text:
It's never a good sign when a health inspector is denied access to a McDonald's kitchen and is only allowed to enter after threatening to file an administrative complaint. It's even worse when the inspector discovers a host of problems, most notably 25 to 30 dead roaches and five more live ones. WTSP News in Tampa, Florida investigated this McDonald's after a customer filed a complaint in May saying that a live roach fell from the ceiling and into their chicken nuggets. As it turned out, that roach was one among many.
The health inspector was eventually allowed access back in May, but when WTSP visited the McDonald's a few weeks later, the camera crew was not allowed to film the kitchen. They did find "numerous flying insects" around the restaurant, as well as food on the floor. However, WTSP notes that they visited just after the lunch rush, making those findings less unexpected.
McDonald's issued a statement explaining that the company cares deeply about cleanliness and safety, and that the inspector's blocked visit "was the result of confusion between the inspector and McDonald's protocol."
Here's are some of the critical violations the inspector observed (full list of violations here):
- Grease accumulating under the cooking equipment
- Food and standing water on the floor
- Toxic item near the utensils
- 25-30 dead roaches under the front service counter
- 5 live roaches near the kitchen sink
- Ceiling soiled with accumulated food debris
[Via Eater]
Also on HuffPost:
Mealbreakers: The Worst Things Found In Food
Parasite In Whole Fish
In April 2013, a supermarket shopper discovered a tongue-eating louse inside a whole fish.
Snake In Bread
In April 2013, a Redditor discovered a snake baked in bread.
Mold In Minute Maid
In March 2103, a Redditor discovered gross mold in a Minute Maid can.
'Wrinkled Brain' In KFC Chicken
In January 2013, a student discovered a fried kidney that looked like a brain in KFC chicken.
Black Widow Spider In Whole Foods Grapes
A Connecticut woman, Nora Weiss, received a shock in December when she found a live black widow spider tucked amongst the organic grapes she'd recently purchased from Whole Foods. A representative for the grocery chain stressed that the "safety of our shoppers is incredibly important." Weiss received a full refund.
Nose Ring In McDonald's Breakfast Burrito
In November, Frances Rosario found a nose ring in her daughter's breakfast burrito at an Atlanta area McDonald's. Rosario said she was rudely rebuffed by the McDonald's staff and received no response from McDonald's corporate office.
Plastic Fragments In Chicken Enchiladas
In November, nearly 11,400 pounds of frozen chicken enchiladas were recalled by Food Source, L.P. because they might have contained plastic fragments. The products, 57-oz. boxes of "Bremer Party Size White Meat Chicken Enchiladas," were shipped to stores in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Live Frog In Walmart Greens
Before Dwanita Pitman of Minneola, Fla. could open her bag of Marketside greens that she purchased at a Walmart on Thursday, Oct. 18, she noticed a live frog camped out inside.
Dead Frog In Spinach Greens
Londoner Sarah Moss was disturbed to find a dead frog in her bag of spinach greens that she'd purchased from grocery chain Tesco. Tesco at first refused to compensate Moss, but ended up forking over a £10 gift voucher.
Moth Larvae In Clif Bar
Redditor DonutPlains got a shock when he unwrapped a Clif Bar to find it covered with moth larvae. A company representative refuted the notion that the bugs got into the packaging at the factory, suggesting instead that they entered in transit or in the poster's pantry. Still, the Clif Bars rep offered to send along some replacement bars.
Finger In Arby's Sandwich
A Michigan teenager found a human finger in his Arby's sandwich in May of this year. It belonged to a worker who sliced the appendage at the restaurant's meat slicer.
Raw Chicken Sandwich At KFC
An image posted to Reddit in September showed what could be the worst KFC ever: an raw chicken sandwich. Worse yet, a bite was missing. The incident allegedly took place in Ontario, Canada.
Syringe In Campbell's Soup
Caveat: this one was definitely fake. A man was caught trying to extort money from Campbell's by planting a syringe in his can of soup in Australia in October 2012.
Worms In KFC Sandwich
A family found live worms in a KFC fried chicken sandwich at an outpost outside Kerala, in southern India, in early October 2012 -- prompting a huge investigations of the KFCs throughout the region.
Plastic Shards In McDonald's Cookie
An Oklahoma woman cut her tongue on sharp shards of plastic she found in a McDonald's cookie in September 2012.
KFC Workers Served Expired Chicken
In September, workers at a Conroe, Texas KFC location allegedly served spoiled chicken that was 16 days old -- six days later than the KFC policy allows.
Rusty Razor Blade Found In Jolly Ranchers Bag
California mother Amy Hu was horrified to find an old, rusty razor blade in a bag of Jolly Ranchers.
Lizard Found Baked Into Bread
In July, 10-year-old William Evans from Hawkchurch, England, found what he claims was a lizard baked into a loaf of bread.
Spider In Chef Boyardee Ravioli
In June of 2012, Florida resident Victoria Harrah claims she got quite a shock recently when a piece of beef ravioli from a can of Chef Boyardee contained an unwelcome additive: a large spider.
Used Band-Aid In Chinese Food
In June of 2012, a New York man found this used Band-Aid in his delivery order from a local Chinese restaurant.
Cockroach In McD Hash Brown
In May 2012, Reddit user LinkBoyJT posted an image Wednesday that might make your skin crawl. After ordering a McDonald's hash brown and eating most of it, he says he was startled to find what he claims was a deep-fried insect stuck to the bottom half.
Chewed Up Pen Found In Ground Beef
In April 2012, a worker discovered a pen in a meat grinder after some of the meat was likely already for sale.
Woman Finds Razor Blade In McDonald's Breakfast
In April 2012, an Illinois woman ordered eggs from McDonald's and apparently discovered a razor blade beneath them. The managers explained to police that razors are used to "clean tight corners"... whatever that means.
Maggot In Wendy's Fries Alleged
In March 2012, a woman claimed she found a live maggot in her fries. According to Wendy's, the local health department determined that a Noctuid Moth larva, found only in outdoor habitats, was provided to them by the woman as the "maggot." The health department found no evidence of any health violations in follow-up inspections of the Wendy's facility after the woman's claim. Photo from Flickr: theimpulsivebuy
McFeather In McNugget
In March 2012, a woman claims she found a McFeather in her McNugget.
Animal Toe In Spinach Artichoke Dip
Andrew Brodsky, 35, found an unidentified animal toe in his container of Sabra Spinach & Artichoke dip.
Coil In Fried Chicken
In January 2012, fifty-year-old bus driver Lajzer Grynsztajn claims he nearly choked to death on such a coil after ordering two chicken breasts and fries from JFK Fried Chicken in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. Photo by Flickr user: Andrea_Nguyen
Mouse In Big Mac Buns
In January 2011, a mouse got trapped in a bag of Big Mac buns at a Philadelphia McDonald's.
Whopper Spit Case
A deputy sheriff alleges that someone spit in his Whopper...and the case has made it to the Supreme Court as of January 2012.
Semen In Yogurt
A grocery store worker pleaded guilty to handing out a semen-tainted yogurt sample at an Albuquerque market.
Fingertip In Applebee's Salad
Louisiana woman Mary Deal Chambers-Johnson sued Applebee's for damages after she claimed a fingertip in her lunch salad gave her post-traumatic stress disorder.
Fly In Yogurt
A Chinese woman found a fly in her yogurt in July 2011. When she asked for compensation, the manufacturer asked her to prove that the fly had died before she opened the container -- by getting the insect autopsied. (Flies can not be autopsied.)
Bloody Bandaid In Pizza Hut Pizza
An upstate New York man found a bloody bandaid in baked into the crust of his Pizza Hut pizza in June of 2011. He sued after the company failed to address his concerns.
Disemboweled Mouse In Packaged Salad
A couple found a disembowled mouse in their Dole packaged salad mix in June 2011. They'd already started eating the salad by the time they found the mealbreaker; they promptly vomited.
Human Blood On BLT & Fries
Cancer survivor Susan Mosher was outraged after she found human blood on her BLT and fries at a Cracker Barrel in Kingwood, TX, in late June of 2011.
Caterpillar In Weight Watchers Cake
A dieting woman found a live caterpillar crawling on a Weight Watchers-brand slice of packaged cake in June 2011. She called it gross enough to put her off of cake forever.
Razor Blade in Wal-Mart Ice Cream
An East Texas woman found a razor blade in a carton of Walmart ice cream in February 2011. Considering the danger, she was surprisingly understanding. She told CBS, "I think it's just one of those random accidents that happen. When you make that much of a product and that many products, you're bound to have a machine break."
Green Pill In Trail Mix
A Salt Lake City teen was hospitalized after biting into a mysterious green pill in a bag of trail mix she'd bought at Whole Foods in January 2011. The teen felt numbness and pain throughout her throat. Whole Foods recalled the product from stores around Utah.
Condom In French Onion Soup
A California man claimed to find a condom in his French onion soup at a Claim Jumper restaurant, also in July 2009. The restaurant's PR firm said that they found no evidence of wrongdoing after conducting an investigation of the matter.
Used Tampon In Steak
In July 2009, a German tourist claimed to find a used tampon in his steak at the Waldorf-Astoria in New York.
Dead Mouse In Bread
In 2009, a man from Bath, UK found a dead mouse in a loaf of bread.
Paperclips In Muffins
At the height of the Beijing Olympics, reporters pounced on the Chinese food industry after athletes found paperclips in muffins served them at an official function. The story's most surprising revelation may just be that Olympic athletes eat muffins.
Live Bullet In Hot Dog
No one said hot dogs promote longevity, but it's not like eating a frankfurter is as dangerous as someone sticking a gun in your face--unless your name is Olivia Chaines and you're eating it Costco. The then-31-year-old had swallowed a piece of a Hebrew National brand hotdog in the shopping aisle of a Costco in May 2004 before she realized that it contained a piece of metal. X-rays revealed that the hot dog had contained a live bullet.
Semen In Spicy Tuna Sushi Sauce
A New York woman sued a sushi bar after she tasted semen in the sauce atop her spicy tuna in June 2008; she says she still has samples frozen in her refrigerator.
Rodent Tooth In Planter's Peanuts
In 2006, a 52-year-old man from Illinois sued Kraft Foods for $55,000 to compensate for the physical and emotional distress he suffered after allegedly biting into a "non-human animal tooth" in a container of Planter's Peanuts.
Gold Tooth In Mars Bar
Finding a golden ticket in your candy bar is great. But a gold tooth? Not so much. That's what happened to a 62-year-old British man in September of 2007. He contacted Mars to try and receive compensation, but got no substantive response.
Human Skin In Chicken Sandwich
Kitchen accidents happen. Knives are sharp; sometimes a cook will slice off a piece of skin the course of an evening. It's understandable. Not understandable? Failing to clean up the product of an accident. That, apparently, is what happened at an Ohio Arby's in June 2007, when a man found a piece of human skin sitting on the lettuce in his chicken sandwich. The man sued, refusing a settlement that Arby's initially offered him.
Mouse In Popeye's Fried Chicken
A Baltimore man was eating fried chicken from Popeye's in September of 2003 when he discovered that the fast food store had inadvertently fried a mouse along with the chicken parts.
Syringe In Burger King Burger
In June of 2001, 22-year-old Angelina Cruz bit into a burger from Burger King--and got pricked in the tongue by a syringe. Citing HIV fears, she sued the chain for $9 million.


