Cold fusion is back

It appears that cold fusion is creeping back into the spotlight, as can be seen from recent media coverage, for example via ACS and at forskning.no. There's also a video presentation on LENR by Pamela Mosier-Boss here, and there is a comprehensive bibliography and a set of full-text papers on cold fusion here.

Predictably, this resuscitates old battles and opens up new battle fronts, including one between chemists (primarily electrochemists) and physicists that I find to be particularly interesting. In the piece at forskning.no, two Norwegian physicists from the University of Bergen - Håvard Helstrup and Professor Egil Lillestøl - express severe scepticism towards any claim of cold fusion. Professor Lillestøl kicks the antagonism into high gear by claiming that "En fysiker vil ikke vil ha store problemer med å forstå at kald fusjon basert på kjemiske prosesser ikke er mulig" ("A physicist won't have great difficulties in understanding that cold fusion based on chemical processes is impossible").

That statement is very hard to take as anything but a stone cold diss of chemists and a chest-beating proclamation of the scientific superiority of physicists. I am going to have to find this dude's h-index tomorrow to see if he's got the credentials to back up such claims or if he maxed out by being the Knut Jørgen Røed Ødegaard of Thorium-based nuclear energy in Norway.

Update: Prof. Lillestøl last published in a scientific journal in 1990 according to ISI-WOS. While his h-factor is substantial, he is only first author on two papers from WAY back in the day. He typically appears smack dab in the middle of the author list among some 30+ other scientists on CERN-related publications, and unlike some of his co-authors, his biography is not on the ISI HighlyCited list. Dude is apparently highly renowned for his pedagogic skills and his popularization of physics though - good on him.

To reform or not to reform

From some recent posts, It would certainly appear as though I'm vehemently opposed to teaching reforms. Also; Anders' comments to the aforementioned posts have done little to diminish this impression :-)


Just to clarify my position; my default position to teaching reforms is very positive. There is no system that doesn't have room for improvement, and a conscious effort towards improving teaching and an aspiration of concomitant added learning and understanding for the students is definitely something worth striving for. Despite how my posts may appear at times, I'm no gatekeeper of teaching traditions. Traditional teaching practices are valuable in that they represent a standard set of well-defined input and output variables by which to measure alternative approaches. I am very sceptical towards any claim of methodological perfection; the best case scenario for traditional teaching methods is that they represent the best practices of the time, and there's no logical reasoning to back any reluctance towards change on the basis that we simply can't do any better.


So; if I'm pro teaching reforms, then what's my problem?


In short, it's the apparent complete absence of scientific method behind recent reforms, and the reluctance or inability to objectively quantify results and thus compare - for lack of a better term - teaching paradigms, in time leading to an iterative improvement of teaching. If a parameter change leads to measurably lower student learning, then don't continue in that direction. One variable at a time is a very simplistic approach to such a complex set of correlated variables as teaching and learning, but even this would be a massive improvement compared to the "reform by elimination method" we've seen. With all the data available, it would probably be a good thing to use multivariate analysis, but the strong inverse correlation between "politics + soft sciences" and math all but ensures a massive fail if this would be put into effect.


For all I know, this could be more of a political problem than a methodological one, in that various amendments not rooted in anything but rhetoric and party programs are piled onto the proposals after the teaching professionals are done with it. This, however, would probably be indistinguishable from bad science. The most recent reform is the so-called "Quality Reform" which was rolled out in 2003 under a center/conservative government coalition. Some notable changes which were rolled out as a result of this reform at the university level are: (1) the introduction of mandatory pedagogic training for academic staff, (2) more focus on student evaluation throughout the semester rather than by one single yardstick (the exam) via portfolio assessment, and (3) a change in the way education is funded.


(1) Mandatory pedagogic training for faculty members - the so-called PEDUP program. I've written about my experiences with PEDUP in several posts, like here and here, and although I recognize it as a good idea on paper, I'm not sure if we'll ever be able to measure the impact. During my PEDUP tenure, the staff refused to answer any questions pertaining to how much the implementation of PEDUP has improved teaching and concomitant student learning. The basis for their refusal to answer any such question was their firm and expressed belief that the quality of teacher performance could not be quantified. Not the ideal attitude towards an implementation based on a measured discontent with teacher performance and the assumption that an improvement of this would lead to better student performance, which is measured, averaged and evaluated like there's no tomorrow.


(2) Portfolio assessment isn't exacly a new concept, despite being touted as such by various politicians. Fact of the matter is; most traditional teaching schemes can be renamed as portfolio assessments without any change whatsoever, as long as more than one element is used in the evaluation. Interestingly, the number of cases of students cheating has increased tremenduously after the Quality Reform was introduced - predictably mostly for any other form of assessment than exams, such as written assignments etc., where students can lift phrases and even entire texts off of the interweb. However, it wouldn't be fair to put the entire blame for this on the reform, as recent years have also brought more attention to these phenomena, as well as educated the teachers in use of tracking software to combat fraud. The observation still remains, and this needs to be taken into account when comparing evaluation forms. After all, a grade is supposed to reflect the performance on an individual basis.

