Science

A look at the role of science in society, and our beliefs.

Hexadecimal

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I wish schools would teach math in hexadecimal and floating point numbers, rather than the cryptic base 10 math they commonly use that requires hours of painful learning non-sensible multiplication tables.

Hexadecimal math is so easy. You really have to memorize how to convert 16 hexadecimal digits into binary, then all binary math is super simple – every answer is just 0 or 1, carrying your digit to the next digit if necessary.

But then again, I am a proponent of adapting the KODAK calendar and Celsius, which are far simpler and more rational ways of tracking time and temperature.

ISS astronauts are building objects not possible on Earth | Popular Science

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ISS astronauts are building objects not possible on Earth | Popular Science

The MIT group’s process involves taking a flexible silicone skin, shaped like the part it will eventually create, and filling it with a liquid resin. “You can think of them as balloons,” says Martin Nisser, an engineer at MIT, and another of the researchers behind the project. “Instead of injecting them with air, inject them with resin.” Both the skin and the resin are commercially available, off-the-shelf products.

The resin is sensitive to ultraviolet light. When the balloons experience an ultraviolet flash, the light percolates through the skin and washes over the resin. It cures and stiffens, hardening into a solid structure. Once it’s cured, astronauts can cut away the skin and reveal the part inside.

All of this happens inside the box that launched on November 23 and is scheduled to spend 45 days aboard the ISS. If everything is successful, the ISS will ship some experimental parts back to Earth for the MIT researchers to test. The MIT researchers have to ensure that the parts they’ve made are structurally sound. After that, more tests. “The second step would be, probably, to repeat the experiment inside the International Space Station,” says Ekblaw, “and maybe to try slightly more complicated shapes, or a tuning of a resin formulation.” After that, they’d want to try making parts outside, in the vacuum of space itself.?

This should be the absolute peak of hurricane season—but it’s dead quiet out there | Ars Technica

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This should be the absolute peak of hurricane season—but it’s dead quiet out there | Ars Technica

To state the obvious: This has been an unorthodox Atlantic hurricane season.

Everyone from the US agency devoted to studying weather, oceans, and the atmosphere—the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration—to the most highly regarded hurricane professionals predicted a season with above-normal to well above-normal activity.

For example, NOAA’s outlook for the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season, which runs from June 1 to November 30, predicted a 65 percent chance of an above-normal season, a 25 percent chance of a near-normal season, and a 10 percent chance of a below-normal season. The primary factor behind these predictions was an expectation that La Ni?a would persist in the Pacific Ocean, leading to atmospheric conditions in the tropical Atlantic more favorable to storm formation and intensification. La Ni?a has persisted, but the storms still have not come in bunches.

Statistics is a lot easier with computers 🔢

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Statistics is a lot easier with computers 🔢

I’ve been lately refreshing myself on statistical analysis by reading. While it’s good to have a modest understanding of statistical formulas, these days the important thing to know is which functions you need to call. All those scary looking square roots, normal distribution and t-tables need not scare you when modern computers can calculate all of those things in a blink of the eye.

The Science of Biological Sex | Science-Based Medicine

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The Science of Biological Sex | Science-Based Medicine

The debate over how best to approach people who identify as transgender or non-binary is many-layered and can be complex. Medical questions about the evidence for the safety and efficacy of specific interventions, and the ethics of treating minors, deserve thoughtful and open discussion. The optimal way to incorporate transgender athletes into competition also could benefit from a good faith debate. Unfortunately, discussion around transgender issues suffers from at least two sources.

First, it has been coopted as part of a politically-motivated culture war. This reality is exactly the opposite of thoughtful good-faith discussion. Second, for most people wrapping their head around a reality that may not conform to traditional notions of strictly binary sex and gender takes a lot or processing. Misconceptions about the basic science are rampant, and are, in fact, encouraged by the culture warriors.

Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer – Priceonomics

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Why the Father of Modern Statistics Didn’t Believe Smoking Caused Cancer – Priceonomics

In the summer of 1957, Ronald Fisher, one of the fathers of modern statistics, sat down to write a strongly worded letter in defense of tobacco.

The letter was addressed to the British Medical Journal, which, just a few weeks earlier, had taken the editorial position that smoking cigarettes causes lung cancer. According to the journal’s editorial board, the time for amassing evidence and analyzing data was over. Now, they wrote, “all the modern devices of publicity” should be used to inform the public about the perils of tobacco.

According to Fisher, this was nothing short of statistically illiterate fear mongering. Surely the danger posed to the smoking masses was “not the mild and soothing weed,” he wrote, “but the organized creation of states of frantic alarm.”

Fisher was a well-known hothead (and an inveterate pipe smoker), but the letter and the resulting debate, which lasted until his death in 1962, was taken as a serious critique by the scientific community. After all, Ronald A. Fisher had spent much of his career devising ways to mathematically evaluate causal claims—claims exactly like the one that the British Medical Journal was making about smoking and cancer. Along the way, he had revolutionized the way that biological scientists conduct experiments and analyze data.

And yet we know how this debate ends. On one of the most significant public health questions of the 20th century, Fisher got it wrong.