text:
Prison Purchase
Montana county mulls buying vacant prison
HARDIN, Mont. (AP) -- A Montana county is considering buying a prison vacant
since it was built in 2007 for $7 million, a quarter its construction price five years
The only thing is, the Billings Gazette reports the prison's owner doesn't know
much about the proposed deal.
Big Horn County Commission Chairman Chad Fenner has been floating an
informal proposal to have his county buy the long-vacant detention facility in
But Jeffrey McDowell, director of prison-owner Two Rivers Authority, had this
to say: He had no direct information regarding discussions between the county
and bondholders who financed the project.
In addition, other Big Horn County commissioners are more skeptical about the
For instance, County Commissioner John Pretty On Top says the county needs
a jail, but not a 460-bed prison.
Information from: Billings Gazette

subset: commoncrawl


text: One of the perks of my new room is the nice view of this lovely tree. However, what you're seeing is not a romantic haze. It's a very dirty window. Success Academy, still plowing through construction of the basement, issued several permits for our hardworking custodial staff to work 24 hours, an extremely difficult rope to pull. Of course, once Success' need for the extra staff was fulfilled, the permits all ran out and could not be renewed for custodial to do the necessary repairs and deep cleaning on the upper three floors, leaving them time for only the most routine maintenance in the rest of the building. And as for teachers, well we've been allotted five paid hours for unpacking and cleaning our new rooms.


text:
AscenDance Radio is "taking dance radio to a higher level". The online radio station is based out of South Florida and plays a variety of dance music genres. They recently sat down with Lifeline's Vocalist Amba Shepherd. You can check out the full interview here, where she discusses her up-coming projects, collaborations with Ferry Corsten and Porter Robinson, and how she linked up with Irish producer Kevin Doherty for Lifeline.
All posts tagged AscenDance Radio interview
Watch The AscenDance Radio Interview With Lifeline's Vocalist Amba Shepherd
By radikal | May 1, 2012 | News | No comments
Featured Video
Bombs Away – Super SoakerDecember 20, 2011 | 18 Comments
Schiller – Try RemixesNovember 8, 2011 | 17 Comments
Kevin Doherty – LifelineApril 10, 2012 | 16 Comments
DJs From Mars Feat. Fragma – Insane (In Da Brain)December 6, 2011 | 14 Comments
Jochen Simms & Luciana – Wicked WorkoutMay 7, 2012 | 10 Comments
Bimbo Jones & Beverley Knight #1 On The DJ Times Chart!August 1, 2014 | No comments
Ayah Marar Featured On StereoTudes' First Slice!July 30, 2014 | No comments
The Bello Boys feat Kat DeLuna "Last Call" #18 On The Billboard Dance/Club Chart!July 29, 2014 | No comments
I.O.U. Opens For Cris Cab At Webster HallJuly 24, 2014 | No comments
Lee Dagger ft Inaya Day's "Shelter Me" NotableDance.com's Song Of The DayJuly 15, 2014 | No comments
Thoughts: Hey there! I've been reading your web site for a while now and finally...
Roy: I really dig the track by I.O.U. The first drop into the siren loop is...
I Just Listen: THIS IS GOOD!...
Stuart Edmondson/Xcorps TV: Xcorps rolls with Ayah Marar! Thanks for being on our Action Sports an...
Ron Slomowicz - Notable Dance: Thanks for the link back!...
"Big Booty Bitches" "bombs away" afrojack Antonia artists australia ayah Marar beg borrow steal breathless calvin harris Club Dance dj kronic djs from mars dubstep dyro edm electro Electronic featured fragma Frank Lamboy House insane (in da brain) kevin doherty lifeline loving you Morena music Nadia Ali phat ass drop Radikal records remix Rocket Pimp schiller skrillex super soaker Swagger the real thinking about you Thomas Gold throwback thursday Tom Boxer trance Try


text:
Heather Graham wore this fugly dress to the Irish premiere of "The Hangover." But she must have been suffering from a hangover headache when she agreed to wear this thing on the red carpet. It reminds me of those cheap Leg Avenue nylon "dresses" you can buy in fetish stores. [Dublin, 6/9/09] Keep reading »
Zergnet: Simply Irresistible
- Popular
We're Loving


text:
As all the major carriers in Canada get set to release the BlackBerry Torch on September 24th, Best Buy is wasting no time in letting customers know they can be among the first to put the device in their hands. The pre ordering page has now gone up on the website, although you do still need to visit a Best Buy Mobile location to process the preorder. Oh ya, bring $50 with you as well as that's the preorder cost.
Source: MobileSyrup
BooFA1010 Sep 3, 2010 at 7:42 pm
demeanor76 Sep 3, 2010 at 11:46 pm
Just today I met my sister and I noticed her new Torch. We don't really talk lately cuz we're busy people. I thought she just bought it today but she said she bought it more than two weeks ago. I was stunned cuz we're living in Jakarta, Indonesia. She bought it at the regular cellphone shop. I was wondering, who the hell brought those phones while some operators in US and Canada still doing pre order for Torch.
tellmebb Sep 4, 2010 at 6:54 pm
:) This is exciting! I guess I'm going to have to go in store and find out whether I am still able to get the phone at no-contract pricing.
Wiredin Sep 4, 2010 at 6:56 pm
pretty funny. Edmonton South had no idea about this. I'm the first one! :)
Actually Edmonton in general has very little education on their sales teams. Four out of five Rogers stores I called said the Torch isn't even coming to Canada and that there must be a mistake on the website. The fifth said they know its announced for the 24, but their rep said it would be postponed till next year and that I should just get an iphone cus its better anyways.
Oh well, at least I got the best buy staff excited about it.
thymaster Sep 5, 2010 at 3:10 am
Sounds like a "fanboy" lied to you.
sk8er_tor Sep 5, 2010 at 1:50 pm
I love how the staff assumed that the web site is wrong. How about you fools are wrong!
As a side note, I don't know how much I believe this story.
wilsonryanp Sep 5, 2010 at 6:57 pm
Future Shop also started taking pre-orders for the Torch. Instead of a $50 charge, you buy a car charger, then when you go down and pick up the phone, they refund the money for the charger ($29.99) and package it in for the price of the phone. Strange way of doing it, but hey, free car charger I guess!!
Lorenn_x Sep 6, 2010 at 4:21 am
This is great! I hope they do the same for the 9780!


text:
says incumbent isn't representing Massachusetts' values.
Warren, a Democrat and current Newton mayor, said in Sharon on Sunday that Brown, a Republican from Wrentham, has "voted 87 percent of the time lock step with his national Republican leadership."
"Unfortunately, over the course of the last 18 months, the junior senator from Massachusetts, Scott Brown, has made the wrong decisions," Warren told 13 residents gathered at Aaron Agulnek's Brook Road home.
"He has voted against our state – voted against the values of our state – repeatedly."
Warren said he had made 80 campaign stops across the state. He spoke to the Foxborough Democratic Town Committee on Monday night.
"This election is about values," Warren said in Sharon on Sunday.
"It's a choice we have about what kind of state and country we are going to be in the future."
Agulnek said he felt bringing the Senate candidates to Sharon was important.
Warren and Agulnek had attended the same community event.
"I thought he was an interesting story, gave an interesting speech. So, I thought that it would be nice to start getting people in Sharon listening to all of the candidates," said Agulnek, a member of Sharon's Democratic Town Committee.
Agulnek expects the committee to invite other candidates to Sharon.
"Me, personally, I've been open minded. I haven't decided whom I'm going to vote for. But I think it's important (that) people in town start listening and paying attention," he said.
Sunday, Warren touted his experience: as mayor in his hometown of Newton; in the U.S. government, including time as New England director of FEMA; and in the Navy Reserve, including a year in Iraq as an Navy intelligence specialist.
As Newton's mayor, "Every decision I make affects hundreds, thousands of my residents," Warren said.
Warren said addressing unemployment, health care and the nation's security would be among his priorities if elected to the U.S Senate.
"Government has a role to play to get this economy moving and get job creation going" through investments in such industries as renewable energy and biotech, he said.
Warren called health care "a right." He said he supports "real sensible solutions" to reducing health care costs.
"The Medicare program should be able to negotiate for drug prices. It doesn't have that capacity," he said, adding that Newton's employee drug program has saved that city millions.
On security, Warren said he supports efforts to "reduce our nuclear arsenal" and to "bring our troops home as quickly as possible."
Brown, meanwhile, has voted to cut funding for HeadStart, as well as police, firefighters and teachers, Warren said. "These are not the values, the sentiment, of the state of Massachusetts," Warren said.
"They're certainly not the values of our country. And they're not the values I grew up with, in my household.
"You can't gut the very initiatives, programs, that America gave millions of families – generations of families – opportunity at this critical moment in time in our country's history."


