# astro: virtual trips to strange new worlds ...

<< Are you looking for an exotic destination to visit this summer? Why not take a virtual trip to an Earth-size planet beyond our solar system with NASA's interactive Exoplanet Travel Bureau? >>

<< Kepler-186f is an Earth-size planet orbiting a small red star, which may or may not have an atmosphere >>

Tony Greicius. Take a Virtual Trip to a Strange New World with NASA. NASA-TV. May 24, 2018.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/take-a-virtual-trip-to-a-strange-new-world-with-nasa

NASA Marshall. May 27, 2018 05:00

https://twitter.com/NASA_Marshall/status/1000753521325731840

# phys: where a drum can vibrate and stand still at the same time ...

<< Mechanical vibrations, such as those that create the sound from a drum, are an important part of our everyday experience. Hitting a drum with a drumstick causes it to rapidly move up and down, producing the sound we hear. In the quantum world, a drum can vibrate and stand still at the same time >>

Hayley Dunning. Can a quantum drum vibrate and stand still at the same time? Imperial College London. May 18, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-05-quantum-vibrate.html

<< to control  the motion of  macroscopic mechanical resonators (..) to explore and exploit quantum phenomena at a macroscopic scale >>

Ringbauer M, Weinhold TJ, et al. Generation of mechanical interference fringes by multi-photon counting. New Journal of Physics. 2018; 20. May 18, 2018.

http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1367-2630/aabb8d/meta

FonT

ecco una sfida per un percussionista  indiano ...(Dha, Dhin, Ta, Tin, Ti, ...)

# acad: the matthew effect vs perpetual novelties

<< Why do scientists with similar backgrounds and abilities often end up achieving very different degrees of success? A classic explanation is that academic achievement exhibits a “Matthew effect”: Early successes increase future success chances.>>

AA << results show that winners just above the funding threshold accumulate more than twice as much funding during the subsequent eight years as nonwinners with near-identical review scores that fall just below the threshold. >>

Thijs Bol, Mathijs de Vaan, and Arnout van de Rijt. The Matthew effect in science funding. PNAS May 8, 2018. 115 (19) 4887-90. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1719557115.

http://www.pnas.org/content/115/19/4887

Sam Zuckerman. How success breeds success in the sciences. University of California, Berkeley. Apr 27, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-04-success-sciences.html

FonT

the "Matthew effect" esteso nel qualsivoglia contesto (vale a dire: rendita di posizione stabile, carriera professionale certa, esercizio del potere di cooptazione, accesso privilegiato a risorse pubbliche e private) vs (ipotetiche entita' AI.qu.cpu autonome, costo base 10-100 usd, emivita 10y) ... come si auto giustifichera' lo status di una futura classe dirigente? Sara' sufficiente il conforto, l'appoggio sottotraccia della "famiglia",  la disponibilita' alla sottomissione/ compromesso "a prescindere", l'eventuali abilita' di chiacchera e visibilita' sui media per stabilizzarne il potere?

# zoo: the first look at Oyster's transitional adhesive dynamics

AA << still do not have a clear picture of how these animals attach to surfaces. Efforts described herein provide the first examination of adhesion at the transition from free swimming larvae to initial substrate attachment, through metamorphosis, and on to adulthood. Two different bonding systems were found to coexist >>

Andres M. Tibabuzo Perdomo, Erik M. Alberts, et al.  Changes in Cementation of Reef Building Oysters Transitioning from Larvae to Adults. ACS Appl. Mater. Interfaces. 2018; 10 (17): 14248-53 doi: 10.1021/acsami.8b01305. Apr 13, 2018.

https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsami.8b01305

Kayla Zacharias. Oysters: one animal, two glues. Purdue University. May 7, 2018.

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-05-oysters-animal.html

# gst: the intricate dynamics of a splashing droplet

<< at all times, the rim thickness is governed by a local instantaneous Bond number equal to unity, defined with the instantaneous, local, unsteady rim acceleration. This criterion is found to be robust and universal for a family of unsteady inviscid fluid sheet fragmentation phenomena, from impacts of drops on various surface geometries to impacts on films >>

Wang Y, Dandekar R, et al. Universal Rim Thickness in Unsteady Sheet Fragmentation. Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 204503. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.204503. May 16, 2018.

https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.204503

<< Because all these features change constantly over a short period of time, extracting high-accuracy, unbiased measurements in the data is quite tricky (..) Classical algorithms are unable to capture all of these details >> Lydia Bourouiba.

<< In contrast, her team’s algorithms can automatically discern a splashing droplet’s rim and distinguish it from the smaller droplets that spray out from the rim, and the ligaments that form around the rim >>

Jennifer Chu. New theory describes intricacies of a splashing droplet. MIT. May 17, 2018.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/new-theory-describes-intricacies-splashing-droplet-0516

https://m.phys.org/news/2018-05-theory-intricacies-splashing-droplet.html 

# lang: we pronounce words more slowly compared with verbs and sometimes pause

AA << study naturalistic speech from linguistically and culturally diverse populations from around the world >>

AA <<  show a robust tendency for slower speech before nouns as compared with verbs >>

Frank Seifart, Jan Strunk, et al.  Nouns slow down speech across structurally and culturally diverse languages. PNAS. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1800708115. May 14, 2018.

http://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/early/2018/05/09/1800708115/F1.large.jpg

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/2018/05/09/1800708115

<< English is peculiar (..) It can never be representative of human language in general >> Frank Seifart

<< In the years to come, as society grows more complex, the number of nouns available to us may grow exponentially. The diversity of its speakers, not so much >>

Alan Burdick. Why Nouns Slow Us Down, and Why Linguistics Might Be in a Bubble.  May 15, 2018.

https://www.newyorker.com/elements/lab-notes/why-nouns-slow-us-down-and-why-linguistics-might-be-in-a-bubble

# astro: crazy chaotic encounters (and megamerger)

<< Binary black holes are basically like giant targets hanging out in the cluster, and as you throw other black holes or stars at them, they undergo these crazy chaotic encounters >>

<< What people had done in the past was to treat this as a purely Newtonian problem, (..)  Newton’s theory of gravity works in 99.9 percent of all cases. The few cases in which it doesn’t work might be when you have two black holes whizzing by each other very closely, which normally doesn’t happen in most galaxies >> Carl Rodriguez

Jennifer Chu. Dense stellar clusters may foster black hole megamergers. MIT News Office. Apr 10, 2018.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/dense-stellar-clusters-may-foster-black-hole-megamergers-0410

Carl L. Rodriguez, Pau Amaro-Seoane, et al. Post-Newtonian Dynamics in Dense Star Clusters: Highly-Eccentric, Highly-Spinning, and Repeated Binary Black Hole Mergers.

Phys. Rev. Lett. 120, 151101 (2018). doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.120.151101.

arXiv:1712.04937 [astro-ph.HE]. Mar 14, 2018

https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.04937