h-index of 13!

Posted on January 2, 2009 by skullsinthestars

What a great way to start the new year!  According to the Web of Science, my h-index has climbed to 13 this week!

For those not familiar with it, the Hirsch index is a (rough) measure of the importance of one’s contributions to science.  It is defined as

A scientist has index h if h of his Np papers have at least h citations each, and the other (Np – h) papers have at most h citations each.

In my case, an h-index of 13 means that I have 13 papers which have been cited 13 or more times by other scientists.  This is excellent, since I only just passed the h-index 12 mark back in October.  As Wikipedia notes, my h-index is at a level exceeding what Hirsch thought would be good for tenure, and approaching that which he though would be good for being an APS fellow!

2008 was a good year for me in terms of citations.  I had 209 total citations for that year, which was my best year yet.  Counting a number of citations not registered properly due to mistakes, my best paper now has over 100 citations.

Here’s hoping that 2009 is an equally good year for me, if not better.  I’m only three citations away from getting my h-index to 14…

Posted in Personal | 1 Comment

13 days until The Giant’s Shoulders #7!

Posted on January 2, 2009 by skullsinthestars

The new year is supposedly a time for looking forward… I say it’s a great time for looking back!  There are 13 days left until the deadline for the 7th edition of The Giant’s Shoulders, to be held at The Questionable Authority.  Entries can be submitted through blogcarnival.com or directly to the host blog, as usual!  Let’s see a good crop of classic science blogging for the new year!

Posted in Science news | Leave a comment

John Wyndham’s The Midwich Cuckoos

Posted on January 2, 2009 by skullsinthestars

I’ve  been reading through a number of classic science fiction novels that were adapted into the classic science fiction movies of the 50s and 60s; so far, I’ve tackled John W. Campbell’s Who Goes There? (turned into The Thing From Another World) and John Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids (adapted into the movie of the same name).  Recently, I decided to tackle yet another Wyndham book, The Midwich Cuckoos (1957):

midwichcuckoos

Doesn’t sound familiar?  If not, you’re almost certainly familiar with the title of the movie version: Village of the Damned.  Let’s take a look…

Continue reading →

Posted in Horror | 2 Comments

Isaac Asimov’s How Did We Find Out About Black Holes

Posted on January 1, 2009 by skullsinthestars

About a month ago, Blake over at Science After Sunclipse posted an image of some of his early kindergarten science scribblings.  That got me thinking about my own early interest in science, and the sources that motivated me.  While visiting my Mom’s house in Chicago (and helping clear out some of my old junk from the basement, at her insistence), I came across a wonderful little book that had a big impact on me: Isaac Asimov’s charming little book, How Did We Find Out About Black Holes:

asimovblackhole

Continue reading →

Posted in Physics | 5 Comments

The Crystal World, by J.G. Ballard

Posted on December 31, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I’ve been slowly working my way through a huge collection of apocalyptic novels in preparation for another major blog post.  Amazon has clued in to my bleak, weird taste in books and recommended The Crystal World (1966), by J.G. Ballard:

Of all the apocalyptic novels I’ve read through so far, this one is unique in terms of its manner of doom as well as the focus of its plot.  In fact, as I note below, its plot struck an unusual chord with me that pretty much demanded that I read it.   Let’s take a look at The Crystal World in some more detail below…

Continue reading →

Posted in Horror, Weird fiction | 2 Comments

Home from the holidays!

Posted on December 29, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Whew!  The fiancée and I managed to get back home last night without any serious hassles.  We’ve been simply exhausted, though, because our trip involved three legs: a starting visit with my family in Chicago for a couple of days, followed by a trip to Montana to visit her family for a few days, and then a return to Chicago for a final day.

The return to Chicago got all screwed up due to unfavorably mild weather.  When we left Chicago the first time, there was several feet of snow on the ground and temperatures around -10 °F.  When we were returning, the temperature jumped to 60 °F, causing the snow to evaporate into a thick, ground-covering fog which blocked all flights into O’Hare and Midway Airports.  We spend a couple of restless hours sleep in a hotel in Minneapolis before catching a flight the next day.