text:
You can never have too much clip art for Valentine's Day. Here are six more images to help make your holiday special. Enjoy!
Page 1 Valentine Wreath
Pagae 2 Valentine Sampler
Page 3 Valentine Candle
Page 4 Valentine Bow and Hearts
Page 5 Hearts Banner
Page 6 Valentine's Day Cheese and Wine


text:
You are here: Home >> Inside information >> Best burgundy 2006 buys Part 5
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Best burgundy 2006 buys Part 5
There was only one burgundy tasting on Friday, put on by the saintly Lea & Sandeman, who, despite being Fulham-based, refuse to act as though all their customers scarper to their country houses on Friday evenings. As a result they get extra-concentrated attention from us hacks, who, for once during Burgundy Week, don't have to keep an eye on our watches while tasting. Below are my favourite wines. (Julia was meanwhile en route to Heathrow for the Wines of Chile Awards and a well-earned break in the Chilean sunshine.) As usual my recommended wines are listed in upwards order of price, though in the...
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text:
2005-2006 MyDD Activist Projects
by Matt Stoller, Sun Nov 26, 2006 at 02:10:39 PM EST
- GoogleBomb 2006: This was an attempt to link search results for right-wing candidates to articles delivering credible criticisms of their records.
- Use It Or Lose It 2006: This was a project designed to encourage Democrats in safe seats to contribute money in their bank accounts to the DCCC so that it could be used to elect other Democrats.
- House Forecast 2006: A free dynamic forecasting model for House seats
- Senate Forecast 2006: A free dynamic forecasting model for Senate seats
- Governor Forecast 2006: A free dynamic forecasting model for Governors
- MyDD Candidate Memo 2006: We polled deep into feelings on Iraq and produced a memo encouraging candidates to use Iraq in their campaigns and to use accountability as a theme.
- Adwatch: We clipped Democratic ads from candidate websites and criticized them using the criteria from the candidate memo.
- CA-50 special election polling questions, Iraq-specific questions: We polled voters after the California 50th special election to determine trends in voting patterns.
- CA-50 special election polling questions, General questions
- Netroots Survey I: This is the only public survey of the netroots themselves...
- Netroots Survey II: Part two of said survey...
- Net neutrality coverage in the 2006 cycle: This is comprehensive coverage and activism around the issue of net neutrality.
- The MyDD/netroots Actblue Page 2006: This was a collaborative fundraising page done by DailyKos, Swingstate Project, and MyDD.
- MyDD's Candidate Interview Series: Conversations with Democratic candidates for Senate, House and Governorships all around the country.
And this cycle we already have Tim Tagaris covering the Louisiana special election in New Orleans, paid for by all of you. That's a lot of free ice cream for one blog. Which project did you find most interesting? Which would you like to see repeated? What other ideas do you have for what we can do next?


text:
EIEN15 Electric Power Systems
Course Program
Online Electrotechnical Vocabulary
Teaching material
Lectures (may be updated from _12.pdf to _13.pdf):
L1, L1 examples,
L2, L2 examples,
GSO Example 3.4,
L3, L3 examples,
L8, L9, L10 Guest lecture,
E1, E1 solutions,
E2, E2 solutions,
E3, E3 solutions
E4, E4 solutions,
E5 with solutions,
E6 with solutions,
E7 with solutions, Solution 7.5,
E8, E8 solutions E9,
Laboratory Exercise 1 Hints for Lab1 preparatory exercises
Laboratory Exercise 2
Computer exercises:
C1 C2 with Lab 1 preparation C3
Download PowerWorld and textbook example cases
Download PowerWorld files
Download Matlab files
Formula sheet
Old exams:
Exam 2009-12-18, Solutions 2009-12-18
Exam 2012-10-22, Solutions 2012-10-22
Exam 2013-10-21, Solutions 2013-10-21
The exam on 25 April has been corrected. The result can be found here.
To see how your exam was corrected, come to Olof's office.
Re-take examination on 25 April 2014 8:00-13:00 in room M:IEA, M-building.
Please register participation to firstname.lastname@example.com.
The exam on 14 January has been corrected. The result can be found here.
To see how your exam was corrected, come to Olof's office.
Re-take examination on 14 January 2014 in room M:IEA, M-building.
Please register participation to firstname.lastname@example.com before 8 January.
The exam on 21 October has been corrected. The result can be found here.
To see how your exam was corrected, come to Olof's office on Wednesday 13 November 12.15-12.45.
Guest lecture in E:B on 16 October, 13.15-15.00:
"Power system operation and control" by Saeed Rahimi, ABB-Ventyx, Västerås.
Errors found in exercises, PDF-files are updated:
4.1: V_INF changed to V_bus
4.4: x=[delta omega_e]T changed to x=[omega_e delta]T
7.4b: V1 changed to 0.99 p.u. -2.2 deg
Sign up sheet for Lab 2 has been posted on IEA bulletin board in M-building.
E-mail has been sent with Doodle for registration to study visit on 2 October.
Study visit on 2 October: Lunds Energi/Kraftringen Nät hosts a visit at the
transformer station at Brunnshög. Search "Brunnshögsvägen 32, Lund" in Google Maps. The number of
hard hats limit the group size to about 20. Guided tours will start 10.15, 11.00 and 11.45.
Introduction to PowerWorld will take place on Wednesday 11 September at
13.15-15.00 in M:X2.
Bring your laptop with Windows or join a friend with one. In advance, please download
PowerWorld v17 and textbook example cases
and try installing it. After successful installation you
will work with Computer exercise 1.
The 2012 course EIEN15 Electric Power Systems starts Tuesday 3 September,
13.15 in M:D.
The course is based on the textbook
Power System Analysis & Design, SI Version, 5th Edition, by J. D. Glover, M. S. Sarma, T. J. Overbye, 2012.
It is not available at KFS but you can order it through Adlibris or Bokia for around 500 SEK.
The student administration is located at IEA
in the M-building on the second floor.
It is open weekdays 11.00-12.30. Other times by agreement. Phone: 046-222 92 90.
You can also contact us by email: firstname.lastname@example.com.
All students present at the first lecture will be
registered as participants of the course. Note that it is the student's responsibility to inform the department
if he or she will drop the course


text:
Cities and Towns
Saratoga Springs, N.Y. 1888.
Schaghticoke, N.Y.
Schenectady, N.Y. /
Schuylerville, N.Y.
Schwenksville, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, 1894.
Scio, Harrison County, Ohio.
Scio, Harrison County, Ohio 1899.
Scranton, Penn. 1890.
Seattle birdseye view of portion of city and vicinity.
Section no. 2, Chevy Chase, Maryland /
Seizangaiei kayakukyoku-zu /
Sellersville, Bucks County, Pa. 1894.
Shanghai xian cheng xiang zu jie quan tu.
Sharon, Mercer County, Pennsylvania 1901.
Sharpsville, Mercer County, Pennsylvania 1901.
Shasta, Shasta County, Cal.
Sheboygan, Wis.,
Sheffield, Warren County, Pennsylvania, 1895.
Shenandoah, Pa. 1889.
Sherburne, N.Y. 1887.
Shifu-kō zenzu /
Shortsville, N.Y.
Sidney, N.Y. 1887.
Silver Creek, N.Y.
Sioux Falls, Minnehaha County, Dakota /
Sistersville, West Virginia 1896.
Sixth ward of Akron, formerly Middlebury, Summit Co., Ohio 1882.
Skaneateles, N.Y.
Sketch of Washington in embryo :
[Sketch plan for landscaping the grounds of the President's House, ca. 1802-05].
Smith's new map of London.
Somerset, Pennsylvania 1900.
Somerville, New Jersey 1882.
Souderton, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania 1894.
South Acton, Mass. 1886.
South Bend, Ind. 1890.
South Bend, Indiana 1866.
South Bend, Indiana 1874.
South Berwick, York Co., Maine, 1877 /
South Fork, Cambria County, Pennsylvania 1900.
South Weymouth, Norfolk County, Mass. 1885.
South-New-Market, Rockingham County, N.H. 1884.
Southbridge, Massachusetts.
Souvenir map of the World's Columbian Exposition at Jackson Park and Midway Plaisance, Chicago, Ill, U.S. A. 1893 /
Spencer, Mass. 1877.
Spencer, Massachusetts, 1892.
Spokane, Washington.
Springfield, 1827 :
Springfield, Illinois 1867.
Springfield, Vt.
Springville, N.Y.
St. Johnsbury, county seat of Caledonia County, Vt. 1884.
St. Johnsville, N.Y.
St. Louis
St. Louis in '93.
St. Louis in 1895.
St. Louis in 1896.
St. Mary's, Elk County, Pennsylvania, 1895.
St. Mary's, West Virginia 1899.
St. Paul, Minn.
St. Paul, Minn. :
St. Paul, Minnesota 1883 :
St. Thomas.
Stadt St. Domingo.
Stadtplan Stalino /
Stamford, Conn.
Stamford, N.Y.
Staunton, Va.
Stillwater, N.Y.
Strasburg, Lancaster Co., Pa. 1903 /
Stratford on Avon.
Street and section map of the Los Angeles oil fields, California /
Street map of Fulton, N.Y. :
Street map of central Kiev.
Street map, New York City /
Sunset, Montague Co., Texas, 1890.
Sunshū fuchū oshiro no zu.
[Survey map of the White House grounds, Washington D.C.].
[Survey of Annapolis].
[St. Louis.
Tacoma, Washington /
Taiwan Tansui-kō, Taihoku-fu kyokuchizu /
Tarentum, Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, 1901.
Tecumseh, Lenawee Co., Michigan 1868.
Tela, Honduras /
Telford, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania 1894.
The Tenement-House Committee maps /
Tennessee Centennial Exposition, Nashville, Tennessee, 1897.
Terminals of the Chicago and North-Western Railway at Chicago /
Terræ Sanctæ, qua Promissionis terra, est Syriæ pars ea, quæ Palæstina uocatur.
Terre Hill, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania 1894 /
Território de Macau, escala 1:20 000 =
Territory of Columbia /
[Territory of Columbia].
Terryville, Ct., Litchfield Co.
Théâtre des opérations en Chine :
This map of the city of New York and island of Manhattan, as laid out by the commissioners appointed by the legislature, April 3d, 1807 is respectfully dedicated to the mayor, aldermen and commonalty thereof /
This plan of the city of Philadelphia and its environs (showing the improved parts) /
This plate of the town of Fayetteville North Carolina, so called in honor of that distinguished patriot and philanthropist, Gen'l La Fayette, is respectfully dedicated to him by the publisher.


