FieldNotes: Amplituhedron and the dissection of cats

Dissecting Cats With High School Students by Rachel Fairbank at Billfold:

As a first-year high school anatomy teacher I got into the habit of hiding my cat dissection manual under a pile of books whenever guests came to my house. Toby, my big orange tomcat, liked sleeping on its crumpled, stained pages. I worried that people might look at the sketches of cats in varying stages of dissection and get the wrong idea. My guests needn’t have worried: Toby was safe from my scalpel. The 30 dead cats stuffed in bins in my classroom were not........

A Jewel at the Heart of Quantum Physics by Natalie Wolchover at Quanta Magazine:

Physicists have discovered a jewel-like geometric object that dramatically simplifies calculations of particle interactions and challenges the notion that space and time are fundamental components of reality. “This is completely new and very much simpler than anything that has been done before,” said Andrew Hodges, a mathematical physicist at Oxford University who has been following the work. The revelation that particle interactions, the most basic events in nature, may be consequences of geometry significantly advances a decades-long effort to reformulate quantum field theory, the body of laws describing elementary particles and their interactions. Interactions that were previously calculated with mathematical formulas thousands of terms long can now be described by computing the volume of the corresponding jewel-like “amplituhedron,” which yields an equivalent one-term expression.........

Big Data Is for the Birds by M.R. O’Connor at Nautilus:

In Ithaca, New York, a virtual machine in a laboratory at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology sits in the night, humming. The machine’s name is Bubo, after the genus for horned owls. About every five minutes, Bubo grabs an image from Northeast weather radar stations, and feeds it through a pipeline of artificial-intelligence algorithms. What does this radar image show me? Bubo asks. Is it rain? Are these insects? Could it be pollen? Bubo doesn’t care about those things; all it wants to see are birds in flight. To find them, Bubo analyzes the velocity and direction of targets seen by the radar station. Bubo knows birds have a velocity different from wind and insects, and filters those out. Now Bubo sees only birds. But how dense are they? How fast are they going? How high in the sky are they flying? The machine makes these calculations and creates an image of countless birds in flight, traveling under cover of darkness.........

Autism Speaks needs to do a lot more listening by Steve Silberman at LA Times:

For a couple of decades now, Americans have been engaged in a wide-ranging and often heated conversation about autism. About what causes it, whether there's more of it than there used to be, and whether it can be cured. About whether autism is a disorder, a disability or a different way of being. About whether the condition is overdiagnosed or underdiagnosed, and which early interventions are most helpful for children........

Ways to think about cars by Benedict Evans at Benedict Evans blog:

Cars are going to change a lot in the next few decades. Electricity on one hand and software on the other change what a car is, how it gets made and who might own one. They might also change the key players. As is often the case when an industry is going to be turned upside-down, there are actually a number of separate things happening, which feed into each other and accelerate the pace of change. .........

A Tale of Two Elephants by John J. McKay at Mammoth Tales:

In early December 1695, a group of workmen were excavating some fine white sand from a quarry between the villages of Burgtonna and Gräfentonna, in Thuringia. The sand was valuable in a number of crafts, including filling hourglasses, so the workers were careful in their excavations. You probably know what happened next. They uncovered “some awful big bones” and sent word to the castle to find out what to do with them. Luckily for us, the lord of the land, Duke Fredrick II of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, was an enlightened despot who was both a patron of the arts and sciences and an avid collector. More than simply ordering the workmen to save the bones for his collections, he had them leave the bones in place and slowly uncover them. This modern style excavation would be an under-appreciated milestone in the development of paleontology.......

The end of walking by Antonia Malchik at Aeon:

......Human beings evolved to move at a pace of three miles an hour, breathing easily, hands free, seeking food and shade. We tread without thinking, toes pushing off from the soil, cheeks lifted to catch the air, dirt caking in our nostrils. Walking is the first legacy of our post-ape genes, the trait that makes us most human: H. sapiens came only after H. erectus. We walked, and began our intellectual toddle toward the Anthropocene.......

