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Watch the Ring of Fire Solar Eclipse!

May 9, 2013 by

Tonight and tomorrow there will be a spectacular ring of fire solar eclipse; however unless you live in Australia, Papua New Guinea, or the Solomon Island you’re out of luck and won’t be able to view it in real life. Still, thanks to technology anyone can stream the eclipse live online! The Los Angeles Times are featuring live coverage of the eclipse if you’re in an area where you won’t be able to see it in person.
For everything you need to know about this type of solar eclipse, Space.com has a cool video explaining what will be happening:

And finally, for all things space related, check out these PUP titles:
The Milky Way: An Insider’s Guide byWilliam H. Waller

This book offers an intimate guide to the Milky Way, taking readers on a grand tour of our home Galaxy’s structure, genesis, and evolution, based on the latest astronomical findings. In engaging language, it tells how the Milky Way congealed from blobs of gas and dark matter into a spinning starry abode brimming with diverse planetary systems–some of which may be hosting myriad life forms and perhaps even other technologically communicative species.
William Waller vividly describes the Milky Way as it appears in the night sky, acquainting readers with its key components and telling the history of our changing galactic perceptions. The ancients believed the Milky Way was a home for the gods. Today we know it is but one galaxy among billions of others in the observable universe. Within the Milky Way, ground-based and space-borne telescopes have revealed that our Solar System is not alone. Hundreds of other planetary systems share our tiny part of the vast Galaxy. We reside within a galactic ecosystem that is driven by the theatrics of the most massive stars as they blaze through their brilliant lives and dramatic deaths. Similarly effervescent ecosystems of hot young stars and fluorescing nebulae delineate the graceful spiral arms in our Galaxy’s swirling disk. Beyond the disk, the spheroidal halo hosts the ponderous–and still mysterious–dark matter that outweighs everything else. Another dark mystery lurks deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole has produced bizarre phenomena seen at multiple wavelengths.
Waller makes the case that our very existence is inextricably linked to the Galaxy that spawned us. Through this book, readers can become well-informed galactic “insiders”–ready to imagine humanity’s next steps as fully engaged citizens of the Milky Way.

Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us by Donald K. Yeomans

Of all the natural disasters that could befall us, only an Earth impact by a large comet or asteroid has the potential to end civilization in a single blow. Yet these near-Earth objects also offer tantalizing clues to our solar system’s origins, and someday could even serve as stepping-stones for space exploration. In this book, Donald Yeomans introduces readers to the science of near-Earth objects–its history, applications, and ongoing quest to find near-Earth objects before they find us.
In its course around the sun, the Earth passes through a veritable shooting gallery of millions of nearby comets and asteroids. One such asteroid is thought to have plunged into our planet sixty-five million years ago, triggering a global catastrophe that killed off the dinosaurs. Yeomans provides an up-to-date and accessible guide for understanding the threats posed by near-Earth objects, and also explains how early collisions with them delivered the ingredients that made life on Earth possible. He shows how later impacts spurred evolution, allowing only the most adaptable species to thrive–in fact, we humans may owe our very existence to objects that struck our planet.
Yeomans takes readers behind the scenes of today’s efforts to find, track, and study near-Earth objects. He shows how the same comets and asteroids most likely to collide with us could also be mined for precious natural resources like water and oxygen, and used as watering holes and fueling stations for expeditions to Mars and the outermost reaches of our solar system.

Filed Under: Astronomy and Cosmology, Events, In the News, Twitter

What’s for Dinner in the Milky Way

May 9, 2013 by

While for dinner tonight I am planning on eating some pizza as per usual, the Milky Way devours hot gas.

The Register reports that “the European Space Agency’s Herschel telescope has captured far-infrared images which appear to show the black hole sucking in a huge cloud of gas.” The images show the Milky Way’s black hole eating up hot gas like I’ll be eating up my pizza tonight.

Image via www.esa.int

 

INSATIABLE black hole in Milky Way’s heart crams hot gas into cavity

Space boffins have suggested the supermassive black hole at the centre of our universe may have a powerful appetite for hot gas.

The European Space Agency’s Herschel telescope has captured far-infrared images which appear to show the black hole sucking in a huge cloud of gas.

One astronomer said it looked as if the hole was “cooking its dinner”.

Set in a region known as Sagittarius A* at the middle of the Milky Way, the scarily huge hole has a mass of four million times that of our sun and is about 26,000 light-years away from earth. Nonetheless, this is by far the closest supermassive hole and is a source of fascination for space scientists.

Now the boffins hope their discovery will allow them to learn something about these interstallar maws.

“The black hole appears to be devouring the gas,” said Paul Goldsmith, the U.S. project scientist for Herschel at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which assists the ESA with their Herschel mission. “This will teach us about how supermassive black holes grow.”

Read the complete article here: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/08/black_hole_milky_way_gas/

For more on the mysteries of the Milky Way, check out this new book exploring all aspects of our home galaxy.

The Milky Way: An Insider’s Guide by William Waller

This book offers an intimate guide to the Milky Way, taking readers on a grand tour of our home Galaxy’s structure, genesis, and evolution, based on the latest astronomical findings. In engaging language, it tells how the Milky Way congealed from blobs of gas and dark matter into a spinning starry abode brimming with diverse planetary systems–some of which may be hosting myriad life forms and perhaps even other technologically communicative species.

