One day I came across something called ‘Null Physics’. I didn’t say that the following content is in any way related to ‘Null Physics’.

If a person creates a huge theory which unfortunately is not science, he/she cannot help it by defining a new science or by seeking supports from eastern philosophy before we agree with him/her and re-examine all the old science in the new way. The current cyclic experiment-induction-hypothesis-deduction-experiment rote of modern science is not the convention or interest exclusively of the west. This is not any nation’s own interest, but is for the sake of the reliability of knowledge. We (all human beings) now agree that knowledge is the most reliable it can be if it is the product of such cycle. If anytime we doubt about the reliability, a modification of the cycle or a new better procedure for more reliable knowledge is then expected, no matter from the east or the west. Currently we are well satisfied with this version of cycle. That’s why people don’t rely on TCM or ‘alternative treatments’.

The cycle must start with experiment. We don’t think about anything if we are blind and deaf and anything that’s paralytic. We think because we observe things. So thought starts only from observation, or experiment if human designed procedure is involved. We don’t start thinking from anything that’s not observed or practiced, for example, God, Zen, or anything alike. I mean we don’t do so as science. So if anyone do so it is not science. It does not prevent them to be philosophy or religion, though.

Even though we have a lot of the observed, knowledge should be a full name of judge if it is useful. In other words, the subject of the knowledge should be a collective noun, eg. ‘women’ rather than ‘my aunt, Jane’. But we never observe ‘women’. We only observe cases of women. So to bridge between experiments (flirting with many women) and useful knowledge (that says ‘All women are such an such’), we need different extent of induction. Here we have to first believe one thing, that the world works in logic, and to admit another, that induction is always illogical.

So the product of induction is not truth but what we called temporarily hypothesis which must subjected to further experiments. We don’t experiment on the hypothesis alone but also its deductions which are its logical products whose errors therefore immediately disprove the original hypothesis while whose correctness do not necessarily prove the original hypothesis. We are familiar with all these rules.

Therefore we know that we can never get the most reliable form of knowledge – truth. The product of the above mentioned procedure is still the most reliable ever possible not because we induce things from experiment in a safe way, but because we never stop testing what’s induced and always ready to disprove them. We do, however, care very much in the process of induction to maximize the possibility that the induction is widely applied. Bad inducing technique often produces products that are easily disproved. However, blaming the flaws in the inducing process of science does not harm the scientific conclusion if the latter is still standing against all experimental results.

Also, for different people to experiment on the one same argument, we need terms which is logically defined in an existing context so that when one argues about ‘women’ for example, all people should know what he/she is actually talking about, deduce correctly from that argument, and prevent experimenting on the wrong subject (men). If the terms in an argument is neither defined at all nor defined in an existing context the argument is neither understandable nor practical.

Maybe the only thing that is a belief in science is that the world works in logic. We define terms logically, induce logically, hypothesize logically, deduce logically, and design experiment logically. I cannot find any other reasons for this except that we believe the world works in logic. Anyone who doesn’t believe in this doesn’t believe in science, either, and is therefore impossible to ‘do’ any science.

Extreme Resistance of Superhydrophobic Surfaces to Impalement: Reversible Electrowetting Related to the Impacting/Bouncing Drop Test

Impalement is new to me, so as usual I Googled the word …

After googling I return to this title and found the word extreme rather frightening, and, not satisfied by only impalement, they even did the impacting/bouncing test!

But, still I wished that bouncing might be a good word so I googled this word again …

Was ACS website hacked by some mentally less abled people? Or I should just refer to Merriam-Webster which is always safe.

Kyle Finchsigmate started a discussion in his blog, The Chem Blog, about the photo-taking audience in the ACS meeting most of whom I believe were Chinese. I can confirm this tendency. When I started blogging I was informed more than one time about my risk of broking the IP rule. And I did learn a lot about this. Thanks those people who help me politely and with good wills!

But under Kyle’s post I saw a heated discussion of two camps, one of which strongly suspected the flaw of taking photo of slides and posters without permission. My understanding of this issue is simply that it is illegal. But I still don’t know why. What I know is one must be highly respectful to the law and ethics of other countries. But if it is allowed to discuss the reason of what’s legal or illegal, I cannot decide which camp to agree with.

