All posts by catschroedinger

Physics and Astronomy at Western Blog, Physics and Astronomy at Western What's Happening

How long do we have? And I am not talking about meteoric impact….

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http://gosset.wharton.upenn.edu/mortality/perl/CalcForm.html

This link is to an actuarial tool.  That means that it tries to figure out what the probabilities of your living a certain length of time is, based upon how long people have lived in the past.  I invite you to try it, and then see how long you might live.  It pegged me at 89 which in many ways was encouraging.

This is useful.  It gives you some feedback.  It makes you think.  But, is it right?

Things are changing fast.  On any day in which you were to take the time you would find many headlines about scientific research that has the potential to massively extend life spans, along with good health.  Currently, the actuaries amongst us do not seem to pay too much attention to that, but there is a significant chance they are wrong.

Today I looked at some head lines….. (Today was a bad day, there was not a lot of health science news but there were still some)

·             Protein’s destructive journey in brain may cause Parkinson’s

·             Alzheimer’s Disease in Mice Alleviated: Promising Therapeutic Approach for Humans

·             From Degeneration to Regeneration: Advances in Skeletal Muscle Engineering

·             Scientists identify new risk gene for Alzheimer’s

Things are changing.  Massive leaps in both understanding and practical ability are taking place.  People are growing hearts using patients DNA (still not quite good enough to keep the blood pumping but heading that way).  Blood has been cloned and transplanted into people. The mechanisms of aging are being understood.  So it begs the question. How long do you think you will live?

http://www.easypolls.net/poll.html?p=50b3a70fe4b007bdc40afa86

 

Physics and Astronomy at Western What's Happening

Dance of the Leonids

The Leonid meteor shower peaked last week, on November 17th, with a predicted showering of about 10 per hour just before dawn. Reminded of that, I took the opportunity to wander outside during the morning hours. I managed only to spot two or three that evening, peering through the generally sodium-vapor emission saturated skies around London, but I thought it a rather good night.

Even when you study the sky for a living, it’s disconcerting how easy it is to forget to take time to sometimes soak up the night sky with one’s own eyes, rather than through a computer screen. Luckily, not everyone else is perhaps as negligent when it comes to watching these relatively rare showings:

 

Physics and Astronomy at Western What's Happening

Mario Kart Tournament

Have you ever wanted a medal with your name engraved to show the world how awesome you are?
Mario_kart_wii_tournament_medals
Now is your chance!

 

The above medals will be given to the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners of the Mario Kart Wii Tournament hosted by the P&A Grad Council and PASA.
Date: Tuesday, October 30th
Time: 4:30 PM
Location: PAB 100

 

All skill levels are welcome!

 

Don’t know much about Mario Kart Wii, no problem!  It’s just like driving–steering wheel and all!  More information on the characters, tracks, and items is here.

 

To participate in the tournament, bring the $2 entrance fee to Clara in the main office or to the tournament.  Hope to see you out!

 

Rules:
–Each bracket will consist of four racers chosen at random.
–Each round will have 3 randomly generated races.
–The tournament will be single elimination, with the top two racers in each bracket advancing.
–The championship race will be played on mirror mode.  All other races will be played on 150 cc.
–In the event of a tie, the tied racers will compete in a single race.  For the championship, they will race on Rainbow Road.  All other tie races will be on a randomly generated track.
–If a racer leaves early he/she forfeits his/her place in the tournament.
–Attempting to interfere with participants as they are racing (blocking the screen, poking them, etc.) will not be tolerated.
–Only the Wii remote and wheel will be provided.

 

Physics and Astronomy at Western What's Happening

Ex Western Post Doc on TV, talking about physics!

This might be going back to far for you, but Steve Rehse was here at Western back in the day in Dick and Daves lab, back when it was in the basement and scary to go inside.  He wanted to be a science prof and left for Wayne State originally about 4 years ago.  Finding money hard to come by he moved to Windsor, and he is a prof there now in the esoteric field of Atomic Physics.

Windsor had a science fair, and came up with the idea of doing a sexy demonstartion to try and get the media attention they wanted.  This clip shows the result on the Daily Planet, where Steve is in great form.

http://watch.discoverychannel.ca/daily-planet/may-2012/daily-planet—may-08-…

I do no know what we would have to compete with this, but I am guessing Patrick Whippey might need to freeze something more jaw dropping than a banana.