William Waller vividly describes the Milky Way as it appears in the night sky, acquainting readers with its key components and telling the history of our changing galactic perceptions. The ancients believed the Milky Way was a home for the gods. Today we know it is but one galaxy among billions of others in the observable universe. Within the Milky Way, ground-based and space-borne telescopes have revealed that our Solar System is not alone. Hundreds of other planetary systems share our tiny part of the vast Galaxy. We reside within a galactic ecosystem that is driven by the theatrics of the most massive stars as they blaze through their brilliant lives and dramatic deaths. Similarly effervescent ecosystems of hot young stars and fluorescing nebulae delineate the graceful spiral arms in our Galaxy’s swirling disk. Beyond the disk, the spheroidal halo hosts the ponderous–and still mysterious–dark matter that outweighs everything else. Another dark mystery lurks deep in the heart of the Milky Way, where a supermassive black hole has produced bizarre phenomena seen at multiple wavelengths.

Filed Under: Astronomy and Cosmology, In the News, Twitter

The Battle to be Born: Sand Tiger Shark edition

May 7, 2013 by

It’s a dog-eat-dog world and inside a sand tiger shark’s womb, it’s a shark-eat-shark world. While inside the womb, baby sand tiger sharks duke it out with their fellow unborn baby tiger shark siblings to be the lone victor (and only child) in this real life Hunger Games battle to the death.

In a report by National Geographic, Ed Yong discusses new information about sand tiger sharks gathered from a new study.

“The first embryo to emerge in each uterus—the ‘hatchling’—always cannibalises its younger siblings. It’s so voracious that at least one scientist has been bitten by a sand tiger pup while unwisely sticking a finger in a pregnant female’s uterus.”

From their diet of nutrients from its mother and the bodies of their siblings, these cannibalistic sharks emerge from the womb at a size that is big enough so that they can protect themselves from predators. Makes you re-think your own sibling rivalry a bit.

Check out more on sharks and animal family life from PUP!

1. A Natural History of Families by Scott Forbes

Why do baby sharks, hyenas, and pelicans kill their siblings? Why do beetles and mice commit infanticide? Why are twins and birth defects more common in older human mothers? A Natural History of Families concisely examines what behavioral ecologists have discovered about family dynamics and what these insights might tell us about human biology and behavior. Scott Forbes’s engaging account describes an uneasy union among family members in which rivalry for resources often has dramatic and even fatal consequences.

In nature, parents invest resources and control the allocation of resources among their offspring to perpetuate their genetic lineage. Those families sometimes function as cooperative units, the nepotistic and loving havens we choose to identify with. In the natural world, however, dysfunctional familial behavior is disarmingly commonplace.

While explaining why infanticide, fratricide, and other seemingly antisocial behaviors are necessary, Forbes also uncovers several surprising applications to humans. Here the conflict begins in the moments following conception as embryos struggle to wrest control of pregnancy from the mother, and to wring more nourishment from her than she can spare, thus triggering morning sickness, diabetes, and high blood pressure. Mothers, in return, often spontaneously abort embryos with severe genetic defects, allowing for prenatal quality control of offspring.

Using a broad sweep of entertaining examples culled from the world of animals and humans, A Natural History of Families is a lively introduction to the behavioral ecology of the family.

2. Sharks of the World by Leonard Compagno, Marc Dando, & Sarah Fowler

Everyone’s heard of the Great Whites. But most people know little of the hundreds of other types of sharks that inhabit the world’s oceans. Written by two of the world’s leading authorities and superbly illustrated by wildlife artist Marc Dando, this is the first comprehensive field guide to all 440-plus shark species. Color plates illustrate all species, and detailed accounts include diagnostic line drawings and a distribution map for each species. Introductory chapters treat physiology, behavior, reproduction, ecology, diet, and sharks’ interrelationships with humans.

Filed Under: Birds and Natural History, In the News, Twitter

The Cicadas are Coming!

May 6, 2013 by

The weather is great, the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, and soon, the cicadas will be chirping, too. This year marks the end of a 17 year long life-cycle for the cicada genus magicicadas in the Northeast. After spending nearly two decades burrowed in the ground as nymphs, they are slated to spring out of the ground to mate and lay eggs for the next generation of cicadas.

These cicadas are part of the North American genus magicicadas that have one of the longest life spans of all insects. If you are near any place that has trees that have not been disturbed for the past 17 years, you can expect many cicadas to be flying around soon- though they will be flying around everywhere soon enough! When the ground reaches a toasty 64 degrees, cicadas that have burrowed deep in the ground around trees will emerge. Scientists are reporting that billions of cicadas will emerge very soon with the warm weather.

Many are dubbing the return of the cicadas as “Swarmageddon” because of the number of cicadas that are expected to emerge. Cicadas are harmless and won’t bite or sting you, though their loud buzzing noises (some as loud as a subway) will let you know that they have arrived.

As you wait out the cicada-storm, check out these PUP books on bugs!