The pro-photo-taking camp have the following arguments:

1. presenting unpublished results on a meeting is actually publishing them I cannot agree with this argument. At least in some situation you don’t publish your results by mentioning them in the meeting orally. Indeed some meetings will become an issue of a journal, some are even themselves journals. But as far as I know talks in ACS meeting do not appear on JACS. So if a great professor who have great idea but lazy graduate student presented his thought on such a meeting, another bad professor with but hardworking graduate students may transform the idea into an JACS paper much faster. It is acceptable, isn’t it, because the former great professor’s talk in the ACS meeting cannot be regarded as formal publication?
2. taking photos differs little from taking notes This is the argument I feel most confused with. People seem to see the difference between taking photos of the whole slides and directly remembering the whole slides with one’s memory. I think these two deeds are the same. If one of them is unethical, so is the other. They may be differ in law because if I directly remember all the things there will be no evidence that I have stolen other’s idea when I use. However, we are not testing the audience about their note taking speed or memory when we give a talk in a meeting esp. with unpublished results. Or, we are not, by forbidding the fastest way of taking things down but allowing the slower ones, creating a ‘statistical gradient’ of the efficiency of informational transmission among the audience. We are not wishing our unpublished result forgotten by those who write slowly while remembered by those who read the mind. There is no difference among all ways trying tho remember the whole slides. If you disagree photo taking you must disagree deliberately remembering or fast note taking, either.
3. You should not remember the whole slides but are allowed to remember some of them This confuses me more because it immediately provokes another question: which portion of slides can be remembered? particularly, the unpublished or the rest? If the unpublished results disclosed in a meeting are not wished to be remembered after the meeting then I can see no value of presenting them in the slides. But it makes sense to me if the whole slides are not supposed to be remembered after the meeting. In this situation, a science meeting is a type of recreation that have indirect but positive effect on both the speakers and the audience, very much like a club.
4. photo taking is understandable for those with language deficiency by ‘language deficiency I mean people like me when facing Scottish or Australian accent or simply French, not mentally ill people. But I still cannot say I agree with this argument which sound pretty like an excuse.

I can conclude with my view on this issue as what follow:

For the audience: If you are not intended to steal the speaker’s idea or results, you should be quite okay that you just remember the speaker’s name and wait for the formal publication under this name. There is no need to remember what’s on the slides in a meeting if that’s going to be published later. The purpose of giving a talk in a meeting is simply to inform people of future publication under a specific name.

For the speakers: If you fear that your unpublished results in the slides be stolen by the audience, present them in a meetings that require peer review of abstracts before acceptance and publish these abstracts, instead. This in effect makes any later publication of the same results plagiarism, doen’t it?

There some also some comments that mentioned the way of thinking in a different country which actually imply a curiosity why the Chinese people aren’t born to respect copyrights. The reason is simple under this wonder. Is it because Chinese speakers have little or no really unpublished (high in originality) results to fear of plagiarism? Or Chinese listeners have nothing to produce if they don’t copy works by others? Well although it is not all the cases this tendency is still exist while diminishing. But another factor which is more profound is seldom seen mentioned, that the Chinese people have a weak convention of capitalism in which personal possession is highly respected as a form of his/her money. There is indeed a Chinese saying that taking thing away without permission is actually being a thief (不问自取是为贼也), but people here seem to feel much less guilty if the things the take away without permission is in an intellectual form. I think the difference is in the default state of ethics when it comes to intellectual properties, when there is no instruction about the rights reserved from the author yet. By default all rights are reserved by the author without specific instruction in the context of western society. But it seems not the case in China. Now the Chinese government are taking great efforts forcing the law of intellectual properties, with the ‘right’ default defined, effecting among the citizens but with small success.

Nowadays information can be immediately transport to a great distance. Your speech may not only be photographed but also captured by a mobile phone which can broadcast the meeting live oversea. I think the authors should be more active in giving detailed instruction of the copyrights of their works in advance if they do want some kind of sharing or spreading of their ideas. Warn the audience explicitly with copyrights if the slides contain unpublished results, esp. when some of the audience are Asian who may not obey the same default as in other countries and regions. For other ways of rights reservation besides ‘all rights reserved’ one can refer to the ideas of Science Commons

This report appeared on the Science & Medicine section of LAT, which I appear to have subscribed. I love avoiding politics but, if sport is separated from politics, I might be allowed to talk about this a little.

