IE7 Beta 2

I downloaded and installed IE7 Beta 2. I have to use IE to use the remote access tools for my job. It is the only time that I use IE. I use Firefox for everything else. I decided to see how remote access would work with IE7 and test out some of the new features.

IE7 looks good. It has a very nice large default font. I compared digg.com and slashdot.com in IE7 and Firefox. Neither site sets an absolute font size. IE7 looked a bit nicer. This blog has absolute font sizes and it looks identical in both browsers.

IE7 does not have traditional windows menus. There is no bar just below the titlebar with menus like file, edit, view…There are some toolbar icons to the right of the tab titles. These include home, rss, print, page, and tools.

IE7 has tabs, but they do not seem to be fully debugged yet. When I right click a link and select open in a new tab, I get the page in a new window. When I use Ctrl-T or the menu entry I do get a new tab, but it is blank.

IE7 now supports RSS feeds. If you are one a page that has a feed, then the RSS icon will be in color. Clicking on it brings up a preview and you can then subscribe. Feeds with new entries are bold in the feed list. Clinking on it brings up a full text of the entry if available through the feed. It look somewhat like bloglines.com.

I will not be switching from Firefox based on this version.

Update: It looks like it is not afont effect. It is more like IE blows up everything on the page. The icons look bigger also. The Slashdot logo looks crisp in Firefox while it looks larger but a little blurred in IE7.  

Psychoquark

I was telling a friend about a posting on the blog, and I told him to look at cyclequark.wordpress.com. He thought I said psychoquark. What a great name for a blog. I should have thought of that. It would be too much work to move my stuff to psychoquark so I will leave it to some other to give the world a blog called psychoquark.

Technorati Tags: blogging

Now Glamour Magazine Is Criticizing Bush Adminstration’s Science Policy

I must start with a caveat. I found this link to a story on glamour.com at reddit.com. I mentioned reddit.com once before. It is a social newsite where members submit stories that they have found on the internet and other members can vote to have them featured on the reddit.com home page. I find that it has some very eclectic choices. I have never read Glamour before. I am a nerd dammit.

Now a second caveat, I generally avoid politics on this blog since there are so many others who blog about it and many do it quite well. Many do it very badly and I do not want to join them. Politics and science sometimes cross and I cannot avoid a comment, so when I saw this story I had to mention it.

There have been many criticisms of the Bush adminstration's science policies. The claims are that decisions are not made on sound science but interest groups politics, ranging from the religious right to the oil industry. Global warming, intelligent design, emergency contraception are all areas of contention.

Into this fray jumps Glamour Magazine with an article on how doctors have started to distrust information that they get from the government.

Glamour has also discovered that blatantly false anticondom information has been incorporated into several federal and state health websites. One, an official Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) site designed for families seeking health information for teens, 4parents.gov, suggests that there is no evidence that condom use reduces the risk of HPV infection and downplays its effectiveness against chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis.

When Glamour criticizes your science you have a serious problem.

Technorati Tags: Science, health

NY Times Covers EPP2010 Report

In today’s Times there is a article on the EPP2010 Report.

“That is a risky investment,” Harold T. Shapiro, an economist at Princeton and chairman of the 22-member commission, said yesterday at a news conference in Washington.

But, Mr. Shapiro added: “It’s least risky path we could find. To stay where we are is equivalent to folding our cards.”

I am expecting this report to get a lot of discussion.

Technorati Tags: Science, physics

EPP2010 Report Released

The National Academies has released their report in the future of elementary particle physics. I listened to a live streaming broadcast of the press conference. The panel made three prioritized recommendations.

1. Support U.S. physicists on the Large Hadron Collider.
2. Do the R&D needed to make a the US competitive in the science and technology needed for the the International Linear Collider.
3. Expand the program of particle astrophysics and pursue an internationally coordinated, staged neutrino program

The panel consisted of about half elementary particle physicists and half are distinguished scientists from outside physics and accomplished experts from outside of science entirely. The panel argued that the U.S. should pursue global leadership in particle physics; that leadership cannot be achieved without risk, but that their recommendations give the highest risk-adjusted return.

