The Tennessee-Georgia War of 2013.

Well, Georgia is at it again.

They are again outrageously claiming that an 1818 federal survey erroneously marked the state border one mile south of its intended location, putting it in TN rather than GA, whereas we have written extensive legal documentation stating exactly the opposite. 

They say that the surveyors in 1818 were using antiquated equipment, whereas we know it was Georgia that supplied this equipment in the first place. Hah!

They say they're being generous with the offer to redraw (sorry, correct) the state line by asking only that Tennessee merely return a small part of the 'misappropriated' land, not the whole lot, but we don't see what's in it for us to give any of it back at all thank you very much.  

They claim that all they are doing is innocently correcting history, but we know what they really want is access to the Tennessee River to siphon off our beautiful water at the dead of night, and anyway it's not as if it's called the Georgia River is it?

They say they have a crippling drought whereas we say they have done diddly squat to encourage conservation or rein in growth of their polluted Atlantan megopolis, and their blatant land-grab would unceremoniously dump 30,000 upstanding Tennesseans into their grubby little clutches.

They are claiming that we are not taking this issue seriously enough. Last time they tried this prank they claimed we were responding with catcalls and whistles because we didn't have any legitimate arguments to make, whereas we know this is just because they are incapable of having fun with anything.

No quarter shall be given to Georgia, especially if they keep whooping us in the SEC.

The Sad Truth about Scientists

It was "Pi day" in the USA last week (3.14). (Not in Europe, of course, where it was 14.3 day). Now,  in 2005 Lu Chao, a 24-year-old graduate student in Northwest Agriculture and Forestry University in Shaanxi Province, China,  successfully recited 67,890 digits of pi in 24 hours and 4 minutes with an error at the 67,891st digit, saying it was a "5", when it was actually a "0".  He had started learning to recite pi in 2004 and spent more than 10 hours memorizing and practicing everyday during his summer college vacation.

Officials with Lu's university perceptively said that he had a very good memory.

What's the truth about these guys? Well, an American  won the memorizing pi competition some years previously, but his wife revealed  that, well may he be able to remember thousands of digits of pi but  he could never remember where he put his glasses or keys. Now THAT'S the harsh, bitter reality. They're not superhuman after all.  They resemble Jeremy Smith these guys, who when HE was 24 walked his mother to his car in France,  found his key didn't turn in the ignition,  phoned a mechanic to start the car,  drove off then noticed there was a teddy bear hanging from the rear view mirror that he didn't remember putting there.  And the Jeremy Smith who in 1985 dreamily got on the wrong ferry in Dover, UK, ended up in Boulogne, France instead of Calais, without his backpack, and was sent back penniless to the UK on the last ferry. And the Jeremy Smith who was in Tony Mezzacappa's office last week fiddling with his blackberry. He'd had it for two years but  when Mezzacappa asked if it was a touch screen phone, Jeremy didn't know.  

I think I'd better get back to memorizing Pi. I've heard mnemonics are good. Here's one for the first few digits:  How I wish I could recollect pi easily today!  

Reasons to be Cheerful, Part IV

Photo: Thomas Splettstoesser,  info@scistyle.com

Troy Wymore: appears to have found out something surprising concerning sarin ....Hmm...
Demian Riccardi: has found out why mercury binds thiol groups. The traditional explanation was not correct.
Jerome Baudry and Xiaolin Chemg: are publishing all sorts of stuff at a rate of knots.
Hong Guo: has cemented the Shanghai relationship.
Loukas Petridis: has simulations of biomass pretreatment that agree remarkably with experiment
Tongye Shen and Hanna Qi: understand peptide folds in solution.
Derek Cashman and Pavan Gatty: gave great talks last week.
John Eblen: looks like he has a new deal sorted out.
Dennis Glass and Benjamin Lindner: graduated!
Hao-Bo Guo: figured out excited states for benzoic aromatic compounds.
Liang Hong: got his third PRL here published.
Amandeep Sangha: has a theory for lignin control.
Sally Ellingson: has an Autodock manuscript written.
Jason Harris: has a Biochemistry paper and more on the way
Xiaohu Hu: appears to be working for his girlfriend now?
Quentin Johnson and Ricky Nellas: have peptide results together.
Roland Schulz: as a Gromacs megadeveloper, has a paper that is sure to be cited thousands of times.
Jing Zhou: quickly got initial results on her cobalamine project.
Emal Alekozai: has found a curious dipole effect in cellulose:cellulase interactions
Jerry Parks and Alex Johs: Figured out how bacteria methylate mercury. You can find the paper describing the work in Science here, and  news reports here and here. For me, this brings home a lesson -  that genomes as lists of letters are listless.  Only when transformed into  three-dimensional molecular architectures with chemical duties can gene function, and thus genomes, really be understood.