The scientists cited in this report argued that ages can be easily pinpointed by forensic radiology:

Bones fuse together according to a well-documented schedule. For girls between the ages of 13 and 17, the best places to look are the knee, wrist, elbow and iliac crest on the pelvis, he said. The younger they are, the more obvious the evidence.

“A Caucasian girl is going to fuse her knee centers at about age 15; they’re going to fuse their iliac crest at about age 16; and part of the elbow will start fusing around 13 or 14,” he said. “That’s the way you do it.”

For the Chinese gymnasts, investigators would have to consult growth tables for Asian girls, Brogdon said.

Although confronted with some opposite opinion by other expert as

One complication with teenage girls is that strenuous exercise can suppress estrogen production, delaying bone development and making them appear to belong to a younger person, said Dr. Vicente Gilsanz, a professor of radiology and pediatrics at USC.

Brogdon still insisted that

But Brogdon said that by comparing multiple bones, “you could come pretty close” to distinguishing a 14-year-old from a 16-year-old.

More evidence can allegedly obtained from modern Odontology:

He [D. Senn] said he can pinpoint ages within 18 months using images of a person’s wisdom teeth, which start forming around age 9 and are not fully developed until around 19. For the Chinese gymnasts, Senn said, he would also look at their second molars, which grow until age 15 or so.

Finally, I think the most spicy sentence in this report is:

“If there is nothing to be afraid of, let their kids be X-rayed,” he said. “It’s almost incriminating if they don’t.”

Let’s reflect this issue with logic. IOC checks the gymnasts’ age by what shown from their passports, so China provided the ‘right’ passport for He Kexin. Therefore one should check the gymnasts’ age by what people can’t provide so easily, which is definitely not their passports, but others for example odontological evidences.

This suggestion should have been sent to IOC, and the latter should have revise its rules in the section of legal age of participants, and check all candidates of gymnastics with their teeth and bones for validity, rather than ages shown on their passports. Imaginably under the new rule some candidates may have been brushed off because of their bone condition even if their passports show 16-above ages.

Therefore China may then have chosen girls with the right teeth and bones instead of passports for a gold medal, if it is teeth and bones that concerns. And maybe another ‘He Kexin’ with perfect odontological condition but shown 14 only according to her passport may have been allowed on the uneven bars. Obviously this sounds more imaginable than feasible.

So why not both passports and bones should be checked together? Because letting the odontological perfect ‘He Kexin’ also be perfect in passport seems much less easier for China.

If China is deemed ‘always lying’, there is no hope that any kind of regulation could help it out of guilty. Sending He Kexin for X-ray study may not help much because the results may still be fabricated or manipulated by China. Even if it is not, new techniques besides forensic radiology/odontology that can ‘pinpoint ages’ within smaller range of error will keep being suggested by scientists like those in this LAT reports. And China should send He Kexin for all these up-coming tests successively. If not, it is still ‘almost incriminating’.

And I’m pretty sure the problem is not with the rule of IOC which is somewhat omissive, but the honesty of a nation which is deemed somewhat lacking. The problem is not whom the gold medal of female uneven bar should belong to – it belongs to China according to IOC and He Kexin’s passport – but whether China have manipulated, if not fabricated, the legal fact of her age, a problem of ethics, and, because of onus probandi and the infinitive suggestion of new sources of evidence possible, a problem that sets China in an endless suspect. China may still reserve one of its 51 golds which it wants, but lose the ethical acknowledgment globally, which it wants more.

New Scientist reported a discovery that Asian elephant “recognised that three plus four is greater than one plus five” (notice that NS uses ’-ise’! Hmm…). A youtube video is embedded on the web page.

I remember another elephant studies on its self-recognition in 2006 on PNAS. The elephant recognized from the mirror itself by touching its own head rather than the image in the mirror, video available here.

I also know something called “elephant paint” in the world. But I tend to believe those are trained, abused probably. But this video is one in youtube that I feel orz (orz is a Chinese word means just orz). The elephant just couldn’t understand why these men were so happy when it tapped that board repeatedly. It didn’t seem to have much fun doing this. It may not be angry with a plain board and want to paint something on it I guess. But one of the men said the painting was very Dumboism. The most hilarious scene is near the end of this video. They gave the elephant a sculpture of human head to paint and it just painted that head randomly as it did on a white board. They then let it push air through a weird tiny thing that will have some voice, and shake another thing that ring. They kept letting the elephant repeat things that it may feel more stupid than what it used to do everyday. At last the elephant couldn’t stand for all these and cried…

Oh I love elephants!

