Fun paper up on Arxiv about avalanche prediction, with applicability to stock markets, sand and snow alike.

Avalanche prediction in Self-organized systems

Authors: O. Ramos, E. Altshuler, K. J. Maloy

Abstract: It is a common belief that power-law distributed avalanches are inherently unpredictable. This idea affects phenomena as diverse as evolution, earthquakes, superconducting vortices, stock markets, etc; from atomic to social scales. It mainly comes from the concept of ``Self-organized criticality" (SOC), where criticality is interpreted in the way that at any moment, any small avalanche can eventually cascade into a large event. Nevertheless, this work demonstrates experimentally the possibility of avalanche prediction in the classical paradigm of SOC: a sandpile. By knowing the position of every grain in a two-dimensional pile, avalanches of moving grains follow a distinct power-law distribution. Large avalanches, although uncorrelated, are preceded by continuous, detectable variations in the internal structure of the pile that are monitored in order to achieve prediction.

[via Arxiv]

For weather geeks among my readership only: It turns out that under the right atmospheric conditions Doppler weather radar can detect cars, and even tell how fast they're going. Very cool.

Check the following figures from north central Illinois via the National Weather Service. Note that the green/red dots on I-57 imply cars moving at a spiffy 130 mi/h. Damn Illinois drivers.

More here.

Missed this months ago from my friend Barry. Very funny -- and darn useful when CNBC host Larry Kudlow comes back from holidays on August 25th.

Lovely chart from Bloomberg today showing that the languishing S&P 500 is newly languishing less than the newly even more languishing (and previously rocketing) indices of the BRIC countries.

Call the press: We're the least loser! We're the least loser!

More here via Bloomberg.

I must be in an eye-candy kind of mood today. The following figure from a paper in the Annals of Geography is fascinating, showing the 3-D topography of wi-fi wireless network coverage in Salt Lake City.

Some random trivia to use in cocktail conversations tonight:

• China has now won more medals in the current Olympics that it did in the entire 1988 Olympics -- and than in all games preceding '88 combined
• Swimmer Michael Phelps has won more medals than either India or Mexico in those countries' respective cumulative histories
• Apple's market capitalization today passed Google's

• Happiness is closely related to a country's temperature extremes (Source: Climate and Happiness (2003))

While I agree that it makes sense for the U.S. to increase immigration of skilled workers, I laughed out loud at ex-Fed chair Alan Greenspan's other rationale letting more people into the U.S.:

"The most effective initiative, though politically difficult, would be a major expansion in quotas for skilled immigrants." The only sustainable way to increase demand for vacant houses is to spur the formation of new households. Admitting more skilled immigrants, who tend to earn enough to buy homes, would accomplish that while paying other dividends to the U.S. economy.

He estimates the number of new households in the U.S. is increasing at an annual rate of about 800,000, of whom about one-third are immigrants. "Perhaps 150,000 of those are loosely classified as skilled," he says. "A double or tripling of this number would markedly accelerate the absorption of unsold housing inventory for sale -- and hence help stabilize prices."

Awesome. Why wait around for sovereign wealth funds to bail the U.S. out when you can simply invite foreigners in and suggest they buy real estate? Alan's soo-oooo clever.

[via WSJ]