The Embalmed Soldiers of the American Civil War by Dr Lindsey Fitzharris at The Chirurgeon's Apprentice:

Thomas Holmes—the “Father of Modern Embalming”—had an unusual way of advertising his services throughout the American Civil War. During one of his many excursions to the front, the surgeon plucked the body of an unknown soldier from the battlefield and brought it back to Washington D.C. There, he washed the corpse and injected it with his patented “safe” embalming fluid, which he claimed was free from toxins. He then dressed the soldier in a fine set of clothes and put him on display in his shop window for all to see......

Science Isn’t Broken by Christie Aschwanden at FiveThirtyEight:

.......If we’re going to rely on science as a means for reaching the truth — and it’s still the best tool we have — it’s important that we understand and respect just how difficult it is to get a rigorous result. I could pontificate about all the reasons why science is arduous, but instead I’m going to let you experience one of them for yourself. Welcome to the wild world of p-hacking..........

No, It's Not All How They're Raised by Trish McMillan Loehr at :

.............If you truly believe "it's all how they're raised," no stray shelter dog or abused dog would be safe to place in a home. I've worked with many animal victims of abuse -- some have issues, it's true -- but many of them are just as resilient as Theodore. Occasionally, an idyllic puppyhood still results in a dangerously aggressive adult dog. I've met those, too. And most dogs fall somewhere in between these extremes. Environment counts, but so do genes. Ultimately, all dogs are individuals, and that's where we need to meet them..............

The Widening World of Hand-Picked Truths by George Johnson at New York Times:

..........Altruism and compassion toward the feelings of others represent the best of human impulses. And it is good to continually challenge rigid categories and entrenched beliefs. But that comes at a sacrifice when the subjective is elevated over the assumption that lurking out there is some kind of real world. The widening gyre of beliefs is accelerated by the otherwise liberating Internet. At the same time it expands the reach of every mind, it channels debate into clashing memes, often no longer than 140 characters, that force people to extremes and trap them in self-reinforcing bubbles of thought......

Return of the oppressed by Peter Turchin at Aeon:

..........What, then, explains the rapid growth of top fortunes in the US over the past 30 years? Why did the wages of unskilled workers stagnate or decline? What accounts for the bitterness of election rhetoric in the US, the growing legislative gridlock, the rampant political polarisation? My answer is that all of these trends are part of a complex and interlocking system. I don’t just mean that everything affects everything else; that would be vacuous. Rather, that cliodynamic theory can tell us specifically how demographic, economic and cultural variables relate to one another, and how their interactions generate social change. Cliodynamics also explains why historical reversals in such diverse areas as economics and culture happen at roughly similar times. The theory of secular cycles was developed using data from historical societies, but it looks like it can provide answers to questions about our own society..........

And if that is not enough, more readings for later this weekend:

There’s a big change coming to how we power our homes – and it isn’t solar or batteries by Chris Mooney at Washington Post
'Clean food' is a dangerous fad by Isabel Hardman and Lara Prendergast at Spectator
4 recordings that prove you can hear environmental change as well as see it by Phil Edwards at Vox
Elon Musk: The World’s Raddest Man and How Tesla Will Change The World by Tim Urban at Wait But Why
Why Failure Hits Girls So Hard by Rachel Simmons at Time
Holocaust trauma: is it epigenetically inherited? by Jerry Coyne at Why Evolution Is True
Another uninterpretable epigenetics study by Noah Snyder-Mackler at The Molecular Ecologist
Fertility Problems: Why Artificial Light Harms Chance of Pregnancy For Middle-Aged Women by Lizette Borreli at Medical Daily