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Joe DeRuvo, Dan Love and Kid's S.P.A.C.E. will be the honorees at the Rye Youth Council's annual Gala on Saturday, January 26, 2013 at the Westchester Country Club. Each of the honorees make Rye a better place for children and will be recognized for their great commitment and dedication to making a difference.
Joe DeRuvo has been involved in the Rye City Schools since 1969! He began his teaching career in Rye at the Osborn school, (after spending 3 years at a Catholic School in the South Bronx). Twenty-three years ago, Joe moved from Osborn to Rye Middle School, at first as a permanent assistant to the principal. Soon his title was changed to Dean of Students, and then to Assistant Principal. While working in the Rye Schools, Joe has participated in many different endeavors, becoming part of the storytelling workshop for Rye teachers, appearing in school theatrical productions both at Osborn and Rye High School. Joe joined the Rye Youth Council Board as the community representative for the Rye Middle School over 20 years ago and continues in the role today. He joined the Rye Youth Council Players and loved the opportunity to be "on stage". Joe is a father and grandfather and well respected and much loved member of the Rye Community.
Dan Love has been the Associate Pastor at Rye Presbyterian Church since 1997. In addition to working with the senior pastor to tend to the worship and pastoral care of the church, Dan has primary responsibility for the confirmation class. For many years, Dan was the leader of the middle school youth group, and has served on youth mission trips from the church to Honduras, Kentucky, New York City and New Orleans. Dan also works closely with the Board of Deacons, the Stephen ministry care giving team, and the Mission and Outreach Committee. Within the larger community, Dan has been an active participant, frequently seen coaching his children, or participating in various community endeavors, joining with a number of Rye Youth Council programs, such as Community Conversations. Prior to coming to Rye, Dan served as a chaplain at the Hershey Medical Center in Hershey, PA. The Loves have three children.
Kids' S.P.A.C.E. was created by Rye parents in 1994 to meet the childcare needs of the Rye elementary school age population and provide an affordable and reliable, high quality program of childcare and enrichment. It is a not-for-profit, user funded, school-based, community organization providing programs at Osborn Elementary School and the Rye Y.M.C.A. The program is open to any child in the Rye City School District, in Kindergarten through fifth grade and currently serve over 160 children, many of who are from single and/or dual-career families. The flexible time schedule ensures that the child who needs care once a week, once a month, or once a year has the same opportunity to use the program as the child who needs care on a daily basis. Since its inception, Kids' S.P.A.C.E. has served over 1500 children., through its three components: Breakfast Club, After Kindergarten program, and After School Program,. All of the Kids' S.P.A.C.E. programs encourage self-confidence and self-expression as well as responsibility, decision-making, and respect for others
Tickets to the Gala, which include cocktails, dinner, dancing, and an auction are available at the Rye Youth Council Office at the Rye Y, second floor. For more information, please contact the Rye Youth Council at (914) 967-3838 or visit www.ryeyouthcouncil.org


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HOUSTON — Warmer temperatures are on the way to the Houston area, according to KHOU 11 News Meteorologist Brooks Garner.
We started off in the 50s early Friday morning but will quickly warm up to the mid-70s this afternoon. There's a 10-percent chance for rain.
This weekend will also be warm and muggy with a chance for scattered showers and temperatures in the upper-70s and low-80s.
Temps will start off in the mid-60s Saturday morning for the Heart & Stroke Walk at Reliant Park. You may need an extra layer for to start the day, but should be able to shed it by the late morning.
By Tuesday the clouds will start to move out, and our daytime temperatures will drop back into the 60s.
Download the free WeatherCaster app for your hourly forecasts and severe weather tracker.


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By Cam Huffman
Sports Editor
The Big Atlantic Classic — and the head-to-head matchups between ranked teams that it provided — had a major impact on the latest Associated Press high school basketball polls released Monday, but the shakeup was felt much stronger on the boys' side than for the girls'.
Woodrow Wilson (12-4) was the biggest mover of the week, and the season. The Flying Eagles made the jump from No. 10 to No. 3 in the Class AAA boys poll, thanks to a 4-0 week that helped run their winning streak to eight in a row. Beckley will try to make it nine straight when it hosts Ripley at 7:30 p.m. today at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center.
South Charleston (14-1) and Martinsburg (15-2) are the only teams ranked ahead of the state's hottest team.
Greenbrier East (16-1) slipped just one spot after losing its first game of the season Friday night against unranked Point Pleasant. The Spartans are now fifth, two spots behind Woodrow, which they beat on Jan. 2. East will have a chance to prove itself again when it hosts Class AA No. 1 Bluefield on Friday.
Parkersburg South (14-3) stands between the two area rivals at No. 4.
Hedgesville (12-3) and Washington (10-4) are sixth and seventh, respectively, in Class AAA, while Morgantown (13-3) slipped from third to eighth. The Mohigans lost West Virginia University signee Nathan Adrian for the season because of a broken bone in his foot and then suffered a blowout loss to Woodrow Wilson in a Class AAA championship game at the Big Atlantic Classic. Huntington and George Washington round out the Class AAA top 10.
Bluefield's performance at the Big Atlantic Classic, which included wins over Westside and Robert C. Byrd, helped the Beavers (13-1) stay No. 1 in Class AA. Westside (11-6), which beat rival Wyoming East after the loss to Bluefield, jumped from eighth to sixth, while Wyoming East (10-5) fell from third to seventh. The two Wyoming County rivals, who split their first two meetings this year, will play again Friday at Wyoming East.
Fairmont Senior, Robert C. Byrd, Poca and Tolsia were 2-5 in the Class AA poll, while Webster County, Scott and Roane County were 8-10. Liberty and Mount View received one vote each to sit in the others receiving votes category.
The highest area team in Class A was Greater Beckley Christian (9-1), which stayed at No. 8. The Crusaders came in behind Charleston Catholic, Tug Valley, Tucker County, Parkersburg Catholic, Magnolia, Buffalo and St. Mary's, who filled the first seven spots. Tygarts Valley moved back into the poll at No. 9, while Valley (9-4) took the final spot in the top 10.
Greenbrier West fell out of the Class A poll after losing to Tygarts Valley, but the Cavailers still received three votes.
The AP's girls poll stayed much more consistent. Greenbrier East (14-0) held on to the top spot in Class AAA, after beating two ranked teams in University and Preston at the Big Atlantic Classic. Princeton (13-2), which will play Greenbrier East in the sectional round of the postseason, stayed at No. 5.
East, the defending Class AAA champion, will host George Washington on Thursday and Logan on Friday. Princeton has a huge game today, traveling to Summers County.
Spring Valley, Morgantown and Huntington were 2-4 in Class AAA, while University, Parkersburg South, George Washington, Wheeling Park and Preston were 6-10.
Westside (15-1) stayed at No. 1 in Class AA, despite losing for the first time in more than two seasons when it fell to University at the Big Atlantic Classic. The Renegades, though, do have some company, as Bridgeport, the Class AAA runner-up last year, moved into a tie for the top spot.
Nicholas County (14-2) remained in third despite its lopsided loss to Parkersburg South at the Big Atlantic Classic. Summers County (11-4) was three spots behind the Grizzlies at No. 6, with Clay County and Robert C. Byrd between them.
Berkeley Springs, Fairmont Senior, North Marion and Sissonville filled the 7-10 spots in Class AA. Bluefield received three votes and Mount View two.
In Class A, Pocahontas County (12-4) was the top area team, coming in at No. 6, with Saint Joseph Central, St. Mary's, Clay-Battelle, Wheeling Central and Tucker County in front of it.
Parkersburg Catholic was No. 7, with two local teams — Fayetteville (9-3) and Valley (9-4) — coming in eighth and ninth, respectively. Gilmer County and Tygarts Valley tied for the 10th spot.
— E-mail: chuffman@
register-herald.com and follow on Twitter @CamHuffmanRH.


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For the second year in a row, , a seventh grade student at , took first place in the Lehigh Valley Mathcounts regional competition.
The 28th annual event, which attracted 280 middle school competitors from five counties, was held at Trexler Middle School on Saturday, Feb. 4.
Velingker also placed first as a sixth grader last year, according to a prepared release frpm Mathcounts. He will be eligible to compete again in 2013 as an eighth grader.
Velingker and the three other top winners will move onto state level competitions as part of the National Society of Professional Engineers' "Olympics of Math" national competition:
- Second place, Clair Tang, eighth grader at .
- Third place, Katie Xue, eighth grader at Eyer Middle School.
- Fourth place, Julie Costacurta, a Moravian Academy eighth grader.
Also for the second year, Springhouse Middle School was the top ranking team out of the 33 schools that participated in the regional competition organized by Lehigh Valley Chapter of the Pennsylvania Society of Professional Engineers. , the team is coached by Kevin Halliman.
The Springhouse team will join the top four finishers at the state competition at the Sheraton Harrisburg Hershey Hotel on March 23 and 24. The top four Pennsylvania students will go on to Orlando, FL in May to vie for national honors.
Nearly 6,000 schools nationwide participate in the competition, which is co-sponsored by the National Society of Professional Engineers, the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics and a host of industries that see the value of making math excellence as challenging and prestigious as participation in sports.
In the regional competition, East Penn School District's Eyer Middle School, coached by Julie Hummell, was the second highest ranking team and Moravian Academy, coached by Alison Overdorf and Dani Mackavage, placed third.
Other high-ranking teams were: St Thomas More, fourth; Southern Lehigh Middle School, fifth, and Orefield Middle School, sixth. St Michael the Archangel was named the "most improved."
Competing students spent the morning in a series of tests that featured questions such as:
- The product of three consecutive odd integers is 9,177. What is the sum of these three integers? (63)
- Draw a pentagon with each of its five diagonals. How many triangles are contained in the figure? (35)
Tests were graded and ranked immediately.
In the afternoon, the top 10 ranking individuals paired in a Jeopardy-like stage competition to determine final ranking.
In addition to the top four finishers, the additional top finishers were
- Fifth place, Daniel Tartaglione, an eighth grader at Pocono Mountain East Junior High School.
- Sixth place, Sameer Lai, an eighth grader at Eyer Middle School.
- Seventh place, Nicholas Carolan, an eighth grader at St. Thomas More.
- Eighth place, Jacob Miller, an eighth grader at .
- Ninth place, Kristina Shum, an eighth grader at Springhouse Middle School.
- 10th place, Lucy Zhang, an eighth grader at Southern Lehigh Middle School.