1. Bugs Rule!: An Introduction to the World of Insects by Whitney Cranshaw & Richard Redak

Bugs Rule! provides a lively introduction to the biology and natural history of insects and their noninsect cousins, such as spiders, scorpions, and centipedes. This richly illustrated textbook features more than 830 color photos, a concise overview of the basics of entomology, and numerous sidebars that highlight and explain key points. Detailed chapters cover each of the major insect groups, describing their physiology, behaviors, feeding habits, reproduction, human interactions, and more.

Ideal for nonscience majors and anyone seeking to learn more about insects and their arthropod relatives, Bugs Rule! offers a one-of-a-kind gateway into the world of these amazing creatures.

Another book by Cranshaw that is currently available features an entire chapter on cicadas among many other bugs.

2. Garden Insects of North America: The Ultimate Guide to Backyard Bugs by Whitney Cranshaw

Garden Insects of North America is the most comprehensive and user-friendly guide to the common insects and mites affecting yard and garden plants in North America. In a manner no previous book has come close to achieving, through full-color photos and concise, clear, scientifically accurate text, it describes the vast majority of species associated with shade trees and shrubs, turfgrass, flowers and ornamental plants, vegetables, and fruits–1,420 of them, including crickets, katydids, fruit flies, mealybugs, moths, maggots, borers, aphids, ants, bees, and many, many more. For particularly abundant bugs adept at damaging garden plants, management tips are also included. Covering all of the continental United States and Canada, this is the definitive one-volume resource for amateur gardeners, insect lovers, and professional entomologists alike.

To ease identification, the book is organized by plant area affected (e.g., foliage, flowers, stems) and within that, by taxa. Close to a third of the species are primarily leaf chewers, with about the same number of sap suckers. Multiple photos of various life stages and typical plant symptoms are included for key species. The text, on the facing page, provides basic information on host plants, characteristic damage caused to plants, distribution, life history, habits, and, where necessary, how to keep “pests” in check–in short, the essentials to better understanding, appreciating, and tolerating these creatures.

Whether managing, studying, or simply observing insects, identification is the first step–and this book is the key. With it in hand, the marvelous microcosm right outside the house finally comes fully into view.

For more on cicada-watch 2013, Radiolab has a cool interactive map that is tracking cicada sightings along the East Coast. You can also check out this article over at New York Daily News for more information on the cicadas.

Have you seen any cicadas in your area?

Filed Under: Birds and Natural History, In the News, Twitter

Happy May!

May 1, 2013 by

May is finally here and with it comes some spring time weather here in Princeton and the end of the semester for me.  Around the world and throughout history, people have spent May 1st doing mainly one of two things: protesting or celebrating.

Today around the world laborers are spending the day protesting for labor rights. From France to Bangladesh, protestors celebrate international workers’ day by marching through the streets. In the United States there are also many protests and marches, but specifically there are many immigration labor rights rallies happening today.

In more recent years, May Day has been a day for immigration reform rallies. Today, immigrants and their allies protest throughout the country including in the San Jose, California area where in 2006 there were historic rallies that called for immigration reform. Read  up about labor and immigration in this country:

Labor Rights Are Civil Rights: Mexican American Workers in Twentieth-Century America by Zaragosa Vargas

In 1937, Mexican workers were among the strikers and supporters beaten, arrested, and murdered by Chicago policemen in the now infamous Republic Steel Mill Strike. Using this event as a springboard, Zaragosa Vargas embarks on the first full-scale history of the Mexican-American labor movement in twentieth-century America. Absorbing and meticulously researched, Labor Rights Are Civil Rightspaints a multifaceted portrait of the complexities and contours of the Mexican American struggle for equality from the 1930s to the postwar era.

Drawing on extensive archival research, Vargas focuses on the large Mexican American communities in Texas, Colorado, and California. As he explains, the Great Depression heightened the struggles of Spanish speaking blue-collar workers, and employers began to define citizenship to exclude Mexicans from political rights and erect barriers to resistance. Mexican Americans faced hostility and repatriation.

The mounting strife resulted in strikes by Mexican fruit and vegetable farmers. This collective action, combined with involvement in the Communist party, led Mexican workers to unionize. Vargas carefully illustrates how union mobilization in agriculture, tobacco, garment, and other industries became an important vehicle for achieving Mexican American labor and civil rights.

He details how interracial unionism proved successful in cross-border alliances, in fighting discriminatory hiring practices, in building local unions, in mobilizing against fascism and in fighting brutal racism. No longer willing to accept their inferior status, a rising Mexican American grassroots movement would utilize direct action to achieve equality.

Others celebrate the more medieval side of Mayday complete with dancing, music, and may poles. In many of Shakespeare’s works like A Midsummer’s Night Dream, Mayday is seen to be a guiding force for the play. C.L Barber discusses the importance of Mayday in all of Shakespeare’s comedies in this book of literary criticism:

Shakespeare’s Festive Comedy: A Study of Dramatic Form and Its Relation to Social Custom by C. L. Barber, with a new foreword by Stephen Greenblatt

In this classic work, acclaimed Shakespeare critic C. L. Barber argues that Elizabethan seasonal festivals such as May Day and Twelfth Night are the key to understanding Shakespeare’s comedies. Brilliantly interweaving anthropology, social history, and literary criticism, Barber traces the inward journey–psychological, bodily, spiritual–of the comedies: from confusion, raucous laughter, aching desire, and aggression, to harmony. Revealing the interplay between social custom and dramatic form, the book shows how the Elizabethan antithesis between everyday and holiday comes to life in the comedies’ combination of seriousness and levity.