Ladle Rat Rotten Hut

Wants pawn term, dare worsted ladle gull hoe lift wetter murder inner ladle cordage, honor itch offer lodge, dock, florist. Disk ladle gull orphan worry putty ladle rat cluck wetter ladle rat hut, an fur disk raisin pimple colder Ladle Rat Rotten Hut.

Wan moaning, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut's murder colder inset. "Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, heresy ladle basking winsome burden barter an shirker cockles. Tick disk ladle basking tutor cordage offer groinmurder hoe lifts honor udder site offer florist. Shaker lake! Dun stopper laundry wrote! Dun stopper peck floors! Dun daily-doily inner florist, an yonder nor sorghum-stenches, dun stopper torque wet strainers !"


"Hoe-cake, murder," resplendent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut, an tickle ladle basking an stuttered oft. Honor wrote tutor cordage offer groin-murder, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut mitten anomalous woof. " Wail, wail, wail ! " set disk wicket woof, "Evanescent Ladle Rat Rotten Hut! Wares are putty ladle gull goring wizard ladle basking?"

"Armor goring tumor groin-murder's," reprisal ladle gull. "Grammar's seeking bet. Armor ticking arson burden barter an shirker cockles."

"O hoe! Heifer gnats woke," setter wicket woof, butter taught tomb shelf, "Oil tickle shirt court tutor cordage offer groin-murder. Oil ketchup wetter letter, an den bore!"

 Inner ladle wile, Ladle Rat Rotten Hut a raft attar cordage, an ranker dough ball. "Comb ink, sweat hard," setter wicket woof, disgracing is verse. Ladle Rat Rotten Hut entity betrum an stud buyer groin-murder's bet. Soda wicket woof tucker shirt court, an whinney retched a cordage offer groin-murder, picked inner windrow, an sore debtor pore oil worming worse lion inner bet. En inner flesh, disk abdominal woof lipped honor bet, paunched honor pore oil worming, an garbled erupt. Den disk ratchet ammonol pot honor groin-murder's nut cup an gnat-gun, any curdled ope inner bet.

"O Grammar !" crater ladle gull historically, "Water bag icer gut! A nervous sausage bag ice!"

"Battered lucky chew whiff, sweat hard," setter bloat-Thursday woof, wetter wicket small honors phase.

"O Grammar, water bag noise! A nervous sore suture anomolous prognosis!"

"Battered small your whiff, doling," whiskered dole woof, ants mouse worse waddling.

"O Grammar, water bag mouser gut ! A nervous sore suture bag mouse!"

Daze worry on-forger-nut ladle gull's lest warts. Oil offer sodden, caking offer carvers an sprinkling otter bet, disk hoard hoarded woof lipped own pore Ladle Rat Rotten Hut an garbled erupt.  

Mural: Yonder nor sorghum stenches shut ladle gulls stopper torque wet strainers.

[Written in 1940 by H.L Chace, a French professor, to show his students how integral intonation is to the meaning of language. Thanks to Don Bashford at St. Jude's Hospital for showing me this 25 years ago].

Nobody In Edinburgh?

[Old Bus on the Isle of Hoy, Scotland. Photo by Martin Bay].

Time to spruce up the old bangers, maybe? We're economizing on travel!

 I'll be giving a resounding  Plenary Lecture at the International Conference on Neutron Scattering in Edinburgh in July. However, it now appears that very few colleagues from the USA will be there to witness this edifying spectacle.  You see, we are now seeing the effect of The New Travel Restrictions. Indeed, the Energy Department Inspector General's report notes that in the last six years  over 90,000 contractor employee foreign travel trips occurred with a cost to the government of just over $300 million.  That's quite a lot of dough! 