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Presidential Image Gallery
Theodore Roosevelt in Africa
November 30, 1909
Source: The Library of Congress
As President, Theodore Roosevelt wanted to increase the influence and prestige of the United States on the world stage. Believing that a large and powerful Navy was an essential component of national defense, Roosevelt expanded the Navy into one of the largest in the world. In December 1907, Roosevelt sent the "Great White Fleet" on a world tour to impress and demonstrate America's growing strength and power.
← Return to Theodore Roosevelt Gallery


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Photo by Saul Young, copyright © 2012
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All quotes tagged Unite
(4317 quotes found)
"The United States has been declared under martial law...All constitutional rights have been suspended. Anyone interfering with the collection of urine samples will be shot. Anyone failing to attend morning school prayer will be shot. The number one enemy of progress is questions. National security is more important than individual rights. Sports broadcasts will proceed as scheduled. Shut up, be happy, obey all orders without question. At last everything is done for you."
"The firmest of friendships have been formed in mutual adversity, as iron is most strongly united by the fiercest flame"
"I haven't, in the 23 years that I have been in the uniformed services of the United States of America, ever violated an order - not one."
"I am mortified to be told that, in the United States of America, the sale of a book can become a subject of inquiry, and of criminal inquiry too."
"If anyone is crazy enough to want to kill a president of the United States, he can do it. All he must be prepared to do is give his life for the president's."
"Let the teachers teach English and I will teach baseball. There is a lot of people in the United States who say isn't, and they ain't eating."
"Ohio claims they are due a president as they haven't had one since Taft. Look at the United States, they have not had one since Lincoln."
"Our citizenship in the United States is our national character. Our citizenship in any particular state is only our local distinction. By the latter we are known at home, by the former to the world. Our great title is AMERICANS -- our inferior one varies with the place."
"The Constitution of the United States was created by the people of the United States composing the respective states, who alone had the right ."


