I have decided to make a commitment to cover all three of the basic science Nobel Prizes this year. Next up is the Chemistry Prize! The prize announcement will begin not earlier than 05:45am Eastern Time (11:45am CEST) on Wednesday, October 9. I’ll be up with coffee in-hand to watch […]
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I have decided to make a commitment to cover all three of the basic science Nobel Prizes this year. Next up is the Physics Prize! The prize announcement will begin not earlier than 05:45am Eastern Time (11:45am CEST) on Tuesday, October 8. I’ll be up with coffee in-hand to watch […]
Live updates are at the bottom of this post. (Scroll down to see them) I have decided to make a commitment to cover all three of the basic science Nobel Prizes this year. I will confess: I know the limits of my knowledge and the prize for “Physiology or Medicine” […]
There has been too much happening this summer to stop and write about it. Instead, here are scenes and some short verses describing this summer so far. Needless to say, if there wasn’t even time to write… it was one heck of a ride.
There is a question that hangs on the lips of scientists in America right now. If science is under threat, what is the best way to act? There is no simple answer to this. Indeed, this is a deeply personal question for each scientist, one that can only be answered […]
President Trump’s candidate for Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, was approved today by the Senate committee that conducted her hearing. During her hearing, a question was asked of Mrs. DeVos by Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) about whether or not she would work to keep “junk science” (such as “Intelligent Design” […]
It’s been days since the confirmation hearings of Mr. Rex Tillerson for United States Secretary of State. I was not able to listen to his hearing, but his testimony has been available in recordings with some transcripts becoming available. The topic of most interest to me was potential U.S. climate […]
As a physicist, I am fascinated by trying to quantify the world – to find the numbers that can represent what is going on in nature. People are hard to quantify most of the time, but trying to do so can be informative. Organizations like PolitiFact [1] offer a set […]
I haven’t posted in a while. The current global Ebola panic, spread mostly by social media and the media and not so much by the actual global threat of Ebola, has spurred me from complacency. Specifically, a WHO ethics panel today unanimously authorized the use of unproven, untested, experimental Ebola […]
I am Stephen Sekula, an Assistant Professor of Physics at SMU conducting research on the ATLAS Experiment. These comments will be my own, and I will try to take a broad view. Let me begin by thanking the members of the Panel for this opportunity to speak, and let me […]
When I think back to my youth, I recognize a series of key moments that happened that led to my becoming a physicist. I often speak of one of those moments when I discuss physics with students or the general public. My father once recorded a documentary about physics entitled […]
Recently, a two new studies of multivitamins and their efficacy for purposes other than vitamin deficiency were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine [1][2]. One study looks at using multivitamins to improve outcomes after myocardial infarction, and finds no evidence of a benefit. The second study looks at measurable […]