So whether you are marching in a parade or dancing around a may pole, or even just spending the day outside in the sun, happy Mayday!

Filed Under: In the News, Latin American Studies, Political Science and International Relations, Twitter

Don Yeomans is one of TIME’s Most Influential

April 22, 2013 by

Don Yeomans, author of Near-Earth Objects: Finding Them Before They Find Us, is named one of TIME’s most influential people in the world! Yeomans has surely earned his spot on the list for his work with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab as they keep an eye on the sky to keep our world safe from near-earth objects- congratulations!

Don Yeomans- Pioneer

Don Yeomans is one of the reasons we can all sleep a little better at night. For over a decade, Don and I have been hunting for incoming asteroids that come too close to Earth, with Don leading the NASA effort to find and track them, while I focus via the B612 Foundation — named for the asteroid home of the Little Prince — on how to deflect them if necessary.

Every night, telescopes make thousands of asteroid observations which go to Don’s premier team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where that data is converted into information about the trajectory of the rocks years or even decades into the future.

One day, without question, it will be Don and his team who issue a warning to the world that it’s time to launch a deflection campaign to prevent an incalculable disaster. We know how things worked out for the dinosaurs; it takes a levelheaded leader like Don to spare us their fate.

Filed Under: Astronomy and Cosmology, In the News, Popular Science, Twitter

Jackie Robinson Day

April 15, 2013 by

April 15, 1947: a great day for baseball, a better day to break down barriers. Jackie Robinson made his professional baseball debut with the Brooklyn Dodgers on this day in 1947. The impact was not only prolific in terms of civil rights, but within the realm of the sports world, professional baseball gained a huge contender.

Today, Robinson’s courageous step into the national spotlight in becoming the first African American professional baseball player is celebrated through Major League Baseball’s Jackie Robinson Day. This year marks the fifth annual celebration that is recognized annually on April 15th- the day of Robinson’s major league debut. During every ball game today, all the uniformed personnel will be sporting Robinson’s iconic jersey number, 42.

Spring is in the air so naturally baseball season is in its prime. Head out to the ballpark and learn some more about what Robinson added to America’s favorite pastime!

1. Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime during the Civil War by George B. Kirsch

During the Civil War, Americans from homefront to battlefront played baseball as never before. While soldiers slaughtered each other over the country’s fate, players and fans struggled over the form of the national pastime. George Kirsch gives us a color commentary of the growth and transformation of baseball during the Civil War. He shows that the game was a vital part of the lives of many a soldier and civilian–and that baseball’s popularity had everything to do with surging American nationalism.

By 1860, baseball was poised to emerge as the American sport. Clubs in northeastern and a few southern cities played various forms of the game. Newspapers published statistics, and governing bodies set rules. But the Civil War years proved crucial in securing the game’s place in the American heart. Soldiers with bats in their rucksacks spread baseball to training camps, war prisons, and even front lines. As nationalist fervor heightened, baseball became patriotic. Fans honored it with the title of national pastime. War metaphors were commonplace in sports reporting, and charity games were scheduled. Decades later, Union general Abner Doubleday would be credited (wrongly) with baseball’s invention. The Civil War period also saw key developments in the sport itself, including the spread of the New York-style of play, the advent of revised pitching rules, and the growth of commercialism.

Kirsch recounts vivid stories of great players and describes soldiers playing ball to relieve boredom. He introduces entrepreneurs who preached the gospel of baseball, boosted female attendance, and found new ways to make money. We witness bitterly contested championships that enthralled whole cities. We watch African Americans embracing baseball despite official exclusion. And we see legends spring from the pens of early sportswriters.

Rich with anecdotes and surprising facts, this narrative of baseball’s coming-of-age reveals the remarkable extent to which America’s national pastime is bound up with the country’s defining event.

2. Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903-1953 by G. Edward White

At a time when many baseball fans wish for the game to return to a purer past, G. Edward White shows how seemingly irrational business decisions, inspired in part by the self-interest of the owners but also by their nostalgia for the game, transformed baseball into the national pastime. Not simply a professional sport, baseball has been treated as a focus of childhood rituals and an emblem of American individuality and fair play throughout much of the twentieth century. It started out, however, as a marginal urban sport associated with drinking and gambling. White describes its progression to an almost mythic status as an idyllic game, popular among people of all ages and classes. He then recounts the owner’s efforts, often supported by the legal system, to preserve this image.

Baseball grew up in the midst of urban industrialization during the Progressive Era, and the emerging steel and concrete baseball parks encapsulated feelings of neighborliness and associations with the rural leisure of bygone times. According to White, these nostalgic themes, together with personal financial concerns, guided owners toward practices that in retrospect appear unfair to players and detrimental to the progress of the game. Reserve clauses, blacklisting, and limiting franchise territories, for example, were meant to keep a consistent roster of players on a team, build fan loyalty, and maintain the game’s local flavor. These practices also violated anti-trust laws and significantly restricted the economic power of the players. Owners vigorously fought against innovations, ranging from the night games and radio broadcasts to the inclusion of African-American players. Nonetheless, the image of baseball as a spirited civic endeavor persisted, even in the face of outright corruption, as witnessed in the courts’ leniency toward the participants in the Black Sox scandal of 1919.