With that delay, we have effectively been in airports and airplanes for three days in a row, which is not a happy occurrence.  Also, our luggage was lost and is now finally appearing at home.

Fortunately, we asked our kitties’ aunt Janet to knit us a few new toy rats for the cats, as the old one had been disemboweled in November.  I had left the carcass in the pantry in order to take a picture for a blog post, but apparently Zoe wasn’t done with it yet.  The pet-sitter must have left the pantry door slightly ajar, because we returned home to find several cat toys strewn across the floor, as well as this horrifying sight:

ratmassacre

Yep, the cats had thoroughly shredded a good section of the rat.  Thanks to Janet for the replacements!  They’ve already been put into action…

Once I get settled, I’ll hopefully get back into some more regular blogging again!

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

A Patrick Swayze Christmas, by MST3K

Posted on December 25, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I’ve got to continue the holiday tradition I started last Christmas; I therefore present, “A Patrick Swayze Christmas”:

In the spirit of the season, I offer sincere best wishes and ‘get well soon’ to Patrick Swayze, who has been fighting cancer.   He’s actually been filming a new series, The Beast, so I take that as a good sign.

Posted in Entertainment, Silliness | Leave a comment

Mr. Faraday’s (most excellent) experimental researches in electricity (1831)

Posted on December 25, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Michael Faraday (1791 – 1867) was a master of electricity.  His researches established may important results in electromagnetic theory, including some which are now so taken for granted that Faraday’s name is unfortunately not even thought of in connection with them.

I started to investigate Faraday’s writings while working on a post about Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s novel The Coming Race, which quotes Faraday to justify B-L’s fictional source of energy, vril.  This led me back through Faraday’s monumental collection of researches on electricity, a collection of over 25 articles published in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society under the blanket title, “Experimental researches in electricity.”

Faraday, though apparently not very sophisticated theoretically, was an amazing experimentalist.  Though I was originally looking for only a single quotation from his articles, I eventually downloaded a half-dozen of his works and I thought I’d discuss their details and their historical import.

We start with what is arguably his most important physical contribution, now known as Faraday’s law.  Faraday’s work opened the door to the discovery of Maxwell’s equations and the identification of light as an electromagnetic wave.  I find it most satisfying to review the experimental work knowing the underlying physical law, so we begin with a qualitative discussion of the “need to know” information concerning electricity, magnetism, and Faraday’s law.

Continue reading →

Posted in History of science, Physics | 28 Comments

Announcing the usual holiday slowdown…

Posted on December 19, 2008 by skullsinthestars

Tomorrow, I head off into the great abyss… visiting relatives for the holidays! (Just kidding, everyone!)  I’m going to try and post a few things of substance while I’m away, but I’m sure I’ll get less done than I expect.

Bear with me, though; in the works are posts on:

  • Some detailed looks at Michael Faraday’s uber-cool work on electricity and magnetism, from the mid-1800s,
  • A discussion of optical caustics and ‘natural focusing’,
  • A survey of a bunch of horror fiction relating to the apocalypse (damn, there’s a lot of those),
  • A discussion/review of books by people I know,
  • and a return to my posts on relativity!

By the way, I noted that my blog stats had passed the 100k mark a couple of days ago thanks to StumbleUpon.  Now that same math post was picked up by what appears to be the Polish version of StumbleUpon, and I just passed 160k page views!  Many thanks to all who stopped by for a read!

Oh, and Merry Christmas and a Happy Monkey!

Posted in Personal | Leave a comment

100k page view milestone!

Posted on December 17, 2008 by skullsinthestars

I passed another blogging milestone several days ago — 100,000 total page views!   The funny thing:  on the 13th, I was still at 84,000.  Then someone put my “Spot the math errors!” post on StumbleUpon (thanks for that, whoever did it!), and I made up the difference within 24 hours.  Think about it: 16% of my total page views for a year and a half of blogging came from one day.  As of this post, I now have 129,000 views.

The internets sure are weird.

Of course, now the plot of my daily blog stats will be totally useless, until next month:

crazystats

Posted in Personal | 5 Comments