When was the last time a conference proceedings volume made good bedtime reading? Mach's Principle: From Newton's Bucket to Quantum Gravity, is such a book. Editors Julian Barbour and Herbert Pfister have crafted a nutritious stew from the strangest variety of ingredients: well-written papers not only by physicists but by historians and philosophers of science, brief quotes from famous physicists of the past and full translations of more obscure papers from 100 years ago, extensively transcribed and beautifully edited discussions of the papers, an index of 21 different formulations of Mach's principle, and the results of several `straw polls' of the participants at the July 1993 Tubingen conference on which this volume is based. Readers will be tempted again and again to dip into the riches provided here. The bedside table, or the coffee table, is indeed the best home for this book.

This new NumPy book provides an easy start to NumPy for those who want to churn numbers in Python programming language, whether you don't have much programming background or you are switching from your favorite language. The author of the book uses quite a friendly tone throughout the book. Most of the important aspects of NumPy is well covered with well explained examples. The examples provided are step by step explained, starting from the basic array/matrix creation to more complex tasks like signal analysis and linear algebra related calculations.
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D.E. Neuenschwander: Emmy Noether’s Wonderful Theorem
Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, 2011, 228 pages. Intended for senior undergraduate physics students

This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant. Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its magnitude, and the physics of a small (and potentially nonzero) vacuum energy.

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If you haven't heard of Night Trap, you probably weren't playing games in the 90s. It was this game and Mortal Kombat that set up the Congressional hearings on video game violence, and this was the most mis-represented of the collection they showed. It also represented a fortuitous save for Digital Pictures. They shot all the video for this game in 1988, funded by a virtual blank check from Hasbro, looking to create some must-have content for a VHS-based game console. That console never made it to market, but DP still had the footage, and by seizing the opportunity to jump on the upcoming Sega CD, they unwittingly sealed their own demise.

Reprinted with kind permission from Annual Reviews, 4139 El Camino Way, Palo Alto, California, USA

The current form of the Particle properties tables stems directly from a 1957 article in the Annual review of nuclear science, by Gell-Mann and Rosenfeld.

Data on particles were becoming available at an increasing rate, and even before the Annual Review volume was published, Walter H. Barkas and A. H. Rosenfeld decided to make the first update of the table of masses and mean lives. It appeared as Lawrence Radiation Laboratory Report UCRL-8030 (unpublished). Thus 1957 saw the first edition of UCRL-8030: Data for elementary-particle physics.

The first revision of UCRL-8030 was made in 1958, accompanied by a "wallet card".

In 1963, Matts Roos's Tables of elementary particles and resonant states illustrated that it was no longer possible for a single person to compile data critically. Thus, as he saw the Rosenfeld et al.'s computerized draft of the 1964 edition, he suggested combining efforts.

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Every room has views of the Hudson River and either Midtown or Lower Manhattan. Yet despite the near-waterfront location, the Standard doesn’t feel remote. Most of the meatpacking district hot spots are in shouting distance. And the proximity of Eighth Avenue and 14th Street means subway and bus options are many. The High Line, the city’s newest park, which is scheduled to open this spring, is (literally) under the hotel.

Neben dem MSI Wind ist der HP 2133 sicherlich einer der schaerfsten Konkurrenten des Eee PCs und da Roger der glueckliche Besitzer eines Eee PC 701 und eines HP 2133 Mini-Notes ist, hat er natuerlich die besten Moeglichkeiten beide Systeme direkt zu vergl