White’s story of baseball is intertwined with changes in technology and business in America and with changing attitudes toward race and ethnicity. The time is fast approaching, he concludes, when we must consider whether baseball is still regarded as the national pastime and whether protecting its image is worth the effort.

Filed Under: American History, In the News, Sports, Twitter

Happy Tax Day!

April 15, 2013 by

Today, paying taxes is just something we do. For the most part, we are compliant with taxes and rush to the post office to send them in so we can go enjoy our tax day freebies thanks to companies trying to put some joy into (and get some profit out of) this non-holiday.

Our colonial forefathers would probably use any expletive rather than the word ‘happy’ in front of the word ‘tax’. Read up on what the sentiment around taxes used to be like and how it helped start a revolution.

Taxation in Colonial America by Alvin Rabushka

Taxation in Colonial America examines life in the thirteen original American colonies through the revealing lens of the taxes levied on and by the colonists. Spanning the turbulent years from the founding of the Jamestown settlement to the outbreak of the American Revolution, Alvin Rabushka provides the definitive history of taxation in the colonial era, and sets it against the backdrop of enormous economic, political, and social upheaval in the colonies and Europe.

Rabushka shows how the colonists strove to minimize, avoid, and evade British and local taxation, and how they used tax incentives to foster settlement. He describes the systems of public finance they created to reduce taxation, and reveals how they gained control over taxes through elected representatives in colonial legislatures. Rabushka takes a comprehensive look at the external taxes imposed on the colonists by Britain, the Netherlands, and Sweden, as well as internal direct taxes like poll and income taxes. He examines indirect taxes like duties and tonnage fees, as well as county and town taxes, church and education taxes, bounties, and other charges. He links the types and amounts of taxes with the means of payment–be it gold coins, agricultural commodities, wampum, or furs–and he compares tax systems and burdens among the colonies and with Britain.

This book brings the colonial period to life in all its rich complexity, and shows how colonial attitudes toward taxation offer a unique window into the causes of the revolution.

Filed Under: American History, Economic History, Economics, In the News, Twitter

Leonhard Euler’s 306th Birthday Present is a Google Doodle

April 15, 2013 by

Today’s Google homepage is a doodle dedicated to the celebrated mathematician Leonhard Euler whose 306th birthday is today. While you may not know a lot about Euler, if you have ever taken a math class you have been exposed to his mathematical contributions. Among his many contributions, he has two numbers named after him- Euler’s Number (in calculus e) and Euler’s Constant (gamma). He is also the man behind ‘ f(x)’ and the use of the Greek letter π. Euler’s contributions do not end here and they have paved the way for today’s leading mathematicians and physicists.

Celebrate Euler’s birthday with some readings from PUP!

1. Dr. Euler’s Fabulous Formula: Cures Many Mathematical Ills by Paul J. Nahin

In the mid-eighteenth century, Swiss-born mathematician Leonhard Euler developed a formula so innovative and complex that it continues to inspire research, discussion, and even the occasional limerick. Dr. Euler’s Fabulous Formula shares the fascinating story of this groundbreaking formula–long regarded as the gold standard for mathematical beauty–and shows why it still lies at the heart of complex number theory.

This book is the sequel to Paul Nahin’s An Imaginary Tale: The Story of I [the square root of -1], which chronicled the events leading up to the discovery of one of mathematics’ most elusive numbers, the square root of minus one. Unlike the earlier book, which devoted a significant amount of space to the historical development of complex numbers, Dr. Euler begins with discussions of many sophisticated applications of complex numbers in pure and applied mathematics, and to electronic technology. The topics covered span a huge range, from a never-before-told tale of an encounter between the famous mathematician G. H. Hardy and the physicist Arthur Schuster, to a discussion of the theoretical basis for single-sideband AM radio, to the design of chase-and-escape problems.

The book is accessible to any reader with the equivalent of the first two years of college mathematics (calculus and differential equations), and it promises to inspire new applications for years to come. Or as Nahin writes in the book’s preface: To mathematicians ten thousand years hence, “Euler’s formula will still be beautiful and stunning and untarnished by time.”

Paul J. Nahin is the author of many best-selling popular math books, including An Imaginary Tale, Digital Dice, Chases and Escapes, When Least Is Best, Duelling Idiots and Other Probability Puzzlers, and Mrs. Perkins’s Electric Quilt (all Princeton). He is professor emeritus of electrical engineering at the University of New Hampshire.

2. Gamma: Exploring Euler’s Constant by Julian Havil

Among the myriad of constants that appear in mathematics, p, e, and i are the most familiar. Following closely behind is g, or gamma, a constant that arises in many mathematical areas yet maintains a profound sense of mystery.

In a tantalizing blend of history and mathematics, Julian Havil takes the reader on a journey through logarithms and the harmonic series, the two defining elements of gamma, toward the first account of gamma’s place in mathematics.