Now, don't get me wrong, I am strongly in favor of reducing unnecessary government expenditure, but things need to be thought through, or unintended consequences shape the end result.  In the case of scientists, many lay-people don't realize that talking with other scientists about your work and learning about other scientists' work in person are absolutely critical to making key discoveries. If scientists don't go to foreign conferences then they don't get to talk with people from other countries  about projects, and, moreover, they don't get to publicize their work. So the result is less well-informed, less motivated scientists doing poor-quality work that no-one else in the world pays much attention to. This reduces significantly the value of funds invested in the research in the first place. To put it another way, we may well spend $3bn on the Spallation Neutron Source, but  if we then try to crimp a few thousand dollars by stopping people going to the world's premier neutron conference future work at SNS will be of lower quality and the worldwide standing of the USA in the neutron sciences will be significantly diminished. 

Here's an alternative suggestion. It seems to me that, unless my maths is really, really bad, the figures above equate to about $3300 per person per trip.  How about simply putting a cap on foreign travel of, say, $2800 per trip? People can get to most places for a $1500 airfare and $200 per day for the hotel and registration. They might have to work a bit online to bring costs down, but that's the point, isn't it?  Better still, if we were to allow lots of  our IT researchers to go to foreign conferences about high-performance computing then, sitting down over a few beers with their German, Chinese and Japanese counterparts, they might just figure out a way  to make videoconferencing really fast and high quality, thus obviating the need for any foreign conference travel at all.  And don't worry, for quite  a while alcohol has not been reimbursable!

Frozen Head and Frozen Toes

There's nothing like a crisp winter hike in sub-zero temperatures!

Here's the view last MLK Day the from Frozen Head mountain fire tower. Frozen Head mountain offers unimpeded views stretching from the Cumberland Mountains to the north to the Tennessee Valley and Smokies to the south.

Starting at 1,362 feet the South Old Mac trail rises steadily for nearly two miles to the summit at 3,324 feet.  Cold indeed it was, especially at the start, but the trees were bare and the cold seemed to lengthen the penetration of the views. We soon warmed up. 

In the early 1800's, settlers from the mountainous regions of Scotland and Wales moved into the Frozen Head area and built homesteads in the high mountains. I  am presently trying to learn  Old Time Music in Knoxville,  and would have loved to have witnessed their Ceilidhs.  Later, local coal  was deep mined using, presumably less joyful convict labor.


The fire tower was built in the 1930s to spot fires and trespassers.  They didn't seem to be up there, though,  in the  fall of 1952 as the  entire state forest was burned by the worst forest fire season in state history.  

Exceptionally Talented Kids

Well on New Year's Day I had the pleasure of driving down to London for the West Ham v Norwich game with Dave Jordan. I hadn't seen  Dave since 1976, when we were both 16 and pupils at Earlham High School. Now, the school itself managed to get itself recently ranked among the bottom 1% of UK high schools and was thence demolished (snif) but our footie team in the 70s wuz magic, and we were both in it.

Dave was a midfield dynamo with a cultured and accurate left foot, and later he coached a successful set of village youth teams in Norwich.  Now,  in our days there were very few scouts for the pro clubs at games, but, apparently Dave's Taverham kids team were constantly sniffed out by the sinister agents from Norwich City, who wanted to identify talent for their 'Academy'.  Now, an Academy is the route to stardom, or at least a living wage doing what you love, and a few prodigies can even be signed to million-dollar contracts in their early teens. But after a while the reaction of Dave and his fellow coaches when they saw the scouts arrive was to pull their best players off the field.  Why would they do that?

Well, signing for an Academy means leaving your friends,  the environment you're used to, and becoming the 'property' of the local pro club. Too may times Dave saw enthusiastic, talented kids snatched by the Academy then returned used, hollow shells of what they were. So he wanted to resist the uprooting and hence his reaction when the sharks were spotted.

The answer must be that there should be a middle way, a way for the most talented kids to receive expert coaching from the academies without giving up having fun with their mates, playing for the local teams as well. And the same goes for any walk of life, not just soccer.  Pro soccer clubs are right - the earlier you can get hold of a kid the better, and the same goes for science - but this needs to be done without uprooting kids from what they know.