First, NPR told the story. Now, we revisit the Summer Explosives Camp courtesy of the Science Times.

There aren’t many wholesome explosions in the news these day, but those are what Summer Explosives Camp provides.

“We try to give them an absolute smorgasbord of explosives.”

“Do not under any circumstances make your self a potato gun out of steel or aluminum. That will get you killed,” Mr. Montrose said.

He handed the students T-Shirts that said on the back, “I ♥ Explosives,” but suggested that they not wear them to the airport.

A Summer Camp Where Fireworks Are the Point

"Among cultural intellectuals, pessimism is the style," he says with a tinge of scorn. "You're not a paid-up member unless you're gloomy." But when it comes to climate change, he finds (quoting the Italian revolutionary Gramsci) that scientists can combine "pessimism of the intellect" with "optimism of the will". "Science is an intrinsically optimistic project. You can't be curious and depressed. Curiosity is itself a sure stake in life. And science is often quite conscious of intellectual pleasure, in a way that the humanities are not."

... the neuroscience of revenge: via real-time fMRI, what was demonstrated was that people were prepared to punish themselves in order to punish others: negative altruism.

Ian McEwan, on the Curious Scientist

ResearchChannel is a nonprofit media and technology organization that connects a global audience with the research and academic institutions whose developments, insights and discoveries affect our lives and futures.

An intellectual community, ResearchChannel was founded in 1996 by leading research and academic institutions so they could share the work of their researchers with the public. These ideas are shared in their original form — unmediated and without interruption. Today, more than 70 participating members and affiliates provide all programming, and that number continues to grow.

Remarkable speakers, researchers and professors present revolutionary thoughts and discoveries on ResearchChannel. Johns Hopkins University, the University of Washington and the Library of Congress are just a few of the world-renowned institutions that participate and whose programs are featured.

ResearchChannel acts as a technology testbed and innovator for new methods of global distribution and interaction. Network, computing and content-creation collaborations allow participants to make the most of traditional, new and emerging technologies. Collaborative projects include those with Intel, IBM and Microsoft Research. New technologies are essential for enhancing research, reaching a wider audience and providing alternative, high-speed exchanges of video resources.

See, for example, 20 Questions for Startup Success

Building successful high-tech products and businesses actually involves about only 20% computer science expertise - there are many other factors that are required for success. In this talk, Norm Meyrowitz, NKM Advisors, examines the 20 questions - and the myriad disciplines - that are necessary to develop the 21st-century sliced bread.

ResearchChannel

Review of Ian Stewart's new book, Why Beauty Is Truth: The Story of Symmetry.

"In physics, beauty does not automatically ensure truth, but it helps." The second: "In mathematics beauty must be true--because anything false is ugly." I agree with the first statement, but not the second. We have seen how lovely proofs by Kempe and Dudeney were flawed. Moreover, there are simply stated theorems for which ugly proofs may be the only ones possible.

Let me cite two recent examples. Proof of the four-color map theorem required a computer printout so vast and dense that it could be checked only by other computer programs. Although there may be a beautiful proof recorded in what Paul Erdos called "God's book"--a book that, he suggested, included all the theorems of mathematics and their most beautiful proofs--it is possible that God's book contains no such proof. The same goes for Andrew Wiles's proof of Fermat's last theorem. It is not computer-based, but it is much too long and complicated to be called beautiful. There may be no beautiful proof for this theorem. Of course, mathematicians can always hope and believe otherwise.

See also a review in Prospect.

The book earns a starred review from Booklist:

Werner Heisenberg recognized the numerical harmonies at the heart of the universe: "I am strongly attracted by the simplicity and beauty of the mathematical schemes which nature presents us." An accomplished mathematician, Stewart here delves into these harmonies as he explores the way that the search for symmetry has revolutionized science.

Beginning with the early struggles of the Babylonians to solve quadratics, Stewart guides his readers through the often-tangled history of symmetry, for nonspecialists how a concept easily recognized in geometry acquired new meanings in algebra.

Embedded in a narrative that piquantly contrasts the clean elegance of mathematical theory with the messy lives of gambling, cheating, and dueling mathematicians, the principles of symmetry emerge in radiant clarity.

Readers contemplate in particular how the daunting algebra of quintics finally opened a conceptual door for Evaniste Galois, the French genius who laid the foundations for group theory, so empowering scientists with a new calculus of symmetry.