Introduced by the Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler (1707-1783), who figures prominently in this book, gamma is defined as the limit of the sum of 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + . . . up to 1/n, minus the natural logarithm of n–the numerical value being 0.5772156. . .. But unlike its more celebrated colleagues p and e, the exact nature of gamma remains a mystery–we don’t even know if gamma can be expressed as a fraction.

Among the numerous topics that arise during this historical odyssey into fundamental mathematical ideas are the Prime Number Theorem and the most important open problem in mathematics today–the Riemann Hypothesis (though no proof of either is offered!).

Sure to be popular with not only students and instructors but all math aficionados, Gamma takes us through countries, centuries, lives, and works, unfolding along the way the stories of some remarkable mathematics from some remarkable mathematicians.

3. Euler’s Gem: The Polyhedron Formula and the Birth of Topology by David S. Richeson

Leonhard Euler’s polyhedron formula describes the structure of many objects–from soccer balls and gemstones to Buckminster Fuller’s buildings and giant all-carbon molecules. Yet Euler’s formula is so simple it can be explained to a child. Euler’s Gem tells the illuminating story of this indispensable mathematical idea.

From ancient Greek geometry to today’s cutting-edge research, Euler’s Gem celebrates the discovery of Euler’s beloved polyhedron formula and its far-reaching impact on topology, the study of shapes. In 1750, Euler observed that any polyhedron composed of V vertices, E edges, and F faces satisfies the equation V-E+F=2. David Richeson tells how the Greeks missed the formula entirely; how Descartes almost discovered it but fell short; how nineteenth-century mathematicians widened the formula’s scope in ways that Euler never envisioned by adapting it for use with doughnut shapes, smooth surfaces, and higher dimensional shapes; and how twentieth-century mathematicians discovered that every shape has its own Euler’s formula. Using wonderful examples and numerous illustrations, Richeson presents the formula’s many elegant and unexpected applications, such as showing why there is always some windless spot on earth, how to measure the acreage of a tree farm by counting trees, and how many crayons are needed to color any map.

Filled with a who’s who of brilliant mathematicians who questioned, refined, and contributed to a remarkable theorem’s development, Euler’s Gem will fascinate every mathematics enthusiast.

David S. Richeson is associate professor of mathematics at Dickinson College.

Filed Under: In the News, Mathematics, Twitter

Dinosaur Embryo Discovered

April 11, 2013 by

Stated simply, dinosaurs are cool. Jurassic Park may have given me nightmares once I was old enough to see it, but they are frighteningly majestic.

Paleontologists discovered fossilized dinosaur embryos in China recently making them the oldest preserved organic remains of a  budding dinosaur to date. The embryos are thought to be sauropodomorphs “because they are similar in many ways to intact embryonic skeletons of Massospondylus, a sauropodomorph that Reisz [paleontologist]  unearthed in South Africa in 2005″  according to Nature.com. The new discoveries will help scientists understand better how these dinosaurs grew to their full adult size.

4-11 dinos

Left: Sauropodomorph in egg. Image via the Huffington Post
Right: Adult sauropodomorph. Image via BBC

Unfortunately, it is confirmed that there is no probability that these embryos could result in dinosaur reincarnation.

To learn more about sauropodomorphs, The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs by Gregory S. Paul has an entire chapter devoted to them.

The Princeton Field Guide to Dinosaurs is a must-have for anyone who loves dinosaurs, from the amateur enthusiast to the professional paleontologist.

  • The first authoritative field guide to dinosaurs
  • Covers more than 735 species
  • Beautiful, large-format volume
  • Lavishly illustrated throughout, with more than 600 color and black-and-white drawings and figures, including:
  • More than 130 color life studies, including scenic views
  • Close to 450 skeletal, skull, head, and muscle drawings
  • 8 color paleo-distribution maps
  • Color timeline
  • Describes anatomy, physiology, locomotion, reproduction, and growth of dinosaurs, as well as the origin of birds and the extinction of nonavian dinosaurs

And, while mosquitoes in fossilized amber can’t bring back dinosaurs, The Amber Forest: A Reconstruction of a Vanished World by George Poinar Jr., & Roberta Poinar brings to life the environment in which the dinosaurs lived.

In Jurassic Park, amber fossils provided the key to bringing dinosaurs back to life. Scientists in the movie extracted dinosaur blood from mosquitoes preserved for millions of years in amber–hardened tree resin–and used the blood’s DNA to revive the creatures that terrified audiences around the globe. In this book, George and Roberta Poinar use amber for a similar act of revival–only they bring back an entire ecosystem. The Poinars are world leaders in the study of amber fossils and have spent years examining the uniquely rich supply that has survived from the ancient forests of the Dominican Republic. They draw on their research here to reconstruct in words, drawings, and spectacular color photographs the ecosystem that existed on the island of Hispaniola between fifteen and forty-five million years ago. The result is the most accurate picture scientists have yet produced of any tropical forest of the past.

