Science - Sealed, Delivered.

Zombies? (I’m not asking, the ? is part of the title)

Wed Aug 19 2009

As has been recently pointed out by several of my colleagues back home, and even in the comments here, there’s an amusing story in this weekend’s Globe and Mail (the BBC has it too) about a fun paper that does some mathematically modeling of various management strategies to a zombie attack.

I have read a full version of the paper, but I’m yet to find one available without subscription, so in the meantime here’s some gems from one of the linked articles:

Professor Robert Smith? (the question mark is part of his surname and not a typographical mistake) and colleagues wrote: “We model a zombie attack using biological assumptions based on popular zombie movies. […]

In their scientific paper, the authors conclude that humanity’s only hope is to “hit them [the undead] hard and hit them often”.

They added: “It’s imperative that zombies are dealt with quickly or else… we are all in a great deal of trouble.”

According to the researchers, the key difference between the zombies and the spread of real infections is that “zombies can come back to life”.

Why, you may ask, does one of the authors has a question mark in his surname? Here it is from the authors own homepage (and for those who are curious, yes the URL does resolve properly when spelled ‘correctly’.

Janine Benyus: ‘When solving a design problem, look to nature’

Sat Aug 15 2009

Linked: NYT on ‘Giant Particle Collider Struggles’

Wed Aug 5 2009

Kudos to Dennis Overbye over at the New York Times for telling it like it is in his story today on CERN’s upcoming restart announcement(s):

The biggest, most expensive physics machine in the world is riddled with thousands of bad electrical connections.

Many of the magnets meant to whiz high-energy subatomic particles around a 17-mile underground racetrack have mysteriously lost their ability to operate at high energies.

Some physicists are deserting the European project, at least temporarily, to work at a smaller, rival machine across the ocean.

After 15 years and $9 billion, and a showy “switch-on” ceremony last September, the Large Hadron Collider, the giant particle accelerator outside Geneva, has to yet collide any particles at all.

But soon?

This week, scientists and engineers at the European Center for Nuclear Research, or CERN, are to announce how and when their machine will start running this winter.

Related: What went wrong (and what’s next) at the Large Hadron Collider