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|Publications Meetings The Profession Membership Programs Math Samplings Policy & Advocacy In the News About the AMS
Math Digest
On Media Coverage of Math
Edited by Mike Breen and Annette Emerson, AMS Public Awareness Officers
Harvey Mudd College President (and mathematician) Maria Klawe, a "fascinating Angeleno" (Photo © Kevin Mapp/Harvey Mudd College.)
"The news should start with mathematics, then poetry, and move down from there," from The Humans, by Matt Haig.
Recent Posts:
See also: The AMS Blog on Math Blogs: Two mathematicians tour the mathematical blogosphere. Editors Brie Finegold and Evelyn Lamb, both PhD mathematicians, blog on blogs that have posts related to mathematics research, applied mathematics, mathematicians, math in the news, mathematics education, math and the arts, and more. Recent posts: "Crowd-Funded Mathematics," "Discovering Proofs," and "Narrowing The Gender Gap."
On preventing collisions between whales and ships, by Allyn Jackson
This brief article presents an interview with marine biologist Asha de Vos, who is working on ways to prevent Sri Lankan blue whales from colliding with large ships. She and her collaborators are developing mathematical models "to understand which areas are key to the survival of the Sri Lankan whales, and where they intersect with shipping lanes." de Vos says, "Using sighting locations and satellite data on temperature, chlorophyll concentrations and salinity, we build habitat models.... When we know which conditions attract whales, we can identify other areas in which they might gather, then overlay the shipping lanes to see where the ships and the whales come together. Then we can target those areas for reducing the likelihood of collisions."
See: "I'm modelling whale ways to keep them safe from ships: Interview with Asha de Vos", by Madhumita Venkataramanan, New Scientist, 7 July 2014, and for more research on blue whales, "Inter-Annual Variability in Blue Whale Distribution off Southern Sri Lanka between 2011 and 2012," by Asha de Vos, Charitha B. Pattiaratchi, and Robert G. Harcourt, Journal of Marine Sciences and Engineering, 1 July 2014.
--- Allyn Jackson (Posted 7/8/14)
The All-Time Ultimate Greatest Ever, by Ben Pitman-Polletta
If you could choose any eleven mathematicians from history to play on your World Cup team, which geometer would be your striker? If you were stuck on a desert island for an indeterminate amount of time, and you could only bring three mathematicians with you, which number theorist would go in your suitcase? If you had to eat only one mathematician for the rest of your life, which probabilist would be on your plate? We all have our own personal list of the top 100 mathematicians of all time (see Greatest Mathematicians of All Time), and we've all debated it with our friends and fought about it with our spouses.
Kiersz's list isn't a top 13--he focuses on mathematicians whose research presaged modern innovations in mathematics and its applications--but he makes some thought-provoking choices. There are the few indisputable greats: Newton, Liebniz, Gauss, Euler, and Euclid are probably in everyone's top 10. Most people would include Pythagoras somewhere, if only for the ubiquitous Pythagorean theorem, and his followers' extreme intolerance for irrational numbers. Descartes for sure, because where would math be without the Cartesian plane? But what about Archimedes? Did you know that he used limit-like arguments to estimate the value of pi and the area under a parabolic curve almost two millenia before calculus was invented? Not to mention he was probably the first, and certainly the most famous, person to celebrate a breakthrough (his understanding of how solids displace liquids) by running through the streets naked shouting 'Eureka!' And it's a tragedy of cultural imperialism that Muhammed ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi, the namesake of the algorithm and father of algebra, mostly goes forgotten. John Napier, the little-known father of the controversial logarithm (it's an acquired taste), is another interesting pick.
Kiersz largely leaves out the modern era, but there are plenty of players, er, scholars, from the past three centuries worthy of attention. Bernhard Riemann, a star of the German team in the mid-1800s, made three great accomplishments, any one of which would put him on the list: formalizing what's now known as the Riemann integral; founding what's now known as Riemannian geometry; and, in a single short paper, introducing the world to the Riemann zeta function and the outstanding Riemann hypothesis. Or take Poincare, who E.T. Bell called "the last universalist": the father of chaos theory, the Poincare group, and the recently-proved eponymous conjecture, is surely one of the best. Of course, it's hard to narrow down any list of the all-time greats, because each mathematician has his own style (not to mention his own field). Analysts might include Cantor, Weierstrass, Cauchy, and Fourier; probabilists would surely argue for Pascal and Bayes, not to mention the Russian giant Kolmogorov; geometers and physicists might tout the accomplishments of Hamilton, Noether, Lie, Weyl, and Einstein; and number theorists would surely give Ramanujan a nod. The fathers of computer science--Babbitt, Lovelace, Turing and von Neumann--certainly deserve a place. And who could forget the prolific combinatorialist Paul Erdős? Then there are those working today, or very recently, whose accomplishments, in time, might be as impactful as those of their predecessors--mathematicians like Fermat-slayer Andrew Wiles, chaos-theorist and topologist Steven Smale, analyst Terrence Tao, probabilist Oded Schramm, and *cough* Benjamin Pittman-Polletta. They may not all be on your list, but there's definitely room for them on mine.
See "The 12 Mathematicians Who Set The Stage For The Modern World", by Andy Kiersz, Business Insider, 3 July 2014.
--- Ben Pittman-Polletta (Posted 7/11/14)
MIT Prof. Making Sense of Big Data, by Anna Haensch
By now we've all heard of Big Data. We're aware of the vast storehouses of data points being gathered on every imaginable thing, or non-things, under the sun. And we're probably aware of the challenges of analyzing such a humongous amount of data, in particular, in a sea of so much information, how does one separate the real trends from the background noise? The MIT News Office explains how one MIT mathematics professor is turning these mountains of raw data into meaningful answers.
Photo by Sandy Huffaker
Professor Alice Guionnet (above) uses a branch of mathematics called random matrix theory. By taking the data and putting it in in cleverly designed arrays, or matrices, Guionnet is able to tease out the important trends and separate them from the noise. In particular, Guionnet is interested in using these techniques to predict the likelihood of extremely unusual events occurring. She likens this process to sewing a patchwork quilt -- after analyzing the data she is left with many partial solutions, and the key is in deciding how these components fit together.
This field is particularly exciting, Guionnet says, because it lies at the intersection of so many branches of mathematics. "it crosses over into different fields," she says, "probability theory, operator algebra, and random matrices -- and I'm trying to advance these three theories at the same time." The techniques are also valuable across disciplines and have been used to analyze trends in statistics, telecommunications, and even neurobiology.
In 2012 Guionnet was a recipient of the Simons Foundation Investigators Grant.
See "Mathematical patchwork," by Helen Knight. MIT News, 27 June 2014.
--- Anna Haensch (Posted 7/29/14)
From Neymar to Nash, World Cup Soccer Equals Economics At Play, by Anna Haensch
Just when I thought I my excitement over the World Cup couldn't reach a more fevered pitch, a recent piece in The New York Times explains that along with the exhilaration of victory and the subsequent swelling of national pride, we are seeing economic principles at play. London School of Economics professor and die-hard soccer--or rather, football--fan, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, breaks it down.
Palacios-Huerta analyzed over 9,000 penalty kicks and found that they exhibited precisely the strategic behavior predicted by the economist John Forbes Nash, Jr. His principle, called Nash Equilibrium, says that for a game that requires multiple zero-sum moves, the best strategy is to vary your moves randomly. Penalty kicks, where one player takes a shot directly on goal, are a great example of this sort of game. Obviously it would be silly for a player to always shoot to the left or right, because then the goalie would know what to expect. But then again, a player might prefer to shoot with a dominant leg, so we wouldn't expect to see a perfect 50-50 split. And indeed Palacious-Herta found that players varied their ball placement exactly as he predicted: 60% to the right, 40% to the left.
Soccer games, Palacios-Huerta claims, are also a great place to test the Efficient Market Hypothesis. In the stock market, this principle basically says that the market reacts so quickly that the price of a stock always reflects its true value based on all known information. So if this is true, no matter how fast you buy, you can never really get a stock for less than it's worth. It should also mean that the price of a stock should stay relatively still in the absence of new information. Of course this is just a hypothesis, and quite difficult to test in the real stock market.
To support this hypothesis, researchers Karen Croxson and J. James Reade found that in soccer, even if a goal was scored moments before the clock stopped, half-time betting remained relatively stable through the break. Although people continue to place bets over halftime, the prices for betting updated "swiftly and fully" within moments of the goal.
But then again, sometimes--er, think the infamous Brazil vs. Coratia penalty shot--there are subtleties that seem beyond the scope of the most sophisticated numerical methods. Palacios-Heurtas covers this, along with the economics of fear and corruption in his book "Beautiful Game Theory: How Soccer Can Help Economics."
Oh, and of course, GO USA!
See: "The Beautiful Data Set," by Iganatio Palacios-Huerta. The New York Times, 13 June 2014.
--- Anna Haensch (Posted 6/25/14)
On Richard Tapia, by Allyn Jackson
Richard Tapia is an outstanding applied mathematician and a first-generation Mexican-American who has worked hard to recruit other members of minority groups into mathematics and science. This article is a profile of Tapia that offers a window into how the mathematical community regards the need to encourage members of underrepresented minorities to join the field. The article reports that Tapia has been going around the country giving a talk titled "Racism in Mathematics: A Direct Factor in Underrepresentation." No doubt the title rankles some, and Tapia acknowledges that he chose it partly to get attention. Nevertheless he does believe that students from underrepresented minorities face extra hurdles that students who are white or Asian do not. For more than 40 years, Tapia has worked energetically and on many fronts to remove those hurdles and get more minority students on track to positions in top mathematics departments. His efforts have been recognized by many awards, including the 2014 Vannevar Bush Award, the highest honor the National Science Foundation gives for lifetime achievement. Photo: Rice University.
See "Minority voice," by Jeffrey Mervis. Science, 6 June 2014, pages 1076-1079 (unfortunately, you need an account to read the article online). (Posted 6/18/14)
---Allyn Jackson (Posted June 18, 2014)
Going All the Way Back with Computing and Art, by Ben Pittman-Polletta
If you are a math fan or an art fan (or both), I hope you have a couple of hours to spare, because it will be easy to lose them in this rambling tour of technology in art. Author Ron Miller aims to trace the history of computer-generated imagery, but he takes the form's ancestors to be all applications of science to the visual arts, beginning with the development of perspective by Fillipo Brunelleschi in the early 1400s, and the subsequent creation of specialized machinery for perspective drawing by Albrecht Durer. Miller serves up chestnuts of art technology like the pantograph--a mechanical linkage which reproduces the movements of a pen at a larger scale; the camera obscura or pin-hole camera--a dark room or box with a hole in one side, used to project an image for tracing; and, of course, the plain vanilla (phoneless) camera. There's an interesting discussion on the invention of the airbrush (in the 1800s) and the scorn it earned from professional artists, and a neat digression on the early uses of mathematics to transform an (analog) input data stream into interesting images, with tools like the oscilloscope and the spirograph. Miller discusses the creation of ASCII art and the mechanical plotter as ways to use the earliest analog computers to generate images. And among countless other artists and inventions in the prehistory of digital and computer art, Miller notes that the first computer graphics seem to have appeared around the same time as the first computers. Filmmaker John Whitney Sr., creator of the title sequence for Vertigo, founded Motion Graphics Incorporated in 1960. Using a 12-foot tall computer he built himself from surplus military electronics, Whitney developed a catalog of special effects which, while hard to sit still through today, I can only imagine blew the socks and garters off of Eisenhower-era moviegoers.
There are lots of jumping-off points here, but the breathless pace leaves out plenty of details. I personally could (did) spend hours looking into the science and math behind Robert Hooke and Ernst Chladni's technique for revealing the nodal lines of a vibrating surface, recently captured in a video that made the rounds on Facebook; without the cheesy music; with a bunch of explanation words. Not surprisingly, there are deep connections between these nodal patterns and the normal modes they arise from, quantum numbers and molecular orbitals, and representation theory. Or, if that's not your speed, you might spend the rest of your workday in the Digital Art Museum, an online museum currently hosting an exhibition of plotter drawings from the 1960s, including works by many of the pioneering artists mentioned in Miller's article. You can also explore more contemporary computer artists, like Yoichiro Kawaguchi. Along with computer scientist Jim Blinn, Kawaguchi brought softer shapes into computer art with the creation of so-called metaballs in the 1980s (also "Real time Metaballs" video). Kawaguchi's recent work is even more organic and colorful, including computer-designed "robots" which look like the intelligent descendents of tropical mollusks. Whether or not you're a fan of CGI, there's plenty here to stave off boredom and/or productivity--so be warned.
See: "The Forgotten History Of CGI," by Ron Miller. Io9, 31 May 2014.
--- Ben Pitman-Polletta (Posted 6/10/14)
Monte Carlo Isn't Just for Gamblers, by Ben Pittman-Polletta
Image: Prof. Mark Whitehorn, School of Computing, University of Dundee.
Some problems are too hard to work out exactly, even if the answers sought are only probabilistic. Unfortunately, this seems to hold for many of the questions one might seek answers to, such as the probable outcomes of business decisions, government policies, or medical treatments. Furthermore, even when exact (deterministic) solutions exist, time constraints may make them impractical, and even unnecessary. Here, Mark Whitehorn describes how mathematicians and computer scientists employ Monte Carlo simulations as computational tools to get good estimates of probabilities, including the outcomes of risky decisions.
The Monte Carlo idea is as simple as simple gets: if you want to understand the distribution of some quantity which is a function of one or more random variables whose distributions are known, one way to estimate the distribution is to calculate it for many (randomly chosen) realizations of the underlying random variables. Monte Carlo can also be used to estimate the outcomes of deterministic processes, if those processes can be stated in a probabilistic framework. For example, pi can be thought of as the probability that a point sampled uniformly from the unit square will fall in the unit circle; pi can thus be estimated from a Monte Carlo simulation, in which points are picked randomly from the unit square, and the number of points falling in the unit circle is calculated. The Monte Carlo class of techniques encompasses a wide variety of approaches to using probability and computation to estimate difficult calculations. These techniques are especially useful for estimating quantities that depend on a large number of interacting random variables--which often occurs in quantum mechanics, engineering, meteorology, and computational biology--and when modeling phenomena with significant uncertainty in the inputs--often the case when studying human systems in business, economics, and politics.
While useful, Monte Carlo methods are by no means new. They were developed in 1946, while Stanislaw Ulam was working on the Manhattan Project. Ulam spent some time laid up in bed, playing solitaire. He began wondering what the probability of a winning shuffle is, and after wrestling with the gnarly combinatorics, he "wondered whether a more practical method than 'abstract thinking' might not be to lay it out say one hundred times and simply observe and count the number of successful plays." Ulam immediately grasped that recent developments in computer technology made it possible to use a similar method to understand other problems in mathematical physics, and he and John von Neumann developed these ideas, and used them to estimate a number of calculations essential to the Manhattan Project. They needed a code name for the project, and called it Monte Carlo, after the casino that Ulam's uncle frequented, and in a nod to the randomness required to make the method work.
See "About to make a big bet? Don't crash out, cash in with the power of maths," by Mark Whitehorn, The Register, 29 May 2014.
--- Ben Pittman-Polletta (Posted 6/25/14)
On soap films, by Anna Haensch
Image: Courtesy of Flickr/frankblacknoir.
Soap bubbles have always been fun pastime of children, and according to a recent article in Phys.org, they have also become the primary object of study for a team of researchers for the University of Cambridge. In particular, researchers are studying soap films of all different shapes and trying to predict where the points of instability will occur when the films are stretched and twisted to the point of collapse.
The group has done a thorough experimental, computational, and theoretical examination of the topologies of different soap films in order to conjecture where the point of collapse will occur. Their conjecture: the point of instability depends entirely on the location of something called the systole.
A systole is the minimum-length closed curve on the surface which can't be shrunk down to a point--by a closed closed curve, I mean a curve that you can start walking along and eventually arrive back where you started. Perhaps the simplest example of a soap film is the catenoid, which you get from dipping a circular wire in soap and slowly lifting it.
Image: Courtesy of Flickr/hoyasmeg
In the case of a catenoid, you probably guessed that the film would break at the thinnest point of the surface, and you would be correct! This point is the systole. Check out this video to see what it would look like in slow motion.
That point where the soap film breaks is called the singularity, and it is of great interests to scientists in many fields to understand where and why these occur. Singularities can be used to explain many phenomena in the natural world, including fluid turbulence and solar flares.
The team has recognized that systoles can occur in one of two ways. Either, like the catenoid, it occurs in the bulk of the film, or like in the Möbius film in the image below, it occurs around the boundary. This, they believe, will precisely determine the behavior of the singularity.
Image: Courtesy of PNAS
The original paper appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science (PNAS).
See "Soap films with complex shapes shed light on the formation of mathematical singularities (w/ Video)." Phys.org, 27 May 2014.
--- Anna Haensch (posted 6/5/14)
On German research minister Johanna Wanka, by Mike Breen
Johanna Wanka, a mathematician, is federal research minister of Germany. She is in the midst of some tough political wrangling, as the federal government and state governments disagree about how research money should be spent. Germany's chancellor, Angela Merkel, is a physicist and Wanka thinks that a scientific background can help in politics: "We may think more...like in a chess game." The article authors conclude, "German scientists are waiting expectantly for her [Wanka's] next move."
See "Doing the math in Berlin," by Kai Kupferschmidt and Gretchen Vogel. Science, 23 May 2014, pages 791-792.
--- Mike Breen
On gerrymandering, by Anna Haensch
Image: Wikimedia Commons, courtesy of rangevoting.org
When it comes to politics, humans are really bad at being fair and unbiased. To see evidence of this, people need not look much farther than their own state's congressional districting map. A recent article in the Chicago Sun-Times compares the current congressional district map of Illinois, which looks like somebody gave a kid a crayon and set him loose, to a proposed congressional map of Illinois designed using a simple mathematical algorithm. I'll let you guess which one is which.
