地球上最大的生物

見到標題相信不少人第一時間想到鯨魚吧，那的確是動物界中第一巨無霸，不過生物不只包括動物，又或者植物，地球上最大這個名銜屬於非動非植的蘑菇！那是一隻在美國俄勒岡州「居住」的蜜糖菌，全長2.4英里，年齡估計介乎1900至8650歲，當然也是地球上最老的生物！

講起地球上最大，讀到這篇文章介紹最大的兩棲類動物原來在南中國，正式名稱是中國大鯢，俗稱娃娃魚，相信就是金庸小說射鵰入面瑛姑要捉那條。

非州無老虎，中國無獅子

早一陣子提起有一位有學問的名人（台北市長）說非州有老虎，原來是錯的；而喜歡舞獅的中國人國內亦沒有獅子！其實亞洲僅有的獅子也是在印度吉爾獅子保護區（Gir Lion Sanctuary）「苟延殘喘」，歷史上的亞洲獅有分印度亞種和波斯亞種，前者已消失，後者是印度政府由伊朗引入，薩桑吉爾（Sasan Gir）人由當初8隻養到今天的523隻，功勞不少，值得表揚。而一隻本土沒有的動物能夠成為常見的形像（例如香港滙豐銀行的石獅子），皆因獅子在佛經中是守護神是力量的化身。

日全蝕

PBS Nova這個系列當中介紹天文的紀錄片相當有水準，早前看了一集Eclipse Over America，講的是二零一七年八月的日全蝕，不經不覺原來已是兩年前的事，還記得當時十分哄動！本片介紹了三組科學家分別利用這次機會去研究日冕，日冕平時被強烈陽光蓋過所以不易觀測。其實古巴比倫科學家在二千多年前已紀錄並發現了日蝕每十八年在地球發生的規律，皆因當時迷信日蝕會影響帝皇壽命，必須在日蝕發生時找個平民坐上皇座頂替，然後在下次月圓時取其性命，名付其實是找替死鬼！不過當時還未預測到日蝕會在地球何處出現，直至十八世紀才由和牛頓同期的英國科學家Edmond Halley研究出來，他的預測方法誤差只有四分鐘和廿哩，時間上和地點上已算相當準確。
至於日冕為何值得現代科學家研究呢？原來太陽的核心達一萬度，不過其外的日冕竟然要高温得多；而不定期的日冕物質抛射包括極強力𥔵場，會影響到地球，八十年代加拿大𣁽北克省就受其影響至大停電。

古代科學家是窮人嗎？

今天和朋友討論科研的問題，今時今日科學家在大學取得教席及開創新公司都可獲可觀收入，友人以為古代科學家如Newton或Kepler均家境清貧，事實並非如此：Newton父親是一位擁有農地及動物的農夫，而Newton曾當教授再轉職皇家鑄幣廠至該處首長之位，相信不會是窮人吧。至於Kepler的確出身寒微，而他第一位結婚對象是一位繼承了已故丈夫遺產的年輕寡婦，她父親（未來岳父）亦曾因為Kepler太窮而反對婚事，直至他出版第一本著作為止，可見書中真有黃金屋！

後話：Kepler這位夫人後來也不幸因病去世，他為續弦花了不少心思，總共考慮了十一位女士！看看此文解釋，說穿了就是選擇困難症吧，可幸的是他最終選的五號帶給他一段美好的婚姻（本人應該會選四號:）

Astrophotography

早一陣子寫過關於太空及天文學的帖，而朋友之中有幾位都是好此道者，昨天首次借來一支望遠鏡嘗試觀「星」，第一目標當然是最容易找的月亮！從鏡中可清楚見到月球凹凸不平的表面，看友人提供的星圖可知月亮右邊是雙子座；金牛座及北斗七星亦不難用肉眼可見，從望遠鏡看這些星也只是一個稍大的點。再試試用GoSky Cell Phone Adapter Mount接上手機鏡頭拍攝但不成功，最成功的是裝了免費的SkyView手機app，靠手機GPS及鏡頭即可知所觀看星空位置然後顯示星座！

經過昨晚，我也躍躍欲試，找到以下有用帖子及網站：

Space.com介紹平價望遠鏡

如何拍攝銀河

用基本器材拍攝仙女座星系

關於Nikon D3200鏡頭的討論

天文攝影入門 作者介紹了幾幅作品都只是用相機不需望遠鏡拍的：Orion and Taurus, Milky Way
能把多張天文照片合成的軟件
十大適合新手觀看的天體

