Quickies
Quickies: First woman to win Fields Medal, hemp supercapacitors, and cyberstalking
- Maryam Mirzakhani becomes first woman to win Fields Medal – “The professor at Stanford University in California was among four Fields Medal recipients at the International Congress of Mathematicians held in Seoul, and the first woman among the 56 winners since the prize was established in 1936.”
- Hemp fibers “better than graphene” – “The waste fibres from hemp crops can be transformed into high-performance energy storage devices, scientists say. They “cooked” cannabis bark into carbon nanosheets and built supercapacitors “on a par with or better than graphene” – the industry gold standard.” From cerberus40.
- How the law is standing up to cyberstalking – From Amy.
- Neck manipulation may be associated with stroke – “Blood vessel tears that lead to strokes may be associated with – but not necessarily caused by – treatments involving neck manipulations, researchers say.” Via Carrie Poppy.
Chriopractic is related to stroke. Who knew? (The answer is, most people with any basic anatomical knowledge. Sadly, that’s apparently not most people.)
Geez. I had some creep set up a fake webpage in my name nearly ten years ago. Someone was angry at my anti-quackery messages on an email bulletin board. I hit a brick wall with the ISP pleading ‘privacy’ for the perpetrator.
Of course mine was a minor aggravation. But it did involve impersonation and did libel me.
It seems that the worst problem is the unwillingness of any web biz to actually engage human beings at living wages to do the kind of supervision needed. So long as their processes and policies are entirely automated, no responsibility for content or user-activity need be taken.
Here is a great article about the achievements of all of the 2014 Fields medallists.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2014/aug/13/fields-medals-2014-maths-avila-bhargava-hairer-mirzakhani