event B, there is an arrow from A to B. • In relativity or computational models like the Wolfram Physics Project, causal graphs reflect the actual structure of spacetime or computational history.

🔸 Key Differences Feature Feynman Diagrams Causal Graphs Purpose Mathematical expansion Represent causal structure

in QFT. of events. Temporal Mostly symbolic Encodes actual causal

Meaning relations. Representation Particle interactions Event causality Used in Quantum Field Theory Relativity, Quantum Gravity, Computational Physics

🔹 Are They Related at All? They are not equivalent, but they both express relationships between events or interactions — just in very different frameworks: • In QFT, Feynman diagrams help compute probabilities. • In causal graph models (like in the Wolfram Physics Project), the entire fabric of spacetime and physics arises from the graph's structure. So while both are graphs involving vertices and edges, their meaning and use are fundamentally different. Would you like a diagram comparing the two visually?

You said: Does the Amplituhedron contain all Feynman diagrams? ChatGPT said: Excellent question — and a deep one. The short answer is: The Amplituhedron does not contain all Feynman diagrams — it replaces them in certain theories, offering a radically different way to compute scattering amplitudes without using any Feynman diagrams at all. Let me explain.

🔹 What Is the Amplituhedron? The Amplituhedron is a geometric object discovered by Nima Arkani-Hamed and collaborators around 2013. It encodes the scattering amplitudes of certain particle interactions in a purely geometric way, without reference to: • Spacetime • Quantum fields • Or Feynman diagrams It was first developed for: • Planar N=4\mathcal{N} = 4N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory in 4D — a highly symmetric (but not realistic) QFT. • Tree-level amplitudes, later extended to loop-level in that theory.

🔸 Relationship to Feynman Diagrams Feature Feynman Diagrams Amplituhedron Approach Perturbative expansion Geometric encoding Input Fields, vertices, propagators Momentum twistors, combinatorics Intermediate Steps Many diagrams with divergences None; computes final amplitude directly Redundancy Huge (many diagrams cancel) Minimal; built to avoid redundancy Containment Diagrams are not inside the amplituhedron The amplituhedron gives results equivalent to the sum of all diagrams

So, rather than containing Feynman diagrams, the Amplituhedron provides an alternative to them, yielding the same final amplitude but without going through the diagrammatic machinery.

🔹 Implication In certain theories (especially planar N=4 supersymmetric Yang–Mills theory in 4D — a highly symmetric (but not realistic) QFT.), the entire Feynman diagrammatic expansion is replaced by computing a volume or combinatorial feature of the amplituhedron. This is deeply tied to hidden symmetries and positivity structures in the amplitudes.

Summary • ❌ The Amplituhedron does not contain all Feynman diagrams. • ✅ It allows you to compute the total amplitude without them, in some very specific quantum field theories. • 🔬 It suggests there may be more fundamental, geometric formulations of physics than quantum fields and Feynman diagrams. Would you like an illustrative visualization of what the amplituhedron looks like and how it encodes amplitudes?

You said: How many kinds of spontaneous quantum events have been observed to occur in a quantum vacuum? ChatGPT said: In quantum field theory, several types of spontaneous quantum events are predicted — and in some cases observed — to occur in the quantum vacuum, due to its inherent fluctuations and instability. These events arise from the uncertainty principle, which allows temporary violations of conservation laws (like energy conservation) within certain limits. Here's a breakdown of the main kinds:

✅ Observed or Indirectly Confirmed Spontaneous Quantum Events

Vacuum Fluctuations • Description: Temporary appearance of particle–antiparticle pairs (like electron–positron pairs) that annihilate each other shortly after.
 • Evidence: Indirect, but foundational to quantum electrodynamics (QED); shows up in: • Lamb shift
 • Casimir effect
 • Anomalous magnetic moment of the electron


Spontaneous Emission • Description: An excited atom can emit a photon spontaneously due to coupling with the quantum vacuum.
 • Evidence: Well-measured in quantum optics; cannot occur in classical EM theory — requires vacuum field.


Hawking Radiation (Theoretical, but Widely Accepted) • Description: Black holes emit particles due to quantum vacuum fluctuations near the event horizon.
 • Evidence: Not yet observed directly, but supported by consistent theoretical work and analog experiments.


Unruh Effect (Theoretical) • Description: An accelerating observer in a vacuum perceives a warm bath of particles (vacuum looks like it contains particles).
 • Evidence: No direct observation due to extreme acceleration required.


Schwinger Effect (Strong-Field Pair Production) • Description: Creation of electron–positron pairs from vacuum in the presence of a very strong electric field.
 • Evidence: Not yet observed in pure form, but being pursued in high-intensity laser experiments (e.g., ELI, SLAC).


❗ Summary: How Many Kinds? There are at least five major categories of spontaneous quantum events associated with the vacuum: # Event Type Observed? 1 Vacuum fluctuations (virtual particles) ✅ Indirect 2 Spontaneous emission ✅ Direct 3 Hawking radiation ❌ Theoretical only 4 Unruh effect ❌ Theoretical only 5 Schwinger effect ❌ Not yet observed

So, to answer directly: Two kinds have been directly observed (vacuum fluctuations via effects like Casimir and Lamb shift, and spontaneous emission), while three more are theoretically predicted and under investigation. Would you like a timeline or visual map of these phenomena and where they stand in terms of experimental support?

You said: Does Quantum Foam exist? ChatGPT said: Quantum foam — also known as spacetime foam — is a hypothetical concept, not yet observed, but widely discussed in theoretical physics as a possible feature of spacetime at the Planck scale (~ 10 − 35 10^{-35} 10 −35 meters). Here's a detailed breakdown of what that means:

🔹 What Is Quantum Foam? • Proposed by John Wheeler in the 1950s. • Describes the idea that at very small scales, spacetime is not smooth, but fluctuates violently due to quantum uncertainty. • Instead of a flat or gently curved spacetime (as in general relativity), quantum foam suggests a chaotic structure where: • Tiny virtual black holes may pop in and out of existence. • Topology and geometry fluctuate, possibly tearing and reconnecting. • Space and time themselves may be emergent phenomena, not fundamental. This is analogous to how a calm ocean surface looks flat from afar, but is foamy and turbulent up close.

🔬 Does It Exist? ❌ No direct experimental evidence • Quantum foam is predicted to occur at the Planck scale, far beyond current experimental resolution. • We can't probe distances smaller than about 10−1910^{-19}10 • −19 • meters even at the LHC, which is 16 orders of magnitude too large to test quantum foam directly. ✅ Strong theoretical motivation • Most approaches to quantum gravity (like loop quantum gravity, string theory, causal dynamical triangulations, and the Wolfram Physics Project) predict some form of non-smooth, fluctuating microstructure of spacetime — very much like quantum foam. • It plays a role in ideas about the holographic principle, black hole entropy, and emergent spacetime. 🧪 Proposed observational hints (not confirmed) • Light dispersion from distant gamma-ray bursts — some models predict tiny energy-dependent delays due to quantum foam. So far, data places upper bounds, but no detection. • LIGO and gravitational wave detectors have been proposed to test Planck-scale noise, but again, no positive results yet.

🧾 Summary Quantum foam has not been directly observed, but it remains a compelling theoretical prediction of many quantum gravity models. You can think of it as a plausible but unconfirmed microscopic structure of spacetime — similar to how atoms were theorized long before they were observed. Would you like to explore which quantum gravity theories describe quantum foam explicitly, or see a visual analogy of how it would distort spacetime?

You said: In the Wolfram Physics model, would the Quantum Foam accomplish Computation? ChatGPT said: Yes — in the Wolfram Physics Project, the analog of quantum foam is not just a fluctuating structure but is fundamentally computational in nature. In fact, computation is what drives everything in the model.

🔹 The Core Idea In Wolfram's model, the universe is represented by the evolution of a hypergraph, where: • Nodes represent abstract "atoms of space". • Edges represent relationships between those nodes. • A set of simple rewriting rules updates this graph over time. This process is computational, and the universe is essentially a giant distributed computation.

🔸 So, Is There Quantum Foam? Yes — though not called that formally, the fine-grained structure of the hypergraph at very small scales behaves like a quantum foam, because: 1. The graph is discrete and locally fluctuating. 2. The structure changes in a non-deterministic way due to multiway branching — capturing quantum indeterminacy. 3. The causal graph formed by applying update rules encodes both quantum mechanics and general relativity in a unified computational framework. 4. The universe does not evolve linearly; it evolves through all possible paths consistent with the rules — similar to a Feynman path integral or quantum superposition.

🔹 Computation in the "Foam" In this model: • The quantum-foam-like structure is not passive; it actively computes all possible evolutions. • This is what gives rise to: • Causal relationships • Quantum interference • Entanglement • Space, time, particles, and forces • Observers are just specific computational processes embedded in this system. Wolfram refers to this as "the ruliad" — the limit of all possible computations following all possible rules. The foam is essentially a slice of the ruliad, constrained by the rules we experience.

🧾 Summary In the Wolfram Physics Project, the quantum-foam-like structure of space is inherently computational — it both encodes and performs the fundamental computation that produces the universe. Would you like a visual simulation of how a simple hypergraph evolves in this model, to see how spacetime and causality emerge?

You said: Given Max Tegmark: "If Consciousness is how information feels as it is being processed, then Consciousness is doubly substrate-independent." Does this imply that the Quantum Foam may support some degree of Consciousness? ChatGPT said: That's a profound and nuanced question — and one that treads the boundary between physics, information theory, and philosophy of mind. Let's unpack it carefully.

🔹 Max Tegmark's View: Consciousness as Information Processing Max Tegmark's quote suggests the following key ideas: 1. Consciousness is the subjective experience of information processing. 2. Information processing is substrate-independent, meaning it can, in principle, happen on any medium — silicon, neurons, paper, or something more exotic. 3. Therefore, consciousness is also substrate-independent, if it's tied strictly to the structure and flow of information. This idea is central to what Tegmark calls the "Mathematical Universe Hypothesis" and his related work on consciousness (e.g., "Perceptronium" — the idea that consciousness is a state of matter defined by specific information-processing properties).

🔸 Does This Apply to Quantum Foam or the Wolfram Model? Now let’s connect this with the quantum foam and Wolfram’s physics model: 🔸 1. Is the quantum foam computational? • In standard quantum field theory or general relativity, quantum foam is a hypothesized physical fluctuation at Planck scales — it's not defined in terms of information or computation. • In Wolfram’s model, however, the fine structure of spacetime is explicitly a computational substrate — a hypergraph updated by rules. That is information processing. 🔸 2. Could it support consciousness? • If consciousness = certain types of information processing, and if quantum foam (or the hypergraph in Wolfram’s model) supports rich and self-referential computation… • Then yes, in principle, such a system could support consciousness, at least in a substrate-independent sense. But that hinges on a few assumptions: • Consciousness is only information processing (functionalism). • No special "biological" or "material" features are needed (non-biological pancomputationalism). • The quantum foam or hypergraph can reach the complexity, integration, and feedback needed (like in Tononi's Integrated Information Theory or other cognitive models).

🧠 Key Insight If the structure underlying reality — such as quantum foam or the hypergraph of Wolfram's model — is capable of implementing sufficiently rich and integrated computation, and if consciousness arises from such computation, then yes, consciousness could, in principle, emerge or be supported by that structure. This does not imply that the quantum foam is conscious per se — but rather that it might be able to support conscious processes, just as neurons or silicon circuits do.

🧾 Summary • Tegmark’s quote suggests consciousness is an emergent property of computation. • Quantum foam in standard physics is not inherently computational, so the implication is weak there. • Wolfram's hypergraph-based quantum foam, however, is computational, and thus, could in principle support consciousness, if it meets the required complexity and dynamics. Would you like to explore what specific kinds of information processing might be necessary for consciousness to emerge from a computational substrate like this?

"The Unified Field of Quantum Physics is the same as the Unified Field of Pure Consciousness." John Hagelin, Ph.D, Raja of Invincible America

[ailtrahq]

SOL plunged by nearly 10% when social mentions of the asset skyrocketed on FTX’s liquidation plan SOL regained some sense of steadiness at press time Despite their evolving technology and growing utility, crypto-assets are still heavily influenced by speculation and social media-induced FUD. The quintessential illustration of this theory could be Solana [SOL], the tenth-largest digital asset by market cap. Is your portfolio green? Check out the SOL Profit Calculator Solana highly sensitive to FUD An on-chain analyst who goes by the pseudonym Emperor Osmo took to social platform X to draw attention to the strong correlation between negative social commentary on SOL and the subsequent impact on its price. It is intriguing to observe the correlation between social media-induced FUD regarding $SOL and its impact on price performance. pic.twitter.com/AR4ZYgJqLD — Emperor Osmo🧪 (@Flowslikeosmo) September 17, 2023 The most recent example that comes to mind is the FUD surrounding FTX’s upcoming liquidation plan. The bankrupt exchange got court approval to sell its assets, a vast majority of which is held in SOL. Holders are concerned that the market might be flooded with SOL coins in the near future, resulting in a strong downward pressure on its value. The attached graph highlights how SOL plunged by nearly 10% as social mentions of the asset skyrocketed. This, despite the plan having adequate safeguards in place, such as placing a cap on the weekly liquidation value. Blast from the past The association with FTX brought misery to SOL in the past as well. The stunning collapse of the exchange in the fall of 2022 brought down the market with it. SOL, on the other hand, sustained significantly more damage as a result of FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s backing and investments in several of Solana’s projects. Source: LunarCrush In this case too, SOL’s social mentions surged to new heights with prices following in the opposite direction, as indicated by LunarCrush’s data. Solana’s history is also marred by periodic network disruptions. These have eroded its relative advantages in speed and efficiency. Earlier in February, Solana suffered a major outage which lasted nearly 20 hours. The glitch birthed another series of negative commentary around SOL. Words like ‘concern’ and ‘outage’ were frequently used in tandem with SOL in that phase. Realistic or not, here’s SOL’s market cap in BTC’s terms Will SOL ride out the storm? It was therefore expected and evident that a surge in social activity was invariably followed by a drop in SOL’s value. However, as far as the most recent case is concerned, the FUD appeared to be subsiding at press time. In fact, SOL was up by 4.26% on the 7-day chart, with the 24-hour price action noting some appreciation too. Source

[medalmonkey]

Class 12th Unit 01 Electrostatics

1)

When you put two objects side by side at a small distance between them, do they exert any force on each other? You actually do not know exactly. You only know when the force due to first object on the second object is so large that it is pushed or pulled and moved a distance.

2)

It does not happen (usually) in the case of gravitational force. That is one object does not move when gravitational force is applied on it by the other object in its vicinity. (An example of such a movement is free fall).

3)

But it happens in the case of a certain kind of stronger force (in comparison to gravitational force). This force has been named electrostatic force.

4)

This is because value of G \( (=6.67×10^{-11)}\) is much smaller than the value of k \((=9×10^9)\). That is why electrostatic forces are stronger then the gravitational forces.

5)

Scientists started inventing a story about the reasons behind the electrostatic force. They came up with the idea of charge.

6)

They said that charge is such a thing that whenever a body possesses it, it can exert an electric force on another body also possessing the thing (charge).

7)

Electric force between two neutrons is zero; therefore, neutrons have no charge, though they have mass.

8)

They told two polarities of charge, positive and negative.

9)

Nature of electric charge on the body can be determined using a gold leaf electroscope which is already charged with a charge of known polarity.

10)

A body can receive charge in two ways. Charging by friction and charging by induction.

11)

When you rub one object over other, electrons are transferred from one object to the other. This is charging by friction.

12)

Electrons are transferred from the material whose work function is lower to the material whose work function is higher.

13)

Unit of charge is a derived unit.

\(1C=1As\)

14)

In case of charging by induction, no real contact occurs between the object. You place one (charged) object in the vicinity of other (uncharged) object and there is a finite separation between the two objects. The uncharged object gets charged ultimately by the process of charging by induction.

15)

One important property of the charge is its invariance. It means that charge at rest is equal to the charge in motion.

16)

Few basic properties of charge are:

a. Quantization of charge.

b. Additivity of charge.

c. Conservation of charge.

17)

Electrostatic force between two charges is not affected by the presence of any other charge.

18)

Now the obvious question arises, if you place two charged particles side by side at a small distance between them, will there be any interaction between them?

Yes, there will be an interaction. Each particle will exert some force on the other particle. You can calculate magnitude and direction of force with the help of Coulomb’s law.

\(F=\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac{q_1q_2}{r^2}\)

19)

If the charged particles are placed in air, and if the charged particles are placed in any other medium, will the forces of interaction be same?

Of course not. The forces of interaction do depend on the medium in which they are placed.

20)

Force between two given charges held at a given distance apart in water (k=81) is only 1/81 of the force between them in air.

21)

This characteristic (of medium) which decides the intensity of interaction is known as permittivity.

22)

Now there is a thing which tells you relation between permittivity of two media. The thing is relative permittivity.

23)

Relative permittivity is obtained when you divide absolute permittivity by permittivity of free space and not vice versa.

24)

Other name of relative permittivity is dielectric constant.