The reason that congressional district maps got to be so crazy-looking in the first place, is due to something called gerrymandering. Gerrymandering refers to the practice of redrawing district lines to create more favorable outcomes for a particular political party. For the quick backstory on gerrymandering--including where the heck the word gerrymander comes from--check out this short video from TED-Ed.
So the bottom line: gerrymandering is bad. In order to have an honest and representative democracy, we need to find a way to break a state into districts that gives an accurate picture of the state's population, and more importantly, can't be tampered with by meddling human hands. One possible solution, which we are looking at in the right-hand map above, is the brainchild of Warren D. Smith, co-founder of rangevoting.org and co-inventor of the Splitline algorithm.
Smith's algorithm goes as follows: suppose we start with a state having population P, which needs to be broken into D distinct districts. The Splitline algorithm says, first define A to be the nearest integer less than D/2 and B the nearest integer above D/2. So for examples, if D=3, then A=1 and B=2. Next we divide the state into two pieces with populations PA and PB, whose populations are in ratio A:B, but in particular, we do this with the shortest straight line possible. So, for example, if we started with a state with population 30, we would have PA=10 and PB=20. Now we have two districts, and they each need to be broken up into A and B many districts, respectively, so we just repeat the splitting process above. Simple as that.
And simplicity, Smith argues, is precisely what makes this algorithm so strong. It is easy to understand, and therefore difficult to mess with, he says, "you want to have something so incredibly simple--something a child could understand. Something natural."Basically, by choosing districts in a mathematical way, we completely eliminate the opportunity for human intervention. For historical reasons, Smith explains, Illinois is a particularly egregious examples of gerrymandering and therefore could benefit from a more natural division of congressional districts. But for some states, like Colorado (below), which has a highly unusual population distribution, the Splitline algorithm isn't necessarily a great improvement over the current map, but Warren feels confident that it's certainly no worse.
Image: Wikimedia Commons, right: courtesy of rangevoting.org
Check out how the Splitline algorithm changes the look of your own congressional district. In addition to the his algorithm, Smith's site hosts a comprehensive and easy-to-understand explanation of the drawbacks and benefits of different voting schemes, and a lengthy page of voting theory puzzles and brain teasers--enough to keep you amused until at least the next presidential primaries.
See "Can math save Illinois from gerrymandering?" by Scarlett Swerdlow. Chicago Sun-Times, 18 May 2014.
--- Anna Haensch
On parents' frustration with the Common Core, by Lisa DeKeukeleare
Implementation of the Common Core Standards for math education--a system 44 states have adopted for codifying what mathematics skills student should learn when--has resulted in a backlash from parents frustrated by demands that students use new methods to attack simple arithmetic problems. Proponents of the new standards say the system is intended to help students be problem-solvers and understand the concepts behind arithmetic operations. On the other side, critics contend that grade school students are too young to grasp this "fuzzy math," and that focusing on concepts rather than basic techniques leaves them ill-prepared for the rigorous application needed for success at higher grade levels. Similarly, parents are aggravated that they are unable to help their children with homework using seemingly newfangled and unnecessary techniques. Some educators blame the implementation, rather than the standards themselves, and school districts have set up workshops and websites to help parents understand the new approach.
See "2+2=What? Parents rail against Common Core math." The Wall Street Journal, 15 May 2014 and a piece in USA Today by former AMS Executive Director John Ewing.
--- Lisa DeKeukeleare
On Maria Klawe, a "fascinating Angeleno," by Lisa DeKeukeleare
This short biography of Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe (left) highlights how her humble beginnings with hand-me-down clothes and her post-college global wandering dovetailed into her passion for making Harvey Mudd a top-notch institution where students of all genders, races, and sexual orientations would feel embraced. Prior to running Harvey Mudd, Klawe was a renowned mathematician who had a successful career at IBM, the University of British Columbia, and Princeton, but who felt like others didn't think she belonged. Since taking over at Harvey Mudd in 2006 as the school's first female president, Klawe has raised the enrollment of women majoring in computer science from 10% to 40%, and her current focus is boosting participation for African-Americans and LGBT students. Klawe notes that she thinks of Harvey Mudd as "an innovation lab" for student participation, and she strives to create an environment in which any student willing to work hard will be supported. Photo © Kevin Mapp/Harvey Mudd College.
See "Maria Klawe: The Forward-Thinking President of Harvey Mudd College," by Liana Aghajanian. LA Weekly, 14 May 2014.
--- Lisa DeKeukeleare
On math, art, and video games, by Claudia Clark
In this article, writer Tracey Lien profiles 21-year-old Iranian game developer, Mahdi Bahrami, whose geometric puzzle game Engare was a hit at this year's Experimental Gameplay Workshop. At the workshop, Bahrami demonstrated an earlier version of Engare, in which the player is challenged to replicate a given shape, such as a spiral, by figuring out where on a moving object to place a dot so that the object will trace that shape. Workshop host Robin Hunicke, who first saw Bahrami's work in 2010, notes that "the drive to explore experimental mechanics is at [the] very core" of Bahrami's current work. At the same time, Bahrami has incorporated elements from his own culture, such as music, into this games. (His first game, Farsh, which he coded in two weeks, involves the building of paths using Persian carpets that can be rolled and unrolled.) Bahrami has also played up the fact that "the pattern making process explored through the geometric puzzles [mirrors] that of Islamic art making." After all, "Islamic art is all about mathematics," he notes. Image: Screen shot of Engare.
See "An Iranian developer's entrancing game about his culture and the mathematics of art," by Tracey Lien. Polygon, 12 May 2014.
--- Claudia Clark
On discovering that seven cylinders can touch, by Claudia Clark
In this brief article, math and science writer Dana Mackenzie describes a new solution to a problem that was presented 50 years ago in the pages of Scientific American: "Can you place seven cigarettes so that each cigarette touches every one of the others?" The problem was solved by Martin Gardner at the time, but required some of the cigarette sides to touch others' ends. This past March, at a Gathering 4 Gardner, Sándor Bozóki of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences presented a solution that he and two colleagues recently found using only side-to-side contacts and infinitely long cylinders. They "used three months of computer time to solve 20 equations in 20 variables," after which they used a "'certified' method developed by Isaac Newton, and updated by computer scientists in 2011, to prove that their solution was not an artifact of computer rounding errors." Photo by Dana Mackenzie.
See "A tale of touching tubes," by Dana Mackenzie. Science News, 3 May 2014 and a related story, although also short, "Meeting of the Puzzlers," by Dana Richards. Scientific American, June 2014, page 23.
--- Claudia Clark
Population-level cyclic motions is not the name of a dance troupe, by Ben Pittman-Polletta
From deciding who gets the last piece of pizza, to choosing which house gets to auction off a multimillion dollar collection, rock paper scissors is a ubiquitous tool for resolving competitive conflicts. But increasingly, the coin-less coin toss is moving out of conflict resolution and into professional sports, show business (Regular Show, Big Bang Theory), and even scientific research. In a recent preprint posted to the arXiv, a team of three (of course) physicists led by Zhijian Wang, from China's Zhejiang University, used experiment and theory to study the dynamics of RPS. Recruiting 60 groups of 6 undergraduates to play the game in 300-round, random-pair "tournaments" and record their moves, the team calculated the proportion of players in each of the game's three "states", at each round. In this situation, with limited information about their opponents' histories, the players were subtly guided by a pair of universal strategies. First, players were more likely to repeat their move than to shift to another, especially when they had just won. Second, players seemed to shift their moves in one direction--from rock, to paper, to scissors. This could be observed in "a deterministic pattern of social state cycling from slightly rich in action R, to slightly rich in P, then to slightly rich in S, and then back to slightly rich in R again." On an individual level, such a shift was more likely to occur if the player had lost on the previous round, in which case they would choose the move that had just beaten them. These behaviors can't be accounted for by classical "infinite rationality" game theories--for example, the Nash equilibrium strategy of choosing rock, paper, or scissors uniformly at random--or by strategies which are contingent only upon the player's previous moves. Instead, the authors proposed a "conditional response model" implementing a "win stay/lose shift" strategy--the kind of strategy that fits perfectly into an evolutionary framework. Plenty of people are touting the reverse strategy--which amounts to "lose, choose the unplayed move; win, copy your opponent"--as a sure-fire winner (reported in Slate and Ars Technica). But a few rounds of RPS will convince you that the strategy is easier said than done. Furthermore, the probability of a loser picking up the move of their opponent is only 40%, meaning Zhijian et al's universal strategy is more of a bias than a guarantee ("Social cycling and conditional responses in the Rock-Paper-Scissors game" on arxiv).
So RPS is safe, for now, and the conflict-prone among us will be happy to know there is no shortage of alternatives--not only the poignantly renamed "chicken-worm-human", but 5, 7, 9, 11, 15, 25, and 101 move expansions of RPS exist. But even if they haven't discovered a way to "always win at RPS", Zhijian and his colleagues have provided further evidence for the "bounded rationality" of human strategists--an understatement if I ever heard one.
See "How to win at rock-paper-scissors," by James Morgan, BBC News, 2 May 2014; "A Mathematician Explains How to Always Win at Rock-Paper-Scissors," by Harrison Jacobs, Business Insider, 5 May 2014; "Scientists find a winning strategy for rock-paper-scissors," by Casey Johnston, Ars Technica, 1 May 2014, and "Rock, Paper, Payoff: Child's Play Wins Auction House an Art Sale," by Carol Vogel, New York Times, 29 April 2005).
--- Ben Pittman-Polletta
On Penrose tile cookware, by Lisa DeKeukeleare
British mathematician Roger Penrose's innovative method for creating infinitely non-repeating configurations of simple shapes not only was revolutionary mathematics, but also provided the foundation for improving everyday goods. In 1974, Penrose demonstrated using just two four-sided shapes--a "kite" and a "dart"--that it is possible to create a tiling pattern with no gaps or overlaps that would never repeat. In a field previously focused on repetitive tiling patterns with rectangles and triangles, Penrose's system was remarkable because a decision about placing a kite or a dart in one location would affect whether a kite or dart could be used at a separate location in the distance, so that local decisions affected global structure. Eight years later, an Israeli astrophysicist used Penrose's system to explain strange characteristics he observed in crystalline structures of aluminum-manganese alloy, which unlike typical crystals were non-repetitive. Properties of these special "quasicrystals" make them ideal for items such as nonstick cookware, razors, and 3D printers. [More on Penrose tiles is in a Feature Column by David Austin.]
See "Impossible Cookware and Other Triumphs of the Penrose Tile," by Patchen Barss. Nautilus--Symmetry Issue (issue 13), 1 May 2014.
--- Lisa DeKeukeleare
On fair division, by Claudia Clark
If you've ever had to share the last piece of cake with someone, you may have used the "I cut, you choose" method for dividing as fairly as possible. But when it comes to more complex situations, such as one person buying another person out of a business that both own, that method probably won't satisfy at least one of the parties. In this article, writer Erica Klarreich describes a few of the different types of fair division methods that exist--such as Fair Buy-Sell--and defines some of the properties of fair division methods. For example, a method is envy-free if "neither participant would willingly trade her share for the other share"; a method is equitable if all participants place the same value on their shares; and a method is considered to be efficient if there are no "other divisions that can improve some or all participants' shares without making anyone worse off." Mathematicians have proved that there is always a way to divide a piece of cake between two people that is envy-free, equitable, and efficient, even if there is "no simple algorithm for identifying it." However, "in some division problems, mathematicians have shown that no ideal split exists" and that different trade-offs are required, depending upon the type of division method.
See "Math Shall Set You Free--From Envy," by Erica Klarreich. Nautilus--Symmetry Issue (issue 13), 1 May 2014.
--- Claudia Clark
Lies, Damned Lies, and Quantum Computing, by Ben Pittman-Polletta
Given an arbitrary sequence of numbers, how can one tell if it is random? In this American Scientist feature, MIT quantum computer scientist Scott Aaronson attempts to answer this question, which I gather most mathematicians will find as infuriatingly ill-posed as I did. Probability theory tells us that the answer is "it depends"--every sequence of numbers is an output (even a highly probable output) of some tailored stochastic process or probability distribution--and, as Aaronson shows, the very same sequence of numbers is also the output of a suitably tailored deterministic process. Still, Aaronson makes a valiant effort to make rigorous the colloquial understanding of the word "random" to mean "patternless." For example, the sextuplets (3, 1, 4, 1, 5, 9) and (6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6) are both equally probable results of picking six digits (uniformly) at random. And yet, neither of them seems random in the colloquial sense, because there are patterns to be discovered in these sequences. As Aaronson explains, this intuition can be made rigorous by a quantity known as the "Kolmogorov complexity." The Kolmogorov complexity of a sequence x is is the minimum length (in bits) of a computer program which ouputs x. So, roughly speaking, the Kolmogorov complexity of a sequence of numbers is how difficult it is to describe that sequence of numbers. The above sequences, and their continuations--the first n digits of pi and the digit 6 repeated n times--all have low Kolmogorov complexity. A long sequence that is more "patternless" would have high Kolmogorov complexity, as any program outputting it would have to contain nearly as many bits as required to write down the sequence itself. Unfortunately, the Kolmogorov complexity (as you might gather from that minimum over all computer programs) is not itself computable. So, there is no guaranteed way to determine the Kolmogorov complexity of a sequence, and the Kolmogorov complexity cannot be the general answer to the question of how to determine a "random" number. But randomness and patternlessness are aligned--ever more so as you get to longer and longer sequences. Indeed, as there are roughly twice as many n-bit sequences as there are n-bit computer programs, a simple counting argument shows that an arbitrary sequence is likely to have a Kolmogorov complexity greater than or equal to its length. So, as Aaronson points out, "if something is random, then it's random"--where "random" might, in fact, have two different meanings.
It is at this somewhat interesting and only mildly meaningless point that Aaronson has the bad manners to introduce us to the BosonSampler. A BosonSampler is an optical device that flings a pack of photons down a maze of waveguides and measures the (random) distribution of places they end up. "The problem," says Aaronson, "is that we don't know how to do anything useful with a BosonSampler." This rather serious problem seems to be compounded by the fact that BosonSamplers are very hard to simulate, but this weakness turns out to be the misbegotten devices' single strength. For the BosonSampler, a kind of quantum computer, can be used--to prove that quantum computers can do something classical computers can't! Indeed, the first BosonSampler--a three-photon device--was recently built, and its output found to match theoretical predictions ("Photonic Boson Sampling in a Tunable Circuit," by Matthew A. Broome, et al). According to Aaronson, the construction of a BosonSampler large enough to exceed the capabilities of a classical computer awaits only the resolution of "major experimental challenges." At this point you may be tempted to condemn BosonSamplers as dangerously ill-considered objects with entirely appropriate initials. If you did, though, you would miss Aaronson's daring final question: If there were a BosonSampler, how could we be sure it was working? I'll rephrase that for the incredulous: If there were a machine that claimed to be sampling from the possible configurations of a BosonSampler passing a large number of photons, how could we be sure it wasn't just feeding us the digits of pi? It turns out that even this is a sticky wicket, when it comes to BosonSamplers. The answer, according to Aaronson, is to require the BosonSampler to return a configuration that has both a large probability of occurrence, and a large Kolmogorov complexity. This turns a "sampling" problem into a "searching" problem--something that Aaronson has recently proved can always be done. If you want to know how these searching problems are to be executed, given that the Kolmogorov complexity is uncomputable, then you have a more patient and tenacious mind than I, and I suggest you take up quantum computing.
See "The Quest for Randomness," by Scott Aaronson, for American Scientist, May-June 2014. [Part two, "Quantum Randomness," is in the July-August issue.]
--- Ben Pittman-Polletta (posted 6/3/14)
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Dr. Margie PinnellKettering Labs 361
Phone: 937-229-2835
Design Projects
Following the principles of the SQF, as a RET participant, you are introduced to the engineering design process through inquiry- and project-based learning. Initially, the design teams tackle an introductory design-and-build challenge, such as a table of cardboard and glue sticks with specified dimensions and support. With this project, teams are guided through the process of ideation and brainstorming, product research and conceptual design, decision analysis and embodiment design, final design, prototype building and testing, product redesign, and project reporting and presentation by faculty mentors, teammates and peers who also provide critical feedback. After this project, teams are introduced to an industry mentor or community partner who provides details for a final project for completion during the remaining five weeks of our program.
The following were our pilot-year projects:
- Design of LED lights to grow algae for bio-fuel applications (industry mentor – Algaeventure).
- Design of calibration tables for force measuring sensors (industry mentor- Bertec Corporation).
- Design of a vision RL power/status indicator system (industry mentor – Persistent Surveillance Systems, Inc.).
- Design sustainable energy solutions for the homeless (community partner – St. Vincent DePaul).
- Design sustainable water collection and conveyance system for a community garden (Community Partner –Five Rivers MetroParks Community Gardens Program).
During our pilot year, some teams arranged additional tours with their industry sponsor or community partner as part of their research process, and most teams maintained contact with their sponsor/partner during their five-week project in order to receive valuable feedback and additional ideas.
Our program provides you with access to University library resources along with tools and techniques needed for your successful design outcome. In addition, faculty mentors work with you and your team regularly and guide you through prototype testing to ensure success. And, a technical editor reviews and helps you and your team edit and revise team project reports.
On the last day, all teams participate in a Design Symposium, so our campus community, community partners and industry sponsors can share in your innovative design and curriculum development successes.