灣區最佳觀星地點（2，3，4）
四月份看甚麼星？

希望在可見將來有成果再在此分享！

Duckosarus

標題是我為歷史頻道網頁介紹的一隻新發現的「怪龍」所創作的名字，如有雷同，實屬巧合:) 去年Nature發表了關於此恐龍的文章：研究人員推測這貌似鴨的恐龍七千五百萬年前生活於蒙古戈壁沙漠，這是第一隻被發現的兩棲類恐龍，能在水和旱地生活。早一陣子無線電視節目「後生仔傾下偈」請來嘉賓盧思穎，談及她小時候的夢想是研究恐龍，我想能發現如此奇怪的化石肯定是該領域專家最大樂趣。

星之源

曾幾何時我對天文學極有興趣，那是在我對電腦移情別戀之前！去年整理香港的舊物時找到小時候視為寶物的天文書籍：崑崙出版公司印行，董時新編譯，Herry Sherwood原著的「無線電宇宙」，售價為HK$3.2；年少無知的我，對書名固然感到有趣，相信更引人入勝的是副題：「來自宇宙間智慧生物的訊息！！」不過除了看過書中的星雲圖片，其他內容基本是不明所以，三十年後才真正地讀一遍（當然不是全部看得懂）基本上是介紹用無線電「望遠鏡」可從太空各處（太陽系內外）接收到的各種電波，以及由此對宇宙星球所增加的認識，不過全書沒有提到從電波成功解讀任何來自宇宙間智慧生物的訊息！無獨有偶，在此之前在書店見到一本The Jazz of Physics, 作者是一位玩爵士樂的物理學家，書中提及他曾經研究宇宙起源，包括Big Bang theory等等；在Netflix也看了好幾套和天文有關的紀錄片，例如：
Edge of the Universe : 這個系列提及用無線電望遠鏡尋找太陽系以外類似地球般有機會孕育生命的行星。
The Farthest Voyager in Space：介紹七十年代發射的兩隻太空探測船
Secrets of the Solar System：探討太陽系一些未解之謎，例如木星這類gas giants如何誕生

有趣的是，由於這些都是舊片，提到「未來」太空探測船可能會有甚麼發現，而2018年已經是那「未來」！2011年出發探測木星的Juno已經接近木星多次，提供了大量出人意表的數據；而Voyager一號更是第一次有人類製造的物件離開太陽系，進入Interstellar space（也是爵士巨匠John Coltrane一張唱片名稱，印證jazz和physics關係不淺呢！）

後記：去年寫過的天宮一號回歸地球事件，昨天又有新消息，最新預測的回歸日期是3/25-4/17之間。

The Magic of Mushroom

最近在Netflix介紹下看了一套以題目為名的紀錄片，大家不要以為和迷幻有關，只是科學吧。一直以為菇是植物，原來生物學中fungi自成一類，在植物和動物之外，反而比較接近後者！本片用鏡頭特別放大拍攝菇類靠孢子由一處彈到另一處繁殖，實在有趣；而在我們吃菇看到的「帽」之下，原來有延申極廣的根網絡，深入其「寄主」（例如樹）後，從後者吸到水分，同時又為其提供礦物質（如氮）。這個也是菌類分解有機物的機制，本片指出其重要性，如沒有此機制，地球上會堆積更多廢物！除了以菇類製成抗生素，片中又提到發明家利用菇類根網的特性，把木屑和菌放在模內，可製成類似發泡膠的物料。此外，大家都會聽過一味中藥：冬蟲夏草，其實也屬菇類，醫學界正研究以此藥抑壓癌細胞擴散。本片實在值得一看。

土星任務

早幾個月前帖了一文關於中國太空站天宮一號將於2018年初以「特別的方法」回歸地球，負面報導不少；剛好在那時又有關於美國太空船卡西尼將於九月中在土星「結束探險任務」的新聞，由於撞的是土星（而且是大氣層）不是地球，倒不見甚麼負面報導，反而有這篇介紹此任務的重大發現。其實我比較好奇的是：土星當地的傳媒對此有何感想？

Tiangong-1 space lab

關於這個太空站如何回歸地球的報導，我先讀的來自一個中文媒體，很負面吧！似乎頗有造成大災難的機會！再在網友留言找到英文網站的連結，讀完又覺得好像沒有那麼高危。到底誰對誰錯？大家細心等等，今年十月至明年四月自有分曉。

