I am a “retired” postdoc in particle physics, trying to transition into the tech industry. I started out programming with Java around 1999, and more recently I’ve been doing a lot of work with Python, C, and C++, although I do occasionally dabble in PHP, Perl, shell scripting, and other languages.

  1. 2014
    Mar
    18

    BICEP2 and the primordial B-modes

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on — Edited

    Yesterday the BICEP2 experiment (Wikipedia page) announced a result that physicists and astronomers around the world had been positively drooling over for two days: the detection of primordial B-modes in the cosmic microwave background.

    Ordinarily I would write a whole blog post going through the BICEP2 paper: what the experiment is, what they’re looking for in the cosmic microwave background, what exactly they found, and why you should be excited about it too, but right now I’m super-busy with other things (including another blog post slated for later this week). So instead I leave you with this collection of links to peruse:

    Background info:

    Reports of the results:

    Popular articles:

    There are many others, of course, but that should be enough to get you started. Also follow the #BICEP2 hashtag on Twitter.

    I leave you …

  3. 2014
    Mar
    08

    Science Online for the online

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on — Edited

    For an organization with “Online” in its very name, you’d think Science Online would have no trouble putting the content of their flagship conference, well, online. Well, guess what: collating and summarizing all that information is hard! So if you weren’t at last week’s Science Online Together conference, and even if you were, it’s all too easy to go a little crazy searching through thousands of tweets, Storify sessions, and blog posts to pick out the parts you’d find useful.

    With that in mind, I’ve spent far too much time over the past three days putting together the following non-attendee’s guide to Science Online Together 2014. Each of the individual sessions is listed, in chronological order (because no other order really makes sense), along with

    • the session’s facilitator: the person who moderated the session, who is a good contact point for questions
    • the session’s Twitter hashtag, where you can find (almost) all tweets about the session, including those from live-tweeters as well as questions contributed by others and further discussion taking place afterwards
    • the session’s Storify page(s), if there is one or more than one, which consists of a …
  4. 2014
    Mar
    03

    Science Online Together: day 3 recap

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    They say all good things must come to an end. I guess that’s true, but it would be really great if there were a magic pill that would keep us from having to sleep so Science Online Together a.k.a. The Best Thing Ever could go on forever.

    Okay, technically that exists. It’s called speed. It’s more tempting than it should be.

    Seriously though. Even with the fallout from the sexual harassment incidents over the last year hanging over everyone’s heads, it was truly a great experience for at least those of us who weren’t strongly affected by that — which probably includes most of the 200+ people who had never been to a Science Online event before. Congratulations to Karyn Traphagen and everyone else who helped pull this off!

    CONVERGE session: Creating Collaboration World Wide across the Web

    As the last day began, it was pretty clear from the number of empty chairs that the previous night’s sci-fi gala had taken a toll on people. Still, a sizeable fraction of the community showed up to see an inspiring and even entertaining presentation from Jon Schull and Nick Parker about the organization they work …

  5. 2014
    Mar
    01

    Science Online Together: day 2 recap

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    I think this tidbit I posted on Twitter summarizes day 2 of Science Online well: “Attending #scio14 as an introvert is like the emotional equivalent of running a marathon.” Or three, as was pointed out to me in a reply. It’s tiring! But awesome.

    CONVERGE session: Reaching Diverse Audiences

    To start out the day we were treated to a talk by Jorge Cham, creator of PhD Comics, about that time he was commissioned to make a video explaining the Higgs boson… then a year went by, and the director of the ATLAS Higgs group told him it was all wrong. The truth is, once the true explanation of the Higgs mechanism/field/boson — the mathematical one — filters through scientists, publicists, journalists, and the internet, it can get pretty distorted. Who can blame the cartoonist at the end of the chain? Just a few days ago, Jorge put up a new comic “re-explaining” the Higgs boson, which stays a lot closer to the fundamental math. It certainly gets my seal of approval! (Self-plug: if you want to see the actual math behind the Higgs mechanism, check out my blog post on the subject.)

    Bonus perk: I met Jorge after his …

  6. 2014
    Feb
    28

    Science Online Together: day 1 recap

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    Science Online in three words: BEST. CONFERENCE. EVER.