25)

Dielectric constant does depend upon temperature. Dielectric constant of a medium usually decreases with rise in temperature. For example, for water at 20C, K is 80 and for water at 25C, K is 78.5.

26)

With the help of Coulomb’s law, you calculate the force experienced by a charged particle exerted by other charged particle. Why does any charged particle experiences a force when is brought into vicinity of any other charged particle? Answer to this question is given with the help of concept of electric field.

27)

You must have seen an aura in the surrounding of a deepak. You may imagine an aura in the surrounding area of any charged particle. The aura is stronger in the immediate vicinity of the charged particle and the aura is fainted when observed distant and distant. This is a visualization of electric field.

28)

How do you detect an electric field?

29)

The test charge acts as a detector of the electric field. It is an infinitesimally small charge so that it affects least the electric field of source charge.

30)

Direction of electric field is the direction of movement of unit positive test charge.

31)

Graph between E and \(1\r^2\) is a straight line.

32)

When a charged particle is accelerated, its motion is communicated to other charged particles in its neighborhood in the form of a disturbance called electromagnetic wave travelling in vacuum with the speed of light. Thus an electric field may be treated as a source of energy which is transported from one place to another in the electric field with the help of electromagnetic waves.

33)

Electric field is depicted on paper with the help of electric field lines.

34)

Electric field lines are continuous curves. They start from a positively charged body and end at a negatively charged body.

35)

No electric lines of force exist inside the charged body. Thus, electrostatic field lines are continuous but do not form closed loops.

36)

The electric field lines are always normal to the surface of a conductor, both while starting and ending on the conductor. Therefore, there is no component of electric field parallel to the surface of the conductor.

37)

How do you calculate force on a charged particle due to any other charged particle?

38)

You calculate it with the help of Coulomb’s law. You can also calculate force by using the concept of electric field:

\(F=qE\)

39)

When you place two charges of equal magnitude and opposite polarity at a small distance between them, the configuration is called electric dipole.

40)

A mathematical entity is defined, the product of either charge of the electric dipole and the distance between the two charges. It is called dipole moment.

41)

Direction of dipole moment:

42)

The above diagram shows a molecule of water with three nuclei represented by dots. The electric dipole moment p points from the negative oxygen side to the positive hydrogen side of the molecule.

43)

Resultant intensity E at a point on the axial line of a dipole is the difference of the fields due to the charges at the ends of the dipole:

\(E\;=\;E_2-E_1\;=\;\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac q{(r-a)^2}-\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac q{(r+a)^2}\)

44)

It is \(E_2-E_1\) because \(E_2\) is greater than \(E_1\). Coincidentally it is the same direction as that of p.

45)

The result (electric field at axial line due to an electric dipole) is:

\(E=\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac{2p}{r^3}\)

46)

When you calculate field intensity on equatorial line of dipole, for resultant intensity you take:

\(E=E_1cos\theta+E_2cos\theta\)

47)

The sine-component are not taken into consideration since they cancel out each other.

48)

The result (electric field at equatorial line due to an electric dipole) is:

\(E=\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac{p}{r^3}\)

49)

At a given distance from the center of dipole, electric field intensity on axial line is twice the electric intensity on equatorial line.

\(\frac{E_{axial}}{E_{equatorial}}=2\)

50)

At large distances from the dipole, the dipole field falls off more rapidly \((E\propto1/r^3)\) than like \((E\propto1/r^2)\) for a point charge.

51)

One interesting feature is that electric field due to a single charge is spherically symmetric while electric field due to a dipole is cylindrically symmetric.

52)

Dipole moment of a quadrupole is zero.

53)

When you calculate electric field intensity at a point on the axis of a uniformly charged ring, you observe that the resultant electric field intensity is \(\sum dE\;\cos\theta\) .

54)

A circular loop of charge behaves as a point charge when the observation point is at very large distance from the loop, compared to the radius of the loop.

55)

Electric field intensity due to a uniformly charged ring:

56)

Electric field intensity due to a uniformly charged ring is maximum at a distance \(r/\surd2\) from its center on either side on the axis of the ring.

57)

When you place an electric dipole in a uniform electric field, it (the dipole) experiences a torque. When you calculate this torque, you multiply either force with the perpendicular distance between the forces. The perpendicular distance between the forces is \(2a\;\sin\theta\) .

58)

There are two positions how the electric dipole is placed in equilibrium. One is at 0 degree and the other is at 180 degree.

59)

The equilibrium corresponding to one is stable equilibrium while corresponding to other is unstable equilibrium.

60)

Small amount of work done in rotating the dipole through a small angle \(d\theta\) against the torque is:

\(dW=\tau d\theta=pE\;\sin\theta\;\;d\theta\)

61)

This work is stored as potential energy of the dipole.

62)

When you bring a charge from some place to a specified position, you do not do any work. You do some work only when you bring the charge against an already placed charge, this work is the potential energy (of the system of both the charges). And when you consider this work (done) for one unit charge, it is potential (not potential energy) at that point. The potential is of the already placed charge (not of the system of both charge).

63)

So the obvious definition of potential is:

“work done per unit charge”

64)

And the definition of potential energy is:

“total work done”

65)

Electrostatic potential between two points:

\(1V=\frac{1J}{1C}\)

66)

Electrostatic potential difference between any two points in an electrostatic field is said to be one volt, when one joule of work is done in moving a positive charge of one coulomb from one point to the other against the electrostatic force of the field without any acceleration.

This definition in other words could be said as:

One joule of work is done in moving a positive charge of one coulomb form one point to the other having a potential difference of one volt between them. i.e. you do or system does one joule work when you/system moves one coulomb charge between two points having one volt potential difference.

67)

No work is done in moving a UNIT positive test charge over a closed path in an electric field. Mathematically, this is written as:

\(\oint E\cdot dl=0\)

68)

Term \(E\cdot dl\) does not signify work done in moving the entire charge by a distance \(dl\), in fact it signifies the work done in moving the UNIT charge only.

69)

Where is the information regarding UNIT charge stored in the above equation? It is stored in the E; it is the force experienced by UNIT charge.

70)

\(\oint E\cdot dl=0\)  and \(\int E\cdot dl\) does not signify one and same thing.

The first one i.e.  \(\oint E\cdot dl=0\) signifies work done over a complete cycle, while the second one i.e.  \(\int E\cdot dl\) signifies work done in moving a path of distance \(dl\) .

71)

There is no mathematical derivation of \(\oint E\cdot dl=0\) . It is not obtained mathematically. \(\oint E\cdot dl=0\)  is a depiction of a certain physical fact which is that the work done in moving a unit positive test charge over a closed path is zero.

72)

\(\oint E\cdot dl=0\)  is zero due to the reasoning that electric field is conservative in nature as similar to gravitational field etc. And in any conservative field, the work done depends only on the initial and final positions. When you complete a cycle you reach where you started from. Your displacement is zero. And that is why work done is zero.

73)

\(\oint E\cdot dl=0\) signifies work done in moving a unit charge and not the entire charge. 

Do you remember, how do you define electric field? 

Electric field is the force experienced per unit charge.

\(E=\frac Fq\)

Now, in a sense, when you calculate  \(\int E\cdot dl\) , you calculate:

FORCE PER UNIT CHARGE MULTIPLY DISTANCE.

\(\frac{force\;\times\;dis\tan ce}{charge}\)

\(\frac{work}{charge}\)

74)

75)

When you calculate electrostatic potential at a point due to an electric dipole, you use following values of \(r_1\) and \(r_2\) :

\(\frac1{r_1}=\frac1r\left(1+\frac{2a}r\cos\left(\theta\right)\right)^{-1/2}\)

\(\frac1{r_2}=\frac1r\left(1-\frac{2a}r\cos\left(\theta\right)\right)^{-1/2}\)

76)

Result (potential at a point due to an electric dipole) is:

\(V=\frac1{4\pi\varepsilon_0}\frac{p\cos\left(\theta\right)}{r^2}\)

77)

Potential due to a point charge varies inversely as the distance from the charge \(V\propto\frac1r\) while potential due to dipole falls off more rapidly \(V\propto\frac1r{r^2}\) .

78)

Work done in carrying charge from infinity to a point is:

W = q X (potential at that point)

79)

The expression for the potential energy remains unchanged, whatever way the charges are brought to the specified locations. This is because work done by electrostatic forces is independent of the path chosen.

80)

When two charges are of same sign, they repel each other. Work done to bring them to their respective positions is positive. Therefore, potential energy of a system of two charges of same sign is positive.

81)

When the two charges are of opposite sign, they attract each other. Work done to bring them to their respective positions is negative.

82)

How do you determine direction of electric field? Usually you do not determine direction of electric field. You only know that electric field starts from positively charged particle and terminates at negatively charged particle. A charge which is positive has high potential and a charge which is negative has low potential.

83)

A different approach to look at the direction of electric field is that it (direction) is from higher potential to lower potential. And this thing is described mathematically as:

\(E=-gradV\)

84)

When you talk about electric field associated with a particular area, you call it electric flux.

85)

Electric flux is analogous to flux of liquid flowing across a plane, which is equal to \(v\cdot ds\) where \(v\) is the velocity of flow of liquid.

86)

Electric flux is a scalar quantity.

87)

SI unit of electric flux is:

(unit of E) X (unit of S)

\(NC^{-1}\times m^2\)

88)

You obtain the total normal electric flux over the entire spherical surface just by integrating over the closed surface area of the sphere:

\(\phi=\oint E\cdot ds\;=\;\frac q{4\pi\varepsilon_0r^2}\oint dS=\frac q{4\pi\varepsilon_0r^2}4\pi r^2=\frac q{\varepsilon_0}\)

89)

When you calculate field due to an infinitely long straight uniformly charged wire, you use values of \(\phi\) and q as indicated:

\(E(2\pi rl)=\frac{\lambda l}{\varepsilon_0}\)

Where \(\lambda l\) is the charge on the wire enclosed in the Gaussian volume.

If \(\lambda>0\) , the direction of electric field at every point is radially outwards.

If \(\lambda<0\) , the direction of electric field at every point is radially inwards.

90)

When you calculate field outside a uniformly charged spherical shell, you use values of \(\phi\) and \(q\) as indicated:

\(E(4\pi r^2)=q/\varepsilon_0\)

91)

This is exactly the field produced by a charge q placed at the center of the shell.

92)

Graph between E and r for a uniformly charged spherical shell:

93)

A shell of uniform charge attracts or repels a charged particle that is outside the shell, as if all the shell’s charge were concentrated at its center.

94)

However, if a charged particle is located inside a shell of uniform charge, there is no net electrostatic force on the particle due to the shell. This is because inside the shell, E = 0.

95)

When you calculate electric field intensity due to a non-conducting charged solid sphere, you use a reduced value of charge. That reduced value is:

\(q'=\frac43\pi r^3\rho \)

96)

With this reduced value of charge, you observe that electric intensity at any point inside a non-conducting charged solid sphere varies directly as the distance of the point from the center of the sphere. Outside the sphere, it (electric field) varies as \(E\propto1/r^2\)

97)

[wisdomrays]

TAFAKKUR: Part 335

THE WONDER OF THE SNOWFLAKE: Part 1

Many things are beyond our limited scope of hearing and sight. However, with the development and advancement of technology, to our amazement, we are learning new things about the world we live in with each passing day. Each finding, or realization, of a fact is like a treasure of beauty revealed to us in complete perfection. These discoveries teach us mind-stunning realities about our surrounding environment and its material elements. In this article, I will discuss the wonder of the snowflake, a tiny six-sided miracle of creation that baffles scientists and people alike with its ingenious structure and awe-inspiring beauty. This magnificent piece of art is a perfect example of pure beauty and marvel.

Wilson Bentley took the first photomicrographs of a snowflake, thereby initiating extensive research on the snowflake. When he was 15 years old, his mother gave him a microscope as a gift. He began studying several things under the microscope, among them raindrops and snowflakes. Later on, he discovered how to photograph this delicate ice formation and presented it to the world. His enthusiasm for photographing snowflakes continued until his death 47 years later. Through his photomicro graph collection, we can see just what a complex and wonderful creation each snowflake is and why it has been the subject of such debate over the years.

The average snowflake is made up of 2 to 200 separate snow crystals; much larger ones can contain as many as 1,000 separate snow crystals. These snow crystals begin to form around tiny dust particles that have been carried up high into the atmosphere. When the temperature drops below freezing at these high altitudes, water vapor clings to these dust particles. Interestingly, the water vapor skips the liquid state and turns directly into ice, a process called sublimation. When the air contains enough moisture and the ice crystals accumulate, these crystal formations begin to fall as snow.

Scientists believe that there are only four different types (shapes) of these six-sided snowflakes; hexagonal plates, stellar stars, stellar and plate combinations, and spatial dendrites. Hexagonal plates are thin, solid, or partly snow crystals. This pattern is made up of a variety of ridges and hollows, as well as thick and thin ice. The stellar star pattern is the one many know as the symbol of a snowflake. It assumes this pattern because ice crystals tend to cling together in "cottony" clumps and have the corners of a star, unlike hexagonal plates.

The stellar and plate combination pattern is formed when plate and stellar star characteristics unite. The resulting flake is considered the most exquisite of all crystals. The plate pattern is in the middle, and the stellar star branches out from the plate. Finally, the dendrite, another stellar type, is identified by small crystals that branch out, fern-like, along each of its six "rays."

It is believed that the shape of the snow crystals forming these snowflakes depends on the temperature of the cloud in which it is formed. Ice crystal columns are formed in the highest clouds, which have the lowest temperatures. Dendrites and star-shaped crystals are formed in the slightly warmer middle clouds, and needle ice crystals are formed in the lower clouds. These temperature variations cause each snowflake to assume a specific shape. Different sources give slightly different temperature ranges and different explanations of a snowflake's developmental stages. This may be to the fact that scientists do not have exact knowledge of the conditions and formation of these delicate crystals, for they base their assumptions on laboratory experiments that seek to create the same weather conditions. It must be pointed out, however, that all snowflakes "created" in laboratories are always deformed and do not resemble the perfectly symmetrical flakes found in nature.

The first wonder I would like to describe is the snowflake's construction. Nuclear physicists and crystallographers are still trying to explain this complex bridgework of molecules that form the ice crystals into a snowflake. A brief explanation behind the construction mystery is that an average hexagonal-shaped crystal may contain 100 millon more water molecules. The ice crystal grows by adding more and more molecules. Its growth proceeds in a way that is both perfectly horizontal and perpendicular, thus building a broader and thicker crystal. Amazingly, this process is always carried out within the same hexagonal symmetry.

An ice crystal's framework is a marvelous example of solid geometry, for it always presents an ingenious grouping of molecular parts. Not only does the ice of a snow crystal grow perpendicularly by interlocking pyramids, but at the same time its horizontal ice particles extend themselves in overlapping hexagonal patterns.

But not all of a snowflake's beauty can be seen with the naked eye. Each crystal contains an invisible masterpiece of construction resembling an ongoing pattern that becomes smaller and smaller. Such a development is produced by the ice crystals themselves, which bond to each other and thereby increase the snowflake's size. Over a period of 15 minutes, and under the conditions necessary for sublimation, a snow crystal gradually assumes the shape of the first stage. This baby crystal is unbelievably tiny, from .008 to .009 of an inch in diameter.

The average initial crystal may appear as hexagonal plates, sector plates, various stellar forms, or as capped columns. This later shows evidence of a skeletal structure, surface design, and pattern that subtly determine the snowflake's final pattern. Later, this plain star will begin to develop either crystal twigs or fern-like plumes. As the final ice structure becomes heavy, it begins its journey to the ground.

An additional wonder is that no two snowflakes are alike! Each snowflake has a unique combination of ice crystals, which creates a unique snowflake. No two identical snowflakes have been found.

Another mystery is why each snowflake has six sides. Johannes Kepler, a physicist and mathematician, has studied this for years. In his The Six-Cornered Snowflake, he mentions some very important and thought-provoking questions and explanations. He also states that there must be an agent for such perfection and calculation, some definite reason why a snowflake's initial form invariably displays the shape of a six-cornered starlet. Why always six? If this were the result of chance, should not some of them at least have five or seven corners?

[embsdiaries]

AI POWERED DATA ANALYSIS FOR CORONA VIRUS EPIDEMIC MONITERING AND CONTROL.

As the first few cases emerged in Wuhan, around the 31st of December information had reached the WHO. Early stages showed pneumonia like syndrome and had heavy similarities with the SARs virus. Whenever such a situation arises, we have very less or no clue at all that this might turn into a global disaster. By the time the severity and destructive strength of the virus was detected it had already flown to various countries and had started the pandemic. As an early protective measure government across the world had stopped the air transport facilities to a certain extend and had advised citizens to stay quarantined. But the big picture here is that these implemented procedures are no fool proof solutions to tackle the situation.