How It's Made

It was one of those woke-up-in-the-middle-of-the-night-with-nothing-better-to-do night so I watched the recorded shows on my DVR (not a lot yet 'coz I set it up just one week ago) After finished watching the exciting 2015 Tournament of Champions (of women 9-ball pool. Ga-Young Kim defeated the "veteran" Allison Fisher. Can't believe I have been watching her playing for 20 years! And she's 47 now), the TV showed the end of "How It's Made" from the Science channel, which caught my attention and I rewinded and ended up watching for ~1 hr of how the following products were made:
- wafer rolls: from raw materials like flour, sugar and chocolate to finish packaging in cans
- championship rings: from the metal mold cut with computer based on 3D design, to the molded wax, and then the plaster mold enclosing the wax model, melted metal poured in, mold dissolved and finally polishing the finished product.
- packaged cooked chicken and turkey
- wood pellet: from wood chips to pellets that could be burnt for heating
- NASCAR engine

The channel has some videos online too. Like this one for making champagne:

The f-hole on string instruments

These days we almost take the f-hole for granted: all instruments in the violin family use this shape for sound hole, which is optimal. Some smart luthier must have figured out the science way back. Well, it might be less "scientific" than I thought but rather a result of natural selection: according to a recent study, it evolved from many other shapes, including a C-like shape. The designs that makes the instrument louder were chosen over the others and eventually all luthier use the f-shape.

I also found it interesting that not only violin magazine mentioned it but also the Economist! I guess the economic Darwinism aspect suits its readers. One question remains: why does flat-top acoustic guitar still use one big round sound hole in the middle? Maybe the f-shape is only optimal for arch-top.

STEM hysteria

I have subscribed to TechRepublic's newsletters for a while. (The place I work for has a learning-hour requirement and these newsletters did a great job in recommending tech webiners or white papers. I am not reading as much this time of the year 'coz the quota has been met :P) It does have its fair share of poorly put-together articles like "the Photo of Alan Turing" (the comment section of which is actually more interesting: some criticized TechRepublic shamelessly plugging Google's technology and Android all the time. Some defended the British government's harsh treatment of Turing for his homosexuality) On the other hand, I found one article argued that "not everyone needs to learn to code", which I completely agree. From the article:

some of the fundamental concerns expressed by the "learn coding" movement are legitimate. Skills such as breaking a complex problem into component parts, rapidly learning and applying new tools and methods, synthesizing a complex series of tasks to accomplish an objective, integrating disparate elements designed by multiple teams, and "debugging" a system when it doesn't work correctly are critical for success in a variety of professions. While coding checks all these boxes, so does woodshop, cooking and baking, advanced mathematics, or designing a house. "Debugging" a failed soufflé or a mortise and tenon joint that doesn't quite fit uses a similar thought process to debugging some pesky JavaScript code, but each content area likely appeals to different sets of people.

I also learned the term "STEM hysteria" from the comments (Yes, I do have friends who think STEM education is not enough in US and is hurting US economy in the long run) I tend to agree with another author, Michael S. Teitelbaum, who wrote the book “Falling Behind? Boom, Bust, and the Global Race for Scientific Talent." He urges that we continue to strengthen math and science education in K-12, because educated citizens should have an understanding and knowledge of math and science, not because there will be lucrative careers awaiting them. There will be for some, but not for all or even most.

I noticed one comment from the post linked above suggested engineering jobs are higher paid so if more students major in engineering, it would solve the problem with inequalities in the US economy. I cannot disagree more: wouldn't having more graduating engineering students drag down the salaries of engineering jobs?

Tech from the olden days

I am cleaning up some really old posts that I wrote way back yet still in draft status. The title used the term my daughter likes to play with: olden days (which apparently many others found interesting too. In fact, it has a long history according to this.)  All those posts are consolidated here.

1) Workaround was needed for sharing files from Win2K to Win7 Home Premium Edition (dated 2009.) Those were the days I still used a Win2K laptop as our home NAS. It required a registry change.

2) Guest Additions (dated 2010) was for VirtualBox. I needed it back then for sharing files between my VM and the host (and I still need it now!)

3) Dell DJ 20 Gen 2 was my latest toy in 2010 (and I still listen to it almost every night!) When it was newly released in 2004, it cost >$100 and I bought it for $40.

