(no subject)
woohoo i got a b in speech! yeah speech is easy but i missed 4 days, studied for only 2 out of 3 tests, and wrote our big last grade speech 10 minutes before giving it and didnt even practice. but since i did it on the wii, i got a 97 b/c i pretty much got up there and just talked about it like i'd talk some other nerdy gamer friend about it.
uhm so heres some things for everyone:
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP)
Amid the chrome and beech decor of the Henry J. Beans cocktail bar, a time-honored tradition is being played out over a lunchtime drink: Dozens of drinkers are buying rounds for friends and colleagues a ritual deeply ingrained in the Scottish psyche. Now the round is under threat from Scottish lawmakers who believe the custom feeds into Scotland's notorious alcohol problems by creating enormous social pressure on pub-goers to take their turn buying drinks.
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Century-Old Brain-Twister Now Solved
The Poincare conjecture involves topology, a branch of math that studies shapes.
It essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
There is a catch: the space has to be finite. Imagine an ant crawling on an apple in a straight line. It can only walk so far before it's back where it started.
Even though the apple has three dimensions, its surface is two-dimensional. The ant can walk backward, forward and sideways on the surface but not up and down. In three dimensions, shapes are harder to determine because people cannot directly 'see' them and there are many more possible types of holes.
The conjecture is named for French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincare, who proposed it in 1904.
An analogous conjecture was proved for spaces of more than three dimensions over 20 years ago. But the specific 3-D case flummoxed mathematicians for years.
In 1982, Columbia University's Richard Hamilton developed a technique called Ricci flow that mathematically ironed out wrinkles in 3-D surfaces and provided a blueprint for cracking the Poincare conundrum.
A problem was posed by puzzling, dense spots called singularities, which exhibited sudden, uncontrolled change.
Perelman's breakthrough was to understand how to analyze these singularities, essentially neutralizing them for a while and allowing the Ricci flow to proceed smoothly and show what a given space is really like, topologically speaking.
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MADRID, Spain - A reclusive Russian won the math world's highest honor Tuesday for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century - but he refused the award.
ADVERTISEMENT
Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal - often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize - for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians - Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao - won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture - an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls - is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
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Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia
A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.
Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.
"It's a new breed," said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."
Tony Benjamins, whose family lost two cats, said he got a big dog a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix to keep the raccoons away.
One goal of the patrol is to get residents to stop feeding raccoons and to keep pets and pet food indoors.
Lisann Rolle said she began carrying an iron pipe when she goes outside at night after being bitten by raccoons when she tried to pull three of them off her cat Lucy. She obtained rabies shots afterward as a precaution.
"I was watching her like a hawk, but she snuck out," Rolle said. "Then I heard this hideous sound a coyote-type high pitch ... It was vicious. They were focused on ripping her apart."
The attacks have been especially shocking because raccoons came within five feet (1 1/2 meters) of cats without any problem in previous years, Benjamins said.
"We used to love the raccoons. They'd have their babies this time of year, and they were so cute. Even though we lived in the city, it was neat to have wildlife around," he said, "but this year, things changed. They went nuts."
In one case five raccoons tried to carry off a small dog, which managed to survive.
The attacks, all within a three-block area near the Garfield Nature Trail in Olympia, are highly unusual, said Sean O. Carrell, a problem wildlife coordinator with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, adding that trappers may be summoned from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove problem animals.
"I've never heard a report of 10 cats being killed. It's something were going to have to monitor," Carrell said.
Meanwhile, residents have hired Tom Brown, a nuisance wildlife control operator from Rochester, Washington, to set traps, but in six weeks he has caught only one raccoon. He and Carrell said raccoons teach their young and each other to avoid traps.
Brown said he had seen packs of raccoons this big but none so into killing.
"They are in command up there," he said.
uhm so heres some things for everyone:
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP)
Amid the chrome and beech decor of the Henry J. Beans cocktail bar, a time-honored tradition is being played out over a lunchtime drink: Dozens of drinkers are buying rounds for friends and colleagues a ritual deeply ingrained in the Scottish psyche. Now the round is under threat from Scottish lawmakers who believe the custom feeds into Scotland's notorious alcohol problems by creating enormous social pressure on pub-goers to take their turn buying drinks.
------------
Century-Old Brain-Twister Now Solved
The Poincare conjecture involves topology, a branch of math that studies shapes.
It essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
There is a catch: the space has to be finite. Imagine an ant crawling on an apple in a straight line. It can only walk so far before it's back where it started.
Even though the apple has three dimensions, its surface is two-dimensional. The ant can walk backward, forward and sideways on the surface but not up and down. In three dimensions, shapes are harder to determine because people cannot directly 'see' them and there are many more possible types of holes.
The conjecture is named for French mathematician and physicist Henri Poincare, who proposed it in 1904.
An analogous conjecture was proved for spaces of more than three dimensions over 20 years ago. But the specific 3-D case flummoxed mathematicians for years.
In 1982, Columbia University's Richard Hamilton developed a technique called Ricci flow that mathematically ironed out wrinkles in 3-D surfaces and provided a blueprint for cracking the Poincare conundrum.
A problem was posed by puzzling, dense spots called singularities, which exhibited sudden, uncontrolled change.