 Now to tackle such extensively spreading diseases or situations it would require heavy data rendering and processing artificial intelligence system working at various levels, that are able to predict and foresee the damage the disease can cause and design solutions to deal with it. If the AI system were to predict the intensity of the spread rate at a very early stage and proposed the right lockdown period, the pandemic control would have been a success. But while the design of such an artificial intelligence system that promises on predicting a global disaster, it would have to be very accurate as it is responsible for many lives. But building a 100% accurate artificial intelligence model is rarely possible, but AI models with slightly reduced accuracy rates have been announced in the recent times. Alibaba was supposed to release an AI model with about 96% accuracy which would categorise CT scans of pneumonia patients as infected and non-infected. Similarly, US military had announced an AI algorithm that could predict infection in non-symptomatic patients before the signs are visible with an accuracy of about 85%. Canadian company blue dot said to have observed signals of a potential pandemic long before the actual surge and had warned the officials well before hand. These signals where picked up by sophisticated AI models. AI has the capacity to work with enormous amounts of continuously updating data, and to render it and to produce meaningful conclusions. 

The interesting thing to note here is the possibility of detecting a potential pandemic from the macro data collected from the society from invariably everywhere. And this would not produce a security threat as these macro data collected from the user serves the purpose of understanding the mood and flavour of the society. Micro and microdata would include social media posts, amount of people visiting the doctor, symptom details, cash flow details and its rate, amount and places of ATM swipes, flight and transport details. These data could be integrated and fed into an AI model which according to the given data could analyse the mood of a certain society and predict the possibility of an upcoming pandemic. Sudden changes in patterns of domestic and international flights, direction and intensity of traffic flow, increase in procurement of medical supplies, retail patterns and increasing sentiments of a certain disease on social media suggests a peculiar event occurring in the community. Now there will be multiple layered AI model that would be used to first predict the possibility of a potential disease then further layered AI would be used to predict the damages it could cause and further layered AI would be used to provide a suitable defence mechanism to the problem.

In multi-layered complex AI algorithm once the chance of a potential pandemic is observed it starts working on the fate of covid 19 patients. The model would be fed with medical data containing all the symptoms that are shown. Now the algorithm would decide the fate of the patient with the symptoms mentioned. The patient could show various symptoms but may not necessarily be in fatal condition, but a patient showing only a few symptoms could turn serious. Now the AI model did not find most symptoms leading to a confirmed fatality, but it was able to narrow down 3 symptoms that ensured serious infection with heavy accuracy. Increase in haemoglobin levels, muscle aching(myglia) and the subtle fluctuation of presence of enzyme called alanine aminotransferase in the liver ensured the patient to be seriously infected. The prediction model also involved data feeding from a swarm of people and later analysing using probabilities, there is random forest model where all patient details are fed and different optional trees are created and finally the most accurate tree is selected that could perform the most accurate prediction of the fate of the covid infected patient.

Now considering the seriousness of the role performed by the AI system it is important to consider that the most accurate model must be used. A separate committee was designated in order to find the most preferable and reliable artificial intelligence model. Now there where 5 different groups of approaches that an AI model could use to produce predictions. Now these groups were evaluated according to their level of complexity, time taken to produce a certain conclusion, accuracy of the prediction is monitored. Clinical surveillance and the predictive surveillance of the patient data is matched and scored for accuracy. There could be basically 3 sets of models, it could be multi input models, parametric models or non-parametric models. Now a set of predefined small data is passed within these algorithms and the accuracy % is matched, now finally in panel selection the winner is selected and invariably the winner produces the most accurate prediction. This method is also known as the GROOMS methodology of selection of suitable AI model from all 5 different groups with predefined sets of characteristics.

Now one of the most important prediction that the AI model will have to make is the spread rate and possible infection probability strength of the virus. These predictions are made using the SIR and SEIR AI model. These are heavily mathematically modelled data which would finally produce a destined result that would predict the possible rate of spread of the virus in a particular community. Now this prediction necessarily would have very little accuracy as this prediction solely relies on the historical spread rate data that is fed into the model. But in reality, the spread of the virus would not follow a specific trend, we are just able to replicate the previous data and also considering the demographics, living conditions of people, the possible rates or its increase could to a certain extend be predicted. The SIR model relies on patient population data and its changes with time. It takes into account three parameters, the people with possibility of infection(S), infected people from the pool of people who had probability of being infected(I), infected and later on recovered people(R). now using these three data a probability calculation is estimated that could show the probability of infection in that particular area and similar demographics. These data when correlated with the surge rate we are able to produce a satisfactory curve on the increase of patients in the upcoming months, hence the rate of spread of the disease can be easily predicted. Similarly, mathematical modelling using various other data could produce further accurate predictions and its combination would make the predictions even more reliable. SIR and SEIR AI models help in drawing various analytical graphs and study on the spread in various places and the similarities shown, we could predict the overall infectious nature of the virus across the globe and find reasons that deteriorate its spread which would facilitate in easier solution development.

As we have now seen the process of fighting this covid 19 pandemic, we could anticipate that the modelling of virus pandemic behaviours would be aided by artificial intelligence in the future. It could provide mathematically regulated estimate for the ideal lockdown period that is not too short to facilitate the pandemic to resurface nor too long to harm the economy and be driven into extensive rates of unemployment rates and recession. It could be ensured that the death toll, infected rate, the economic damage, the lockdown period and necessary resources be minimised. And the availability of relief facilities at the exact required places be maximised as we will be able to predict the places with possible extensive increase. The treatment costs would be reduced and would help us choose intelligently the right mixture of preventive strategies for its control.

Overall, the artificial intelligence system rather than just providing a mathematically driven statistical analysis, it simulates the entire pandemic conditions using the bulk of data using super computers to predict with more accuracy. With the bulk of intelligently derived fight back strategies AI could also be deployed in medicine R&D which would ensure faster medical support and hence a faster break from the pandemic. So, these AI models would ensure a completely systematic and strategized fight against any devasting life threatening situation that may arise in the near future and would ensure our readiness against facing the global misery.

Reference:

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-981-15-5936-5_3

[comicteaparty]

October 12th-October 18th, 2019 Creator Babble Archive

The archive for the Creator Babble chat that occurred from October 12th, 2019 to October 18th, 2019.  The chat focused on the following question:

Of your story’s characters, who is your favorite to write and why?  Also, who is your least favorite?

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

In Phantomarine (http://www.phantomarine.com/), my favorite AND least favorites to write for... are both of my villains My favorite to write for is the 'fun villain' - a character as quirky and dramatic as they are threatening. It's super satisfying to just get into their words and PLAY.(edited)

The other is the 'cold villain' - calculating and quiet and controlled. Dramatic fun villains are way more my thing, so writing one that's so restrained (combined with all the bad things I know she's done )... I genuinely dislike writing for her. She holds me back from having fun... AND she's a meanie

Deo101 (Millennium)

In millennium (https://millennium.spiderforest.com/) My favorite to write for is definitely Keith and Aaron... I know technically that's two characters but they practically count as one, so I'm gonna say them. I just really like writing their goofy interactions and their silly jokes, and the way they interact with eachother versus with everyone else.

I..... Don't have a least favorite to write honestly. If I had to pick one, I guess I would say the HARDEST person to write for is Kessiah, which I guess makes writing her scenes my least favorite? That's just because shes the newest character of the whole cast, though, so I don't know her as well. I still like writing her and I love the scenes shes in and shes super important, she's just harder so I dread some of her scenes because I don't quite know how to fit her in. (She was added kind of last minute, everyone else has been there years before I started!)

AntiBunny

In AntiBunny http://antibunny.net/ I've often said my favorite character to draw is Piago, but probably my favorite to write is Penelope, because of how organically she's grown over time. And she gives me a nice challenge to write because she always seeks non-violent solutions, and she doesn't live in the sort of world where that's always an option.

For least favorite, probably Malphas. He never shuts up, and that's tons of dialogue I have to work in. He's the kind of guy who uses ten words where one would do just fine. If he gets talking he can grind the pace to a halt. Juju I'd also say is difficult to write. Readers want another chapter with her, but honestly, her kind of grim humor really isn't my cup of tea anymore. I've grown as a person and she hasn't, so I'm not really sure what to do with her.

snuffysam

For Super Galaxy Knights Deluxe R: http://sgkdr.thecomicseries.com/comics/ Mizuki and Taci are definitely the most fun to write, especially when they're interacting with each other. Mizuki is the perfect roaster, and Taci is the perfect roast target, so I'm not sure I can pick a favorite between them. For least favorite... either Cahe or Gynu. Gynu has very little personality besides being loud and powerful. He serves as a counter to Suzigu's lazy/annoyed attitude I suppose, but on his own he doesn't really do much for me. Cahe is a bit more entertaining, and while he's not particularly complex I am glad that his kind, mostly innocent personality is a part of the comic. The real issue with Cahe is his powerset - it's basically impossible to work him back into the story as a fighter because of how his ability works.

HiddenElephant

For The Wide Ocean: http://thewideocean.thecomicseries.com/

Most fun to write: Zahrah. Unsurprisingly one of the main characters, the reason why she's fun to write is because it's surprisingly fun to see which poor decision she'll make next, or she's bonding / living with the people around her.

Least fun to write: Paea. A minor character who's hard to remember. I don't have an especially good grip on her character, and a lot of the time it feels like I'm writing her because the plot calls for a sharkfolk who fills the niche she fills; someone we know, who is a little bit of a jerk but not as much of a jerk as another character.

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

In http://oldmanandtheseawitch.tumblr.com/ I only really have two main characters are the moment and one I only partially write for, as Ains belongs to his creator and I'm essentially using him on loan. So technically, it'd be Witchy. Truth be told, it's also Witchy because he's basically male-Yzma, he likes being mean and nasty, he's a dramatic, crafty fish-man with an eye for pretty things and absolutely zero ability to be introspective on his own feelings. But there's a strange, surprising depth and sympathy to him where he should otherwise be unsympathetic.

For non main characters, probably Hiro. He's such a goofy little fisherman and will invariably be doing something stupid in the background. I love him. I would die for him.

Least favorite... gosh. I try to make every character a character I would love writing for or could make a main story for, so that's honestly pretty hard. There's King [Redacted], who will not show up for a LONG time but his characterization is always slippery for me--unlike his son. Who is somewhere in the character page but also won't show up for a long time.

@LadyLazuli (Phantomarine) VILLAINS VILLAINS VILLAINS ARE THE BEST TO WRITE FOR

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

@Steph (@grandpaseawitch) THERE IS NO DOUBT ABOUT THAT

HiddenElephant

Actually, I'd debate that, especially when they are irrevocably cruel, violent, self-serving and delusional.

keii4ii

Well, some people genuinely have a ton of fun writing characters like that. Whatever Floats Your Boat and To Each Their Own

kayotics

yeah I gotta agree with Keii, sometimes people just love writing villains. And sometimes those are the most fun? You don't have to write them winning, either

keii4ii

I love lawful good/ lawful neutral characters, good or bad, both as a creator and as a reader. But I'm fully aware that not everyone likes them, and that's okay!

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

True! I know Steph and I definitely lean more in the villain/antihero-centric direction, but depending on your story’s aim - and the kind of villain you’re writing - it can either be a chore or a delight. Writing stalwart, lawful-good heroes is a nightmare for me, in comparison. It’s just not something I’m strong at

keii4ii

(psst lawful good does not always a hero make. You can totally have lawful good losers :'D)

kayotics

i think most of my favorite characters to write are chaotic in nature, whether they're villain or hero, or even just a side character, so really there's all sorts of directions you can go

keii4ii

Yeah!

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

Lawful-good is an alignment that sees very little action in my writing, haha. As an entity of chaos myself, it tends to leak into my characters.

But the worst of the worst, the True Villain, is absolutely a delight to write. I've written a few bad-end versions of Witchy like that in other universes and they were IMMENSELY fun.

LadyLazuli (Phantomarine)

A lawful good loser is actually a character I’m currently trying to write. He’s right on the edge of what I’m comfortable with. A layered kind of good. Good that means well, but suffers on the way to goodness. It’s a great exercise, and I’m starting to genuinely love him. A golden hero who always succeeds and does the right thing... may actually show up as a secondary villain someday, in comparison 🤫

Steph (@grandpaseawitch)

Oh! I may not have a LAwful Good character, but... there is one for a main character.

Which is Mister Ains. :3

So there is technically one in the comic.

He's a fun kind of LAwful Good because... he was originally the type of Order Is Very Important type of Lawful Good. A good heart, but sometimes might have put rules above people, and over the years, learned how to be the more "Good Is More Important Than Order" kind of lawful good. Which, to bring things back around to the topic, is why he's a very fun character to write, and probably the most fun of the characters on loan to me.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I would put "Good Is More Important Than Order" under Neutral Good, personally. (Assuming it doesn't go all the way to "good is more important because order is useless," which sounds like Chaotic Good.)

Lawful Good seems like a tough alignment to write -- maybe the toughest? Because it's unrealistic for there to be no unjust laws. If the character starts off earnestly believing all the laws are for a good purpose, that works, but eventually they're going to find a bad one and be forced to choose...

Deo101 (Millennium)

I've always thought of it more like "do good and dont break any laws"

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

But sometimes, the only good thing to do is breaking the law.

Extreme examples are things like "you're legally required to report on your neighbors if they question the government, and anyone who's reported mysteriously disappears in the night."

keii4ii

One way to go about it is they die trying to change the law the legal way (or the closest possible), e.g. getting killed while doing a peaceful protest

or a suicide protest that doesn't involve physically threatening/harming others (e.g. self incineration protests by Buddhist monks)

Nutty (Court of Roses)

the Player's Handbook for D&D: "Lawful Good creatures can be counted on to do the right thing as expected by society."(edited)

keii4ii

Also, lawful good doesn't have to mean "the MOST upper-est left-est corner possible in the alignment graph." You can be like, 90% lawful 88% good or something.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

"Neutral Good folk do the best they can to help others according to their needs. Chaotic Good creatures act as their conscious directs, with little regard to what others expect."

keii4ii

That too. Society =/= the government

at least, not in every case!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Yeah, "expectations of society" is a different standard from "laws of society." And it'll vary from subgroup to subgroup, so if the character sticks to "the expectations off my social circle that believes it's wrong to inform on our neighbors," it's easier to maintain.

Nutty (Court of Roses)

Yeah! i was double checking the book and saw that description, and for that very reason is why i brought it up

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

You'd still have to always associate with a group that shares your current values, so you'd have to deal with conflict by convincing people to come around to your point of view...that, or dumping them and finding a new friend group...

keii4ii

As someone who consistently tests lawful good, I genuinely don't get why this is any harder than any other alignment! Like... I'm not lawful good 100% of the time, but I'm still closest to that alignment than any other, overall!

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

I mean, I probably follow the local laws 90% of the time, but I wouldn't say that makes me Lawful so much as lucky!

keii4ii

Just because some evil-aligned villain has the occasional Pet The Dog moment, doesn't necessarily make them good or even neutral, yeah?

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

...no? But I'm not sure that's the same issue.

keii4ii

Say a lawful good character breaks a rule they consider to be fundamental to being lawful. It can happen. One key difference, for me, is how they deal with it afterward.

Deo101 (Millennium)

I like to think of it more as a tendancy than a hard set rule, too

Nutty (Court of Roses)

I myself consider Merlow Chaotic Good, but not because he's a wacky unpredictable guy, he just goes with the flow and what feels right to him.

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

So would the difference be that "lawful good" feels bad/guilty/distraught about having to break the rule, whereas "neutral good" doesn't feel attached to the rule, just satisfied that they did the right thing?

Nutty (Court of Roses)

that sounds about right

or at least, the LG one would be self conscious about it and worry about what others think

keii4ii

Maybe not even "what others think"

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

NG would probably worry about that to some extent too, just for practical reasons.

keii4ii

depending on the situation

Nutty (Court of Roses)

true

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

But "willing to break the law for the greater good, just beats themself up about it afterward" is a much easier character type to sustain than what I was thinking!

Nutty (Court of Roses)

yeah!

keii4ii

like, it could be more about... worry about what they believe others SHOULD think (this can be very relevant if there is a big rift in the society with regards to what's right -- maybe they're in the minority, and don't feel guilty about acting contrary to what the majority believes to be right)

(I really like parentheses in case you haven't noticed)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

(lol me too)

Nutty (Court of Roses)

(whisper whisper)

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

So that goes back to the "LG character adheres to the rules of their particular subculture" idea.

keii4ii

That sounds about right

Though there could be exceptions -- like, what if that subculture is all about anarchism?

Erin Ptah (BICP | Leif & Thorn)

Chaotic Lawful!

And given the history of real-world attempts at anarchist communities, we know that one can only sustain itself about five minutes before self-destructing...

Nutty (Court of Roses)

loooool

[athenaegalea]

The recent explosion of Amazonian deforestation onto the headlines because of the increase in fires, and some, ahem, disagreement on the implications of this, inspired me to try to look into it properly.

Before we begin, it’s important to understand that these fires aren’t important as an event but as a shift. The area lost to them will not be of itself on a scale to worry about, but is potentially indicative of a long-term increase in the rate of deforestation which over a period of years will have a major impact.

Unsurprisingly, it’s all very complicated, and I have barely scratched the surface in my research. I will be talking almost entirely about Brazil, which controls about 3.3 million km² of the about 5.5 million km² of Amazon. As (apparently; I haven’t properly checked this and my sources aren’t very good) 75% of Amazonian deforestation is in Brazil, I think this is at least excusable for an overview.