Its drivers were still available for download from Dell in 2010 (not sure if the link works now.) It is not a plug-and-play device on Win7 and the Windows driver needed to be installed for it to be recognized. The WinXP driver actually works on Win7 too. Also, to use subscription service like Rhapsody, one needed to upgrade the player with a PlaysForSure compatible firmware (the last one on the page) Unfortunately that .exe only works on WinXP so you need to somehow find one. And when I ran it, it stuck on "Restarting player" even though the player was restarted (and upgraded) Fortunately it didn't matter. I just close the installer and it didn't cause any problem. Once the player has been upgraded, you could still transfer subscription tunes using a Win7 computer.

Fast forward to 2014: I could use my Dell DJ 20 on my Win8 PC in plug-and-play fashion. I couldn't get it to work with the Rhapsody client though. Rhapsody no longer officially supported it (no more PlaysForSure?) Today it plays non-DRMed files for me only.

4) CopyTrans is a free tool for copying songs to iDevice without iTunes

5) 2009 was the 50th anniversary of COBOL. It was obviously an important milestone but it's also one of the few major computer programming languages that I knew little about.

6) Shozu was an iPhone App I experimented with (and wanted to recommend) for posting to Blogger. I don't think I used it that much after I drafted that post in 2008 with it though :P

Fast forward to 2014: the official Blogger app on iOS is free yet still not very good. I'm writing this on a PC instead.

7) I wanted to raise awareness of radiation level in Hong Kong back in March 2012. Excerpt from the CNN article:

When Pieter Franken visited Hong Kong one of the first things he did was measure the level of radiation in his hotel room. "The whole idea is to measure everything (rather than only performing spot checks)," said Franken. Hong Kong lies just 50 kilometers from a nuclear power station located in Daya Bay in Guangdong province, but its 12 permanent radiation monitoring stations are not in heavily populated urban areas. On a six-hour drive around the city's major commercial and residential, Franken mapped radiation levels with a portable monitoring kit devised by Safecast. All the data is publicly viewable as interactive heat maps on Safecast's website. The drive revealed that Hong Kong had a constant level of radiation that hovered around 0.2 microsievert per hour for an annualized dose of 2 millisieverts. This was slightly higher than the 0.1 microsievert per hour that Safecast mapped in the major urban centres of Tokyo and Beijing. One millisievert per year is an internationally-recognized nuclear factory guideline for exposure to radiation by the general public, according to Dr. John Leung, radiation expert and physics professor at the University of Hong Kong. "Your risk of having cancer is increased for 4 to 5% per sievert of radiation your body absorbs," explained Leung. "The way to control it is to receive as little as possible." On his drive around Hong Kong Franken wanted to see how localized the radiation was, "but it seems to be all over," he said. Franken believed that the common denominator throughout the city, concrete, was a key source of the radiation. Or more specifically, the locally-sourced granite aggregates used in place of pricier cement to make the concrete. "Hong Kong is lying on a high-background radiation level because the radionuclide content in the granite in this region of the country is a bit higher than the world average," said Leung. "There is more uranium and thorium in our granite. It's natural." A study conducted by Leung and his colleagues in 1990 found that the gamma radiation dose rate of local soil to be 1.8 times the world average. Hong Kong's concrete infrastructure poses no immediate harm to residents' health, but some wonder if more attention should be given to how buildings are made in the city. "When we make concrete, we don't pay attention to the mineral content of the rock, so long as it is strong enough," said University of Hong Kong structural engineering professor, Albert Kwan. "If it's really is the case (that local granite has elevated radioactivity), perhaps we should import our granite from elsewhere." The everyday doses of radiation we encounter are far from being fatal in one shot, but it is the accumulated exposure that may be cause for concern. To reduce everyday levels of radiation Safecast suggests opening doors and windows to ventilate rooms. This minimizes the accumulation of radon - a radioactive gas produced by the decay of naturally occurring uranium and thorium. Inhaling radon - one of the leading sources of human exposure to natural radiation - in the home and workplace causes tens of thousands of deaths from lung cancer annually, according to the World Health Organization.

8) I was experimenting with booting to a Live version of Arch Linux on a USB drive on my personal laptops in 2009. larch was the next thing to try after my FaunOS experiment.