"For more than half a century, the United States has been a leader in particle physics, but its flagship facilities are now being surpassed by new ones in other countries," said committee chair Harold T. Shapiro, president emeritus and professor of economics and public affairs, Princeton University, Princeton, N.J. "Today the U.S. program is at a crossroads. At just the moment when the scientific opportunities are the most exciting, we have no compelling strategic vision for the next stage of our efforts. Our leadership in particle physics either can be sacrificed, or it can be maintained by making a strong commitment to some key new experimental facilities here and thoughtful participation in current and future global efforts."

Technorati Tags: Science, physics

Adding Light to the Heat of Global Warming

The New York Times tried to add some light to all of the heat about global warming in Sunday's Week in Review. Their review of the science seems reasonable. The earth is warming due to greenhouse gases and will continue to so. Predictions of detailed consequences are not as certain. Sea levels will rise, but when will New York look like New Orleans we just do not yet know.  

I think they made a very important point, if we could make absolutely accurate predictions about what global warming's effect would be in 50 years, we still might not be able to move government nor people to act to stop it. The timescale is simply no long. 

Without a connection to current disasters, global warming is the kind of problem people, and democratic institutions, have proved singularly terrible at solving: a long-term threat that can only be limited by acting promptly, before the harm is clear.

Technorati Tags: Science

Busy Bicycling

Bicycling season has started in earnest and kept me to too busy to much blogging. Once the weather gets good, I can be out on the road for 10-15 hours a week. Sometimes I think deep thoughts while I am on the bike, which I can write up when I get back, but mostly I just get too tired to blog. 

Also some of my blogging energy gets sucked up into blogging about cycling. 

Technorati Tags: blogging, bicycling

It’s Particle Accelerator Day

Well at least in Illinois.

In recognition of the labs’ role as world leaders in accelerator technology, Governor Rod R. Blagojevich issued a proclamation declaring the day as “Particle Accelerator Day” in Illinois, which was read by IDCEO Director Lavin during the signing ceremony at the James R. Thompson Center in Chicago.

Argonne National Lab and Fermi National Accelerator Lab are both in the western suburbs of Chicago. They are taming up to work on accelerator technology, since each is hoping to get a large new accelerator. Argonne would like to build the Rare Isotope Accelerator. Fermilab would like to host the International Linear Collider. Both would rely on superconducting radiofrequency cavities to accelerate the beam, so they are hoping to do joint research that will benefit both.

Technorati Tags: Science, physics

The Authority on a Year of Gmail Use

I checked my blog stats today and saw that they were relatively high for me. The most viewed post was A Year of Gmail with 10 views. The next highest had 3. I am not sure where the traffic is coming from. The post is from March so it is not in my feeds or on my front page. WordPress tells you what search terms were used to find your blog and none were gmail related. I searched "Year of Gmail" on Google and my post was listed first. Wow. However, I did not find anyone linking to the post.

Technorati Tags: gmail, blogging

Will Immigrints Keep Doing Our Science

I commented on Philip Greenspun article about women in science twice already. It seems to be a very rich topic for discussion. A new point struck me today. Greenspun argued that immigrints are the ideal candidates for the intellectually demanding but insecure and not well paid jobs that our current scientific research organization provides.

Imagine that you are a smart, but impoverished, young person in China. Your high IQ and hard work got you into one of the best undergraduate programs in China. The $1800 per month graduate stipend at University of Nebraska or University of Wisconsin will afford you a much higher standard of living than any job you could hope for in China. The desperate need for graduate student labor and lack of Americans who are interested in PhD programs in science and engineering means that you'll have no trouble getting a visa. When you finish your degree, a small amount of paperwork will suffice to ensure your continued place in the legal American work force. Science may be one of the lowest paid fields for high IQ people in the U.S., but it pays a lot better than most jobs in China or India.

Well today the Washington Post reports that applications from outside the US to US graduate schools are going down.

International applications are still down 23 percent from 2003, she said, at a time when foreign students receive most of the degrees in several fields. Twenty-five years ago, U.S. students made up about 78 percent of students receiving science and engineering graduate degrees. Today, it is about half. And foreign students who do come to study at U.S. universities no longer remain: Twenty-five years ago, 70 to 80 percent of foreign students stayed in the United States after receiving their graduate degrees, but now only 50 percent do.

I think Greenspun's analysis of the state of scientific workforce is quite accurate, but his relatively blase attitude about it is not acceptable.

Technorati Tags: Science