First of all we have to talk about the overall scale of deforestation. In 2018 7,900 km² of forest were destroyed. The total area that has been deforested since 1970 is 790,000 km² , or about 20% of the total.

(Source. These numbers are a bit odd, as they are apparently “calculated from estimates provided by the Brazilian National Institute of Space Research (INPE) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO)”, but here they use the INPE and Imazon, an NGO, and neither matches the other table.)

So the most recent numbers are from July 2019, in which according to the INPE 2,092 km² were deforested. A naive multiplication out here is insufficient, as the peak tends to be June-September (roughly), and of course the data are very noisy and we’re hearing about a peak. Still, this does seem to be a major departure from form.

(Please note that this graph does not include data from 2019)

While this July is a major departure from recent form, there is certainly not enough information to conclude that the rate will be greater than in, say, the early 2000s.

So. What will the impact of this deforestation be? Ehhhh. There’s a loss of biodiversity, the value of which is, well, incalculable. And since I also have no idea what proportion of species are endangered by destroying 20% of their habitat, I’ll just have to leave this as an open threat. It is a problem but I have no idea how big.

There are also various indigenous tribes. From a quick Google, about 450,000 in some fraction of 305 tribes. (I make no claims as to the accuracy of those numbers). Again, how important this is turns on both the unknown empirical question of the knowledge that would be lost with them and the unknowable moral question of what value should be placed on the preservation of cultures.

The third impact and one which is almost measurable is the local climatic change because of the lack of transpiration. This apparently has various associated problems (I still don’t quite understand why every single change in local climate invariably has only negative effects), but I have been unable to get any sense of the scale of it.

Then there’s the greenhouse gas emission/non-absorption. This is what I’ll be focusing on because it’s a single number, which is not to be taken to mean that it is necessarily the biggest issue. As said above, I have literally no idea.

The Climate Brief estimates that carbon emissions from deforestation in 2015 were something like 300MT. This is about 1% of total human carbon emissions in that year, for scale. There’s also the impact of the agriculture on the cleared land (mostly cattle ranching), but I think that should be dealt with on the demand rather than supply side, so I won’t cover it here.

However, it (maybe) gets worse.

As mentioned briefly above, the rainforest through some effect of transpiration I won’t even pretend to understand produces its own climate. It has been argued (by the Guardian, admittedly) that after somewhere around 20-30% deforestation the Amazon will undergo irreversible desertification. Given that it’s currently at 19.3% in Brazil this makes me more than a little nervous.

The question of to what extent Bolsonaro himself has caused this latest increase is one I shall leave to those who know more about Brazilian politics than I. I don’t much like him, which would irretrievably wreck any attempt at objectivity.

[arcticdementor]

Trump ignores the climate summit, and dismisses it as dreams and windmills.

…

The hilarious thing about the greenie reaction to Trump standing them up is that it becomes obvious that the goal was a joint declaration of something expensive, the more expensive the better, with the US footing the bill and the greenies skimming the expenditures.

The “International Community” is the state department, and the greenies are largely NGOs, which are also the state department, so the planned meeting would have been the presidency putting pressure on the president to fund activism against the president.

Climate action primarily consists of shaking down energy companies and disrupting the electricity grid. Even if windmills and all that met their promises, which they never do, the effect on CO2 emissions would be absolutely insignificant.

…

Action to shake down energy companies and disrupt the electricity grid is indeed unstoppable, but the actual effect of all these measures on CO2 emissions has been near zero. Green energy projects do not in practice generate energy. They generate superior holiness. The objective is never to generate electricity from wind, but to generate holiness from wind, and convert holiness into money and political power. The alternative energy projects are never implemented with serious intention to generate substantial amounts of energy. They merely go through the motions of trying to generate energy, and, as the climategate files reveal, Michael Mann merely went through the motions of investigating whether the world was warming or cooling.

Members of the priestly caste that engage in holiness spiraling are always conmen and frauds, whether Saint Jerome arguing for mandatory priestly celibacy, or Michael Mann arguing that western civilization threatens the earth. And when these priests use priestly power to intrude into merchant activities, as when they get involved in large scale solar power and wind farms, the ensuing business activities are always cons and frauds. The real objective is never to generate power, but to shake down the people operating the energy grid, which results in brownouts, blackouts, and high energy prices. The problem is not just that wind power and solar power are intermittent and unreliable, but that the people implementing wind power and solar power are unreliable. The problem is not the technology, though the technology is unsatisfactory, the big problem is the people implementing the technology. Hydro power is intermittent also, because some years it rains and some years it does not, but we never had the problems with hydro power installations that we are now having with big wind farms and big solar power installations. The problem is that they are not even crooked merchants, they are crooked priests who do not understand and do not care about the business and the technology. They want to destroy technology, not implement renewable energy. The technology works, at a price, or rather could be made to work, at a price, but the operators invariably play the holiness card to scam the grid instead. If you do business with crooks, you get burned.

The climate scam movement is a movement to destroy western civilization in order to steal a few bucks from the energy companies.

…

How do I know Mann’s Hockey stick was fraud, rather than excessive creativity in adding apples to oranges?

Dr Tim Ball did a similar multi proxy graph based on substantially the same data, but, unlike Mann, showed his work, revealed his data and mathematical methods.

…

So, is Ball a fraud, or is Mann a fraud? One of them has to be a fraud. How do you know that Mann, rather than Tim Ball, is the fraud?

Mann sued Ball for libel. Ball defended his work on the basis of truth, that it was truthful to call Mann a fraud and the hockey stick graph fraudulent, thus turning the libel case into court trial on which version of our climate past was fraudulent.

Mann tried to win the case by dragging it out and running up endless and enormous legal fees, lawfare tactics that revealed he was speaking power to truth. After eight long years of delay and the artificial manufacture of huge legal bills, the court found in favor of Ball, because Mann refused to supply the calculations whereby he supposedly derived the hockey stick graph from the proxies.

[sg-physics-tuition]

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All of the allegorical chapter intros from Warped Passages

Entryway Passages: Demystifying Dimensions

“Ike, I’m not so sure about this story I’m writing. I’m considering adding more dimensions. What do you think of that idea?

“Athena, your big brother knows very little about fixing stories. But odds are it won’t hurt to add new dimensions. Do you plan to add new characters, or flesh out your current ones some more?”

“Neither; that’s not what I meant. I plan to introduce new dimensions--as in new dimensions of space.”

“You’re kidding, right? You’re going to write about alternative realities--like places where people have alternative spiritual experiences or where they go when they die, or when they have near-death experiences?* I didn’t think you went in for that sort of thing.”

“Come on, Ike. You know I don’t. I’m talking about different spatial dimensions--not different spiritual planes!”

“But how can different spatial dimensions change anything? Why would using paper with different dimensions--11″ x 8″ instead of 12″ x 9″, for example--make any difference at all?”

“Stop teasing. That’s not what I’m talking about either. I’m really planning to introduce new dimensions of space, just like the dimensions we see, but along entirely new directions.”

“Dimensions we don’t see? I thought three dimensions is all there are.”

“Hang on, Ike. We’ll soon see about that.”

*Questions I’ve actually been asked.

Restricted Passages: Rolled-up Extra Dimensions

Athena awoke with a start. The previous day she had read Alice in Wonderland and Flatland in order to seek some inspiration about dimensions. But that night she had the strangest dream, which, when fully conscious, she recognized as the result of having read the two books on the same day.*

Athena dreamed she had turned into Alice, slipped into a rabbit hole, and met the resident Rabbit, who had pushed her out into an unfamiliar world. Athena had thought it a rather rude way to convey a guest. Even so, she had eagerly looked forward to the upcoming adventure in Wonderland.

Athena was in for a disappointment, however. The resident Rabbit, who was fond of puns, had sent her instead to OneDLand, a strange, not so wonderful, one-dimensional world. Athena looked around--or, I should say, to her left and right--and discovered that all she could see were two points--one to her left and another to her right (but in a prettier color, she thought).

In OneDLand, all the one-dimensional people with their one-dimensional possessions were lined up along this single dimension like long, thin beads strung out along a thread. But even with her limited purview, Athena knew there must be more to OneDLand than met her eyes because of the outrageous din that met her ears. A Red Queen was well hidden behind a dot, but Athena couldn’t miss her strident yells: “This is the most ridiculous chess game I have ever seen! I can’t move any pieces, not even to castle!” Athena was relieved when she realized her one-dimensional existence shielded her from the wrath of the Red Queen.

But Athena’s cozy universe did not last long. Slipping through a gap in ONeDLand, she returned to the dreamworld’s rabbit hole, which had an elevator that could take her to hypothetical, other dimensional universes. Almost immediately, the Rabbit announced, “Next stop: TwoDLand--a two-dimensional world.” Athena didn’t think “TwoDLand” a very nice name, but she cautiously entered all the same.

Athena needn’t have been so hesitant. Almost everything in TwoDLand looked the same as in OneDLand. SHe did notice one difference--a vial labeled “Drink me.” Bored with one dimension, Athena promptly obeyed. She quickly shrank to a tiny size, and as she became smaller, a second dimension came into view. This second dimension was not very big--it was wrapped around in a fairly small circle. Her surroundings now resembled the surface of an extremely long tube. A Dodo was racing around the circular dimension, but he wanted to stop. So he kindly offered Athena, who looked rather hungry, some cake.

When Athena ate a morsel of the Dodo’s dreamcake, she started to grow. After only a few bites (she was quite sure of this, as she was still rather hungry), the cake very nearly disappeared; all that remained was a very tiny crumb. At least Athena thought there was a crumb, but she could see it only when she squinted very hard. And the cake wasn’t the only thing that had vanished from view: when Athena returned to her usual size, the entire second dimension had disappeared.

She thought to herself, “TwoDLand is very yodd indeed. I’d best be getting home.” Her return journey was not without further adventures, but those will be kept for another time.

*Or perhaps this story is a result of my having begun my education at the perhaps questionably named Lewis Carroll School, P.S. 179, in Queens. 

Exclusive Passages: Branes, Braneworlds, and the Bulk

Unlike the studious Athena, Ike rarely read any books. He generally preferred playing with games, gadgets, and cars. But Ike hated driving in Boston, where the drivers were reckless, the roads were badly signposted, and the highways were invariably under construction. Ike always ended up stuck in traffic, which he found especially frustrating when he could see a nearly empty freeway overhead. Though the empty road would be tempting, Ike would have no way to quickly reach it since, unlike Athena’s owls*, he couldn’t fly. For Ike trapped on slow roads in Boston, the third dimension was no use at all. 

[*nb: owls are mentioned in the chapter body:]

When you peg someone as one-dimensional, you actually have something rather specific in mind: you mean that the person only has a single interest. For example, Sam, who does nothing but sit at home watching sports, can be described with just one piece of information. If you felt so inclined, you could picture this information with a one-dimensional graph: Sam’s proclivity to watch sports, for example. In drawing this graph you need to specify your units so that someone else can udnerstand what the distance along this single axis means, such as the number of hours Sam spends per week watching sports on TV. (Fortunately, Sam won’t be insulted by this example; he is not among the multidimensional readers of this book.)

When we describe most people, however, we usually assign them more than one, or even three, characteristics. Athena is an eleven-year-old who reads avidly, excels at math, keeps abreast of current events, and raises pet owls. You might want to plot this too (though why, exactly, I’m not really sure). In that case, Athena would have to be plotted a s point in a five-dimensional space with axes corresponding to age, number of books read per week, average math test score, number of minutes spent reading the newspaper per day, and nubmer of owls she owns. However, I’m having trouble drawing such a graph.

“Hey, Athena, is that Casablanca you’re watching?”

“Sure is. Want to join me? This is such a great scene.”

You must remember this, A kiss is just a kiss, A sigh is just a sigh, The fundamental things apply as time goes by.

“Hang on, Ike. Don’t you think that last line’s a little weird? It’s supposed to be so romantic, but it almost sounds as if it’s about physics.”

“Athena, if you think that’s strange, you’ve got to hear the opening verse of the original:”

This day and age we’re living in, Give cause for apprehension, With speed and new invention, And things like fourth dimension, Yet we get a trifle weary, With Mr. Einstein’s theory...

“Ike, you don’t really expect me to believe that, do you? Next thing I know you’ll tell me Rick and Ilsa escape into the seventh dimension! Why don’t we forget I ever said anything and just sit back and watch the movie?”

[nb: actually true]

Relativity: The Evolution of Einstein’s Gravity

Icarus (Ike) Rushmore II couldn’t wait to show Dieter his new Porsche. But as proud as he was of his car, he was even more excited about his Global Positioning System (GPS) that he had recently designed and installed himself.

Ike wanted to impress Dieter, so he convinced his friend to drive with him to the local track. They got in the car, Ike programmed in their destination, and the two of them set off. But to Ike’s chagrin, they ended up in the wrong place--the GPS system didn’t work nearly as well as he had thought it would. Dieter’s first thought was that Ike must have made some ridiculous error, like confusing meters and feet. But Ike didn’t believe he could have made such a stupid mistake, and he bet Dieter that wasn’t the problem.

The next day, Ike and Dieter did some troubleshooting. But to their dismay, when they went for a drive, the GPS was even worse than before. Ike and Dieter searched again for the problem and finally, after a frustrating week, Dieter had an epiphany. He did a quick calculation and made the startling discovery that without accounting for general relativity, the GPS system would build up errors at the rate of more than 10 km per day. Ike didn’t think his Porsche was fast enough to warrant relativistic calculations, but Dieter explained that the GPS signals--not the car--travel at the speed of light. Dieter modified the software to account for the changing gravitational field the GPS signals had to pass through. .Ike’s system then worked as well as the readily available commercial variety. Relieved, Ike and Dieter began to plan a road trip.

Quantum Mechanics: Principled Uncertainty, the Principal Uncertainties, and the Uncertainty Principle

Ike wondered whether Athena was making him watch too many movies or Dieter was talking too much about physics. But whatever the reason, the previous night Ike dreamed he met a quantum detective. Dressed in a fedora, a trench coat, and with a stone-faced expression, the dream detective spoke:

“I knew nothing about her except her name, and that she was standing there before me. But from the moment I set eyes on her I knew Electra* would be trouble. When I asked her where she came from, she refused to say. The room had two entrances, and she must have come through one. But Electra whispered hoarsely, ‘Mister, forget it. I’ll never tell you which.’

“Although I saw that she was shaking, I tried to pin this lady down. But Electra paced frenetically when I started to approach. She begged me to come no closer. Seeing she was agitated, I kept away. I was no stranger to uncertainty, but this time it had me beat. It looked like uncertainty was going to stick around here for a while.”

*The name refers to the electron, not the character in Greek mythology.

The Standard Model of Particle Physics: Matter’s Most Basic Known Structure

Of all the stories she had read, Athena was most thoroughly perplexed by Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Princess and the Pea.” The story tells of a Prince who searched unsuccessfully for a suitable princess to wed. After he had searched in vain for weeks, a potential princess arrived by chance at his palace, seeking shelter from a storm. This soggy visitor thereby became the unwitting subject of the Queen’s litmus test for princesses.

The Queen prepared a bed, which she piled high with mattresses and eiderdown quilts. At the very bottom of the pile she placed a solitary pea. That night, she showed her visitor to the carefully prepared guest room. The next morning, the princess (as indeed she proved herself to be) complained that she had not been able to sleep at all. She had tossed and turned the whole night, and found she had actually turned black and blue--all because of the uncomfortable pea. The Queen and Prince were convinced that their visitor was truly of royal blood, for who else could be so delicate?

Athena turned the story round and round in her head. She thought it fairly ridiculous, even the most sensitive of princesses, would ever have discovered the pea by lying passively on top of the pile of mattresses. After many days’ deliberation, Athena found a plausible interpretation, which she rushed to tell her brother.

She rejected the common interpretation that the princess proved her royal nature by demonstrating delicacy and refinement with her sensitivity to even something as minor as a pea under a pile of mattresses. She offered an alternative explanation.

Athena suggested that when the Queen went away and left the princess alone in the room, the princess threw decorum to the wind and gave vent to her boisterous youthful nature. The princess ran around and jumped up and down on her bed until she was exhausted, and only then lay down to try to sleep. Through her rambunctiousness, the princess compressed the mattresses so much that for a brief moment the pea stuck out like a sore thumb and gave her a small bruise. Athena thought this princess was still rather impressive, but found her revisionist interpretation much more satisfactory.

Experimental Interlude: Verifying the Standard Model

Ike once again dreamed he met the quantum detective. This time, the sleuth knew what he was after--and he had a pretty good idea where it should be. All he had to do was wait--sooner or later, if he wasn’t mistaken, his quarry would appear.

Symmetry: The Essential Organizing Principle

Athena uncaged three of her owls and let them fly around. Unfortunately for Ike, he had left the top of his convertible down that day and the curious owls flew right in. The most mischievous of the owls pecked at the car’s interior and ended up tearing it a little.