I basically followed the instructions and also did the followings:
I) make a copy of an existing profile. I copied xmini to a new one named "my"
II) I changed the addedpacks by
- remove all xfce* lines and added one line with jwm (pacman cannot find those xfce related packages and I prefer jwm anyway)
- remove aufs (otherwise I got error about dependency on pre-2.26.29 kernel. It has actually become part of the new kernel anyway. However, the included one is aufs2 and it doesn't support "Merging overlays" when you save sessions from running the resulting image of larch.)
III) create a directory for building the image. Make sure it is on a filesystem with lots of free space!
IV) the command should be./mklarch -ug -p ./larch/profile/my [dir created in 3]

Fast forward to 2014: I tried something similar again: Live Ubuntu on USB on my Intel Core i5 laptop. The performance was horrific. Slow to boot and slow after boot (probably worse than the 2009 experiment!) I ended up buying a $50 60 Gb SSD (el cheapo and SSD didn't appear in the same sentence back in 2009) and installed Ubuntu 14.04 properly on it. I like this setup. It didn't require much tweaking at all and most things work out of the box (except this)   

African cichlid fish

I wrote about guitar-related newsletter I got in my Inbox the other day. I also got newsletters from my Alma Mater, University of Texas at Austin. I found the ones from the college of natural sciences particularly interesting. As a trained scientist, I gotta admit I wasn't in touch with science as much as I did when I was a kid but this newsletter keeps me closer. I especially enjoyed this article on African cichlid fish: only one male fish in the group (called a school of fish) gets to be the colorful one and have strong reproductive system. Other male fish with grey color could challenge and if it wins, it becomes colorful and reproductive while the loser loses the color and its reproductive system gets weaken! Well, that kinda reminds me of the scene at UT back then: guys fight for gals (metaphorically) The winner got in good mood and sometimes dressed himself up too, while the loser became less active and might just withdraw from the social circle. 

Data Cruncher Uses Code to Solve NYC’s Problems

I read this article from the Wired magazine while having my froyo break. I was fairly impressed even though there wasn't much detail about what that female programmer did exactly. In any case, it was a good thing done by our profession and definitely deserved some credits. I guess I'm really easy to please 'coz judging from the comments on the linked articles, a lot of readers were not impressed. I do agree with one of them: some mission critical systems (like the ones used in hospital) could be so buggy that a whole team of programmers are dedicated to fixing bugs and basically performing the heroics mentioned in the article all the time!

Unfamiliar territory

I suppose one of the least understood country (especially to the west) would be North Korea. NBA great (and the notorious) Dennis Rodman has organized a few trips and playing games over there, which generated a ton of publicity, not all of them positive to say the least. However, I've just read an interesting article about a scientist who were with Rodman there (translating for him). There are few things I wanna mention from the article: he found that North Korean people were genuinely friendly to him, in spite of the propaganda against Western people (especially American)  Trips like the one made by Rodman would make North Korean understand the outsiders more (and vice versa) And the understanding could only be a good thing. Regarding his own activities there (researching genetics and teaching science,) he found the students were really interested in the scientific methods and ideas he taught and appreciated his efforts. It's good to put politics aside.

The Galileo affair

This post has nothing to do with the heavily promoted TV series starring 福山雅治 in Hong Kong but the scientist instead. For some forgotten reasons I brought up Galileo vs the church during a family conversation even though I have pretty much lost my interest in science after college. It was my favorite subject when I was a kid. (I guess it's abandoned because chicks found artists more cool than scientists) I barely even read "soft-core" science these days but I gradually started doing that again because of the kids. First, it's a known fact that girls in the American education system tended to be uninterested or even discouraged in this area so I gotta do something to counter balance that. Second, I wanna find some heroes that my kids could look up to. Apparently they are not too interested in great composers even though they play. I guess scientists who made discovery and contributions to our world would be easier to understand and be admired. A recent article that is related to science (and also history) and I found interesting was from Quora: the Galileo Affair was voted as the top most misunderstood historical event. (Linking to Wikipedia because you have to become a member of the latter to read its article and I still couldn't figure out how to unsubscribe) Here's the gist: Galileo's contribution to heliocentricism (i.e., the Earth going around the Sun instead of the other way around) was exaggerated. His punishment by the church because of his advocacy of heliocentricism was also exaggerated (the punishment was house arrest for the last 9 years of his life but he was not tortured. And the church didn't exactly oppose heliocentricism but rather Galileo's presentation of it)