    Okay so that sounds like I’m overselling, but I really am having a great time here. Even though it’s my first time attending a Science Online event, I came in immediately feeling welcomed by the community because the attendees cover such a broad spectrum — from journalists to PR specialists to science grad students — united only by a common passion for science communication. Unlike the physics conferences I’ve been to, there’s no pressure to prove myself to the “experts”; in fact, in some sense there are no experts. Sure, some people have more experience with science communication, or at previous Science Online conferences, but there’s definitely a sense that everyone has something to contribute. I had no qualms about speaking up at my very first discussion session. :-)

    It has been an intense day though! I had substantive conversations with over 30 people who I had never met as of 24 hours ago. Some of them I already knew through Twitter, though, which was pretty cool — it’s exciting to recognize the faces in the profile pictures. I’ve been building a list of everyone I meet during the …

  7. 2014
    Feb
    26

    Science Online is here!

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    All the rest of this week I’ll be bringing you updates from the Science Online Together conference in beautiful (or at least not snowy) Raleigh. If you haven’t heard of it, Science Online Together is an annual conference that brings together all sorts of people involved in promoting and performing science on the internet: bloggers, journalists, creators of educational videos, online course instructors, science popularizers, public relations specialists, and researchers, ranging from grad students to tenured professors. I’m here in my capacity as a blogger, as a moderator of Physics Stack Exchange, and as a contributor to reddit’s /r/askscience.

    Given the name of the conference, it probably comes as no surprise that it has a significant online presence, even for people who aren’t going to be attending. Each day begins with a CONVERGE session: this is like a plenary session in a normal conference, with a speaker addressing all the conference attendees in one room. You can actually watch these sessions live through the Science Online website, and follow along with that part of the conference from the comfort of your home.

    The rest of the time is filled with discussion sessions, Q&A …

  8. 2014
    Feb
    25

    Working on a new look

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    Later this year is going to be the tenth anniversary of Ellipsix Informatics. In celebration of that, I’ve been working on a brand new, brighter, theme for the site! And with the Science Online conference coming up this week, I’ve decided to roll out the first batch of changes: a new colorful header, more prominent featuring of the blog posts on the home page, and some playful changes to the color scheme.

    This is just a rough draft to shake things up, so expect to see more changes that refine the site’s style as the year goes on. Suggestions and feedback are welcome!

  9. 2014
    Feb
    24

    What's in a proton?

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    Hooray, it’s time for science! For my long-overdue first science post of 2014, I’m starting a three-part series explaining the research paper my group recently published in Physical Review Letters. Our research concerns the structure of protons and atomic nuclei, so this post is going to be all about the framework physicists use to describe that structure. It’s partially based on an answer of mine at Physics Stack Exchange.

    What’s in a proton?

    Fundamentally, a proton is really made of quantum fields. Remember that. Any time you hear any other description of the composition of a proton, it’s just some approximation of the behavior of quantum fields in terms of something people are likely to be more familiar with. We need to do this because quantum fields behave in very nonintuitive ways, so if you’re not working with the full mathematical machinery of QCD (which is hard), you have to make some kind of simplified model to use as an analogy.

    If you’re not familiar with the term, fields in physics are things which can be represented by a value associated with every point in space and time. In the simplest kind of …

  10. 2014
    Feb
    04

    Wrapup of a busy month

    Posted by David Zaslavsky on

    January has been one of those busy months when I haven’t been able to put anything substantial on the blog. I’ve been meaning to — and yes, I do have several posts in preparation for whenever I get a chance — but I’ve just had so much going on, the time kind of flew by.

    Most of the month has been occupied with preparing for, going on, and recovering from my trip to Jyväskylä (Finland). Although it’s pretty cold there by the typical standards of the continental US — the unusual cold that we’ve been experiencing in the States is normal winter weather for Jyväskylä — I actually rather like it there. The scenery is pretty, the city is small but not so small that it doesn’t exist, plus the physics department has a strong record of the kind of research I do. And oh yeah, everyone speaks English. Seriously, even though the primary language of Finland is (of course) Finnish, I didn’t interact with a single person who didn’t speak very good English, so I had no trouble getting around.

    Depending on how things go, I might wind up as a postdoc there for the …