When Ike saw the damage, he stormed into Athena’s room and demanded that she watch her owls more carefully in the future. Athena protested that her owls were almost all well-behaved and she need only keep an eye on the bad one. But by that time the owls were back in their cages, and neither Ike nor Athena could identify which one was guilty.

The Origin of Elementary Particle Masses: Spontaneous Symmetry Breaking and the Higgs Mechanism

The stricter enforcement of speed limits made long-distance driving a nightmare for Icarus III. He longed to race as fast as he pleased, but police pulled him over nearly every half-mile. The cops never bothered with dull, neutral cars, but harassed only the lively, turbo-charged vehicles, like his own.

Ike resigned himself to driving only short distances, since that way he could avoid the police altogether. Within the half-mile-wide region around where he started, police never interfered and he could always drive impressively fast. Though the Porsche engine’s force was unknown outside his neighborhood, closer to home it became legendary.

Scaling and Grand Unification: Relating Interactions at Different Lengths and Energies

Athena often felt like she was the last to be told anything interesting. She didn’t even hear about Ike’s adventures with his car until after he had owned it for over a month. And she didn’t learn them from him directly--she learned about them from a friend of hers who had heard about them from Dieter’s cousin’s brother, who had learned about them from Dieter’s cousin, who had heard about them from Dieter.

Through this indirect route, Athena was told Ike’s remark, “The influence of forces depends on where you are.” Ike’s uncharacteristic pronouncement completely mystified Athena until she realized that the message must have been distorted along the way. After thinking about it for a while, she decided that Ike’s real remark must have been, “The performance of Porsches depends on the model of the car.”

The Hierarchy Problem: The Only Effective Trickle-Down Theory

Ike Rushmore III came to an ignominious end when he drove his resplendent new Porsche into a lamppost.  He was nonetheless happy in Heaven, where he could play games all the time. He was a gambling man at heart.

One day, God Himself invited Ike to a rather strange game. God told him to write down a sixteen-digit number. God would roll the heavenly isocahedral die. Unlike a normal, cubic die with six sides, this die had twenty sides, with the digits 0 through 9 written twice. God explained that He would throw this die sixteen times and construct a sixteen-digit number by listing the results, one after the other. If God and Ike came up with the same enormous number--that is, if all the digits matched in the correct order--God would win. If the numbers weren’t exactly the same--that is, if any of the digits failed to match--Ike would defeat God.

God began to roll. The first side that came up was the number 4. This agreed with the first digit of Ike’s number, which was 4,715,031,495,526,312. Ike was surprised when God rolled correctly, since the odds were only one in ten. Nevertheless, he was pretty sure the second or third number would be wrong; the odds of God’s rolling both numbers correctly in succession was only one in a hundred.

God threw the first die for a second and then a third time. He rolled a 7 and then a 1, which were also correct. He kept rolling until, to Ike’s astonishment, He had rolled all sixteen digits correctly. The chances of this happening randomly were only 1 in 10,000,000,000,000,000. How could God have won?

Ike was a bit angry (one can’t get very angry in Heaven) and asked how something so ridiculously unlikely could have happened. God sagely replied, “I am the only one who could expect to win, since I am both omniscient and omnipotent. Howeer, you must have heard, I do not like to play dice.”

And with that, GAMBLING FORBIDDEN was posted on a cloud. Ike was furious (of course, only a little). Not only had he lost the game, but he’d also lost the right to gamble.

Supersymmetry: A Leap Beyond the Standard Model

When Icarus first arrived in Heaven, he was directed to an orientation seminar where the authorities explained the local rules. To his surprise, he learned that right-wing religious groups were essentially correct, and family values were indeed a cornerstone of his new environment. The authorities had long ago established and traditional family structure premised on the separation of generations and the stability of marriages; a top would always marry a bottom, a charmer would always align with a strange bird, and an uptown girl would always marry a downtown cool cat. Everyone, including Ike, was satisfied with the arrangement.

But Ike later learned that the social structure in Heaven had not always been so secure. Originally, dangerous energetic infiltrators had threatened the hierarchical foundation of society. In Heaven, however, most problems can be solved. God had sent everyone a personal guardian angel, and the angels and their charges had heroically worked together to avert the threat to the hierarchy and preserve the ordered society that Ike could now enjoy.

Even so, Heaven was not entirely safe. The angels turned out to be free agents, with no contract binding them to a single generation. The fickle angels, who had so bravely rescued the hierarchy, now threatened to destroy Heaven’s family values. Ike was appalled. Despite Heaven’s well-advertised attractions, he was finding it a surprisingly stressful place.

Allegro (Ma Non Troppo) Passage for Strings

Fast forward a millennium.

Icarus Rushmore XLII was trying out his new Alicxvr Device, Model 6.3, that he had recently purchased from the Spacernet. (Icarus III’s interest in speed and gadgets had apparently been passed down through many generations.) The Alicxvr was designed to let the user view things of any size, from the very small to the very large. Ike was pretty sure that most of his friends who had purchased the Alicxvr Device would first try the large settings, of many megaparsecs, so they could see into outer space beyond the known universe. But Ike thought, “I know just as little about what is happening at extremely tiny distances,” and decided to investigate a miniscule scale instead.

However, Ike was an impatient sort. He couldn’t be bothered to read the extensive instruction manual accompanying his device and instead decided to plunge right in. Blithely ignoring the red indicator overlapping the smallest sizes, he adjusted his dial to the 10 -33 cm setting and pressed the button labeled “Go.”

To his horror, he found himself space-sick in a wildly oscilllating, precipitous landscape filled with strings. Space was no longer the smooth, anonymous background he was accustomed to. Instead it was jiggling rapidly in places, heading into pointy sections in others, or wandering off into loops that pinched off or later rejoined the surface. Ike fumbled desperately for the “Stop” button and only just managed to press it in time to return to normal with his senses intact.

After recovering his stability, Ike decided he probably should have read the manual after all. He turned to the “Warning” section and read: “Your new Alicxvr Device Model 6.3 works only for sizes larger than 10 -33 cm. We have not yet incorporated the latest string theory developments, whose predictions physicist and mathematicians connected to the physical world only last year.”

Ike was very disappointed when he realized that only the newer Model 7.0 included the latest results. But Ike then caught up with the most recent string theory developments, souped up his Alicxvr, and never got space-sick again.

Supporting Passages: Brane Development

Ike Rushmore XLII decided to dive down once again to the miniscule Planck scale. Happily, his souped-up Alicxvr worked perfectly and he smoothly arrived in a ten-dimensional universe filled with strings. Eager to explore his new environment, Ike cranked up the hyperdrive attachment he had purchased from Gbay. He watched with fascination as strings collided and tangled in mesmerizing ways.

Although Ike worried that the Alicxvr might break down, he was curious to learn more about this novel world. So he increased the pressure on the hyperdrive lever. At first strings collided together even more frequently. But when he cranked up the lever still more, he entered a new, completely unrecognizable environment. Ike couldn’t even tell whether spacetime was intact. But he kept cranking up the hyperdrive, and, strangely enough, emerged unscathed.*

However, his surroundings were now quite different. Ike was no longer in the ten-dimensional universe he had started off in. He was instead in an eleven-dimensional universe filled with particles and branes. And, odd as it seemed, nothing in this new universe interacted very much. When Ike looked back at his controls, he discovered the hyperdrive lever had mysteriously reset to low. Confused and rather exasperated, Ike cranked up the lever once again, only to find himself back where he started. When Ike checked thee controls, he discovered that the hyperdrive lever was once again back at low.

Ike thought his Alicxvr was probably malfunctioning. But when he checked his up-to-date manual he discovered that his device was operating perfectly--high hyperdrive in ten-dimensional string theory was the same as low hyperdrive in an alternate eleven-dimensional world. And vice versa.

The manual didn’t say what should happen when the hyperdrive wasn’t very low or very high, so Ike entered the spacernet and put himself on the wait-list for an improved version that would solve the problem. But the Alicxvr designers promised only that the release date would be some time within the millennium.

*Actually, according to the duality we learn about in this chapter, even the probes used to study a given version of string theory change character when the coupling becomes strong. So if Ike really was part of the string world, he, too, would change.

Bustling Passages: Braneworlds

Icarus III was becoming increasingly disillusioned with Heaven. He had expected it to be a liberal, forgiving environment. But instead, gambling was prohibited, metal silverware was forbidden, and smoking was no longer allowed. The most restrictive constraint of all was that Heaven was stuck on a Heavenbrane; its residents were forbidden to travel into the fifth dimension.

Everyone on the Heavenbrane knew about the fifth dimension and the existence of other branes. In fact, the righteous Heavenbraners often whispered about the unsavory characters sequestered on a Jailbrane not too far away. However, the Jailbraners couldn’t hear any of the slander that Heavenbraners spread about them, so all remained peaceful in the bulk and on the branes.

Sparsely Populated Passages: Multiverses and Sequestering

Despite its explicit prohibition on the Heavenbrane, Icarus III ultimately returned to gambling. After ignoring repeated reprimands, he was sentenced to confinement on the Jailbrane, a distant brane separated from the Heavenbrane along a fifth dimension. Even after he was sequestered on the Jailbrane, Ike doggedly tried to contact his former buddies. But the distance between their two branes made communication difficult. He was reduced to flagging down passing bulk mail carriers, many of whom ignored his entreaties altogether. The few who did stop always conveyed his messages to the Heavenbrane, but at a frustratingly leisurely pace.

Meanwhile, back on the Heavenbrane, disaster loomed. The guardian angels, who had so bravely rescued the hierarchy, had no respect for the other residents’ family values and were on the verge of creating intergenerational instability. Heaven’s fallen angels considered all pairings acceptable and encouraged everyone to mix with a trophy partner from another generation.

When Ike learned of the threat, he was aghast and he resolved to redeem the situation. Ike realized that by using the slow and deliberate manner with which he was constrained to communicate with the Heavenbrane, he could judiciously feed the massive egos of the unruly angels living there. Thanks to Ike’s helpful intervention, the angels stopped threatening the social order. Although Icarus III still had to serve his sentence, the relieved residents on the Heavenbrane honored him forevermore in urban myth.

Leaky Passages: Fingerprints of Extra Dimensions

Athena had to admit that she missed Ike. Even though she had often found him annoying, she was pretty lonely without him. She was looking forward to spending time with K. Square, an exchange student who was planning to visit. But she was appalled by the closed-mindedness of her neighbors, who were all apprehensive about K. Square’s arrival. It didn’t matter that he spoke the same language and behaved the same way as everyone else. In the current climate, K. Square’s foreign origin alone was enough to make them wary.

When Athena asked her neighbors why they were so anxious, they replied “What if he sends for his heavier relatives? What if they’re not so well behaved as he is and stick to their foreign laws? And when they all arrive together, what will happen then?”

Unfortunately, Athena heightened their suspicions by telling them that K. Square and his relatives couldn’t possibly stay long in any case, since they were all very unstable and the K. Square family could visit only during the commotion of energetic gatherings. Recognizing her unfortunate choice of words, Athena reassuringly added that the foreigners would stick to local laws during their brief and exciting visits. Convinced, her neighbors then joined her in welcoming the K. Square clan.

Voluminous Passages: Large Extra Dimensions

Now that K. Square’s visit was over, Athena spent a lot of time at the local Internet cafe. She was exhilarated by her recent discovery of some mysterious new websites, the most intriguing of which was xxx.socloseandyetsofar.al. Athena suspected that these suggestive sites were a consequence of the recent AOB (America On Brane)/Spacetime Warner multimedia merger, but she had to go home before she had time to investigate.

When Athena arrived at her house she rushed to her computer, where she once again sought the exotic hyperlinks that had been so readily accessible at the Internet cafe. To her frustration, however, CyberNanny prevented her from reaching the forbidden dimensionally enhanced sites.* But by cloaking her identity with her secure alias, Mentor, Athena vanquished her cybercensor and succeeded in finally returning to the mysterious hyperlinks.

Athena secretly hoped that K. Square had sent her a message that was hidden in a webpage. But the sites were not easy to understand, and she managed to pick up only a few potentially meaningful signals. She resolved to study their content some more and hoped the merger--unlike the other merger with a similar name--would last long enough for her to figure them out.

*Physicists post their papers on a website that begins with “xxx”: check out xxx.lanl.gov. Internet filters have occasionally forbidden access to this site as well.

Warped Passage: A Solution to the Hierarchy Problem

Athena awoke with a start. She had just revisited her recurring dream, which had again begun with her entering the dreamworld’s rabbit hole. In this episode, when the Rabbit announced, “Next stop, TwoDLand,” Athena ignored him and waited to hear the choices that remained.

At the three-spatial-dimensional stop, the Rabbit announced “If you lived here, you’d be home by now.” But he refused to open the doors, despite Athena’s pleas that she did indeed live there and very much wanted to return home.

At the next stop, uniformed six-dimensioners tried to enter. But the Rabbit took one look at their inordinately large girth and abruptly closed the doors, saying that they couldn’t possibly fit. They quickly departed once the Rabbit threatened to cut them down to size.*

The elevator continued on its extraordinary journey. When it stopped again, the Rabbit announced, “Warped Geometry--a five-dimensional world.”** He gently pushed Athena towards the door, advising her, “Enter the funhouse mirror--it will take you home.”

Since the Rabbit had mentioned a fifth dimension, Athena found this highly unlikely. But she didn’t have any choice but to enter and hope the tricky Rabbit was right.

*As we saw in Chapter 18, extra dimensions can be uniform, large, and flat. The Rabbit is skeptical about this idea. **This counting includes a dimension of time.

The Warped Annontated “Alice” ¹

Athena stepped out of the dreamworld’s elevator into the warped five-dimensional world and was astonished to see only three spatial dimensions. Was the Rabbit playing games, pretending to take her to a world with four spatial dimensions when in fact there were only three? What a funny way to travel to what looked like an ordinary world!²

With great gallantry, a local received the puzzled new arrival. “Welcome to Branesville,³  our glorious capital. Permit me to show you around.” Athena, who was tired and confused, blurted out, “Branesville doesn’t look all that special. Even the mayor looks completely normal,” although she had to confess, she wasn’t entirely sure as she had never seen a mayor before.

The mayor to whom Athena referred had arrived accompanied by the Cheshire Fat Cat, his Chief Advisor. The Cat’s job was keeping tabs on everything in the city, which was greatly facilitated by his skill at catching people unawares--especially surprising in lgith of the Cat’s enormous bulk. The Cat loved to explain that he owed this skill to his ability to disappear into the bulk, but no one ever understood what he meant.⁴

The Cat materialized next to Athena and asked if she would like to accompany him as he made his rounds. He warned her tha she had better be comfortable ith bulk, to which Athena eagerly responded that her favorite uncle was in fact very, very fat. The Cat looked skeptical, but agreed to take her along. He offered Athena cream cake with butter frosting, in which she happily indulged. And off they went.

Athena wondered what it was she’d eaten. She now appeared to be on a four-dimensional slice of a five-dimensional world, and as far as she could tell, she was no thicker than this thin four-dimensional slice. She exclaimed, “I am like my paper doll! But whereas Dolly has two spatial dimensions in a three-dimensional world, I have three spatial dimensions in a four-dimensional world.

The Cat grinned sagely and explained, “You are now conscious of what I like to call The Bulk. You are still in Branesville, but will be leaving (and growing) momentarily. Branesville is in reality part of a five-dimensional universe, but the fifth dimension is warped so discreetly that Branesville residents are completely unaware of its existence. They have no idea that Branesville is the border of a five-dimensional state. You too mistakenly concluded on your arrival that there are only three spatial dimensions. The new Athena, untethered from the brane, is free to travel out into the fifth dimension. May I suggest for our destination another village called Weakbrane, at the other edge of the five-dimensional universe?”

What a strange five-dimensional journey it turned out to be. After leaving Branesville, Athena found herself moving in another dimension, and growing as she did so.⁵  When the observant Cat noticed the confused look on Athena’s face, he reassuringly explained, “Weakbrane is close by and we will be there very soon.⁶ It’s lovely, but don’t be alarmed when you see that, like the Branesville residents you encountered, Weakbrane residents scoff at the notion of four spatial dimensions. You, who can see out into the bulk, will see a huge shadow on Branesville, ten million billion times bigger than the one with which you started. Almost everything else will seem to you and to them to be entirely normal.”

But upon her arrival in Weakbrane, Athena noticed one other thing. The four-dimensional graviton had quietly accompanied the travelers on their journey and was softly tapping on her shoulder. He touched her so extremely gently that she had barely noticed.⁷

But she couldnt’ ignore the graviton when he launched into a litany of complaints. “Weakbrane would be so exciting, were it not for the superior influence of the entrenched hierarchy. The strong, weak, and electromagnetic armed forces on the Weakbrane permit me only the most feeble strength.” The graviton whined how everywhere else he was a force to be reckoned with, especially in Branesville, which is ruled by an oligarchy with comparably strong forces.⁸  Weakbrane, where gravity was the most suppressed, was the graviton’s least favorite place.⁹ The graviton turned to Athena in hope of enlisting her in his plan to wrest power from the reigning authorities.

