Magnetic Precipitation Tipping Point
How cool; magnets, rain and tipping points. It’s sounds like your basic power law, but basically it sounds like you can understand rain patterns by studying magnets!
In the June issue of the respected journal Nature Physics, he and J. David Neelin, UCLA professor of atmospheric and oceanic sciences, report that the onset of intense tropical rain and magnetism share the same underlying physics.
“We studied properties of that relationship that are also observed in equivalent quantities for systems with ‘continuous-phase transitions’ like magnets,” said Peters, a research scientist with UCLA’s Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics and a visiting scientist at the Santa Fe Institute.
“The atmosphere has a tendency to move to a critical point in water vapor where the likelihood of rain dramatically increases. The system reaches a point where it’s just about to rain; it’s highly susceptible. Any additional water vapor can produce a large response.”
“Our study showed that absolutely everything we dreamed of finding was actually there,” Peters said. “The predictions from critical phenomena showed up in the data. This is a huge step forward in self-organized criticality and critical phenomena. There really is a critical point. We observed the system in a whole range of different water vapors. This is the strongest evidence for any physical self-organized critical system to really have a critical point.”
How does a critical threshold point work?
Consider a pile of rice, Peters said. You can add a single grain of rice and measure its effect on the pile. After slowly adding rice grains, at some point you eventually trigger an avalanche; the release is very fast. A similar principle is behind the coin machines you can find in casinos, where it looks as if dropping in one or two quarters will create an avalanche of coins that will come crashing down for you. In fact, it is much more likely that it only looks like the system is at a critical point; you are more likely to lose your quarter.
Imagine that you add one raindrop into a cloud. Like the pile of rice, where adding a single grain can produce an avalanche or nothing at all, or like the coin machine, the one additional raindrop could trigger a huge downpour, but most of the time produces nothing. You can heat a magnet to a point where it loses its magnetization; it no longer has a north and south direction.
“When a magnet is near the critical temperature, a slight perturbation can cause it to switch north and south,” Peters said. “When the system reaches the critical point and is so susceptible, a slight change — one more grain of rice, one more coin — can produce a massive response of the system. This phenomenon can be studied using statistical mechanics and critical phenomena.”
S.F. Unveils Universal Health Care Plan
Holy crap, those damn hippies are at it again: San Francisco unveils a universal health plan for residents. According to the Washington Post,
The city would offer health care to any adult resident, regardless of immigration or employment status, under a plan announced Tuesday.
The plan, which still needs be approved by the city’s Board of Supervisors, is aimed at 82,000 uninsured residents who earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, said Mayor Gavin Newsom. San Francisco already provides universal health care for children.
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, appears with Sandra R. Hernandez, CEO of The San Francisco Foundation, during a news conference, Tuesday, June 20, 2006, in San Francisco. Newsom and other officials unveiled a plan to make San Francisco the first city in the nation to provide health care to all residents. The plan aimed at 85,000 San Franciscans who earn too much to qualify for federally subsidized health care would offer basic preventive care and treatment for catastrophic illnesses. (AP Photo/Ben Margot)
San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, left, appears with Sandra R. Hernandez, CEO of The San Francisco Foundation, during a news conference, Tuesday, June 20, 2006, in San Francisco. Newsom and other officials unveiled a plan to make San Francisco the first city in the nation to provide health care to all residents. The plan aimed at 85,000 San Franciscans who earn too much to qualify for federally subsidized health care would offer basic preventive care and treatment for catastrophic illnesses.“Rather than lamenting about the fact that we live in a country with 45.8 million Americans that don’t have health insurance … San Francisco is doing something about it,” Newsom said. “San Francisco is moving forward to fulfill its moral obligation.”
This is really awesome. What I would like to see is S.F. release the amount its public hospitals lose every year treating the uninsured – I bet it’ll be much, much more than the proposed $200 million a year this will be costing the city.
And as for the businesses complaining this will put them out of business; you know what? If you can’t afford to treat your employees humanely, and you can’t afford to contribute a whopping $1.60 an hour per employee to guarantee health care for everyone…you have a failed business model and shouldn’t be in business in the first place.
Parallel Position
I’ve just had what I’m sure is the first of many of this particular type of experience: not completely understanding an academic subject, but curious enough to engage, and put myself out enough to ask questions (clearly labelling myself as a novice looking to learn), and basically got shut down with a “no” and nothing else.
The most frustrating thing is that, from reading further comments, I do actually understand precisely what they’re saying, and what I was saying is not unrelated or wrong, it’s just not said right, if that makes sense. I don’t hold the language-fluency necessary to communicate my particular thoughts on the matter. I realize this is my CHID education biting me, and I realize this is going to come up again and again.
I just wonder, 3000 miles away from CHID, will I have the strength of will to continue putting myself out there and risk being wrong (and brusquely told so) in order to learn?
For what it is worth, I do realize that it’s normal to question your intelligence and ability to head off to grad school and do it, and that imposter syndrome is especially strong in women. I’m just dismayed to be feeling it already.
I have a feeling I’m going to be very quiet in Albany.
London surgeons expected to win approval from ethics experts to carry out face transplant operations on four patients
So apparently British surgeons have received permission from their ethics committees to carry out four face transplants in the near future. This is of course following on the heels of the French transplant done on patient Isabelle Dinoire, whose lower face was mostly missing after being attacked by a dog as she lay unconscious from a sleeping pill overdose. Needless to say, much of the debate on the transplant was whether or not she was an ideal candidate – in addition to her psychological state, there was the fact that she kept smoking after transplantation, which seriously compromises your immune system’s ability to heal, raising issues of tissue rejection.
Anyhow, it sounds like the British surgeons are looking at full face transplants, largely for people who’ve been seriously burned. Frankly, I think this is a long time coming. For the most part, facial structure varies from person to person, so the features aren’t going to be akin to the transplantee’s face – there will be no Face\Off issues going on. The new face will be at best a blend of the old and the new, but more importantly, it will be a healed face – not one covered in scar tissue and exposed muscle. It will allow someone to go out and live a life that doesn’t require masks, or being under constant, not terribly subtle scrutiny.
The thing I think we have to ask ourselves is why this hasn’t happened sooner.