Dan Garisto

Overall, pouring cold water tends to generate a higher quantity of smaller bubbles with radii ranging from 1 to 2 millimeters, whereas pouring hot water can produce larger bubbles with radii of 5 to 10 millimeters. However, it is important to note that these are merely qualitative observations made by visual inspection. To arrive at accurate conclusions, a quantitative analysis of the bubble size distribution is necessary. We look forward to more in-depth research by readers interested in this topic.

Precise cause for this is still a bit iffy but one culprit could be bubble size. Warmer water tends to have larger bubbles, which could lead to lower frequencies; colder water has smaller bubbles leading to higher frequencies.

Figure 6 The spectral energy distributions of pouring hot and cold water sampled from whole recording, 1/6 octaves smoothing. components. The spectral energy distributions clearly illustrate that the sound of pouring hot water exhibits a predominance of energy concentrated in the lower frequencies, while that of cold water displays a predominance of energy at higher frequencies within the audible range. Stated alternatively, the sound of hot water contains more low-frequency components, whereas the sound of cold water contains more high-frequency This is why, intuitively, even a person who doesn't know anything about acoustics would qualitatively describe hot water as sounding duller and cold water as sounding brighter or crisper.

Brief answer: cold water seems to have higher frequencies; warm water has lower frequencies.

"This is why, intuitively, even a person who doesn't know anything about acoustics would qualitatively describe hot water as sounding duller and cold water as sounding brighter or crisper."

The best part about this is that it's still a bit of an open question because fluid dynamics is, well, tricky. Here's an extremely accessible article from just last year.

That said, worth noting (the Times flubs this, though I think the story is otherwise good) that this was an author retraction, not the journal retracting it over their wishes. See comments from one of the authors:

Top Journal Retracts Study Predicting Catastrophic Climate Toll

Not ideal.

"If Uzbekistan were excluded, they found, the damages would look similar to earlier research. Instead of a 62 percent decline in economic output by 2100 in a world where carbon emissions continue unabated, global output would be reduced by 23 percent."

Are they really distinct in terms of likelihood? I admit I group all of the sterile-related anomalies (including reactor) together in my head and my sense is that all of them were on thin ice.

Search for light sterile neutrinos with two neutrino beams at MicroBooNE - Nature Data obtained from the MicroBooNE liquid-argon time projection chamber are used to exclude the single light sterile neutrino interpretation of the LSND and MiniBooNE anomalies at the 95% confidence le...

The LSND anomaly has been extremely dubious for a long time. Hopefully this puts things more to bed.

As a side note, always nice to see null results getting published in top journals.

Placing both AI and quantum technologies in a single office makes sense, says Steven Girvin, a quantum engineer at Yale University, as AI has emerged as a powerful tool for developing quantum computers. The office’s effectiveness will depend on coordinating myriad strains of research, he says. “It’s nice to have one box on the org chart that sees the big picture of all the quantum investments,” he says. “But whoever does that work has to spend all their time then making connections to all the other types of science that quantum needs.”

Machine learning is a useful tool for plenty of scientific areas. The reason 'AI' is getting grouped with quantum computing specifically—at companies like Google and now at DOE—is because of branding and wishcasting.
www.science.org/content/arti...

While the Trump administration is imposing de jure and de facto restrictions against Chinese nationals, I am not aware of any policy that would reject visas for Chinese nationals in fields of "interest" to the PLA.

Please be careful about generalizing from individual cases.

The U.S. Is Funding Fewer Grants in Every Area of Science and Medicine A quiet policy change means the government is making fewer bets on long-term science.

An excellent visualization of changes to NSF and NIH funding.

My hand holding a shortbread cookie in the shape of an airplane. There are red sprinkles in the pattern of the survivorship bias plane.

A plate of the same cookies.

Does anyone want a survivorship bias shortbread

BREAKING: Northwestern University has agreed to pay the U.S. Treasury $75 million, over the course of three years as part of an agreement with the federal government to restore funding and end investigations into the university

Full statement from NU below:

Wine bottle meme First third: Thanks for having us at your lovely home! Second third: So, have you ever heard of the Superconducting Super Collider? Last third: The International space station is a vanity geopolitical project, devoid of real science. Reliance on Russia means it has even been a net negative for US soft power. We could have discovered the Higgs on US soil a decade earlier!

Happy Thanksgiving!

There are currently about ~250 active doctoral dissertation research grants, which support early career researchers (mainly in the social/behavioral/economic sciences) to the tune of ~10-30k. Sure looks like NSF is sunsetting the program.

‘Anti-woke’ policies blamed for falling attendance at some US conferences Scientific meetings that support Black, Latino and Indigenous researchers are grappling with funding cuts and other restrictions.

Following Trump's DEI cuts, attendance has plunged at some conferences for scientists from underrepresented groups. The loss of federal support means fewer chances for people to network, share science, and develop new career paths.

Still, attendees say "the sense of solidarity remains strong".

I think the best we can do is—if we decide the policy merits coverage—is provide context for _why_ there is such agita from the engaged community over potentially/seemingly mundane changes, without stoking undue panic.