Athena thought she had better leave immediately and looked around for the rabbit hole, but couldn’t find it. She did find a white rabbit, whom she expected to be an efficient guide. But the Weakbrane rabbit had an alarmingly sluggish gait, and kept repeating how happy he was that his date would wait.¹⁰ Athena realized that this rabbit wasn’t going anywhere, so she found a more anxious rabbit she could follow, and worked her way back home. Once she understood the physics implications, Athena enjoyed her dream enormously--though it should be noted that she never again ate cream cake.

¹ This title borrows from Martin Gardner’s delightful Annotated Alice, in which he explains the wordplay, math riddles, and references in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. ² The brane itself is large and flat and has only three spatial dimensions. Only gravity makes contact with the additional dimension. Remember that the five-dimensional space has four spatial dimensions (and one of time), whereas the brane has three spatial dimensions. I’ll still call time the fourth dimension, and I’ll call the additional dimension the fifth. ³ Branesville is the Gravitybrane. ⁴ The Fat Cat, unlike Branesville residents, is not confined to the brane. ⁵ Everything is bigger and lighter near the Weakbrane. Athena’s shadow over Branesville grew as she got closer to the Weakbrane and further away from the Gravitybrane. ⁶ The fifth dimension does not have to be very big in order to solve the hierarchy problem. ⁷ Gravity is feeble on the Weakbrane, where the graviton’s probability function is so small. ⁸ On the Gravitybrane, gravity is no weaker than the other forces. ⁹ The petulant graviton is complaining that on the Weakbrane, gravity is much weaker than the electromagnetic, weak, and strong forces. Gravity would be much stronger (and have a strength closer to that of the other forces) closer to the Gravitybrane. ¹⁰ Things are bigger and time is slower on the Weakbrane.  The rabbit’s laxness is accounted for by rescaling time. 

Profound Passage: An Infinite Extra Dimension

Athena woke up with a start. Her recurring dream had once again taken her down the rabbit hole. This time, however, she asked the rabbit to take her straight back to the warped five-dimensional world. Athena arrived back in Branesville (or so she thought). The Cat soon appeared, and she eagerly turned to him, anticipating her dream cake and a delightful excursion to the Weakbrane. She was sorely disappointed when the Cat told her there was no such thing as Weakbrane in this particular universe.*

Athena didn’t believe the Cat and thought there must be another brane further away. Proud of herself for understanding how, in the warped geometry, further-away branes had weaker gravity, she decided it was probably called the “Meekbrane” and asked the Cat whether she could go there.

But once again she was in for a disappointment. The Cat explained, “There is no such place. You are on the Brane; there are no others.”

“Curiouser and curiouser, thought Athena. This clearly wasn’t exactly the same space as before, since it had only a single brane. But Athena wasn’t ready to give up. “May I see for myself that there is no other brane?” she asked in her sweetest tone.

The Cat strongly advised her against it, warning, “Four-dimensional gravity on the brane is no guarantee of four-dimensional gravity in the bulk. Once I nearly lost everything but my smile there.”

Athena was a cautious girl, despite her many adventures, and she took the Cat’s warning to heart. But she often wondered what the Cat meant. What did lie beyond the Brane, and how would she ever know?

*The geomery of this chapter is warped, as in the previous ones, but now there is only a single brane--the Gravitybrane. Although this means that there is an infinite fifth dimension, this chapter will show why this is perfectly fine with the warped spacetime. 

A Reflective and Expansive Passage

Ike XLII as ready to live large. He wanted to test the Alicxvr’s ultra-high settings of many megaparsecs, with which he could explore places beyond the Galaxy and the known universe and experience distant regions no one had ever seen before.

So he was thrilled when the Alicxvr took him to distances 9, 12, and 13 billion light-years away. But his excitement diminished when he tried to go farther and his signal strength fell precipitously. When he aimed for 15 billion years, his exploration aborted completely: he no longer received any information at all. Instead, he heard, “Message 5B73: The Horizon customer you are trying to reach is beyond your calling area. If you need assistance, please contact your local long-distance operator.”

Ike couldnt’ believe his ears. It was the thirty-first century, yet his Horizon service still provided only limited coverage. When Ike tried to contact the operator, a recording said, “Please stay on the brane. Your call will be answered in the order in which it was received.” Ike suspected that the operator would never respond, and was wise enough not to wait.

Extra Dimensions: Are You In or Are You Out?

Athena’s dreams about OneDLand, branes, and five dimensions were passed down for generations. When Ike XLII heard them, he wanted to check whether there was any truth to her stories. So he took out his Alicxvr and went down to a very small scale--not so small that strings would appear, but sufficiently small to check whether there was a fifth dimension. The Alicxvr answered Ike’s question by sending him off to a five-dimensional world.

But Ike was not completely satisfied. He remembered the bizarre things that had happened earlier on when he had fooled around with the hyperdrive option. So he once again cranked up the hyperdrive lever--and once again, everything changed drastically. Ike couldn’t identify a single familiar point. He could tell only one thing: the fifth dimension had disappeared.

Ike was mystified, so he searched the spacernet to see what it could tell him about “dimensions.” He waded through numerous sites that he recognized from his more embarassing spam, but soon realized that he’d have to refine his search. When he still couldn’t find anything definitive, he conceded that he wouldn’t know the fundamental origin of dimensions any time soon. So he decided to turn his attention to time travel instead.

(In)Conclusion

Icarus Rushmore XLII used his time machine to visit the past and warn Icarus III of the disaster that awaited him should he continue driving his Porsche. Ike III was so astounded by his visitor from the future that he heeded Ike XLII’s warning. He traded in his Porsche for a Fiat and subsequently led a full, contented, and slower-paced life.

Athena was ecstatic to be reunited with her brother, and Dieter was happy to see his friend, though both of them were confused since it seemed as if Ike had never left. Athena and Dieter realized that the time travel that Ike reported to them was pure fiction. Even in dreams, the Cat never looped through time, the Rabbit never reached a stop with extra time dimensions, and the quantum detective refused to contemplate such odd behavior of time. But Athena and Dieter preferred happy endings. So they suspended disbelief and accepted Ike’s fantastic story all the same.

[realtalk-tj]

What sort of supplies would be the best to buy? I’m a freshman

Response from Quirrell:

Here’s what I would go with (but please adapt this to your tastes/class requirements):

Two 2″ binders for your blue/red day classes (of course, you will invariably end up bringing the “wrong” binder to school on the day you have to turn in the Most Important Assignment of the Year, so be wary) 

Lots of lined paper

I’ve found pocket folders/dividers to be pretty helpful.

Pencil pouch with: pencils, pens, etc. The usual suspects.

A few notebooks for when you run out of lined paper (you will), or for the one teacher whose son owns stock in Composition® or something.

Graphing calculator

Lunch (x180)

[moodboardinthecloud]

Climatologist Michael E Mann: 'Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes'

Jonathan Watts

The Observer

Climate change

The author and eminent climate scientist on the deniers’ new tactics and why positive change feels closer than it has done in 20 years

@jonathanwatts

Sat 27 Feb 2021 16.00 GMTLast modified on Mon 1 Mar 2021 09.31 GMT

Michael E Mann is one of the world’s most influential climate scientists. He rose to prominence in 1999 as the co-author of the “hockey-stick graph”, which showed the sharp rise in global temperatures since the industrial age. This was the clearest evidence anyone had provided of the link between human emissions and global warming. This made him a target. He and other scientists have been subject to “climategate” email hacking, personal abuse and online trolling. In his new book, The New Climate War, he argues the tide may finally be turning in a hopeful direction.

You are a battle-scarred veteran of many climate campaigns. What’s new about the climate war? For more than two decades I was in the crosshairs of climate change deniers, fossil fuel industry groups and those advocating for them – conservative politicians and media outlets. This was part of a larger effort to discredit the science of climate change that is arguably the most well-funded, most organised PR campaign in history. Now we finally have reached the point where it is not credible to deny climate change because people can see it playing out in real time in front of their eyes.

But the “inactivists”, as I call them, haven’t given up; they have simply shifted from hard denial to a new array of tactics that I describe in the book as the new climate war.

Who is the enemy in the new climate war? It is fossil fuel interests, climate change deniers, conservative media tycoons, working together with petrostate actors like Saudi Arabia and Russia. I call this the coalition of the unwilling.

If you had to find a single face that represents both the old and new climate war it would be Rupert Murdoch. Climate change is an issue the Murdoch press has dissembled on for years. The disinformation was obvious last year, when they blamed arsonists for the devastating Australian bushfires. This was a horrible attempt to divert attention from the real cause, which was climate change. Murdoch was taken to task by his own son because of the immorality of his practices.

We also have to recognise the increasing roles of petrostate actors. Saudi Arabia has played an obstructionist role. Russia has perfected cyber warfare and used it to interfere in other countries and disrupt action on climate change. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow has made a credible case about Russia’s efforts to hijack the 2016 presidential election and get Trump elected. Russia wanted to end US sanctions that stood in the way of a half-trillion-dollar deal between Rosneft and ExxonMobil. It worked. Who did Trump appoint as his first secretary of state? Rex Tillerson, the former CEO of ExxonMobil.

Today Russia uses cyberware – bot armies and trolls – to get climate activists to fight one another and to seed arguments on social media. Russian trolls have attempted to undermine carbon pricing in Canada and Australia, and Russian fingerprints have been detected in the yellow-vest protests in France.

And WikiLeaks? Your book suggests they were involved? I’m not an expert but there has been a lot of investigative journalism about the role they played in the 2016 election. Julian Assange and WikiLeaks helped Donald Trump get elected, and in doing that they did the bidding of Putin. Their fingerprints are also all over the climategate affair 10 years ago. UK investigators have evidence of Russian involvement in that too.

It’s an unlikely alliance. Yes, it’s a remarkable irony. Who would think you would see a US republican president, a Russian president and Rupert Murdoch working together as part of the coalition of the unwilling, doing everything in their power to prevent action on the defining crisis of our time: climate change.

What is in it for Murdoch? The Saudi royal family has been the second-highest shareholder in News Corporation [Murdoch’s company]. And apparently Murdoch and the Saudi family are close friends, so that is a potential motive.

It's frustrating to see scientists being blamed. We've been fighting the most well-funded PR campaign in human history

You say the deniers are on the back foot and there are reasons to be hopeful. But we have seen false dawns in the past. Why is it different now? Without doubt, this is the best chance in the 20 years since I have been in the climate arena. We have seen false complacency in the past. In 2007, after the IPCC shared the Nobel peace prize with Al Gore, there seemed to be this awakening in the media. that felt to many like a tipping point, though at the time I was very apprehensive. I knew the enemy wouldn’t give up and I expected a resurgence of the climate war. That’s exactly what we saw with the climategate campaign [the leaking of emails to try to tarnish scientists]. This is different. It feels different, it looks different, it smells different.

I am optimistic about a favourable shift in the political wind. The youth climate movement has galvanised attention and re-centred the debate on intergenerational ethics. We are seeing a tipping point in public consciousness. That bodes well. There is still a viable way forward to avoid climate catastrophe.

You can see from the talking points of inactivists that they are really in retreat. Republican pollsters like Frank Luntz have advised clients in the fossil fuel industry and the politicians who carry water for them that you can’t get away with denying climate change any more. It doesn’t pass the sniff test with the public. Instead they are looking at other things they can do.

Let’s dig into deniers’ tactics. One that you mention is deflection. What are the telltale signs? Any time you are told a problem is your fault because you are not behaving responsibly, there is a good chance that you are being deflected from systemic solutions and policies. Blaming the individual is a tried and trusted playbook that we have seen in the past with other industries. In the 1970s, Coca Cola and the beverage industry did this very effectively to convince us we don’t need regulations on waste disposal. Because of that we now have a global plastic crisis. The same tactics are evident in the gun lobby’s motto, “guns don’t kill people, people kill people”, which is classic deflection. For a UK example look at BP, which gave us the world’s first individual carbon footprint calculator. Why did they do that? Because BP wanted us looking at our carbon footprint not theirs.

This leads to the second tactic – division. You argue people need to focus strategically on system change, but online bots are stirring up arguments over individual lifestyle choices. That said, you suggest there is too much emphasis on reducing meat, which is a relatively minor source of emissions compared with fossil fuels. Isn’t that likely to be divisive among vegetarians and vegans? Of course lifestyle changes are necessary but they alone won’t get us where we need to be. They make us more healthy, save money and set a good example for others. But we can’t allow the forces of inaction to convince us these actions alone are the solution and that we don’t need systemic changes. If they can get us arguing with one another, and finger pointing and carbon shaming about lifestyle choices, that is extremely divisive and the community will no longer be effective in challenging vested interest and polluters.

I don’t eat meat. We get power from renewable energy. I have a plug-in hybrid vehicle. I do those things and encourage others to do them. but I don’t think it is helpful to shame people who are not as far along as you. Instead, let’s help everybody to move in that direction. That is what policy and system change is about: creating incentives so even those who don’t think about their environmental footprint are still led in that direction.

Another new front in the new climate war is what you call “doomism”. What do you mean by that? Doom-mongering has overtaken denial as a threat and as a tactic. Inactivists know that if people believe there is nothing you can do, they are led down a path of disengagement. They unwittingly do the bidding of fossil fuel interests by giving up.

What is so pernicious about this is that it seeks to weaponise environmental progressives who would otherwise be on the frontline demanding change. These are folk of good intentions and good will, but they become disillusioned or depressed and they fall into despair. But “too late” narratives are invariably based on a misunderstanding of science. Many of the prominent doomist narratives – [Jonathan] Franzen, David Wallace-Wells, the Deep Adaptation movement – can be traced back to a false notion that an Arctic methane bomb will cause runaway warming and extinguish all life on earth within 10 years. This is completely wrong. There is no science to support that.

Even without Arctic methane, there are plenty of solid reasons to be worried about the climate. Can’t a sense of doom also radicalise people and act as an antidote to complacency? Isn’t it a stage in understanding? True. It is a natural emotional reaction. Good people fall victim to doomism. I do too sometimes. It can be enabling and empowering as long as you don’t get stuck there. It is up to others to help ensure that experience can be cathartic.

You also suggest that Greta Thunberg has sometimes been led astray. I am very supportive of Greta. At one point in the book, I point out that even she has at times been a victim of some of this bad framing. But in terms of what she does, I am hugely supportive. Those I call out really are those who should know better. In particular, I tried to document mis-statements about the science. If the science objectively demonstrated it was too late to limit warming below catastrophic levels, that would be one thing and we scientists would be faithful to that. But science doesn’t say that.

Ten years ago, you and other climate scientists were accused of exaggerating the risks and now you are accused of underplaying the dangers. Sometimes it must seem that you cannot win. It is frustrating to see scientists blamed. We also are told that we didn’t do a good enough job communicating the risks. People forget we were fighting the most well-funded, well-organised PR campaign in the history of human civilisation.

Another development in the “climate war” is the entry of new participants. Bill Gates is perhaps the most prominent. His new book, How to Prevent a Climate Disaster, offers a systems analyst approach to the problem, a kind of operating system upgrade for the planet. What do you make of his take? I want to thank him for using his platform to raise awareness of the climate crisis. That said, I disagree with him quite sharply on the prescription. His view is overly technocratic and premised on an underestimate of the role that renewable energy can play in decarbonising our civilisation. If you understate that potential, you are forced to make other risky choices, such as geoengineering and carbon capture and sequestration. Investment in those unproven options would crowd out investment in better solutions.

Gates writes that he doesn’t know the political solution to climate change. But the politics are the problem buddy. If you don’t have a prescription of how to solve that, then you don’t have a solution and perhaps your solution might be taking us down the wrong path.

What are the prospects for political change with Joe Biden in the White House? Breathtaking. Biden has surprised even the most ardent climate hawks in the boldness of his first 100 day agenda, which goes well beyond any previous president, including Obama when it comes to use of executive actions. He has incorporated climate policy into every single government agency and we have seen massive investments in renewable energy infrastructure, cuts in subsidies for fossil fuels, and the cancellation of the Keystone XL pipeline. On the international front, the appointment of John Kerry, who helped negotiate the Paris Accord, has telegraphed to the rest of the world that the US is back and ready to lead again. That is huge and puts pressure on intransigent state actors like [Australian prime minister] Scott Morrison, who has been a friend of the fossil fuel industry in Australia. Morrison has changed his rhetoric dramatically since Biden became president. I think that creates an opportunity like no other.