(3) The funding of education at universities and university colleges has changed from being a fixed amount based on the number of students to following each student. In other words; universities get paid according to how many students pass. And wouldn't you know it; the number of failing students has dropped significantly since the introduction of the Quality Reform. You think there might be some conflict of interest here? Also, this effectively introduces a serious covariance in the data set which makes it impossible to determine any positive effect of mandatory pedagogic courses etc. Not even with a neural network would you be able to untangle the effects of a) introducing changes meant to improve the quality of teaching, learning and evaluation and then b) roll out a system wherein the universities get a cash incentive to let students pass while at the same time c) let the university decide how many students pass or fail.

This is not very scientific. Not at all. As a matter of fact, I'd wager that if hereditary factors have any influence on intelligence at all, and the scientific and engineering communities were made up by the same people who constructed Reform 94 and the Quality Reform, humanity would still be sitting in caves, trying to figure out if rocks are edible.

I hate it when it happens...

Suddenly I'm forced to reconsider my love for vintage Nationals in specific and blues in general*:



I hate it when that happens...

*And maybe you as well, Wilhelm?

At least they recognize what's important

The student organization (Elevorganisasjonen) claims that it's illegal to expel (for one day) students who are caught using snus (perhaps the brand and concept Skoal is more familiar to folks Stateside). Featured in the piece is a photo of the student organization leader, Håvard Vederhus, mugging it up for the cam with what I assume is his most intimidating yet intellectual look. At least it's good to know that the student organization really cares about the important things - you know; the quality of the education, relevance of textbooks, level of school with respect to requirements at higher institutes of learning.

This epic battle between "The Man" and the downtrodden is based in a new rule which a high school in Porsgrunn rolled out this week, wherein the school reserved the right to expel for one day any student caught using snus. According to the brilliant legal minds in the student organization, this is illegal. Equipped with their razor-sharp wits, years of legal experience and three episodes of Boston Legal Vederhus and his posse dug up a preceding case from a high school in Gausdal, where the Department of Education ruled that the school could not deny access to students who showed up late for class or forgot their books. Clearly the punishment must be proportional to the crime. Besides, the use of snus on school grounds should be legal as long as it doesn't bother anybody.

The school regulations reportedly include a total ban on the use of any form of tobacco on school property.

Do you think the legal juggernauts in this student organization have much of a case based on the above facts and statements?

Class of '89 reunion?

So I'm starting to get invitations and info pertaining to my junior high school reunion. What is the customary thing to do here, considering that a) I'd have to travel quite a bit to get to the "event", b) the sum total of people from this class roster I'm currently in touch with is zero, and c) the "event" is set to occur just around the time when my wife and I are expecting our firstborn.

Decisions, decisions.....

On a side note, the number of misspellings in the ~35 words that made up the official invitation letter make me inclined to believe that I've made it OK despite what junior high school I've went to rather than because of it...

Whut in the name of tarnation?

You better believe it's Monday today. I should've seen the writing on the wall when it turned out that the coffee machine was out of order as I rolled into work. That and other small kinds of mishaps flat out pale, however, compared to the horror of having to talk to the Norwegian equivalent of the INS due to some bureaucratic snafu with regards to the imminent arrival of a visiting professor. At least his arrival was imminent prior to the aforementioned snafu. Dude is supposed to arrive here Thursday night, and he applied for his VISA in January, where the duration as well as the starting date of his stay were specified and backed up by the invitation letter. Today he got static from the embassy, telling him that his contact person at the host university had to contact UDI on his behalf in order for the VISA to be issued.

As luck would have it, I am that contact person. Which entailed getting all the information together and calling their "hotline". The first time I called, I was on hold for about ten minutes before some fluke in the system - or an operator - hung up on me. Game over, back to scratch. Their phone service is one of the more sensory-depriving experiences I've been exposed to. Aside from the "Press 1 for English menu" option, and the interruption by some low-budget automated "All our operators are busy at the moment. Please hold." every ~2 minutes, there is absolute silence. No Sixties classics, no 90's elevator music - flat out silence. And the automated douchebag asking you to hold offers no information on the expected time you have to wait, or even the (probably staggering) number of people ahead of you.

The 'Gitmo people ain't got nuthin' on the INS. The first couple of times you call, you quit after ten-max fifteen minutes. At some point you figure out that you don't call these servants of absolute evil for fun, and that the only way to hopefully accomplish your bidness is to bite the bullet and endure the hellish holding period. By the time you actually get to talk to some carbon-based life form (as far as I know anyways), you're so deeply engulfed in Stockholm syndrome/have the Eye of Sauron on you that you forget the fact that you were on hold for - in my case - 40 minutes before you got to talk to anyone.

So was the situation resolved? That's a big, fat no - the person on the line told me that this type of application normally took three months to process, and that she could try to speed it up but she couldn't promise anything.

Funfact: When you apply for these things, you have to get the starting/arrival date approved before they even start to look further at the application. The application was submitted and pre-approved exactly TWO months prior to the arrival date. I don't know precisely who screwed up, but we're left holding the bag. One thing's for sure; the INS people need less meth and more math.

Outline of a song

...at least a rough recording of the basic riff, verse and chorus structures, with a some simple fills added. I can always add bass with teh Whammy and program some decent drums in Cubase, but it would be better if someone could add proper bass and keyboard. You hear me, Joe?



...oh; and this song structure is somewhat reminiscent of some three other bands. Anyone hear any resemblance?