Trump called for ‘gold-standard science’: how the NIH, NSF and others are answering Some researchers say that US-agency policies provide opportunities for political interference.

What to do about this fourth kind of stories, about mundane-sounding policies that could be a nothingburger or could be opening the door to abuse? I don't really have a good answer—my own reporting is as fraught with the uncertainty of whether a policy like gold standard science will matter at all.

In which I fruitlessly beg NIH grant-seeking folks to focus on what is actually important. A new webpage on the NIH site called “Implementing a Unified NIH Funding Strategy to Guide Consistent and Clearer Award Decisions” is causing a small kerfuffle on the socials. As per us…

Different tone, but basically says the same thing:

"The real issue is the nature of these priorities which will be used to decide on grant selection going forward, and the expertise of those making the decisions. And the process for making those decisions."

Here Berg argues the policy change is fine, unless the heads of the ICs are inappropriately appointed.

Others are worried about geographic bias entering the mix. (Story notes this: "NIH was already taking some steps to rectify that bias")

“My colleagues are asking who would agree to volunteer their time on an NIH study section if their ranking of grants will not be what drives awarding,” Carol Greider, a Nobel Prize winner and molecular biologist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, tells ScienceInsider. “The main issue really is who is making the decisions after peer review and how will there be transparency in that process?”

In August, when news of the payline change began to emerge, Jenna Norton, an NIH program officer, said she and some of her colleagues within the agency were concerned, like some potential grantees. “If program staff were going to be the ones who got to make these calls [on grant decisions], I would be much less worried. But it definitely opens the door wide for abuse from an administration that has definitely not earned our trust regarding their scientific judgment,” she told ScienceInsider speaking in her personal capacity. Norton, who has protested other recent changes at NIH, was recently placed on administrative leave, a further sign of politicization at the agency in the eyes of some.

Will making "a threshold peer-review score" public actually change much? Will stopping the use of hard cutoffs based on a peer-review score—as many NIH institutes have already done—do anything?

On their own, by the letter, probably not much. The concern is: 'what else changes?'

And then there are stories like this, the NSF reorganization, much of the gold standard science stuff—essentially stories about bureaucratic juggling or rejiggering. It's unclear what their intent is, let alone what their impact will be.

NIH shake-up to grant decision-making draws concerns of political meddling Policy drops “paylines” based on peer-review scores and requires geography and other factors to guide approvals

Some meta commentary inspired by this piece.

There are basically four kinds of science policy stories about federal agencies these days:
-unprecedented/illegal actions (mass RIFs)
-changes to funding (budget, indirect costs)
-policy change w/clear intention (EPA overturning endangerment finding)

The animating impulse behind DOGE — to shrink government without regard for Congress’s spending decisions — may in fact be stronger than ever. Now that project is in the hands of Vought, who was plotting how to reduce the federal workforce back when Musk still described himself as “involved in politics as little as possible.” While DOGE was drawing ire for its haphazard, wanton cuts with volatile personalities, Vought was stocking the Office of Management and Budget with dozens of policy experts, largely old Washington hands more likely to spend their nights reading white papers and budget tables than being chronically online. (Vought declined to comment.) Over the course of the year, Vought’s staff put together the president’s proposal for the federal budget, used executive authority to control agency spending, and sent so-called “pocket recissions” — a legally questionable maneuver to cancel appropriated funds near the fiscal year’s end, without sufficient time for Congress to reject it — to Capitol Hill. The politics of making such cuts, ironically, have grown easier due to the fury that DOGE incited. Vought’s methodical and relatively low-key approach — despite provoking legal challenges — has yet to inspire the type of media attention, or sustained public outrage, that DOGE did.

With DOGE splintered/absorbed, Vought is now the main force in making dramatic cuts to government agencies.

Inside the DOGE Succession Drama Elon Musk Left Behind What really happened when he logged out of Washington.

A lot of clarifying details in here about how DOGE's influence waned after Musk's departure in May and what many of its key figures are now doing.

A Battle with My Blood When I was diagnosed with leukemia, my first thought was that this couldn’t be happening to me, to my family.

"As I spent more and more of my life under the care of doctors, nurses, and researchers striving to improve the lives of others, I watched as Bobby cut nearly a half billion dollars for research into mRNA vaccines" www.newyorker.com/culture/the-...

A glorious selfie with the official MAHA lanyard seconds after I made it past Secret Service screening.

About that exclusive, "closed-to-press" MAHA summit last week with RFK and JD Vance: I got in.

Here's what I saw. 🧵 🧪

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

I think we need a mouth tape deep dive, Max.

Pigeons sense Earth’s magnetic field in an entirely new way Specialized hair cells pick electric currents induced by magnetism

Interesting update on avian magnetoreception. This is neat, but given the existing evidence I would be a bit surprised (sotto voce: and disappointed) if the cryptochrome mechanism with its elegant quantum biology turned out to be for naught.

HEADS UP: CDC website now officially asserts that vaccines may cause autism.“Studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities.” Also says the “vaccines do not cause autism” header remains b/c of an agreement with Cassidy.