SCIENCE!

[Lord Chrusher]

Me thinks you are making your figures wrong if you have to photoshop them.

[Master Gunner]

After a bit too much faffing about I submitted the paper I have been working on. My officemate also submitted a paper today, a paper I am a coauthor on.

SCIENCE! Woo!

[Lord Chrusher]

Also on the science front it was announced today the Square Kilometre Array, a massive planned radio telescope, will built both in South Africa and in Australia and New Zealand.

Not quite science, but I am following the docking of the SpaceX Dragon capsule with the International Space Station. Rocket science is a bit of a misnomer; the science of rockets is quite simple while rocket engineering is fiendishly difficult.

[Master Gunner]

Reading up on the SKA, that is insanely cool. As is what's going on with SpaceX.

[Lord Chrusher]

The Dragon capsule has been grabbed Canadarm2.

[Metcarfre]

I guess I'm a gasfitter today... and deciding if I want to go to a conference in Halifax in the fall.

[Master Gunner]

Halifax is a cool place. The Keg (steakhouse and bar) is apparently exceedingly good from what I've heard (I haven't being to Halifax in many years, myself).

[Metcarfre]

If I wanted to go to the Keg, I'd go to the one five minutes from my house.

...Unless you don't mean the nationwide chain of slightly overpriced steakhouses.

[plummeting_sloth]

The Dragon Capsule has officially docked with the ISS. Entry by station personnel is expected Saturday morning.

[Master Gunner]

If I wanted to go to the Keg, I'd go to the one five minutes from my house.

...Unless you don't mean the nationwide chain of slightly overpriced steakhouses.

Allegedly the one there is better than the rest of the chain (there's one next door to me here as well). Unfortunately, as it's been so long since I was last there, most of what I know of the city is second hand now.

I do remember the Citadel being cool, though.

[goat]

Me thinks you are making your figures wrong if you have to photoshop them.

Easier to manipulate colors on cell images so you can actually see the important bits. Also useful since you can't crop images in Illustrator (boo/hiss).

[Metcarfre]

Big chunk of funding came through recently.

Also, participating in frenzy of work to get data together for a collaborator so she has something to present Saturday in Oslo. If it works as expected, it will be a really, really big deal. Fingers crossed!

[Lord Chrusher]

I have a 15 min talk at the Astronomy Society of Australia Annual Science Meeting next month in Sydney.

[The Jester]

That sounds really cool, Chrusher. Good luck!

[plummeting_sloth]

Crusher, I first thought you said it was a 15 walk to the ASAA meeting and I was like "Well, I guess that's convenient and all, but is it SCIENCE!?"

In clothes science, I was able to remove some nitric acid stains from me whitest of white dress shirts with a nice soak in dilute hydrochloric and a bit of potassium permanganate. Also, the lab is a fine place to do laundry, apparently.

[plummeting_sloth]

Speaking of SCIENCE, GZA plans to collaborate with Niel DeGrasse Tyson and others to produce an astronomy-based rap album

http://betterwithpopcorn.com/blog/george-prax/music-news/wu-tangs-gza-and-neil-degrasse-tyson-collaborating-rap-album-about-cosmo

[Metcarfre]

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH THAT IS AWESOME

Gives me even more impetus to start learning about and appreciating rap and hip-hop.

[ecks]

I really hope they have a song about fucking magnetars, and how they work.

[plummeting_sloth]

The tail end of the periodic table just got bit more pronouncable! Elements 114, 116 given names by IUPAC

http://earthsky.org/human-world/two-new-elements

[Metcarfre]

Collaborator took work we were frantically putting together at the last second (reviewing slides all night Friday so she could give talk on Saturday morning) to Oslo.

Huge deal, got offered over 4 million in funding. Can't wait until this gets published.

[plummeting_sloth]

Alright Terps! A human powered rotary aircraft finally flew. I really want to go there the next time they do a test.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-k-3efasOk&feature=player_embedded

[EikoandMog]

I'm taking a break from my science. When I go back to classes, I will be doing a lot of chemistry and a little physics in relation to it. Doing polymer chemistry, spectroscopy and medicinal chemistry next semester.

[EikoandMog]

The tail end of the periodic table just got bit more pronouncable! Elements 114, 116 given names by IUPAC

http://earthsky.org/human-world/two-new-elements

The periodic table is now 1.75% more pronounceable!

[plummeting_sloth]

More importantly, the symbols are a lot easier to use when you do that dumb thing by spelling words with element shorthand.

[Lord Chrusher]

Journals seem to be far too picky about publishing series of papers.