The specimens examined by the Poinars reflect amber’s extraordinary qualities as a medium for preservation. Millions of years ago, countless plants, invertebrates, and small vertebrates were trapped in the sticky resin that flowed from the trees of ancient forests and, as that resin hardened into translucent, golden amber, they were preserved in almost perfect condition. Samples analyzed and illustrated here include a wide range of insects and plants–many now extinct–as well as such vertebrates as frogs, lizards, birds, and small mammals. There are even frozen scenes of combat: an assassin bug grappling with a stingless bee, for example, and a spider attacking a termite. By examining these plants and animals and comparing them to related forms that exist today, the authors shed new light on the behavior of these organisms as well as the environment and climate in which they lived and died.

The Poinars present richly detailed drawings of how the forests once appeared. They discuss how and when life colonized Hispaniola and what caused some forms to become extinct. Along the way, they describe how amber is formed, how and where it has been preserved, and how it is mined, sold, and occasionally forged for profit today. The book is a beautifully written and produced homage to a remarkable, vanished world.

Filed Under: Biological Sciences, Earth Sciences, In the News, Twitter

Country/Rap Song on Race Relations

April 10, 2013 by

Brad Paisley and LL Cool J on the same track? That’s equally as strange as the Tim McGraw and Nelly duet in 2004′s “Over and Over”. Unlike that smooth song about heartbreak, however, Paisley and LL’s song has a much different topic. The new song is titled “Accidental Racist” and is causing quite a stir.

The song is supposed to be interpreted as a song about overcoming racial tensions caused by past events in American history. However, as is everything that exists, its message is subject to interpretation. Race relations has never been an easy topic to discuss and many are calling the song an epic fail. The duo calls the song “a conversation starter.”

While the two may have had good intentions in writing this song, to get a better picture of race relations and how they are evolving, check out some of these PUP books.

Creating a New Racial Order: How Immigration, Multiracialism, Genomics, and the Young Can Remake Race in America by Jennifer L. Hochschild, Vesla M. Weaver & Traci R. Burch

The American racial order–the beliefs, institutions, and practices that organize relationships among the nation’s races and ethnicities–is undergoing its greatest transformation since the 1960s. Creating a New Racial Order takes a groundbreaking look at the reasons behind this dramatic change, and considers how different groups of Americans are being affected. Through revealing narrative and striking research, the authors show that the personal and political choices of Americans will be critical to how, and how much, racial hierarchy is redefined in decades to come.

The authors outline the components that make up a racial order and examine the specific mechanisms influencing group dynamics in the United States: immigration, multiracialism, genomic science, and generational change. Cumulatively, these mechanisms increase heterogeneity within each racial or ethnic group, and decrease the distance separating groups from each other. The authors show that individuals are moving across group boundaries, that genomic science is challenging the whole concept of race, and that economic variation within groups is increasing. Above all, young adults understand and practice race differently from their elders: their formative memories are 9/11, Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s election–not civil rights marches, riots, or the early stages of immigration. Blockages could stymie or distort these changes, however, so the authors point to essential policy and political choices.

Portraying a vision, not of a postracial America, but of a different racial America, Creating a New Racial Order examines how the structures of race and ethnicity are altering a nation.

Jennifer L. Hochschild is the Henry LaBarre Jayne Professor of Government, professor of African and African American studies, and Harvard College Professor at Harvard University. Vesla M. Weaver is an assistant professor in the Woodrow Wilson Department of Politics at the University of Virginia. Traci R. Burch is assistant professor of political science at Northwestern University and research professor at the American Bar Foundation.

What Is Your Race? The Census and Our Flawed Efforts to Classify Americans by Kenneth Prewitt

America is preoccupied with race statistics–perhaps more than any other nation. Do these statistics illuminate social reality and produce coherent social policy, or cloud that reality and confuse social policy? Does America still have a color line? Who is on which side? Does it have a different “race” line–the nativity line–separating the native born from the foreign born? You might expect to answer these and similar questions with the government’s “statistical races.” Not likely, observes Kenneth Prewitt, who shows why the way we count by race is flawed.

Prewitt calls for radical change. The nation needs to move beyond a race classification whose origins are in discredited eighteenth-century race-is-biology science, a classification that once defined Japanese and Chinese as separate races, but now combines them as a statistical “Asian race.” One that once tried to divide the “white race” into “good whites” and “bad whites,” and that today cannot distinguish descendants of Africans brought in chains four hundred years ago from children of Ethiopian parents who eagerly immigrated twenty years ago. Contrary to common sense, the classification says there are only two ethnicities in America–Hispanics and non-Hispanics. But if the old classification is cast aside, is there something better?

What Is Your Race? clearly lays out the steps that can take the nation from where it is to where it needs to be. It’s not an overnight task–particularly the explosive step of dropping today’s race question from the census–but Prewitt argues persuasively that radical change is technically and politically achievable, and morally necessary.

Kenneth Prewitt is the Carnegie Professor of Public Affairs at Columbia University. His books include The Hard Count: The Political and Social Challenges of Census Mobilization. He served as director of the U.S. Census Bureau from 1998 to 2001.

Not Even Past: Barack Obama and the Burden of Race by Thomas J. Sugrue

Barack Obama, in his acclaimed campaign speech discussing the troubling complexities of race in America today, quoted William Faulkner’s famous remark “The past isn’t dead and buried. In fact, it isn’t even past.” In Not Even Past, award-winning historian Thomas Sugrue examines the paradox of race in Obama’s America and how President Obama intends to deal with it.