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Reporting from Berkeley — —
Need juice for a dying iPod? You may soon be able to plug the gadget into a shirt, dance the electric slide and be good to go.
Researchers at UC Berkeley are perfecting microscopic fibers that can produce electricity from simple body motions such as bending, stretching and twisting. The filaments, which resemble tiny fishing lines, may soon be woven into clothing and sold as the ultimate portable generators.


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Updated Jan 26, 2013 - 7:02 pm
Luis Gonzalez: 'There were times' where Justin Upton didn't provide leadership
Originally published: Jan 24, 2013 - 5:15 pm
Gonzalez, having been part of the D-backs' lone World Series team back in 2001, says that while Justin Upton is a great player, the organization had a desire to add more lunch pail-type assets in the offseason.
So while Thursday's decision to move Upton in a blockbuster deal with the Atlanta Braves might have ruffled some feathers in the Valley, the five-time All-Star said the D-backs received exactly what they were looking for.
"What we've gained now, is a couple of blue collar guys that are going to play the D-back way," Gonzalez, now a special assistant to team president and CEO Derrick Hall, told Arizona Sports 620's Doug & Wolf Thursday. "Which means they'll go out there and play hard, give everything they've got.
"We love Justin Upton, of course the fans are going to miss him and we're going to miss him... But at the same time, this is a business in baseball. What we are trying to do is make our team better."
While Gonzalez said the team will miss Upton's skill set both in the field and at the plate, the former D-back was rather candid in suggesting that at times the star outfielder was his own worst enemy.
"There were times when Justin was on, he was a superstar," said Gonzalez. "But when he was off, he would get in his shell and would have those slumps and those streaks.
"When you're in the middle of that lineup you have to be that rock every day when you're going good and when you're going bad. You have to provide that leadership for your teammates... Personally for me, there were times where (Justin) didn't have that."
Although he understands why plenty of the attention has been centered around the 25-year-old outfielder since the deal was announced Thursday morning, Gonzalez said fans should be happy with what the organization received in return.
"I think we got a pretty good player in return," said Gonzalez referring to former All-Star Martin Prado, who played five positions with the Braves. "Not only that, but we have that depth in the outfield, and we are able to explore different options.
"Maybe, people think we got short-changed in the deal. But in the long run for us, we've added depth with not only two young pitchers (Randall Delgado and Zeke Spruill), but another young shortstop (Nick Ahmed) in the deal. We've continued to stockpile what we have."
Dave Dulberg, Web Content Editor - ArizonaSports.com
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