These blood-loving spiders could help fight malaria by Rachel Feltman at Speaking of Science
What dementia ‘tsunami’? Your chances of getting it have dropped by Clare Wilson at New Scientist
Could the Microbiome Cure Eating Disorders? by Carrie Arnold at The Daily Beast
ADHD mystery: Claims of no attention deficit disorder in France challenged by Andrew Porterfield at Genetic Literacy Project
Can Bernie Sanders act like a progressive on GMOs, overcome tribal allegiances, embrace science? by David Warmflash at Genetic Literacy Project
When the Birds and the Bees Were Not Enough: Aristotle’s Masterpiece by Mary Fissell at Public Domain Review
How to Tell Science Stories with Maps by Greg Miller at The Open Notebook



The Most Depressing Discovery About the Brain, Ever by Marty Kaplan at AlterNet
What’s It Like to Get a Ph.D. in Science? by Tom McNeil at Slate
Panda Pregnancy: Pseudopregnancy by Suzanne Hall at San Diego Zoo
Irradiated Food Sounds Like a Terrible Thing. It’s Actually Really Good. by Kiera Butler at Mother Jones
Hurricane Katrina showed what "adapting to climate change" looks like by David Roberts at Vox
The obesity trend isn’t only affecting humans — chimps, pets, and lab rats are getting fatter too by Julia Belluz at Vox
Book Review: After Nature: A Politics for the Anthropocene by Steve Donoghue at Open Letters
Two Cheers for the Middle Ages! by Eric Christiansen at The New York Review of Books



Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe by Stefaan Blancke at Mind Matters
Rock Steady by Brian Switek at WSJ
“Disgusting” Bugs That Infested Burning Man Not Actually Disgusting by Brooke Borel at Popular Science
Going Viral: scientific storytelling with contagious ideas by Tash Reith-Banks at Notes & Theories
Food Goes ‘GMO Free’ With Same Ingredients by Ilan Brat at WSJ
Why Vegetables Get Freakish In The Land Of The Midnight Sun by Whitney Blair Wyckoff at The Salt
The Case for Teaching Ignorance by JAMIE HOLMES at New York Times
No, You Do Not Have to Drink 8 Glasses of Water a Day by Aaron E. Carroll at New York Times
The Great Boto Botch Job by Jason Bittel at onEarth
Four field anthropology and the “divorce” metaphor by ANDREW A. WHITE at University Affairs
The Missionary by Stan Rice at Honest Ab: Evolution and Related Topics
Disease du Jour by Eleanor Kellon, VMD at Horse Collaborative
Jay Whitacre and the Edible Battery by Debra Smit at Ozy
In science we trust… up to a point by Adam Rutherford at The Observer


Previously in this series:

FieldNotes: a view to spotted horses in the morning
FieldNotes: The Word For World is Blue (or is it Gold?)
FieldNotes: Golden Mean, polite middle-ground, and optimal numbers of legs.
FieldNotes: speeding up and slowing down time
FieldNotes: from Captain Ahab to Jeff Goldblum, chasing the giants
FieldNotes: this is not your grandparents' neuroscience!
FieldNotes: Brontosaurus in, Food Babe out.
FieldNotes: Rogue Microwave Ovens Call Home
FieldNotes: Let the sleeping apes lie
FieldNotes: one thing leads to another leads to another
FieldNotes: Seductive Allure of Seductive Allure of Neuroscience Explanations
FieldNotes: do African horses do flehmen at the sight of Derby hats?
FieldNotes: How The Bird Got Its Beak
FieldNotes: When Snakes Had Legs...
FieldNotes: Only before the bicameral mind evolved could people fall for Bohannon's cheap stunts
FieldNotes: Water, fire, origin of life, origin of cooking.
FieldNotes: Jurassic World, and other strange animals...
FieldNotes: Honey Badger Don’t Care!
FieldNotes: Hallucigenia is back on its head again.
FieldNotes: Poisonous and grieving quail, reclusive rail, and giants!
FieldNotes: When Snark was a Boojum
FieldNotes: In a grip of the legs of a snake
FieldNotes: Cecil and grief
FieldNotes: Science Notes and high school start times
FieldNotes: Earthly Octopus Genome, and Elephant Tracking


Images:
Artist’s rendering of the amplituhedron, by Andy Gilmore.