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Showing posts from November, 2015

PhD advertisements in Astronomy

I have been hunting for open PhD position, mostly in Europe, over the last 4 months and I have had to follow about 4 websites, for the most part, constantly to check for new positions/advertisements. And while there were a few websites where people curated lists of places in the world or in the US where students can pursue graduate studies in Astronomy & Astrophysics, either the lists were outdated or the hyperlinks were broken. So I'm going to take a shot at it myself and curate a list of places to pursue graduate studies in A&A. You can follow this page  for updates.

This week's Pocket reading list : Week 2 of Nov.

Rocket men  : Human breath can be used to diagnose patients for certain illness. While people have tried developing instruments that can analyze our breath to look for symptoms, it's a very hard problem to crack given the low concentrations of molecules involved. Cue three rocket scientists - one who had worked on lasers, one who had worked on photonics and analyzing molecular spectral data and the third who had worked on gas flow. They developed a portable machine which can accurately detect Ammonia in human breath, thereby helping diagnose patients. The Two Cultures of Computing  : There are two kinds of people that I know of - the first kind who quarrel about which the best text editor is (VIM FTW) and the second kind who look at us and wonder why we're quarreling over which the best text editor is. This is such an account. More elaborate. More examples. Everything You've Heard About Chastity Belts Is a Lie  : For those who don't know what it is, a Chastity Belt

This week's pocket reading list : Week 1 of Nov

The WWII-Era Plane Giving the F-35 a Run for Its Money  : It's interesting the hear that while technology has been making war more and more sophisticated, there have been people who are keen on using less-technologically advanced machines. This is the specific case where an older (turbo-propeller driven) plane is being preferred for ground support, instead of the more technologically advanced flying machines, as they are better at it than the rest. How Politics Shaped General Relativity  - It's almost been a 100 years since Einstein proposed the General Theory of Relativity, which gave rise to cosmology and helped us understand the universe as a whole. It's interesting to read about how the political ideologies of the time (WWI-WWII) contributed to adoption or dismissal of the theory in various parts of the world. The things feminism has improved for me: A male perspective  : A very interesting article that elaborates on the underlying principle - "Knowledge is Po