Nobel Prize for Economics for practical work on poverty

Two MIT professors, who are husband and wife, and a Harvard professor are sharing the Nobel Prize for Economics because of work they have done on global poverty. By examining things like educational improvements and preventative methods for health care and how those can improve national economies, the work these three have done the past couple decades have been shown to help millions of people, especially in some of the poorest nations in Asia and Africa. Some of the work was actually done in the field, testing policies to see what did and did not work, and this more scientific approach often cannot be done in advanced economic models.

Esther Duflo, one of the winners from MIT, is only the second woman to win an economics Nobel, and is also the youngest to win it at age 46.

Eleventh Annual CIERA Public Lecture Thursday, October 24 @ 5:30 p.m. Northwestern University, Cahn Auditorium 600 Emerson St. Evanston, IL 60208 Cartography of the Cosmos:  Mapping the Unseen

Photo by Michael Marsland Priyamvada Natarajan Yale University Professor of Astronomy & Physics Award-winning author of Mapping the Heavens: The Radical Scientific Ideas that Reveal the Cosmos

Description of the Lecture: Our cosmic view has been rapidly evolving, and over time maps have revealed the refinements. Until 1914, we believed that we were alone in the universe and unique. In addition to demonstrating the existence of other galaxies, the astronomer Edwin Hubble in the 1920s discovered that our cosmos was in motion. Since then we have rapidly uncovered many other features of our cosmos – the existence of dark matter, black holes, dark energy, and extra-solar planets. In my talk I will focus on how mapping encodes radical new scientific ideas. We will trace the history of acceptance of new astronomical ideas and talk about the current status of several transformative and deeply contested ones. The arc of their acceptance reveals not only our shifting conceptions of the cosmos but also demonstrates how science works.

Nobels for Peace and Literature

The Nobel Peace Prize for 2019 goes to Ethiopia's Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, for his efforts to end long, ongoing battles and conflict in his country, as well as ending incarceration of political opponents and improving the standing of women, as well as working on issues that affected other regional areas and relationships. 

The Nobel Prizes for Literature for both 2018 and 2019 were announced yesterday. Last year's literature prize was postponed due to scandals in the academy. The topic of nationalism was prevalent in each of the winner's writings.

Nobel Prize in Chemistry

Three scientists will split this year's Nobel in Chemistry (from the US, Great Britain, and Japan) for their work in the 1970s on lithium ion batteries. These are now common in almost all cell phones and electric cars, and are being developed to store energy from wind and solar power stations - a pretty important and overdue bit of recognition, most would say!

Nobel Prize in Physics

The Nobel Prize in Physics was announced this morning, and goes to James Peebles (US, Princeton), Michel Mayor and Didier Queloz (both Swiss), for their work to change our perspectives on the universe. Peebles was one of the leading theoretical scientists who studied the cosmic microwave radiation left over from the Big Bang, and figured out the visible, ordinary matter we see is only about 5% of the universe. About 20% is determined to be dark matter, and some 75% dark energy (a type of 'anti-gravity' force pushing the universe outward - we have no clue what makes up dark energy, at the moment).

Mayor and Queloz changed our perspective on the universe by being the first to discover exoplanets. We now have observed thousands of other planets and solar systems, and some of our theories of planet and solar system formation have changed because of this discovery, such as why there are numerous examples of 'hot Jupiter' planets, where massive planets are formed near their host stars.

Nobel Prize in Medicine

Two Americans and one British scientist are sharing this year's Nobel Prize in Medicine. Their work in the understanding of how oxygen is used within cells was groundbreaking, and gives fundamental understanding to some of the basic cellular chemistry that allows life to exist.

Interested in Climate Modeling, but don't know how to code? Check out EdGCM!!

Here is a wonderful resource for students and teachers to use for climate science interests. You can run a professional climate simulator without having to know the vast levels of science or coding that go into such simulators. The Educational Global Climate Modeling site at Columbia University, EdGCM, takes an old NASA climate model and has developed a GUI for user friendly accessibility for running the simulations.

Run and analyze your own simulations using parameter sets of your choice, to 'discover' the effects of all sorts of physical processes on the global climate. I believe you can even run simulations for past climates, such as ice age periods, to learn how natural physics processes cause cycles in climate patterns.

This could be a game changer both for learning about the actual science of climate, as well as the science research process used to study climate!! Have phun!

Relevant to Juniors: New Star-Exoplanet system found close to us

Especially juniors, check out this article about a large gas giant planet, similar to Jupiter, orbiting a small dwarf star. There are many questions astronomers are asking about how a small star could form large planets, but regardless it is there! This is a new binary system like we have been studying. Enjoy!

This is the link to the binary star simulation we used in class.

Seniors, Sept. 11 work

Unfortunately, I had to leave with illness; very sorry about this. Happy hump-day!

Please be sure to talk with others to go through the practice problems from last night on electric potential and the use of energy, and have consensus on those.

For today, check out a video on an electrical analog to projectile motion, where we imagine an electron moving into a constant, uniform electric field. This electric force will play the role of gravity for a ball rolling off a table. Take notes on it, along with writing down any questions that come up.

Also, to begin getting a sense of scale for electricity, check out two short introductory videos on the power grid. Click here and then for this second one. Again, take notes and make any comments or questions so we can chat about them.

After the videos, make good use of time to work through practice problems:
        AP Problem from 2000, from the Substitute Teacher;
        Ch. 21 #33, 92     these are in the initial unit packet
        Ch. 23 #4, 11, 13  these are in the small potential pack from yesterday

For SAT II people, we'll meet Thursday during periods 5, 6.

Seniors - Check out Band Theory

As we get into electricity, materials become important, with the big 3 being insulators/nonconductors; conductors (usually metals); and semiconductors. To begin understanding why there are different electrical properties, we have something called Band Theory, coming from quantum mechanics and the notion of energy levels for atoms. Check out this video to get a hopefully clear conceptual understanding of what these 'bands' are that we'll refer to.