Obama’s journey to the White House undoubtedly marks a watershed in the history of race in America. Yet even in what is being hailed as the post-civil rights era, racial divisions–particularly between blacks and whites–remain deeply entrenched in American life. Sugrue traces Obama’s evolving understanding of race and racial inequality throughout his career, from his early days as a community organizer in Chicago, to his time as an attorney and scholar, to his spectacular rise to power as a charismatic and savvy politician, to his dramatic presidential campaign. Sugrue looks at Obama’s place in the contested history of the civil rights struggle; his views about the root causes of black poverty in America; and the incredible challenges confronting his historic presidency.

Does Obama’s presidency signal the end of race in American life? In Not Even Past, a leading historian of civil rights, race, and urban America offers a revealing and unflinchingly honest assessment of the culture and politics of race in the age of Obama, and of our prospects for a postracial America.

Thomas J. Sugrue is the David Boies Professor of History and Professor of Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His books include Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North and The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton).

Filed Under: Cultural Studies, In the News, Music, Sociology, Twitter

Sports and Education during March Madness

April 8, 2013 by

If you’ve been keeping up with PUP’s March Mathness, you must have a much better bracket than I do. This year I chose to make my picks based on rankings and even took a little advice from ESPN commentators rather than doing my usual picks based on mascots and/or uniform colors. This has been by far my worst bracket ever. If I had made my picks mathematically with PUP or even based on school mascots, I bet I would have won this year’s pool. Tonight is the night, though- the final championship game.

Sometimes when I watch the games, I forget that the players are students like me- granted, they get national television exposure and I don’t. With all the press they receive not only from their own local media but national media like ESPN, it’s easy to forget that these players go to class and are in school getting a degree in addition to playing ball.

Besides the national exposure, there are plenty more differences between me and a recruited student athlete at a big time school. After tonight, the college sports world will continue with baseball and lacrosse season just to name a few prominent school sports, and these basketball players will head back to class- but what are the differences between the likes of Kevin Ware and me heading to class?

William Bowen, also author of Higher Education in the Digital Age, and Sarah Levin discussed these differences in their 2005 book Reclaiming the Game. From admissions into the school to grades in a class, the differences between a student athlete and a regular student are both vast and troubling.

Read below to preview Chapter 1 of Reclaiming the Game.

Chapter 1

IN NO OTHER country in the world is athletics so embedded within the institutional structure of higher education as in the United States. This is true at all levels of play, from the highly publicized big-time programs that compete under the Division I banner of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) to small college programs that are of interest primarily to their own campus and alumni/ae communities. But to many sports fans, “serious” college sports are thought of almost exclusively in terms of Division I competition between highly skilled teams composed of students holding athletic scholarships. It is no surprise, therefore, that the ranking of the best and worst college sports programs introduced by U.S. News & World Report is concerned, at least in the first instance, only with play at this level.1

However, as both university presidents and readers of the sports pages know well, the public exposure these programs receive is not always positive: the extensive reporting of events such as the resurgence of Notre Dame football, the bowl championship series, and basketball’s “March Madness” is regularly accompanied by commentary on the “dark side” of big-time sports.2 In 2001 the Knight Commission published a second report calling for reform of Division I sports in stronger terms than ever before,3 and a week does not pass without one or more stories detailing some new recruiting scandal or lapse in academic standards, debating gender equity issues, commenting on rowdy behavior by athletes and other students, or speculating on the future course of the NCAA.

The academic downside of big-time sports has been recognized for a very long time–indeed, for at least a century.4 The generally unstated–or at least untested–assumption has been that all is well at colleges and universities that provide no athletic scholarships and treat college sports as a part of campus life, not as mass entertainment. The positive contribution of athletics in these contexts is emphasized on the sports pages of student newspapers, alumni/ae magazines, and of official publications, which, taken together, provide a generally healthy corrective to a societal tendency to emphasize problems.5 The director of athletics and physical education at Bryn Mawr, Amy Campbell, surely spoke for many dedicated coaches and administrators at such schools when she wrote: “College athletics is a prized endeavor and one that enriches the experience of college students. The question should not be ‘at what price athletics’ but rather how to structure athletic programs that serve both the student athletic interest and the greater goals of liberal arts institutions.”6

We identify strongly with this pro-sports mindset and cannot imagine American college life without intercollegiate teams, playing fields, and vigorous intramural as well as recreational sports programs. But we are concerned that all is not well with athletic programs at many colleges and universities outside the orbit of big-time sports. One of our principal concerns is that widely publicized excesses and more subtle issues of balance and emphasis may undermine what many of us see as the beneficial impact of athletics. “Save us from our friends” is an old adage, and it has real applicability here. Zealous efforts to “improve programs,” boost won-lost records, and gain national prominence can have untoward effects that may erode the very values that athletic programs exist to promote–as well as the educational values that should be central to any college or university. From our perspective, the challenge is to strengthen, not weaken, the contribution that athletics makes to the overall educational experience of students and to the sense of “community” that is important not only to current students but also to graduates, faculty members, staff, and others who enjoy following college sports.

Click here for more of chapter 1.

Filed Under: Education, In the News, Sports, Twitter
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