Readers will marvel at how much this calculus has done to advance research in quantum mechanics, relativity, and cosmology, even inspiring hope that the supersymmetries of string theory will combine all of astrophysics into one elegant paradigm.

An exciting foray for any armchair physicist!

Is Beauty Truth and Truth Beauty?

Nearly a year after its first mention on MemeStreams, the day is finally here.

Here's an excerpt, from the end of the "Words of Thanks" (aka Acknowledgments):

The many friends mentioned above, and some others not mentioned, form a "cloud" in which I float; sometimes I think of them as the "metropolitan area" of which I, construed narrowly, am just the zone inside the official city limits. Everyone has friends, and in that sense I am no different from anyone else, but this cloud is my cloud, and it somehow defines me, and I am proud of it and proud of them all. And so I say to this cloud of friends, with all my heart, "Thank you so very much, one and all!"

I Am a Strange Loop

The most obvious differences between different animals are differences of size, but for some reason the zoologists have paid singularly little attention to them. In a large textbook of zoology before me I find no indication that the eagle is larger than the sparrow, or the hippopotamus bigger than the hare, though some grudging admissions are made in the case of the mouse and the whale. But yet it is easy to show that a hare could not be as large as a hippopotamus or a whale as small as a herring. For every type of animal there is a most convenient size, and a large change in size inevitably carries with it a change of form.

On Being the Right Size

Francis Fukuyama has a new book, entitled "Beyond Bioethics: A Proposal for Modernizing the Regulation of Human Biotechnologies".

He writes:

The title "Beyond Bioethics" is not meant to downplay the importance of ethical issues, but rather to suggest we need rules now with real enforcement power. The entire field of bioethics was created back in the 1970s at least in part to relieve pressure on the scientific community for overt regulation; they could point to toothless bioethics committees and say that they were taking account of ethical issues, without having to face real limits on research. We are saying that the time for this is past; that we need to proceed under socially agreed upon rules that ensure that future research respects the dominant ethical concerns of the broader democratic community.

This book is freely available as a downloadable PDF; just complete the "order" form at this site.

Biotech Governance Project

This is not your father's high school biology; the days are long since gone when "bio" meant taking a razor to an earthworm, frog, or fetal pig.

Now, "bio" is applied pattern recognition ... cool hunting.

The genetic divergence time between two species varies substantially across the genome, conveying important information about the timing and process of speciation. Here we develop a framework for studying this variation and apply it to about 20 million base pairs of aligned sequence from humans, chimpanzees, gorillas and more distantly related primates. Human–chimpanzee genetic divergence varies from less than 84% to more than 147% of the average, a range of more than 4 million years. Our analysis also shows that human–chimpanzee speciation occurred less than 6.3 million years ago and probably more recently, conflicting with some interpretations of ancient fossils. Most strikingly, chromosome X shows an extremely young genetic divergence time, close to the genome minimum along nearly its entire length. These unexpected features would be explained if the human and chimpanzee lineages initially diverged, then later exchanged genes before separating permanently.

Reread that last sentence for emphasis. I missed this paper on initial publication, but on recent review, and in the context of the Year in Ideas and yesterday's NYT profile of its lead author, I have to say this is the closest thing to a Gold Star biology paper as I have seen recently.

If you've read The Ancestor's Tale, you'll recognize some of the analytical techniques applied here.

Genetic evidence for complex speciation of humans and chimpanzees

"I'm a data guy. What I know about is how to analyze big, complicated data sets."

In 2000, he pondered who had the most interesting, most complex data sets and decided "it had to be the biology people."

Biologists are awash in DNA code. Last year alone, the Broad Institute sequenced nearly 70 billion bases of DNA, or 23 human genomes’ worth. Researchers are mining that trove to learn how humans evolved, which mutations cause cancer, and which genes respond to a given drug.

Since biology has become an information science, said Eric S. Lander, a mathematician-turned-geneticist who directs the Broad Institute, "the premium now is on being able to interpret the data." That is why quantitative-minded geeks from mathematics, physics and computer science have flocked to biology.

A Cold War Cryptologist Takes a Crack at Deciphering DNA’s Deep Secrets

Seriously cool photos.

Small World is regarded as the leading forum for showcasing the beauty and complexity of life as seen through the light microscope. For over 30 years, Nikon has rewarded the world's best photomicrographers who make critically important scientific contributions to life sciences, bio-research and materials science.

I wish the prints were larger.

Nikon Small World - Photomicrography Competition