How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates; The New Climate War by Michael E Mann – review

Read more

The book provides a long list of other reasons to be hopeful – rapid take-up of renewable energy, technology advances, financial sector action and more. Even so, the US, like other countries, is still far short of the second world war-level of mobilisation that you and others say is necessary to keep global heating to 1.5C. Have the prospects for that been helped or hindered by Covid? I see a perfect storm of climate opportunity. Terrible as the pandemic has been, this tragedy can also provide lessons, particularly on the importance of listening to the word of science when facing risks. That could be from medical scientists advising us on the need for social distancing to reduce the chances of contagion, or it could be from climate scientists recommending we cut carbon emissions to reduce the risk of climate catastrophe. There is also awareness of the deadliness of anti-science, which can be measured in hundreds of thousands of lives in the US that were unnecessarily lost because a president refused to implement policies based on what health scientists were saying. Out of this crisis can come a collective reconsideration of our priorities. How to live sustainably on a finite planet with finite space, food and water. A year from now, memories and impacts of coronavirus will still feel painful, but the crisis itself will be in the rear-view mirror thanks to vaccines. What will loom larger will be the greater crisis we face – the climate crisis.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/27/climatologist-michael-e-mann-doomism-climate-crisis-interview

[biomedgrid]

Biomed Grid| Prediction of the State of the Cardiovascular System based on the Allocation of the Boundaries of the Implementation of the Dynamic System

Recently, research methods for rare experimental events have been intensively developed [1-9] . For a quantitative assessment of rare events, the time intervals between occurrences of successive events above (or below) some threshold Q are usually considered. In this case, both the probability density function of these repeated intervals and their long-term dependencies are investigated (autocorrelation function, conditional repetition periods, etc.). In the numerical analysis necessarily considers not very large thresholds Q, which provide good statistical estimates of repeated intervals, and then these results are extrapolated to very large thresholds, for which the statistics are very poor [1-5] .

In [6], based on 24-hour Holter-monitoring data, it was shown that linear and non-linear long-term memory, inherent in repeated heartbeat intervals, leads to a power law of PDF change. As a consequence, the power law will be satisfied by the probability WQ(t; Δt) of the fact that for Δt time units that have passed since the last repeated interval with an extreme event (record) greater than the threshold Q (briefly, Q-interval) , at least one Q-interval will appear, if for t time units before the last Q - a Q-interval of heartbeat has appeared. Using the probabilities WQ(t; Δt) using long-term memory, the procedure for predicting Q-intervals (RIA-procedure) was proposed in [6-14], which is an alternative to the traditional technique of recognition of specified patterns, the so-called PRT-recognition technique (pattern recognition technique) based on short term memory. The RİA approach does not require the limitedness of the used Q-interval statistics and in all cases gives the best result. Based on this approach, a procedure for predicting a larger (with a record exceeding a certain large threshold Q) repeated Q-interval of heartbeat was developed in [15] using the preliminary selection of repeated Q-intervals with persistent (steadily growing) records based on the transformation [16,17] of the original signals (in this case, repeated Q-intervals) in a series of times to achieve a given threshold of change. However, the implementation of the approach to predicting complex signals proposed in [17] based on the selection of the dynamic system implementation boundary provides for a preliminary selection of a “stable” segment at the end of the time series where the predictor is trained taking into account the latest dynamics of the process under study. In this regard, in [18,19], a computational procedure was proposed for segmentation of nonstationary time signals with fractal properties.

However, the implementation of the approach to predicting complex signals proposed in [17] based on the selection of the dynamic system implementation boundary provides for a preliminary selection of a “stable” segment at the end of the time series where the predictor is trained considering the latest dynamics of the process under study.

Minimal cCoverage and Fractality Index

This dimension is introduced by Hausdorff by the formula

where N (δ) is the minimum number of balls of radius δ covering the set A. The basis for the definition (1.1) is the asymptotics for δ, which is defined by the expression for fractal sets.

The fractal dimension of the time series can be calculated directly through the cell dimension Dc, which is also called the Minkowski dimension or the box dimension [20].

To determine the value of D, the plane on which the time series graph is defined is divided into cells of size δ, and the number of cells N (δ) is determined, where at least one point of this graph is located. It is then constructed by the points regression y = ax + b , whose coefficients are estimated using the least squares method (MHK). Then is the MHK-estimate of the coefficient a. However, to reliably calculate Dc in this way, a too large representative scale containing several thousand data is required [21]. Within this scale, a time series can change many times the nature of its behaviour.

In order to associate the dynamics of the process corresponding to the series { X(ti )} , with the fractal dimension of this time series, it is necessary to determine the dimension D locally. For this, it is necessary to find an approximation sequence that is optimal in a certain sense for each fixed δ. For this purpose, the following procedure for minimal coverages is proposed in [3]. To calculate from the fractal dimension of a time series, or the graph of a real function of one scalar variable y = f (t) , defined on a certain interval [a, b], you can directly use the procedure for determining cell dimensions, considering cell coverage as a special case of covering with rectangles.

We introduce a uniform partition of the segment [a, b] by the points

and construct the graph coverage of the function y = f (t) with rectangles with base δ and height Ai(δ) , (Figure 1) [19].

Figure 1: Fragment of cellular (gray rectangle) and minimal (black rectangle) coverings of the graph of the fractal function on the segment [t_(i-1),t_i ]. Obviously, the minimum coverage is more accurate cellular

Here

We introduce further the value

and we call Vf(δ) the amplitude variation of the function f(t) corresponding to the partition scale δ. The total coverage area Sμ(δ) is written as

It is obvious that Sμ (δ ) is the minimum area of the graphics coverage of the class of coatings with rectangles. Therefore, such a coating is called minimal [19].

After multiplying both parts in (1.2) by δ2 , for the cell division area SC(δ) we get

and in particular for rectangular coverings

From (1.5) and (1.7) we find

where

The index μ is called [19] the fractality index, and the dimension Dμ is the dimension of the minimum coverage. The value of μ is related to the stability of the time series: the more stable the behavior of the original series (i.e., oscillations occur near one level), the greater the value of μ, while the opposite is true.

If the function f(t) is called stable (quasistationary) on the interval (a, b), when its volatility is invariant on this interval, which has long been evaluated [22] by the standard deviation of changes in the selected time window (a, b), then the degradation point time series, i.e. The point at which stability is violated (quasistationarity) can be determined by the jump in volatility. For the evaluation, change in volatility points that divide the original time series into quasistationary portions (segments) corresponding jumps volatility functions developed [18] computing segmentation procedure generalizes iterative method centered cumulative sum of squares (ICSS) [23]. In general, the problem of segmentation, non-stationary time series, i.e. splitting it into non-intersecting adjacent fragments that will be statistically homogeneous (or at least possess this property in a general degree than the initial data) is known as the task of finding the chance-point problem [24,25].

The main advantage of the fractality index μ compared to other fractal indicators (in particular, with the Hurst index H) is that the corresponding value Vf(δ) has a quick access to the power asymptotic mode (1.7). The Hurst index H is determined based on the assumption that

Angle brackets here mean averaging over the interval (a, b). For comparison of μ and H, we introduce the definition of the average amplitude on the partition (1.3)

Multiply (1.4) by and substitute it into (1.8). Then we get

As is known [26], if f(t) is a realization of a Gaussian random process, then the Hurst index H is related to the dimension Dμ and therefore to the index μ by the relation

Therefore, in this case H = Hμ =1-μ . However, real physiological time series, generally speaking, are not Gaussian and therefore Hμ and H can vary greatly. Indeed, in formula (1.12) a power law holds for the average amplitude of the function f(t) over an interval of length δ, while in equation (1.10) the power law holds for the average difference between the initial and final value f(t) on the same interval. So, in general, H ≠ Hμ .

The aforementioned property of the rapid output of ( ) f V δ to the power asymptotic mode makes it possible to use μ as a local characteristic that determines the dynamics of the original process, because the representative scale for its reliable determination can be considered to have the same order with the characteristic scale of the main process states. It is natural to introduce the function μ(t) with the values of μ defined on the minimum interval μ τ preceding t. At this interval, the value of μ can still be calculated with acceptable accuracy. Since in practice a time series always has a finite length, the interval μ τ has a finite length. When calculating the rhythmogram of the heartbeat, we have taken 24 μ τ = hours, δ = ti − ti1 =1hour, b-a = 30x24 = 720 hours, m = 30.

We divide the interval (a, b) of the values of the time series f(t) into intersecting intervals of length μ τ , shifted relative to each other by 1 point (i.e., by the value of δ). In each interval of length μ τ , we construct minimal coverings Пi from rectangles with bases with amplitude variation and by points construct the regression Denote by points and construct a regression. Then MHK-estimates ^ a1 and 0 a of the coefficients a and b will be obtained by

where

Denote j-th rolling interval length and each starting point of the interval τμ( j) let’s compare a pair of numbers bj, μj .Thus, at all points we obtain the corresponding values b(t) and μ(t), defining relation (1.14). Using the resulting arrays of these values, we calculate the following characteristics: average values of μ and b values, maximum and minimum values of   variation of values (variability) μ (t) and b (t). Using the resulting arrays of these values, we calculate the following characteristics: average values of μ and b values, maximum and minimum values as well as quantities and characterizing the spread of values (variability) μ(t) and b(t). Repeating the above calculations several times, we calculate the averages over all the obtained realizations of the values which will give an idea of the behavior of the local characteristics μ and b for the time series under study. Experimental studies conducted in [19] for various types of fractal time series show a low variability of the values of μ and b with a lower variability of the value of b.

Since the value of b is closely related to the distribution of the increments of the time series and, therefore, to the volatility of the time series, for to apply the computational segmentation procedure [18] based on the detection of the jump of the volatility function, it is advisable to use to divide the non-stationary series into “quasistationary” parts with the initial series f(t), the series of values of b(t) and as an estimate of the points of change of the studied series to take the average value of the points of change obtained for the original series f(t) and the number of the values of b(t), respectively.

Algorithm for Detecting Changes in Volatility

We give a brief description of the theoretical part of the method for estimating the point of change in the volatility of the time series used in [18].

Consider a time series model.

where { }i y is the sequence of random variables { }i ε is the sequence of stationary errors of observation of the quantity Y at the instants of time are the regression function (conditional average) and the volatility function (conditional variation), respectively. Model (2.1) is a special case of the non-parametric model

when X =t and, therefore, Хi=ti.

Following the procedure for finding a single point change (single change-point) volatility [23], we set

where 1 2 0 τ ,τ andk are unknown parameters. For simplicity, we put , where [a] means the largest integer not exceeding a.

Let the hypothesis H0 mean that volatility has no points of change. When this hypothesis is fulfilled, it follows from

and determine the statistics

If μ (t) and 0G (t) are known, the least-squares method (MHK) for the volatility jump point k0 can be used to obtain the following estimate [27]

The value of k V will be close to 0 when the hypothesis H0 is fulfilled and is non-zero if the volatility changes. Simple calculations lead to equality

The statistics Dk, defined by the formula (2.8), differs only in sign from the statistics used in [23]. From (2.7) it follows that Dk can also be used as an estimate of the point of change k0.

In [27], more general statistics for detecting changes in volatility are introduced.

From (2.10) we can obtain an estimate for the point of change k0

By specifying kˆ(v) one can obtain the following estimates of the quantities τ12 τ22

To establish the asymptotic distribution of the statistics v k V with the known functions of regression μ(t) and conditional variation σ(t), the notation is introduced

If 1 2 τ =τ = 1 , i.e. hypothesis H0 is true, then under a certain condition [27] the limiting relation

where d means convergence in distribution - any number from (0,1) 0 ≤ v ≤ 1 B(t)- standard Brownian motion by [0,1]; and

The approximation of the random variable from the right-hand side of (2.13) with ν=1/2 is obtained using the formula [28]:

If there is a jump in the volatility of the function, i.e. heteroscedastic regression model σ 2 (t) ≠ const , the estimate of the point of change is defined as [27]:

Where

μˆ (t) - evaluation of the regression function μ(t). The limiting relation (2.13) under certain conditions from [27] remains valid when kˆ (v) and k V are replaced by kˆ(v) and ˆ v k V .

To estimate 0σ (t) (2.3), it is advisable (especially when there is a certain amount of outliers or when the observation distribution function has “heavy tails”) to use the absolute deviation estimate [29]

where

K(.)-nuclear function, and n b = b -sequence of strip widths. As a nuclear function K(t), one can adopt the standardized Epechnikov core

or Gauss core

Here I(A) is an indicator function of set A:

I (A) = 1atx ∈ A and I(A)=0 at x ∉ A.

To estimate the widths of the bands in (2.18), we use the method using the , which is defined as [30]

where defined by formula (2.17) with the strip width b=bn. The expected value of χ 2 - Pearson statistic (2.21), ER2, is approximately equal to the number of degrees of freedom n.

Since R2 depends on the estimated (conditional) variation, equality (2.21) can be used for the optimal choice of the bandwidth bn:

To detect the volatility points of the time series Y(t), we preliminarily construct the estimate μˆ (t) , the trend component μ(t) and allocate the irregular stochastic component a(t) = Y (t) − μˆ (t) with the property of stationarity (in broad sense) i.e. with constant mean m and covariance function 1 2 K(t , t ) , depending only on the difference of the arguments. The verification of the a(t) process for stationarity is carried out using a sample autocorrelation correlogram function [31], which for a stationary time series must rapidly decrease with increasing delay time.

Consider a stationary time series{ } t a with zero value and variances (variances) be the cumulative (accumulated) sum of the series { } t a and centered and normalized cumulative sum of squares.

For a constant variance t σ =σ , the sequence { } k D oscillates with respect to zero. If sudden changes in the variance t σ are possible, then the graph of the dependence of Dk on k will be concluded with a high probability within certain limits, which are calculated from an analysis of the asymptotic distribution of Dk relative to some constant dispersion. Given this property, in [23] is

If the maximum in (2.24) exceeds the above-mentioned boundary levels k D level of significance α, then according to the iterative method of centered cumulative sums of squares (ICSS), the k* value from (2.24) is taken as the estimate of the point of variation of the variance.

In [27], a modified ICSS algorithm was proposed (let’s call it MICSS), in which the statistics D_k is replaced by v k V defined by expression (2.10). The critical values of v ( ) a v C T of the statistics k V for ν=0 are given in [23], and for ν=1/2 in [28]. For the level of significance, α=0.05 is usually applied.

In the MICSS method in step 1, the statistics

replaced by statistics

where a [t1;t2] means that the sample of values of at is taken at at t1 ≤ t ≤ t2 , where statistics (2.16) defined on the interval [t1;t2] .

In equality (2.26), the estimate σ is determined by the formula where T R is defined in (2.17). A consistent estimate for σ2 , which is the variance of the random variable , is obtained on the basis of analysis [32] of the sample stationary sequence

For this, statistics are entered

where { , 1} nl n≥ is a sequence of positive integers with 1 n≤ l ≤ n and the notation is entered

where Γ(•) − is the gamma function? If 0 n l → and / 0 nl n→ as n → ∞ then as , , n p n → ∞ B σ [32]. So, the estimate ˆw σ in (2.26) for sufficiently large n (large T) can be taken as , ˆw n p σ = B (in the calculations, p=1 with c c1= Г(1) and ln( ) nl = n were taken.

The critical values Cα,0(T*) of statistics (2.25) for different T*= t2 - t1 + 1 are defined in [23]. At a level of significance α =0.05, the asymptotic (for large T *) values of Cα,0(T*) in [23] are determined to be 1.27; 1.30; 1.31; 1.33; 1.358 at Т*=100; 200; 300; 400; 500; ∞ respectively. Linear interpolation for intermediate T* values gives the following values

From (2.7), (2.10), (2.16), taking into account the estimate ˆσ = ST /  T , the statistics (2.26) with ν=0 can be written as

Therefore, the critical values of the statistics (2.26) with ν=0 are written as

To determine the critical values of the statistics (2.26) with ν=1/2, you can use the asymptotic relation (2.13), written as

Solve x nonlinear equation

obtained from the curve of part (2.14) with h = l = δ . Under the initial condition x=x0 (for example, x0=100) we find the solution x* of equation (2.31) for fixed α in the MATLAB system. Then the value can be taken as the critical value of the statistics (2.26) with v = 1 2 .

Modified Method for Predicting the Status of the Cardiovascular Systems on the Basis of Identifying the Boundaries of Quasistationary Sections of The Time Series

To solve the problem of predicting complex digital signals, it was proposed in [17] to use the last “stable” fragment of a time series for training a predictor, obtained by dividing into quasi-stationary regions. Such a task is known [33,34] as a problem of detecting a “debugging”, i.e. changes in the probability properties of the signal. Such a definition can give for complex signals an inaccurate border of a true change in the dynamics of a signal. To detect the change in the dynamics of a complex signal, it was proposed to use an estimate of the local fractal dimension based on the fractality index μ of the time series [19].

As shown in section 1, it is most appropriate to characterize the non-stationary time series with two indicators b(t) and μ(t) included in the power representation (1.14) of the amplitude variation ( ) f V δ of the function f(t) graph corresponding to the original time series. In this case, the value of b(t) is closely related to the volatility (conditional variation) of the time series, according to a jump in which in [18] an algorithm for segmentation of a nonstationary time series was developed.

Given this property of the function b(t), we can propose the following method for detecting the boundaries of quasistationary portions of the time series. Using the sliding window’s original signal f(t), the derived estimation signal b(t), which characterizes the local fractal dimension of the time series, is plotted. In the derivative and in the original signal according to the algorithm [18] are the points of disorder. The positions of these points are compared and the average is taken, which will be the boundary of the adjacent quasi-stationary areas. The fragment of the last generated quasi-stable signal dynamics is used as a learning set for the predictor.