Richard talked about the ”-ize” problem which as I observe has been complained about from early in peoples comments. It is interesting no offense but watching English-speaking people talking about English especially in a Chinese person’s eyes (I fortunately avoided typing “in a Chinese people’s eye”). Warning: this post has no point!

I personally love using “ize”, but I admit “ise” catches my attention from time to time in a peculiar way. In my own illusion there are only two English’s, the British one and the American one, although Richard emphasised emphasized that there is no British English at all. High school English education in China proposes what’s known as British by sending all fibers and centers to hell, while Microsoft Word, a software developed by Americans (please allow such superficial recognition), keeps reminding the Chinese-version users by underlining every colourful neighbours. Obviously The MS corp. beats L. G. Alexander who once conquered Chinese English learners with his New Concept English.

The most cynical lesson of New Concept English I remember is situated in a bus. The man was headed for Trafalgar Square, somewhere I don’t know, but the ‘conductor’ (whom for quite a moment I can’t realize is actually the DRIVER) couldn’t change his note. He then asked several passengers for a pound of small notes who appeared to be of noble class and have no small notes. At last two dirty workers had some and helped change the poor one pound note. Then the two workers said something quite cynical to conclude the lesson I don’t remember but sort of “only poor people would have a lot of small notes to help you out”. Wow that’s amazingly cynicism scarcely seen expressed in any other English textbooks. The T Square which seem hard to get to and the cynic workers in the bus gave me the first impression of London.

Obviously “ize” was used throughout the four-volume New Concept English. Therefore I thought alternatively “ise” was American English and was then astonished by the popularity of the British’s “ize” in US contexts where people seldom use colourful fibre, until I read Richard’s post and get the essential point that there was is and will be no ‘ise’ at all, except in some crazily designed softwares (excluding MS Word). Hip Hip Hurray!

God bless those people (esp. some journal’s editors) who still know what I’m talking about even if I use only present tense with colourful fibre in neighbour centre.

I was told that body can’t be blank…

UPDATE: It seems that the blog system of NN can’t support so long a title:

Why must the in press paper of Polymer fail so much in appearance? (I’m going to type all text in the title just for fun.) In fact several journals I subscribe from ScienceDirect bare the same problem in their in press articles. The PDF files eat a lot of memory and slow down the acrobat reader severely when you scroll across many pages, as you have to, however, because all images are migrated in the bottom of the file! The images, moreover, suck even more memory when rasterizing themselves so you have to stop on each page you scroll across to wait for the images so that you can decide whether to continue scrolling. Why can these journals not follow the example of the ACS journals and Wiley InterScience whose ASAP articles and Early View look just the same as their published ones?

Interestingly, the system first generated the permanent link with the full content of the title, from “Why” to “ones?”, and try to refer to this link after you click the Submit button. The system notice me that my post was published successfully which is true, but failed to displayed the published post with the first generated link because the title of the post as well as its link have been cut, so on the same notice page it report an error of file not found.

Google has release a new service called Sites. It differs vaguely from Google Pages in purpose. Sites seems to encourage group editing or other wiki-like applications, while Pages serves for more general situations.

I can’t find anything to collaborate with anyone, currently. So I built a personal portal site. It’s bilingual. I’ll add more contents later.

Follow this youtube link. The man in the video is me.

UPDATE: You really do NOT want to hear this!

Image from Wikipedia.org under the item ‘Bacteial conjugation’

Sometimes a bacterium transfer its DNA duplication to another one by a bacterial conjugation (that is a tube-like protrusion from its membrane which injects into another bacterium) for mysterious purpose. Rosemary J. Redfield called this one form of sex that bacteria have. In this form a bacterium should first create the protrusion, or pilus, which can analogously called an ‘erection’. This process involves the spontaneous deformation of the bi-layer membrane of the cell, which, along with other membrane-directed cellular behaviors, have been a hot topic of biophysics for quite a long time. Recently, scientists from Jilin University of China experimentally observed a similar process in a kind of well-defined synthetic vesicles which protrude with time multiple tubular structures from the original spherical shape. Although the real mechanism of this process is not assured, The researchers believe that this finding maybe helpful for the understanding of the dynamics of the vesicle evolution in cellular events.

Image from Wikipedia.org under the item ‘Aerial refueling’

Similar scenes are there in aerial refueling.