Fuzzy Logic

I was having some problems running large simulations (500k+ particles) in Geant4. Every once in a while I would get a std::bad_alloc() error. A reboot seemed to fix it but I didn’t understand WHY this would be a problem. Anyhow, I found this post which seems to be onto a possible solution. Simply increasing the memory your shell has access to seems to fix this memory error. We’ll see….

whereas increasing the stack size by using the command
ulimit -s 900000
allowed the program to run apparently without a crash:

EDIT: Nevermind, I had created a bomb. Oops.

I tweeted about this, but it was so cool I thought it deserved its own post. While the rest of Apple’s press conference yesterday was pretty worthless (27 minutes of “there is no problem” and 3 minutes of “here’s your stupid case”), there was a pretty interesting part of an Engadget article that was posted later.

Evidently Apple uses computed tomography to scan the insides of their devices when they are undergoing testing. Seeing as how I also use CT to scan cargo containers, I thought that was pretty  damn cool.

An interesting story today comes from the AP (and, by association, CNN’s Website) telling the tale of a court in Pakistan that has issued a gag order on one of their Nuclear Scientists/Engineers/Physicists, Abdul Qadeer Khan, because he has been telling the media about how Pakistan helped North Korea develop nuclear bombs.

A court on Monday barred the disgraced architect of Pakistan’s atomic weapons program from speaking about nuclear proliferation, less than three weeks after he implicated the army in the sharing of nuclear technology with North Korea.

That’s right–the Pakistani court has the ability to refrain a person from talking completely about a subject because they don’t want to have to admit what happened.  Great.

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It seems that Prof. Rusi Taleyarkhan, a Purdue University Professor in the School of Nuclear Engineering, has been found guilty of scientific misconduct.

Quote from the Purdue News Service:

Purdue University on Friday (July 18) announced that an investigative committee with members from five institutions has concluded that two allegations against Rusi Taleyarkhan, a professor of nuclear engineering, constituted research misconduct.

I can’t really comment on this too terribly much as I’m a student in the School of Nuclear Engineering.  That being said, I hope that this doesn’t tarnish the reputation of Purdue or NE there–there is only so much they can do and they couldn’t be expected to do more than they already have.  So, that all being said, read up on it and see what you think.

The site Little Green Footballs comments on Obama’s new plan to rid the planet of nuclear weapons.  Now I have been following everything that Obama says about Nuclear technology for personal reasons and most of it I simply think about and then add that to my list of reasons why Obama aggravates the piss out of me.  I’m not saying he’s a horrible person and I’m not saying that I won’t vote for him (as I am still completely undecided), but he just is so aggravating sometimes that it’s ridiculous.  Why would Obama take away our main deterrant force?

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