To increase the efficiency of the Q-event forecast, i.e. a record of the rhythmogram of a heartbeat, a larger threshold Q, in the selected last quasi-stationary segment of the time series of the rhythmogram, a combination of the algorithm of repeated intervals using long-term memory [6] with the method of reaching the threshold of change [16] is used.

The RIA approach is based on the analysis of the nonlinear component of the long-term dependence of repeated intervals rj between events xi exceeding a certain defined threshold Q (Q-events).

Sometimes, instead of the threshold K, the average repeat interval or repetition period is set to where P(x) is the distribution of events { } i x .

In this approach, to predict random signals with fractal properties, the mathematical apparatus of interval statistics is used when the probability WQ (t;Δt) that during the time Δt appears at least one Q-interval if during the time t for the last Q- event Q event has occurred.

where ∂(Q) characterizes the density distribution of the lengths r of repeated intervals

The method of reaching the threshold of change is based on the transformation of the original signal into a series of times to reach the threshold P:

where N is the number of samples in the original signal, x′ is the converted signal, where only those values are left, the relative difference between which exceeds a certain predetermined threshold p, N′ is the number of samples in the converted signal, τ-time series to reach the threshold of change p, where each value of τ-means the time it took the signal to exceed the threshold of change p. The coincidence of the signs of differences xi′ −xi-1 ′ and (τi − τi-1) indicates the persistence (steady growth) of both the values x′i and the time τi between records xi′ and xi-1′ . In application to records (extreme events) heartbeat means records and steady increase of intervals between consecutive records. Under the records of the heartbeat can be understood Q-events, and the intervals-Q intervals. Transformation (3.3) can be used to pre-select heartbeat records in the Q-interval prediction procedure, based on the RİA technique, which allows speeding up the last procedure and increasing the reliability of the prediction obtained.

Read More About this Article: https://biomedgrid.com/fulltext/volume3/prediction-of-the-state-of-the-cardiovascular-system.000644.phpFor more about: Journals on Biomedical Science :Biomed Grid

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Top Frequency Mathematics Choices

Frequently, an excellent number of groups is 5 or 6 although there are a few rules which people use to decide this. However, it’s still surprisingly common to find textbooks do everything by hand and finally, learning how to create a histogram by hand is an excellent way to improve at reading them and figuring out what the challenge is every time a computer or calculator provides you something you don’t expect. Any change with regard to time is known as a rate. The individual’s mathematical ability write me an essay online has to be substantially below the degree of peers with symptoms usually occurring simultaneously. As Pinkham argued, the simple fact which we may find all types of information in the true world that appear to conform to Benford’s Law suggest this law has to be scale invariant. Produce a means to establish the distance between the cars without leaving your vehicle.

On the other hand, the point is it’s beneficial to realise that the probabilities of certain kinds of hands in a range will be different. There does not appear to be enough demand overall for Cappuccinos to justify purchasing a larger coffee machine at this phase. For instance, you could be attracted simply to lotteries that have very reduced www.samedayessay.org probability of winning, since it feels more exciting when you really win. You also need to think about processing time. Other electronic devices including plasma televisions may also have a detrimental influence on the HF spectrum. A relative frequency table indicates the variety of people who chose each steak in comparison to the range of people who did the tasting.

Within this example, we’ll go through the exact same process with a different data set. Your capacity to accurately quantify economic relationships depends not just on your econometric model-building abilities but also on the standard of the data you’re using for analysis and your ability to adopt the acceptable strategies for estimating models that will likely violate a statistical assumption. One other important property, is that its values may also reveal the region between two classes. In the event the pieces of data cover a wide array of numbers, then the data in the very first column is broken into intervals. The data have to be derived from a dependable collection procedure, but it’s also advisable to be conscious of any extra limitations or challenges. http://web.utk.edu/~gduscher/?make=custom-essay-writing-reviews Grouped data is data that’s been organized into groups referred to as classes.

Quite simply, the quantity of force applied t.. A means to lower this need is to minimize the sampling rate, that is the second method to improve frequency resolution. Determine the quantity of time that has passed. The combination keeps the variety of available channels concerning the exact same. The difference between both might be the inter-quartile range (IQR). This is merely a list and there’s no agreed upon order.

The Truth About Frequency Mathematics

An individual can either compute the mean via the use of frequency or no frequency in any way. Each interval is known as a class interval. The corresponding frequencies are then regarded to produce the frequency polygon.

Even a health care provider will say that. The main reason for constructing the function in this manner is that the curve that’s defined by the function has an immediate connection to probability. The third table outlines a number of the applications at every one of the several frequency bands.

This calculation is fairly straightforward and is among the easier measures of central propensity to calculate. But if you’re working with the dataset yourself, you might have to to find out what the graph looks like before you’re able to be certain you chose a superb number. As previously mentioned, histogram may be used for creating frequency polygon. This is precisely what is going on in the graph above. They are not ordered.

Because of this, AM systems are extremely sensitive to random sound. Select a frequency that’s in the center of the band you desire to operate on. They’re such distinctive instruments. But since the signals of FM stations cover only limited distances, the very same frequencies can be utilised in different geographic regions of the nation.

Lies You’ve Been Told About Frequency Mathematics

Your application will adhere to the exact same route and criteria. The similar mathematics is just a convenient coincidence. You can also download ExamView software.

Descriptive statistics don’t, however, enable us to make conclusions beyond the data we’ve analysed or reach conclusions regarding any hypotheses we may have made. Correlation is the solution. To display data, there are lots of graphs and charts out there.

Torque Calculator Torque is just a rotational force. Quiz video assists in testing your knowledge. Calculator usage is allowed in the program.

Remedial education is shown to work for kids since they need the particular help from teachers trained in learning disorders. Appropriate prerequisite abilities and understandings for this course are needed for success within this class. Rubrics can increase the consistency and trustworthiness of scoring.

There are many different ways in which calculators interpret keystrokes. And it’s this information that may enable you to crack codes. Add to locate the perimeters of polygons on such worksheets.

Now you’re prepared to go out into the area. Let’s take for instance, Table No. 3.

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Fractal Structure of Microcrystalline Cellulose Obtained by Method of Spray Drying-Juniper Publishers

JUNIPER PUBLISHERS- ACADEMIC JOURNAL OF POLYMER SCIENCE

Abstract

In this research, a fractal structure of beads of different sizes obtained by spray-drying of aqueous dispersions of microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) was studied. These beads are formed as a result of aggregation of rod-shaped cellulose nanocrystalline particles (CNP). It was found that increasing the average radius (R) of the formed MCC beads results in increased porosity (P) and reduced density (ρ). The dependences of P and ρ on scale factor (R/r) can be expressed by power-law equations: p=(R/r)k-dp  and p-d (R/r)DP-K  ,where the fractal dimensions PD= 2.887 andPD=2.986 are close to Euclidean dimension E=3 for three-dimensional space; r=3nm is radius of cellulose nanocrystalline particles, Po = 0.03cm3/g is porosity and d=1.585g/cm3 is true density (specific gravity) of CNP, respectively. Thus, with the increase in the size of formed MCC beads, the order in the packing of the beads is distorted conforming to theory of diffusion-limited aggregation process.

Keywords:  Microcrystalline cellulose (MCC); Spray-drying; MCC bead; Size; Porosity; density; Fractal dimension

    Introduction

It is known that various natural and artificial objects and phenomena can be considered as fractals, distinctive features of which are scale invariance (self-similarity) and fractional dimension [1,2]. The theory of fractals is widely used in engineering, mathematics, biology, physics, chemistry and other areas. According to this theory, the fractal dimension (D) of an object can be determined by logarithmization of power-law dependence of structure or property on scale factor. In particular, the theory of fractals was applied for description of structure and properties of such wide-spread natural biopolymer as cellulose and also of diverse cellulose materials.

For instance, cellulose fibers were studied by a method of low-temperature nitrogen sorption to measure the dependence of cumulative volume on radius of various pores expressed by the power-law function, from which the fractal dimension from 2.88 to 2.95 was determined [3]. In another research [4], the fractal structure of pores in various cellulose materials was studied by nitrogen and water vapor sorption methods; in the case of nitrogen sorption the fractal dimension of pores was from 2.13 to 2.50, whereas sorption of water vapor gave the fractal dimension of pores less than 1.5 due to altering of cellulose structure under effect of water. The study the distribution of nano-scale cellulose aggregates by method of small-angle X-ray scattering permitted to calculate the fractal dimension D=2.10 [5].

The main purpose of this research was to study the fractal characteristics of Microcrystalline Cellulose (MCC) beads with different sizes prepared by method of spray drying, which can be used as excipient in pharmaceutics and medicine, as well as filler in various composite materials.

    Experimental

Material

The initial material was chemical grade cotton cellulose (99 % α-cellulose, DP=2700) of Hercules Inc.

Method of preparation beads of MCC

Cotton cellulose was hydrolyzed with boiling 1.5M sulfuric acid at the acid/cellulose ratio 10 for 1h followed by filtration of the acid and washing of MCC on the filter to neutral pH [6]. The resulting wet cake of MCC was diluted with distilled water to obtain 1-5% dispersions, which were disintegrated in Waring blender at 15,000rpm for 10min to break the agglomerates. To produce beads, the aqueous dispersions of MCC were spray-dried using a lab drier of Pilotech at the following conditions: feeding 10ml/min, air pressure 0.2MPa, inlet temperature 120oC and outlet temperature 60oC.

Sieve analysis

MCC beads of different sizes were separated by screening through sieves with mesh of 80-100, 140-170, 230-270 and 450-635. The average radius of the beads was shown in the Table 1. With rise of the concentration of MCC dispersion from 1 to 5%, an increase in the yield of larger beads was observed.

Scanning electron microscopy

Shape of MCC beads were investigated by electron microscope Hitachi S-4700.

Wide-angle X-ray scattering (WAXS)

Nanostructure of MCC beads was investigated by WAXS method using Rigaku-Ultima Plus diffractometer (CuKa - radiation, l=0.15418nm) [7, 8]. Lateral size (L) of cellulose nanocrystalline particles (CNP) in direction perpendicularly to [200] planes of crystalline unit cell were calculated by modified Scherrer equation taking into account the contribution of instrumental factor and lattice distortions to width of crystalline peak. Minimum radius of CNP was calculated as follows: r = 0.5L.

Sorption method

Sorption of hexane vapor by MCC beads was measured at 25oC with the use of a vacuum Mac-Ben apparatus having helical spring quartz scales [9]. The porosity [p,cm3/g] the beads was calculated by the equation:

where V is total volume of pores (cm3 )  measured at relative vapor pressurep/p0 m is mass of the dry sample (g).

    Results and Discussion

SEM studies showed that spray-dried MCC beads have ellipsoidal or spherical shape and contain small rod-like particles (Figure 1). As known, cellulose is semicrystalline linear polysaccharide that consists of elementary nanofibrils and their bundles called microfibrils [10]. Furthermore, each nano-scale fibril is built of ordered rod-like nanocrystallites and low ordered amorphous nanodomains. The three-dimensional ordered nanocrystallites are strong and inaccessible structural elements. As against, the low-ordered amorphous domains are weak and accessible segments of the fibrils. Therefore, cleavage of amorphous domains at the acid hydrolysis leads to formation of rod-shaped nanocrystalline particles (CNP). As a result of spraydrying, the rod-shaped CNP are aggregated by their side surfaces and forms micron sized beads of microcrystalline cellulose with various average radius.

The structural studies showed that CNP isolated from plant biomass have lateral sizes of 4-8nm and length of 100-200nm [11]. As it follows from WAXS results, the average lateral size (L) of CNP made of cotton cellulose is 6nm and their average radius (r) is 3nm or 0.003μm (Table 2).

The study of vapor sorption of inert organic liquid (hexane) revealed that the porosity of MCC beads varies in the range from 0.0757 to 0.0931 cm3/g (Table 3). Moreover, when the average size of the beads increases, their porosity rises.

The dependence of porosity (P) on scale factor (R/r) can be expressed by a power-law function:

where Po is porosity of CNP, DP is fractal dimension; E=3 is Euclidean dimension for three-dimensional space.

After logarithmizing of the function (2), a linear graph was drawn (Figure 2), from which the values of Po = 0.03 [cm3/g]=2.887 were found.

Along with porosity, it is also possible to calculate the density of MCC beads, as follows:

where Vc = d-1 is specific volume of CNP having crystallinity about 80% and true density (specific gravity) d=1.585g/cm3 [10].

Using ρ values and scale factor [R/r](Table 3), the linear dependence can be obtained (Figure 3) by logarithmizing of the function:

From the linearized graph (Figure 3), the value of Dρ =2.986 was calculated.

The results have shown that the small beads contain more densely packed aggregates of CNP than the large MCC beads. According to DLA-theory [2, 12-14], such structural feature indicates that the formation of MCC beads occurs via diffusionlimited aggregation process.

    Conclusion

Rod-shaped crystalline nanoparticles (CNP) of cotton cellulose with radius r = 3 nm have a compact packing with high true density (specific gravity) d=1.585g/cm3 and negligible porosity Po=0.03 cm3/g During spray-drying a lateral aggregation of rod-shaped CNP occurs. Moreover, with the development of aggregation process of CNP and increase in size of the formed MCC beads, the order in the packing is distorted conforming to theory of diffusion-limited aggregation process. Consequence of this phenomenon is increase in porosity and decrease in density with the rise in size (average radius R) of the beads. The dependences of porosity (P) and density (ρ) on scale factor (R/r) can be expressed by the following power-law equations:

where the fractal dimensions DP = 2.887 and Dρ = 2.986 are close to Euclidean dimension E=3 for three-dimensional space.

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As soon as we fit both these models, they’d yield various outcomes. A geometric sequence is only a sequence paramountessays com of multiples rather than increasing by a constant. The exact same function may be used to locate the distance between two points.

As soon as we fit both these models, they’d yield various outcomes. A geometric sequence is only a sequence of multiples rather than increasing by a constant. Use a protractor to assess the angles.

The Upside to What Is Domain in Math

In the end, notice that the term domain itself isn’t exact and thus is only utilized as an abbreviation every time a formal definition was given before or when the details are irrelevant. Under each particular idea, you will see links to in-depth tutorials that will let you learn and review the material. A great paper should essentially outline whatever you want to do at a high level.

There are not any troubles with a polynomial. Here are some resources which should provide help. There’s debate over whether Lovelace wrote the very first computer program.

I’m trying to rewrite a URL depending on the Accept header of the request. These functions are offered by this module. On the other hand, the most usual instance of a limited domain is most likely the divide http://biophysics.uchicago.edu/ by zero issue.

This is an entirely absurd notion that was put to rest by Godel in the previous century. There’s almost always some negotiation. Nobody understands that theory, and therefore do not be concerned about that.

The True Meaning of What Is Domain in Math

Functions are a particular sort of relation. If you discover any duplicate x-values, then the different y-values mean that you don’t have a function.

One of my preferred techniques to bring some easy counting is during art projects. You may want to concentrate on a single shape at a moment. In the event you’re unfamiliar with these concepts, here is the best way to calculate each one.

One particular important point to consult your hosting company is what tech support they give. However many seconds you return in time, it is possible to ALWAYS go back one more second! High-achieving students must substantially enhance their performance from year to year to keep their within-cohort rank, but there’s nonetheless a good deal of persistence in the rankings.

Lies You’ve Been Told About What Is Domain in Math

A standard home network consists of a router and lots of devices on the router. Suppose you are requested to discover the domain and range of The domain is comparatively simple to discover. Again, your own solution will supply you with full flexibility here where on Medium you’re left with a few hacks to produce your site semi-multi lang.

Whatever you do inside or outside your home needs math abilities. The terrible news is that plenty of folks try this line and it isn’t something many even respond to anymore. The table indicates the results.

In Whateverville, everyone over age 10 is permitted to vote. With this video, kids are going to be in a place to learn about the effortless way they can do so as to solve or hunt for the range in math. The student having the most cards is the winner.

The Little-Known Secrets to What Is Domain in Math

This is an entirely absurd notion that was put to rest by Godel in the previous century. There’s almost always some negotiation. Nobody understands that theory, and therefore do not be concerned about that.

Calculators might be helpful for solving problems that come up in discussions. It’s also irrational to say an atom will cease to exist later on. It follows that two aggregates must not have overlapping invariants and entities which might or might not contradict with one another.

Math doesn’t have to be restricted to a particular portion of your day. Adhere to that link first in the event that you don’t! Finally click Add Domain.

The Fundamentals of What Is Domain in Math Revealed

Additional it protects the personal networks from distant attacks. You should also think about the demands of the colleges and programs you want to know more about. At this time you can finish a topic proofreading jobs as soon as your students have mastered it, not when you use up all your problems.

This informative article explains what you will need to know to deal with the majority of the situations. From this easy intuition it’s already apparent that domains frequently do not have a best element, because this would signify that there’s an element having the information of the rest of the elementsa rather uninteresting circumstance. In math, when you study a particular topic, a great deal of times you’re incorporating other mathematical topics into solving the issue.

There are quite a lot of techniques to select from depending on the essence of the equations in the model and the physical domain in which they should be studied. You may often determine the range by taking a look at a graph. It requires a graph.

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