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289 articles from FRIDAY 20.1.2012
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FRIDAY 20. JANUARY, 2012
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23:57
Project Bifrost: Rockets of the Future?
Guest contributor Tabitha Smith introduces Project Bifrost, the potential foundation for interstellar space exploration. -
23:55
My hero: Evariste Galois by Andrew Miller
'His collected work runs to only 60 pages but is brimful of ideas that mathematicians today still feed off profitably'
Galois was to mathematics what Arthur Rimbaud, a generation later, was to poetry. He was born in a small town south of Paris in 1811. His family were highly political, though it was a time in French history – between the revolutions of 1789 and 1830 – when to think at all was to be political. In 1829 – at the age of 18 – he published his first paper, a study of fractions. The same year, his father killed himself after a (political) row with the local priest. These were not calm people.
At 20, he joined the National Guard. The guard – a heavy-duty republican outfit – was disbanded and Galois, with several comrades, was arrested. All this might be thought enough to keep a young man busy, but Galois was saving the best of himself for his maths.
His work – now known as Galois Theory – is probably incomprehensible to anyone outside of the mathematics department of a university. My mathematician neighbour has tried on several evenings to explain it to me – I was graded D at O-level – and at a certain point during those evenings the theory appears before me like a beautiful, shimmering spacecraft but is gone entirely by the next morning. The general territory is algebra, more specifically, algebraic solutions to polynomial equations.
In fairness, it seems very few of his contemporaries knew exactly what he was talking about, though the sharpest realised that whatever it was, it mattered. His collected work runs to only 60 pages but is brimful of ideas that mathematicians today still feed off profitably.
On 30 May 1832, the day after being released from prison for the second time, Galois fought a duel. It is not certain what it was about. Politics, perhaps, or a woman. It's not even clear who it was against. What is known is that Galois received a ball in the abdomen and died at 10 o'clock the following morning. His last words were to his brother: "Don't cry any more, Alfred. I need all my courage to die at 20."
• Andrew Miller's Pure won the 2011 Costa novel award.
guardian.co.uk © 2012 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds
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23:49
Pictures: America's "Lost" National Parks
See U.S. national parks that are no more, including the second national park, a Trump pleasure palace, and more. -
23:30
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23:25
NIH Examines What Drove Its Grant Success Rate to a Record Low
Last week, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) announced that the success rate for... -
23:24
Fear gone viral
If you were paying attention to the flap over two recent flu experiments involving ferrets, you may have come away with the impression that scientists all but waved a red flag in front of terrorists and said, "Here's a perfect biological weapon - help yourselves." -
23:24If last week's Consumer Electronics Show is any indication, the next major computing device to enter consumers' homes will be a "smart" television - whether viewers like it or not.
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23:14
Belief in Evolution Boils Down to a Gut Feeling (LiveScience.com)
LiveScience.com - Gut feelings may trump good old-fashioned facts, and even religious beliefs, when it comes to accepting the theory of evolution, new research suggests. -
23:14
CBC Radio debuts new series on tech
CBC Radio debuts new series on tech: Recivilization, with guest host Don Tapscott, Sunday mornings at 11 AM
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23:09
AP - Reno hasn't seen a winter this dry in more than 120 years. So residents welcomed a forecast that a storm was due to blow across the Sierra Nevada this week.
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23:07
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22:44An upcoming online application will monitor weather, energy and small wind turbine performance.
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22:44
Green Blog: Administration Withdraws Interior Candidate
A nominee asks that she be withdrawn from consideration after Republicans object to comments she made about hydraulic fracturing, mountaintop removal coal mining and weak regulation of air and water quality.
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22:42
Blog - Samsung's Smart Window
Part-window, part-touchscreen. Cue the Minority Report references.
A “smart window” from Samsung took away the award for innovation at CES this year. What’s a smart window, and why do you need one right away?
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22:37Update of retracted study ties extreme longevity to nearly 300 gene variants
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22:30SPACE.com - The launch of the first privately built spacecraft to the International Space Station has been delayed until late March at the earliest, the company building the spaceship revealed today (Jan. 20).
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22:30SPACE.com - The U.S. military's "Phoenix" project aims to recycle spare parts from old satellites to create new Frankenstein spacecraft in orbit, but it needs faster telescope imaging to find satellites suitable for cannibalization. Now it has called for a swarm of mobile ground telescopes capable of spotting possible space targets from many angles.
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22:14Called a "photographer's liberation," Kodachrome produced clear, vivid color photographs that drastically changed National Geographic magazine. Kodak announced Monday it will cease production of the iconic medium.
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22:01Reuters - A judge in Southern California on Friday sentenced a former financial advisor to life in prison for strangling a wealthy biotech executive and attempting to steal $9 million from one of his investment accounts.
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21:49An upcoming online application will monitor weather, energy and small wind turbine performance.
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21:47The Costa Concordia from above, a rusty dead star, a "fresh" Mars crater, and a sinking moon are among the week's best space pictures.
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21:42In a statement posted today on the Web sites of Nature and Science, a...
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21:24Getting an autism diagnosis could be more difficult in 2013 when a revised diagnostic definition goes into effect. The proposed changes may affect the proportion of individuals who qualify for a diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder, according to preliminary data presented by Yale School of Medicine researchers at a meeting of the Icelandic Medical Association.
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21:24Radiation therapy is an important part of head and neck cancer therapy, but most head and neck tumors have a built-in mechanism that makes them resistant to radiation. As a result, oncologists have to deliver huge doses of X-rays to the patient, damaging surrounding tissues and producing significant side effects. To overcome this resistance, researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Buffalo and the University of Southern California (USC) have developed a nanoparticle formulation that interferes with the resistance mechanism, and as a result, increases the efficacy of radiation therapy in a mouse model of head and neck cancer.
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21:24College students need not feel guilty about spending hours each day on Facebook or other social networks. Turns out it might help them get a job.
Naposledy aktualizované zdroje
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TIME (dnes, 11:00)
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BBC Science/Nature (dnes, 10:01)
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EurekAlert (dnes, 06:00)
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ScienceDaily (dnes, 02:43)
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Sci-Tech Today (22. 2, 22:01)
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NASA (22. 2, 17:36)
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