Perelman's breakthrough was to understand how to analyze these singularities, essentially neutralizing them for a while and allowing the Ricci flow to proceed smoothly and show what a given space is really like, topologically speaking.
-------------
--------------
MADRID, Spain - A reclusive Russian won the math world's highest honor Tuesday for solving a problem that has stumped some of the discipline's greatest minds for a century - but he refused the award.
ADVERTISEMENT
Grigory Perelman, a 40-year-old native of St. Petersburg, won a Fields Medal - often described as math's equivalent of the Nobel prize - for a breakthrough in the study of shapes that experts say might help scientists figure out the shape of the universe.
John Ball, president of the International Mathematical Union, said that he had urged Perelman to accept the medal, but Perelman said he felt isolated from the mathematics community and "does not want to be seen as its figurehead." Ball offered no further details of the conversation.
Besides shunning the award for his work in topology, Perelman also seems uninterested, according to colleagues, in a separate $1 million prize he could win for proving the Poincare conjecture, a theorem about the nature of multidimensional space.
The award, given out every four years, was announced at the mathematical union's International Congress of Mathematicians. Three other mathematicians - Russian Andrei Okounkov, Frenchman Wendelin Werner and Australian Terence Tao - won Fields medals in other areas of mathematics.
They received their awards from King Juan Carlos to loud applause from delegates to the conference. But Perelman was not present.
"I regret that Dr. Perelman has declined to accept the medal," Ball said.
Perelman's work is still under review, but no one has found any serious flaw in it, the math union said in a statement.
The Fields medal was founded in 1936 and named after Canadian mathematician John Charles Fields. It come with a $13,400 stipend.
Perelman is eligible for far more money from a private foundation called The Clay Mathematics Institute in Cambridge, Mass.
In 2000, the institute announced bounties for seven historic, unsolved math problems, including the Poincare conjecture.
If his proof stands the test of time, Perelman will win all or part of the $1 million prize money. That prize should be announced in about two years.
The Poincare conjecture essentially says that in three dimensions you cannot transform a doughnut shape into a sphere without ripping it, although any shape without a hole can be stretched or shrunk into a sphere.
Proving the conjecture - an exercise in acrobatics with mindboggling imaginary doughnuts and balls - is anything but trivial. Colleagues say Perelman's work gives mathematical descriptions of what the universe might look like and promises exciting applications in physics and other fields.
"It is very important indeed because it really gives us an insight into geometry and in particular the geometry of the space we live in," said Oxford University math professor Marcus du Sautoy. "It does not say what the shape (of the universe) is. It just says, 'look, these are the things it could be.'"
Academics have been studying Perelman's proof since he left the first of three papers on it on a math Web site in Nov. 2002. Normal procedure would have been to seek publication in a peer-approved journal.
Three separate teams have presented papers or books explaining the details of Perelman's work, which draws heavily from a technique developed by another mathematician, Richard Hamilton of Columbia University. The Clay Mathematics Institute says the two men could conceivably share the Poincare money.
Ball said he asked Perelman if he would accept that money. Perelman said that if he won, he would talk to the Clay institute.
Perelman is believed to live with his mother in St. Petersburg. Repeated calls over many days to a telephone number listed as Perelman's went unanswered. Acquaintances refused to give out his address or the number they use to contact him, saying he did not want to talk to the media.
------------
Psycho Killer Raccoons Terrorize Olympia
A fierce group of raccoons has killed 10 cats, attacked a small dog and bitten at least one pet owner who had to get rabies shots, residents of Olympia say.
Some have taken to carrying pepper spray to ward off the masked marauders and the woman who was bitten now carries an iron pipe when she goes outside at night.
"It's a new breed," said Tamara Keeton, who with Kari Hall started a raccoon watch after an emotional neighborhood meeting drew 40 people. "They're urban raccoons, and they're not afraid."
Tony Benjamins, whose family lost two cats, said he got a big dog a German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix to keep the raccoons away.
One goal of the patrol is to get residents to stop feeding raccoons and to keep pets and pet food indoors.
Lisann Rolle said she began carrying an iron pipe when she goes outside at night after being bitten by raccoons when she tried to pull three of them off her cat Lucy. She obtained rabies shots afterward as a precaution.
"I was watching her like a hawk, but she snuck out," Rolle said. "Then I heard this hideous sound a coyote-type high pitch ... It was vicious. They were focused on ripping her apart."
The attacks have been especially shocking because raccoons came within five feet (1 1/2 meters) of cats without any problem in previous years, Benjamins said.
"We used to love the raccoons. They'd have their babies this time of year, and they were so cute. Even though we lived in the city, it was neat to have wildlife around," he said, "but this year, things changed. They went nuts."
In one case five raccoons tried to carry off a small dog, which managed to survive.
The attacks, all within a three-block area near the Garfield Nature Trail in Olympia, are highly unusual, said Sean O. Carrell, a problem wildlife coordinator with the state Department of Fish and Wildlife, adding that trappers may be summoned from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove problem animals.
"I've never heard a report of 10 cats being killed. It's something were going to have to monitor," Carrell said.
Meanwhile, residents have hired Tom Brown, a nuisance wildlife control operator from Rochester, Washington, to set traps, but in six weeks he has caught only one raccoon. He and Carrell said raccoons teach their young and each other to avoid traps.
Brown said he had seen packs of raccoons this big but none so into killing.
"They are in command up there," he said.