Science news in brief
Colour blindness may have hidden advantages
Six percent of men have deuteranomaly, the commonly known green-red color blindness. A less fraction of women are suffered, due to the recessive nature of the mutation gene that is only found on X chromosome. Interestingly, the mutant form of green pigment may help to differentiate subtle shades identical to people with normal vision, such as some different khaki shades. Given the commonness of this type of color blindness, it's hypothesized that the gene may once provided evolutionary benefit.
Warped geometry speeds airline boarding
The first application of Lorentzian geometry outside physics is for airplane boarding process. It's found that boarding passengers with window seats first is more efficient than filling the plane from the back, which creates a lot of blocking. Uncontrolled boarding - adopted by airlines such as Southwest in the United States and EasyJet in the UK - is also relatively efficient.
Well, my experience did show that the boarding on Southwest flights were pretty fast. The abstract for the paper sounds cool:
physics/0512020
Title: Analysis of airplane boarding via space-time geometry and random matrix theory
Abstract: We show that airplane boarding can be asymptotically modeled by 2-dimensional Lorentzian geometry. Boarding time is given by the maximal proper time among curves in the model. Discrepancies between the model and simulation results are closely related to random matrix theory. We then show how such models can be used to explain why some commonly practiced airline boarding policies are ineffective and even detrimental.
Does rivalry rewire the rapping web?
The network of rappers has a 3 degrees of separation and shows little assortativity in contrast to other human social networks.
What is interesting to me is a comparison between different networks. On average it takes a chain of 2.9 people in the network to connect one rapper to another. This compares with 2.5 people for the network of movie actors (popularized in the Kevin Bacon game ), 3.6 for company board directors, and 5.9 for collaborations between high-energy physicists.
Six percent of men have deuteranomaly, the commonly known green-red color blindness. A less fraction of women are suffered, due to the recessive nature of the mutation gene that is only found on X chromosome. Interestingly, the mutant form of green pigment may help to differentiate subtle shades identical to people with normal vision, such as some different khaki shades. Given the commonness of this type of color blindness, it's hypothesized that the gene may once provided evolutionary benefit.
Warped geometry speeds airline boarding
The first application of Lorentzian geometry outside physics is for airplane boarding process. It's found that boarding passengers with window seats first is more efficient than filling the plane from the back, which creates a lot of blocking. Uncontrolled boarding - adopted by airlines such as Southwest in the United States and EasyJet in the UK - is also relatively efficient.
Well, my experience did show that the boarding on Southwest flights were pretty fast. The abstract for the paper sounds cool:
physics/0512020
Title: Analysis of airplane boarding via space-time geometry and random matrix theory
Abstract: We show that airplane boarding can be asymptotically modeled by 2-dimensional Lorentzian geometry. Boarding time is given by the maximal proper time among curves in the model. Discrepancies between the model and simulation results are closely related to random matrix theory. We then show how such models can be used to explain why some commonly practiced airline boarding policies are ineffective and even detrimental.
Does rivalry rewire the rapping web?
The network of rappers has a 3 degrees of separation and shows little assortativity in contrast to other human social networks.
What is interesting to me is a comparison between different networks. On average it takes a chain of 2.9 people in the network to connect one rapper to another. This compares with 2.5 people for the network of movie actors (popularized in the Kevin Bacon game ), 3.6 for company board directors, and 5.9 for collaborations between high-energy physicists.
posted by faraway at 1:43 AM
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